#obviously there's some things I listed here that people like

[threeacttragedy]

Entry 20: The One Where We Take a Course in Rear Window Ethics

Oh, hey, hey – you’re back!

Yes. I, uh – we need to – uh... What the hell are you doing with that Exakta VX camera fitted with a 400 mm Kilfitt lens?

Come here. See those open windows across the courtyard?

Uh, yeah…

Well, I’m trying to zoom into that apartment –

Wow. Because that’s not creepy as fuck.

Oh, don’t be so modern. This is New York City, 1954. It’s fine.

Yeah, okay. I need you to focus for a moment. Seriously – put down the zoom lens. Headquarters called and wanted to know why Dorothy was still in Oz. You know we were told to take her home.

No – actually we were told to throw stones at that wannabe Wizard. And we did. Kind of. Okay, whatever, but surely you can feel the shift. At the very least we’ve infiltrated the base camp with a bunch of flying monkeys. They’ll take care of the rest. God, there’s one in there –

And we were supposed to help Dorothy find her way back home.

Meh, don’t worry about Dorothy. I don’t think she’s ready to go home. Even after the ping-pong bullshit of the past few weeks, she’s still standing on her own two feet. Although Toto continues to be a mild pain…

But –

But nothing. Dorothy’s had the power to get her own ass home this entire time. When’s she’s ready, she’ll go.

Okay, well, obviously you’re not going to be of any help as you seem preoccupied with spying on your neighbors. So, I’m going to need to borrow the hot air balloon. Where’d you put it?

Oh, it’s on the—wait! If you take our balloon, how am I supposed to get around? I’m not staying here indefinitely. There’s no air conditioning in this damn apartment!

How about I promise to come back for you? Maybe.

Damn you. Fine, I’ll go with you. Let me get my shit together. Here, hold my camera – and don’t drop it!

Hmph, this is heavy. How does it work? I just look through this and… <points camera towards apartment across the way> Oh – this is interesting. What the hell did you say was going on over there? “…[S]tart from the beginning…Tell me everything you saw – and what you think it means.”

You know those days when you have no choice but to catch up on the work you’ve been blowing off for the past few days (maybe even weeks)? Well, last week, I was having one of those days. The work I’d been pushing down my list for weeks finally needed to be addressed. Regardless of how mind-numbing it was, it had to get done otherwise things were going to start going awry.

I’m one of those people who – when working on the mundane – has a mind that tends to wander every few minutes or so. I find myself Googling things like, “What is the fastest animal on the planet?” And, for your own Useless Knowledge, the cheetah’s land speed of 60+ mph doesn’t come close to the peregrine falcon’s dive bomb of 240+ mph.

Anyway, to keep my mind from wandering, I usually have something running in the background to force my brain into paying attention to two things at once – somehow that helps me maintain focus. The most popular “something” is almost always one of the many (quite possibly too many) British detective shows available for streaming. But, the other day, I simply wasn’t in the mood to rewatch Season 3 of “Dalgliesh” for the seventh time.

So, after a bit of scrolling, I put on an old movie I hadn’t seen in years: “Rear Window.”

The 1954 original, of course.

I’m rarely impressed by anything put out by Modern Hollywood, but the old shit – well, there are some legit classics out there, including this one.

One of the reasons I’ve always been fond of this movie is because you go into it knowing the “bad guy” right from the word “go.” I’m one of those extremely annoying people who can guess the villain within the first few chapters of a book, or within the first twenty or so minutes of a movie (like I said, I am rarely impressed by Hollywood). However, I will admit, one book did slip by me. Damn you, Agatha Christie. Honestly, though, the thrill I felt with being wrong was far more memorable than anything I’ve ever felt with being right. Good or bad, a surprise always leaves its imprint, doesn’t it? Plus, the hysterical elation my father must have felt – and later exhibited – knowing I was going into the final few chapters wrong – well, damn him, too. And, no, the book was not “Three Act Tragedy.” That one was quite easy.

Okay, enough about Ms. Christie. Back to Mr. Hitchcock.

As I sat busily typing away and listening to the dialogue of “Rear Window” playing in the far reaches of my office, it suddenly occurred to me that the parallels between “Rear Window” and the Lukola fandom were rather, well, thought-provoking. Here we have a man (and later his sidekicks) peering into the personal life of another human being. Our protagonist in “Rear Window” witnesses an event (a cover-up, actually) and sets out to prove it – all from the perspective of an onlooker looking in. Sound familiar? I thought it might.

So, welcome to your course on “Rear Window Ethics.”

Now, I cannot intertwine “Rear Window” with the Lukola fandom without dragging your ass into the story. Actually, I could – but it’s far more entertaining for me (and hopefully you) if I form a nexus between you and the movie.

Therefore, you, of course, get to align yourself with L.B. Jefferies (played in real life by Jimmy Stewart). If you’re still in this fandom, it’s because you’ve witnessed something you simply cannot ignore and you’re almost certainly hellbent on proving it at this point.

It’s very likely most of you entered the Lukola fandom alone. You watched some portion of the World Tour and became intrigued. Your mind began to wander, which sparked some urge in you to do some digging. Eventually your investigation led you to the Devil – sorry, I mean, social media. There you met like-minded junior investigators, and you’ve now found yourself chatting with these newfound friends and theorizing in the burrows of underground group chats.

So, about your sidekicks…

The part of “Stell-aaaaaa!!!!” (yes, that is my hat-tip to Jake) is given to your most “inventive” Lukola friend. You know, the one that has their own “theories” channel in your private chats; the one who scurries down the rabbit hole – not in search of the White Rabbit – but in search of the Cheshire Cat. Stella is the reason you think outside the box. In “Rear Window,” Stella (played by Thelma Ritter) is Jefferies’ nurse (Jefferies is injured and bound to his apartment; hence why he has so much free time to gaze out the rear window). This friend will throw anything and everything against the wall to see what sticks – even if it occasionally takes a deep-dive into how to cut up a body in a bathtub.

Next, we have Detective Doyle, Jefferies’ long-time friend (played by Wendell Corey). Doyle is quite possibly your spouse, haha, or anyone who side-eyes your involvement with this fandom. Doyle half listens to Jefferies’ theories and usually counters Jefferies with an alternative piece of evidence. But don’t fret, although Doyle teases Jefferies about his wild theories throughout the film, Doyle is, in fact, supportive of Jefferies and does comes around in the end.

I’m going to switch gears for a moment but not before acknowledging that, yes, I am aware I’m missing a player here. Don’t worry – she will arrive shortly.

Alright, on to our subject matter: Lars Thorwald.

Thorwald (played by Raymond Burr) is our straight-outta-Hitchcock-baddie who has been spotted by Jefferies trying to cover up the murder of his wife. The obvious parallels I’m going to draw between “Rear Window” and the Lukola fandom are (1) Thorwald’s crime being equivalent to the World Tour and everything that has happened thereafter, and (2) Jefferies’ obsession with proving Thorwald is guilty being comparable to the fandom’s obsession with proving Lukola is real.

Now, I’m going to get the ball rolling by fast-forwarding through the World Tour all the way up to where I last left you – the post-release of “Mis-Directed.” Recall that shortly before the book’s release, in a surprise turn of events, Luke appeared with Antonia at the Boss event held January 30. However, this was almost immediately negated by Luke snubbing Antonia post-event (and perhaps even more shockingly, Antonia’s mirrored lack of acknowledgement of Luke). And try as Nicola might, there’s no skirting around the innuendo made throughout that fan-fic of a book.

“Watson! Get up! There’s fuckery afoot!”

Who the hell are you?

I’m Dad. Who are you?

Ah, not that guy!

Yes, that guy. Of course, Dad has entered the room. After all I needed someone to fill the role of Lisa Fremont (also known as Grace Kelly). Lisa is your Lukola friend with the highest degree of common sense. She takes the “evidence” presented and looks at it with some realism. She is never going to take the Dwight Shrute Route and state something as “Fact,” but she is the one you rely on to delineate between what makes sense and what doesn’t. In short, this is your friend who understands human nature.

Alright, before I really get this ball rolling –

Since I’ve now added a third wheel (Dad) to the back-and-forth dialogue of my two wizard-chasing-balloon-riding-time-traveling-narrators, I suppose I should also give these two imbeciles names.

You first.

Uh, well, I’m Charley and that’s –

I’m Crowd.

Full credit for these two make-believe idiots is given to my dad. He created the personas of “Charley and the Crowd” for my two nieces a few years ago. They would show him their dolls and my dad would narrate what was going on in their stories. Of course, my nieces regularly corrected him with, “No, Papá, that is not what Barbie is doing!” Still, Charley and the Crowd stuck around, playing the role of two, usually counter-productive and sometimes ignored, news anchors at a Macy’s Day Parade-like event hosted by my nieces’ massive collection of L.O.L. Dolls.

And just for clarity’s sake, during the dialogue between Charley, Crowd, and Dad, actual statements made by Dad will be in quotations. Any statement not in quotations was added simply to move the story along.

Let’s begin (finally).

In “Rear Window,” every time Jefferies and his sidekicks present their findings to Detective Doyle attempting to prove Thorwald’s guilt, they are thwarted by evidence discovered by Doyle’s investigation. It’s a constant back-and-forth throughout the movie; however, regardless of how “solid” Doyle’s evidence is that Anna Thorwald is still alive, Jefferies remains sat on the hill that Thorwald killed his wife. It was this parallel – not the peeping Tom aspect of the movie – that piqued my interest last week. No matter what was thrown at him, Jefferies remained steadfast in his opinion Thorwald murdered his wife. Nothing budged him. I realized Jefferies’ level of resilience mirrored every diehard Lukola’s reaction to every piece of contradictory evidence thrown at them. Nothing budges them.

The tail-end of January and all of February was a bit wild in the Lukola fandom. I mean, there were a lot of narratives being thrown around only to be counteracted by another event. As I mentioned earlier, we ended January with the Boss event but that flame was quickly extinguished by Luke and Antonia’s complete lack of follow-up. Luke had the perfect opportunity to make it “official” with Antonia – to finally shut down the Lukola shippers – but he didn’t.

Crowd: Antonia not doing anything with it is the biggest tell, in my opinion.

I’m not going to spend much time rehashing the Boss event because I already discussed it in Entry 18 (link below), but I will touch on two things that I believe deserve an Honorable Mention.

The first being –

Charley: Why didn’t Antonia have her phone or even a handbag at the Boss event?

I mention this little detail because it was echoed at the BAFTA afterparty Luke attended with Antonia on February 16. In fact, I suspect this may be the modus operandi when Antonia attends an event with Luke – she is not given the opportunity to have a phone with her. One would think, at the very least, you would see Antonia entering and/or leaving an event with some kind of handbag or clutch. But we have pictures of Antonia entering both the Boss event and BAFTA afterparty without one. I will acknowledge we don’t see her leave these two events; however, if we rewind time, Antonia does not have a handbag with her during Papsmear.

Dad: “Well, that’s extremely odd.”

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned it before – at least not on this blog – that my dad has an eye for women’s fashion. My sisters and I grew up under his critical eye and, to this day, my father doesn’t know where he went wrong with my older sister. This is entirely why he was given the part of Lisa Fremont, the movie’s style icon in the form of Grace Kelly. The fact that Antonia is never seen with any type of handbag at these events sparked his interest.

Dad: “[It seems] they [at a minimum Luke] wanted complete control [of what Antonia could take away from the event]. No handbag. Nowhere to hide a phone. No rogue pictures floating about.”

Charley: Yes, it does seem that way.

The second event I wanted to mention was – although neither Luke nor Antonia liked the Boss grid post of the two of them entering that event together – Nicola did. Now, this wasn’t an immediate like. In fact, Nicola waited almost two weeks to like the post, on February 12.

Crowd: The day before Nicola went back and liked that post, that video was being dissected across social media.

Dad: Why?

Charley: Because it was suggested Luke said, “Let’s get this done,” as he walked inside the event with Antonia.

Dad: “I don’t hear shit.”

I will admit, when this video was initially sent to me, I didn’t hear anything except the background noise. However, when I was told what was allegedly being said, I was able to hear it. This very well could be the power of suggestion but the timing of Nicola’s like on this post is, at a minimum, noteworthy.

Once we leave the Boss event, we stumble right into “Mis-Directed.” I’ll post the links to my review of that book at the end. It is what it is – and it’s a whole lot of…umm, yeah…maybe Dad said it best.

Dad: “Either your Lukola thing is real, or Ireland is a psychopath.”

Crowd: Seriously, who let this guy in here?

I’m going to have to hard agree with my dad on this one. Not necessarily about Nicola being a “psychopath,” but the references made in the book are too on the nose for it not to be intentionally Lukola- and/or Polin-coded.

I’m also convinced this book was edited after the World Tour, with the most obvious example of this being demonstrated with the quote: “The dates here coincided with the time period of Leicester Square… Below the words was a symbol of a V-shaped flying dove. At first glimpse, it strongly resembled two raised fingers.” If our duo is to be believed, Luke and Nicola had no idea prior to the World Tour that the fandom would go wild over Colin’s fingers. But after the release of Part 1, any mention of “two raised fingers” would send the fandom into a feeding frenzy. And it’s such an extremely random bit of innuendo, I have trouble believing the author came up with it on her own.

Charley: When you think about it, if Antonia hadn’t shown up at the Boss event, the Lukola fandom would have taken the book as confirmation that Lukola was real.

Indeed, a hefty portion of the fandom would have done just that. The fandom was already convinced that Luke and Nicola spent the holidays together – even without direct evidence – because there was evidence that Luke and Nicola did not spend the holidays with Antonia and Jake, respectively.

Antonia appeared to be with family at Christmas and in the Maldives over New Year’s – without making even the slightest insinuation that Luke was with her.

Jake seemingly spent the holidays with Dylan B., as demonstrated by his pre-Christmas stories with Dylan in their (basically) adjacent hometowns – without Nicola, who, by her own account, was in Galway. Jake and Dylan’s Christmas stories were followed up with their jointly hosted New Year’s Eve party – at which Nicola was not present (as evidenced by Nicola’s comment to an attendee’s New Year’s Eve post: “Have the best night miss yous”).

Dad: “It is weird they [Nicola and Jake / Luke and Antonia] wouldn’t spend any of the holidays together. One? Sure, maybe. But all? No.”

But, even with that statement, my dad chose to play the role of Detective Doyle (a/k/a the Devil’s Advocate of “Rear Window”) regarding the holidays because –

Dad: “Misty [Antonia] was with her dance troupe. Jake was with his friends. Ireland was doing her thing. But no one knows where Thang [Luke] was. Everyone else has a trail except him, which is odd. He could have been with Ireland, but you can’t prove it, so what you have is not really evidence.”

