#oh and its only 200 pages!

[phaedraismyusername]

It's possible that this recommendation works for my brain only but if you have a deep love for everything that Like Real People Do by Hozier brings to the table then Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford might be a book for you

[deoidesign]

Hello! I just discovered your blog and I immediately became captivated by your webcomic, but I'm unsure where to read all of it. I know it's on Webtoons, but I can see it hasn't been updated for a while, and you still post about it.

Are your physical novels just prints of the webcomic? Are they a continuation? Is the story complete? Thanks in advance!

Hi there!

Glad you found me and are enjoying my comic!

It's only on webtoons, and the story is not complete yet! We're 2/3 of the way through right now. It's currently on hiatus, and it's scheduled to come back in about 2 months!

I'll explain why it's been so long if you're curious, but also for my followers who might also be wondering about it under the cut. Sorry, it's pretty much just me complaining haha

I took a month off I took 2 months to get the books printed I took a month to prepare my next comic and I took 2 months to write the rest of the series (I knew the character arcs I wanted, but not the time periods or mysteries!!!) I've been working on actual episodes since then

I had to take some time off because of some pretty extreme burnout due to the sheer amount of work it was to draw over 800 pages and write 6 complete stories in a year and a half... I was getting sick almost weekly due to the overwork, it was really really bad honestly. I was having to work 60+ hours every week just to keep up...

The nature of the comic itself is also difficult... Each of the arcs is a complete, self contained story which can be read (ideally) without context, and my arcs need to be about 10-13 episodes each... And since I have an exact number of episodes to work with, it's even harder.

It takes a ton of planning and a ton of refinement, and working week to week with no breaks I was forced to put out second or even first drafts, so I just wasn't happy with the work I was doing... And to do that for the rest of the series? I wouldn't be proud of the work I did.

Plus... To be entirely honest, webtoon has treated me quite badly IN MY OPINION... They deprioritized me before I launched (I had to beg for more promotion, I'm not exaggerating), they outright denied me the opportunity to even ask for a raise, I don't make any money on fast pass and they pay me less than my partner makes working at trader joes. My first editor left me completely hanging, my second editor (who I loved) was fired... And they told me I wouldn't get a third season before my first season even finished. So it was just repeatedly completely demoralizing.

I'm sorry it has taken so long, it'll have been 10 months by the time I come back. But I realized... I won't get promotion either way. I won't get more episodes either way. I won't get more money either way. So to finish everything, to make it feel good, to make it something I'm proud of, I chose to take longer to make it better.

I am fully aware I will lose a significant amount of my readership for this and it might genuinely affect my career moving forward. But it's what I had to do! So I'm sticking to my guns on it, and I'm confident long term it'll be worth it. It never could have been this good if I didn't take this much time.

[gnaga37]

still don't understand why my elementary teachers were so obsessed with having a perfect neat and organized notebook

[prokopetz]

Trying to make an entry for the jam made me confront a question: how does one inject flavour and evocative writing in an RPG when there is little to no space for flavour text?

I ended up unable to add any writing that wasn't rules without going over the 200 word limit, outside of maybe the naming of some mechanics, but I went in thinking that being able to provoke the imagination would be the difference between an ok entry and a really good one.

How would you do it?

(With reference to this post here.)

The customary answer in the one-page-RPG sphere is graphic design, but here you can't do much of that, so you need to rely on phrasing, rhythm, register, word choice, and yes, game-mechanical jargon. Indie RPGs are often mocked for using their own idiosyncratic terminology rather using the "standard" jargon developed by Dungeons & Dragons and its various direct imitators, but there really is a point: even something as simple as the level of formality of the mechanical text can have a huge impact on how a game comes across.

Let's look at an extreme example – my own recent experiment in fitting a complete game into a single Bluesky post:

CREATURES Need: 3d6 Character * Skills: Hands, Feet, Mouth, Guts; assign 3, 2, 2, 1 * Traits: claws, fangs, fins, horns, shell, slime, tail, tentacles, trunk, wings; pick 2 Conflict * Roll dice=skill * Highest: * 6: Yay * 4–5: Okay * 1–3: Uh-oh Scenario * escape maze * eat wizard * profit!

This one only has three hundred characters to work with, and consists almost entirely of rules text, yet the structure and word choice convey a very clear idea of who the player characters are and what they do!

It can be helpful to bear in mind that the separation of rules text and flavour text is an artificial one, adopted by long-form games where mixing mechanics with microfiction can make the former difficult to when there's three hundred pages of the latter to comb through. You don't really need to worry about that in a very short game, so you're free to have the same text play both roles.

[bogleech]

I completely missed that a Mortasheen book was getting kickstarted! What's the best way to get updates on that? Is there some way to sign up for a bogleech.com news letter? I don't want to miss when it comes out

Oh it was kickstarted three years ago, but with the intention of coming out in only one year. A lot of stuff happened :( It's a tabletop RPG that's actually been in development by other folks for now a grand total of I think 15 years, with me just being the art and concept side. I was never really let in on 90% of that development or what caused it to go on that long but now I have enough stuff together that I should be able to get the book out for real in 2024, with the help of the remaining gameplay dev Morgan Mullins, a huge boost of additional development help from @gutsygills, and a dozen different artists I've paid to contribute.

Having sunk so much of my life into it, I won't make it at all possible for people to miss when it comes out. It's basically the thing I have to bank on as my main career for the foreseeable future, the first book is only intended as the start of a series of expansions, it'll have its own official website and get pitched to actual gaming stores. I've been really sweating to make it look as professional-ish as possible.

Like the core D&D books it will have to be fairly pricey, we're looking at 200-300 pages, but I'd also put out much cheaper digital versions, and maybe little skinny "monsters only" books for people who just want to look at those :)

The stats/abilities on these pages are already a little out of date, the gameplay system had some last minute updates following a lot of backer playtesting!

I dunno how many people reading this have maybe never heard of Mortasheen yet but it's a horror-comedy flavored homage to Pokemon and Digimon set in a world sort of like ours, thousands of years from now where there's goofy monsters and mutants and biotech while humans are very rare and endangered. Actually the setting most similar to it now is Adventure Time of all things, if it had a whole lot more body horror and no magic (but lots of biotechnology indistinguishable from it). But when development of this game began, Adventure Time was just that weird short pilot Nickelodeon passed up on. Now it will be coming out after Adventure Time had a finale, sequel movies and the first season of a followup series. It has literally taken more than an entire Adventure Time to get this done :( I did not mean for an answer to an ask to go on this long but it occurs to me as important information for my followers in general!!!

[scarlet-ancunin]

♡You Love Me To♡

A/N: The song below inspired the fic for me

☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

" I Care About you to"

Those five words rang through the vampire spawns head over and over. They really like me. Astarion was sitting alone in his tent thinking about it. Of course the events that happened after struck something he didn't think was possible... but was it.... Love... from such a simple moment between them such a simple hold.

It wasn't forced but gentle. It didn't have strings attached- wanting something in return... no it was a genuine feeling of love and care that came with that simple gesture of affection. He enjoyed it he wanted to feel more of that.

After 200 years of abuse from Cazador, locking him in the dark with nothing, feeding on rats and bugs he forced him to eat, trying to break his mind, using his looks and his body to bring him poor helpless souls to his lair. Like lambs for the slaughter. And he was the cause of it all. He had many lovers or rather flings but at this moment the only person who stayed on his mind was You. You were special in ways he couldn't understand and that probably is what led to his original plan of using you to fail miserably.

He realized while skimming through the same page in his book that more than anything he wanted to see you smile more because of him. Its probably what led to this sudden idea to walk towards the tent that occupied the "blade of frontiers".

'This is a stupid idea' the pale elf thought while approaching the man cradling a goblet of wine looking up. Astarion cleared his throat to catch the mans attention. "Oh? Astarion a rare occurrence to be visiting me at such an hour what do you need?"

Astarion also found wyll more annoying then he care to admit out loud but right now he was the only one he could... Trust with this little idea. "I...I need a favor I'll gladly pay you back later but i need your help can you help me?" Astarion says this with a vague motion and a simple wave of his hand.

Wyll ever the "hero" agrees "sure but what does this favor intel?" Astarion suddenly found the dirt on the ground more interesting avoiding eye contact. "Astarion?" Wyll asked softly but a hint of curiosity.

"Can you teach me... ugh can you teach me how to, well, dance" that was all Astarion said nothing more nothing less and certainly not sharing his reasons for this request. Wyll was surprised "Astarion you don't know how to dance?"

The vampire glares at the man suddenly "i wouldn't have ask for the damn favor if i did" seeing Wyll frown made him pause and look away with a huff. "I- never really got around to it.. can you teach me?" He sounded more calmer slight hints of plea.

Wyll nods smiling "sure a man shouldn't miss the opportunity to show off not only his skills with the blade but also with movements of his body" Astarion grimaced at this before rolling his eyes. "We can practice at nights while everyone is asleep" he said before walking away quickly. Wyll blinks before chuckling low and retiring for the night.

-

Astarion was surprisingly a quick learner he watched each move just like he watched his prey before feeding. There was one problem... the man wanted to learn something a little but more romantic and rather closer.

"Ah as much as i like to prance around all day i was hoping for something a little more on the intimate side of things" Wyll gives him a knowing smile "fancy wooing someone in particular?"

Astarion plays ignorant "oh please i simply want to learn because it is a good skill that's all" he crossed his arms and tilts his head up towards the night sky eyes closed. Wyll hums low "well i suppose i don't need to show you because i taught you the good skills already"

Astarion was quick to change his tone "alright, alright it is to flatter someone I suppose" "anyone I know of?" Wyll asked enjoying this to much. The Pale elf rolled his eyes with a huff he mumbles out a soft maybe.

"Its Y/n isn't it?" Wyll said matter-of-fact and it annoyed Astarion to no end. He doesn't meet his gaze but Wyll knew he was right. "They will like you no matter if you dance or not Astarion i see the way they look at you with adoration not many hold such a gaze to anyone they didn't care about."

Astarion sighs pinching the bridge of his nose. "I am aware my looks draws-" Wyll cuts him off "its more than that Astarion even Halsin knows this" Wyll pressed and Astarion red eyes flicked between wylls devil eyes and the small fire they made far from the camp.

"Just teach me...." he stares at the man before him for a moment "please"

~

Luckily Astarion had fed the night before so he was happy and was able to be useful for the team consiting Himself, You, Gale and Halsin. Every time you wasn't paying attention behind you it was fine because the sound of a fast ice, fire or lightning arrow whizzed through the air landing strong damage on them.

Back at the camp Gale and Halsin made it their mission to make sure everyone else especially Scratch stayed occupied to give Astarion a moment alone with You which meant going far from the camp and taking a wine bottle and some simple food to snack on but most importantly the fancy music box he stoled from that pompous man when he wasn't looking.

Gentle laughter filled the air as Astarion mentioned how he stoled the music box giving a fake story of "how can you blame me I'm a victim to" and how gullible they were. Astarion smiles at you. A real one enjoying your laughter and company all the same. Its when he stood up walking to the tree truck with the misic box opened and ready. He gave the dial behind it a few twist and it started to hum to life.

You blush deeply when Astarion holds his hand out to you "may i have this dance" You stood up grinning like an idiot and nod taking his hand in yours "well i suppose you can" you teased playfully before you both slowly began to dance to the soft tune.

It was perfect you thought to yourself looking up at him getting lost in those crimson eyes of his. His smile was sharp and while he doesn't like when you mention the crease of his smile to him, it always made you admire him more. What he assumed was imperfect meant so much to you.

