#one plot point was that he accidentally killed the big brother of his kind-of friend and she was (obviously) pissed

[celestie0]

gojo satoru x reader | oneshot smut [18+]

title. around the clock

Hooking up with your little brother’s babysitter? That sounds more like a bad porno than a sensible decision.

ᰔ pairing. babysitter/boxing au - underground boxer & babysitter!gojo x college student!reader (f)

ᰔ summary. when underground boxer gojo satoru becomes a little strapped for cash, he gets a day job as a babysitter for a five-year-old kid named yuuji who most definitely has adhd (but that’s besides the point). the kid’s mom gave gojo two rules, and two rules only: don’t accidentally kill my son, and do not flirt with my daughter. he’s pretty sure he’s got a good hold on the former, but he’s got no self control over the latter.

ᰔ warnings/tags. 18+, fem!reader, smut, casual sex, lil bit of fluff, lil bit of crack, slight age gap (reader’s 22 & gojo’s 27), cum play, creampie, unprotected sex, praise kink, slight degradation, gojo is a sleazebag that cares?, sort of porn-coded smut except there’s a lil bit of lore so it’s kinda porn w plot, uhh having sex with risk of getting caught, gojo beats people up at night & then plays father figure to a 5 y/o during the day, mentions of violence/alcohol/drugs/blood/cigarettes

ᰔ word count. 12.6k

a/n. hiiii friends jeez it feels like FOREVER since i've posted some good ol' smut (still has plot tho xd)...hopefully you enjoy n see ya at the bottom! lmk if i missed any warnings! if you asked to be tagged but didn’t get tagged it’s bc you have your tags off aaa :( even when some ppl tried to fix it i still couldn’t tag them i’m sorry!!

alsoooooo so very much love to @starmapz for beta reading this for me :”) really helped me w my posting nerves haha. she is also a wonderful jjk author pls go check out her works!! 💕 ART CREDITS: @/3-aem

➸ masterlist

2:34 pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): heyy um i’m sorry if this comes off kinda rude i just am kinda bad with this but i was wondering if you could text my mom for questions about yuuji’s care instead of me?

2:46pm Gojo Satoru: Oh 2:46pm Gojo Satoru: Yeah, sure

2:34 pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): sorry i know my mom doesn’t know much ab how to take care of him bc i was the one that took care of him for a while but i just really want to separate myself from that guardian role now that i’ve transferred to NYU yknow? :/ i think it’s not my place anymore. i just wanna be big sis now haha

2:46pm Gojo Satoru: I get it. Sorry if I was making you uncomfortable with my texts

2:48pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): no no not uncomfy by it, thanks for looking after him. it’s just i’m kind of busy n stuff so it can be distracting 

2:49pm Gojo Satoru: Ok, got it

2:52pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): and it was kind of an issue with his last babysitter

2:53pm Gojo Satoru: Oh?

2:55pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): yeahhh like he would keep textinf me n stuff uhh kinda weird things… i told my mom about it and she was super pissed so she fired him

2:55pm Gojo Satoru: Weird things?

2:56pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): yeah he was always “accidentally sexting me” n like he sent me a dick pic once sooooo yeah

2:56pm Gojo Satoru: Who tf 2:56pm Gojo Satoru: I’ll go beat him up

2:57pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): oh no no its fine lol 2:57pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): please dont beat anyone up 2:58pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): i’m not saying you’re like him tho i just think maybe less texting unless its an emergency okay?

3:00pm Gojo Satoru: Are you sure because I will totally go beat him up for you

3:01pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): NO I DONT WANT YOU TO BEAT ANYONE UP FOR ME 3:01pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): also no offense but you dont look like you could beat someone up

3:01pm Gojo Satoru: WHAT 3:02pm Gojo Satoru: Tf you mean “no offense” that’s literally the most offensive thing you could say to a guy

3:04pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): yeaa i mean you have muscles ofc but in the ‘ohhh i wanna look good for instagram’ way and not like real man muscles yknow

3:06pm Gojo Satoru: Ok princess next time you visit home and go on one of your stupidly large grocery hauls I’ll make sure you carry all those groceries in by yourself 

3:06pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): NO 3:07pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): I WAS JUST JOKING 3:07pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): YOURE SO STRONG TY FOR ALWAYS CARRYING THE GROCERIES INSIDE 3:08pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): PLEASE KEEP CARRYING MY GROCERIES INSIDE

3:09pm Gojo Satoru: Nah 3:09pm Gojo Satoru: Should we be texting right now? I’m not sensing any emergencies here

3:11pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): pls. my groceries :(

3:16pm Gojo Satoru: I’ll let the kiddo know you say hi 👋🏼 

The irony of it all was that, if Gojo really wanted to, he absolutely could beat the shit out of someone. And he has, hundreds of times, pseudo professionally. Although that isn’t something he’d admit to you, out of fear that you might relay that info back to your mom who would then become mortified that she’s entrusted her five-year-old son’s life to the hands of an underground boxer. 

But he needed the money. A night-time job didn’t really make daytime money, not when they could easily replace him with the next dude the second he gets knocked out of the ring more than twice, let alone if he let it happen once. And although he sometimes made large sums, it wasn’t stable income. He needed a back-up plan, and so babysitting it was. 

The babysitter working nights at unsanctioned dojos and gyms located in the back of cartel blocks, knocking teeth out of men twice his size, would put any decent mother into a coma or induce some episode of syncope, hence why it wasn’t something he put on his resume before he got hired. Not that he even needed to provide a resume; your mom seemed desperate to cover the position as fast as possible, that promotion at work was moving faster than she wanted to, and Gojo’s beneficial attribute that he possessed as a candidate to look after her son, compared to all the other potential hires, was that he had a penis.

He likes the kid. Yuuji. He’s got kind of a short attention span, and makes Gojo weary of his age. Hold up, that makes him sound like he’s geriatric, he’s really only the ripe old age of twenty-seven, but the immortality and infinite stamina that a five-year-old boy has on him is enough to have him huffing and puffing at the end of every single evening shift he takes on with the rascal. 

Fighting is all sprint, and no stamina. Sure, there might be some more seasoned boxers that might disagree with him, but for someone as young as him in the field, it’s the tactic he’s been forced to gain. If he draws a fight on for too long, he'll get killed by a forty-two year old man with steroids clogging up his adipose tissue and enough  testosterone to grow a full-body beard by the time the sun starts to set. No, his strategy is to knock them out within the first fifteen seconds. Use their weight against them, and whatnot. A tactic he’s found has worked, since he’s been undefeated thus far. 

He can never wrap his head around it. The drug lords that run the rings who’ve gained millions the night before from selling crystal meth only to lose it all the night following in the second Gojo hooklines a solid punch to their betting boxer’s chin, making them see God & their Momma before they tap out (if they’re even able).

He doesn’t pocket much money from it, not anything compared to what the men who bet on him end up making at least, but it’s a decently solid sum. How lucrative it really is depends solely on what he thinks the value of his life is.

It’s not unheard of, boxers dying in the ring. Turns out, rich drug dealers care very little about the sheep they’ve captured to perform their entertaining little stunts. But Gojo wasn’t doing all of this to feel some sense of work-life pride, no, it was just sustenance. When basic needs are not met, humans resort to the most animalistic of all behaviors, and while he’s not proud of what he does, he can’t deny the fact that it’s turned him into an adrenaline junkie that gets a rush in his veins every time he knocks a jaw loose.

But balance was key. And hence why he’s a boxer by night, babysitter by day. For at least four days a week, he gets to pretend he’s the king’s most trusted appointed knight, or he’s the radioactive tyrannosaurus rex that wants to tyrannize all the other dinosaurs, or maybe he’s the evil power ranger (he always forgets which color that one was) that is determined to make the world a living hell by smashing mr. potatohead against the bunk bed post a billion times for all the other toys to see. Or whatever other imaginative hyperfixations Yuuji imposes on him in the later afternoon once he’s had his bowl of spaghetti-O’s and is ready to play. Lately, the kid’s been really into space. They’ve got all sorts of space toys these days. Back in Gojo’s day, he just had a good ol’ Buzz Lightyear.

“One rule, that’s it: don’t accidentally kill my son. Actually, one more rule. Don’t flirt with my daughter.” 

There’s a part of Gojo that believes your mom kind of knows he’s up to shady shit at night, otherwise why else would she clause for him to not flirt with you if she didn’t read the slight swell to his eye and the healing gash across his cheek as anything other than this boy is trouble and I want him nowhere near my too-good-for-him daughter of reproductive capacity since that’s the exact tale of how I became a single mother in the first place. Or maybe he inherently looks like he’s up to no good? He’s not sure which angle is more offensive, and which one was more flattering. Well in any case, she entrusted Yuuji’s life to him, despite acknowledging the plausibility of harm, and that means she overall thinks positively of him, right? ……right?

The first night he met you, it was awkward to say the least. Gojo spends most of his nights performing deadly stunts for middle aged men with potbellies, and most of his days hanging out with a five-year-old (one who he’d argue is his only friend at this point). Sure, he’s got some people he sees occasionally back in his high school hometown when he can brave hearing about how everyone’s in college now or doing a masters or they’re working respectable nine-to-five day jobs meanwhile he has to lie to his Pops that he’s been working in insurance for the past two years. Listen, in fairness, he probably makes the same amount of money as an insurance broker would anyways, but he can’t exactly own up to the identity of his craft. 

Anyways, the point is, he’s not used to seeing other people his age anymore. There’s the occasional hook-up with girls he hasn’t seen since Mrs. Tracy’s homeroom period back in sweet two-thousand-sixteen, or his twice-a-year hangout with Suguru where he only learns the day of where he's visiting from since the guy moves around more than Gojo can keep up with. But save for that, he mostly just sees your mom and then Yuuji. 

So seeing you standing in the kitchen for the first time when he went to put Yuuji’s half-finished GoGurt back in the fridge was startling to say the least. When the sight of a woman startled him, he knew he needed to start getting out again.

You were on your tiptoes, reaching up to grab at something over the fridge, and wearing these ridiculously short shorts to where he could see the curve of your ass, his line of sight trailing down the skin of your bare legs. He couldn’t see anything of your form above your shorts, given you were wearing an extremely baggy t-shirt with NYU on it in big bolded university letters. As far as he knew, you were a senior at NYU, studying psychology, made dean’s list consecutively for the past three years given the way your mother posted all your stellar transcripts up on the fridge (he gets that she’s proud of her daughter, but doesn’t that kind of stuff usually end in grade school?) But other than that, it was all the information he had on you.

“Here,” he said, pressing his front to your back, maybe just to get a feel, as he reached over to you to finally grab the box of cereal you were swatting for, the one that he purposefully placed at the back because Yuuji learned how to climb counters recently. “Is this what you want?”

He had heard you gasp, spinning around on your heel fast, staring up at him with wide eyes like you weren’t expecting some random man to be in the house right now, and your first instinct ended up being to grab the knife out of the kitchen knife block and lunge it straight at his torso.

If it wasn’t for his boxer reflexes, he’d have ended up at the ER that evening. Or dead. All depending on the strength you could pack into a stab. But instead, he deflected it, though not without a gash to his torso through the fabric of his shirt, one that you spent the rest of the evening profusely apologizing for and eventually mending to with cotton balls and neosporin. 

“I didn’t know you were my little brother’s babysitter,” you mumbled with a small wince on your face as you dabbed ointment on the wound while he pulled the hem of his shirt up to his shoulder. He’s never had an injury tended to before. It was nice.

“It’s fine, I get it, totally acceptable response to seeing a random dude in your house.”

He remembers the curl of your eyelashes while you stared down at his bare upper half, something he imprinted on his memory rather than the concern in your face as your fingertips traced the scars across his chest. He hoped they made you feel better about the one you just slashed into him, because after all, what was one more? 

He knows he shouldn’t have, but he kissed you that night. Two minutes before your mom came home, and right after you bid him goodnight with one more apology, he backed you up against the door of your bedroom, his hands on your hips pulling you towards him, and his lips pressed against yours. Something seamless, from candid conversation that was heading towards an end, to full fledged making out against white-painted wood, his teeth nipping at your lip and he wondered just how touch-starved those university boys were leaving you given the desperate way you’d clinged to his shirt for dear life as he deepened the kiss.

The moment only lasted one minute and fifty-seven seconds, and in the remaining three, your mother’s key pushed into the front door and he had to pull away. Always, on the dot, 10PM, she was home. It was how he knew he had two minutes left to make a move in the first place.

So much for no flirting.

6:57pm Gojo Satoru: Bahahah I accidentally forgot where yuuji’s epipen is 6:58pm Gojo Satoru: [sent a photo] 6:59pm Gojo Satoru: Turns out this can-o-soup was just covering it in the cabinet

7:01pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): ??? why did you need to find his epipen

7:08pm Gojo Satoru: Oh he accidentally took a bite of my pad thai 7:09pm Gojo Satoru: I freaked cuz I thought it had peanuts in it but I remember I asked for it without any  7:09pm Gojo Satoru: shit’s crazy

7:10pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): WHY THE FUCK DIDNT YOU TEXT ME????????

7:12pm Gojo Satoru: YOU SAID YOU DIDNT WANT ME TEXTING YOU UNLESS IT WAS AN EMERGENCY ?

7:13pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): SATORU YOU THOGHT HE ATE SOMETHING W PEANUTS IN IT AND YOU FORGOT WHERE HIS EPIPEN WAS THATSS A FUCKIGN EMERGENCY

7:15pm Gojo Satoru: THE KID IS DOING FINE HES ALIVE JESUS LEAVE ME ALONE 7:16pm Gojo Satoru: [sent a photo] 7:16pm Gojo Satoru: See. he’s chill 7:17pm Gojo Satoru: with intact airways might I add 7:18pm Gojo Satoru: Also isn’t he a little too old to still be watching baby sensory videos?

7:20pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): yeah my mom thinks he has adhd :(

7:22pm Gojo Satoru: oh

He tried to keep his word though (although he doesn’t recall ever giving it) out of the respect he had for your mom. She was a hard-working lady, single mom of two who went from working three jobs to now being a major administrator at a big law firm near the outskirts of town. It was an underdog story if he’d ever heard one, and he loved an underdog story. 

But a little texting here and there wouldn’t hurt, right? Or so he thought, until you told him to cut it out with the contact. Maybe you were just trying to be the good one in this situation. After all, hooking up with your little brother’s babysitter? That sounds more like a bad porno than a sensible decision. Still, he’ll eventually get your replies to his which shirt should Yuuji wear to the park? and look, the toothfairy gave him the butt of a joint and a couple thumbtacks for his front tooth. he’s ecstatic texts, although in a less timely manner than before when you weren’t trying to preserve propriety. And when you’d occasionally visit every other weekend, he’d do his best to keep his hands in his pockets, and you’d fill up your nights with hangouts with your hometown friends to avoid spending too much time with him at the house. A silent agreement to not fuck each other, it was. 

4:55pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): send pic of yuuji pls i miss him :(

5:04pm Gojo Satoru: [sent a photo]

5:08pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): IS THAT BLOOD?!?!?!?!

5:09pm Gojo Satoru: chillllllll it’s fake. We’re working on his halloween costume

5:09pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): WHY DOES IT HAVE BLOOD?!?!?!?!?!?

5:10pm Gojo Satoru: He wants to be a baby xenomorph and I'm his parasitic host. You know that iconic chestburster scene from the old school alien movies? yeah

5:12pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): satoru please for the love of god just dress him up as a dinosaur or something

5:13pm Gojo Satoru: I’m not the one that came up with the idea, okay? It was him

5:14pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): because you let him watch adult swim with you before putting him to bed. you’ve deranged his brain.

5:14pm Gojo Satoru: He needs it. Builds character.

Gojo was living a double life, and if someone asked him, he’d say it was less of a Clark Kent way and more of a Bruce Wayne way, although in reality, he knows it’s close to neither. He’s no superhero with a concealed identity fighting crime, he’s a con artist that’s tricked a hard-working woman into hiring him just because he’s trying to save up enough money to get the fuck out of this godforsaken town, given he’s not knocked dead before then for the crime’s amusement.

But Yuuji looks up to him now. And Gojo’s grown attached to him too. He taught the kid how to tie his own shoes and piss inside the actual toilet like a real man. And that kid’s the only thing that’s made him question any of this. Maybe that’s what dads feel, suddenly held to all this impossible responsibility and the pressure to stop doing stupid shit so that you’ll stick around to see your kids get older. The thought that there are eyes on you now, eyes that are innocent and hopeful and learning, and because they know nothing at all, you feel the responsibility to protect them from everything. For fucks sake, remind him to never become a dad. 

“Do you like my sister?” Yuuji had asked him out of nowhere one afternoon after he just got home from preschool, stacking a blue cube over a yellow one at the dining table.

“Uhh,” Gojo starts. He wondered if your mom had put a wire on the kid, so his answer was as diplomatic as he could manage. “Yeah, she’s cool. You’ve got a cool sister.”

“But. But.” Yuuji stutters, trying to find his big boy words. He stretches up higher to reach the top of his stack of blocks, but he only has so much arm real estate at the age of five. “Do you like her like you wanna kiss her?”

Gojo grabs the block from the kid’s hand, for a moment questioning Yuuji’s decision to want to put a blue block over another blue block, but he figures aesthetics are the least of a kid’s concern, and so he places the block where Yuuji wanted it. 

Why does the kid know what kissing is anyway? Do kids know that kind of stuff at that age? Isn’t a kiss to a five-year-old just something their mom gives to them before they head off to preschool for the day? And not something that happens between adult men and women? Maybe he should stop watching that adult swim in front of him.

“No. I don’t want to kiss your sister,” he says, again, because he is suspicious of a wire. It was a lie and then some, because he wants to do a lot more than just kiss you.

Gojo lifts the RedBull he was nursing up to his lips and watches Yuuji in the corner of his eye as the kid stares at his growing stack of blocks with a concentrated expression on his face, his chubby fingers squeezing tightly into little round dimpled balls, like he’s putting together all his tiny brain cells together to form another coherent thought before turning to face Gojo on the chair.

“It’s ok. You can kiss her if you wan’ed to. You can marry her too,” Yuuji says.

Gojo almost spits out his RedBull. He barely manages to swallow it, a broken cough immediately leaving his throat when some of the liquid goes down the wrong pipe and he’s smacking a fist against his chest to knock the sanity back into himself.

“Where the fu—…where the flip did that come from?” he asks, blinking back tears from the rasp in his throat.

Yuuji’s small shoulders sulk as he sits back on his heels. “I want a papa.”

Oh fuck that hurt. Jesus christ, there was nothing more sad than that. Yuuji has literally never known what it’s like to have a dad, since his had left before he was even born. Gojo’s not really close to his old man by any means, but he had still been a fatherly figure in some pivotal moments when he had needed it growing up. Kids need their dads. And he’s seen enough people lose their way without one to know that the value of them is really underestimated.

He’s also kind of shocked that Yuuji really did think of you as his motherly figure. Maybe since it had always just been him and his dad, Gojo learned how to self sustain from a young age, and he and his dad became accustomed to just looking after their own interests to avoid the headache of tending to one another. My land is my land, and your land is yours, and there was the occasional Saturday night spent together with his dad’s millions of beer bottles emptied dry on the carpet in front of the 1992 box TV as the two shared a greasy pizza from the place down the street. That was the extent of family solidarity that he knew.

But he can’t imagine being barely eighteen and having to take care of your little brother all by yourself because your mom was too busy trying to put food on the table and was too poor to hire a babysitter. Your mom tried so damn hard to keep you away from the single teenage mother life, but somehow ended up giving it to you by proxy in the end anyway. It was no wonder you wanted space now that Yuuji’s a little older and your mom can afford a babysitter. No matter how much you might love your sibling, being their effective guardian out of pure necessity had to have taken a toll.

Gojo clears his throat before he speaks. “Buddy. If I married your sister, we’d be brothers. I wouldn’t be your dad.” 