Charley: Thanks, Dad.

But, let’s face it, my dad is right. There’s no solid evidence that Luke and Nicola spent their holidays with each other or anyone else. You can apply the same theory to the birthdays. The only “evidence” we have that two people did not spend a birthday together was Jake posting a belated birthday greeting to Nicola followed by Nicola posting what appeared to be an intimate birthday dinner for two, presumably from the night before. We can surmise Nicola’s birthday date was not Jake, otherwise he would not have posted the late greeting.

About Jake’s birthday –

Crowd: Oh, yeah, “hard launch No. 54” because Nicola used a red heart in her birthday story to him.

Charley: You mean the same one she used in a story for another friend just the other day?

Crowed: Yep.

Dad: “I don’t know what to say about those people [the Jakolas]. They need to resubmerge or something. There’s no relationship there [between Jake and Nicola].”

The Jakolas are banking this “hard launch” on the fact Nicola posted a birthday story for Jake, but not for Luke, and vice versa. These are the same people who will argue that Luke and Antonia not posting about each other’s birthdays is because they’re private – but, in the same breath, refuse to acknowledge Luke and Nicola may not post about each other’s birthdays because they’re private.

I believe it’s worth mentioning that no one from the Bridgerton cast except James Phoon posted about Nicola’s birthday on January 9. When Nicola acknowledged her birthday greetings the day after, she did not repost Phoon’s story nor did she repost fan-favorite JVN’s birthday story. And I should have placed bets on this next part – no one from the Bridgerton cast posted about Luke’s birthday on February 5. Surely, I’m not the only person who saw – and anticipated – the comraderie there.

What the Jakolas should have been focusing on with Jake’s birthday was the fact that it was Dylan and Becky’s boyfriend that were wearing matching “Jecky” shirts at their joint birthday party. No one else had that shirt except for the two people believed to be their significant others. Although I’m not fully convinced Jake is dating Dylan, I am one hundred percent convinced Jake would date Dylan over Nicola.

Charley: What’s next?

Crowd: God, there was so much shit going on in February! Uhh, let’s jump to Valentine’s Day. Nicola attended the IFTA’s with her mother and sister, and Luke attended a GQ dinner event alone.

This holiday follows in the same vein as the previously noted holidays, except it’s Nicola and (amazingly!) Luke that are both accounted for. Jake was presumed to be in Sheffield rehearsing for his play; and Antonia was nowhere to be found, not even at the GQ dinner.

However, Antonia does make a brief reappearance at a BAFTA afterparty alongside Luke on February 16.

Crowd: But it was a repeat of the Boss event. The next day, neither acknowledged the other.

Charley: And Luke was reported to have left the party after only an hour – without Antonia. He even posted a picture of himself getting into a car alone.

Dad: To me, “[i]t seems like Thang took his dog [Antonia] for a walk and left her at the dog park.”

Two days later, Luke – actually out for a walk – is papped getting coffee, alone. Is it horrible of me to say that the most exciting thing about these pictures was the untucked versus tucked shirt? I’m not even sure why I’m taking the time to mention this except I felt there would be some side-eye if I did not.

And to be honest, I’ve left out some details and minor events from the months of January and February because, if I were to add them, this post would be twice as long as it already is. For example, don’t get me started on sunburns, tan lines, and “sunny places.”

If we were in the movie, “Rear Window,” everything stated up until this point would run parallel to the back-and-forth between Detective Doyle and our Trio of Peeping Toms. Evidence is presented by the Trio, which is then countered by Doyle. Doyle’s evidence is dismissed by the Trio because, again, they’re hellbent on proving their case, so they continue theorizing and digging into Thorwald. All that leads up to the movie’s climax.

Charley: Have we finally made it to the SAG?

Crowd: Yes, yes, we have.

Charley: Dad – Dad – wake up!

Dad: Huh?

Alright, the fucking SAG awards. This would be about the point in “Rear Window” where Lisa gets caught by Thorwald rifling through his belongings in search of evidence. We’re in the audience biting our nails because Jefferies can’t do a damn thing to help Lisa except watch everything unfold. And that’s what we did with the SAG awards. The entire Lukola fandom was hyper-focused on Luke and Nicola – and they did not disappoint.

Forget all the drama we endured from the sideshow characters and the nonsense that came with them.

Forget Luke being AWOL for six months.

Forget everything except the “hug heard ‘round the world.”

The ice was broken; the champagne was flowing. Luke and Nicola’s joint SAG appearance was like the World Tour on steroids.

Dad: Can I say something?

Crowd: Fuck. What?

Dad: “It was their season, right? So, their joint appearance on the red carpet wasn’t earth shattering. Neither was them sitting together. It was their night to celebrate.”

Crowd: Who invited this wet blanket to the party?

Dad: I wasn’t done. “Their season has run its course, right? They’ve ‘graduated.’ So why are they the focus of mainstream media?”

Charley: <thinking> Because there’s something newsworthy there?

That is your climax. Not their SAG appearance – because everyone can have their own interpretation of Luke and Nicola’s behavior and those interviewers’ Q&A’s – it was the mainstream media going ga-ga over Luke and Nicola that sent the Lukola narrative tumbling out the window. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll understand that reference.

By the following day, Luke and Nicola were everywhere. I genuinely appreciate the “Librarians��� of the private group chats – those people who track and record every single post, story, like, non-like, follow, unfollow, literally everything – their job was grueling last week. The Sincerely Ignorant Lukolas who jumped ship months ago were frantically trying to climb back on board, while the Jakolas were desperately trying to find their Dramamine. The Defectors went silent except to remind their hive of hornets not to worry; that they will get “a reminder soon…”

Charley: A reminder of what?

Crowd: Oh, that there are two side characters floating about.

Well, lo and behold – right on schedule – a random picture of Luke and Antonia in an elevator surfaced the day after the SAG awards. The problem with the picture was that it was dismissed by Lukolas almost immediately. The account that dropped the picture on X was suspicious. Antonia’s hair and clothing seemed “so last year.” The Lukolas were far more focused on Luke and Nicola liking anything and everything to do with the SAG that day than to pay any attention to the “same old song and dance” about Antonia. Even Nicola liking Jake’s very bland “Nicola” comment on her grid post was dismissed with a “shooing” wave of the hand and an uninterested half laugh.

On February 25, the “insinuation” pictures were at it again. In fact, it was a rather busy day. An event host posted a picture of what appeared to be Antonia perfectly centered at an L.A. hotel pool. The story was reposted by the hotel itself. In fact, that’s the only reason the picture was found by the fandom. A new elevator picture of Luke and Antonia dropped; however, it, too, was dismissed fairly quickly, regardless of it being dropped by a different, less dubious X account. The Lukolas just didn’t give a fuck about Antonia. Luke was the subject of a blind that insinuated he had spent most of his time at the SAG looking in a mirror. And the evening was rounded out by something that would have rocked the boat in June 2024 but had little effect in February 2025 – Nicola followed Antonia on Instagram and vice versa!

Oh, shit – Jefferies just lost his grip and fell out the “Rear Window.” But he didn’t die! So, that’s a plus.

The following day, February 26, Antonia started to remove tags from her Instagram account including the “Soho” New Year's 2024 picture of Luke and his friend group, which included Antonia. And Nicola responded to the “mirror” blind about Luke with “I can confirm this is 100% not true [laughing/crying emoji].” So, interestingly, we had Antonia backing further away from Luke and Nicola stepping up to defend him.

Crowd: So, where do we go from here?

That’s a good question. The thing I’ve learned through this “course” is that the Lukolas are now unmoved by the shenanigans happening around them. You can serve Antonia to them on a silver platter, and they’ll flag down the waiter and ask them to return her to the kitchen. And you won’t find Jake anywhere on their menu (hence why I didn’t even bother to mention Jake’s play).

Dad: I think “the whole thing has run its course.”

It really has. The Lukolas are tired but unyielding. At this point, they just want their version of Thorwald to confess. The narratives running parallel to each other (i.e., Lukola vs. Jakola vs. Lutonia) can’t go on much longer. One of them is going to crack under the pressure.

Remember, “Three can keep a secret…”

P.S.

Dad: “Is Ireland still wearing that ring?”

Me: Yes.

Dad: “Then why did you call me?”

Me: <deep sigh>

[bakuchrome]

WILDFLOWER -K. Bakugo

Katsuki Bakugo x Reader

Master List

Bakugo never cared about his reputation. He was a hero, a damn good one, and that was supposed to be enough. But with every explosion, every pissed-off rant at reporters, and every viral video of him telling a villain to "sit the hell down," his agency wasn’t exactly pleased.

They wanted him softened. More palatable. Someone the public could root for in a safe way. So they made a call.

And that’s how Tsuyu Asui became his fake girlfriend.

It wasn’t her idea, but she agreed— calm, logical, a perfect contrast to Bakugo’s temper. The media ate it up. Headlines praised his 'gentler side.' Paparazzi photos of their staged coffee dates were plastered everywhere. People started to believe that maybe Dynamight had a heart underneath all that fire.

But you?

You knew the truth.

Because Bakugo Katsuki might have been 'dating' Tsuyu for the world to see, but behind closed doors, in stolen moments, and in the way his hands always found you in the dark— he was yours.

The first time you heard about the fake relationship, you laughed.

"That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard."

Bakugo glared at you from across the room, arms crossed, a vein threatening to pop in his forehead. "Yeah? Well, tell that to the dumbasses at my agency."

You tilted your head, watching him. He was tense, more than usual. And that meant something.

"Does Tsuyu know this is fake?"

"’Course she does, idiot," he scoffed. "She doesn’t give a shit— she’s just helping me out."

"Right." You leaned back, crossing your arms. "And you’re fine with this?"

"Obviously not, dumbass!" His voice spiked, and he groaned, rubbing his temples. "But what the hell else am I supposed to do? They’re threatening to pull my damn endorsements— say I’m 'too aggressive.'"

You stared at him. His jaw was locked, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

"You are aggressive, Bakugo."

His red eyes snapped to yours. "Yeah? And you like it."

The words sent a rush of heat down your spine. Because he was right.

You had known Bakugo for years. You had seen every side of him— the ruthless fighter, the stubborn idiot, the boy who loved so deeply it scared him. And this? This was some PR bullshit that didn’t belong to him.

"You could say no," you said softly.

He exhaled sharply, shaking his head. "And what? Let them ruin my image? Make me out to be some kinda—" He clenched his teeth. "—villain?"

And that was the part that killed him the most.

Bakugo had spent his entire life proving he wasn’t like him. That he wasn’t another Shigaraki, another Dabi, another cautionary tale of power left unchecked. He had worked for this. Bled for this. And now, the world wanted him to play nice, or they’d take it all away.

You swallowed hard.

"So, what now?"

Bakugo sighed, shoving a hand through his hair. "Now," he muttered, "I pretend to be in love with someone else."

And you hated how much that hurt.

The first time he kissed Tsuyu in public, you saw it on the news.

It was a quick thing— just a brush of lips outside a café, cameras flashing, a reporter gushing about how 'Dynamight is finally showing his softer side!'

You had to turn off the TV.

Because the thing about Bakugo was— he didn’t do half-measures. If he was pretending, he was going to make it look real. He was going to sell the lie.

And it made you sick.

That night, he showed up at your door.

You almost didn’t let him in.

"Go home, Bakugo."

"Open the damn door, please."

You froze. Because Bakugo never said please.

When you opened it, he looked— wrecked.

His hair was messier than usual, his eyes dark with something unreadable. He wasn’t wearing his usual scowl, wasn’t posturing like he had something to prove. He was just— there

"Don’t," you whispered. "Don’t come here after you just—"

"It’s not real," he said, stepping closer.

You clenched your fists. "It looked real."

His jaw tightened. "I know."

"Then maybe you should go back to her."

His eyes flashed. And then— before you could push him away— his hands were on your waist, his lips crashing into yours, desperate and real and nothing like what you saw on the news.

You gasped against his mouth, fingers tangling in his hoodie as he backed you against the wall.

"I hate this," he rasped. "I hate this fucking lie—I hate that I gotta do this when all I want is you."

Your heart slammed against your ribs. "Then stop."

His breath was ragged, his forehead pressing against yours. "I can’t."

"Why not?"

"Because they’ll take everything from me," he murmured. "And I can’t lose this."

You swallowed past the lump in your throat. "And me?"

His grip on you tightened. "I’m already losing you."

The words knocked the air from your lungs.

Because you knew— you knew— this wouldn’t last. That eventually, something would break. Either you, or him, or this whole stupid act he was playing at.

But for now— just for tonight— his hands were on you, and his lips were on yours, and he was saying your name like it was the only thing keeping him breathing.

And you let him.

Because if Bakugo Katsuki was a wildfire— then you were already burning.

[agenericplaceholdername]

"Wasted [true] potential"

People love to say that [x] was actually a good idea but had "wasted potential" - I've seen this applied to basically any piece of Ninjago content that is generally disliked (eg. Hands of Time, Crystalized) or even stuff that is liked but could have been better.

This makes sense - usually if you dislike something, you can think about why you disliked it, and if you like the overall show, find a way to imagine how things could have gone better. But what's a Ninjago idea that was just bad?

No "wasted potential" - just something that was flawed from the start, and while theoretically it could have worked (since I think basically anything can be contorted into making sense), given the constraints of the medium, almost certainly would have failed.

Ideas:

Bringing back Harumi - could have been net neutral but I don't think anything could have been worth undoing her really powerful death scene

Reviving the villains in a 44-minute special. Unlike Crystalized bringing back old villains, where there was more than enough time to do something new ("wasted potential"), I don't think any version of DotD would have done justice to all the villains in just 44 minutes

The Jay/Cole/Nya love triangle. A better show could have pulled it off, and I'm almost willing to forgive it because "Versus" is such a good episode, but it did a lot of bad things to half the Ninja team and I don't think there was that much of an idea there to begin with beyond "let's invent character drama." It does lead into Skybound, which *does* have wasted potential (and some individually bad ideas) but the triangle in and of itself was just bad from the start

On the same note - the Wu/Garmadon/Misako love triangle. Even worse.

The episode "True Potential" ironically enough falls into the almost-reverse category -- the category of having almost no "wasted potential" because it delivers on its potential so well. Love this episode

Snaketastrophy - suffice it to say I would appreciate its humor a lot more (because it is genuinely funny) if it didn't come at the expense of (inadvertently) gutting Harumi's character, which I think was unavoidable without completely changing the plot.