He twirls you slowly and then dips you smiling lightly "your full of surprises my love" you said softly smiling up at him then giggle before moving in closer and kissing him passionately.

"I love you very much" he said softly before leaning his head on top of yours when you rest your head against his shoulder. The music a soft background to the moment you both are sharing.

☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆~☆

Narrator: hidden behind the trees and bushes silently observing the intimate scene before them was their loyal companions all supportive of their friends successful moment

As always i hope you like it, thanks for your support and requests are open for Astarion from BG3 😁❤️

[sabine-smitten-obviously]

and now i have to find myself a tower in a forest near a wall ...

... and look for a black, dark sorcerer !

You love fairy tales? You love Good Omens? You loved Aziraphale and Crowley in medieval clothes? Then you will love this not so little fanfic i dearly recommend to you!

Villainous by @ineffablepenguin

What it is about:

Once Upon A Time…

There was a red-haired sorcerer who lived alone in a high tower, and a blond prince who lived in a palace full of people. And they were both of them desperately lonely.

The Kingdoms of Empyrion and the Sorcerers of Apollyon have hated each other for hundreds of years, ever since the Great War. They do not interact, other than to occasionally try to kill one another. And they certainly do not make friends.

Crow is an exhausted sorcerer who just wants everyone to leave him the hell alone: for the Sorcerer’s Council to stop harassing him to live up to his potential, and for wannabe Empyrion Heroes to stop attacking his tower to try and kill him. Until one day when he meets Prince Azra of the High Fells, who doesn’t behave anything like he’s supposed to…

Part fairy tale, part fantasy, all love story. There’s magic, and grand romantic gestures, and Heroes and a handsome Prince, and a Villain. There are even some wild heroics, though not necessarily from who you would expect. At its core it’s simply about two (relatively) sane people living in a mad world who find each other.

What i love about it:

🫅🏼 I mean - fairytales? And a lot of them? I found it very nice to guess all the tales when stumbling upon a hint. Nice touch: in the epilogue there is a list of all the fairytales which have kind of flown into this fanfic and i am quite proud that i only missed 1 i actually know (and of course those i dont know).

👑 This story is RICH - and i mean really rich. It goes into details over everything and sometimes it reminded me of books written bei Hermann Hesse because of all the little things that kept coming and being mentioned. On my e-reader it was 566 pages! And yes, it took them about 200 pages for their first kiss 😅 That said, its always drawing a picture and reading the story is kind of seeing in your imagination. Obviously nothing is ineffable for @ineffablepenguin 😉

💪 The action scenes: oh my, its like a Schwarzenegger-movie, you cant stop reading, its fast, its furiuos ... oh, thats another movie, ngk.

🩷 The character development: both of our beloved angels start out being insecure of their roles, their place and their worth. But - this is the first fanfic i ever read, where both of them get to be BAMF !!!!

🩷 The plot: i love being suprised - i mean we do know a lot already, diving into a GO-fanfic with the tag "happy ending", right? So there were some really interesting turns and sometimes i wondered "ok, just how will this play out? How will the author get to unknot THIS?" And i have to admit, sometimes i really didn't see it coming. Very nice!

🩷 The healing: i dont know if it was on purpose or the author just felt like our ineffables needed to hear and think stuff, but actually the way their characters develop and how they help each other with it, what they are thinking etc ... reminded me a lot of trauma-therapy. So as one of those few (ähem) people who really spiraled after the big 15 of S2, this was such a nice feeling.

💫 the epilogue - this story doesnt end at happily ever after. Instead we get to know, how they make a living for themselves and sneak a little into their daily lifes. I truly appreciate that, its a nice way of comforting the Reader out of the story.

This wonderful art is from @pinkpiggy93! 🩷

Most beloved quote:

"And i love you too, my dear," he said firmly. "You are so very easy to love."

And isnt this quite a sentence, we all need to hear?

So if you are into good omens, fairytales, long fanfics to really dive in to for several hundred pages, some surprises and of course a happy ending - this is quite the story for you.

🩷🤗

Reading is not a hobby, its an attitude.

[sgiandubh]

I’m reading the new Clanlands book. I was hoping it would be a fun read like the first one, no narrative. I’ve now read two different passages in the book where Sam talks about running into a woman he finds attractive whether it’s a hotel patron, hotel staff, or shop worker, including this passage about Valentines Day. He hoped to ask the woman making his smoothie on a date and instead ended up alone in his hotel room on Valentine’s Day dreaming about a romantic night in his hotel room with the fantasy date that never came to fruition.

I wish for once we shippers could get a win instead of taking one step forward and two steps back if you know what I mean. It’s hard to hold out hope of Sam and Cait ever coming out publicly when there’s interviews and books filled with the narrative.

Dear Valentine's Day Anon,

You start with a lie. You are not reading that book. You have read someone else's (dutiful Marple, as always, all hands on deck) choice of salacious/commercial/crappy sentimental passages of a 150 to 200 pages book chock-a-block full with other things. You, therefore, have an F- from me for laziness and naïveté. When you speak about a text, any text (and this, Anon, scarcely is literature), please be honest with yourself and wait until the end. The same way you should never judge a book by its cover, do not judge a book by some excerpts someone picked up in order to show you how desperate the author is to sell it.

Reading is a personal affair. Buy the book. Read it all. And then you'll be qualified to have a grounded opinion. I am not in a hurry to read it and I certainly had no hopes he would give us a single ounce of his reality or truth in a commercial companion to a TV show, as this book clearly is.

Then, there's also that: it is a ghostwritten book and not a very good one. Travel books are also always rife with false self-references and I hope, for one, you do not believe there is anything remotely objective in Marco Polo's Book of the Marvels of the World (some say he never got where he told all the Western World he did!). And if Marco Polo himself lied shamelessly, why wouldn't SRH do exactly the same, for the needs of a scantily cobbled show where he is playing the decoratively fit clown along his older, wiser, nerdy companion?

I was shown the reactions to those dutifully poisonous posts. A mob, cackling and the host gleefully throwing gasoline on that fire (but oh, no: she is not a hater - my foot she isn't). The only comment that truly broke my heart, Anon, is this one:

What a terrible person must the woman who wrote that be! What a horrible, empty life she must have! Please, for the name of everything holy, leave Chrissie Heughan out of your putrid pettiness! She raised her boys by herself and with very little. Whoever wrote this comment should really, really be ashamed of herself. She can even say whatever she wants about SRH, but she should leave his family out of her hatred. Not a single woman in that thread corrected or challenged her. Not. A. Single. One.

You also tell me you are tired with the tango. I also think no real shipper could fall, by now, for these tired tricks. And if you do believe the interviews and books more than they should be, you are the perfect fodder for those interviews and books that can and should be questioned, as anything else in this strange story is critically questioned every single day.

So you see, Anon, I will perhaps be interested in your grounded opinion the day you will come back after reading the whole book, not Marple's Reader Digest version. If anything, your uninformed, gluttonous curiosity backfired. Unless you came here to spread the holy shite on this doorknob, too. But that is your problem, Anon. Not mine.

[rapha-reads]

IWTV rewatch

Season 1 episode 7 [The Thing Lay Still] - part 3/3

- Okay, the triple confrontation Daniel/Louis, Daniel/Armand and Louis/Louis is long but there's so much to say, I have to quote it entirely:

[Daniel] "Well, isn't that neat and tidy?" - THANK YOU DANIEL, I know I can always count on you to point out the flaws and holes in the fabric of Louis' recollection.

[Louis] "'There was a ship. We did get on it.'

[Daniel] 'Yeah, I read that, the first 50 pages. Not exactly the, uh, adventure-of-our-lives feeling I'm feeling.'

[Louis] 'It was a traumatic escape.'

[Daniel] 'Yeah, but she didn't say that explicitly. […] But, um… there's a feeling that she hated your guts there for a while. Why is that?'"

Trust Daniel to always see the little thing that would be inconsequential to anyone else.

[Louis] "'I was haunted by my brother's death, by the abandonment of my sister, by the murder of Lestat, I…'

[Daniel] 'Murder? What murder? It was an act of mercy. You didn't kill Lestat. You spared him out of some fucked-up idea you had about love.'

[Louis] 'Love? I bled him like a pig and waited for the death rattle.'"

Oh, Louis. You are so good at lying to yourself. Good thing Daniel's too much of an excellent investigative reporter to let you fool him like you're fooling yourself. Notice how Louis looks as Daniel undoes all his lies and smoke mirrors? Like he's still trying to cling so hard to the story he's told himself for the past 80 years, like the lie is the only thing that keeps him upright, like if he admits the love, admits he wanted to save Lestat, that would completely undo him and there would be no going back?

[Daniel] "You were shot point-blank by an alderman. You were dropped a thousand feet and survived. You torched Antoinette just to make sure. Where does the trash go, Louis? You take the trash down to the street, some guys show up in a truck and they throw it in the back, and then, they drive it out to the middle of nowhere, right? No. They take the trash to the dump. And having lived two blocks away from the dump just outside of Fishkill, New York, with my first wife, I can state, with authority, what else you'll find there. Rats. Big fucking rats, the size of Kevin Durant's sneakers. Enough blood in them to bring back the dead. Especially one in a trunk with locks on the inside. You knew it, Louis. You had to. The biggest rat eater of them all."

Thank you for bringing back Moonlight Sonata! Haven't figured out yet if it's intra or extradiegetic tho. I love its presence in this episode. It's my favourite piece of classical music (I know, very original) and it's so gothic par excellence.

Mention of the first wife, Alice/Armand, no, I will not get down from this hill.

I love how Daniel's theory posit Louis as having done some planning for himself outside of Claudia's and even Lestat's, with the trunks locking on the inside and the rats needed to revive.

[Rashid/Armand] "'This session is over.'

[Daniel] 'How many days in the Islamic year? How many names are there for Allah?'

[Rashid/Armand] '355 and 99.'

[Daniel] 'Why does a 200-pound bouncer pass out after he sucks him off, and you, a wet T-shirt away from 130, doesn't even blink?'"

Ha, Daniel said 'okay who the eff are you and why am I smelling bullshit'. Meanwhile Armand said 'oh shit we're getting too close to dangerous waters and Louis is about to lose it, better reassert control'. But also, Muslim!Armand. Definitely. Not a throwaway line, not just pretence. Rolin Jones I'm counting on you to not fuck this up.

[Louis] "'I couldn't burn him.'

[Daniel] 'But Claudia could.'

[Louis] 'No', she couldn't.'

[Daniel] 'She stuck a pen in his neck. She recorded his last words in his own blood. The girl did not have a fuckin' problem tossing him on the grill, okay?'"

And Louis' wall of lies is breaking and shattering… And the pebbles of the zen garden, his other big trauma, don't help either…

[Daniel] "You cursed her into the darkness. You chose Lestat over her time and time again. You don't need a memoir, Louis. You need a hundred sessions of EMDR. You know the shit they put soldiers through when they see one of their platoon buddies get blown up in front of them?"

Say it, Daniel! These messy vamps need therapy.

Making jokes to avoid the sheer anguish in Louis' face, voice and body language, both in the 1940 flashback (the image of Louis holding Lestat's body and yelling is tattooed on my eyelids) and in 2022 (Louis sitting in his zen garden hugging and rocking himself, eyes screwed shut, trying to block Daniel and Armand's voices and the memories lives rent free in my mind).

[Daniel] "'144 years and you're still Louis the Pimp, paying a whore to sit in a room and talk with you. 'Cause why? You got some story you wanna tell the whole world about yourself?'