Yuuji’s eyes light up at the word brother. “Brothers? Me and you?”

“Yeah. Bros.”

The kid giggles, all bubbly with cheeks rounding fully and eyes sparkling. Gojo reaches out to ruffle at his hair before Yuuji gets down onto one stubby leg at a time from the chair then bolts towards the kitchen.

“Juice!!” he yells somewhere around the corner out of sight.

Gojo sighs, staring at all the toys he pulled out for Yuuji to play with, all left in a scattered mess across the table. He gets up out of his chair and heads towards the fridge. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll get you your juice, you little demon.”

The conclusion he comes to, and it might read like an obvious one, is that kids don’t really know the reality of life, hence why adults hide so much from them. 

This is what he thinks of tonight when he wraps his worn out boxing tape around his hands and his wrist, tightening it with his teeth, and he can smell the sweat and grime from them. The back of the underground gym had an old dated locker room, and as Gojo stretches his neck side to side while sitting on the stiff metal bench, he eyes the peeling red paint of the locker in front of him, blurring vision making it look like spilt blood. 

His phone pings with a text. He shuffles inside his duffle bag to look for it while his other hand scratches at his bare chest.

1:07am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): hhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 1:07am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): omgomgomg sor y i’m 

He blinks at the screen, confusion flashing across his face. He types one letter, but then he sees three dots and a speech text bubble in the bottom left, so he waits for you.

1:09am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): i drunk :(

The corner of his mouth ticks up slightly. 

1:09am Gojo Satoru: Yeah I can tell

1:10am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): at a apartyyyy

His eyebrows raise slightly, the thought of you tipsy on some frat party couch flashing through his mind, yet of all things you could be doing at that frat party, you’re texting him? Must be a really boring party.

1:11am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): whyyy are you aawake?

1:12am Gojo Satoru: Couldn’t sleep 1:12am Gojo Satoru: Don’t you have a midterm in the morning?

1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): wtf hwo do you knwo that

1:15am Gojo Satoru: Your mom keeps your schedule posted on the fridge

1:15am yuuji’s sister (no flirting): im so fucked;’;(((

He snorts. He’s got a bit more life experience than you, five-ish years to be exact, more than enough time to master the no-hangover hangout, but just before he can offer you some advice, he sees another text from you. 

1:16am yuuji’s sister (no flirting): can i tell u smething 

His gaze flits up to the ceiling briefly, and he hears commotion outside the thick walls of the locker room. The previous fight was over, and fast. The guy must’ve been knocked out in under twenty seconds tops, which means that Gojo was next up against whatever superbeast just beat him up. 

1:17am Gojo Satoru: Sure

He stands up, placing his phone down on the bench before he flexes the muscles in his arms a couple times to get the blood flowing into them. And there’s the noise of another ping. Actually, four.

1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): sonetimes 1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): i thikn of  1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): when u kisse me 1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): *kissed me

His eyes widen slightly, irises dry to the ashy cigarette smoke from outside lingering in the air, and his heart rate picks up a bit. An adrenaline junkie with close to no fear in his veins due to the way his amygdala’s been fried to a crisp from years of boxing, yet he’s got his breath hitched from the memory of your soft lips against his. It makes the blood rushing through the muscles of his arms rush somewhere down south instead.

Loud banging on the door of the locker room jolts him out of his trance, and he’s stiff around the edges once more.

“Satoru! You’re up, man,” he hears Danny, the fight coordinator, yell at him from the other side of the heavy & poorly-installed steel door.

Gojo sighs, glancing down at the texts on his phone. To respond, or not to respond. You’re off your face, clearly chatty from the alcohol, and he knows for certain you’ll regret every life decision you’ve ever made once you wake up in the morning and see the self sabotaging behaviors you’ve engaged in tonight. He knows that responding to you might put you at ease rather than straight up ignoring you, but the feeling will pass, and he has a match to win with no more room left to stall.

He makes his way out the locker room, pushing past the crowded halls of people underneath dim flashing club lighting, some dudes angrily jerking to face him when he pushes past them with a stiff shoulder, only for their eyes to widen when they see just exactly who pushed them. 

There’s strippers in the ring, doing some routine for pre-match, and Gojo narrows his eyes at the man he sees laying back over the rubber boundary rope, head tipped back up to the ceiling with a wicked grin on his face. So that was his opponent? He’s never seen the guy before. Was he from a different district? Different district talent was tough, you had no background info on them, while they’ve been preparing to be here for weeks. Hence why boxers tend to do better when they visit a different district than they do in their own. There have been rules made to limit these types of fights, mostly over outrage that it was unfair to bid on them, but they were also usually more entertaining to watch. Gojo’s got a sick feeling to his stomach as the strippers clear the ring.

“Hey,” Gojo calls out, grabbing Danny by the back of his collar and dragging him towards him and away from the girls stepping down onto the floor, “what’s in for this fight?”

Danny glances up at the ceiling. “Tarp’s bettin’ tonight, so it can’t be anything less than ten grand for you. I’d say tops fifteen?”

Gojo narrows his eyes further, then glances off into the ring again. The man stands up, and Gojo gets a better look on his face. He’s got short hair, neon green in color with a dark fade underneath and tattoos all over his face. But those eyes. They were freakishingly red, and it made him uneasy. He knows the type. The type of boxers that do this to genuinely hurt people for thrill. Make no mistake, Gojo understands he’s made himself out to be like that too, gaining some kind of rush out of this profession, but this type of fighter was different. The type to literally continue smashing a dude’s face into the floor until they’re a bloody mess even minutes after the winning call, and no referee to stop it because that’s the kind of action the spectators wanted.

Danny reads his line of sight. “That’s Gale. Newton’s new boxing toy. Came outta nowhere about a month ago. He’s undefeated so far in his district, and Newton specifically wanted to see you up against him tonight,” Danny tells Gojo, resting his elbow up on his bare shoulder. “Chances are he’ll compete with Tarp for final bid if you win this one. I’m talking twenty-five grand in the next if you can knock him out in this.”

“Uh-huh,” Gojo acknowledges, rolling his shoulder so Danny’s elbow falls from it. Forget the money, he just wants to make it out of this alive.

He sets his foot up on the square, ducking through the dividing boundary straps and the tacky caution construction tape that the gym thinks creates an exciting ambience. He hears the static of the speakers as the announcers call out Gojo’s name, then this other guy, loud bass club music booming through Gojo’s chest as he tries to take a few deep breaths through the thick air of this low-ceiling arena. 

The dim overhead lights flickered, casting shadows over the makeshift ring, and the crowd pressed tight around at every perimeter area, yelling and pushing, one even tosses a beer bottle on the square and it shatters, spreading glass all across, a few shards reaching Gojo’s feet and he looks down at them with a shudder. A fight immediately breaks out in the crowd over something related or possibly entirely unrelated, and he’d have no way of knowing as he swipes the shards away with his heel.

The influential men always sat up on higher seating, off towards the back in their own VIP section where they suck in the smoke of fat cigarettes and peer through 100% tinted sunglasses to assess the boxers they’ve bid thousands on. The light reflects off the golden grills of their teeth with every snarl at any passerby that gets too close, like a lion in its den. That’s what the sanction was called. Lion’s den.

Gojo sighed, eyeing the twisted grin of this Gale guy across from him. Was that his real name? Usually, foreign district guys get nicknames. Gojo’s always thought the nicknames were tacky, and he’s accumulated some of his own over the years, but to his ears, none of them ever really landed, although The White Fox admittedly was kinda nice. Reminded him of throwback shooting games. 

He sucked a breath in through his teeth, holding his hands up in front of his chest in weak fists, storing energy in them in the form of pure anticipation alone, and then the bell rang.

His opponent lunged towards him immediately, fists flying in a barrage of reckless strikes, and Gojo’s eyes momentarily widened in the briefest moments of hesitation he had been allowed before ducking and dodging every one of this guy's shots, then jumping a step back to create distance.

Fuck. He was fast. Not just boxer fast, athlete fast. There was a difference. And it wasn’t a good one to be up against.

Gojo picked up light on his feet. He couldn’t win this one fast, that much was certain. One single careless or reckless move, and he’ll get tackled. He knows that by the malicious look he sees on that guy’s face, grin wide like he’s some cannibalistic beast. 

Stepping back towards the center, Gojo purposefully set himself up for Gale to swipe a vicious hook towards his head, before Gojo last minute ducked down, crouched to the floor, and swung his leg out to knock the guy off balance by his ankles, and he falls onto his back with a loud thud!

There’s a moment of momentary silence from the crowd, right before Gojo put the man in a torso-lock, twisting him in a way a human body should absolutely not be twisted, hearing the grunts of pain and the crack of spine even through the shouts of the crowd.

He can hear it. Kill him! Knock his fucking teeth out! Snap his neck like a goose, man! FIN-ISH HIM! FIN-ISH HIM! FIN-ISH HIM!

He feels like throwing up. 

Gojo looks up at the referee, who wasn’t really a referee, just there to run the clock when there was action and only barely stop it before near death. “This is enough, right?” he asks.

The referee nods. “1-0, next round.”

Gojo lets go of his opponent, leaving him there to heave for a moment before he gets up onto his feet again. Just needs one more, and he’s a winner. Ten grand in his pocket, and he won’t have to come back here for a couple weeks.

Gale gets up, swiping at the spit that had trickled out the corner of his mouth down to his chin, and he had an enraged look on his face. The second the bell rang for the second round, he exploded forward towards Gojo with even more fervor than before, gritted expression with a thirst for violence fueling the storm of punches he was throwing towards Gojo but he tried to remain calm, light on his feet, swiftly duck and avoid before he can find another opportunity to clear a sharp, clean jab right to the ribs—

sometimes, i think of when you kissed me

Gojo misses his strike, leaving his guard wide open, and Gale takes the opportunity to land a solid punch straight to his jaw, sending his mouth guard flying straight out of his mouth into the air, and knocking him backwards onto the ground with a thud and then he finds himself staring up at the rusting metal ceiling and a ringing in his ears that almost matches the roar of the crowd.

His head is in a haze, dizzy like where one second could feel like a millennia. He feels a soreness underneath his chin, a pain that radiates to his mouth, and he briefly swipes his tongue over his front teeth to make sure he still has all of them. 

What the fuck was that? That intrusive thought. There’s no intrusive thoughts allowed in life or death situations, not when he was always just one smash to the head away from a permanent concussion. But, fuck, he can’t help it. Can’t help thinking of you. Even when his vision has gone blurry and he should really be weary about what happens next in this ring, his mind’s just thinking about you, at some frat party, tipping back shots of tequila and waiting for a text-back in response to your tipsy ones. Were you even waiting up on him? Have you already passed out on the couch, or were your friends dragging you back to your dorm? Or are you fucking some other dude right now? Has he got his hand up your top, squeezing at you, sleazily feeling you up before spilling beer all down your shirt, and are you kissing him back with the same enthusiasm, your phone now somewhere long slipped between the cushions of the couch and out of sight?

Even though it’s still sore, he tenses his jaw. Grinds his teeth, even. Tasting blood somewhere along the line of his gums, he realizes his lip is split. He licks at it, the flavor of copper more rich on his tongue, and he clenches his fists tightly. Why’s he thinking of that right now? It just pisses him off, the thought of you with some other dude. Maybe that’s what he needs to win this fight. Spite. Although he’s not sure why the guy across from him at the ring has to pay for it.

He lifts his head up off the ground, and while it felt like years he had been down, a glance at the timer tells him it’s only been a solid four seconds. A solid four seconds that his opponent had to fully charge a lunge towards him with the look of death in his face, raising his elbow up into the air in time with his leap, ready to come straight down, and Gojo’s eyes widen at the sight above him from where he’s still lying on the wood.

“Shit—” he cusses, rolling his body over to the side so that the dude falls straight down onto the floor rather than elbow Gojo in the fucking ribs, and then he gets back up on his feet. 

Stakes were high, he has to end this, he has to end this now, and he flexes the muscle in his right bicep, channeling everything he has into this one blow, and before Gale even really has a chance to turn around and face him again, Gojo’s already three-fourths set up a knockout undercut that he drives straight up the guy’s chin, with so much force it has him lifting up off the floor, a vertebrate stretch to his spine before he’s sent flying backwards and slammed against the tight rubber lining of the ring to where he was half hanging over it.

The room fell silent for a split second, then erupted in a roar as the referee fell to one knee beside Gale, checking him for any semblance of consciousness, and when he found none, he waves the match off. 

Gojo’s eyes flit up towards the lion’s den, the only opinions that he really needed to care about were sitting in those mahogany chairs with glasses of scotch swirling around in their hands, and he sees some of them looking straight at Gojo before leaning towards one another and discretely talking about something he can’t make out because he doesn’t know how to read lips.

He feels someone tug at his arms from behind, pulling him to crouch down and he balances back on the balls of his feet. He glances down through the ring at the floor. Danny was leaning against the wooden surface of it. “Dude. Go.” He jerks his head towards Gale, who still laid there sprawled across the now stretched out rubber perimeter bands. “Go fuck him up. Knock a few more teeth out, I don’t know, get some more blood out of him.”

“What?” Gojo huffs, yanking his arm away from Danny’s grip. “The fuck are you saying?”

“I told you, man, Newton’s here and he’s got his eye on you. Go give him a show,” Danny says, “do it.” And when he sees clear frustration on Gojo’s face he sighs. “Twenty-five grand, consider that, will you?”

Gojo sneers at the man, an awful taste in his mouth as he spits blood towards Danny’s feet. “Go fuck yourself on his cock if he wants a show that bad.” And then he ducks underneath the bands and hops back down onto the floor, pushing past people who were trying to grab at him and pull at him and lift him up and even throw him down until he made it through flashing hallways and back to the locker room.

He shuts the door behind him, sliding the bolt lock into the frame so no one can follow him inside, and then he leans his weight back against the chilling steel before tipping his head back until it hits the surface too.

He lets out of a few deep breaths, then stares down at the sting he finds over his knuckles. Red and blistering from the last punch he delivered, and he’s almost certain he broke a bone in his hand. Fuck. It was bleeding across the cuts, too. He had to figure out a way to get it all healed by tomorrow, as if that was humanly possible, just because he doesn’t want Yuuji questioning him about it.

Yuuji. For fucks sake, when has he ever thought about the kid this much? When has he ever thought about much of anything when he’s out here or in the ring? He’s a babysitter by day. He’s a “part” of your family when the sun is up and normal functioning society is breathing their lives into the clean air. That’s it. He’s no five-year-old’s caretaker in front of all these primetime drug lords, and he certainly shouldn’t be thinking of you when facing big, burly men he’s aiming to rough up, all within the dead hours of night. So then how come these thoughts are on his mind at all times, twenty-four-seven, around the clock?

He heads further into the locker room, glancing down at the bench where he’d left his phone, then picks it up, neck craned all the way down to glance at the screen as he holds his phone by his hip because he doesn’t have any energy to pick it up any further towards his eyesight. 

He sees your messages. You never sent any follow-up ones, just your horrendously typed out sonetimes, i thikn of when u kisse me *kissed me across the span of four texts, and Gojo runs a tired hand down his face.

He tips his head back to groan at the ceiling, guttural with no basis other than a release of all the pent up frustration of every sort, then he types in a couple messages to you,

3:23am Gojo Satoru: That’s nice 3:24am Gojo Satoru: I think about fucking you all the time 

—and then tosses his phone into his duffel bag to call it a night.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

You’re awoken to your alarm blaring heavily, and you whack your arm across your nightstand table beside your tiny twin-size bed to hit the snooze button, then rub your eye with a loose fist while smacking at the residual taste of alcohol you have on your tongue. 

“Mm…” you mumble to yourself. And then the thirst hits you. The overwhelming, intense, unquenchable thirst that leaves your mouth feeling like the Sahara desert before you grab your twice-dented Hydroflask from the nightstand, twist the cap off and chug about twenty ounces of water in one breath. 

You let out a deep exhale and fall back into bed, your hand resting on top of your water-filled tummy, and you stare up at the ceiling of your dorm. 

Last night was horrible. You knew you shouldn’t have gone to that frat party, especially given you have an exam in—you checked the time on your phone—about an hour, and an hour was not enough time to recover from the raging hangover headache that’s pounding through your head. But your roommates insisted you went, and so go you did. You never knew what to expect, always torn between shaving your pussy before you go or throwing on a stained pair of sweatpants to keep the guys away instead. Sometimes, it was a combination of both. But last night, you ended up drinking more than you usually do, and that always led to poor, poor, poor decisions, in which all the sense of pride you had in yourself was washed down with the puke that you hurled into the upstairs toilet. 

You grab at your phone again, briefly seeing that your friends had sent you some photos from the night. You immediately swiped off to the side to dismiss the notifications, because as far as you were concerned, you never wanted to see those photos in your life.

And then, in the briefest of moments, you saw a familiar name in your notifications that made you heart skip a beat.

Gojo Satoru (yuuji’s babysitter)

With an immediate gasp, you pulled your phone to your chest and held it there, blinking up at the pale yellow ceiling, your heart picking up in rhythm.

Oh fuck.

That was right.

You drunk texted him last night.

You drunk texted your little brother’s hot babysitter.

Fuck.

Mortified was an understatement, possibly because you don’t even remember what you said, and so you don’t even want to see what he replied with.

You groan, rubbing both your hands across your face then kick your sheets back with your feet like a child having a temper tantrum because you were so embarrassed you had even texted him at all last night. I mean, he was hot. A little older than you, really gorgeous eyes, tall, and, yeah, you gave him shit for the Instagram muscles thing, but that’s only because you thought he’d find it cheeky that you were trying to humble him despite the fact that he’s more toned and ruggedly sculpted than any other man you’ve ever met. You didn’t want to have a flustered schoolgirl attitude because it would just seep through to his ego.

In any case, he was hot, there was no denying it, so can you really blame yourself? But still. There was collateral with this. You had to see him every other weekend. He knows your family, even your extended since they invited him to Thanksgiving dinner a couple weeks ago. A high-risque drunk text recipient if he ever was one (of course he has been, look at that face). Why couldn’t you have just drunk texted ECON160 guy from last semester who Clit DJ’d you underneath your desk at the back of the lecture hall instead?

The thing that made you nervous about Gojo Satoru was that he was just so…confident? Like, in that I was raised to be this way confident and not that I fought inner demons my whole life to barely end up this way confident, y’know? Never had to fake it ‘til he made it, he just was. At least that was the kind of energy you got from him, and unfortunately for you, it was nerve wracking but enticing all at the same time.

You sigh. “Stupid. Stupid. Stuuuuuupiiiiidddddddddddd. You. Are. So. Stuuuuuupiiiiddddddd,” you sigh, running your hands through your hair to grip at the strands.

You pull your phone away from your chest, and finally brave yourself to read the texts from your notifications screen, but not without blurring your vision a little to further stall. And then you finally refocus it to read them. The first one you see has you gasping—

3:24am Gojo Satoru (yuuji’s babysitter): I think about fucking you all the time 

It has heat spreading across your cheeks, and you blink at your screen, then quickly swipe up to read the previous messages with rushed glides of your index finger on the screen to see that he had sent it to you in response to your barely coherent texts about how you still so often think about that time he randomly pressed you up against the door of your bedroom to kiss you that night you first met him.

I think about fucking you all the time

At 3 in the morning? He decided to send that text at 3 in the fucking morning? That was the devil’s hour. What’s he trying to tell you? 

Oh come on, you’re not stupid. And you know he isn’t either. The sexual tension was palpable, it was there since the day you two met and you almost stabbed him, and also everytime you were visiting the house, and his shoulder brushes against yours when he’s trying to get past you in the kitchen, or when you’ve got Yuuji in your arms and the kid is clinging to Gojo’s sleeve because he wants him near him at all times. There’s even sexual tension over the phone, in those stupid texts he sends you all the time about meaningless child care stuff, and honestly, those little updates made your day.