The magical storeroom gags in DRS2. The only "potential" they had was to be shorter

Agree? Disagree? What are some of your ideas on stuff that isn't "wasted potential"? Could also be things that have no "wasted potential" since the execution was really good and lived up to all the potential!

[watercolor-hearts]

I don't really see the reason to talk about my stories and stats from last year in a long post but this template seemed fun so I filled it out. 😊 You can find the blank version here.

Also, it's surprising that my favorite fic is not something cardiophilia-related but not that long ago I reread almost all of my stories (that are on Ao3) from 2024 and I was genuinely surprised how much I enjoyed reading Mr. Relationship Expert. And it's nice to see how much people like it. ❤

[ktempestbradford]

I have been on a Willy Wonkified journey today and I need y'all to come with me

It started so innocently. Scrolling Google News I come across this article on Ars Technica:

At first glance I thought what happened was parents saw AI-generated images of an event their kids were at and became concerned, then realized it was fake. The reality? Oh so much better.

On Saturday, event organizers shut down a Glasgow-based "Willy's Chocolate Experience" after customers complained that the unofficial Wonka-inspired event, which took place in a sparsely decorated venue, did not match the lush AI-generated images listed on its official website.... According to Sky News, police were called to the event, and "advice was given."

Thing is, the people who paid to go were obviously not expecting exactly this:

But I can see how they'd be a bit pissed upon arriving to this:

It gets worse.

"Tempest, how could it possibly--"

source of this video that also includes this charming description:

Made up a villain called The Unknown — 'an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls'

There is already a meme.

Oh yes, the Wish.com Oompa Loompa:

Who has already done an interview!

As bad (and hilarious) as this all is, I got curious about the company that put on this event. Did they somehow overreach? Did the actors they hired back out at the last minute? (Or after they saw the script...) Oddly enough, it doesn't seem so!

Given what I found when poking around I'm legit surprised there was an event at all. Cuz this outfit seems to be 100% a scam.

The website for this specific event is here and it has many AI generated images on it, as stated. I don't think anyone who bought tickets looked very closely at these images, otherwise they might have been concerned about how much Catgacating their children would be exposed to.

Yes, Catgacating. You know, CATgacating!

I personally don't think anyone should serve exarserdray flavored lollipops in public spaces given how many people are allergic to it. And the sweet teats might not have been age appropriate.

Though the Twilight Tunnel looks pretty cool:

I'm not sure that Dim Tight Twdrding is safe. I've also been warned that Vivue Sounds are in that weird frequency range that makes you poop your pants upon hearing them.

Yes, Virginia, these folks used an AI image generator for everything on the website and used Chat GPT for some of the text! From the FAQ:

Q: I cannot go on the available days. Will you have more dates in the future? A: Should there be capacity when you arrive, then you will be able to enter without any problems. In the event that this is not the case, we may ask you to wait a bit.

Fear not, for this question is asked again a few lines down and the answer makes more sense.

Curious about the events company behind this disaster, I took myself over to the homepage of House of Illuminati and I was not disappointed.

I would 100% trust these people to plan my wedding.

This abomination of a website is a badly edited WordPress blog filled with AI art and just enough blog posts to make the casual viewer think that it's a legit business for about 0.0004 seconds.

Their attention to detail is stunning, from how they left up the default first post every WP blog gets to how they didn't bother changing the name on several images, thus revealing where they came from. Like this one:

With the lovely and compact filename "DALL·E-2024-01-30-09.50.54-Imagine-a-scene-where-fantasy-and-reality-merge-seamlessly.-In-the-foreground-a-grand-interactive-gala-is-taking-place-filled-with-elegant-guests-i.png"

"Concept.png" came from the same AI generator that gets text almost, but not quiiiiiite right:

There are a suspicious number of .webp images in the uploads, which makes me think they either stole them from other sites where AI "art" was uploaded or they didn't want to pay for the hi-res versions of some and just grabbed the preview image.

The real fun came when I noticed this filename: Before-and-After-Eventologists-Transformation-Edgbaston-Cricket-Ground-1024x1024-1.jpg and decided to do a Google image search. Friends, you will be shocked to hear that the image in question, found on this post touting how they can transform a boring warehouse into a fun event space, was stolen from this actual event planner.

Even better, this weirdly grainy image?

From a post that claims to be about the preparations for a "Willy Wonka" experience (we'll get to this in a minute), is not only NOT an actual image of anyone preparing anything for Illuminati's event, it is stolen from a YouTube thumbnail that's been chopped to remove the name of the company that actually made this. Here's the video.

If you actually read the blog posts they're all copypasta or some AI generated crap. To the point where this seems like not a real business at all. There's very specific business information at the bottom, but nothing else seems real.

As I said, I'm kinda surprised they put on an event at all. This has, "And then they ran off with all our money!" written all over it. I'm perplexed.

And also wondering when the copyright lawyers are gonna start calling, because...

This post explicitly says they're putting together a "Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory Experience" complete with golden tickets.

Somewhere along the line someone must have wised up, because the actual event was called "Willys Chocolate Experience" (note the lack of apostrophe) and the script they handed to the actors about 10 minutes before they were supposed to "perform" was about a "Willy McDuff" and his chocolate factory.

As I was going through this madness with friends in a chat, one pointed out that it took very little prompting to get the free Chat GPT to spit out an event description and such very similar to all this while avoiding copyrighted phrases. But he couldn't figure out where the McDuff came from since it wasn't the type of thing GPT would usually spit out...

Until he altered the prompt to include it would be happening in Glasgow, Scotland.

You cannot make this stuff up.

But truly, honestly, I do not even understand why they didn't take the money and run. Clearly this was all set up to be a scam. A lazy, AI generated scam.

Everything from the website to the event images to the copy to the "script" to the names of things was either stolen or AI generated (aka stolen). Hell, I'd be looking for some poor Japanese visitor wandering the streets of Glasgow, confused, after being jacked for his mascot costume.

HE LIVES IN THE WALLS, Y'ALL.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How I got scammed

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

I wuz robbed.

More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And then he tried to do it again, a week later!

Here's what happened. Over the Christmas holiday, I traveled to New Orleans. The day we landed, I hit a Chase ATM in the French Quarter for some cash, but the machine declined the transaction. Later in the day, we passed a little credit-union's ATM and I used that one instead (I bank with a one-branch credit union and generally there's no fee to use another CU's ATM).

A couple days later, I got a call from my credit union. It was a weekend, during the holiday, and the guy who called was obviously working for my little CU's after-hours fraud contractor. I'd dealt with these folks before – they service a ton of little credit unions, and generally the call quality isn't great and the staff will often make mistakes like mispronouncing my credit union's name.

That's what happened here – the guy was on a terrible VOIP line and I had to ask him to readjust his mic before I could even understand him. He mispronounced my bank's name and then asked if I'd attempted to spend $1,000 at an Apple Store in NYC that day. No, I said, and groaned inwardly. What a pain in the ass. Obviously, I'd had my ATM card skimmed – either at the Chase ATM (maybe that was why the transaction failed), or at the other credit union's ATM (it had been a very cheap looking system).

I told the guy to block my card and we started going through the tedious business of running through recent transactions, verifying my identity, and so on. It dragged on and on. These were my last hours in New Orleans, and I'd left my family at home and gone out to see some of the pre-Mardi Gras krewe celebrations and get a muffalata, and I could tell that I was going to run out of time before I finished talking to this guy.

"Look," I said, "you've got all my details, you've frozen the card. I gotta go home and meet my family and head to the airport. I'll call you back on the after-hours number once I'm through security, all right?"

He was frustrated, but that was his problem. I hung up, got my sandwich, went to the airport, and we checked in. It was total chaos: an Alaska Air 737 Max had just lost its door-plug in mid-air and every Max in every airline's fleet had been grounded, so the check in was crammed with people trying to rebook. We got through to the gate and I sat down to call the CU's after-hours line. The person on the other end told me that she could only handle lost and stolen cards, not fraud, and given that I'd already frozen the card, I should just drop by the branch on Monday to get a new card.

We flew home, and later the next day, I logged into my account and made a list of all the fraudulent transactions and printed them out, and on Monday morning, I drove to the bank to deal with all the paperwork. The folks at the CU were even more pissed than I was. The fraud that run up to more than $8,000, and if Visa refused to take it out of the merchants where the card had been used, my little credit union would have to eat the loss.

I agreed and commiserated. I also pointed out that their outsource, after-hours fraud center bore some blame here: I'd canceled the card on Saturday but most of the fraud had taken place on Sunday. Something had gone wrong.

One cool thing about banking at a tiny credit-union is that you end up talking to people who have actual authority, responsibility and agency. It turned out the the woman who was processing my fraud paperwork was a VP, and she decided to look into it. A few minutes later she came back and told me that the fraud center had no record of having called me on Saturday.

"That was the fraudster," she said.

Oh, shit. I frantically rewound my conversation, trying to figure out if this could possibly be true. I hadn't given him anything apart from some very anodyne info, like what city I live in (which is in my Wikipedia entry), my date of birth (ditto), and the last four digits of my card.

Wait a sec.

He hadn't asked for the last four digits. He'd asked for the last seven digits. At the time, I'd found that very frustrating, but now – "The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue, right?" I asked the VP.

I'd given him my entire card number.

Goddammit.

The thing is, I know a lot about fraud. I'm writing an entire series of novels about this kind of scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

And most summers, I go to Defcon, and I always go to the "social engineering" competitions where an audience listens as a hacker in a soundproof booth cold-calls merchants (with the owner's permission) and tries to con whoever answers the phone into giving up important information.

But I'd been conned.

Now look, I knew I could be conned. I'd been conned before, 13 years ago, by a Twitter worm that successfully phished out of my password via DM:

https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

That scam had required a miracle of timing. It started the day before, when I'd reset my phone to factory defaults and reinstalled all my apps. That same day, I'd published two big online features that a lot of people were talking about. The next morning, we were late getting out of the house, so by the time my wife and I dropped the kid at daycare and went to the coffee shop, it had a long line. Rather than wait in line with me, my wife sat down to read a newspaper, and so I pulled out my phone and found a Twitter DM from a friend asking "is this you?" with a URL.

Assuming this was something to do with those articles I'd published the day before, I clicked the link and got prompted for my Twitter login again. This had been happening all day because I'd done that mobile reinstall the day before and all my stored passwords had been wiped. I entered it but the page timed out. By that time, the coffees were ready. We sat and chatted for a bit, then went our own ways.

I was on my way to the office when I checked my phone again. I had a whole string of DMs from other friends. Each one read "is this you?" and had a URL.

Oh, shit, I'd been phished.

If I hadn't reinstalled my mobile OS the day before. If I hadn't published a pair of big articles the day before. If we hadn't been late getting out the door. If we had been a little more late getting out the door (so that I'd have seen the multiple DMs, which would have tipped me off).

There's a name for this in security circles: "Swiss-cheese security." Imagine multiple slices of Swiss cheese all stacked up, the holes in one slice blocked by the slice below it. All the slices move around and every now and again, a hole opens up that goes all the way through the stack. Zap!

The fraudster who tricked me out of my credit card number had Swiss cheese security on his side. Yes, he spoofed my bank's caller ID, but that wouldn't have been enough to fool me if I hadn't been on vacation, having just used a pair of dodgy ATMs, in a hurry and distracted. If the 737 Max disaster hadn't happened that day and I'd had more time at the gate, I'd have called my bank back. If my bank didn't use a slightly crappy outsource/out-of-hours fraud center that I'd already had sub-par experiences with. If, if, if.

The next Friday night, at 5:30PM, the fraudster called me back, pretending to be the bank's after-hours center. He told me my card had been compromised again. But: I hadn't removed my card from my wallet since I'd had it replaced. Also, it was half an hour after the bank closed for the long weekend, a very fraud-friendly time. And when I told him I'd call him back and asked for the after-hours fraud number, he got very threatening and warned me that because I'd now been notified about the fraud that any losses the bank suffered after I hung up the phone without completing the fraud protocol would be billed to me. I hung up on him. He called me back immediately. I hung up on him again and put my phone into do-not-disturb.

The following Tuesday, I called my bank and spoke to their head of risk-management. I went through everything I'd figured out about the fraudsters, and she told me that credit unions across America were being hit by this scam, by fraudsters who somehow knew CU customers' phone numbers and names, and which CU they banked at. This was key: my phone number is a reasonably well-kept secret. You can get it by spending money with Equifax or another nonconsensual doxing giant, but you can't just google it or get it at any of the free services. The fact that the fraudsters knew where I banked, knew my name, and had my phone number had really caused me to let down my guard.

The risk management person and I talked about how the credit union could mitigate this attack: for example, by better-training the after-hours card-loss staff to be on the alert for calls from people who had been contacted about supposed card fraud. We also went through the confusing phone-menu that had funneled me to the wrong department when I called in, and worked through alternate wording for the menu system that would be clearer (this is the best part about banking with a small CU – you can talk directly to the responsible person and have a productive discussion!). I even convinced her to buy a ticket to next summer's Defcon to attend the social engineering competitions.

There's a leak somewhere in the CU systems' supply chain. Maybe it's Zelle, or the small number of corresponding banks that CUs rely on for SWIFT transaction forwarding. Maybe it's even those after-hours fraud/card-loss centers. But all across the USA, CU customers are getting calls with spoofed caller IDs from fraudsters who know their registered phone numbers and where they bank.

I've been mulling this over for most of a month now, and one thing has really been eating at me: the way that AI is going to make this kind of problem much worse.

Not because AI is going to commit fraud, though.

One of the truest things I know about AI is: "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

I trusted this fraudster specifically because I knew that the outsource, out-of-hours contractors my bank uses have crummy headsets, don't know how to pronounce my bank's name, and have long-ass, tedious, and pointless standardized questionnaires they run through when taking fraud reports. All of this created cover for the fraudster, whose plausibility was enhanced by the rough edges in his pitch - they didn't raise red flags.

As this kind of fraud reporting and fraud contacting is increasingly outsourced to AI, bank customers will be conditioned to dealing with semi-automated systems that make stupid mistakes, force you to repeat yourself, ask you questions they should already know the answers to, and so on. In other words, AI will groom bank customers to be phishing victims.

This is a mistake the finance sector keeps making. 15 years ago, Ben Laurie excoriated the UK banks for their "Verified By Visa" system, which validated credit card transactions by taking users to a third party site and requiring them to re-enter parts of their password there:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090331094020/http://www.links.org/?p=591

This is exactly how a phishing attack works. As Laurie pointed out, this was the banks training their customers to be phished.