[Rashid/Armand] 'When you hear it you'll be ashamed, ashamed of what you say to him now!'"

Please don't hold back, Danny, do tell us what you think exactly. But hey, Louis needs to hear it.

The fuck are you talking about, Armand… Also notice how agitated he is? Feeling protective of Louis, or feeling like he's losing control of the interview, the interviewee and the interviewer all at once?

Love Armand taking off is gloves in the background. So subtle, so crucial. And then the lenses.

[Daniel] "'This is the same shit that happened in San Francisco.'

[Louis] 'Not exactly.'

[Daniel] 'How is it any different, Louis?'

[Armand] 'This time I won't save your life. Louis can sometimes act out. I protect him from himself, always have. Stopped him that night in San Francisco.'"

Oh, hello, Armand's decided to play Superman. Aaaaah, Armand's orange eyes, I love them!!!

Can we talk about Armand's infantilisation of Louis? "He acts out, I protect him from himself"… Like a child that can't regulate his feelings and needs to be put on time's out. The manipulation is deep and multi-layered, it's not just the memory alteration. Notice how Louis is pretty much dissociating, staring at the grey wall, face slowly becoming inexpressive and voice returning to flat and empty, from the moment Armand started telling off Daniel?

[Daniel] "'You were there.'

[Louis] 'You don't remember.'

[Daniel] 'No, I don't remember.'

[Louis] 'What was that you said about memory? 'A monster', was it?'

[Daniel] 'But I saw you standing in the sun.'

[Armand] 'As we age, the sun loses its power over us. What's a mediocre star to a 514-year-old vampire?'

[Louis] 'Daniel Molloy, I'd like you to meet the vampire Armand, the love of my life.'"

One, don't be too cocky, Louis, there's plenty you don't remember about that night too yourself.

Two, and we've come full circle again, the monster memory making itself fully known after lurking all season long.

Three, shut up Armand, the Sun is not a mediocre star, it's part of the entire reason there's life on this planet, show some respect. Sun deities are some of the most frequent deities around the globe. You need to come back down to earth.

Four, all the books being out of reach to Louis, another way Armand's exerting subtle control.

Five, "love of my life", BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAGA *deep breath* HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAA, that line kills me every time I hear time. Why you lying Louis, stop fucking lying all the time. Sorry, Armand.

Daniel seeing them side by side and hearing that stupid line after listening to Louis ramble and compose poetry on the spot about Lestat for the past week or so: "hm. I sense bullshit of the highest degree. Time to destroy that whole tower of lies one by one.".

Aaaaaaaaaah, that was such a rich and intense episode!!!! What a grandiose season 1 final!!! So many different elements that have got to be revisited by other perspectives to get the full painting. So many seeds planted for season 2 and even season 3!! The writing is flawless, the acting is exquisite, the music is gorgeous, the costume, set design and stage direction are masterful. I am in love with this show.

ep1 | ep2 | ep3 | ep4 | ep5 | ep6 | part 1 | part 2

[somanyratsinthewalls]

Burning Hearts Chapter 2

Pairing: Law x Straw Hat Zoan Type (named) FemOC 

Word Count: 2500

Summary: You were teleported across the globe in an instant, away from your crew. Your body was badly broken and beaten, thrust into the harsh landscape of a Northern island. You are discovered by the Heart Pirates and brought back to health. Startled upon waking up in a foreign place with an unfamiliar crew, you are shocked with the news that you’ll be spending two years there. Trafalgar Law, the captain of the Heart Pirates has made a promise to train you, but will it become something more than a mentor relationship?

Chapter 1 - Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6

Burning Hearts Chapter 2: The 2 Year Sentence

— — 

“So would you rather eat 200 spiders… or spend a week in Impel Down?” Shachi asks his cohort from a desk chair as he flips through a News Coo. 

“Spiders for sure. I’m not built for prison.” Penguin responds as he lazily tosses a tennis ball against the cold, steel walls of the surgical bay. 

It had been 4 days of keeping the new mysterious patient sedated while her body healed from its grievous injuries. Shachi and Penguin took shifts watching over her during the night and double teamed the job during the day, all while administering the necessary sedative drugs. The boys were the only two crew members occupying the safe house while the rest of the Heart Pirates accompanied their Captain to the crisis at Marine Ford. 

Shachi sips from a can of cola and flips the page. Several minutes of silence go by, the only sounds to be heard were the slow rhythmic beeping from the winged girl’s heart rate monitor and the sharp thumping of Penguin’s tennis ball against the wall. 

“Would you rather have crayons for teeth or live shrimp for nipples?” Shachi asks, desperate to fill the hours with some sort of entertainment. Penguin holds onto the tennis ball and thinks for a minute. 

“Could they be white crayons?” Penguin follows up. 

“Sure. But they’d still melt if you ate hot foods.” Shachi flips another page. 

“I’d still pick the crayons. I think you’d be able to see the shrimp through my jumpsuit…” Penguin looks down to his chest. “Ok my turn.” Penguin sits up straighter and turns towards Shachi. 

“Fuck, Marry, Kill… pancakes, waffles, French toast.”

Shachi looks up from his News Coo finally, his eyebrows knitted together. 

“Dude that doesn’t even make any sense, how am I supposed to-“ 

*BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP*

“Wait why is its heart rate increasing…?!” Penguin sits up on the heels of his hands and looks at the monitor. 

Shachi puts down the News Coo and rises from the chair. He approaches the monitor. “It shouldn’t be… we just injected her 30 minutes ago…” Shachi checks the IV line to make sure it was still clear and functional. It was. Shachi’s heart dropped into his stomach. The patient was waking up despite the heavy dose of sedatives. The patient who had broken a cabinet and two steel medical carts the last time she decided to-

*BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP*

“Oh shit oh fuck oh shit oh fuck-“ Penguin’s eyes widen as he panics, standing up. 

“Calm down.. Don’t freak… the Captain put her in sea prism shackles this time… she can’t break them…” Shachi tries to calm his crewmate. Penguin would have maybe believed him if he didn’t notice Shachi’s obvious shaking and heavy breathing. 

The woman’s eyes flutter open.

“Whhdsshhshhh hnnnn..?” Garbled nonsense slipped from the woman’s lips. Her eyes were fully open, but they struggled to find something to focus on. “Whrr mmeye? Why cnteye moovvvv?” The words come out in drunk, mushy syllables. 

The woman, Daisy, as the Captain had insisted they call her, was weakly pulling at her restraints but failing miserably. Unlike her impressive showing before, the sea prism stone had sapped all of her energy. Upon realizing they still had control of the situation, Penguin and Shachi move to flank the body on the operating table. They stare down at the woman’s wide, panicked eyes, unable to find a target to look at fully. One eye was brown and one was grey. The way the eyes frantically searched for something made them seem like two different people were occupying this body.

Shachi and Penguin looked back up at each other before looking down at the confused, bound woman. 

“Um. Hi. So, this is probably really weird for you but-“ Shachi nervously starts. 

“Nnrfffffhh? Lufffnnuyy? EWrhrrhrwrrss louuuffyy?” 

“I have no idea what you’re saying. The sea prism stone around your wrist is probably melting your brain right now. I’d love to take it off but you tried to kill us last time we did that, and the Captain has specific orders.” Shachi explains the situation to the disoriented patient. “And until he gets back we have to keep you out, little bat.” 

Shachi sidles over to the steel medical cart and retrieves one of the emergency sedative syringes. 

*BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP* 

“Mmmpph!! Nhhh!! Lsssttnn luffnnn!! Kzzrroo hrrrmppp!!” The girl huffs out as her head lolls to the side, body completely limp due to the sea prism. It was clear to both men that she was trying to resist. 

“Shach maybe we should hear her out.. I don’t know if we shoul-“ Penguin moves around to the other side of the operating table to stand beside Shachi. 

Shachi readies the emergency syringe. 

“Since when are you a vampire sympathizer? You were calling her an “it” five minutes ago, I don’t want to hear the savior act now.” 

Penguin sighs at Shachi’s response. He backs off. 

“NNPNNHH!! WATTPHHH!!” Daisy groans out as Shachi delivers over 100 cc’s of sedative right into the her exposed thigh. 

“Lufffy!! Hrrlllp...” The woman’s eyes roll back in her head and her body becomes limp against the operating table once again. 

— — — 

*We’re too weak! Run away!* 

“Shit…” 

You were awoken from your nightmare by a violent heaving in your throat. 

“Oof-“ 

You push yourself up as far as you can go before turning yourself to the side and letting go of the tension. Your stomach contents are heaved forward into the conveniently places trash receptacle on the side of the surgery table you were strapped to. Your body lurches against the restraints involuntarily. After a painful few moments of heaving, you feel the shackles on your arms and legs release.

You didn’t care how it happened, you were just happy that you could fully hold yourself over the trash can to vomit. 

After the wave of nausea passes, you slump down on the cold, metal floor and try to catch your breath. You allow your eyes to close as you relish in the feeling of being unrestrained. 

“Rito Daisy…” A deep, booming voice comes from the darkest corner of the now dimly lit operating room. 

Your eyes snap open. You wipe your mouth. Your head whips towards the sound. 

“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m-“ 

“That ‘Surgeon of Death’ guy. From that shit at the auction house. I know who you are.” You state in between labored breaths, finally regaining your mental clarity. You back yourself up against the wall of the surgical suite, putting the metal barf bucket in front of you. 

Law steps out of the shadow and stands before you. 

“Then you know I don’t take the news of an enemy showing up in my camp lightly.” Law sets his large sword down against the medical cabinet. You notice that someone has repaired it since you had destroyed it with your wings during your last attempt to break out.  

Your wings. 

You realized now you were in your full human form. What good could your wings do here? Always able to carry you away from any problem… but not now… you were trapped… again… 

“Miss Rito my name is Trafalgar Law and you crashed into our base camp several days ago. Your body was badly damaged. I sewed your…” Law swallows.  “…appendages… back together. Your bones have still not yet completely healed, which is why I’ve had you sedated.” Law explains methodically as he sits down in the desk chair. 

You couldn’t escape. This asshole was so confident in his ability to best you that he was lounging in his office chair while you were completely unrestrained. You weren’t an idiot, you knew that you were at the mercy of this strange man. You had no idea where your blades were anyway. Probably lost in that avalanche. Shit

“Where’s my Captain?” You asked blankly. 

There was a long pause. 

“He is alive.” Law eventually states. 

You stare at each other. 

After a few moments, Law pulls a News Coo from his jeans pocket and tosses across the floor of the surgical suite at you. 

You refuse to break eye contact with Law, still suspicious of his intention. You pick up the News Coo and open it in your lap. 

“I’m not going to hurt you, Rito Daisy.” Law cocks his head at you, prompting you to begin reading the article. 

You keep your gaze on on the ice grey eyes of Trafalgar Law. This tense stare lasted for a few moments before you decide you had no choice but to peruse the article. 

The air in the med bay became so thick you could eat it by the spoonful. 

“Ace is dead… Two years… Become stronger…” You sigh and gaze absently at the newspaper. “What the fuck am I supposed to do?” You close the newspaper and look up at your captor. 

“You’ll stay with me. I will train you.” Law meets your gaze. 

You furrow your brows. 

You burst out laughing. 

“HAH! Yeah I don’t think so.”  

“Your captain ordered that you stay here.” 

You were in shock. There was no way Luffy would ask you to spend any amount of time let alone 2 years with an enemy pirate captain. You must have heard him incorrectly. There must be some mistake. 

“… What?” You look up into Law’s frigid, grey eyes. 