But… you don’t know much about him, and your mom would kill you if she ever found out you wanted him. And she’d probably pulverize him if she found out he ever made a move on you. Cremated without leaving a trace behind would be an understatement. She thinks he’s no good and she thinks you’re too good. You know she’s warned him before to not get close to you, as if she was pre-emptively expecting him to try to get in your pants like it was some canon force of the universe, hence why he’s probably so fucking awkward around you whenever she’s there too. Like if he accidentally got caught staring at your ankles, your mom would light him on fire, so he’d rather not risk it by just avoiding looking at you at all.

Your mom has always been protective of you. Your father was a deadbeat, one she thought she loved, only to watch him leave. And she had to raise a baby all by herself. He re-entered your lives right before you graduated high school, knocked up your mom again with Yuuji, and guess what? Left again without a trace. To be doubly humiliated by a man is a fate you wouldn’t wish on any woman, but that’s exactly what your mom went through. It was a wake-up call for her, though. No more living paycheck to paycheck like you had been your whole lives up until Yuuji was born. The kid doesn’t even know how lucky he is with everything he has right now. Your mom worked her way up the corporate ladder and made something of herself and now you guys were comfortable, so it was safe to say she had some sort of right to look after her daughter, of whom she simply doesn’t want to follow in the same naive footsteps of her youth.

You get it. She wants to break the generational cycle. But it made being with men tough on all fronts, let alone dating. You could never bring a guy home because he’d never be enough, even if he cured cancer or could make you orgasm while doing a sixty-nine handstand. And while her overbearing paranoia over what you do or where you are or who you’re with has since dimmed slightly since you officially moved out to finish your last year of higher education at NYU, you can still feel her disappointment from a hundred miles away when you’re making out with some random frat guy on his beer-stained couch at eleven AM on a Tuesday.

But you got to college. You’ve already made it this far. You’re on dean’s list. You graduated high school as salutatorian. You’re the most highly decorated cello player in the state. You won Miss County pageant when you were sixteen for your philanthropic efforts towards feline leukemia. You did online community college for three years so you could stick back after high school and help your mom raise Yuuji, which meant that you had to forfeit your scholarship to Cornell. You’ve spent your whole life being good, you just wanna be bad for a little bit.

And if bad meant fucking the hot and mysterious babysitter, then so be it. 

You pick your phone up, begin blasting what the hell by Avril Lavigne on your dorm room bluetooth speaker, then type a message to him that says—

10:34am you: do it then

—then shove your phone under the sheets and belt out the lyrics aaaall my life i’ve been good, but now, ahhhh i’m thinkin’ what the hell!!! while kicking your feet and clutching your pillow.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

Gojo has no clue what divine entity has overcast their gratuitous spirit over him on this blessed Monday afternoon, but he’ll thank them for it later once his balls are empty. 

He’s got you on your back, sprawled across the couch in the living room, the first fuck being a rushed one that you offered him with before he has to go pick Yuuji up from circle time at preschool, which wasn’t ideal, but he’s delirious at the sight of you underneath him right now. Your little NYU shirt, a tighter one this time, bunched up over your bare breasts, otherwise entirely naked other than the flimsy panties dangling at your ankle, and the view of the tip of his cock looking hot and heavy against the velvet of your cunt, slowly pushing in, feeling the warmth of your walls squeeze around him paired with the sweet moan that leaves your lips, makes him fall forward with a bracing hand dug into the cushion by the side of your head because the sensation feels so fucking good he can hardly keep himself upright.

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” he grunts, pushing himself in further to try and bottom out but he’s still got a couple inches he needs you to take, and so you curl your hips upwards towards the cieling to make more room for him, practically putting yourself into a mating press and soon enough he’s balls deep, “you on any birth control?”

“Uh-huh,” you moan, eyes closed and head tipped back with one hand squeezing your own tit.

“I can cum inside then, yeah?” he asks you, pushing your knees to your chest, slowly drawing his hips back and you squirm underneath him.

“Let’s get there first, and then we’ll discuss,” you breathe out.

“I’ve been there for the past ten minutes, baby. I could cum at any second with the way you look and feel,” he informs you flatly, because it was just the truth and you had to know it, then he feels himself twitch inside, slowly working up to a languid rhythm, almost fearfully like your mom’s going to pop out somewhere around the corner with a camera crew ready like one of those retro TV shows just to humiliate him on national television for not keeping it in his pants like she’d told him to. 

“Harder,” he hears you whisper, and he rolls his eyes shut to just focus on the feeling. The feeling of your nails grazing down the skin of his chest and his abs, tracing the scars he’s collected over the years, and he feels you tightening around him. He leans down to kiss you, fucking you properly now with the squeak of the couch springs echoing across the room, your hums of moans seeping through his lips until he’s fully taking them on with an open-mouthed kiss of sloppy tongue. 

The fact that it was wrong felt right to him, and he realizes in this moment he’s lost all sense of control. He wasn’t just an adrenaline junkie that liked to rough up dudes, he was an adrenaline junkie that wanted to fuck you against all better judgement or moral compass. The way your tits were bouncing, the slap of skin on skin, his balls slapping against your ass while you wrap your legs around him tighter, all convincing him that any consequence made it worth it.

“Good,” he groans the praise, pinning your hands above your head as he rams his hips against yours, your cute moans and squeals sounding like literal music to his ears and he feels heat spread all the way up his neck, “goooood, keep squeezin’ me like that, fuck.” He slows down momentarily, just to take a moment and watch, really look and see the way his length disappears inside of your pretty self with every push forward, and then he works back up to a relentless pace that has you tipping your head back with a slack jaw and eyes closed tightly shut, sprained expression of pleasure spread across.

“Oh, oh my god, Satoru—” you mewled and he felt dizzy from the sound of his name from your softly parted lips.

“Fuck, I’m gonna—” His hand finds it’s way between your legs, calloused pads of his fingers brushing against your clit and you jolt underneath him, gasping as your hand shoots out to dig your nails into his bicep for purchase. “I’m gonna cum, better tell me where you want it.”

“In me,” you moan, “nowhere else.”

He presses his mouth against your cheek in a lazy smile, “Atta girl,” he drawls before pushing your ankles down as far as they’d go near your ears, folding you in half and then reigns all hell into your cunt. He should really care a bit more about your pleasure, but testing your flexibility like this with both his hands holding you down was doing sinful things to his brain, and besides, you had yourself covered with the messy circles you were rubbing over your clit. It was hot to see that too, your nimble pretty fingers so close to the place where he was pounding into you. 

“Oh shit, shit, shit—” he grunts when starts to see blistering white in his vision, balls straining with a pleasure that was almost painful. The moment he finishes feels like hot flashes in his brain, a heat like the cum he begins to paint inside your walls in time with your release, thrusting over and over and over, each one more staggered as he lets off a long, drawn out groan that comes from deep within his chest with the feeling of you milking him dry and the sound of you enjoying every second of it. He can’t remember the last time he came this much or this hard and even after coming down from the high, he feels the remnant pulse of your orgasm around his now half-flaccid dick.

He leisurely pulls out, hearing you let out a soft whimper as he marvels at the sight of his cum slowly dripping out of you and down towards the couch, before he scoops it up with a couple fingers and pushes it back inside. You grip his wrist tightly, but you weren’t stopping it, that motion of him plunging it all back into you.

“Want a taste?” he asks, casually.

“Mhm,” you nod, face looking flush.

He pulls his fingers out of you, coated with sex, then plugs your pussy with the fingers of his other hand because he kinda likes the idea of you walking around all day with him inside of you, so he doesn’t want it getting out. He’s then pushing his other fingers past your lips, pleased to find he’s met with not even so much as a grazing of teeth, and he grins, “bet you take a dick in your mouth as good as you take it down here.”

Your furrow your brows at him, the pout of your lips seen in the way they were puckered to lick his fingers off clean, and when you release the suction with a smack of your tongue and his fingers were wet from your saliva now, his eyes narrow with desire. You push his face away with the heel of your palm to his forehead. “Flattery won’t make me suck your dick.”

“Alright. So? How is it?” he jerks his chin towards your face, pushing against your hand with his forehead until he’s hovering over you again, “taste good?”

“It’s cum, Satoru.”

He shrugs. “Bad?”

“No,” you say, and you can’t make eye contact, “good.” You sigh. “Hot. I don’t know. Salty, sweet. I’m the sweet. You’re the salty. And this conversation is obscene.”

He kisses you, capturing your lips softly, tongue darting out to taste what’s on yours. “I like it that way. Dirty. Nasty. Obscene, whatever.”

There’s the slam of a car door heard from the driveway, and the two of you instantly make eye contact with round eyes.

“Sa—” you stutter, “Satoru.”

He gets up off the couch in a panic, and heads to the window of the living room fully butt-ass naked, then peers through the blinds to see—

Your mom was making it up towards the front door, rustling with her keys in her purse. And the last thing he sees before he turns around to face you is her pushing the keys through the lock.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” he cusses, finding his boxers off of the floor, hopping on one foot with his cum & slick coated dick flapping around and slapping against his thighs unceremoniously as he tries to get one leg in through them and then the other. You’re trembling as you hook your panties back into place, pull your shirt back down your torso, and even in his extremely panicked state, he’s still sad he can’t freely stare at your tits anymore. You’re rummaging for your skirt in a haste, looking everywhere for it, and he finds it underneath the coffee table before tossing it to you and then he side-to-side hops towards the coat closet while he pulls his sweatpants up over his ass, in time for you to quickly run and shut the door of the closet closed just before the front door of the house swings open.

The inside of the coat closet is dark, barely enough space in there for a six-foot-four two-hundred-and-twenty pound man, but it’s better than being balls deep inside his boss’s daughter on the couch when said boss just came home from work.

He hears conversation on the other side of the door, albeit muffled, and he presses his ear to it to hear better while he tucks his dick into his boxers from where it was hanging over the waistline.

“Mom! You…you’re home so early,” he hears you squeak out.

“Yes,” your mom says, “The rest of my meetings today are online, so I figured I’d come home when there’s less traffic.”

Gojo feels you lean against the coat closet door.

“I see, I see, how was your day at work?” you ask with a tremble in your voice.

“Fine.” And then nothing. The silence could mean that was all she had to say, since your mom wasn’t really a woman of many words, or it could be a silence that means she’s suspicious about something. “Darling, why is your skirt flipped up and tucked into your panties? Your whole butt is showing.”

Through the wood of the door, he hears you softly gasp. “Oh, um, I just went to pee. Must’ve—…must’ve got caught when I pulled it back up.” 

“I see,” your mother says, and Gojo can hear her dropping her heels down near the shoe rack at the entrance. “You know, I really don’t like those short skirts you wear often. Maybe it’s just your generation, but I think it looks tacky and cheap.”

“Mom,” you say, in as stern of a voice as you can manage without sounding embarrassed.

Your mother sighs. “In any case, where is Satoru? I still would like him to go pick up Yuuji. I don’t have the patience to sit in preschool & daycare traffic right now.”

“Oh gosh, I don’t know,” you chirp, and then he hears you let out a small oh no before you lean even more weight against the door, this time somewhere lower, and he realizes you’re pressing your ass against it. His eyes narrow with a small frown, and then he realizes— his cum must still be trickling down your thighs. You couldn’t put your panties on fast enough. 

Shit. That’s hot. A little fucked up, but hot. He feels his dick harden against the fabric of his boxers, and he rests his forehead against the door, fringe stuck to his forehead with sweat as he slips his hands down his sweatpants and then gives his cock a firm squeeze. The thought of you discretely swiping his cum up your inner thigh and smearing it against your thin panties so your mom doesn’t catch sight of it dripping down your legs has him slowly working up to a rock-solid erection, and he almost lets out a broken grunt from the feeling.

“What?” your mother says, “what do you mean you don’t know?”

“I’ve just been watching TV this whole time,” you say, “last time I saw him…he was…um, in the backyard pulling weeds?”

He lets out a small scoff through his nose at your cover-up. Cute. And not bad. 

Your mother sighs loudly, and he glances down at the strained veins on his dick as he tugs it through his hand, the tip rearing and appearing flushed and dripping with precum. God, you were just on the other side of this door. Less than a few inches away, and he’d be inside of you. 

“I’m going to take a shower. Go find him and tell him to pick up Yuuji soon. But before then, change into something less revealing,” your mother says in a more or less detached tone, and he can hear the stomps of her footsteps up the stairs from above him in the coat closet.

The two of you wait at least a solid minute, and just when the coast is clear, he hears you turn the knob of the coat closet and slowly crack it open.

“Okay, I think she’s in the shower, I hear the water running,” you whisper at him, “you can go now—” You glance down towards his groin, your jaw dropping. “What—…Satoru, why the fuck is your dick staring at me right now?!” you whisper-hiss at him.

He pulls you into the coat closet, pushing your front against the door to where it clicks shut, and you gasp when his hands pin your wrists crossed behind your back and his dick presses into the plush of your ass.

“You talkin’ to your mom while your pussy’s stuffed full of my cum was the single hottest thing that’s ever grazed my lizard brain,” he tells you, flipping your skirt up and hooking your panties to the side, his index finger briefly brushing against your entrance to find it still leaking from the way your walls were pulsating from his words. And then he aligns his tip to your entrance. “Now keep quiet while I do this, ‘kay?”

“Oh—” you gasp, your cheek pressed against the door as you arch your back and push your ass out for him, “okay—” you say, barely vocalizing the first syllable before he’s already stuffing himself inside of you with one solid glide of a push, making you yelp loudly and he has to instantly cup a hand over your mouth.

“Shhhhhh,” he hisses at you, immediately starting to pound you from behind, “told you to— fuuuck,” he catches sight of his length covered with a mix of your glassy arousal and his white cum, now starting to cream at the base of his cock, “jesus christ—” he breathes out, squeezing the flesh of your ass harshly with his other hand and you let out another yelp, “I told you to fuckin’ keep quiet.”

“I’m—mff,” you muffle against his palm, “I’m trying but,” your hips move back in time with his, “feels good, feels too good,” you mewl, and his hand desperately yanks up the fabric of your shirt so he can squeeze at your breast.

“Yeah?” he grunts, hypocritical for telling you to keep it down when he was slamming his hips against your ass with so much fervor he wouldn’t be surprised if the sound was reverberating across the entire house, “you like it when I fuck you while your mom’s all clueless just up the stairs?” His rhythm falters, feeling his release building, and his hand reaches in front of you to rub your clit, making you drop your head against the door with tightly closed eyes. “Gets— you—wet, doesn’t it?” he torments you, his lips near your ear as he slams his hips against you harshly with every enunciated syllable. 

“Mhm, mhm,” you easily agree, or maybe that’s because it’s all you can really articulate, and he angles his hips up so his balls slap more fervently against your clit, making you scream into his palm while he picks up the pace of the circles he draws on your clit and in one, two, three— beats of his pounding heart, he feels you come undone around his cock, gushing wetness leaking out of you, he can feel the mess of fluids splattering on the skin of his thighs due to each of his heaving thrusts as he cusses out a fuuuuuuckkk before spilling his cum inside of you, a short-lived and thicker release this time that has you mewling from overstimulation, and in a few following thrusts, he’s given you everything he had to give.

His eyes open, he wasn’t even aware he had shut them in the first place, and he glances down at where the two of you were joined. Rings of arousal coat the length of his half-pulled-out dick, and the second he retreats all of it, a bulging push of his cum seeps out of you, dripping and pooling all over the hardwood floors.

“Holy shit, I wish I could take a picture of this,” he says, taking a step away to commit the sight to memory, your legs trembling and still slightly spread, ass pushed out and when you wiggle it a little, he lets out a huff of an exhale because he just can’t believe how sexy you are. Are all college girls like this? He’s never been to college, his old man’s been trying to get him to go for years, but maybe this is what finally convinces him.

“No pics,” you breathe out once you catch your breath, standing up straight slowly, “that’s my one sex rule.”

He takes a step closer to you, flipping your skirt back over your ass while you shimmy your shirt down to cover your chest. “That’s the only rule you have? Anything else goes?” he asks.

You spin around to face him, his eyes briefly flitting down to the still exposed skin of your midriff. “I have a feeling I’d be making up more specific rules if it was with you.”

He smiles, his hands grabbing your hips before pressing you up against the door again. “I also had a rule. It was to not fuck you. Wait, no, to not flirt with you. Which, technically, I didn’t do.”

You blink your eyes at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“What?” he asks, genuinely confused, “I didn’t.”

“Huh—” you scoff, “how do you think we got into this situation in the first place?? You didn’t just say wanna fuck? You were insufferably flirty with me.”

“Nahhh nah nah nah nah, baby, that’s not flirting,” he tells you, thumb running circles over your hips, “that’s, like—…I don’t even fuckin’ know how it worked on you to be honest, I was just being stupid.”

“Oh okay so I’m stupid.”

“I never said you were stupid?”

“Well you said you were being stupid so me falling for it must mean I’m stupid.”

“Pshhh. You’re cute. Pulling weeds, by the way? Adorable.”

Your hand slowly roams up the front of his shirt, the fabric bunching at your wrists until you uncovered up to his collar bone, and you stare at his skin. He tries to not let the way his heart’s beating faster show through the heave of his chest. 

“Why do you have all these scars, anyway?” you whisper to him.   

“Too many girls tryna stab me,” he tells you.

You roll your eyes. “Seriously.” Your thumb traces the one you had left on him. 

“I—” He stops himself.

Does he tell you? Should he tell you? What, just because he’s seen you naked and you took his dick like a queen he’s supposed to open up to you about these things now? He doesn’t know. Maybe he could? Maybe you already suspect what he does at night. And if not, at the very least, I’m an underground boxer might make you think he’s hot? At the very worst, you’ll report him to the cops and he’d get fired as your little brother’s babysitter then thrown into jail, but not before the busted cartel gets him first.

“Maybe I’ll tell you some other time,” he says, his hand wrapping around your wrist and pulling it from his chest, “no hyper personal details until you’ve had my dick in your mouth at least once or twice. That’s my one rule.”

You snort. “I could’ve guessed that rule from a mile away.”

He hums. And then there’s the sound of steps creaking down the stairs above the two of you.

You both make eye contact, eyes widening, internally yelling at each other: how the fuck did we get into this situation twice?!

This time, Gojo opens the door and stumbles out of the closet, leaving you inside of it, just in time for your mom to come down the stairs.

“Satoru. I was looking for you,” she says as she rounds the post. “Have you picked up Yuuji? He has to go for his swimming lessons soon.”

“Ah, nope, was just about to head out,” he says, letting out a cough to diffuse tension, “sorry, I was—” he points his thumb over his shoulder to behind him, “…pulling out some gnarly weeds.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “I see. Well, thanks. If you want, I can add a gardening stipend to your paycheck. Let me know.” And he’s not sure how to respond because he’s not sure if she’s joking. 

He heads out the door, the keys to your mom’s minivan in his palm as he throws them up into the air and catches them a couple times. And just before he gets inside the car, he turns on his heel to face the house and pulls his phone out of his pocket to type in a message for you.

3:22pm Gojo Satoru: Send over those me-specific sex rules soon

.

.

.