I came close to getting phished again today, as it happens. I got back from Berlin on Friday and my suitcase was damaged in transit. I've been dealing with the airline, which means I've really been dealing with their third-party, outsource luggage-damage service. They have a terrible website, their emails are incoherent, and they officiously demand the same information over and over again.

This morning, I got a scam email asking me for more information to complete my damaged luggage claim. It was a terrible email, from a noreply@ email address, and it was vague, officious, and dishearteningly bureaucratic. For just a moment, my finger hovered over the phishing link, and then I looked a little closer.

On any other day, it wouldn't have had a chance. Today – right after I had my luggage wrecked, while I'm still jetlagged, and after days of dealing with my airline's terrible outsource partner – it almost worked.

So much fraud is a Swiss-cheese attack, and while companies can't close all the holes, they can stop creating new ones.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to post about it whenever I get scammed. I find the inner workings of scams to be fascinating, and it's also important to remind people that everyone is vulnerable sometimes, and scammers are willing to try endless variations until an attack lands at just the right place, at just the right time, in just the right way. If you think you can't get scammed, that makes you especially vulnerable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[inkskinned]

i have a fever. let's imagine pokemon world dash discourse together. (sorry i do not have darkmode.)

🤳🏻 pokestopit reblogged team-sprocket

👻 gengaydar Follow

For the last fucking time owning a gengar is NOT graverobbing. what is actually wrong with you people

#gengar #why am i even still on this site #i don't have a gengar but like. what's even going on over there #is marowak graverobbing now too??

💅 deerlinguist reblogged givemeyourstrongestpotion

👩‍❤️‍👩 lightscreend Follow

farfetch'd is like the most edible pokemon just because he comes with his own aromatics. pop that bad boy in the oven with some oran berries.... don't mind if i do

⚧ feministforcepalm Follow

@dyketraining tags pass peer review

🚣🏼‍♂️ magicarpaltunnel reblogged haxorsus

🐦‍⬛ corvikite Follow

I love to hate things and people. And when I turn out to be RIGHT and that person is a DICK? All parasocial relationships are bad and evil unless I am right about hating someone and then parasocial relationships are good actually

🪐waterbubbil Follow

We all thought about the same person let's just be honest here....

🎀 contest-winrar Follow

For me it's always going to be people who keep Pokémon without any thought as to their enrichment and needs. You do not need a fucking Arcanine, you live in a studio apartment and don't walk more than a block a day. You think you want a Gardevoir but are you okay with having an unknowable creature reading your thoughts every waking moment of the day? Even while you do... the nasty?

It drives me crazy because people see a Champion and think they have the time, energy, money, and space necessary to raise a Dragon type. Unless you have generational wealth, let me spell it out for you: you do not have the funds for a Dragon type. And yes! Charizard is on that list, guys! You can't even afford to feed yourself!

📯 jessiejustlickme Follow

local tumblr user declares the poors only get rat pokemon. maybe a bug pokémon if we are very good. we must grovel in the streets amen

🎀 contest-winrar Follow

Laugh all you want but I'm serious. I have heard of someone who is living with a MR. MIME like it's her HUSBAND!!!! That's fucking GROSS. These are creatures that TRUST us and NEED us.

Did you know that most Ponyta prefer to be in a herd? Are you going to have the space for that? Did you know that if you don't properly care for certain fire species their flame goes out? Sure, they're cute when they're small: but unless you're a rancher or a Gym Leader... I'm sorry. You're gross to me if you think otherwise. I hate people like that.

And for the record, rat and bug Pokémon are very valuable from an ecological standpoint. They hold an extremely important niche. People like you would rather they be hunted to extinction because they're pests, not pretty. It's disgusting.

🐦‍⬛ corvikite Follow

anybody in this thread smoke weed

#NOT THE RATS FOR THE POOR PEOPLE... GIRLLLLLL #the thing is they're not like... wrong.... #like i agree with the sentiment #my friend tried to get a slyveon just by like. playing catch a few times #.... like you do need to try.... #also fyi i have a large species so i'm biased #grovyle my baby . my man. u are costing me like so much in pokepuffs per month

👁‍🗨 badsol

why are we all talking about what pokemon to eat tonight lmafo

#.... obviously jigglypuff. homegirl is 90% cotton candy

🪅 feebassguitar reblogged metrognome

🫖 sinisteacher Follow

Like okay I got into science because I love to learn but the more I find out about how we've classified Pokémon types the more insane I feel. What do you mean there's no singular true indicator? What do you mean that there are several conditions which completely alter their base type?

Literally today my lab partner and I got into a very serious discussion about Luxray. That thing is a fuckking dark type!!!!! I'm sorry!!! I don't care what Bulbapedia says!!!! anyway i threw a pokeball at him and it swallowed him whole and now i'm going to jail for unlawful imprisonment of a TA

🍙 thesandwichking Follow

there's something, like, very dystopian about the idea that if u put an ugly hat on ur favorite little creature it changes like. the DNA. like. do other pokemon look at what you've done and cower? that's their friend... similar but changed... forever having known a life that is entirely alien to them...

🐳 wailordsupreme Follow

.... Are we going to ignore that OP swallowed a human into a ball???

#yes we are. #my friend loves those hats but I think they're so ugly #and stupid #if i wanted a specific type imma get that type..... #typesetting #show james

🧗‍♀️ backpacksandcavesnacks reblogged eevee-lotion

👑 lemmegrabmyballs Follow

ROUND 5 of 6 (see blog for more)

PLEASE REBLOG FOR VISIBILITY:

✍️ dreepydrabbles reblogged ash-hole

☠️ marrowhackoff Follow

just saw someone say writing omegaverse fanfic of your pokemon is bestiality. ma'am this is the monster fucking site. you should be grateful that it's only omegaverse.

#the things i've seen would melt your eyebrows clean off your face #..... typhlosion they could never make me hate you baby #i know that's not what's in your heart

🪽 honey-tree-skies reblogged gymcrawler

🐛 youngstirjoey Follow

Okay say what you will. But shorts really are comfy and easy to wear

🛀🏽 intimidatecutsyourattack Follow

Sorry bud. But. Investing at 3 notes

🐛 youngstirjoey Follow

don't do this to me. i h avue a wife . and chi ld

[kurohe]

Things you can do to actively participate in the revolution

Here's the list !

I know some of those will look really silly, i promise they are not. And obviously, this is not a checklist, you don't have to do everything. But they're steps that you can absolutely take if you wish to, and they WILL help.

(i am continually correcting things when people point out mistakes. Thanks everyone for your help)

(under the cut !)

1) Let's start off with a very easy one you can do right now: stop using Chrome. It's a google owned browser, and it sents all of your data towards it. Mozilla is a very good replacement, but almost anything will do, really. Also, resign your amazon prime subscription. We revolting against capitalism as a whole, and this is a good first step to not freely give em your data and money

2) Start stealing things from supermarkets and malls. I am not kidding. Little things, that aren't really monitored: a can of food, a lighter, a pair of socks. Condiments are particularly easy to hide in bags or pockets. Steal hygiene products, steal food.

Remember that you should have access to those for free, and you don't because a few rich guys don't want you to.

Additional tip: train station stores are very easy to steal from, because they're so busy. But don't put yourself in danger. Check beforehand if they check bags at checkout, look out for employees that might notice what you're doing. Don't be reckless.

(edit: imma say this, you should read up on what the risks of stealing are, for you and others. Stealing from big stores is IMO always morally right, but it is risky for many reasons. Be careful)

3) In the same line, if you see someone stealing anything from a big store, no you didn't.

4) I know a lot of people are scared of disrespecting rules. By fear of being caught, or by guilt. My advice is: start disrespecting stupid, meaningless rules. I don't have specific exemples, but you'll encounter them and wonder why you're doing that. Stop doing it. This will train you to be able to disobey autority way easier.

5) Put stickers everywhere. If you already have them, go ham. Especially on public property (lamposts are amazing). If you don't, buy them from artists or independant stores, not big brands. If you cannot afford them, remember that you can simply write stuff on an A4 paper and plaster it to walls. Or even post its !

6) Carry a sharpie with you at all time, the big black ones. If you see propaganda, scribble it out. Keep a look out for terfs stickers, maga posters, etc. Also good for getting rid of transphobic and sexist stuff written on public restroom stalls !

7) Buy locally. This means going to the market or small stores, and thrifting your clothes. If you can't for money or accessibility reasons, try trading with your friends, family and neighbours. Get communication going in your circles, and you'll realise there are a lot of things that you can simply trade with or buy from people around you. Like a jar of jam against some eggs, or a pair of socks for a t-shirt you don't wear anymore !

8) Learn how to sew. I know, that sounds dumb ! But i promise you, not only will it be amazing to trade with other people ("i'll sew back ur shirt and in exchange, you give me a can of peaches !"), corporations also haaaate when you know how to fix your clothes. Because they want you to buy more. You'll spend a lot less money if you know how to fix em

9) If you have the space and the money, grow your own food, and share it or sell it around you. Be careful, some assholes will call the FDA on you. Do that with people you trust.

Additional tip: growing vegetables and fruits can be a real nightmare. You can absolutely start by just growing some basil or mint :)

10) Organise. Join leftist groups online, even if it's just to see what's being said, you don't even need to interact. Follow creators, repost and share their content. By doing that, you'll stay informed on group movements like strikes, protests and boycotts, which you can then participate in. It's very important you're connected to other ppl and the movements that are started !

11) Unionize. I'm very sorry I don't know the exact way unions work in the US, but if you can, join one. They will help you in times of needs, especially if you're a student or a worker. If you're not sure how to do that, absolutely ask around to people you know are very active politically, around you or online. People will help.

12) Stay. Informed. Follow independant papers and news outlet. If you can afford it, give them a dollar or two. They are fighting everyday for access to unbiased information for all, and sadly, their independance means that they rely almost entirely on donations and people simply engaging with what they put out.

If you can't access those: do not get your news from TV. Ever. Or anywhere else that has been bought by the far right. Sadly, the majority of TV channels are just the worst.

And, most importantly: fact check. All of the time.

13) Share that information. Talk to those you trust and who are ready to listen to you, and tell them about what's happening. Get angry with them. Revolution stems from people coming together and realising that they're being used and profited off of. Share videos and posts relating to politics, especially informative videos.

14) Go to protests ! If you've never been, i know it can be scary. But you can stay in the middle (don't go all the way to the front, that's where stuff can get heated) and scream and walk with everyone else. You'll meet people who, like you, want things to change. Capitalism wants you to stay as unconnected to others as possible, and that's a great way to fight that.

Sometimes, there are sites that have a planning for all protests happening in a city. Look up if one exists for yours

15) Create and strenghten community. I know i really struggled with this one, because it's so vague. But here's a few places you can start:

-Go and introduce yourself to your neighbours, if you deem it safe. Give them a little gift if you can afford it, like a pack of pasta.

-Make new friends, even if they aren't deep friendships. You need connections. Online or irl, both are fine- don't stay isolated.

-If you already have community, go check on them right now. Ask your friends how they're doing, and if they need anything- ask how they're being impacted by what's happening right now politically.

16) Look for ways to fuck over the institutions in easy ways. One example that went around tumblr a lot is letting dandelions grow in your backyard, because landlords fucking hate it. If you work in retail or fast food, cheat. Accidentally forget to scan the diapers. Put in 7 nuggets instead of 6.

(edit: been told that it's very risky for walmart workers to not scan things, so beware.)

17) Engage in art. MAKE art. Music, shitty paint drawings, craft, anything as long as you're being creative. Share it. If you feel like you can't do that, then support artists. Make a point to look up cool illustrations, and new music. Go to the cinema.

If you're an artist currently in an underpaid office job, please, by the love of god, be creative during office hours. You're underpaid, they do not deserve your full time and attention. Take 30 minutes to write that snippet you've been thinking about.

(and actually, if you're underpaid at all: do the minimum required. So that you can't be fired, but that's it. Any more effort is not worth it. Companies will never be thankful for what you do.)

18) Look up books that your state banned, and go read them. You can get them secondhand, or as pdfs online. (if anyone needs ressources, i will glady look for and share them.)

And, actually, read books in general if you can. Yes, fanfics count !

19) Seek education. There's a lot of youtube channels out there talking about educational subjects in a fun way. Some things the rich assholes who run the country specifically don't want you to learn more about are: biology, history and archeology, social and economic sciences. GO LEARN ABOUT THOSE.

The people in power don't want you to be educated. It's why they eviscerated the education system.

20) PIRATE. I cannot stress this enough, anything you can pirate (that isn't from small, indie creators, except if you absolutely can't afford it) do it. Download music illegally, torrent movies and games. If you want access to academical studies and papers, some writers will give them to you for free if you email them about it. There are also ways to go around paywalls.

21) Don't fall for the traps of "progressive brands". Lately, i've seen a lot of praise for Ben and Jerry's for openly supporting lgbtq rights and being globally anti-trump. They are still a brand. Avoid buying from any big names when you can. That being said, if you have to, check beforehand which ones and what their history is. Some are more evil than others.

Additional tip: a lot of brands you see in stores are actually owned by bigger brands. One prime example of this is Nestle, who are fucking evil, but they own a shitload of other big names. Be careful what you buy.

22) I hate to say this, but be prepared to defend yourself. Revolutions are never peaceful. You will get in danger. If you can, get in ok physical shape. Learn how to run fast and fight well.

If none of those are available options to you, please, make sure you have someone around you that will be able to protect you, or a place where you can be safe. Whether you are disabled, a minor, or anything else. Don't put yourself in more danger than is necessary. (this used to also include getting a gun. I deleted it because i don't exactly know how gun legislation works over there, and thus am not comfortable recommending it. But it's still an option.)

23) Last but not least, be kind. When someone cuts off a woman speaking, interrupt and give her the floor back. Shame those who think it's right to say bigoted shit in public. Listen to those around you. If you can't act, then remember to always have empathy for the homeless, for drug users, for immigrants. Understand they are people just like you. You are not immune to propaganda and prejudice, no matter who you are. Always question yourself and your biases.

(if you've read this far, please repost. We need this to reach as many people as possible)

I want to remind you that you're not alone. I know things seem hopeless, but the simple fact that you're reading this is proof it's not. I don't live in the US, but i'm supporting you as best i can from where i am, and sending you strenght.