“I saved your captain’s life after the battle at Marine Ford. Once he regained clarity, I told him my crew mates had found one of his. He made me promise to not allow you to try and find him or the rest of your crew. I promised him that I would train you and give you access to the strength that will prepare you for the New World.” Law explains. 

Your eyes widened further. 

“You can either stay to train,” Law reaches an arm towards you to help you off the ground. “Or you can go against your Captain’s orders.” Law raises an eyebrow. 

There was a long pause. If this was truly what Luffy wanted, you didn’t have much of a choice. Without breaking his gaze, you clasp your hand around Law’s elbow and allow him to pull you up. 

“We are not allies. We are not friends. I am here at the orders of my captain.” You state as you rise to your feet. 

“Understood, Miss Rito. It may help you to know that I'm not pleased with the situation either. I’ll show you to your room.” 

— — —

You walked through the unfriendly, unfamiliar metal halls of the Heart Pirate’s base with your new mentor leading you. After several minutes of silence, Law arrives at a steel door and opens it. Inside the room was a small closet, single bed, desk, and half bookshelf. There was a small window behind the bed. The bed had two white pillows and a grey quilt. Not only did this place feel like a prison, it really looked like one too. You grimaced as you looked over the sterile environment before noticing something laying on the bed. It was your bag and blades. 

“My stuff!” 

You pushed past Law who was still in the doorway, bumping him into the frame in the process. He straightened himself and watched you rip open your tattered, filthy backpack and empty it out onto the bed. You sift through the contents to make sure everything was still inside. 

You brush your hands over each item. Hope flutters in your heart at the sight of familiar things. Your sword sharpening stone, your botanists notebook and pens, a spare set of clothes, a pink hairbrush and hair elastics, and an empty glass container that had been previously been filled with banana pudding. Sanji always made sure to slip your favorite treat in your bag before leaving the ship for the day. You smiled remembering how lush it tasted, feeling glad that you had eaten it on Sabaody so it didn’t go to waste. 

You come across a crumpled paper. You flattened it out to reveal a photograph of You, Nami, Robin and Chopper. Nami was pinching Chopper’s fluffy little cheek, the blush evident on his face. You and Robin were arm in arm and laughing. A third hand was behind your head making little bunny ears. You all looked so happy. Your smile faded. Were they okay? And everyone else? There was no way of knowing… 

Tears started welling in your eyes so you put the photo down. 

“Wait where’s my-“ You realize that your personal bag of herbs was missing. 

“This?” 

You turn around to face Law. He was holding a small, red woolen satchel in his hand that you knew contained your stash along with some paper and a butane lighter. The drawstring bag dangled from his tattooed fist. 

E, A, T, H. 

“That belongs to me, give it back.” 

“I do not tolerate illegal drug use in my base. I’m disposing of it.” Law shoves the bag back into his jeans pocket. 

“I’ll smoke outside then, shit. Just hand it over. Also, illegal drug use? We’re pirates… isn’t everything we do technically illegal?” 

Law ignores you and turns to leave the room. You were irritated by his refusal to answer you and refusal to return your bag. You grab one of your twin blades that were resting against the bed frame. As you unsheathe the blade, a shooting unbearable pain throbs in your shoulder causing you to drop your weapon onto the floor, the metal hitting metal making a loud clatter. 

“Fuck!” You cry out and grab your arm, head beginning to spin from the pain. 

“Your body is still healing. You’re in no shape for a fight. Training begins when you’ve recovered.” Law heads out of your room without closing the door and is already halfway down the hall. “Bathroom is down the hall. Dinner’s at 7.” 

You hear his footsteps fade away as he disappears deeper into the base. You were alone. You look around the bare bedroom and reality sets in. You were going to have to be here for 2 years… 

You flop down face first onto the bed and begin to cry. 

xx

Authors note- thank you to anyone who is reading this self indulgent series. Sorry if it’s weird, gotta set up the story before we get to all the smoochin. Are you guys into this? It’s my first real series so I’d love feedback. Love y’all :)

[mean-scarlet-deceiver]

Wilbert's Worst

Right, so I really was open to having my mind changed on The Worst One but nobody’s argument has budged me.

I was going to write a complete, balanced essay on The Worst W. Awdry Book, but I’m a) mired in the research phase (hey if anyone knows someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of Tom and Jerry hit me up, for real) and b) right now I wanna talk about the characters and their Beloved Dynamics instead. 

So I'm just gonna get this out of the way so I can post the poll and move on to answering fun asks and watching Tom and Jerry in peace. Behold: a salty and unbalanced review.

Wilbert’s biggest failure of a children’s storybook? 

Henry the Green Engine 

Ohhh… because of the, uh, ra —?

Because of the racism, yes!

Oh. You do know that since 1972 they’ve republished it without the n-slur? 

Good for them. Two things: 

1. I know it used to be there, I’m never able to read it without knowing it was there in the first edition.

2. I consistently try, when ranking the books, to consider them in the context in which they came out. Because of this, I don’t like using “things that happened later” (like a new character never being properly used again or whatever) against the book. This helps me evaluate the author’s successes and failures against what they were trying to achieve when they wrote it vs what I would most want (blorbo content). It helps me not bring to bear the whole weight of fanon and fandom on a text that should be able to stand or fall on its own. Tl;dr I try to read the books like a guy who picked it up in 1951, or whatever. 

And yeah, if I’d bought this when it came out it would have had the slur. I’m going to judge it accordingly. 

Look, racism is bad, no argument, but does that mean the book as a whole must be condemned? 

Yeah, I think the slur and the “aaaand suddenly, blackface! heeheehee” bullshit fuck over the entire book, game over. Go directly to jail, do not collect $200. 

The Railway Series is not a work of high art or deep thorny complex literature. The books are meant for children — small children, at that. Children small enough to get bedtime stories read to them. The main goal of each book (especially this early on — you do have to manage secondary priorities like “pleasing the long-time fanbase” the longer you go, but right now we’re only 6 books into the series) is to create a happy imaginary world to enhance childhoods and family lives… to impart to other parents and kids a similar cosy happiness to that the author and his own kids enjoyed when he was workshopping/drafting the stories for them. When we say “children’s book” we really do mean little’uns — these average 1.25 full-color illustrations per page!

And these books sold in large numbers. This means it’s a certainty that somewhere in 1951 there was a Black family who owned the whole series, who went out to the shops, whose kid was like “ooh! Henry gets a book, neat…,” who like everyone else enjoyed the wild ride of Henry’s inspection and coal and wreck and rebuild… only to get verbally spat on one page from the end. 

Real mood-killer there. Epic fail, as the cool kids used to say in my youth. 

All right, fine, cool kids never said that. Anyway, statistically speaking there was certainly even more than one family that got that experience. Not to mention the non-Black families who even in 1951 were like “... wtf? i’d smack my kid if they ever said a word like that around me, geez. no.” Just a lot of people who had the light the book was kindling in them snuffed out all at once. 

You can actually be totally racist and your book not commit creative suicide on the penultimate page! Awdry flubbed his job of 'bestselling books-for-six-year-olds' here. Creative failure. Unforced error. Automatic zero. 

But times were different then, you have to consider it in the context of the time. 

1951 U.K. was not the nadir of multiracial equality or Black power, but jfc. I can assure you that over 99% of children’s books published that year in the Anglosphere managed to not use the n-slur. 

All right, all right. That was bad. But this feels off-topic. If you had never known about what used to be “Henry’s Sneeze,” would you still rank the entire book as dead last in the Wilbert Awdry corpus? 

Not dead last, but it is not a strong book. “Coal” and “The Flying Kipper” are super-interesting as material for Henry, but after that the book kind of falls off a cliff; the intrigue drops dramatically. The railway incidents chosen to make stories of are all solid choices, but it was not only “Sneeze” where Awdry’s handling of the material feels clumsy and weird. (And I’m not even talking here of the “heehee blackface — ain’t i a stinker?” gag in “Sneeze.”) 

But… “The Flying Kipper”? C’mon. It’s a superb story and no book that contains it can be the absolute worst in the series. 

“TFK” remains easily the best single TVS episode ever – but a lot of that is down to Britt and David’s artistry and judgment. 

Don’t get me wrong, a full-on railway wreck makes interesting material. But I don’t think the book does nearly as much with it as it could (and I’m trying sooooo hard here to forget about the amazing TVS adaptation, as I think it REALLY shows Awdry up. Even so, the storytelling here is surprisingly tepid and low-stakes). I get that Awdry probably wanted to lean into the comic angle and not make Henry’s condition afterwards seem too grave, in order to ensure the material wasn’t too dark for his young audience? (*mutters* again, a level of tender consideration for his readers’ youth that went right out the window when it came to small Black kids, evidently coz he couldn’t imagine that they read) Understandable, laudable — but if he outright refuses* to make the wreck too dramatic or scary then, well, then the wreck isn’t real scary or dramatic. And it can’t save the rest of the book from its flaws. 

*For all I know it could have been the publishers who insisted that the wreck be made preschooler-safe, that’s possible (although it’s also consistent with Awdry’s brand of humor and his overall low degree of emotionalism in his writing). Either way, though, the end result book is what it is and it will be judged accordingly. 

In addition to not being as exciting as many remember... @trainsupessandhuntresses asked me once if I thought some of Awdry's stories were "mean-spirited." I had to assent vigorously. And a surprisingly high proportion of those "mean" moments are in Henry the Green Engine? For some reason? It’s not just the racism. Awdry was not in the game to give Henry a deserved happy ending, he’d wanted to kill him off (the fuck?) and when his publishers prevented him (I don’t say this often, especially since I love how salty the Awdrys get about their publishers, but this in case good job, publishers!!) he wrote “TFK” with the primary motivation of giving Henry a new engine basis. Any soft or hearty emotions we get out of the deal are a side-effect — the only emotion that was fueling Awdry as he wrote this was spite, spite and a weird resentment towards his poor, long-suffering, invaluable illustrator. (I don’t blame Awdry for being frustrated that the engine illustrations were continually inaccurate or confusing, but I do think it’s weird to read all this great Henry material knowing that it was written with such poor grace.) 

So his ‘happy Henry’ stuff feels perfunctory; his Percy interlude is just brutal (why did you have to drag Percy into Henry’s book purely to give him a fuck-up, a scolding, and a messy dunce cap?); Gordon’s savaging of Henry for being too happy after recovering from a near-death experience is such an incredibly low point for Gordon that it’s hard for me to accept it as canon (there’s being proud, boastful, and self-absorbed, and then there’s being the straight-up raccoon dumpster fire Gordon is in that scene). Oh, and I think “call the police [local constabulary, doesn’t bear firearms]” woulda probably a less reckless way of dealing with the rock-throwing youths than the sneeze of hot locomotive ashes, which of course the Fat Controller doesn’t like, that shit coulda been real dangerous! Mind, there are small rays of kindness throughout that do get me (the interactions between Henry and his crew feeling to me the least perfunctory and most heartfelt), but this is overall such a mean-spirited book. God. It starts off with such a gentle story (almost a non-story, if you’re in it purely for the “railway incidents” game and not character drama), but in short order the vibes just sorta suck. At least in other RWS books, when the vibes are off, they’re usually off near the beginning and then improve by the end. This one gets worse as it goes on. Oof. Don’t like that. 

Also, the last page is sooooo lame. I suspect the publisher strong-armed Awdry into writing most of it so that at least the slur wasn’t on the last page of the book... and if Awdry had any idea of how much he’d just empowered Henry and all his fans in this book he shouldn’t have found it hard to find 50 extra words to sum things up. As it was, he’s just filling space and running out the clock, lol. Lame wrap-up. Boring. As usual when it comes to every little thing about this book, Britt and David closed this up better (mind, their closer – “He had taught Gordon and silly boys a lesson, with a whistle and a sneeze” – also sucked. But at least it was blessedly short.)