[the end]

a/n. hope u enjoyed im shitting bricks posting this bc i haven't posted a oneshot smut since february but thanks so much for reading i appreciate u!! i got way too invested in the whole underground boxer thing 😂😂 but the fact i managed to keep everything under 12k is an accomplishment to me bc if u read my other fics you know i’m a yapper LOL i have another kind of a similarly written smut oneshot n it’s a lil angsty (totally different au tho) i’ll probs post that one next but yea i really like, hmm, i really like exploring entire characters within a short amount of time i enjoy writing the obscure lore drops xd it’s been kinda fun so far anywho much loveee hope to see u around! <3

➸ masterlist

taglist:

@joemama-2 @erencvlt @pickuptruck01 @hanakotateyama @nuronhe

@beabadobeee @air3922 @timetoletmyimaginationfly @chiyokoemilia @jotarohat

@sirencholia @sorcerersseestars @horisdope @to-dabi @staoru

@aliidarling @ninjaturtletoes @lavender-hvze @lanadelreylover11 @chckn-pi

@satoryaa @gojodickbig @v4mpieres @reinam00n @sleepyyammy

@haikomaiko @tbzzluvr @myahfig4 @arabelluhhh4200 @bloopsstuff

@nat-the-gayass-down-bad-mf @badbclub @blackunecorn @geniejunn @n0tviv

@verystrawberryhottub @iheartshopping @peonysfordayz @dreamsxmerci @aishies-stuff

@milkm4nz @athinasaurus @sashisuslover @welldamnsatoru @aeriiixhh

@crystalymin @dcvilxswish @miakxn @satxoru

[zehecatl]

why is my dreams always this plotted out 'could be turned into a story' thing

like. literally dreamt about a 'powerless' kid getting saved from an abusive institute by pirates, who turns out to not be that friendly, but it also turns out said kid can communicate with the fucking dead, and uh oh, drama unfolds!

like i'm not complaining, i'm just wondering

[woodchipp]

A CRITIQUE OF OMORI, PART 3: MARI AND THE TRUTH

NOTE: Reader discretion is advised. By clicking on “Keep reading”, you willingly choose to continue reading the post.

OMORI spends a considerable amount of time trying to ingratiate you to Mari as a character. In Headspace, she plays a motherly role to Omori and the gang, providing endless positivity and advice to the party whenever they take a break at her picnic blanket; at one point, Kel even begs Hero not to tell Mari about him and Aubrey knocking Basil over the same way a child would beg someone else to not tell their mother after messing up. In the real world, everyone who knew her only ever speaks of her as being kind and gentle, and the official walkthrough guide even calls her “the glue that holds everyone together”.

As wholesome as all of that may seem at first glance, this is one of the main problems with Mari’s writing: the game tries to get you to love her so hard that it comes off as overly aggressive character shilling. For instance, during the second picnic Omori and his friends can have with Mari en route to Basil’s house, Basil wishes to be more like Mari and notes that she always seems to have everything under control, Hero compliments her on how she always makes everything look easy, and Aubrey describes her as "effortlessly graceful". As with Basil summing up each of the characters via flowers, the game spells out the character’s personality for you right at the start rather than allowing you to parse it for yourself over the course of the story.

[Pictured: complex and nuanced characterization.]

[How should I know? I literally just met her a few minutes ago.]

If the shilling had been limited to Headspace, it could’ve been a powerful narrative tool to show how much Sunny idolizes his big sister and foreshadow that his perception of her is unreliable. The problem is that what we learn about her in the real world reinforces said unreliable perception; as with the photo album and the main characters’ childhood, the narrative paints the real Mari as too impossibly perfect of a person to be remotely believable. Not only did she switch beds with her brother when the latter started to have difficulty falling asleep, she also let him sleep with her when he had nightmares, took the blame for him breaking one of their mother’s vases and even saved him from drowning once. She also bought Basil his signature photo album, bought Sunny a giant building block set as a gift for one of his birthdays, carried Sunny back home after he fell asleep on the bus, pitched in along with Sunny's other friends to buy him a violin for Christmas, was the perfect match for Hero and generally served as the group’s caring mother figure in the real world as well. C’mon, love her already!

Of course, such a flawless angel is too good for this sinful earth. That is why, after spending the entirety of its runtime building up to Mari having killed herself due to her own mental issues, the game pulls a last-minute plot twist and reveals that Sunny accidentally killed her by shoving her down the stairs during an argument they had over Sunny breaking his violin on the day of a recital they were to perform at. As evidenced by the datamined text from the “Truth” photo album, the game gives no consideration to Mari’s perspective on the matter and only focuses on Sunny’s feelings. It’s all about how he was overcome, how his fingers were shaking in pain and how he was sick of practicing over and over. How did Mari feel when she saw her brother destroy the fruit of her and his friends’ hard work in one fell swoop? How did she feel being perpetually dissatisfied with the waltz she obsessively practiced, trying to reach the unreachable standards she set for herself? These are questions the game doesn’t bother answering, because Sunny and his feelings are of central priority to the story at all times, even if it comes at the expense of other characters, their own feelings or even logic. 

(speaking of logic, the game never explains why Sunny and Mari were arguing at the top of the staircase in the first place. the piano room, which is most likely where the two practiced since Mari's piano is located there, is on the first floor of their house, while Photo of an Argument shows them them having said argument on the second one. peak writing)

Additionally, the story fails to properly establish just how strenuous violin practice was for Sunny. The only bit of set-up for the argument the game provides during the main story is Lost Library's “Saturday morning cartoons” book, which isn’t much and requires the player to make a giant leap from “Sunny doesn’t like violin practice because he misses out on watching cartoons with his friends” to “violin practice physically hurts Sunny and he resents Mari for her perfectionism”. Likewise, the narrative’s prior and consistent portrayal of Mari as flawless is incompatible with the plot twist’s insinuation that she overworked Sunny and was harsh on him when he made mistakes, which makes the twist feel even more inorganic than it already is.

If the game left the twist at Sunny shoving Mari down the stairs, that probably would’ve been enough. However, it subsequently inserts Basil into the scene, him having bore witness to the argument and Mari’s murder. This doesn’t make sense on a logistical level because the game never explains how Basil managed to get inside Sunny’s house and why he was there in the first place. Not only does Basil not try to call an ambulance/find the nearest adult to help, he comes up with a plan to cover up Mari’s murder by framing it as a suicide. Basil’s multi-step plan is not something one would come up with in a situation of high anxiety and stress: it feels nearly premeditated, and at no step of the way does Basil seem to have had second thoughts, like one would if they were acting irrationally. Furthermore, the sheer tonal dissonance created by the fact that Basil of all people came up with an idea this demented isn’t disturbing as much as it is absurd. It reeks of the writer assuming that a topic like murder instantly makes a story Deep and Complex without putting any thought into it, and it seems Basil was written into the twist solely to absolve Sunny of any responsibility for the cover-up. 

Finally, the game inadvertently implies that Mari's suicide wasn't investigated properly, if at all. The clues indicating that she didn't hang herself are obvious, such as the fact that she seemingly used a jumping rope and her stockings being clean as opposed to stained with grass and mud from the ground around the tree. Such a break from reality isn't much of a significant problem, but it does become rather conspicuous once you notice it. Fans tend to theorize that Sunny's parents somehow knew the truth and possibly bribed the police into dropping the case, but there isn't enough concrete evidence to support this theory.

The knowledge of the twist is imperative to understanding just how aggressive and transparent the shilling becomes. Some of the most notable moments that explicitly demonstrate what the player is meant to think about Mari include divine light shining down on her grave in the town’s cemetery, her farewell to Sunny at the end of the North Lake segment, where she is briefly shown walking on water, and her brief conversation with Sunny in his house's piano room on One Day Left, where she apologizes to Sunny for “pushing him too hard”, implying that her brother killing her was somehow her fault.

Mari isn’t a character in her own right - she is the quintessential fridged woman, existing purely as the object fueling the main characters’ grief and being important only when the game needs to assure the player that Sunny killing his sister wasn’t much of a big deal. After all, even the person he killed is shown to forgive him for what he did.

Speaking of Sunny, his actions in the aftermath of the incident paint him as rather reprehensible. Not only does he vandalize Basil’s most precious belonging and then leave him alone, but he also chooses to lie by omission to his friends and his parents, letting them believe that they failed her because of the assumed nature of her death as a suicide. On top of all that, the game seems to heavily imply that Sunny blacked out the photos due to Omori’s influence; considering that Omori is apparently meant to be the personification of Sunny’s depression, this reads as a convenient way to absolve Sunny of any responsibility for his horrible actions by making his Evil Mental Illness the culprit.

It’s time to talk about this game’s depiction of mental illness, then.

[shipcestuous]

Recently, I've watched an Isekai anime loosely based on Norse mythology, called Master of Ragnarok and Blesser of the Einherjar. I honestly didn't find it anything to write home about (too much moe girl/loli fanservice for my liking - even if I admit I'm not really the right target for that, maybe fans of that kind of thing would appreciate it - plus some interesting ideas and characters that I thought weren't developed in ways that did justice to their potential, a story that somehow rushed by too quickly while also making it feel not much was really happening, and a very rushed ending) but there were some things in it that caught my attention in... an incesty way, so to say.

The anime's about a Japanese boy, Yuuto, who is accidentally sucked into the land of Yggdrasil in the Bronze Age. Yuuto thankfully has his smartphone on him, which is solar-powered and somehow still has a working Internet connection, and he essentialy uses online articles on the historical development of several technologies and military strategy to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court his way into becoming the Patriarch (chieftain) of the local Wolf Clan and help it progress economically and socially while battling its enemies, with the eventual goal of giving everyone in Yggdrasil, a land of warring clans, a chance at a peaceful life so he can hopefully focus on finding a way to go back to his time and the girl he's in love with. In the process, he ofc gets a bunch of badass girls with all sorts of skills swearing fealty to him as well as becoming romantically interested in him despite him insisting that he's already taken... oh, and he also inspires stories that will one day develop into an oral tradition that will form the basis for Norse mythology.

Thing is, in Yggdrasil, the Patriarch of a clan binds their followers and allies to them by making them take a sacred oath that makes them honorary family. Which is why the girls mentioned above are referred to as his Daughters or Little Sisters according to their rank, and refer to him as either Father or Big Brother in turn. Cue a lot of the fanservice scenes being along the lines of "I want to help Father wash his back in the bath!" "Only after I've had my turn, you're just his Daughter but I'm his Little Sister!" and even some more serious plot points having that "Big Brother, now that we've joined our clans, it would be even more politically convenient if you married me and gave me your seed so I could carry your heirs!" flavor...

But ofc, if it was just that, I'd been sending this ask to your other blog! There's also two biologically related siblings I ship, personally...

Now, the story starts in medias res, with Yuuto already being a successful Patriarch with a formidable reputation. But in later episodes, we find out that when he first dropped into Yggdrasil, he was taken in by the Wolf Clan when he didn't yet know anything about the land or its peoples. Felicia, the daughter of the former Patriarch, was the one who accidentally summoned him, so she took it upon herself to teach him everything he needed to know, falling in love with him in the process, but he also made friends with Loptr, Felicia's older brother, who then became Yuuto's sworn Big Brother. Eventually, however, Loptr and Felicia's aging father, Farbauti, noticed Yuuto's developing skills and literal otherworldly knowledge, and when it came time to name his successor, he picked him over his own biological son. Loptr, who'd always expected the title to pass on to him, was enraged and tried to kill Yuuto, but Farbauti put himself between them and took them blow, dying by Loptr's own hand. After this, Loptr fled and, blaming Yuuto for supposedly scheming to get Farbauti to pick him as heir while pretending to be Loptr's friend, as well as coping with his own patricide by misremembering it as having happened because Yuuto hid behind Farbauti and consciouly used him as a human shield, he swore revenge against Yuuto and married the Panther Clan's Patriarch, Sigyn, to make her give up her position to him and have an army at his disposal to fight the Wolf Clan.

Yuuto blames himself for how things turned out, thinking of himself as some arrogant kid who ruined everything for the Wolf Clan's ruling family by showing off skills that didn't even belong to him but to the historical generals and politicians he read about online, but is willing to fight Loptr to protect the Wolf Clan. Felicia, on the other hand, is still deeply troubled by what happened, but she both loves Yuuto and thinks he's a great Patriarch, so even if it pains her, she'll pick him over Loptr every time.

As for Loptr... he's willfully bling to Felicia's real feelings. And I say "willfully" because, when things were fine between the three of them, he was very aware of Felicia being in love with Yuuto and even gave him a cheerful yet not-so-joking "you make my little sis suffer and I kill you" speech. But when he later writes her to ask her to ditch Yuuto and join him and she sends a reply along the lines of "back off, the only older brother I'm loyal to is Big Brother"? Clearly his beloved sister could have never written anything like that, that dastardly Yuuto just sent him back a fake letter to try and tear down his morale! It takes him attacking Yuuto directly during a battle and Felicia literally jumping in between them to convince him that no, she's not actually on his side... and let's just say, he doesn't take it well, violently throwing her aside. Yuuto even seems to believe he might kill her over it, as he references Farbauti's death by saying he doesn't want anyone else to die for his sake! Unfortunately, we kinda have to take his word for it as, due to the abrupt ending, we don't really know if Loptr could have really gone that far, but I choose to believe he wouldn't. Like, he'd probably fight her and harm her, but kill? She's the only family he has left and, despite everything, he still loves her... or at least, he feels very possessive of her.

Something else that might be interesting from a Loptr/Felicia shipping perspective is Loptr's marriage to Sigyn. In the anime, she's clearly in love with him and he at least seems to like her well enough: she's always initiating physical affection but he never shies away from it, they're briefly shown having sex and cuddling and talking after, he thinks of her as a great resource on the battlefield, and the one time he gets mad at her is when Yuuto knocks Loptr out and she uses her magic (she's one of the most powerful witches in Yggdrasil) to send him back to modern Japan out of fear Yuuto may kill him, depriving Loptr of the chance to get revenge, but even then, he calms down pretty quickly when she cuddles up to him and tells him she only did it because she couldn't lose him as both the Patriarch of her clan and her husband. However, I've read that in the light novel the anime is based on, Loptr is apparently very cold to Sigyn, explicitly seeing her only as a tool that allowed him to rise to power and an advantage in battle, and when she sends Yuuto back, he's a lot angrier, stopping just short of hitting Sigyn herself. Which sucks, obviously, and I'm glad the anime didn't go to that extreme and made him a bit more likeable and their relationship healthier... but it also makes me wonder if Felicia was really the only important woman in his life in the light novel!

... Oh! Master of Ragnarok anon, here again! I was so focused on Loptr and Felicia that, somehow, I completely forgot about another ship! Albertina and Christina are twin sisters and princesses from the Claw Clan. Their father sends them to Yuuto so that he may take one of them as his bride and the other as concubine, but they end up becoming his Daughters instead, working for him as bodyguards and information gatherers. Albertina is the oldest, but she's very naive and childlike. Christina is the youngest, but she's very mischievous and loves to tease people. They both develop a certain attraction towards Yuuto, but Christina is also very possessive of Albertina and, in the end, she mainly just seems to want her twin all to herself... it doesn't hurt that her favorite target for her pranks is Albertina, and no matter how much she embarrasses her and berates her, in private and in public, she seems to do it at least in part because she finds Albertina irresistibly cute when she's flustered. Their very introduction has them falling on top of each other in a rather suggestive way due to one of Christina's pranks. Because of how inseparable they are, Yuuto ends up combining their nicknames, Al and Chris, and calling them Alchris when he's addressing both of them, like they're a single unit.

This sounds so angsty and painful! As wrong as Loptr is, I can't help but feel sorry for him. I'll be imagining a happy reconciliation for the siblings!

Albertina and Christina sound very shippable!

Thanks for the message!

[cleverclove]

thanks for posting about hamlet ur the only way i actually understand that blasted book for my english class 🫵🗿🫶

OH HOLY SHIT YOU’RE WELCOME…it’s super fun once you get into it :> but uh here’s an actual rundown if you need it :] (except it’s told in incomprehensible modern day language)

King of Denmark? Dead. He’s king of DEADMARK now hehe

His ghost comes back and haunts the fuck out of Hamlet’s homies

Hamlet’s homies, seeing as said ghost looks exactly like the dead king, decide to tell their emo homie, Hamlet

Hamlet has recently returned from a weeks-long voyage from college back home to Denmark to mourn his dad (F to pay respects)

This bitch is EMO AS HELL (i mean his dad DID just pass so….)

(Btw Denmark is at risk of war with Norway but oddly enough it’s not as big a plot point as you might think???)

Except OOPS! Apparently his mom married his uncle. Wtf mom???

Said uncle is kind of a dick and Hamlet basically sticks his middle finger up at him the whole entire play

Hamlet’s homies, led by his college fuckbuddy, Horatio, come over to tell him about this ghost

King of Deadmark tells him that that motherfucking (literally) uncle of his is behind it

Hamlet swears revenge but debates whether to believe this ghost or not (bc duh, it’s a ghost. Not exactly the most trustworthy source.)

Oh he also has this ex, Ophelia

She’s a cinnamon roll (and the only one in the play)

He’s mad bc she broke off their relationship (bc her father tells her she’s not his type…..royalty back then was only allowed to marry other royalty -_-)

So there’s this whole subplot about their breakup going about as well as you’d expect a Shakespearean tragedy to go

(Or: Hamlet commits borderline domestic abuse)

Yeah he’s kind of a shitty boyfriend (ex now)

Blah blah blah blah shenanigans happen

Hamlet intends to kill Claudius the Dickhead Uncle, who he believes is behind a tapestry in mom’s room

So after a fight with his mom he stabs the tapestry with a man behind it

Except OOPS it’s his ex’s dad

Anyway at this point Dickhead Uncle is like “okay you’re done” because damn this is a PR NIGHTMARE

So he sends Hamlet off to hang out in England for a bit

(And by hang I mean get hung. As in executed <3)

Along the way he gets kidnapped by pirates (?????)

Idk either

He sees the letter condemning him to death

He crosses his name out and puts his FRIENDS who he’s traveling with to death instead

Yeah he’s kind of a shitty friend too

Back to Denmark! Ophelia, obviously unable to live without a man (this IS Shakespeare after all), goes insane at the loss of her dad and bf

She ends up swimming with the fishes (bc she drowns herself. Pure innocent cinnamon roll too good for this world fr.)

Hamlet returns and FUCK.

His ex (who he’s still in love with) killed herself because of him D:

Her brother, obviously pretty distraught at losing his sister AND dad within the span of a few days because of Hamlet, is pretty pissed off at him understandably

He challenges Hamlet to a “friendly *wink* duel”

Clown on clown violence because the poisoned sword Laertes the brother uses hits both of them

Hamlet poisons the king after his mom accidentally drinks the poisoned wine that Claudius planned to give HAMLET to kill him

So yeah. Three people are dead now, and Hamlet isn’t gonna live much longer.

His fuckbuddy from earlier, Horatio, is absolutely DEVASTATED dude

Being the loyal bff he is, he tries to kill himself too to join Hamlet in death

(Kinda gay if you ask me but whatever)

Hamlet dies in Horatio’s arms

(Again, pretty gay but what do I know :P)

Horatio lives and vows to tells Hamlet’s story as the Norwegians storm the castle and take over Denmark.

[ray-ray-writings]

UMM THIS

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMe24dvmM/

Im sorry I know you are packed and busy but can I make a request based on that video?? BECAUSE HOT DAM JUST WILBUR ENTERING LIKE

‘WHAT IS THIS I HEARD ABOUT HURTING Y/N AND TOMMY ‘

LOOK AT THAT VIDEO LOOK AT IT AND TELL ME YOU ARENT SIMPING TO THAT MAN

I simply cannot tell you that because it would be untrue because I am SIMPING so hard…. Also this was way longer and had a lot more plot than I originally planned so…. There’s that lol. Hope you enjoy. (P.S. Because it’s so long, this is going to be the only post tonight, my brain is a bit fried rn lol. Have a great night everyone!)

Warnings: Mentions of very quickly losing a lot of weight, it’s brief but it’s there. As well as, manipulation from Dream. At one point the reader is like “wow it’s been three days since you hit me… Thanks Dream!” And a few swear words here and there. 

Before Wilbur died, you and Wilbur were married. It absolutely broke your heart to watch the love of your life lose his mind (and then his life) for the nation that you and he created to raise and protect your boys in. But you stood by his side until the very end. You held his hand as he died and clutched his body with Phil once it was over. Ghostbur gave you somewhat of a shock. Because you’re husband was back, and he remembered you. He was the man you had married. The person he was before the presidency, before the war, before L’Manberg… You’re Wilbur was back. But you were still sad. You couldn’t hug him or kiss him like you were able to and although he seemed to be right in front of you, it felt like he couldn’t be farther away. Ghostbur can see this and decides that if he can, he really wants to try to come back to life. He tells his father and older brother about this and so they begin planning and researching. In doing this, they kind of accidentally turn a blind eye to what is happening to you and Tommy. 