If you have any questions, do ask away. I'll end on this image that's very dear to me:

[deadsetobsessions]

Sea Cryptic! Danny AU- Pt. 7

[Pt.1] [Pt.2] [Pt.3] [Pt.4] [Pt.5] [Pt.6] [Pt.8] [Pt.9] [Pt.10]

“I’m having a child.”

Danny stared at Batman.

“…Uh, congrats?”

Batman whips out a stack of paper and a pen. “It’s you. Sign here and initial the highlighted spots.”

Danny instinctively, from years of dealing with Vlad, whacked the stack right out of Batman’s hands and into the bay. He doesn’t even feel bad about littering this time because, “Begone, fruitloop!”

Wait, no, that’s not what he meant.

“I mean- I have parents!”

“Not for long.” Batman muttered and then did a double take. “You have parents? How?”

Danny gasped, placing a hand on his chest to clutch his metaphorical pearls. He ignored Batman’s mutters. Everyone knows the vigilante has an adoption problem. At least, everyone who lived in Gotham did, as everyone who didn’t was somehow convinced that he “worked alone” or some bullshit like that. “Are you naturally this insensitive or were you dropped on your head as a baby? Obviously I had to come from somewhere.”

“They’re still… alive?”

“And kicking,” Danny said, inching away from yet another rich weird guy trying to adopt him. “Mostly the kicking part, though.” He said, remembering the sparring sessions. His mom could kick his as six ways to Sunday with nothing but jiu-jitsu and still have time to work in the lab.

“I see.”

“I’m charging you extra for the emotional upheaval. I have trauma regarding rich people trying to adopt me.”

Batman sullenly handed over a thousand.

“Sweet. There’s a group of shades down here asking if you could find their murderer. Apparently the serial killer is still at large.” Danny pointed.

“Of course. Tell me everything.”

The adoption papers disappeared as Batman went into detective mode.

Danny shoved the cash into his glowing chest and breathed a sigh of relief. He needed to make rent this month so it was a windfall running into Batman.

——

“Hey, Tim?”

Tim woke up from his Power Nap. “Huh?”

“Phantom’s complaining that Batman kept trying to adopt him.”

Tim blinked. “Uh.. what does that have to do with me?”

Danny stared at him, a patiently amused smile on his face. “Just in case the rumor about the Wayne’s sugar-daddy-into the Bats was a thing. Other than that, we might have to confront Batman to get him off of Phantom’s back. ”

“You… want to confront Batman.”

“Hey, man, Phantom’s a friend and it’s ride or die.” Danny snickered. It was literally die, with his Phantom side of things. He held two fists up, and wound them, like Popeye right after eating spinach or something. “And if Batman bothers Phantom, we ride at dawn.”

“Batman doesn’t come out unless it’s dark, though? Or for the Justice League.” Tim grinned. He mentally classified Danny under his “to go to” list. That’s where Bart, Bernard, Cassie, Kon, and Garfield were. If he starts shit, he could count on them to have his back and cause even more shit. Danny, wanting to fistfight Bruce over the man making Phantom uncomfortable? He absolutely is making that list.

“Then we ride at, like, dusk. Or uh, like 10PM. I gotta get my beauty sleep.”

“You’ll definitely need it,” Tim inconspicuously texted the group chat, which quickly blew up.

“Shut up,” Danny playfully shoved Tim. “Wait, can Batman even legally adopt? Isn’t being a vigilante illegal? And how can he adopt someone dead?”

Tim dramatically flailed and splayed over Danny’s carpeted living room. “Dunno about his identity,” he lied to Danny, like a liar. “But Gotham has a bunch of laws for the undead/restored to life people so there’s probably enough gray space there.”

Danny spluttered. “You guys have undead friendly laws?”

“Yeah, geht do you think Grundy just chills out? Plus, we have like a minor resurrection event every few years. It usually doesn’t stick but sometimes it does. Bruce pushed for those laws when Jason came back to life, except he doesn’t actually want people to know he’s like, alive.”

“Jason died?” Danny blinked. Well, that would explain the vibes. “Huh. So what’s up with his rank vibes then?”

“Rank vibes?” Tim pressed record on his phone.

Danny nodded. “Yeah, you know how Phantom’s got like a really chill green vibe?” Inwardly, Danny snickered at his pun. Chill. Yeah, he meant that very literally. “Jason’s got kind of a rank green vibe. He’s kind of stinky? Definitely never introduce him to Phantom.” Danny’s senses got worse in his ghost form.

“Jason regularly showers, though?!”

“Not smell! Like, a spiritual smell?”

“You can smell souls?!” Tim sat up. “Bro, you’re a meta?!”

“Uh.” Danny hesitated. “Yeah. I can smell souls. It’s a thing. Everyone from my town can do it.”

“What?!” Tim paused. “Wait, can Phantom smell souls?”

“Yeah. We’re, uh, from the same town.”

“Danny, what the fuck?”

“Hey, don’t look at me like that, you’re the one with a soul-sick brother! Not to mention, you’re kinda stinky too!”

“Hey!”

“Soul-stinky nerd man!”

——

“I stink?!” Jason spluttered out, extremely offended.

“The Lazarus pits. He’s most likely smelling traces of Lazarus pit on you, you imbecile.”

“We need to speak to Phantom. This instant.”

“I dunno, B. Danny sounded like he was gonna break your face if you bothered Phantom anymore.” Dick snickered.

“Yeah,” Tim chimed in, from his seat in front of the Bat-computer. “He was pretty serious.”

“Are we just gonna glaze over the fact that they’re from the same town?!” Stephanie exclaimed, practicing her moves on a training dummy.

“How does that even work? What does that mean? I thought Phantom was an immortal?” Duke asked.

“We also can’t rule out time-travel.” Barbara slammed her baton into a training dummy, twisting her wheelchair in an agile maneuver that left the dummy on the floor.

“No bothering Phantom.” Cass proclaimed.

“That’s quite right. You all have a warm dinner sitting above your cave and should it remain uneaten, I assure you that sherbet Sunday and crêpe Tuesday shall be canceled.” Alfred stepped in. The Bats, threatened, scrambled to ditch their gear and go upstairs.

[thatsveryvortex]

Writing Tools for Planning Your Story

I've tried tons of writing apps and sites, so you don't have to. Here's a list of free sites to plot out your novel, with my review and some images of how I use it.

Milanote

Milanote is like having a giant pinboard with folders. You can upload anything onto it [yes even your main doc] and then draw over it or connect things with lines and arrows

Milanote lets you add up to a hundred things for free, not including drawing. This is one of the downsides of the site as I've found myself reaching that limit recently.

For me, the best part is being able to draw over stuff, and the color swatches.

Milanote is a lot less structured than other sites I've used, and personally, I don't think their templates are worth using.

8/10 overall, Milanote is what I mainly use. Here are some pics of how I use it:

Miro

Miro is a flowchart website mainly used for corporate jobs, however, it can be a great plotting tool for that reason

Miro has a lot of great starter templates if you are looking for a more structured freeform experience. It also comes with a blank page as well.

Unfortunately, I'd argue that it's a bit of a hard tool for beginners to use without a template, I've learned copy-paste is my best friend with Miro the hard way.

It's much better than most platforms at making timelines though.

It has a limit of three boards which is a bit disappointing but overall, I think it's worth the try.

5/10 Miro is very middle of the road for me due to the limited ability to customize things and the free limit. Here are some pics:

[I wrote that part weeks ago, I am now fully using Miro and believe it's the best for making timelines and charts, I just wish it let me make more boards 8/10]

Hiveword

This might be someone's jam, I can't really say it's mine though.

First off, the unpaid version is really just a few boxes saying "Write a summary here." which makes it just not worth it in my opinion

There really isn't any way to customise things which is my favorite part of most of these softwares

I've barely used this, so maybe there's something I'm missing but

1/10, Just use Google Docs at this point, here's a couple pics

World Anvil

People like this software, it's mainly used for tabletop, which is just a different way of writing adventure, and I've seen it recommended by authors.

Unfortunately, I'm going to disagree with a lot of people and say it's hard to use and isn't even really good at plotting.

I may be biased on this one as every time I've tried to use it in the past I've struggled. However, it seems like another just write it in a document and create a folder.

I'd say it's closer to an organizing tool, but even then just use something else.

3/10, I have nothing to say about it but maybe you'll enjoy it, all here are two photos

Campfire

This is the one I think I've heard the most about, but have never actually tried.

right off the bat, I'm going to say this is 100% worth it, you'll see at the end with the photos but this is like if Miro and World Anvil had an organization baby.

It's extremely easy to understand, and it makes timelines, it's more for writing your whole book but idk about that yet.

7/10, its themes are really pretty but it limits how much you can do to 20 I believe. Here are the photos

That's all for now, honestly, I think you should use Miro if you are looking to plot things out, and Milanote if you want to collect and organize your thoughts for writing, as that's what I do. Obviously what I like won't be for everyone, but hopefully, this helped you see some options

[mossy-rock-in-a-field]

Several weeks ago, my retirement-age mother requested that I play Baldur’s Gate 3 for her because she has trouble with controllers/keyboards and wanted “to see what all the fuss is about with that cute wizard boy.” For context, my mother and I have done this sort of thing in the past with certain RPGs (dragon age, mass effect, etc.), but it’s been a few years since she’s personally requested a game like this. Basically, I control her Tav but let her make all the choices so she can determine how the story plays out without worrying about mechanics. She treats it like a choose-your-own-adventure book.

Anyway, here is a list of some of the things my mother has said and/or chosen to do throughout the course of BG3 in no particular order:

She is (obviously) romancing Gale. She is quite smitten with him and his passion for books and learning; she also thinks he’s polite and qualifies as “relationship material.” She also REALLY likes the things he’s said about his cat so far (my mom is a cat lady), so I know she’s gonna flip shit when we meet Tara in Act III.

She’s playing a normal druid Tav with a generally good alignment. Her favorite spell is Spike Growth because she thinks it’s hilarious whenever enemies walk into the AOE and die. I usually end up having to cast it at least once per battle per her request. Sometimes twice.

Contrary to her alignment, my mother tasks me with robbing every single chest, crate, barrel, and burlap sack we come across; this also includes people and their pockets. The party is always at max carrying capacity. ALWAYS. She doesn’t like selling things because “what if I need them.” The camp stash is in literal shambles. There is no hope of organizing it. She’s got like fifty seven sets of rags and a billion pieces of random silverware.

She MUST talk to every animal and corpse in the game. I think five hours of her total playtime so far (47ish) has been spent speaking to animals as many times as humanly possible. Like, I was thorough in my own playthroughs, but this is on a whole other level.

She did NOT get Volo’s lobotomy, but she did let Auntie Ethel take her eye in hopes of a cure for the tadpole. I did not understand the logic then. I still do not understand it now.

She is far more interested in fashion than equipment stats. Do you have any idea how much gold I’ve had to spend on dyes just to make things match? SO much. Same vibe as that “please someone help me balance my finances my family is starving” tweet but instead of candles it’s thirty thousand fucking bottles of black and furnace red dye.

We broke the prisoners out of Moonrise, but they got on the boat too early and bugged the fight by leaving Astarion and Karlach behind. Wulbren Bongle somehow got stuck in combat mode even after engaging the cutscene on the docks below Last Light; he he kept trying to run ALL THE WAY BACK TO MOONRISE nine fucking meters at a time while I frantically tried to finish the fight with the Warden, otherwise Wulbren would have run straight into the shadow curse. (I would’ve let him go; fuck Wulbren Bongle, all my homies hate Wulbren Bongle. But my mom didn’t know that, and she wanted to keep him safe. So.)

She had me reload a save like eighteen times to save the giant eagles on top of Rosymorn Monastery. Wouldn’t even let me do non-lethal damage just to get past things. I think getting that warhammer for the dawnmaster puzzle took us like an hour and a half alone. (Yes, I know you can use any warhammer, but SHE didn’t.)

She’s started keeping an irl notebook to keep track of her quests between play sessions. She writes down ideas and strategies when she thinks of them during the week, then brings them to her next game session at my house. I think she wrote about three pages on possible approaches to the goblin fortress alone.

She insists that I pet Scratch and the owlbear cub before every single long rest, no exceptions. Sometimes I have to do it multiple times until she is absolutely sure that the animals know exactly how much she loves and cherishes them. She has also commissioned a crocheted owlbear plush from a friend of hers and is very excited.

I’m sure there’s a bunch of stuff I’m forgetting, but those are some fun things I thought of. She’s enjoying the game and is telling all of her retired friends to get it and play it for themselves. She asked me “what is Discord” yesterday and I think my life flashed before my eyes.

anyway shout out to my mom for being neat

Part 2 — Part 3 — Part 4 — Part 5

[henneseyhoe]

Sunshine

Aaron Pierre x BLACK!FEM!Reader

ORDER:Coffee (Smut) Tea (Fluff), Strawberry Cheesecake (Hair Pulling) , Jelly Filled Donut (Creampie) , Vanilla Beignet (Blind To Love) and a Brownie (Sunny vs Grumpy) served by Terry Richmond.

SUMMARY: Shitty jobs are made worth it cause pretty, funny girls exist!(ig idk chile)

The Bakery<3

✮✮✮✮

“How the hell do you deal with that?”

Was what people would ask Terry when they saw you two together. You were loud, anyone could hear your laugh from miles away and your smile radiated bright happiness that annoyed most, especially in your field of work. You were enthusiastic about nearly everything, seeing the bright side to dark situations that some just couldn’t bear. Maybe that’s why Terry held onto you the way he did. He even gave you the nickname ’Sunshine’ to show.

Everything that was listed, he indeed was not. He was not happy go lucky, he was not enthusiastic about things he had to do and he definitely wasn’t looking on the bright side, for reasons that could probably be justified.

When he was happy, it was mostly because of you. You were best friends (or he was definitely YOUR best friend) and working together in close proximity made it so much easier for Terry to get use to you. It was hard for Terry not to crack a smile when you were constantly in a good mood, bouncing off the walls. You found the spots in him that were soft and poked at them until he gave in, you learned his humor and kept him laughing when he didn’t want to.

He couldn’t lie, he was growing accustomed to being with you, he could even say he loved having you around (he would probably never say that out loud) . He just couldn’t help but feel a little warmth in his chest when you were near, butterflies in his stomach when you made eye contact with him. Little did he know, you felt the same.

Your heart beat down on your rib cage faster than it was on your first mission. You loved a challenge, and Terry was exactly that, testing your abilities to be professional, dangerous, light on your feet, but also keeping your brand of being the happy person you were.