Didn’t you once list HtGE on a list of your favorite Wilbert Awdry books? 

I did list it as one of the books that “at one time or another” have been my favorite in the series. Unfortunately in the case of HtGE, that was back when I really couldn’t read a story that I knew from the TVS without mentally substituting the adaptation into my brain as I read… largely overriding the actual text. Plus, everything I knew from TVS as a kid kind of automatically got a halo effect. Plus, I was super into Henry’s arc. 

The first time I read HtGE after calming down and actually reading all the books as books... massive disappointment. There is such a gap there between what I'd thought the book said (all our incredible fanon work overanalyzing and headcanoning Henry and building this beautiful fantasy arc about disability!) vs. what it actually said (limp and careless writing, mean vibes, airbrushed n-slur, bad aftertaste). 

I do think there is some stuff about the development of Awdry’s storytelling technique here that is interesting (again, Tom and Jerry superfans reading this, please shoot me a message!) but it doesn’t counteract everything else. 

At least we’re over the racism stuff? 

Nah, I’m not over it, actually. 

[romanscoming]

Hi. Will u do evan peters x reader. Where Evan's friends are celebrating 🍾 his birthday at a strip club but he feels nervous since it's his first time being in a strip club since he's awkward and shy, but the reader works at a strip club gives him relief and makes him come out of his shell.

I was think about a face claim of the reader either to look like kali uchis or sza. But I chose sza bc she's wifey.

Love u girly pop.

“BEAUTY AND THE BEAR.”

JUST A LITTLE SAYING: I LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH, AND YOU CAN ALWAYS REQUEST ANYTHING EVEN IF ITS NOT A FANFIC, YOU AND ALWAYS MESSAGE ME IF YOU JUST WANT TO TALK TO LIKE HELP WITH STARTING YOUR OWN PAGE, BUT IM CRAZY ABOUT YOU GUYS AND HOW I HAD 200 FOLLOWERS LAST WEEK AND IM NOW WITH 315 TODAY, SOME MIGHT SAY THATS NOT A LOT BUT TO ME IT IS, I SO GRATEFUL AND IM READY TO FACE ANYTHING THAT IS COMING MY WAY,,THANK YOU 4 FOLLOWING ME.

SHY!EVAN PETERS x BLACK!FEM!SEXY!STRIPPER!READER (READER IS A MIXTURE OF SZA & KALI) SMUT - 18+

NEW TAGLIST | REQUEST | WATTPAD | visual porn link for this fic here!

REQUESTED OR ASKED;

- YES. (ABOVE)

3RD PERSON | EVAN PETERS POV :

WARNING !

p in v, oral (m&f receiving), soft sex, gentle sex, praise kink, celebrating sex, birthday sex, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap), stripper/strip club, hair pulling kink, body worship, size kink, belly bulge kink, Evan wanting it slow so it can last long, spit kink, cum control, cockwarming, biting, marking kink, inexperienced/kinda experience, goddess kink, pleasing kink, pussyeating, Evan/Reader in control for the most part, whiny/sensitive Evan and Reader, begging, pleasuring and pleading, making out, tit sucking, edging, grinding, dirty talk, tongue fucking, reader playing in Evan's hair, overstimulation, mention of public fucking and owning Evan.

EVAN WAS NEVER THE TYPE OF GUY WHO WOULD GO TO CLUBS.., maybe bars, and small little clubs but never a strip club.

That's what he thought until now, all of his friends wanted to celebrate his win of best act, and his bday; January 20th, at a strip club, but nobody told Evan they surprised him with it, and boy oh boy was he embarrass.. and so nervous when he seen the girls dancing, and the smirks on his friends faces.

"Why are we here..?" they just smirk at his question before pulling him into a boot which was quickly followed by a waiter asking them what would they like to drink, before Evan could answer with 'water' his friends shouted "About 10 shots of Whiskey, and 5 shots of Crown"

Evan was in shock still nervous as ever but only the drink arrive he was forced by his friends to take at least about 7 of them, back to back.

That's he'd realize it was a busy night at the club, they were about 5 girls on the stage but nun caught his eye,, not yet.

Just as you arrived on stage, with a silky see-though rope as you had gotten closer to the rope and let your hand slip off of your shoulders pushing the rope off your your body exposing your glamour body roped ties around your body, showing off always your curves, the thickness around your thighs as the lining of the tongs laid out, all of your body fat showing making him crave you.

Just as his eyes rises from your legs to your breast as the straps of the sequin tank top hugged against your big boobs causing them to spill out around any open area it can find,, eyes falling back onto your stomach as he watch the rhinestones coming from your belly button all the way between your boobs.

It was like he was in heaven he didn't know what to do or what to think and was all just you,, a goddess.

He could tell this wasn't your first time dancing, by the way your outfit stood out of the rest, your shiny, like a Emperor,, a Feminine empress, like gold.. like the stars on a starry night.

Just as you stopped your little warm up, they called out your starring name, "Lady 'Gorgeous-Gensis' and her last and special dance for the night!"

Your head raised at the state of your name, and your let out a cheeky smile before swaying your hips against the pole, your hands stroking it, sliding up and down as your eyes travel throughout the audience smirking at all of the men with their heart eyes staring back at your while throwing cash.

Do to being a starring stripper, you hardly had to do shit to get the men attention, it was just the need of revealing clothes which intended to always get the attention the more.

Double DD cups, and a slim waist and with big juicy ass, and you'd have everyone in the whole world attention, no eyes off of you.

But you think that was way your became a stripper?

You friend and you loved to dance as you grew up, elementary School dance team, middle school dance team, and aa track-star in high school and dance team again, you just loved to sway your hips around and dance around,

Whenever you were on the stage, next to the pole with the lights shining on you, it was as if nobody was there you were just dancing to be happy, to feel like how it was to be young dancing on tv or something,

All of the motion in you, just rolling on your body, sassing your hips, jiggling all of the shininess of your outfit around the whole room and your eyes fell onto Evans sparkled eyes as he wanted you out of all of the women in the room, he was watching you

Watching your every move, every step, every bounce, every shake, everything, and once your eyes locked in, and you smirk and blew him a kiss he was calling from heaven,

he could have died in your arms right then and there.

A loyalist man, who is just craving you attention, your body and wants to make you feel like .

Evan would make your pleasure his top priority, did do anything to have you moaning, crying and moaning his name in pleasure from what he was doing to you.

Locking in eyes with him was like a predator and a prey right in action.

You didn't think but was your swing on the pole legs half wide and your back arched as your head fell back looking into his eyes one again before standing up and bouncing on the floor in a slip,,

You wanted to get him in action, hard as a rock.. you just wanted him as much as he wanted you, but who was going to tease the other the most.

You stood up a little like a pornstar, as your felt back to your knee throwing your head back

Before telling your hands fall to the floor and hold on to it as your whipped your head back and front letting your energy max out as your started to crawl to the edge of the stage where Evan was standing before facing your back toward him and bouncing your ass up and down acting as if it was him.. you know his cock.

You hungry little slut, you take it anymore and you knew you were getting closer to the end of your dance before you walked back to the pole all sexy and sassy just as your stripped from up to down on that pole before posing with your body upside down.

Legs crossed holding you on the pole as your hands landed on the floor keeping your head from dropping dead on the floor, you wink as the eyes on you screamed and cheered as the room went all dark, and you were off the stage and into the back dressing rooms.

You were fixing your hair, makeup and wiping all of the sweat from your body off as your sprayed your perfume and felt all pretty and beautiful again, like a beauty model.

Just as your disappeared in the darkness Evan frowned.. he wanted to see more of you, he'd stood up from his stop and sat at the bar dressing the alcohol he was given, "Your eyes were on Y/N huh boy?"

"that's her name?" Evan grin to himself before looking from his drink, hands and then finally at the man,

All he could think of is your pretty, full of beauty skin, and a gorgeous name for your gorgeous-self,, so beautiful.

"She's not quite new maybe joined in about a couple of days ago or a week, but her moves are always something new, yk."

Evan just smiled at the man before smirking as he started to move away, noticing you in a rope walking around towards a closet.

"Hi..uh-Hey Y/N,, I can-" Evan had tired to say before you continued to walk farther away from him.

He frowned to himself but it was turned upside down when he heard your soft voice..

"Hold on,, just a second baby." He had heard you say,, it was like you were sent from heaven for him, you have him floating following you like one of the cartoon characters madly inlove.

Evan let out a small whimper, "uh.. Okay!"

You walked back out with shoes and your heels in your hand as you backpack was on your back hair clipped up, but in a pretty way to make Evan fall for her more.

He watched as you got closer to him letting out a small chuckle, "What is it honey?"

She started to walk off, waving at others stripper and the bartenders and other worked before walking out the door.

Evan was following her close behind, forgetting about his birthday and about what he friends sent him here to do, to celebrate right?

He followed behind you ramble as he stayed behind you all the way to your car, just are you let out a hum and grabbed a hold of the door handle of the car.

You body turned very fast and you locked eyes with the taller men, as you heart skipped a beat, and word were caught in his throat.

You smiled and grab ahold of his hand before kissing it, "The infamous Evan Peters caught a eye fa' me?"

You could see the redness of his cheeks as he was flushed with blush across his face.

You smile before kissing his hand and up his arms before licking his name, looking at him while doing it before his grip on your hand had gotten tighter.

Just as you were getting on your tippy-toes to kiss him, as your breath was on his bottom lip..

His body shocked, which making you press your forehead against his, before..

Whispering in his ear, "Relax birthday-boy.., Would you a present from me?" Just as you kissed him before he could even answer your question.

That's how it leaded to the position you were in now, you were in the back seat of your car just as your legs were spread wide open.

You had teased him enough he shoved you in the back seat and ripped off the rope you had on before and the lingerie your had one before fingering you for a while.

But now it was something different,

Evan hands with a mad grip on your thighs as his head was buried in between your thighs deep inside of them, he'd made you cum at least twice already,

You were just begging him to let you please him; whining moaning, whimpering and crying balling in tears.

"Baby-Baby, Bb~AagHh~Evannn!"

Moans leaving out your mouth left and right and his tongue worked hard on your clit like he had double the speed and double the tongue going rapidly between your pussy lips.

over and over and over, you were happy but sad, it was his birthday and he was suppose to be getting the pleasure, just as you felt about orgasm coming up your looked in his eyes just as he thrusted his tongue into your cunts hole, again and again and again.

He hummed against your pussy, "Cum all over my face cmon, precious." he said as he bit on your pussy making you let out a loud cry.

Just as your body started to shake at your approaching pit in your stomach, Evan hands fell on your body, the feel of your curves against him was like heaven

He would be lying to you if he'd say no he wasn't palming himself thought his pants, he'd been at it sense the second time you came,

The way he was licking you like he was a man who hadn't even in seconds, days, weeks, months, years..

So ferocious..

Savage,..

And VICIOUS

You were loving it just as much as you were losing it, your hand quickly fell to his hair as you pushed him closer inside of you pussy before thrusting your hips upwards letting his nose slip up and down your slit over and over..

You let out a loud ass moan, "Please!!, Evan-Babyyyy-ahhh~ nngh-pleas'Honeyy!" you whined as your eyes fell into his eye just as his watch you twitch on his tongue and seen how your eyes were trying to focus on him, you needed to be praised.