While those three are figuring out how to bring Wilbur back from the dead, you and Tommy are being harassed by Dream. Something else you lost when you lost Wilbur was protection from Dream. For some reason, Dream was always afraid of Wilbur. Perhaps it was his ability to always stand up for what he wanted and fight for the things he loves… Or perhaps it was because he was Techno’s brother. Doesn’t matter. Point is when you lost Wilbur you lost the protection from Dream. Dream threatens you and Tommy, trying to provoke Tommy and trick him into doing stuff so that Dream could get him in trouble and one day it finally works. Dream tells Tommy where George’s vacation house is because he knows that Tommy cannot resist checking a place out and looking through other people’s stuff. So Tommy drags Ranboo over there and while they’re there they accidentally knock over a lantern and burn some of the house and some of the chests. On the other side of the server, Dream is in your home, poking fun at you for losing your husband and telling you that it was partially your fault and just stuff like that. You didn’t react. You never could when talking to Dream. But his words stung and slashed deep, and he knew it. Finally after a while of this, Tommy comes bursting through your front door, out of breath and seemingly panicked. “What’s the matter?” You ask softly, leaving your kitchen and going to comfort your boy. Tommy is about to spill everything but when he looks up he sees Dream and immediately swallows his words. “We were playing tag… That’s all… Tag” he says. You absolutely do not believe him but you catch his gaze and know that whatever he’s done he cannot say it in front of Dream. So you decide you’ll just have to wait…. You don’t have to wait long. 

“You burnt down George’s vacation home?” Dream’s deadly tone sounds from the kitchen. Your eyes widen and scan Tommy’s face and the look that overtakes him, you know it’s true. “I did not burn it down… I knocked over a lantern and a small fire broke out… I tried to repair everything, it’s fine.” Tommy insists. But Dream seems too pissed to listen to reason. “Come with me” he hisses, marching forward and snatching Tommy’s wrist tightly and marching out of the house. A small whimper left Tommy’s lips as he was pulled causing you to fly into a rage. “Let go of him!” you demand, chasing after them. Dream doesn’t listen and so you reach out and shove his shoulder causing him to stumble, let go of Tommy’s wrist and whip around to face you too. A chilling smile rests on his face, “Oh you just messed up big time.” Before you can react, he reaches out, grabs your wrist, grabs Tommy’s again and continues on down the Prime Path. You’d try to fight it but the grip on your wrist was just too strong. Dream pulls you to Tubbo and immediately jumps on the boy. He explains what happened as well as says that you assaulted him and that he wants you two exiled from L’Manberg or there will be hell to pay. Dream tells Tubbo he will start a war and will kill everyone and everything if his orders are not followed. You can tell Tubbo really doesn’t want to, but it’s something he has to do. Tubbo lets out a small sigh and nod, “Okay Dream. You win.” He murmurs, not looking at Tommy’s betrayed face. “Excellent choice, Mr. President,” the man spits out. “Tubbo” Tommy utters broken heartedly, staring at his best friend, silently begging him to say sike… It never comes. “Dream please escort Tommy and Y/N out of my country.” “With pleasure” You wrist is seized again and you’re being dragged away from your home. 

After you three get out of the SMP, Dream lets go of your wrists and lets you walk for yourself. You approach Tommy and wrap a comforting arm around him. “It’s going to be okay Tommy. Everything is going to be okay.” You comfort the young boy who sighs and nods, “I just can’t believe that he would throw me under the bus like that,” Tommy murmurs. “I know kiddo. I know.” You follow Dream for a very long time until he is satisfied that you are far enough away from the rest of the SMP. “Okay, we stop here… Put your stuff in this hole,” Dream commands, digging a small hole for the two of you to throw your stuff in. You let out a scoff and roll your eyes, “No way. You’ve already forced us into exile. There’s no way we’re giving you our stuff.” Dream’s face flushed a bright red before he lurched forward and grabbed you. Putting in a headlock to where you’re back was pressed against his chest, his arm around your throat while he has a crossbow to your head. “I’ve had enough of you fucking attitude Y/N. You have no power here. I do. I’m in charge and when I say to do something, you do it. If I ask you to jump, the only thing you may ask after that is “How high?” Do you understand?” You don’t speak, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of obedience. But then the tip of the arrow digs into the side of your head causing you to let out a small pained whimper, “I said, do you understand?” he demands again. “Yes” you finally whimper out. He moves the crossbow away from your skull and lets you go and shoves you forward, stumbling into Tommy who catches you and stabilizes you. “Put your stuff in the hole… Now” he growls, not in the mood for any more ‘games’. You and Tommy share a look and then a sigh and slowly put your things in the hole like he demanded. And you could only watch as he placed TNT above it and blew up everything. All of your items that you had worked hard for… Gone in a moment. Dream leaves with a cackle. You and Tommy are just there. Shocked. Finally, after a few moments, you’re able to shake yourself out of it. “Okay… Let’s get started, there’s no time to waste.” Tommy just looks at you and then he sighs and nods. “Let’s do it then.” The two of you spend the rest of the day gathering materials and building yourself a little shelter. You were all alone… At least you were all alone with your brother.

As we all know, Dream comes back almost every day. He comes back, blows up your stuff and leaves. The first time he came back you tried to stop him… It didn’t go well. “Dream, please he just-“ He cut off your words with a harsh slap across the face. It sends you flying and leaves your head spinning. “Haven’t you learned yet? Stuff. Hole. Now.” And you have no choice but to obey. You watch with a broken heart as Tommy slowly begins to actually trust Dream and believe him when he says that no one misses him. You do your best to be there for him and convince him that it’s not true but as days go by and no one, not even your Ghostbur, you can’t help but slowly believe that they’ve forgotten about you two. As time goes on, it seems that you and Tommy fade. You lose a lot of weight. Your food source is scarce and you have to do a lot of work because you’re restarting every. single. day. You get hurt a lot easier and it takes a lot more time to recover. Every once in a while, Dream will physically hurt you. Whether it a slap or a small sword slash, he does it just to make sure you still remember who’s in charge. You just learn to take it and deal with it. It hurts, but at least it’s you and not Tommy. Ranboo visits you once and is horrified at what he sees. He’s worried about you, but knows he can do basically nothing to help you. He makes a mental note to tell someone about it back in the SMP…. And even though he has memory problems, this is one thing he cannot forget. 

On the other side of the SMP, Philza, Techno, and Ghostbur have done it. They’ve cracked it. They have figured out how to bring Ghostbur back to life and to bring back Wilbur. The three make the plan and tell no one, especially not you. (Yeah…. They don’t even realize that you and Tommy aren’t around rn lol) They want to make sure this works before they tell anyone. So they do all the prep and the work and then they perform the ritual. They perform it in a cave somewhere just a little bit away from Techno’s house so that absolutely no one would know where they are or what they were doing. They begin just as nightfalls. Carefully completely each step and making sure they’re doing everything just right, knowing if they fuck up one small thing it’s over and they won’t be able to get Wilbur back. The three complete the final step and wait…. Nothing happens. “Fuck!” Techno curses, his eyes falling to the book, “We did everything right! It should have worked!” “Techno calm down, we’re all upset but at least we-” Philza doesn’t get to finish. All of the sudden a bright light floods the room. The light? It’s coming from Ghostbur. “Uhh guys?” the ghost questions in fear as he is levitated off the ground. Philza and Techno cannot look at him for fear of going blind. Ghostbur is unsure of what is happening but then the shredding pain fills his body. A scream rips from his throat as his whole form begins to physicalize. The skin begins to become real as the bones, blood, organs, and all other internal body parts forms. All memories that Ghostbur had forgotten flood Wilbur’s mind as his whole life flashes before his eyes, reminding him of everything. It only lasts a few moments more before the light fades and Wilbur is dropped from the air. His body hits the ground with an extremely harsh thump. He feels the impact and lets out a groan. His whole body is sore… But he’s there. He’s real and most importantly he’s alive. “Wilbur?” Philza asks hesitantly. Wilbur lets out another groan. The two standing men share a look before rushing to his side. They kneel beside him and gently reach out. Don’t tell anyone but tears threaten to fall from both men’s eyes, Philza and Techno’s, as their hands actually are able to touch Wilbur and they don’t go through him as if he were a ghost. They gently help him from his side to laying on his back. At the movement, Wilbur opens his eyes and is met with the tear laced ones of two of his family members. “Hey guys” he manages to croak out, “how’s it going” “Wilbur” Philza breaks, a tear streaming down his cheek before he lurches forward and wraps the boy into a warm hug. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry” the older man sobs to his son. “Shhhh,” Wilbur calms his father, “It’s okay Dadza. I wanted it. You did what you had to do. It’s okay.” To the two’s surprise’s Techno’s buff arms wrap around the two and join in the hug. “It’s uhhh… it’s good to see you Wilbur” Techno grumbles, not really liking the emotion that had built up in his chest. Wilbur let out a soft laugh, “Good to see you too Tech.” 

The sweet moment is broken by someone calling Techno’s name a little ways away from the cave. At first, they elect to ignore it, but then the voice calls again, this time for Philza and they can tell now that whoever it is, is panicking. So the two help Wilbur up and gently help him out of the cave. They look out over the snow and find Ranboo there, standing on Techno’s front porch. “Ranboo!” Techno calls out causing the tall boy to turn around and then run at them. “Techno! Phil!.... Is that Wilbur? Like actual real Wilbur? He’s alive?” Ranboo asks, his tone still slightly panicked. “Yes Ranboo… It’s a long story but to sum it up we managed to bring Wilbur back to life… Now why are you here and why are you panicked.” Ranboo’s eyes shift back to Wilbur and gulps, “I knew you weren’t going to like this… But now you’re really not going to like this… Dream is hurting Y/N and Tommy…” All three, especially Wilbur, snap to attention at that. “What?” Wilbur asks harshly. Ranboo gulps and nods before diving into his story. He tells them about your exile and how Dream has been treating you two, blowing up your stuff and even physically harming Y/N. He tells them that Dream has the two convinced that nobody cares about them anymore. The three go stiff at that. Have they all been so focused they really missed all of this? Well time to go right some wrongs. It is almost as if all ache and tiredness left Wilbur’s body at the thought of his spouse being hurt, especially at the hands of Dream. He straightens up and takes a few steps toward Ranboo, “Take them to us” he speaks, his tone pretty damn dark. Ranboo nods and quickly turns around and leads the three men back to the exile spot. 

Back in exile, you and Tommy built a house… Logsted! It wasn’t exactly your taste, but it made Tommy happy so you lived in it together. You had woken up, actually feeling kind of good. The bruises and nicks on your face had slowly begun to heal and Dream hadn’t hit you in the past three days. You had a nice dinner last night, you and Tommy had found some chickens and made a small chicken farm a little ways away from the house so that way Dream couldn’t easily find it, but point is you had chicken for dinner… that’s what I was getting at… I’ll move on. So long story short, you were feeling good. The sun had risen and so Tommy and you were just kind of waiting for Dream to show up so you could get the daily blowing up over with. And like clockwork, he shows up, but for some reason he’s angry. For the past couple days he’d actually be pleasant to be around, greeting you asking you how you’ve been. But today was different. He slammed the door open and begins digging a hole in the middle of Logstedshire… That’s really weird. He was going to blow up the stuff inside the house? No way. But he points to the hole and you know he wants you to dump your items in. You move to the hole but don’t throw your stuff in, “Inside the house? Can we please go outside, I don’t want to ruin our hard work” wrong thing to say. A growl escapes Dream’s lips as he reaches forward and slaps you hard across the face, harder than he’s ever slapped you. It is enough to make you dizzy, but you don’t even have time to recover because his hand is in your hair, yanking it back forcing you to look at him. “You stupid bitch. You would think that after all this time, you would have learned by now… I mean you were doing so so well. But it just seems that you never learn your lesson… Guess I’ll have to teach you yet again.” And he pulls out his sword and points it at your stomach, ready to slice you again. Just as he’s about to harm you, the door swings open again and someone stumbles in. They lean against the doorframe with their hand grabbing the top of the frame. You can hear Tommy let out a gasp and you watch Dream’s eyes widen in fear. “So Dream,” an all too familiar voice calls, “What’s this about hurting Y/N and Tommy now?” And then you’re let go by Dream. You crash to the ground, fall flat on your ass, but you manage to scramble to a stand as you stare at the door frame in complete... Shock? Amazement? Fear? You can’t tell. You’re husband, Wilbur, is standing there in the flesh. Literally in the flesh. He’s alive again and you cannot believe it. “Wilbur” Dream stutters out, “You’re alive? How-” “That doesn’t matter, Dream. What matters is the fact that you’ve been hurting Y/N and Tommy… We can’t have that. So now what is going to happen is I’m going to take my family back to L’Manberg and you are never going to hurt them again,” Wilbur announces, moving ever so slightly further into the room. Seeming to have recovered just a bit from shock, Dream actually retorts, “Or what?”. Two more people enter the house and it causes Dream to blanch even further. “I think you know what… now run along.” Not wanting to risk it, Dream takes off running. 

Once you’re sure he’s gone, you allow yourself to speak. “Wilbur?” You whisper out, still not sure if this is real or if you’re dreaming. Wilbur’s attention shifts to you and he completely soften. “Hello,” he greets with a soft smile on his face, taking a few steps toward you, “Have you missed me?” Deciding you don’t care if he’s real or not, you rush forward and throw yourself into his arms. You, like Philza and Techno, almost cry at the feeling of your body’s connecting. He’s here. He’s real. And he’s alive. His arms wrap around you and hold you to him so tightly, you almost can’t breathe. But you don’t care. You’re hugging your husband. You’re actually hugging your husband. “I missed you so much, Wilby. I mean we had Ghostbur but it wasn’t the same. I missed you,” you mumble into his shoulders, the tears slowly falling out of your eyes. His hand comes up and slowly pets your head, in silent comfort and reassurance. 

After a few minutes you pull away slightly, “How are you-” You’re cut off by his lips pressing against your and you cannot help but melt. It has been months since his passing and this was just the absolute best feeling in the world. You kiss back with so much passion it makes your head spin, this time in a good way. It’s also probably the only time ever his brother’s didn’t fake vomit at the sight of you kissing. You only pull back to catch a breath, but right as you breathe in, Wilbur’s lips are back on yours. The process repeats a few times, before you manage to breathe out a “Will,” causing him to pull back, but leaving his forehead resting on yours and his lips just hovering above yours. “Yes my love,” he mumbles to you. “Can we go home please” you ask, not wanting to be here at Logstedshire any longer. He gives you a warn grin, leaning the inch forward and kissing you once more before giving his answer. “Of course my love. Let’s get out of here.” 

[kcatta-wodahs]

MC Who Does Not Fear Death x OM! Demon Brothers

Or maiming, or apparently any other consequences. You’ve walked into this situation with absolutely no filter and no fear. Time to tear down every structure of Devildom society.

Lucifer

You look at him with a withering stare when he tries to intimidate you into behaving.

“I was summoned out of my trashy apartment to this place, where literally anyone could snap me like a twig on accident. I’m just working on the assumption that I’m already dead.”

He sternly looks at you. “You’re under my protection during your time here. No harm will come to you.”

You snort derisively, which visibly irritates him. “Don’t worry about it. I won’t come back to haunt you if it happens.”

As you continue through your life in Devildom he keeps calling you out for meddling and all that, like usual, and he HATES that you literally *do not care* when he threatens you.

Like HE knows that he wouldn’t hurt Diavolo’s transfer student but YOU are supposed to be AFRAID of him dammit.

His frustration at this ends up turning into a form of respect. You’re about the only person who will stand up to him, and tbh like you’re so fucking fragile but you’ll yell at him all day? That takes guts. Annoying guts. But you’ve got guts.

But also STOP IT. He has enough stress in his life and now he’s constantly terrified that you’ve decided it’s a great idea to adopt a baby balrog

Which you did once. He’s just afraid that “Flamin Hot Cheeto” is going to come back since you somehow managed to imprint on it.

despite the fact that the BABY could easily tear your arms off on accident

Not to mention he gets the flack for EVERY SINGLE ONE of these following stories. You stress him out so much. Please. Please, stop. 

He’s almost to the point of begging. The Avatar of Pride is three steps away from either locking you away for the rest of the year or begging on his knees for you to calm down. 

 But you know you’d find a way out if he locked you up so no worries. It’ll be a good challenge.

Mammon

“Well you WON’T be dead because it’s my job to protect you! Are you doubting the Great Mammon?!”

Stupid human. Yeah, you’re fragile and weak, but that’s why HE’S your bodyguard now, and there’s no way in hell (lol) that he would let you die on his watch.

Lucifer would kill him.

You welcome the challenge, and he thinks it’s funny at first but quickly becomes a flustered mother hen.

“NO, we are NOT going out to Madam Scream’s at 3am! Do ya know what kinda CREEPS are out there at 3am?!”

And you sneak out the fucking window.

He has had more heart attacks in the past week than he has had in the last 100 years of life.

He starts agreeing to your ridiculous adventures JUST because then he can actually keep an eye on you. 

He adores the chaos of the laugh that bursts from you every time you narrowly escape death. 

He HATES how often you have to NARROWLY ESCAPE DEATH. So he will never tell you.

He almost doesn’t have time for his own shenanigans anymore, because all his time is taken up by trying to make sure you stay alive.

And you’ve figured out that if you turn *any* of your ideas into a money-making one, he will join you whole-heartedly.

So you bribe him because what’s money to you anymore anyway?

Leviathan

I mean he doesn’t leave his room much, so tbh he probably just gets texts from you that make him want to scream.

‘hey uh levi say if someone were to hypothetically be stuck in a succubus’ devil basement to become an unwilling sacrifice to asmo what would that person, hypothetically, do?’

‘probably die’ is usually all he sends back

You always come back, because he always sends a text to the other brothers. In that case Asmo came to rescue you himself and scold the succubus.

You become the friend that he makes funny throwing-shade reddit posts about. (Devvit? Devil reddit? Eh??)

‘Levi so this has nothing to do with anything but is there a cure for a dangerously potent ‘always win at rock-paper-scissors' curse? Asking for a friend’

‘Friend is being held hostage tho so maybe be quick about a response’

He didn’t even know that kind of curse existed. None of them did. What the fuck did you do.

How did you get taken captive by playing rock paper scissors?

He doesn’t know. Nobody does. He expects the play-by-play so he can recommend it as a new anime to his favorite producers. 

Somehow your chaotic plans end up with stories almost as great as TSL. 

Beelzebub

He physically carries you around.

He’s like “fuck this you can’t get into trouble if I’m holding you.”

If Beel’s on MC watching duty, he’s almost the only one who is successful, just because you physically cannot get away. 

But at the same time, he is very easily bribed. 

So yes, he’ll go to Madam Scream’s with you at 3am. Sounds like fun.

But he is very protective after losing someone he cares about (who you remind him of so much….) so he keeps you close when you’re out and about too.

If you start getting into a fight with some other demon he literally just takes the fight for you and wins with no trouble at all.

You like having Beel with you.

Especially finding street festivals! You’re in a whole new world and there’s a MILLION things to try. Beel is more than happy to try them with you.

But that leads to arguments about whether deadly creatures to humans are still deadly when dead. 

“No, you can’t eat that it’s on fire. I know even small fires hurt humans. I’ll eat it for you.”

“That hot sauce makes every demon I know cry. You really shouldn’t buy a bottle. Please. No, don’t try it. No, that’s too much for one-- oh. Oh no.”

He forgives you as long as you don’t actually get hurt and you give him your leftovers.

Asmodeus

“If I get wrinkles because of you I promise you will never hear the end of it. I will curse you forever.”

He swears on every single one of his lovers that you have started giving him grey hairs.

GREY HAIRS, MC.