Whenever Terry came into work, even if it was just to train, you were up in his face cracking jokes like you hadn’t just ran two miles. Of course because he was a rank higher than you, he use to send you on about your way the first few times, a little annoyed with your presence and attitude until realizing he couldn’t get rid of you even if he tried. You were everywhere and the crew was slowly growing a liking to you too.

You were like a leech, as he would describe. A cuddly and cute one, but a leech nonetheless.

Coming up on the date of the official homecoming for soldiers, it was time to head back to your respective states and you offered Terry a day to spend with just the two of you, enjoying the scenery of downtown and all it had to offer..as friends, Which he accepted after a huff (which was obviously faked, his ass was happy you asked) . Somehow, Terry found himself not wanting to leave when night had came. Something he had NEVER felt before, and he hated it. He hated that he knew it was because of you too, nothing else. Hell, he didn’t even like the state he was in, he was ready to go when he landed.

Babysitting a beer in your hand, you two sit close around the fireplace of your apartment, or what was yours till tomorrow.

“Feel like we been here forever” He breaks the silence, sipping on his drink while staring at the flicker of the fire in front of you both.

You shrug.

“It kinda has been? Seven months, two weeks, five days, and 21 hours is a long time!” You nod, Terry giving you a look before stifling out the chuckle he tried so hard not to free. You smile, satisfied at how easy it was to make him laugh now.

“So!…You ready to go home to the missus?”

Terry raises a brow, swallowing the bitter drink in his mouth. “Missus?”

You hum, waiting for an answer, but he never confirmed.

“Yeah. I mean, you never said anything about a wife or a kid, but I just assumed-“

“Never said because I don’t have” He interrupts, laughing. He couldn’t even imagine what about him gave husband. He didn’t wear a ring, on the right finger at least, and he thought the flirting he did confirmed him to be single already..Or what he thought was flirting. The making sure you ate and drank every day and teasing about how many push ups you could do didn’t really connect the dots for you. You were looking for a more forward approach considering he was a blunt man.

“What the hell about me made you think I was married with a kid?”

You laugh along with him to save yourself the embarrassment. Truthfully, you asked on purpose to see if he was single or not. To your surprise, no one had snatched him up yet.

“I-…I don’t know. I just see a nigga like you and just expect it” You respond, the palms of your hands already sweating. Your body was once again defying you, you felt like you were in highschool again.

Terry’s laugh shrunk until it was no more and his eyebrows rose at your statement. “A nigga like me?”

“…Yeah. Ya know…” You trail off, shyly looking away. By now regret had already set in your stomach for bringing up shit and snooping in his business. It would have been easier to search his name in the database and read his files, keeping your stalker shit on the low.

“Hm…Elaborate, sunshine. I wanna know what that mean” He presses, his squinted eyes searching for yours, but you refused to give in and see what may have been rejection.

“Look” You huff, shaking your head. “I just mean…You are a very handsome man, and I expected you to be…spoken for? Can you even say spoken for when talking about a man?”

You both laugh, but tension was still thick in the air, you just didn’t know what kind of tension it would turn to. Whether sexual or awkward tension, your nerves were getting worse by the second.

Terry on the other hand seemed cool as a cucumber, his tongue subtly tracing the rim of his beer bottle as he thought to himself before taking his last drink, finishing the beverage off.

“I don’t think so, but still. I appreciate that…so”

“So…”

He tilts his head. You could see it all from your peripheral view. His strong presence demanded attention from you. It was like that while working and it happened to never change outside of it.

“You aren’t spoken for?” He asks, his shoulder softly bumping yours to pull an answer quicker.

You shake your head, simultaneously setting down your bottle.

“Not since a year ago. Maybe if it was possible to pack a niggas dick with you when you leave for work, it wouldn’t be inside your bestfriend, right?”

“…You shittin’ me?” He leans, almost shocked that anyone would dare to cheat on you. Not only because of the person you were on the inside, but also because you could be classified as a high threat even while ass naked. That’s just the type of woman he wouldn’t cross, even at his rank.

“Nope, deadass”

“Damn..” He mumbles. “Whatever nigga out here silly enough to let little miss sunshine walk the earth without being right behind her need his ass beat. Shit, i’ll do it for you actually”

You giggle. “You’re silly”

“Nah, I’m serious”

Who knew that conversation alone would end with you getting ate out by someone you considered a friend, someone who you looked up to just a little, someone who just admitted he’d fuck somebody up for you…maybe giving it up was justifiable.

On the couch with your legs spread to each side, you forced yourself to open your eyes and bask in reality as Terry began the journey of taking you apart and putting you back together again. He placed soft kisses around your lips and on your clit before he licked long strings from your entrance, then sucked, earning a soft gasp from you.

His hands gripped your thick thighs while holding them apart, his strength not allowing you to hide from him at all. He wanted to taste all you had to offer, his tongue doing all the hard work slithering inside of your warm walls as his nose nudged your clit. You tensed up with every nudge, watching as he freely put his face in it. He made it messy enough to admire when he pulled his mouth off of you, your pussy glistening like he just doused you in oil.

“Look at that, mmm” There was a grumble that came deep from within his throat. His green eyes on you made it so hard not to be bothered even with him not doing anything, your poor clit jumping with excitement as he spread your lips open.

“She happy to see me, huh?”

You moan and nod eagerly, bringing your hand to your mouth to suck on a finger. Terry smiles at that, sharp teeth flashing from under his lips. He just wanted to bite you all over.

“Yeah, I know. When the last time you had some?”

“I-I don’t remember” And you truly couldn’t. Nothing worth remembering.

“Yeah? Imma make sure you remember this shit” He ends off with a bite to your thigh, almost as if he was warning you for what’s to come before he dove back into your heat, slurping up your soaked clit. Your belly was doing summersaults, you could barely contain your volume. It seemed Terry didn’t care about his.

When he ate, he made noise. He moaned, grunted, groaned. He was having just as much fun as you.

Your legs had began to shake the longer he was down there, your hands gripping onto the top of his white tank since that was all you had to hold on to after he practically ripped your oversized shirt off of you beforehand, and you feared ruining the couch if you got to pulling on it.

“Yes, yes, yes! I’m so close” You struggled to keep your eyes on him even with his staring back up at you, low lidded and dark. They beckoned you to stay, but pleasure had came rolling through like natural disaster and wiped all thought from your brain, leaving you a shaking, blubbering mess.

His mouth pulled off of you and his hand moved in place of it, rubbing your clit in tight circles.

“Feel it, baby. Let it happen” He coos as you fight against his hand, thighs closing around his wrist which he just smacked away and kept at it until he felt he was done.

“Stop moving, let that shit happen, baby”

You felt like you were literally about to float to heaven, back arching up off of the couch just to get away from the overstimulation.

“Okay! Fuck!”

He moves his hand and allows you to go through the motions, twitching until that special feeling left your center. “Good job, pretty girl” A kiss from him was placed beside your opened mouth as heavy breathing left you.

He gave you time to recover while undressing himself, items of clothing fluttering to the ground until he was in nothing but his shorts.

Your eyes never left his length as it bobbed out of the bottoms. You hadn’t even noticed there was nothing under the shorts till now..So all of that print you were eyeing was all him. He was nothing little, nothing that you had ever seen before and it almost made you ask if that was all of it, hoping he had added something extra, if possible. You wanted to taste him, to lick up the dribbling precum from his tip and test if you could take him in your mouth first, but Terry desperately wanted to be inside you. You protested, pulling him in and stroking his shaft to solicit him into going your way, but he was stern, nearly completely ignoring your advances and lifting you to your feet.

You yelped, legs wobbly from your first orgasm, but you had no need to worry about falling because you were lifted off of your feet as fast as you got on them.

“D-don’t drop me!”

You begged, holding onto him while he bounced you to catch you in the right position to fuck you good, your legs swinging over his arms and his hands cupping your soft ass.

“I gotchu, baby”

He reassured as he kisses your lips. You could smell and taste yourself all on him, slightly sweet and herbal from the beer. All while sucking on his tongue, you felt the tip of him swipe against your entrance, your heart beating so hard in your chest that you were convinced he could hear it, and it was the same for him. He couldn’t wait to feel you, to be connected in other ways than just conversation and friendship. He longed to know what it would be like, and when he got a taste, there was no turning back from then on. Not that he would want to, anyway.

There was no way you were getting away from him. You were strong, but Terry was strong. The man trained relentlessly and always being on his toes payed off at work and apparently in the bedroom too.

Your thighs ached with a burning sensation as he bounced you on his long dick effortlessly, the tip of him kissing your cervix ever so slightly, but he knew good enough not to hit it dead on, fearing hurting you in the process. You appreciate the thoughtfulness, seeing as you were already losing the part of your brain that made thought out decisions.

“So fucking deep!”

You cried out weakly, nails scratching down his broad shoulders, creating red streaks he’d try to hide with a long sleeve the morning after, the feeling of you still dancing on his tongue as he got dressed. He grunts, palms squeezing the fat of your ass as his pace never seemed to falter. He was determined to get you there. To feel you cum around his dick so hard that the neighbors would wonder if you were hurt, that they would think about calling the cops just to check on you.

“Cmon, baby. You a big girl, take this dick like I know you can” He encouraged you sweetly, voice unshaken and stable as if the ribbon of release in the pit of his stomach wasn’t threatening to come undone, spilling his seed deep inside of you.

It wasn’t long until he decided to change the position and lay you on your stomach instead, a soft pillow placed underneath your hips to make sure you could meet his height and your ass stayed up right for him. Before he entered back into your warmth, he took his time to spread your cheeks and licking up whatever your pussy had started to drip, earning whiny, pathetic mewls from you.

He licked from your clit to the winking rim of your asshole, the tip of his tongue circling around it before going back down to your sensitive bud, teasingly suckling on it softly.

You drooled into your sheets. You knew you looked so damn stupid right now, but you couldn’t help it with how he was turning you every way but loose.

“Taste so fucking good”

He says from behind you, fully standing now with a hand in your silk press and the other laid directly in the middle of your back to help that arch. He didn’t even have to guide his dick into you, you were so wet and open for him already that all he did was wind his hips back to line up with you and push forward.

You could swear your breath was being sucked out of your lungs with each inch he dropped into you. It felt so good that you could almost ignore him pulling on your hair, forcing your head back to meet him for a slow, nasty kiss.

“Fuck- My hair, Terry!” You whined against his plump lips, one of your hands reaching for his wrist, but the tugging only made it worse for you. The sharp stinging in your scalp oddly satisfied something within you, your clit twitching at the newfound feeling.

“Fuck it. I’ll pay for it” He grunts, his teeth tugging at the bottom of your lip.

You both kissed with teeth and all as he fucked you, your ass loudly clapping back on his toned body with every thrust. He felt every motion of it, the waves clashing with his hips so mesmerizing that he couldn’t help but wanna stare.

As he pulled away from your lips, he opted to grab a hold of your throat instead, your moans immediately getting caught.

He made sure to grab you by the part where it was safe to hold, safe enough to where you could still breathe a little, but still got the sensation to feel held.

“Why-“ You managed to choke out, yet you couldn’t finish a sentence.

He cracked an almost cocky smile then moaned out a curse, his dick violently throbbing inside of you and reaching beyond what you thought was gonna be his limit.

“Why what? Spit it out, ma” He teased, his low cut nails almost scratching up the side of your throat when his thrusts got more fluid, the man putting way more wine into every collision.

You began to cry out, him muffling them slightly by letting go of you and pushing your head down into the bed. He only fucked you harder when your arch fell with your hips, your legs giving out as your pussy cried right along with you.

This position had you feeling everything. From the tip of him grazing your gspot to the veins that traveled up his dick and massaged your walls, giving you texture that you never felt before.

Him demanding a word out of you was like speaking to a brick wall. You had already came without warning, now you were just wetting up the sheets with incoherent words spilling from your mouth. He imagined you fucked out under him like this plenty of times before but he never knew it’d feel and look this good.

“Shit! Keep doing that and imma cum” He warns, but that’s exactly what you wanted. You wanted to feel him fill you up to the point you were leaking. You began purposely clenching around him, the first squeeze prompting him to lay a smack on your ass, and the second one making his hips stutter against you. He could feel himself becoming lighter, a swirl of heat blooming in the bottom of his stomach.

“Nut in this pussy, baby. Let me feel it, please” You begged hopelessly, doing your best to keep a good hold on his dick until he released with a loud groan, grinding his hips into your ass. You could feel each and every spurt of his cum being released inside you, warmth and fullness is what laid in the bottom of your belly.

“Mmm, fuck” His hips bucked one last time before he was pulling out with a grunt, large hands gripped on your ass and spreading you apart to see what he had done to you.

“So pretty. Push it out” He demanded, and you abided by it, pushing his cum out of you until you no longer felt full.

✮✮✮✮

💌- I’m criiine, this was supposed to be a headcannon too- LMFAOAOA. and yall wonder why i take so long, lawd. i told yall, i cannot do shit right smh. Anyway! i hope you liked this, homegirl 😭 i also managed to get this out before my first college class so hallelujah! *does ring shout*. also this was the longest smut i wrote in a whiiile lmfao. a whole 3k+ words so yaaay! eb clap for henny and wish her luck on this class 😋

[mylordshesacactus]

Okay, I didn't want to clog up the notes of someone else's post with something tonally different because that's rude, but. I Need to elaborate some more about no-kill vs open-intake shelters because I feel like some people still don't get it.

I'm gonna use an example here: My cat, Nepenthe, came from a small municipal open-intake shelter (I don't use the term "kill shelter" because I think it's obscene and cedes ground to ARA fuckwits for no reason) in an area with a NOTORIOUSLY awful stray cat problem.

She was on the euthanasia list. She was next in line on the euthanasia list.

They would never have been cruel or manipulative enough to say it that baldly, of course, but...I can read. Status was "at rsk", with two days' grace before ticking over into "extreme risk", the red zone. The ones who have had the most time, the most chance, if the shelter ever runs out of cage space.

I have gone the fuck off on people who hear that and immediately assume I will tolerate them bashing or insulting that shelter.

Because here's the thing about Penny. She is my baby, my darling, light of my life, and if I hadn't come along, euthanizing her would have been not only necessary but an ethical obligation.

She was neurotic, traumatized, and unpredictably aggressive--not "I'm bad at feline body language and ignoring her subtle back-off signals" unpredictable, I mean "we showed footage to a professional feline behaviorist and their immediate reaction was 'oh that is NOT normal'" unpredictable. "Actual legitimate psychological problems" unpredictable. The previous three times she had met with potential adopters, she attacked them unprovoked and had to be recaptured by a vet tech wearing a bite sleeve designed for aggressive dogs. She was the textbook definition of unadoptable.