"Y/N, you doing so good baby, just cum on vanny's tongue, cum all over his face for him okay, just keep your eyes on me when you have your orgasm?"

You nodded quickly as he mumbled a small, "good baby girl" in your pussy before licking it up better then he was doing before.

His finger shoved into your hole, thrusting them back and forwards,, and starting to curl them up inside of you as your eyes were on him and as they rolled back for a bit.

"Cumming!!.. Im cumming evvy!! Aaaah~ I can't hold it its so strong aagh~ pleaseeee.. nngh! You whimpered just as your body shaken bad, all of your body moving as your pussy squirted all over Evans face just as his fingers in your cunt were covered in thick white substances..

Pussy fully juiced as most of it was still coming out falling into Evans mouth as his opened it whine wanting more, you moaned at the sight before, his fingers circled your clit just as you came once again, as the liquid spilled out of your hole.

His pants were off now, boxed still of as he sticked his hand out and palmed himself as you watched whining wanting to touch him as you reach for him but he didn't save you.

Evan kissed your stomach up to your neck, peppermint kissing your face cooling you down as he kissed your lips..

"I was supposed you please you vanny-bear!"

He shushed you just as you got settled on his lap, just as he exposed he coded cock with his pre-cum mixture of gulps of his white thicken cum.

Finally as you were pushed down on his cock, you started ridding him, as his sucked on your neck, letting marks all around.

Slowly, bucking your hips back and forth as his cock filled you up.

His hands quickly gripped on your waist squeezing roughly as he became all nervous and clingy to you, wanting you to be closer.

You whimpered as his nails were starting to go into your stink, just as another loud whimper fell out of your mouth.

Evan hand darted up to over your mouth shushing you a little.

"Shh, doll, you can't be too loud." He spoke softly to you,

You nodded quickly looking deeply into his eyes as you started to ride faster.

Evan didn't wanna to rick him wanting to hear you so he didn't hand from your mouth, instead he stuff two fingers; middle and index into your mouth chargering you to suck them.

Evan had never been ridden like this, it was like a dream, he was still a little clingy but wanted to control himself because he was scared he was going to lose it and was going to bone you into the seats on the car,,

But it seem like he was going that anyways like his hands were rolling around you body all over as he started to play with your tits for a while as he squeezed them and pinch the nipples making you whine again..

"Holy fuckkk-you're riding me sooo'g good babyyy doll." He groaned under you as your head fell in his neck as you started to bounce more, but slowly gave out.

Evan began lifting your hips, meeting you half way, but in the same pace, just thrusting much faster then you.

Your moans were going to be the death of him as they became louder even though they were muffled.

He knew for a fact you hadn't been touch like how he's been touching you know.

"Please.. Bear.. I don't think I can't last any longer.."

Just as you choked on his fingers he flipped you guys over just as the white liquid circle was reveal around his cock as he thrusted in and out.

Your hands grabbed his shoulders and the right hand fell to his back as you whined loud and moan, as you breathe was caught up as you felt him slipping in you as you had a dent in your stomach.. which was his fat mushroom tip and thick member.

You whimper and all, as you nails duged into Evans skins as his head fell back as he groaned for the pain and started to ram into your cunt.

Fast and faster by the second your eyes were rolling back just as he was watching you slowly kissing your forehead and rubbing his thumb around your lips as he pushed it into your mouth making you suck on it, as you were full on babbling while sucking.

"Such a pretty cockdrunk dollface."

He kissed your lips deeply, both of you huffing mouths together,

as the kiss was very angrily or passionately which to choose, pulling on the bikini top, which were now not even covering your breast, they were exposed to the fresh lustful air.

You were pulling Evan closer to you just as you were humping upwards while his dick was hitting your celivix over and over

You eyes rolled back, just as your head fell back and you kissed your teeth as you held Evan more closer wanting more just as you guys both started to thrust against each other..

"Evannnn! bear,, vanny.. mm.. ah! please god.. Soooo good s'good!" You cried and babbled just as you guys locked eyes again as you clench to him once you started to cream his cock, full of your juices and wetness.

You kissed Evan heatedly as he started to ram into you over and over, quickly as his dick twitched in your warm thigh cunt..

"Y/NNNN!" He groaned as he felt you tighten around him, "I don't think I can pull out.. you sucking me in Y/N.. fffff'fuck!"

Just then and now, you were nodding at him as you cupped his cheek wanting him to stay focused on you, a sex kiss, wet and sloppy as you guys tongues slapped and played against each other just as you clench around him more.

Wrapping your legs around his hip pushing him deep was you sensitive pussy was feeding him in more and more, you cried as you felt him rack into your womb, you nodded your head more

His cock twitches even more finally as his cupped face in your hand focused on you and your tight cunt just as his thrusts were getting sloppier and quicken slowly,

He moaned and groaned as you clenched on him more wanting him to stay and not more, before you knew it the wall of your cunt were painted white, you smiled at him giving him a lazy kiss as you let him ride out his orgasm and kissed you deeply but breathlessly feeling him still in your stomach

SORRY IF ITS SHORT, IF WANT MORE VISUAL P LINK I CAN DO IT JUST COMMENT AND LET ME KNOW ILL DO IT FOR ALL STORIES NOW.

ANY MISTAKES/MISSPELLS TELL ME.

[koiyan-hades-kid-with-a-system]

Camp/Underworld Quotes #6

Koiyan, making exotic wines and meads: Be the wine experimenter they said. It'll be fun they said.

Cory, helping them bottle the wines: Wtf is a star fruit?

Koiyan, done with their pale white ass not knowing 90% of the exotic fruits they know: Questions later, bottling now.

-

Dionysus, seeing Koiyan make wines with ease: ...Are you sure you're not my child?

Koiyan, making rice wine on the roof: It's just the Vietnamese in me.

-

Other kids, getting wasted easily, looking at Koiyan: How come you're not a Dionysus kid and not drunk at this point?

Koiyan, been drinking since she was 2 years old: Experience

Other kids: How?

Koiyan: Vietnam has no legal drinking age. Kids start drinking usually at 10-12 there. My mortal step-father did.

-

Cory: Why rice wine?

Koiyan, taste testing the rice wine: It's what my area of Vietnam is known for.

-

Koiyan: When I die I want Cory to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.

-

Zagreus: I'm gonna get my pilot's license. I've already got a driver's license and a cosmetology license, that's two of the big five licenses.

Koiyan: The big five licenses?

Zagreus: Driver's license, cosmetology license, pilot's license, fishing license, and… license to kill! I can't wait to get that one.

-

Zagreus, helping Thanatos dispose the bodies Koiyan made: You stole my Adamant Rail for this.

Koiyan: The alters wanted violence and Ares told us to help with the war.

-

Zagreus: What state do you live in?

Thanatos: Constant anxiety.

Cory: Denial.

Koiyan: Perfection.

Cyrilla, pointing to all of the camp: NEW YORK! WE'RE ALL IN NEW YORK LONG ISLAND.

-

Koiyan: I’ve become a bread crumb dealer to four crows at the lake. They pay me with a bit of everything. Like shiny things, fabric, or pens. But recently they paid me with a 20 dollar bill they found somewhere. So I decided to buy them some more expensive bread. They loved it. So they understand what to do. Give me money. I’ve probably racked up about 200 dollars at this point. Is it morally wrong though, I mean. They’re the ones who steal the money from others. Or perhaps they just have a big pile laying somewhere. Should I keep on doing this?

Cory: You sound like the start of a Batman villain.

Koiyan, now being flocked by crows: More like the crazy bird lady from Home Alone 2

-

Koiyan: I think you're still suffering the effects of your party last night.

Nico: All I drank was Redbull!

Koiyan: How many?

Nico: Eighteen.

Koiyan: I'm getting Will-

-

Cyrilla: Whose turn is it to give the pep-talk before capture the flag?

Koiyan: *sighing* Zagreus.

Zagreus, now hanging around camp and is now a camp counselor: Fuck shit up out there, but don’t die.

Cory: *wiping away a tear* So inspirational.

-

Cyrilla: *is hugging Koiyan*

Thanatos: Hey! It's my turn to hug Koiyan!

Thanatos: *grabs Koiyan*

Zagreus: *kicking down the door* What do you mean, "yOuR tUrN"? We agreed now is my time slot!

Cyrilla: No, It's still my turn!

Koiyan: *suffocating* Guys, I love you, but just because I'm the smallest doesn't mean you can be hugging me constantly!

Thanatos: But we need the moral support!

Cyrilla: And you're small! Which is cute!

Zagreus: If I don't hug you right now I think the depression will kick in and my body will stop functioning.

Koiyan: *close to tears* Well- I, I guess.

-

Koiyan, at the slightest provocation: I came into this earth screaming and covered in someone else's blood and and I'm not afraid to leave the same way.

Zagreus, knowing its her cycle: Want chocolate?

Koiyan, about to cry: Yes please.

-

Koiyan: *Plays Slender: The Eight Pages*

*Jumpscare*

Koiyan, the only Asian in the group: *Jumps back* OH SHIT, IT'S A WHITE GUY!!!

Cyrilla: Do you mean me?

Koiyan: Not this time

-

Koiyan, to Cory: You're starting to forget your Spanish. You don't practice.

Cory: Lo siento. Estoy embarazada.

Koiyan: You just told me you're pregnant.

Thanatos: Congratulations Cory, you're glowing!

Cyrilla: Who's the unlucky guy?

Koiyan: Estoy rodeado de idiotas (I am surrounded by idiots)

-

Cory: Where's Zagreus?

Koiyan: Don't worry, I'll find them.

Koiyan, shouting: Thanatos sucks!

Zagreus, distantly: Thanatos is the best person ever! Fuck you!

Koiyan: Found them.

Thanatos, tearing up: Babe...

[communistkenobi]

Hiiiiiiii Nick, so sorry if you've already answered this somewhere, but I couldn't find it. I was wondering if you have any recs for leftist literature that's somewhat digestible for people who don't usually read a lot of academic papers/journals and the like? Basically, theory for beginners, I guess. I've been wanting to start reading more theory and while everything you posted about The Authoritarian Personality was super interesting, I think that trying to read a 1000 page book right now would kill me 💀

(also definitely don't feel the need to answer, I just thought you might appreciate getting an ask that's not star wars related asjdjdjshdjdhsjdjfj)

oh god yeah do not start with authoritarian personality that thing is insane

There is a Marxism archive that has a page for beginners here (ignore the advice to read Capital. Like try if you want to but it’s not accessible at all in my experience lol, so I would not start there). That website gives you free access to a lot of theory, you can poke around there and see what you might want to read (if you scroll to the bottom of the page I linked it has a link where you can search by subject - so if you want to learn more about leftist feminism, or colonialism, or etc, you can do so). I’m not the most well read marxist unfortunately so I can’t give you detailed recommendations from the lists they give. I have read a bit of Lenin and found him to be quite funny. Also sorry this is skewing communist, I have only read a few bits of anarchist literature and wasn’t impressed with it (not a dig at anarchism in general, I just did not have a good introduction to it and because of my schooling I tend to spend most of my time with more critical/marxist lit). So don’t let that sway you, this is just my own bias and theoretical instincts.

Why Marx Was Right by Terry Eagleton (this is a book, sorry I don’t have a link) is fairly accessible, as is Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher (this is very short, like under a hundred pages).