Why can’t you just settle down and let them all take care of you? You don’t have to prove anything to the other demons!

But you will. You’re living in Devildom now, and by everything unholy, you are going to live that life to its fullest extent.

He was thrilled at first when you were all for joining him at his nightclubs and parties. Now he hides every party’s date from you.

That time you almost threw yourself off a balcony to try and emulate a very drunk demon’s newest dance move.

“I need to stay TRENDY, Asmo!! I’ll be fine!!”

Ever since learning Demonus doesn’t affect humans you have challenged every single stuck-up tough boy to a drinking contest.

And every single time you win, Asmo has had to *narrowly* save you from being killed by said demon.

And you just say “he deserved it” every time.

And like, yeah okay, he probably did but YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO DIE.

Somehow, you manage to out-party Asmo.

dON’T TELL THE OTHERS but he lives for the times when you practically fall asleep on his shoulder while coming home from a rager. You may not get drunk, but when you’re sleepy, you’re so affectionate and something in his heart melts.

Satan

At first, Satan was all for the rebellious “life life with no restraints” thought process you explained to him.

I mean, he didn’t like the assumption that he and his brothers couldn’t control themselves to not accidentally kill you, but also… fair.

But he didn’t realize that this mindset followed through for EVERY demon in ANY place.

Including RAD, where old and wizened demons were *really* not used to being contradicted

Which led to you “accidentally insulting” your 5000 year old Human Studies professor by giving them a pop quiz on current memes (which they failed).

And left Satan as the one who had to make sure that said professor didn’t kill you. 

And the thing is, this keeps happening.

You’ve written all over the school’s library books, pointing out every error.

You *continue* to argue with the demons who threaten to kill you when you say silly things like “No, Solomon did not learn his sorcery at Hogwarts because Hogwarts isn’t REAL.”

(Solomon, meanwhile, refutes you vehemently and seems to grow three inches taller every time you glare at him.)

Satan assures you that he values knowledge and truth and all that, but could you maybe find a less dangerous way to push it?

No can do, Satan, because you already had plans with Mammon to use a curse that writes the history of the actual Sorceric Academy that Solomon attended like 400 years all over the desks in Human Studies. It’s activated by anyone saying “Hogwarts”. 

No, no, Satan, it’s brilliant, because you can’t do magic. It can’t be you who did it.

Satan, no don’t tell Lucifer.

I thought you hated him. Satan, wait. 

You are the only person in the history of ever who convinces him to come to Lucifer for intervention. You wear that badge with pride and also deep, deep, bitter sadness. 

Belphegor

Like, through the plot your willingness to be a thorn in anyone’s side just to get more information really works for Belphie.

He’s like all I gotta do is ask? Sweet. Yeah. Go, human.

But then when he’s all big and threatening and “im gonna kill you” and you just kind of look at him and nod like “yeah, this checks out.” 

Frankly, that’s rude, MC. 

And then he keeps threatening to kill you and it doesn’t even PHASE you like. You just keep listening to him rant and going “OH i think i get it now”

He liked that you were always looking for more information when he was the one pushing you around, but now?

No. Human, he is going to KILL you here, STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.

And then you do the time-travel bit, and see that he *literally has killed you in one timeline* and you just like

Shrug it off and keep talking about Lilith???????

Tbh what probably stopped him from doing it again is just that you’re fucking insane, MC 

“MC, you literally just saw yourself dead in Mammon’s arms”

You wave your hand vaguely in his direction and say, “Yeah okay, but can we talk about the lack of communication in this household because it is tearing this family apart.”

What the fuck MC

When he’s back to normal, tbh he loves that side of you. He loves getting into shit when he’s not sleeping. He will 100% encourage you and be there to make sure that you *don’t* actually die again.

He’s the only one who doesn’t actually try to stop you. Who knew he was so into chaos.

But if you try to drag him to a plan when he should be sleeping he will be like Beel and literally just hold you down while he naps dammit. You brought this on yourself. He needs sleep.

[angelz-dust]

masters of none - part 4 (jason todd x reader)

summary: after many months, we are back in action and back in reader’s head. pls enjoy these jason crumbs. if you need a refresher on the plot, the other chapters will be linked below!

word count: 3.7k

warnings: food/eating. alcohol. cursing.

part 1 /// part 2 //// part 3

gravity

ever since i ever felt ya, right there life couldn't seem better. tulip flowers in my sweater. ask me now, is this forever?

…

you rested your chin on the table before you, your arms hanging limply between your knees as you listened to your manager, dana. you were really just watching her mouth open and close while she pointed at a powerpoint. god, what you would've given for an extra hour of sleep. the all nighters in the studio were starting to take a toll. 

the feeling of the back of daisy’s soft hands brought you back to earth. the smell of cocoa butter dancing beneath your nostrils as her smooth engagement ring rolled across your cheek. you breathed in her smell, exhaling in content through your nose.

“you good?” she mouthed and you closed your eyes, giving her a little nod. the bassist rubbed her calloused fingers against your forehead, pushing strands of your hair past your hairline. you pouted when she eventually pulled away, leaving you only with the sensation of touch that once was.

you heard tyler shift in his seat and then felt some air graze against your hand. you looked under the table, noticing he was holding something out to you. you two made eye contact briefly before you scooted back in, grabbing what felt like an envelope. looking down at your lap, you saw a sticky note attached to it. jason’s money was what it said. you carefully put the envelope in your jacket pocket, sitting back in your seat now and looking at dana’s powerpoint. she was going over reports from your publicist, jerry, which you didn't particularly care about.

“now, i have to ask,” dana’s words pierced your bubble of inattention. “have you all thought about what i said about this next album?”

jordy raised his hand like a school kid. “yes?”

“y/n and i decided that we'd be okay with making our album a group project. it has been, admittedly, kinda hard and boring without everyone else. we’d honestly be doing ourselves a disservice by not doing it together,” jordy explained, dana clapping her hands together.

“wonderful,” she nodded, keeping her hands clasped. “i know you two were excited to do your own thing, but i was talking to jerry and he was really pressing me to get a group album from you guys. the people wanna see you guys as a unit of established artists, which you all are. so what's the concept? we never discussed it.”

“uh,” you verbally paused, raising your arms above your head to stretch. “disco, jazz, and funk. it's a mix of those.”

“retro is in right now,” dana nodded, pacing around the room. “how far back will this set us on a release date?”

you grimaced, leaning back in your seat, the back of the seat lightly bouncing as it absorbed your weight. you pondered the question for a moment. “if it’s gonna be a group thing, it'll have to be significantly longer. we have a decent starting off point but i'm gonna need way more songs now.”

“what about the rest of you? any tracks that we could swing?” dana asked, looking at the rest of the group. 

grabbing a pen and piece of scrap paper, you started jotting down notes as everyone spoke out to you. dex and quinton didn’t have anything, but they wouldn’t be a problem. you just needed to give them a beat to rap over and you’d be set. the twins had a finished song already that fit the concept, which was good. with tyler’s voice and aly’s excellent song writing abilities, you doubted very seriously that anything else needed to be done to it. daisy and hector had plenty of lyricless songs, too. funk and soul was their specialty, after all. misha even had a demo track she was willing to share. 

you looked over the notes you had taken, tapping your pen on the table as you hummed to yourself. “this could probably work. we’ll need to go over everything in the studio, though.”

“we should just do it now. no one is doing shit else today, right?” dex asked the group, who all shook their head. 

“i have a request,” you raised your finger, looking at dana. “i want gotham to be involved in this project.”

“gotham…” dana repeated slowly, unsure of what you meant. “care to elaborate?”

“music videos directed by student directors from gotham university, commissioning local artists for album art. dancers, actors, musicians, whatever. all of them have to be from gotham. i don't want any of the money we put into this project leaving this city,” you stated firmly, dana giving you a blank look. 

“i like that idea,” hector said, giving you a kind smile before turning to dana, shifting in his seat. the drummer was like a big brother, always backing you up in moments like these. “accessibility to the arts is really limited here and we should change that.”

“i’d rather give back to the city, too,” quinton agreed, playing with the gold cross hanging from his neck. “we’re one of the only groups in gotham known outside of gotham. we should use that as an opportunity to rep our city.”

“it sounds like you have your minds made up on this,” dana narrowed her eyes, letting out a sigh. “it would definitely be good PR.”

“because god forbid we do something out of the kindness of our hearts,” misha laughed, rolling her eyes. “we're trying to put the city on and you're worried about how it makes us look.”

“that's my job, misha. don't you want me to do my job?” dana retorted. “besides, i'm more concerned with the funding. you all don't have disposable income, believe it or not.”

“but i know someone who does,” she said with a singsong tone, giving you a look.

“i hope you're not referring to me,” you deadpanned. your income was far from disposable.

“i’m referring to our good friend, bruce wayne,” she explained, grabbing a business card out of her purse, handing it over to dana. “ever since i got invited to that charity gala, i've had a direct line to a representative with the wayne foundation. i say we ask them to help fund the project.”

“now that could work,” dana admitted, eyeing the card as she tapped her foot. “if we pitch for more youth involvement, it'll probably go over better. we all know how much bruce wayne loves saving the children.”

you frowned at how dana described bruce’s initiatives as a philanthropist. you were sure his motivations for favoring youth projects were good intentioned, considering his parents had been killed when he was just a little boy. you wanted to go into this good intentioned, too and you hoped that they'd agree. they being the wayne foundation and subsequently, bruce himself.

“ty and quinton could do something with forrester. if we’re going for the youth involvement route, i mean,” aly spoke up. 

“forrester correctional. our old stomping grounds,” quinton sighed wistfully as he patted tyler on the shoulder. “i think that would be a good idea.”

“they use the arts as an outlet for them, so it could be beneficial for everyone,” tyler nodded. “there are a lot of good kids there. just unfortunate circumstances, that’s all.”

“wasn’t one of bruce’s son’s a troublemaker before he was adopted?” aly continued, not noticing the look you and tyler shared. “i’m sure he’d probably be interested in doing something with them if his son comes from the same background.”

“it’s settled, then. you all keep working on the music. jerry and i will handle the rest. we need this album out before hector and daisy’s wedding,” dana said, grabbing her suitcase. 

…

hey, i have your money. did you still want it?

you stared down at the unsent message, your thumb floating over the send arrow. you hadn’t spoken to jason since that night after the race, as per his request. your mind kept wandering back to it, even as time still went on. what happened was scary, to say the least. fun, but scary. you wondered how the hell jason didn’t get the two of you killed. that part, you didn't want to think about too hard. everyone in gotham had their secrets and it was an unspoken rule amongst citizens to not pry. secrets were secrets for a reason. nothing good ever came from unearthing them.

speaking of secrets, you hadn't exactly told tyler and quinton what happened that night. not in detail. you conveniently left out the chase and stopping to get something to eat. omitting the first part was obvious, but the second one was for your own sanity. you didn't need them teasing you over nothing. besides, all that mattered was no one was dead or arrested. and for the way the three of you used to get down, that was a win. 

you considered texting jason earlier this week, just to check in on him, but you decided against it. he obviously wanted you to text him and you obviously had to do the opposite. his little mind game wasn’t going to work on you. you pressed send, frowning immediately as you did so.

maybe it already had.

“it’s too many people in this bitch,” dex sighed, the cold of the water bottle you had asked him for against your hand bringing you back to reality. blinking, you were suddenly very aware of the chaos surrounding you in the studio as you put your phone back in your pocket. you looked to your left, where jordy was leaning against the wall and scrolling through his phone. to your right was aly, who was scribbling in her songbook in the chair next to you. you remembered you were supposed to be working, too. “we need a new stu.”

“i’m working on it!” hector hollered from inside the booth as he and daisy were setting up equipment and instruments. you glanced up at the glass in front when you heard his voice, accidentally catching the pair share a little kiss. you quickly averted your gaze, smiling to yourself.

“new stu, new view, what it do?” quinton began to freestyle to a beat he was making on the coffee table in front of him. “off 92, posted up with southside crew.” 

“okay,” dex laughed, noddinh his head as he was vibing with the beat, making his way out of your line of sight. you heard someone, presumably tyler, join in and add some depth to the beat. it sounded like he was hitting a pencil against a shot glass.

“i got a new boo, but i’m tryna slide with misha, too,” quinton continued, dex adlibbing in the back as quinton lowered his voice to his signature melodic whisper. “on the low, nobody gotta know.”

“would you shut the fuck up?” you heard misha say, followed by a barrage of muffled smacking noises and verbal objections from quinton, who you assumed was on the receiving end of what sounded like an assault by pillow.

laughing to yourself, you leaned your head in aly’s direction, not fully facing her. “pass me the flash drive?” you held your hand out weakly. once you felt the plastic in your palm, you leaned back over and put it into the computer, pulling up the proper files. 

“we’re done back here,” daisy smiled at you, she and hector coming out from the booth. 

you clapped your hands together. “wonderful. everybody shut up, please.”

you pulled up the twin’s song and let it play, your eyes fixed on the colorful audio loops on the screen. the green ones were tyler’s vocals, the purple were aly’s. it looked like blue was reserved for instruments and red was any added sound effects or layered sounds. 

“you two sound really great,” jordy walked up behind aly’s seat, leaning against it as he swayed his head to the beat. 

“thanks. i wrote it with our mother in mind,” aly said, the words coming out of her mouth uncomfortably. you placed your hand on hers and gave it a little squeeze, which earned you a look of appreciation.

“it's missing something, though,” tyler scratched the back of his head. “i need the producer squad to give us some assistance.”

“oh, say less,” dex laughed, snapping his fingers to the beat with one hand and holding his glass of hennessy in the other. he danced his way over, taking aly’s seat as she, tyler and jordy moved to give you all some space. 

misha sauntered her way over, sitting against the table and flipping her hair over her shoulder. the smell of her sweet perfume floated in the air around you. “i think it just needs some fluffing up. some snapping might work. more vocal layering in certain spots.”

“i agree,” you nodded, dex letting out a satisfied sigh as he took a sip of his cold drink. 

“is it good?” misha asked him teasingly and he took his final swig, letting out a more dramatic and drawn out sigh. this time, though, it was on beat with the song. you were pretty sure it was unintentional on his part, since he and misha just shared a laugh before returning their attention to the screen.

after a moment of pondering, you swiveled around in your chair, looking at tyler. “okay, hear me out…”

…

two weeks of very diligent working between the nine of you had given you a lot to work with for the album. all that was left was to start putting things together. you still had a ways to go, but you had a good starting off point. as much as you hated to admit it, it was a good call on dana’s part to have you all do a group album. the fans seemed to be greatly anticipating the release and the work ethic the nine of you shared was incredible. even in that cramped little studio, you all made it work.

you all agreed to take the day off, but you were still working at some capacity. you had just traded one small space for another, working in your walk-in closet/home studio for the day. you still needed said walk-in to function as a closet, so there were still garment bags pushed up into a corner and shoe boxes haphazardly stacked, surrounding your desk that you had shoved in there. there was just enough space for you to move your chair and safely get out without twisting an ankle, a fate you often flirted with in that room.

in the spirit of your day off, you hadn't done anything too difficult. you were just trying to decide what order you wanted the completed songs to go in. it may seem like an insignificant detail, but the order was important. the transitions between songs couldn't be jarring for the listener. everything had to flow together with natural progression. at this point, it didn't matter since you weren't done with the album, but it was just giving you an idea of how to fill the gaps with future songs. 

the sound of your growling stomach indicated that it was time to stop for the day. you quickly saved all your work and headed to the kitchen. you popped some leftovers in the microwave and scrolled on twitter while you waited. the microwave beeped at you, so you set your phone back down and grabbed the bowl, mixing up the contents with your fork. the flash of light coming from your phone got your attention. a text notification.

are you home?

oh, so now he wanted to respond? cute.

despite your annoyance with the situation, you quickly responded with a yes and set the phone back down. you leaned against the counter, eating what little food you had in your reheated bowl. you mixed the contents around with your fork, grumbling. stupid jason and his stupid inability to text back. he could have at least had the decency to leave you on read. he probably didn't even have read receipts on. you weren't sure which was worse. tossing your now empty bowl into the sink, you grabbed your phone to read his next message.

i’ll be over soon. 

soon was very vague and you wished that you would've demanded an exact time, but that opportunity had passed by the time you thought about it. you busied yourself with tidying up, trying to make your place look presentable. you even lit your new candle, which you found yourself focusing your attention on while you waited for him to show up. staring at the flame was much more entrancing than you anticipated.

you heard the door buzzer go off. you weren't expecting anyone else, so it had to be him. you leaned against the wall, pressing your finger to the button.

“who goes there?” you presented the question as a joke, but your tone was a little flat.

“it’s the irs,” jason’s voice came through and you buzzed him in. 

not too long after, you heard him knock on the door. you cracked it open and the first thing you noticed was his cologne. it was a strong but pleasant scent. spicy and sweet. it was very intoxicating, actually. so much so that you almost forgot you were angry at him.

“hi.”

“hello.”

you opened the door fully and handed the envelope to him. jason eyed it suspiciously. he opened it up and began to count it out in front of you. he made an effort to do it very slow, the sound of the crisp dollars echoing in the quiet hall. his eyes stayed glued to yours as he counted out loud. you leaned against the doorframe as you watched.

“six… seven… eight,” he said, pulling out his wallet and stuffing it with the cash. “thought you would've skimmed some off the top.”

“i should have with how long you made me wait,” you said matter of factly, letting your annoyance be known now. 

“i know. i’m sorry,” he sounded honest but you couldn't see it in his face or in his eyes, which was worrisome. it was a nice alternative to listening to a sputter of excuses, though. “let me make it up to you?”

“how do you plan on doing that?”

“i’m so glad you asked,” he smiled. “as it turns out, i've recently come into some money. let me spend it on you?”

“so you like throwing money at your problems?” you asked him. well, you weren't really asking. it was more like you were telling him. 

“no,” he said, sounding a little offended. “i just thought-”

“you just thought that throwing money at me would make me forget about the fact that you ignored me for a month.”

“no, no,” he shook his head, sighing in frustration. “listen, i-”

“i really don't wanna hear it,” you said honestly, watching as his frustrated look turned into kicked puppy. you almost felt bad. “i don't like feeling stupid, jason. that's how i feel right now. i want you to make it up to me but you'll have to be a bit more creative than this.”

“you want me to make it up to you?” jason had repeated, confusion on his face. 

you poked him harshly in the chest. “you do that or you leave me alone. those are your options. goodbye.”

you shut the door in his face and let out the breath you were holding in. you weren’t sure how jason was going to react to your little ultimatum, but those were your terms. you liked him but you weren’t going to stress over someone you barely knew, especially with your assumptions about him floating around in your head. 

“i’ll be right back,” you heard him say through the door, catching you off guard. 

“what?”

“don’t go anywhere.”

you didn’t respond but you heard his footsteps getting quieter as he walked down the hall. the elevator ding indicated that he had left. you stood there, confused as to what it was he was trying to do. you were still stewing in your negative emotions, so you went and busied yourself again. you decided the dishes needed washing and got on it right away. in the middle of scrubbing the stubborn sauce stains out of your plate, you heard your door buzzer go off again. 

so he did come back after all. interesting.

you buzzed him in like you did before and waited by the door for him. he knocked and when you opened it, you were met with two gifts: a bouquet of pink tulips and a small box of something from the bakery around the corner. 

“i shouldn’t have ignored you. it was rude and stupid and i’m sorry. it won’t happen again,” he said to you, holding out the items to you. you hesitantly accepted them, taking the opportunity to look through the plastic opening of the box to see chocolate covered strawberries. 

“it better not happen again,” you pouted, looking up at him. you had to appreciate the effort he put in at such short notice. it was a sweet gesture and he actually looked sorry this time. 

“it won’t,” he assured you and you smiled.

“i forgive you. but you’re on thin fucking ice,” you reminded him and he grinned at you with a nod.

“i’m going to make it up to you. just you wait,” he said confidently. “not all of us are naturally creative like you, though. you gotta give me some time to think of something else.”