She could not be fostered. There was absolutely no way she could live in a home with small children, or older children, or an elderly person with thin skin, or anyone who would get upset if they were clawed in the face without warning every few days.

Now, here's some math for you, keyboard warrior writing up a condescending screed about how there's Never Any Excuse for euthanizing a healthy animal:

The average length of stay in that shelter, for a healthy cat, was roughly two weeks. Which means, on average, assuming fast turnover, a single cage space in that shelter can save the lives of 24 cats every year.

Penny, when I met her, had been there for 43 days. A month and a half. Three times the average length of stay.

I love her. She has improved my life immeasurably and there is nothing I wouldn't do for her. Her life is not more valuable than the lives of the other 23 cats who might have been saved by the slot she was taking up. Euthanasia, if space had run out, would have been the only ethical option.

(Yes, obviously I DID show up and I DID choose her. But frankly? I was a grad student with a psychology degree, studying to be a therapist, living alone, no plans to have kids, a private room where she wouldn't have to interact with other people or animals, de-facto engaged to a professional animal behaviorist; I was ACTIVELY LOOKING for an edge-case project cat, and could calmly and intelligently articulate my understanding of the seriousness of her behavior and my plan for helping her. You can't count on that happening. I was a fucking unicorn.)

No-kill shelters have the INCREDIBLE luxury of deciding who to save. They have the luxury of having all the time in the world to wait. And in the meantime, what exactly do you think is happening to the other animals? The ones they DON'T pick? The ones there's no room for? Do you think they magically don't need to be surrendered anymore? Does Santa Claus find them a home, perhaps?

You can't reduce the life of an animal to math. Good, ethical no-kill shelters can be wonderful resources--either taking highly-adoptable animals from open-intake shelters to free up space as efficiently as possible, or else taking in behaviorally or medically complicated dogs who need more time to find their perfect match than open-intake shelters can give.

But if you're going to shit on open-intake shelters, you don't get to be a fucking coward about it. So here. Prove how much smarter you are.

You've run out of space. Every cage is full. The cat cannot be fostered. You've filled all your available foster slots with other cats, to buy her time. The "no-kill" shelters are full--they pulled the cats they thought they could save, and the scruffy, psychologically-unsound, adult black domestic shorthair with chronic herpes? Nobody wants her. In this world her unicorn's not coming.

She's had three times as long as every other cat here. You have given her every chance, wrote her a lovely bio, moved other cats to other shelters to keep space open so you didn't have to make this choice; but she mauled someone else today and there's a sweet, cuddly, highly-adoptable tabby with no problem behaviors being checked in right now. If you can't put that new cat somewhere it's going to be euthanized without even being given a chance, even though it is extremely adoptable and would likely find a new home within a week.

You don't have a magic wand. You can't wish a conveniently empty second shelter into existence. Every option has been exhausted.

Look me in the eye, and tell me which one dies.

[coryndoll]

in which you’re a rising music star who navigates playful tension with actor drew starkey, and your flirtation turns into something deeper amid a viral music video and your grammy win.

content: diff style writing, drew being cute n following readers lead for the mv

authors note: will lowkey write a part 2 and/or the music video version of this if requested but idk, hopefully it was kinda understandable!! i just wanted the pov as if u were watching the yt video for the behind the scenes footage omg

you’ve known of drew starkey—how could you not? he’s a rising star, a name that keeps getting bigger, a face that’s starting to dominate everyone’s celebrity crush list whenever you scroll through tiktok. the kind of guy that gets cast in fan-favorite shows, whose off-screen personality makes people love him even more. charming, funny, effortlessly likable. he’s everywhere.

but what you couldn’t have imagined is that he knew of you first.

it started small, almost too subtle to notice. a clip of him in an interview, sitting back in his chair, nodding as he listens to a question before casually mentioning that he had just discovered a new artist, you, and couldn’t stop listening. he called your music addictive, something about the way you write lyrics just clicked with him. maybe it would’ve gone unnoticed if he hadn’t mentioned it again.

a month later, another interview, another confession. a different setting, a different outfit, but the same topic. only this time, the interviewer caught onto it.

“seems like you’re a fan.”

drew, red in the face, grinning but flustered, just said, “yeah. yeah, i am.”

he didn’t say much else, but he didn’t have to. the internet picked up on the pattern. his name was suddenly linked to yours, your fans and his fans overlapping, people tweeting at you to collab when?, digging through every interview and live stream to see if he’d mention you again. edits of him set to your songs started appearing on every social media feed. some even made it look like you were the leads in some slow-burn romance movie, just from your music videos and his show clips.

and you? you didn’t think much of it. it was flattering, sure. entertaining, even. but you’d never spoken, never met, never had a reason to. it was just one of those internet things, something people liked to fantasize about but wasn’t real.

until about a year ago.

red carpet event, flashing cameras, voices shouting your name. you were mid-step, smiling for a picture when an interviewer stopped you, microphone extended.

“if you win tonight, who’s getting the first thank-you?”

you barely thought about it. “oh, obviously. my parents, my team, everyone who worked on the album . . .” a pause, a flicker of mischief as the words slipped out. “and drew starkey!”

then you scurried off, leaving the interviewer blinking after you. you didn’t look back, but you knew exactly what you’d just done. by the time you got home, twitter had already lost its mind.

so with all that history, all those years of almosts, how could you not end 2024 and start 2025 with a steamy, intimate music video starring your one and only secret admirer?

the behind-the-scenes video you upload to youtube starts with a simple title card—bts: filming my new music video with bae—before fading into a clip of you on set, bundled up in a puffer jacket, arms wide as you greet drew with an easy, “hi!”

it’s the first time meeting him in person. you’ve known of him, obviously, but standing here now, seeing the way his face lights up at the sight of you, it’s different. the camera catches his initial reaction. he smiles wide, like he’s trying to keep himself from grinning too hard, nodding like he’s trying to play it cool. you hug, brief but natural, before the video cuts to your interview.

you’re curled up in your seat, dressed down in sweats, looking entirely comfortable in front of the camera like you’ve done this a hundred times before. one leg is crossed over the other, your head rests against your palm, and the other hand is tucked between your thighs, playing absentmindedly with the fabric of your hoodie. you’re practically beaming as you talk.

“he’s cute. but no, getting drew to agree to the video was no problem,” you admit, a small laugh slipping through. “it just made sense. everybody on twitter and everybody on tiktok can calm down now.”

you grin at the camera before adding, “plus, my mom loved his last movie.”

your friend behind the camera immediately jumps in, amused. “did she?”

you snicker, nodding your head like the answer is obvious. you don’t even need to say anything. your smile says it all.

cut to: on set at night.

you stand close to drew, explaining your vision, the two of you tucked into a quiet corner of the closed-off street. it’s late. you’re talking, hands moving as you try to get the words out just right, and drew listens intently, nodding along, before huffing out a laugh at something you say.

the next shot is of you in position, standing just outside the entrance of a nightclub. the scene is meant to be electric, with the music pounding inside, the city buzzing around you. you refilm the shot a few times, stepping out of the alleyway and onto the sidewalk, pausing just as drew and ‘his group of friends’ step onto the curb from their car. the camera zooms in on your expression, catching the exact moment your character notices him.

you give him a look, one of intrigue, curiosity, a silent pull that makes drew’s character do a double take as he follows his friends inside. but as you turn and walk away, he hesitates. his friends don’t notice, but the audience is supposed to.

although the music is supposed to cut through, they’ll be able to see him say the words, “wait up for me, i’ll catch up.”

he stays behind. he follows you.

the cameras catch him walking past the frame, but in the behind-the-scenes footage, you’re already waiting for him off-camera. you’re standing just around the corner, out of sight, and the second he’s done with his take, he breaks into a grin, beaming as he jogs over to you.

“was that good?” he asks, a little breathless, still caught in the rush of the scene.

and off-camera, you laugh.

the next shot starts with a handheld camera capturing you inside a dimly lit bar, the neon glow from the signs reflecting off the polished counter. you’re perched on a stool, fingers curled around a glass, not drinking, just holding it for the scene, your expression unreadable as the camera focuses on you. the shot lasts for only a moment before it abruptly cuts away.

to: drew’s micro interview.

he’s leaned back in his chair, relaxed, but there’s a knowing glint in his eyes, something playful lurking beneath his words. “she made me flustered super easily, yeah,” he confesses, mouth curving into a smirk as he glances off-camera toward your friend conducting the interviews. “she just has that effect to her.”

to: the first night scene.

this time, the energy is entirely different. the camera moves with purpose, following drew as he catches up to you, his hand grasping your arm, tugging you into another alleyway. the moment is fast, urgent, his body pressing yours up against the cool brick wall, his lips finding yours without hesitation.

the camera doesn’t linger on the kiss itself. instead, it captures the details, like the way drew’s fingers tighten around the fabric of your clothes, the way your hand slips into the back of his hair, curling at the nape of his neck. the shot pans downward, exposing the closeness between your bodies, the breathlessness of it all, before the scene suddenly fades.

you’re sitting up straighter this time in your interview immediately after the clip, legs crossed, hands in your lap, but there’s a mischievous glint in your eyes. your tongue presses against your top teeth as you chuckle, fully aware of what you’ve just filmed. you don’t say much, but the knowing look on your face says enough.

the final shot of this segment shows you and drew after the director calls cut, the tension immediately breaking as laughter spills between you. you pull away first, eyes bright as you turn toward the monitors, eager to check the footage.

drew, still lingering in place, rubs his bottom lip with his thumb, watching you for a beat before finally trailing after you, taking his time.

the next shot follows your character, leading drew by the hand, weaving through the streetlights, your destination clear in your mind, and you toss him the car keys without hesitation. drew catches them, glancing between you and the keys in his hand, a flicker of disbelief crossing his face. the trust is unexpected, almost daring. but after a brief hesitation, he gives in, climbing into the driver’s seat while you swing into the passenger side, watching him with a smirk.

the screen quickly shifts to behind-the-scenes footage—handheld, slightly shaky, like a friend capturing the moment on their phone. you lean halfway out of the car window, hair tousled from the wind. your voice is light, playful, as you drag out the words dramatically, “we’ve been filming for the last six hours! i wanna go home.”

you make a face at the camera, and off-screen laughter follows. just as the camera pans back toward the car, drew reappears, slipping into the driver’s seat after what was clearly a break. he clocks the camera almost immediately, smiling as he watches you slide back inside, adjusting in your seat like you’re preparing for another take.

to: the car scene.

you're in the passenger seat, lip-syncing the lyrics, the camera catching you. your expression shifts between something teasing and something more heated, fingers toying with the hem of your dress as drew grips the wheel beside you.

then, another interview clip overlays the scene. you sit comfortably, your grin almost mischievous as you speak, “i wanted this music video to be very, very horny. like, so horny but also so fun, and freeing too.”

you pause, laughing as you push your hair back, “i really wanted to capture that feeling of instant attraction. like, that moment when you lock eyes with someone across the room and just know something’s about to happen. the whole video is about chasing that rush, that tension of being drawn to someone you shouldn’t want but not being able to stop yourself.”

“so, yeah. i wanted it to feel intense, a little dangerous, a little intoxicating . . . like a night you’ll never forget, even if it only lasts ‘til sunrise.”

it cuts to a different segment of the micro interview. you’re sitting casually, your thumb nail between your teeth as you listen to your friend. the vibe is lighthearted, almost too laid-back, until your friend says, “you should call him if you win that grammy.”

you freeze for a second, eyes widening slightly, then burst out laughing. sitting up straighter, you give her a look, almost like she’s lost their mind, “are you serious?”

the final shot in the behind-the-scenes video captures you dramatically collapsing onto the mock-bedroom set, letting out an exaggerated groan as you flop onto the bed, completely wiped from weeks of filming. you’re on your back, hair splayed out around you like a halo, eyes half-closed as the exhaustion hits you full force.

drew, on the other hand, leans back against the headboard, legs sprawled out casually as if he could take on another round of filming, but still, his hand reaches out, and you take it without hesitation. your hands clasp in a silent victory, both of you relishing in the fact that you’ve wrapped up the last take of the day.

“is that it?” you ask, glancing at the crew who are already packing up, and when they confirm it, a smile breaks across your face. you raise a fist in the air, a mock victory pose, causing a few of the crew members to chuckle behind the camera.

the camera cuts back to you, but just a few minutes later, still lounging on the bed with drew, who’s now looking at you with that signature grin of his. you sit up, stretching your arms over your head, and your voice is light as you ask, “was that fun?” you’re genuinely checking in, making sure drew’s feeling good after all the intense shots.

drew pauses for a beat, then lets out a little laugh, clearly still feeling the buzz from the shoot. “i had . . . a blast,” he says, but there’s something about the way he says it, maybe it’s the glint in his eyes or the slight inflection in his voice, that makes you burst out laughing.

you start to get up from the bed, your laugh still lingering in the air as you move out of the frame. the camera stays on drew as he watches you go, looking like he’s still processing the day. just as you move out of view, someone walks in from the side to start cleaning up the set, but drew doesn’t miss a beat.

“i’m being so honest right now, dude,” he says, his grin turning playful, and you hear the laughter behind the camera as they capture this moment.

after the music video shoot wraps, you and drew keep in touch. with the release of the video just around the corner, your team suggests posting a teaser to build hype on social media. it’s the perfect opportunity, so you agree.

another mini shoot is set up for the teaser. drew and his team arrive, and even though this shoot is way more relaxed than the last one, the excitement is still palpable. you’re going to film a short, tantalizing snippet.

the plan is for the camera to follow your feet clicking against the floor as you walk down a hallway, but your face won’t be seen. you stop in front of a door and knock before the cameras on you now.

the moment the door opens, your smile is real as you grab his hand. you pull him with you down the hall, and the camera focuses on the back of his head, leaving fans to wonder who he is. as you pass the wall, the words of the song title come to life to tease which song its for.

as soon as the video drops, the internet blows up. fans can’t stop guessing who your mystery man is.