Also I KNOW I keep bringing this up but Discourse on Colonialism is such a fantastic essay (you can skip past the introduction in this pdf if you like and go straight to the essay). You don’t need to know all the theorists Cesaire is talking about or get all of his references. I think this is a very good introduction to colonialism as a force in the world. Cesaire is a fantastic writer, extremely witty and scathing while being incredibly insightful, truly a level of hater we should all aspire to become

There’s also the communist manifesto, which is very short and easy to read. You don’t have to pay too much attention to the historical stuff they bring up imo. This just answers the basic question of like “so what do communists believe exactly?” Even if you’re not a communist I think it’s useful to see these beliefs articulated in plain language.

If you want a book to read, there is Black Jacobins by CLR James about the Haitian Revolution (~200 pages). This is a history book written from a leftist perspective. I find reading about history very instructive because it alerts you to a lot of the problems with mass organising, all the sticky ways that class conflict manifests at all levels of society, and gives you context to a lot of leftist thought that, when detached from its historical circumstances, may seem weird or abstract.

I hope this helps!

[pinchofhoney]

Hiiiii can y do a story with prompt 1 on the fluff factor . I’d love it where The reader is spotted on the shadow and set and every is curious as to who they are until Ben finally introduces them

thank youuuuu

lights, camera, a(ffe)ction # 200 follower special event

» prompt event » special events masterlist

fluff prompt one: “do you know how glad i am to have met you?”

photo is not mine, credit to the owner

i combined this request with another one, because they are practically the same: can u do one where the reader is spotted wandering around the shadow and bone set and all the cast members wonder who she is until they find her and ben together

ben barnes x fem!reader

word count: 1.6k

warning: none, it's pure fluff with singing in the trailer and meeting people important to ben

summary: Is it a coincidence that both home and love have the same number of letters? Maybe home is not just the four walls of your apartment.

a/n: i hope the title i came up with makes sense, because it popped into my head at the last minute,, hi!!<33 thank you for joining the event, i hope you enjoy this short piece of writing! let me know<3

pages that may interest you: masterlist ♡ taglist ♡ who i write for

taglist: @wolfmoonmusic @myladydarkling @alexxavicry

Oh, don’t you dare look back.

Just keep your eyes on me.

I said you’re holding back…

Movie sets were known for their bustling energy and frenetic pace, with hundreds of people scurrying to and fro to ensure everything was running smoothly. The air was often alive with a palpable sense of excitement, as everyone strived to bring their best themselves possible on the set.

But on this particular day, there was one trailer that stood out from the rest. From its closed door came the unmistakable sounds of radio music, its catchy tunes carrying on the breeze like a siren's song. But it wasn't just the music that was drawing people's attention. Mixed in with the melody were the strains of joyous laughter and loud singing, the kind that only came from someone who was truly enjoying themselves.

“She said shut up, and dance with me!” Ben sang, his eyes alight with amusement as he watched your smile widen and the sparklers in your eyes dance with laughter.

Together, you stood in the middle of the cozy trailer, relishing the moments of rest between his takes. The music from the small radio was infectious, and soon you both found yourselves dancing clumsily to the beat, lost in the sheer pleasure of the moment.

As you twirled and spun, your cheeks ached from the laughter bubbling up inside you. You couldn't help but giggle at the sight of Ben, decked out in a black-and-gold costume with carefully coiffed hair. He looked every inch the villain he was playing on screen, but in this moment, he was carefree and alive with joy, his voice ringing out in exuberant song.

“This woman is my destiny,” he said with a playful grin, his hand gentle as he took yours and pulled you closer, his arm wrapping around your waist.

“She said ohohohhh!” you chimed in, howling like a wolf rather than hitting the notes of the song. But it didn't matter. In this moment, nothing did. You both laughed until tears gathered in your eyes, your hearts overflowing with the pure delight of being able to be in this moment.

As the music continued to fill the small trailer, you found yourself leaned into Ben's embrace. The bustling film set outside seemed to fade away as you rested your head on his shoulder, feeling his arms wrap around your waist. You couldn't help but smile as you noticed the intricate details of his coat – the stitching, the buttons, the way it hugged his shoulders. It was clear that it was a high-end piece of clothing, and you couldn't help but feel a little intimidated by it. It probably cost more than your six months' rent for your rented apartment and you would sink to the ground if you accidentally destroyed something.

But Ben didn't seem to care about the coat, or anything else for that matter, except for the two of you in that moment. His warmth and strong embrace made you feel safe and cherished, like at home, even though this place was far away from him. Not only because you were in a trailer on a film set, but also literally far away – you were in Hungary, in Budapest. You could hear the beat of his heart as he held you close, and it only made your own heart beat faster.

You looked up at him, meeting his gaze and feeling a rush of affection wash over you. Ben leaned down and placed a soft kiss on the top of your head before resting his chin there, and you felt your heart swell with love. The music had slowed down now, and you felt Ben swaying with you in a gentle rhythm that only he seemed to know. “Do you know how glad I am to have met you?” he whispered, his voice soft and filled with emotion.

His words brought a smile to your face. “I'm so glad to have met you too,” you whispered back, your voice barely audible above the music. “You make everything feel like home.”

You heard a deep sigh from Ben, and his arms slowly loosened their grip around your waist. He muttered about having to go back to the set, sounding downcast at the thought of leaving your embrace. As much as you wanted him to stay, you knew that his work was important and that he had to go.

You leaned back slightly, looking up at his face. His lips were pursed into a pout, and his brows were furrowed in disappointment. You couldn't help but smile at his cute expression, feeling a sense of warmth in your chest.

“Can I come with you?” you asked, not wanting to leave his side just yet.

Ben's face brightened up at your suggestion. “Yeah, of course you can,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “You can see what goes on behind the scenes, and meet some of the other actors.”

You felt a flutter in your stomach at the thought of meeting Ben's co-stars. You had always been a fan of his work, and the idea of getting a glimpse into the movie-making process was thrilling.

It was your first time on a film set and to say you were stressed was like saying nothing. You clung to Ben's arm tightly as he led you towards the set. The butterflies in your stomach had turned into a full-blown storm, making it hard to catch your breath. The hustle and bustle of the film set were overwhelming - people rushed past you, carrying equipment and props, while others huddled around monitors, intently watching the scenes being filmed.

You were excited to finally see the behind-the-scenes action of the movie industry, but at the same time, you felt like you didn't belong there. Watching big productions on a TV screen was one thing, but witnessing how they are made was something completely different. The thought of intruding on Ben's professional life made you feel like you were crossing a boundary.

As you walked past the crew, you noticed some of them staring at you. You couldn't tell if it was because they recognized you as Ben's girlfriend or if they were just wondering who you were. Their curious gazes made you self-conscious, and you felt like you were under a microscope.

You kept your head down, trying to avoid eye contact with anyone, and focused on the ground beneath your feet. You felt like a stranger in a foreign land, unsure of what to expect or how to behave. The adrenaline pumping through your veins made you feel alive, but it also made you feel vulnerable and exposed.

As you walked further into the hall, the actors slowly turned back to their work, but some of them still threw you curious glances. You recognized them all from the show, from the fierce Jessie Mei Li to the charming Kit Young. You couldn't believe you were actually on the same set as them. You had heard a lot about them, you knew they were amazing people and they all treated each other like family, but you had never had the chance to meet them in person before. Just as you were starting to feel overwhelmed again, you quickly felt Ben squeeze your hand to give you encouragement.

You looked up at him and saw the familiar glint of mischief in his eyes. He leaned down and whispered in your ear, “Don't worry, they won't bite. Well, maybe Kit will, but he's harmless.”

You couldn't help but giggle at his joke, feeling a warmth spreading in your chest. It was amazing what kind of character Ben played in Shadow and Bone series, because in reality he was the sweetest person you had ever met. When he playfully winked at you, you felt all the tension slowly leave your body. It was a small gesture, but it conveyed so much.

As Ben led you towards the group of actors, your heart pounded in your chest. You couldn't believe you were actually meeting the people who brought your favorite characters to life. You felt Ben's hand on the small of your back, and his touch filled you with a sense of comfort and safety.

The actors turned to face you, and you felt a wave of nervousness wash over you. But as Ben introduced you to each of them, you could see the warmth in their eyes and the smiles on their faces.

“Y/N, it's so nice to finally meet you!” said Danielle, as she enveloped you in a warm embrace.

“You must be the lucky girl who stole Ben's heart,” said Kit, with a mischievous grin. You laughed, feeling grateful for the playful banter that seemed to break the ice.

“He talks about you all the time. He's been practically glowing since he met you,” Amita added with a lovely smile.

For a moment you felt like crying, feeling a sense of acceptance and belonging that you had never experienced before. The other actors came forward, greeting you with smiles and hugs.

“Welcome to the family,” said Freddy with a grin. “Now I'm going to be a little jealous,” he joked, to which Ben rolled his eyes with amusement.

As the actors welcomed you with open arms, you felt like you were part of their family. You laughed at their jokes, listened to their stories, and shared in their excitement for the show's success. It was as if you had known them for years, and you couldn't help but feel a sense of belonging.

Looking up at Ben, you saw the pride and happiness in his eyes. You knew that he was happy to share this special moment with you, and that he was grateful for the love and acceptance that his co-stars had shown you.

[writing-whump]

forgive my 200 ask at the minute, but my brain is on fire. I just love your babies, so much. Alright, so would u ever be up for writing a moment where Isaiah actually has to use his shadow on another wolf, where all his soft skills in the world fail him (the other pack/wolf won't hear him) and he's forced to let the Executioner out in front of Matt and Sel?

And not even in a bad lighting (ofc Sel will be spooked regardless), but really just a small reminder this man IS super capable and badass, even if his shadow is lowkey falling apart.

asking for a friend ���🙈🙈

I need you too much

Seline always felt like she had to beat the world back with a stick sometimes, to conserve her energy levels.

Everything tried to syphon her. Every class, every homework, every person, everything needed for work. And that was fine, that's why she made sure to enjoy all those things as much as she could. Careful selection.

But she still needed those precious days where she could just stay in her room and do nothing. Just her thoughts, her books, some writing done, music and daydreams. No obligations, no socialising or putting herself together.

She needed to just be with herself to recharge her batteries.

And she was careful about that time even with Isaiah and Matt. While she made an effort to be present with them, whole-heartedly and completely, to make traditions, to spend time together, there were moments that were untouchable and only hers.

But now the most terrible feeling came upon her.

She wanted to spend the entire weekend with Isaiah.

She couldn't sleep that night, thinking of how much she didn't want to go back to the house or to her room or to her books, if she could just be with him. One more day. An extra day of the week.

It wasn't a thing she felt like she could say out loud without sounding insane. Every girl in her shoes would logically want to spend all her time with her boyfriend.

But Isaiah wasn't just in the category "interesting" or "not exhausting". He was category "share every thought with", "read him the best passage on the page" and "childish kind of delight" at just seeing his face.

This was terrible. Out of control terrible, horrible.

So instead of enjoying the evening and hurrying home from class, she sat down at the park next to uni and watched the trams. Sun came and went, twilight came and went and she couldn't make herself move. Afraid to go home; afraid to completely lose herself in that irresistible desire to see that man.

Oh, this was so so bad.

Seline refused to give someone that much power over her. To hurt her, to control her. She wasn't going to depend on anyone and even less on a guy. Her thoughts were supposed to be enough to make her happy - she was enough to make herself happy.

The streets were clearing out. Vienna wasn't particularly calm at night, but the vicinity of the main university building sure missed its students in these hours.

Seline almost didn't notice, except the trams weren't coming that often and the wind was starting to howl emptily.

She should go home. This wasn't particularly secure anymore. Not that she needed anyone to feel secure. No way.