“seems like you’re getting your feet wet with the flower selection,” you noted, taking a whiff of the delicate and fresh scent. they’d look nice on your coffee table.

“lady at the shop said they would convey my sincerest apologies,” he explained, a hopeful look in his eyes. “did it work?”

“for now,” you shrugged, setting the items down on the table next to the door. 

“i can accept that.”

“you’re gonna have to because that’s all i’m giving you,” you said firmly. his charm wasn’t going to get him out of this one. not completely. “now go away. i want to eat my berries in peace.”

“i’ll text you as soon as i get the chance,” he told you as you were shutting the door. you peered at him, narrowing your eyes before shutting it again. “i’m serious!”

“goodbye, jason!” you said through the door. you heard his faint farewell as you walked away, plopping on the couch with your dessert in hand.

were you still a little mad at him? yes. but you weren’t going to pass up free stuff, even if you had made all that fuss about the money earlier. at least the gifts had some thought behind them. so long as he held up his end of the deal, you had a feeling being friends with jason wouldn’t be that bad.

hopefully, anyway.

[radiantmists]

pjo + rqg?

(send me two+ fandoms and I’ll give you some thoughts about a crossover!)

Okay, juicy! I ended up spending way longer on this than 10 minutes but I had fun...

The obvious point of meeting is the greek gods being real in both settings, but the challenge with using that approach is that the gods in PJO function as actual characters, albeit powerful ones, whereas in RQG they're very removed forces of nature. They don't have specific interests for which they give quests; they have a sort of general value set and as long as you live by that, you have their favor. And compare the glimpse of Hades we get in RQG Rome with the portrayal of him in PJO-- very different, yeah?

(at this point i got distracted by something and when i came back i didn’t remember where the above was going, so i’m just gonna leave it there to contemplate)

But! I’m now thinking about the rqg cast as demigods, and specifically the fact that Zolf is like, older, which is established in PJO as an unusual thing for demigods and especially kids of the big three. And like, his brother died in a mining accident, so maybe that was Hades or some other god trying to kill him and getting Feryn instead. And so Zolf goes to sea where he’s not constantly harassed by Hades like he would be in a mine, and miraculously survives a shipwreck (or two?), probably thanks to his powers, and maybe one of those wrecks is partially caused by a monster that’s attracted to his demigod-ness so he’s got some more self-blame attached to that, but he’s also  got this weird relationship with Poseidon where he doesn’t want to be ungrateful for his own life being saved and his powers, but he also resents him for all the suffering that’s happened  around him because of his heritage, and that Poseidon hadn’t shielded his family and friends at all.

So he comes on shore after his last shipwreck, having lost the leg to whatever monster there is, and he decides that now that he’s got no one he’s really attached to, he’s going to just fight some monsters. And one day he comes upon some girl getting attacked, and wades in.

Sasha  in this scenario would be a child of Hermes, which I especially like because iirc children of Hermes get basically no powers, they just tend to be sneaky and have the base demigod build. She never knew her mortal parent, and instead got picked up by Barrett, who’s most likely a mortal who can see through the Mist and keeps some monsters on the payroll as well as some demigods to keep them in line. he doesn’t tell her a lot about the grander system, just makes use of her abilities. At some point she’d encountered Eldarion, who’s some kind of minor immortal, maybe a dryad or something, who plays the role of Chiron but... worse. 

Sasha gets away, but out of Eldarion’s protection the monsters who work for Barrett track her down, and this is when she meets Zolf. She’s a bit leery of him at first because the other fully-adult demigods she’s met have all worked for Barret and made questionable compromises of morality in  order to stay alive, but she’s  starting to realize that she genuinely can’t make it on her own, so she agrees to travel with him when he asks. For his part, Zolf is like gdi I can’t believe I’m getting attached to someone again, this always ends badly, but he can hardly leave her to fend for herself either, right?

Within a fairly short window of meeting each other, maybe the same encounter actually, they come across Hamid, who has no idea about any of this myth stuff. Neither of them can figure out who his godly parent is bc he manifests some accidental fire powers, but he really doesn’t seem like any child of Hephaestus they’ve met. Zolf also really can’t leave this one to fend for himself because he has no freaking clue what’s going on and is horrified by killing monsters. He’s not sure how Hamid survived this long by himself.

So they go off together and eventually encounter Wilde, who’s mortal but the Oracle of Apollo. The idea of prophecies and fate has always vaguely infuriated Zolf, plus Wilde is still Wilde, so they don’t get off on a good note, but you also can’t ignore prophecies, so when he says he’s been  guided to them and then goes all funny and vomits a poem that, when recited back to him, he scoffs at the quality of, they don’t much have a choice.

The prophecy probably involves them foiling some plot by a child of Hades, which is maybe why Hades has been so aggressive toward Zolf in the past; along the way they discover that Hamid is actually the child of a monster, specifically a dragon, which iirc is a thing in actual greek myth even if i can’t remember it coming up in PJO. (this is how he’s survived so long; monsters aren’t drawn to him bc he’s not a demigod). 

hamid, i think, figures this out a bit before the rest of the group, and is very freaked out by how his friends will react to it so he keeps it secret. the secret gets blown wide open soon after they meet grizzop, who joined the hunters of artemis bc she’s cool and because immortality and is now off away from the others, tracking some monster involved in the main plot. i think when they reconvene with the hunters, one of them recognizes what hamid is, and then there’s a whole drama where the others have to deal with the revelation while also preventing him from being killed.

wilde manages to be pretty useful despite being mortal and they all get attached to their squishy poet friend, especially when the fact that he never quite asked to be an Oracle and the way it messes with him becomes clear to them.

azu is a child of aphrodite and probably comes from a place where there is a more camp half-blood claiming, group training structure, but she’s definitely the black sheep of the aphrodite group because while love is important to her, she’s really interested in fighting. when whatever oracle they have tells them an aphrodite person has to go on a quest she’s pretty universally nominated, not that she has a problem with that.

cel is a sorceror person along the lines of medea or circe but less evil; i’m not sure where exactly they fit into the plot though. ed is also definitely a child of Apollo in this, and the things with dyslexia and adhd from PJO canon definitely come into play in his backstory as the black sheep of his own family.

zolf and,  to a lesser extent, sasha, tend to come into conflict with grizzop and azu who buy into the whole ‘greatness of gods’ and ‘fate’ stuff a lot more. azu starts to get somewhat disillusioned of all this as the quest goes on and she sees what being a hero actually means. zolf gets into a lot of shouting matches with poseidon, though i think in this universe it would be reparable bc poseidon is a bit more like PJO poseidon who isn’t perfect but is less of a remote dickhead.

i don’t exactly know how things resolve immediately, but an epilogue would definitely be sasha establishing a sort of school/home/camp for demigods that doesn’t push them into roles the way the ones azu and she knew tended to do, and focuses more on giving them a safe place and enough fighting skill to survive, as well as a community who understand, the way zolf helped her. 

[ladyloveandjustice]

Belated Spring 2020 Anime Overview: My Next Life as Villainess

For the Spring 2020 anime season, I mostly watched continuations of shows I was already into. The one new show I did pick up was My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! follows Katerina Claes, a spoiled young noble girl deviously scheming to win the heart of a prince- oh wait, never mind, she hit her head and remembered her past life! Turns out she’s an eighteen year old Japanese otaku chick who died and got reincarnated as the villainess in her favorite otome game. 

If you don’t feel like reading the wiki article, an otome game is basically a female- targeted dating sim where you play as a blank slate main character and date a bunch of pretty boys (and sometimes girls, but usually only if you go outside the mainstream ones), unlocking their backstories and collecting all the romantic endings.

Having played this game, Katarina is well aware that the Villainess character- who constantly tries to interfere with the game’s heroine and whichever boy she’s pursuing- is either exiled or killed in all of the games endings. And now she IS that villainess, living in the world of the game and all its characters! Does that mean she’s doomed to a horrible fate? What’s a girl to do?

Well, if you’re Katarina, what you do is be supportive and kind to the people around you and in doing so accidentally get every single character in the game to fall in love with you. And yes, this includes all the boys the heroine is supposed to date, the other female romantic rivals the heroine is faced with and the game’s heroine herself.

That’s right, we finally got us some bisexual romantic comedy hijinx last anime season, my friends! My Next Life as a Villainess was the delightful little show I really escaped into during these anxious pandemic times . All these girls casually falling in love with Katarina without it being treated as ‘weird’ was what particularly drew me to this show and warmed my gay little heart to see. It was honestly the perfect fluffy, low stress watch during these high stress times.

Anime has long been oversaturated with ‘harem’ stories- where a usually unwitting protagonist somehow gets a bevy of beauties in love with them- but it’s still unfortunately really unusual to see bisexual harems, especially ones with a girl at the center, so right away there’s a big draw to this story that helps it stick out from the rest.  (And worry not, the story is largely focused on Katarina having fun with these pals-who-are-not-so-secretly-in-love-with-her, rather than having a ton the dubious shenanigans you see in more sexually charged tales.)

Harem protoganists also famously tend to have the personality of potatoes, being so painfully bland it’s unclear why so many people would fall in love with them in the first place. But that definitely not the case for Katarina. She’s brash, ridiculous, kind and INCREDIBLY dense, and that for a pretty dynamic combination in this setting! She does genuinely come off as a fun person to be around. Unlike a lot of modern isekai shows, she doesn’t stumble into having incredible magic powers or skills, so her compassion is genuinely her greatest strength and what saves the day and wins hearts time and time again.

Katarina’s five brain cells doing their weekly check-in

(The moment she won my heart was when she responded to a tragic Frozen style situation with her friend locking himself away from people because he believed his magic was dangerous by taking an axe to his door. My kinda girl!)

The premise also allows for some plausible built-in reasons for the characters to take such special notice of Katarina- having been raised in a different world, she isn’t beholden to all the social rules, class divisions and noble family drama all the other kids in this very specific midevial-esque fantasy world are so embroiled in. This combined with her naturally earnest, accepting and straightfoward nature means she’s able to cross boundaries and reach out to them in a way they aren’t accustomed to. She was significant in each character’s life because she genuinely was the first to show them acceptance and affection without pretense, if only because she isn’t even aware there was supposed to be a pretense.

Katarina’s focus on trying not to die and her fear she’s going to meet the same fate as the villainess in the game also at least gives some kind of a basis to her comical obliviousness to everyone being in love with her. She assumes that everyone has to be into Maria (the heroine) and terrified of her because that’s how the game GOES okay, that’s CANON! Of course, this logic stretches thin as time goes on and it would be abundantly clear to most people that things have diverged greatly from the game’s storyline, but the show makes it clear that Katarina’s determined, one track mind is as much a gift as a curse. 

Her bullheadedness when it comes to picking up how everyone REALLY feels about her is an intentional gag on the show’s part and even her love interests are well aware of what a colossal dumbass she is and not afraid to point it out!

My Next Life as a Villainess isn’t without its flaws, and the personalities/backstories of some of the ‘love interests’ Katarina gathers may be a stumbling block on some- mostly the male ones.  Geordo, “the black hearted prince” has a bit of the “ possessive shoujo bad boy” archetype about him, and though he’s far from the worst that genre of love interest has to offer (there’s not much bad he can get up to due to Katarina’s obliviousness, the lighthearted nature of the show, and his rivals constantly getting in his way), the way he refuses to break Katarina and his engagement off despite her repeatedly asking him to, as well as some of his lines here and there, are definitely NOT cute. 

Keith is Katarina’s adopted brother, but clearly has a thing for her too. On one hand, they only first met when they were nine and he fell for her pretty immediately. On the other hand, he still refers to her as “sister” constantly which is kinda eesh. 

The other two guys are all right- Nicol’s big thing is he’s inexpressive and doesn’t talk much which, considering show doesn’t spend much time inside his head, doesn’t make him a very interesting character in the ensemble (maybe he comes across better in the novels) but there’s nothing wrong with him. Alan is undoubtedly the Best Boy in my book. He’s another common trope- rambunctious and competitive with Katarina but clearly soft for her- but he’s done well and they have a lot of cute moments together.

I find the girl love interests to be a much more interesting group overall, though this may be my obvious bias talking. Sophia has the strongest connection to Katarina, their backstories being intertwined in a surprising and touching way (I’m told in the novels her affection for Katarina was treated as more platonic, but the anime definitely plays it up as having romantic elements). Maria’s original role as the game’s heroine puts her in the most interesting position (and would make her the most narratively satisfying choice of love interest, if the show was actually interested in choosing). And while Mary is comically tenacious in her pursuit of Katarina, she’s doesn’t ever act ‘sinister’ or overstep boundaries in the way Geordo does, her “scheming” only really amounting to straightforwardly asking if Katarina wants to ditch her fiance and run away with her. 

As I mentioned, one thing that really contributes to My Next Life as a Villainess being a relaxing watch is that the queer characters are treated with casual acceptance. Mary in particular isn’t subtle about her crush on Katarina, but nobody bats an eye at her and she’s completely open and comfortable with herself too. The observing maid notes that the girls are in love with Katarina with the same bland affect as when she notes she notes the guys are. And while the social practices of the nobles are pretty heteronormative- girls are always engaged in arranged marriages to guys, the guys are expected to dance with the girls (something Mary complains about!)- there’s apparently a booming queer romance novel industry that inspires our young wlw.

Katarina, having grown up in a different world, seems to be the one most prone to heteronormativity of her group. She never really considers  that a girl would ever fall in love with her, but is also never hostile to the idea. It’s telling that when Mary very clearly indicates her desired romantic partner would be a girl, Katarina’s the only one that gets tripped up and has to walk back her assumption that Mary would be talking about a guy. 

Mary LAYING DOWN THE LAW

Also, Katarina has  SEVERAL “she’s so cute! My heart is beating faster!” moments with the other girls, on par in frequency with her moments with the guys. This strongly hints she’s an oblivious bisexual disaster.

So, My Next Life as Villainess is a fun, frothy watch and the rare positive example of silly wish-fufillment that’s inclusive to a wlw audience. But is the actual plot good, or remotely complex? The answer to that is no, the plot is fairly predictable and one definitely shouldn’t got into this story expecting a deep examination of the nature of fate or anything like that.There’s no real explanation of big reason as to why why Katarina was reborn into this game world and so on.

 The antagonist that does eventually emerge plays off otome game tropes a bit, but ultimately isn’t that interesting or built up all that well. . The attempts at drama the show makes towards the end fall a little flat, especially since it tends to rely on very-late-in-the-game-exposition-dumps (dark magic isn’t even MENTIONED as existing in this world until like, the second to last episode where it becomes relevant and we get a vague infodump explaining its mechanics). The conflict honestly almost feels shoehorned in and the climax is pretty standard and doesn’t really utilize the big cast of characters all that well

But in the end, that’s okay! The show makes it abundantly clear from the beginning it’s not here to be Deep, but to be some silly fun. And it really fulfills that purpose well, from it’s catchy, peppy theme tune to its consistently warm tone. It MAY get repetitive at times for some, and I do have some quibbles- like how I found the childhood segments to be some of the shows best material and wish we could have stayed in that section for a bit instead of rushing through it, how I wish Katarina had kept her cute little scar, etc- but overall, it was definitely the soothing balm I needed during a very rough time and I absolutely recommend it if you’re looking for a chill, feel-good watch.

 And hey, a second season’s supposed to be on the way too, so there’s something to potentially look forward to!

[jakey-beefed-it]

God, I need to expand on this because it was SO FUCKING COOL.

So I mentioned that Altanin died yesterday as part of a puzzle to gain access to a tomb... but that really doesn’t do any of it justice.

Quick background: Altanin is a tiefling, he was raised by human steppe nomads but never really regarded as one of them save by for his few friends and his adoptive mom. Eventually he accidentally killed his fiancee’s asshole brother (barbarian rage is a thing) in what should’ve been just a brawl, and was exiled.

Come to find out somewhat recently that the real reason he was exiled is that all the clan shamans had been having prophetic visions that a figure with horns and eyes like burning coals (which very much describes my tiefling lad) would bring ruin to their people. Some wanted to exile him right then and there, others thought it would be better to kill him, but the majority were like ‘Altanin? Kehuja’s boy? He’s big but he’s not dangerous to US, he’s a good kid.’ 

Until of course Altanin killed a man *by accident* just by dint of how fucking strong he is, at which point they kinda reconvened and were like ‘Ok yeah he’s dangerous to us whether he means to be or not, destiny is not to be fucked with, should probably kill him’ but Altanin’s mom, who is one of said shamans, convinced them to settle for exile. 

Anyhow so we’re trying to get into the tomb of the legendary khagan who united the nomads ages and ages ago, because there’s something there that the bad guys who have invaded the steppes want and we’re determined to get it first or otherwise ensure they can’t get it, as that would likely be really bad. And there’s this full on transitional gateway that leads to... the spirit world, as far as Altanin’s concerned- a representation of the top of the holy mountain in the middle of the steppes, with carved megaliths representing the aspects of the Stormfather, the sky god who makes up half of their sort of national pantheon (the other being Earthmother). On the one side of the summit is the gateway we came through, showing the inside of the tomb. On the other side of the summit is another stone gateway, but empty. In the middle were the bad guys’ elite soldiers who were trying to puzzle out how to open the other gate.

There was a huge fight (where Altanin literally grabbed an enemy tiefling by the horns and yeeted him off the top of the mountain), and after we won, and dealt with a malevolent ghost possessing our rogue, Altanin went around to the megaliths and did the gestures or whatever they required to ‘activate’ them. In the process he took a fuckton of damage and a level of exhaustion, and had to cast aside all his gear before coming to the final pillar. The carvings indicated that the thing to do in order to proceed... was to die, as every storm must.

Now, Altanin isn’t fearless as such, just perfectly willing to fight and die for strangers, much less his own people. But he is a bit conflicted- his people are the ones who cast him out, after all. Other people elsewhere in the world- particularly orks generally and the mostly human city where he settled for a while -think  very well of him and welcome him and even love him. He’d die for any of them without hesitation. But that’s not what’s being asked of him. So here he is, on an echo of the holy mountain of his people, and to go forward and unlock the tomb of their legendary hero-founder, he has to die for them.

Altanin looks back at his friends one last time, and gives them a sad, slightly wry smile. He then channels all the energy he’d gathered from the other megaliths into his fist and punches himself square in the face. A lightning blast the size of which no one in the party has ever seen flashes down, and he drops dead.

Altanin, now basically a ghost, sees that the other door is open after all (to him anyhow, now that he’s dead). While his friends try frantically and unsuccessfully to raise him, he proceeds into the final chambers of the tomb.

There he finds it guarded by countless mummies... of tieflings. Who proceed to tell him that the legendary khagan... was an evil sorcerer who manipulated the steppe nomads into serving him to escape the fate of the other evil sorcerers to the east (who were killed in a huge epic war with most of the rest of the world like several thousand years ago). And these tiefling mummies are there to guard his remains, and ensure that they can never again be free from his sarcophagus prison. They were the first of the steppe nomads, these tieflings, Altanin’s ancestors. They were the ones who served the khagan the most loyally, and so it is their duty to ensure he never returns. Over time, the legends changed such that the khagan himself was remembered heroically but the tieflings were cast as accursed, leading to Altanin’s less than warm welcome among most of the nomads apart from the ones who knew him well. 

So he realizes that he really is one of them, one of the nomads, not just by the way he was raised by also by ancestry... but to learn the truth of things would break the spirit of his people, even if they believed him. And so he must keep this secret from all but his companions- both that the khagan was a wicked tyrant, and also that he, Altanin, is truly one of the people by blood and bond both. The best news of his life... but he can’t really share it with the people who would treat him differently if they knew.