‘ its drew isnt it ’

‘ PLEASE TELL ME THATS WHO I RHKNK IT IS ’

‘ y/n y/l/n u did NOT. ’

others speculate wildly, throwing out all kinds of guesses. you both meet up to hang out during the lead-up to your album release, laughing about the crazy theories online. some fans are dead sure it’s him, while others debate who it could be. the excitement only grows, and you secretly enjoy the fun of keeping them guessing.

but everything falls into place when you win that grammy. it’s the culmination of everything you’ve worked so hard for, and as the announcement echoes through the room, you’re overwhelmed with emotions. you honestly didn’t expect this, especially as a first-timer. they are hard to come by, and you’re honestly convinced this is going to be your one and only.

the wave of emotion hits you as you hug your loved ones, the tears welling up in your eyes. you quickly pat under your eyes with your fingers, trying to compose yourself as you walk toward the stage. all eyes are on you, and the spotlight is so bright you almost can’t bear to look directly at it.

you hold the grammy in your hands, trying to keep your composure as you deliver the half-planned speech you’d scribbled down earlier. it’s all so surreal.

“god, i actually thought i was about to pass out when they said my name,” you admit, and the audience of familiar faces laughs.

“i just can’t believe i’m standing here right now, receiving this. i have poured my heart into this album, into my music, and i never imagined it would lead me here. to my team and family, you’re the reason this dream is even possible. to my fans, thank you for making this journey so worth it. this award is for us. i love you all, and i’ll keep making music as long as you’ll keep listening. thank you all so much.”

eventually you’re off the stage and sitting at your table, still processing everything that's just happened. there are few who still congratulate you from their seats around you. your friend, sitting beside you, gives you a look, the kind that says it all. you know what to do.

you hesitate. was she serious about what she said before about if you won? you roll your eyes, but you can’t ignore the pull of it. you grab your phone and turn it on briefly, waiting for an appropriate moment. your thumb hovers over the keyboard for a moment before you type out the message to drew:

hey. can i call u tonight?

a/n: such an abrupt ending LOL but i have to cut it off here bc i have my first day of my new class tmr n im supposed to get up in 2 hours 💔 ILL REWRITE THIS OR DO A PART 2 IF I REREAD THIS LATER N NOT LIKE IT

[emmyc0z]

Can you write something for Sephiroth(pre-nibelheim) or Astarion? Your work is absolutely fantastic btw I’m in love with it ❤️❤️❤️

Not So Subtle

pairing : sephiroth x female!reader

summary : you have a teenage girl level crush on him, that you and zack talk (very loudly) about when you think no one can hear. but he does.

a/n : this takes place pre-nibelheim so everyone is happy and well! in honour of ff7 rebirth :)

“Close your mouth or you’ll catch flies.” You snap your jaw shut, eyes moving to glare at the young, dark haired boy who has decided to break your daydream. 

“It wasn’t even open.” He plops down beside you, shoulder touching yours. 

“Mhm.. and you weren’t drooling over our superior.” 

“Your superior,” you correct, eyebrow lifted with pointed sarcasm. If you could stick your tongue out at him, without it seeming childish to everyone around you, you would.

“Last time I checked, you weren’t a first class soldier either,” He points out, amused. Your elbow makes contact with his arm, and his hand reaches to cover the area as he laughs.

Zack was younger than you, though he certainly never acted like there was an age gap. In his mind, you were the same age as him in some way or another. You had always trained together so you felt much closer in age even though you were at least 3 years older than him. At times, he felt like a younger brother to you.

Even more so when he found out you had a crush on the man he spent everyday training beside. Constant teasing, constant threats to spill your secrets, constant blackmail. You couldn’t even count the amount of times he had used your crush to his advantage on one hand. 

There was a time you had to put your foot down and tell him no more, cause it was wrong of course. But also mostly cause you were running out of money to buy his silence.

“Yeah but I'm older, closer to his age. So I don't have to talk to him like I'm below him, unlike some people.” 

“Can you even talk to him?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then why are you sitting here staring..?” 

“He’s training..” 

“Mhm.” The look on his face tells you he’s not convinced. Right now, it was the truth, Sephiroth was swinging his sword in the domed combat simulator, glass walls clear enough for you to see through. So the excuse of not being able to talk to him, out of fear of being sliced in half by his giant sword, was plausible. 

But any other time that you had sat staring at him, making no effort to speak to him, rendered that excuse inapplicable. 

“Shut it..” You push his shoulder with your elbow once more, and he snorts out a laugh. 

“I don’t get why you can’t just talk to him..” 

“Of course you don’t.. because you're obviously blind. Or you’ve been hit in the head one too many times in combat training.” You turn your gaze away from Zack to look back through the glass enclosing Sephiroth. 

His hair is tied up, hanging loosely against his back. It’s a rare sight, so you indulge yourself and stare a second longer than you should. It’s so relaxed, you think, compared to the seriousness of always having it pristinely down. There are stray hairs, flyaways, falling from the hair tie and hanging against his face. It’s unkempt, a nice contrast to his seemingly perfect lifestyle.

He swings his sword with calculated grace, a grace that you (or Zack for that matter) had yet to achieve. The control he held over his blade was impeccable, it never slipped or moved from his hold even when his hands were moving faster than his body could keep up with. Just another thing that had to be perfect in his life.

“How could I ever speak to him and not make a fool out of myself? For one, he’s first class, I'd totally ruin my chances of making first class if I said something totally outrageous. And knowing me, my mind would be so jumbled, I wouldn't even realize the words had left my mouth before he put me on some kind of ‘do not promote’ list.” 

“Oh so.. the only reason you won’t talk to him is because you're worried about making first class? Not.. I don’t know, maybe, the 12-year-old-girl-level crush you have on him.” Your hand slaps over his lips, eyes scanning around you. For the most part, no one looks at the two of you, and you figure the ones that are looking are doing so because of your hand covering Zacks blabbermouth. 

“Would you shut it?” Even with your hand covering his mouth, he manages to laugh at your widened eyes. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes are a dead giveaway of his amusement. You remove your hand with a pointed look, one that says ‘keep it down’ in a far more subtle way than a hand over his face. 

“You’re so lucky you’re younger than me.” 

“More like so lucky you don’t want to make your boyfriend angry. Besides, you know I’m stronger than you.” 

“Mhm..” You roll your eyes, and with a sigh, you turn back to face Sephiroth. He stands still now and you realize all of the practice dummies have been broken. From your position, he doesn't even seem to have broken a sweat, even though he’s been in there for over an hour. His sword lies on the ground, thrown without care. 

Even with Zack beside you, and the silent teasing that exudes from his body, your eyes remain trained on Sephiroth. You realize it’s childish, to stare and never approach, but the idea of even standing next to him is enough to intimidate you. 

He runs his hand over his back, pulling the hair tie from his hair, allowing it to fall against his shoulders once more. He turns, presumably to leave the combat simulated, and his eyes meet yours through the glass. You knew your staring wasn’t subtle, it had never been before, but you had never expected to get caught. You had never been caught. 

You turn your head away so fast that Zack almost flinches, probably thinking you were going to hit him again. 

“Jesus,” he looks at you with confusion, “What’s the problem?” 

“He saw me.” 

“What?” 

“He saw me! Through the glass! He totally caught me staring at him..” You stare at Zack with wide eyes and flushed cheeks, before you head falls into your lap in shame.

“Would you relax? I guarantee he doesn’t care or he didn’t even see you. Maybe he was just looking at his reflection.”

You look back towards Sephiroth to see him leaving through the doors of the dome, and then you turn back to Zack with a pitiful whine. 

“This is so pathetic…” 

“I agree,” he smiles when you shoot him a glare, “Just talk to him.” 

“Talk to who?” A deep voice sounds from beside you, higher up than where you sit. You feel the hairs on the back of your neck stick up, and Zack's expression is enough to confirm your suspicion about who stands next to you. 

You turn your head to face Sephiroth, and he stares at you expectantly. You think you catch the slightest smirk building on the corner of his lips, but you also think you might just be trying to make yourself feel better. Standing, nowhere close to his height, you hold your hands up. Zack takes this as his sign to stand too. 

“Nobody! Angeal!” You fumble out words, trying to throw out a name before he grows suspicious. 

“Well which is it, nobody? or Angeal?” 

“Angeal. Yeah! Angeal, so.. um.. I should probably go find him.” 

“It just so happens that I have to find Angeal too, allow me to join you.” 

You want to throw the nearest chair at Zack, curse him for speaking so loudly. And you curse yourself for not thinking of an excuse in a reasonable time frame, so you just nod, and excuse yourself from Zack. 

He gives you a pitiful smile, and when you turn to look behind you for support one last time as you walk away he gives you a thumbs up. His face contradicts his hands, and he seems like he’s in a far less teasing mood. 

“Whatever you have to say to him, it must be important.” 

“Hm?” You tilt your head up and to the side to look at Sephiroth, you’ve been walking together for a few minutes now, mostly silently. 

“You're walking fast.” You shrug your shoulders and continue walking. 

At least until your steps are interrupted by him stepping in front of you. 

“Is there a problem?”

“What? Of course not!” He practically glares down at you, arms crossed over his muscular chest. You can see the outline of his defined chest muscles through the straps of his top. And you realize you're practically drooling over him, right in front of him so you force your eyes to meet his once more. But his glare is replaced by a smirk, and amusement in his eyes. 

“I see now..” 

“See what?” 

“Really? Do you think you’re subtle?” Your face flushes and once again you want the floor to open up and consume you whole, but you're stuck here. 

“I don’t know what you're talking about.” Step back, you scream at yourself, but he moves closer and it’s impossible to move your feet. They feel like lead underneath you, not even giving way to a small shuffle backwards.

“No?” His hand reaches up to rest on your cheek, it's gentle, far gentler than you would’ve expected. But the way his fingers tense against your skin has you feeling fuzzy, “You think I don’t notice the way you stare? Hm?” 

He stares at you, thumb moving to the other side of your chin, holding your face in his hand. He maneuvers your face, moving it however he likes. You realize he’s examining the flush in your cheeks, the way your lips part like you want to say something. His tongue gives a humiliating click when your lips close, and the words are lost. 

“I hear you, when you talk to Zack,” he stops his movement, stilling your face to look directly at him, “You’ve never been a quiet girl. Why are you so quiet now?” 

When you don’t respond his eyebrows scrunch, its subtle and almost missable because it’s gone in seconds. He’s not satisfied by your silence.

Sephiroth bends his shoulders, moving closer to your face, “Although, I suppose you’ve never been very talkative around me.” He moves closer still, swerving his nose to the side of your face until he’s able to speak in your ear, “That’s not very nice. You might hurt my feelings if you keep ignoring me.” 

“I’m sorry,” you mumble out meekly, you're honestly not even sure it’s audible at first but he laughs quietly, breath fanning on your ear. His other hand, the one that doesn’t hold your face, reaches up to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear before he pulls away. The breath that leaves your body is almost embarrassing. 

“What’re you sorry for, hm?” He stares expectantly down at you, eyes never leaving yours. 

“F…for ignoring you.”

“So you ignore me?” 

“No!”

“So you’re lying?” You shake your head as much as you can within the hold of his fingers, “Then what are you sorry for?” 

“For not talking to you.” 

“And why don’t you talk to me, I'm sure you know it’s rude to stare and never speak to someone.”

“Because..” His grip loosens, hand moving back to your cheek, thumb resting on your cheek bone. 

“Because why? Cmon use your voice, the one you use to talk about me with Zack.” 

You stare up at him pitifully, and the way words fumble from your mouth has you wanting to throw up, “Because I have this stupid crush on you, and I can't talk to you without getting nervous. I know it’s stupid and I should have told you sooner so you could reject me and I could move on and I never meant to offend you or-”

You hadn’t realized he had gotten so close until his nose touches yours, top lip brushing against yours as he tips your chin up towards him. Your words fall flat on your tongue when you meet his eyes, or rather when you see his eyes that are focused on your lips. 

“Offend me.. that’s sweet..” He’s so close to you, that every word has his lips brushing against your own again and again. 

“Sephiroth..?” You suppress the urge to move the tiniest bit forward so your lips can fully meet his. And you're sure your face is impossibly red. 

“You should’ve told me about this ‘stupid’ crush sooner, such a foolish girl. May I?” You're confused, what is he asking for? His eyes flicker up to yours before moving back to your lips. When you realize what he means you nod your head perhaps too eagerly. 

Slowly, to tease, his lips press against yours, palm pressing into the skin of yours to keep you in place. Eyes fluttering closed, your hands find his chest, silently screaming about the position you’ve found yourself in.

His lips overpower yours in every regard, moving languidly against you. His other hand reaches up to the free side of your face, fingers tickling the skin on your neck and thumb resting on your jaw. 

When he pulls away you can only look at him with half lidded eyes, dazed. 

Al he does is chuckle, rubbing your cheek with his thumb and patting your head. One hand holds the back of your head, leaning down to kiss your temple, before stepping behind you, “Don’t be so shy from now on. Maybe we’ll end up here again.”

His steps echo through the empty hall as he walks away.

“Wait… wait.. I thought you had to go see Angeal?” You turn, taking one step in his direction, then stopping yourself in your tracks hesitantly. 

“I didn’t. And I know you didn’t either.” He only turns his cheek towards you to speak and then continues on down the hallway, tall and brooding.

[coco-oats]

Strategies I use to…

Reconnect with myself˚◞♡ ⃗ *ೃ༄

Hiiii, here is a list of some things I do in order to reconnect with myself!

When I feel down, overwhelmed, mindless, or just not like my usual self, these activities are my saviours.

• Physical activity!!! - You know I had to put this one first, girl. Strength training, stretching, swimming, running, walking, dancing, playing sports, etc. Physical activity makes me feel amazing and gives me a total confidence boost, I’m just in my element.

• Meditation - Deep breathing, relaxing music, clear mind, I love it! I feel a deep sense of connection with myself and the universe when meditating. It’s also just a great reset if you’re in a negative mood, I feel totally cleansed afterwards.

• Pampering!!! - face massage, gua sha, long hot bath/shower, full body massage, cute treat/drink, ice roller, positive affirmations, comfy clothes, favourite movie, and so on.

• Get creative - Getting creative is a good way to express and connect with yourself. Doing something artsy always reminds me of when I was a kid, and writing is a great outlet for my creativity.

Drawing, writing, sculpting, painting, colouring, knitting, crocheting, etc.

• Journaling - I love journaling so much. It’s a good way to check-in with yourself, learn about yourself, and release your emotions. I feel a lot more in tune with myself afterwards.

I’ll write about : Things I am grateful for, my dreams and desires, goals I’m working towards, my favourite things about myself, my feelings, etc.

• Expressing myself - Often, the reason for me feeling disconnected with myself is because I’ve hidden or ignored my true feelings/thoughts/self. I mean obviously masking yourself makes you feel disconnected with yourself…

My strategy is to openly express myself confidently. I share my feelings and opinions, and I don’t try to hide who I am. I don’t care what people think of me, I will never be ashamed or embarrassed of my authentic self.