"Ah, look at that. Isn't that Seline?"

Seline blinked, getting herself back in the present.

The girl had long violet hair, a coat with spiraly patterns and long fale earrings shimmering in the steetlamp light. The other one she held around the waist had long brown curly hair and dark eyes and was considerably smaller in size.

"Hi, Violet," Seline muttered. "Bye, Violet."

Violet gave her a sly smile. "Oh you are not getting rid of me that easily. You know Seline, Cami? That's the witch that used to be in our coven."

Seline sighed, leaning back on the bench. Just the kind of theatrics she needed.

"You know why she got kicked out?"

"I left," Seline corrected, trying to not to let herself get baited into this. Violet was not worth the time to argue with.

"She believes," Violet continued, voice rising, "into the human system of work. Wants to waste her valuable magic and time for salary and live under explotative capitalist conditions. Some serious brainwashing, isn't it?"

Seline rolled her eyes. "It's called having interests outside of magic. And wanting to contribute something to the society."

"We are contributing. Our magic. A proper witch should get the freedom to develop her talents and arts."

"No, you just want somebody to take care of you just because you were born," Seline said, voice acidic. "If you can't find a wolf who would do so just cause you look pretty, then the state should do it for you. Cause food and electricity simply fall out of the sky and witches are too cool to work like normal mortals."

Violet frowned. "You just aren't skilled with magic so you look for something pathetic to fill the void."

"Yes, indeed, lot of pathetic people work at the university."

"I am at the university too."

"That's it, Violet. You are, you don't work. You just put stickers with communist ideas onto bathrooms and tables and feel important. Giving speeches about how everything should belong to everybody, because you shouldn't have to create anything of value, since you have a talent for magic."

"That's-"

"Magic," Seline interrupted, "that doesn't work on humans or for humans. It comes from wolf shadows and works only on them. Tell me Violet, what exactly is your problem? Can't find a job to your liking? Or can't be bothered to put in any effort or thought into one?"

"You should learn how to shut up," Violet was downright hissing. "So it doesn't cost you that precious job of yours."

"Are you pulling the strings now, Vi? If you at least read the crap you put on those stickers or actually went 50 kilometers to the east to see what your ideas looked like in practice in the Sowjet Union-"

"That you came from to steal our jobs and places at universities," Cami said, looking terribly proud of herself for pitching in. "Little Slavic refugee and a thief."

This is the EU, you idiot. I have every right to he here. Seline stood up, making a mocking motion as if she was tipping her head to the two witches, heart racing. "Your intelligence knows no bounds. Have a good evening, bitches."

She made to move behind the bench and to the other side of the park, when a tall figure suddenly appeared out of the shadow, blocking her way.

"If only you stayed a little bit longer, Sel," Violet said in the sweetest fake voice she could manage. "You might have had found a wolf to protect you."

...

"Isaiah, you are overreacting."

Isaiah didn't slow down at Matthew's protests as he hurried down the street, into the direction of Seline's last class.

"She should have been home hours ago."

"Yeah, maybe she found a bookshop on the way and forgot about time again."

"She is not answering me."

"Do I have to remind you of the speech she gave us both about being constantly available? She knows how to turn it off and all that crap." Despite his reassurances, Matthew jogged behind Isaiah at the same pace.

The streets were basically empty at 11 on Monday. Isaiah let his shadow up to have more senses to search with. His shadow eagerly consumed the darkness and the streets around, melting into it.

It sensed another intense eagerness just ahead of them.

Isaiah sped up into an outright run, Matthew close on his heels.

He didn't catch Seline's scent until he was almost there. They stood upwind with buildings all around, it was hard to track.

But it was Seline alright. Circled by a bunch of wolves who were throwing her around like a volleyball. Frozen solid in their grip, tyring not to show a reaction. Sign of fear or pleading would just rile a wolf up.

Wolves technically shouldn't harm witches. Witches had a powerful calming effect on them, making it very hard to be hostile to them.

But there were other witches present. Two altogether, standing a bit to the side but with good view. A wolf head over heels for a witch would be capable of many impossibilities.

The girls noticed them first, the one with blue-violet hair immediately positioning herself between them.

Matthew stopped at the sight, unsure. Wolf should not harm a witch. Not only was it physically uncomfortable, felt entirely wrong for a wolf to do so, it was strictly forbidden and looked-down upon.

A wolf should not touch a witch without her permission. Touch ment connection and connection meant magic.

Isaiah had not decided what to say yet, but he did not feel any qualms. "You let her go right now," he said quietly. "This is the only warning you will get."

The violet witch smiled widely as the wolves behind her looked up, sneering.

"I don't think you are paying attention, pal," one of the wolves said. "It's six of us. And it's only two of you. You really want to fight us?"

Might makes right kind of idiots? Fine with him.

Isaiah noticed Matthew's hesistant look, not seeing a way how to get to the wolves around the two witches he wasn't supposed to touch.

Isaiah didn't wait for him. His shadow was up and about in the darkness, covering the ground underneath them. One quick twist and they were all falling down, feet flying up as if he pulled the carpet underneath them.

The girl's smile turned into a surprised grimace.

Before anyone could move Isaiah used his shadow to sweep over the wolves, rolling their shadows one by one with smoothness of years of experience.

He stepped closer, pushing the two witches out of the way as they yelped, looking down. His shadow didn't need a straight path. And he had enough control not to touch Seline in the midst of them.

She was standing upright in the middle with a stony expression. But her arms were wrapped around her, her hair was sticking in all directions. He scanned her for any signs of blood or injury.

Not finding any didn't really quell his anger.

"I thought you wanted to fight," Isaiah said, turning back to the wolves crawling and moaning on the ground. Three were shivering without their shadows, one was curled up holding his head, one was even passed out. Rolling a shadow was never pleasant.

The last one, the one who spoke, was crawling away. Isaiah quickly closed the distance between them, kicking him into the stomach. And then in the face for good measure.

He took him by the collar, easily lifting him with one hand. "You come after my girl again, I'll rip your arms off, you hear?"

The wolf shook violently than nodded.

Isaiah turned around, his shadow riding around in satisfaction, brimming with happy aggressive energy. It wanted to make good on his threat right away, wanted to rip them to little pieces along with the witches.

Isaiah looked back at Seline and down, suddenly self-conscious of how much of those desires she could read from his expression.

Seline said nothing, retrieving her bag from the ground.

She did not take his hand, when he offered it.

...

Isaiah was sure he had fucked things up spectacularly. He went all scary in front of Seline, did not even wait for Matt to back him up. He just rushed into it with killing intent.

The way Seline got scared from Matthew's shadow, how she cried and shut him down for weeks to come was fresh in his mind, making his chest tight and dread pool in his stomach.

Seline said nothing on their ride back home and didn't look at any of them. He wasn't sure how to interpret it, she was very hard to read, when she didn't want some kind of emotion to show. But it must have been fear. What else could it have been?

Fear from what just happened and from him and from being involved with wolves in general...

When they arrived at their apartment, she went upstairs immediately. Clear signal she wanted space.

"This is going to be a problem," Isaiah said quietly, staring at the staircase.

Matthew bumped into his shoulder. "What do you mean?"

"Well, look at her! She is terrified of me!" He turned around to lean his forehead against the wall.

There was angry stomping on the floor above them. Then a slam of the door.

"Yeah, I don't think fear is what we are talking about," Matthew said dryly. "She looks pissed to me."

"Huh?" Isaiah said intelligently. His brain was short-circuiting at how he just went all Executioner in front of his girlfriend.

"Yep. Stop making guesses and go talk it out. No point worrying about something that might not be true."

"But- Did you not see-"

"I saw fine. It was plenty cool, if you ask me," Matthew said with a smirk. "Shoo."

Isaiah shook his head in exasperation, but went up.

Seline was in the process of changing and getting ready for bed. She slammed the cupboards violently behind her, the doors creaking painfully as she threw them open and then shut again.

Isaiah slipped inside her room, a little stunned by the display. He couldn't remember if he had seen Seline like this before.

"Ehhh...are you okay?"

She gave him an indignant look. "I'm fine! Perfectly fine!"

Isaiah watched her as she glared at her discarded jeans and shirt on the bed, in her PJs already, suddenly grateful Seline's affinity was water and not fire.

"Why didn't- you could have called me, you know?" He said tentatively into the silence. "I would have come sooner."

"I didn't need you to come."

Isaiah's eyebrows knitted together. "Well, then you could have at least called Matthew or messaged us where you were, so if something happened, we would know to look for you."

"I don't need-"

"You message your mother when you go to school and arrive home, why the hell can't you do the same for your pack?" Isaiah interjected, voice jumping up. "If you don't want to see me, fine, if you- at least let us know you are okay. Not to mention you weren't-"

"If those cows didn't bring their wolves, I would have been alright," she said, turning back to him, her chin up.

"I don't doubt that, but they had wolves around and it's my duty as your packmember and packleader-" Why was he defending his desire to protect her again?

He knew it was the wrong thing to say by the furious look in her eyes.

"Look," he said, pressing the bridge of his nose. "Wolves are dangerous, the city is dangerous and I just want to keep you safe. You can at least make sure of that, right? If you need a break from-from me or if you are disgusted or scared of me right now- there are still ways how to-"

"What are you going on about?"

"You didn't answer my messages or my calls all day," Isaiah said. "I thought something was wrong or that you were upset with me."

Seline watched him silently as if that wasn't all.

"And...right now...That must have been scary, right? I don't blame you for-"

She gave a dramatic sight. "I was upset. But not with you."

Seline approached. Isaiah suppressed the urge to back away, keeping the space he had drawn around her in his head untouched.

Seline's eyes widened at something, then she took the last three steps between them to stand right in front of him. "I'm not scared of you. That was actually...really nice of you. To defend me like that."

"Yeah?" He rubbed the back of his head self-consciously. "I don't want you to see-"

"I have never been scared of you. Wolves, sometimes, and yelling maybe, but not you. You would never do anything to hurt me." She took his face between her hands to make him look at her.

Isaiah let out a relieved breath, putting his hands over hers on his cheeks. "Okay. That's good, I'm glad. So what were you...upset about before?"

He watched her face intently, and his heart jumped into his throat where there were suddenly tears spilling over her cheeks.

"Sel?"

"I don't-" she broke off with a shuddering breath, ducking her head. "I don't want to need you this much."

"I'm sorry - what?"

"It's like I depend on you to protect me, and-and I'm doing it all wrong. I'm not supposed to tell you stuff like this, but I wanted- I want to be with you too much." She let go of his face, hugging herself.

Isaiah had the distinct feeling he was missing something. "And that's bad how?"

She looked up at him, her eyes even bluer from the tears.

"Isn't that kind of why we are together?"

Her blond eyebrows met in the center of her forehead in annoyance. "Don't you understand how bad this is? You...you are better than my solitude."

Isaiah frowned until he remembered the quote she meant. It was one of the quote books that they read in the evening to each other, sometimes to discuss them. My alone feels so good, I'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude.

His heart was fluttering in his chest at the proclamation as he understood what this meant.

Not needing more reassurance than that, he scooped her up from her feet, hugging her to him. No way he was allowing his girlfriend to feel so sad about caring about him so much.

He dragged her into the bed, arms wrapped snuggly around her, and she reciprocated, hugging him just as tight around the waist. Like she couldn't get close enough.

„Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within," he said into her ear, nose in her hair. "You know that one? Cause that's how it feels to be with you."

Her breath hitched against him, her face buried in his chest he wondered how she could even breathe. But he couldn't make himself let her go.

He wondered how he ever could again.