The guardian mummies guided him to four legendary (and, they warned, cursed) treasures that had been buried with the khagan. Well, three- one of them had already been removed ages ago and found its way to Altanin’s hand previously- this is Ravener; his magic longsword forged by Stormfather. They led him to see the sarcophagus of the khagan, where Altanin agreed he must remain for eternity and promised the guardians he would keep the details secret to protect the resting place. Walking out the door he was returned to bodily form (his corpse vanishing in another flash of lightning), passed out the rest of the loot to the party.

Anyhow it was a Big Dramatic session that was kind of the culmination of a whole lot of good emotional plot stuff for my boy, and I am SUPER PUMPED to keep goin’ with Altanin.

[tanoraqui]

I have no idea what critical role is but you reblog it a lot. Is it just a bunch of people playing video games or something?

Critical Role is an ongoing RPG game (D&D 5e) played by a bunch of notable voice actors from video games, including Ashely Johnson (The Last of Us), Liam O’Brien (idk, he voiced some guy named Illidan somewhere? I know very little about video games), and Laura Bailey (she’s Laura goddamn Bailey). The Dungeon Master is Matthew Mercer (blanking - Overwatch cowboy) who’s REALLY GODDAMN GOOD at being a DM, and indeed does it as part of his full-time job now, because at some point they all went “fuck it” and incorporated as their own company. Because fuck yeah. Last spring (my god it was only last spring) they did a kickstarter to fund an animated series of some previous RPG adventures, and it broke several records and now - slowed by the global pandemic - there’s gonna be 2 seasons of an animated show, hosted by Amazon I think? (Every time I think about that I scream softly in excitement in my mind.)

It’s currently on its second big, multi-year campaign, with the adventuring party The Mighty Nein. Their previous campaign starred Vox Machina. Some highlights, arbitrarily mixed together, include:

that time Vox Machina had a cannonball contest, displaying their distinct personalities and powersets really well, actually

that time the Mighty Nein accidentally got into a fight with some smugglers and then the city guard, accidentally stole a ship, and thus, and I cannot emphasize this enough, accidentally became pirates

“Take me instead, you raven bitch.”  - Vax’ildan of Vox Machina, half-elven rogue, offering his own life to the goddess of death in exchange for his sister’s and (unbeknownst to him at the time) beginning of long character arc of multiclassing as a paladin

Vox Machina’s archnemeses: doors, and also the elderly

the Mighty Nein’s archnemeses: chairs

Veth Brenatto, sometimes Nott the Brave, of the Mighty Nein regaining - with the help of her friends - her halfling form after years as a goblin, and immediately dip-kissing her husband and kicking all aforementioned friends (and her son) out so they can have sex

Taliesin Jaffe had eerie luck with nat20s in the Vox Machina campaign, but I maintain that Laura Bailey [harp music] actually has the best record for narratively on-point nat20s, including but not limited to:

two consecutive nat20s as Vex’ahlia of Vox Machina, half-elven ranger, to shoot the Briarwoods (sexy wizard/vampire couple) when they were about to kill her brother

True Love’s Nat20, rolling as part of the resurrection ritual to bring back Percy (Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, human gunslinger of VM)

in the culminating moment of an episode in which the M9 one by one spoke with ancient, evil hag about what they might trade her in order to lift the curse on Nott, tiefling Jester Lavorre rolling at nat20 deception check to trick the into hag eating a cupcake laced with magic dust that lowered her ability to resist the Modify Memory curse Jester immediately cast, convincing the hag that she’d already agreed to the deal without demanding anything in return

not a Vex roll but Vex-enabled: dropping Grog (goliath barbarian) out of basically a magical pokeball with perfect dramatic timing for him to roll a nat20 final blow on his evil abusive uncle, cleaving him in twain

“Call me child one more goddamn time--”  - Keyleth of the Air Ashari, half-elven druid of VM, snarling at the ancient green dragon who’d orchestrated the destruction of 1/4 of Keyleth’s people

“You were not born with poison in your veins....Welcome to the Mighty Nein.”  - Caleb Widogast, human wizard, consoling/forgiving/welcoming aa lawful evil NPC who they’d caught playing a major part in creating a war between two empires for The Greater Ultimate Good (and kinda his own personal gain)...but he was their friend already at that point and Caleb had his own history with doing terrible things that he thought were right at the time, and actually someone else might’ve said the “Welcome to the Mighty Nein” part but that’s intrinsically part of it, and it’s...something they say to a lot of people; to a range of NPCs and guest characters. Which is interesting because Vox Machina DIDN’T; they were a tighter family unit but...well, they were a tighter family unit. And kinda...better people, more Heroes(TM)? Disastrous and often very fucked up inside and sometimes out, but Heroes(TM), on the whole. 

whereas the M9 are more trying to sort out their own personal problems, and stumble into international politics almost by mistake. Even their relationships with NPCs are different - they don’t trust, none of the M9 trust in a way VM did, the party took much longer to gel just with each other. Partly, admittedly, because by the time Vox Machina came to the YouTube screen, the cast had been playing at home for about a year, whereas we’ve been watching the M9 from level 1...but even accounting for that, they’re all much less trusting people. Most of them had big secrets in their backstory

which is why it’s all the more wonderful every time they invite someone new it, either outside the group or just with each other. And it pays off - I don’t have a whole meta, but I’ve been thinking idly for a while about how kinda...the big (DM-created) plot twists in the VM campaign were generally...disruptions, dissolutions, or betrayals? The deception of Raishan (aforementioned ancient green dragon.) Hotis’s assassination attempt on Vax, while disguised as a trusted NPC. When Emperor Uriel stepped down and before he’d even finished his speech, there was a sudden invasion of 4 goddamn ancient dragons. Whereas the M9...not only have no NPCs unexpectedly turned on them (the grievous actions of aforementioned lawful evil NPC were mostly pre-story), but it feels almost like a plot twist every time an NPC in authority is benevolent? Like, they arranged peace negotiations between the warring empires and I think every single fan and player was waiting with bated breath for it to all go wrong...and it didn’t. There’s a truce, now. Will it last? Who knows. Jester’s god turned out to not be a god at all, just an archfey in over his head, but he’s not trying to hurt anyone - he came clean and asked for help.

Idk, man. Critical Role streams on Twitch every Thursday at 7pm, or at least, it’ll keep doing so if public health concerns don’t make it take a break again, and it makes me unironically happy to watch, pretty much every time. The cast has great friend chemistry and, now that they’ve all warmed up to each other, so do the characters.

Episodes DO tend to be 3-4 hours long, shaving off maybe half an hour in the podcast versions, so be aware of that. But I just kind of set Thursday evenings aside and I love it. 

it’s funny bc I told my roommate I probably wasn’t going to go on a long emphatic ramble in response to this but Here We Are

[otterplusharchive]

rey! do you have any recs for kdramas? i have never watched any, but i like lovable characters and romance ? thank you in advance!

I DO IN FACT HAVE DRAMA RECS HII not all of these will be kdramas, but ill start with the kdramas ive watched and enjoyed and ill include all the warnings for them that i can remember off the top of my head and a brief synopsis for u!

kdramas-

1. weight lifting fairy kim bok joo

this was probably one of the first kdramas i saw people post about in like 2015 and i watched a little bit of it in 2016 but then only just got around to finishing it last year. the basic gist of it is its about a young sports college weight lifter, kim bok joo, centering around her navigating through her life and trying to figure out who she is and what she wants in life and what she wants to be. her romantic interest in the show is a swimmer and they have a sort of rivals to friends to lovers, he is SO in love with her and its adorable. i absolutely loved the side characters in this show theyre all so fun and kim bok joos best friends and weight lifting team are especially delightful. my main warning would be that this show addresses eating disorders and theres a lot of mention of both weight gain and weight loss, theres also a plot point early on where kim bok joo has a crush on her eventual love interests older brother but it gets resolved and the older brother literally goes "i didnt realize you had a crush on me and if i knew that i wouldnt have been so friendly with you, it would be completely innapropriate for us to be in a relationship". overall its a really sweet and emotional fun show but if you have issues with weight talk id skip this one

2. tale of the nine tailed

this one is really recent from last year and i didnt expect to be so hooked by it but boy howdy did i get attached to all the characters and the wild plot. it feels hard to explain the plot but basically a nine tailed fox named lee yeon is living in modern day seoul and is working for the underworld finding paranormal spirits/creatures/other rogue foxes that are causing havoc on the world, hes resigned himself to living this life while waiting for his girlfriend who died tragically 600 years ago to come back to life because he traded his status as a mountain god in order to ensure that her soul would one day be reincarnated. a plucky investigative journalist named nam ji ah figures out that hes not human and shenanagins ensue because she looks exactly like his dead girlfriend oooooo whatll happen. the plot beyond that gets really wild and its hard to explain and is easier to just watch. if u enjoy paranormal adventures this one is good. my one big complaint and issue with this is that the immortal mountain spirit meets his original girlfriend when shes a child and she continues to visit him off and on as she grows up which is Hm I Dont Like That! but thankfully the present time romance our female lead meets him when shes about 30 if im remembering right. also warnings for general fantasy violence, references to child abuse, animal death, and abandonment issues

3. extraordinary you

HUGE unreality warning for this. if you have issues with feeling unreal or have paranoia/delusions about not being a real person id avoid this one just because of its premise

ok i know i said tale of the nine tailed was a hard plot to explain but BOY extraordinary you is even HARDER to explain. because its so wild but so good. its about a girl who realizes that she is literally a side character in a comic book, and the story becomes her trying to change the story to save her character from dying but it becomes a lot more than that. the romance in this is literally tooth achingly sweet and the show itself is very pretty, i loved the side characters in this one and the show was engaging and interesting to watch it became really layered and meta. super reccomend this one honestly. my main issues/warnings that i can remember off the top of my head were just one character being the classic controlling boyfriend stereotype, bullying someone specifically for being poor, unreality like i mentioned before, and then at the very end there was this love interest for a side character who got reincarnated from a past piece of writing that they had been in and put in the comic but she was a student and he was the school cook which is weird but thankfully they like barely interact at all and theres no real romance he just like recognizes her and its barely a thing at the end of the show but its still weird

4. mystic pop up bar

big warning for suicide, sexual harrasment (which is framed as being bad and the guy whos harrassing the girl literally gets thrown off a roof)

i havent finished this one yet and thats mainly because im not emotionally ready because this one makes me soooo emotional. if you like found family this is a good one. its about a pop up bar run by a woman whos been tasked with solving the problems of a certain amount of people in order to atone for her crimes in the past before dying, shes able to enter the dreams of people and solve their issues using the information she gets in the dreams. paranormal shenanagins ensue, she acquires a son and a husband and it kills me its so fun and quirky and fun despite handling dark themes and peoples problems. also very sweet the found family murders me

5. kingdom (netflix original)

i literally am not going to be able to watch any other zombie media because kingdom and train to busan are the best pieces of zombie media ive ever seen. warnings for gore and violence and just general horror aspects.

i absolutely love this one its so thrilling and well done, i love the acting and the way that this show looks its absolutely gorgeous. a zombie plague breaks out in joseon period korea where the emperor has died and then was brought back to life by the queen and her father in a ploy to try and keep their family in political power, the crown prince must find answers. a lot more happens and its very dramatic and good i love the characters in this one

cdramas

1. the untamed. if you follow me and you havent watched the untamed im begging you to watch the untamed. literally one of the most beautiful stories ive experienced in my life i am not joking when i say i cried multiple times over it. the main characters are canonically gay in love and have a son together please watch the untamed. handles a lot of dark themes, heres a tw guide

2. the sleuth of the ming dynasty

this is another one i havent finished but its fun so far, very gay, found family, food, and solving murder mysteries during the ming dynasty

3. hikaru no go (also known as qi hun)

havent finished this one, there is some propaganda about hong kong in the first episode but as far as i know thats the only instance of something like that in the show

this ones about the game go and so far its very sweet and fun, local boy awakens a ghost who was a master of the game of go hundreds of years ago and eventually is persuaded to learn how to play go with the aid of the ghost. im really liking this one so far its very cute and i love the characters in it. if youve watched the untamed nie huaisangs actor ji li is in this one!

4. the legend of yunqian

this ones very short and on youtube, all the episodes are about 5 minutes long and its a lesbian time travel fantasy adventure with a happy ending! funny and cute

jdramas

1. cherry magic

please please please watch cherry magic. the premise sounds very much like a weird yaoi kind of thing but trust me on this. trust me. it is so heart warming and sweet and i was so emotional about it and the growth of the main character.

adachi gains the power to read peoples minds on his 30th birthday based off a urban legend that if youre a 30 year old virgin that youll become a wizard. after gaining this power he accidentally finds out that his extremely popular and handsome coworker has a crush on him, and shenanagins ensue along with adachi having blossoming feelings in return. this show was really refreshing in a lot of ways, adachi is a main character who like.. is unsure of himself and insecure in a very kind of realistic way, he closes himself off and is afraid to reach out to people and through the course of the show we see him slowly come out of his shell and realize that hes likeable and lovable and that people want to be around him and its so nice to see. my main complaint about this show is that i dont really like the background couple, but otherwise this is a very sweet and refreshing gay romance that has a happy ending!

some others that i myself havent seen but that ive seen people talk about a lot and that i want to watch eventually:

- the legend of fei (cdrama)

- the wolf (cdrama)

- gaurdian (cdrama, not the kdrama one called goblin)

- healer (kdrama, i did watch some of this one but it was in 2016 and i never finished it so i barely remember any of it but i do remember liking it)

- nobody knows (kdrama)

- its ok to not be ok (kdrama)

sorry this is so long but i hope youll be able to find a drama u enjoy!!

[entity9silvergen]

Mosaic (Disenchantment Fanfiction)

Summary: We are just mosaics of everyone we love and that mosaic shows everyone we love how beautiful they are. Bean doesn’t think she can love like everyone else but maybe that’s okay.

Fandom: Disenchantment 

Word Count: 2K

Characters: Bean

Relationships: Bean/ Mora, Mentioned Bean & Everyone, Mentioned Odval/ Sorcerio, Mentioned Zog/ Oona, Mentioned Zog/ Dagmar

Warnings: Internalized arophobia, first person pov, some self-deprecation, sex mention, drug mention, mention of interspecies relationships in fantasy setting 

Other Tags: F/F, Mentioned F/F QPR, Reflection/ Self-Reflection/ Internal Thoughts, No Dialogue, Queerplatonic, Aromantic Character, Aromantic Homosexual Character, Arospec Character, Queer Themes, Unreliable Narrarator, S3E6, Oneshot, AroWriMo 2021

Author’s Note: My friend sent me the line “I am a mosaic of everyone I’ve ever loved” about twenty minutes after I watched “Final Splash.” I’m working on the prompt for Week 2 of AroWriMo rn but I had to drop everything and write a short fic about this. Again, I didn’t really use the prompt but it kind of fits with week 1’s prompt romo/loveless & future. 

I’m headcanonnoning Bean as aro or demiro/ greyro. I think in the show it was implied she never experienced romantic attraction prior to meeting Mora because she likes women and I don’t want to erase that in any way but Bean still gives off a big aromantic bisexual homo(queer)platonic vibe.

_____________________

My name is Princess Tiabeanie of Dreamland and I’ve never loved anyone.

I mean, I love my dad and my friends and all that but I’ve never loved loved anyone. Is that weird to say? That makes it sound like I don’t really love my dad and Elfo and Luci and everyone. I probably shouldn’t say that then because I actually love them a lot. They’re my everything. 

One time, I was walking down Elf-Ally and this elf was sitting on the side of the road with some chalk. I feel like elves would really like chalk but I’ve never seen any of them use it, not even Arto, except this guy. I’d never seen anything like it before so I asked what he was doing and he said he was making this mosaic to show his love for this other elf he liked. I didn’t really understand it so he explained it to me like this: we are just mosaics of everyone we love and that mosaic shows everyone we love how beautiful they are.

I still didn’t get it so I just laughed at him and he got kind of upset and threw a piece of chalk at me. It didn’t really hurt but Luci was with me and the elf started throwing stuff at him and you know how Luci gets when he hits his nose so we left. I couldn’t really forget what that elf said though. 

You see, a mosaic is a mix of a bunch of little pieces taken from different things that all come together to make one thing. There’s this mosaic at the church and it’s pretty freaking ugly but the mosaic this elf was making was just so beautiful. He used so many colors and he drew all these little pictures and hid these words I didn’t understand in them. I’d expect it to be all crude and gross like those scribbly pictures Derek would draw when he was younger that Oona pretended to love but it all came together so well. It didn’t even look like separate pieces. It was just one.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The influences of countless parts of my life, weaving together into an insanely complex mesh- That felt like me. I always felt like something was broken in me but maybe I’m just a mosaic. 

I think my dad made me who I am the most. Even if he wasn’t really present most of my life. Sure, we don’t see eye to eye sometimes but I think we’re better because of that. He made me strong. His actions guided me into becoming the woman I am today. He taught me how to keep fighting. Literally and figuratively. He taught me to keep my head up and he taught me how to stab people. It’s pretty cool. I remember this one time as a kid he took me out to the courtyard, stole this guy’s knife, and taught me how to use it. I think I still have the knife actually. I don’t stab people with it anymore though.

(I hope he’s okay. He hasn’t been the same in awhile.)

My mom… Well, I don’t really love her anymore but I did for a long time. She was… How do I put it? A constant in my life. Even though she wasn’t there. What I felt towards her, it kept me together for a long time. When I had nothing to fall back on, I always had her memory. Until she tried to take over Dreamland, obviously. Now I just say she gave me my love for alcohol and that’s pretty sweet too. 

(I still miss her. I bet she’s dead.)

You know those pictures where the guy has an angel and demon on his shoulders telling him what to do? That’s Elfo and Luci, and it’s literal for Luci. And maybe for Elfo? He did go to heaven that one time. It can be kind of annoying to hear them bickering all the time, especially since they almost never want the same thing, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Elfo keeps me safe and Luci pushes me to be more than I am. They make life fun. Fuller. Less lonely.

(I’m scared they might leave someday. I wouldn’t blame them.)

I don’t really like Derek but I still love him. Maybe a little less since he tried to burn me at the stake. Maybe a little more since he chickened out at the last second. And a little less because he still went through with it. And maybe a little more since it was an accident. We have a complicated relationship but he’s still my little brother, as weird as he is. He reminds me of what I have to fight for, if that makes sense. I don’t really see him as the future of Dreamland or anything but he’s still a little kid and I can’t really help but have a soft spot for him. Don’t tell him I said that.

(I wonder if he’ll keep me around when he’s king. I’d be lying if I said I was surprised.)

The same goes for Oona. I never liked her but I think I love her. Especially after she tried to save me from my mom. And since she became an epic pirate. She’s awesome. She’s the mom I always wished I had except she was actually there the whole time and I didn’t realize it. I’m happy with how things turned out though. I don’t regret it. Plus she’s got great taste in drugs. I still steal them sometimes.

(I don’t know if she loves me. Maybe she did once but not anymore.)

I kind of hate Odval and Sorcerio in a weird way where I like them at the same time. They’re not really family but always been there. Like they’re kind of like second dads to me. Second dads whose the sex lives I know way too much about. My gay polyamorous uncles? But they kind of care under all that court properness and tradition nonsense so they’ve kind of wormed their way into my heart. They’ve always made my life difficult but I don’t think I would be myself if I wasn’t challenged so much.

(I think they’d rather have me gone. They don’t hide it every well but I can pretend.)

I’m going to be honest, I was really bummed when Pendergast died. We were kind of the same age and he hung around the castle for most of my life. And my dad trusted him so we actually did stuff together sometimes. A lot of adventures that never really went anywhere. He could be kind of a stick in the mud but he never really minded that I’m a girl and let me tag along on crusades and helped me get better with weapons and stuff. And Pendergast was weirdly loyal to Dreamland, even after Dad forked his eye out. Or was it spooned? I don’t remember. Some kind of eating utensil. I wasn’t there when it happened. But it was nice knowing I could trust him. He could be kind of fun though when he was off-duty. Total lightweight though. He threw up on one of those little guys who carries dad’s cape once. 

(I wish I’d known him better. I really miss him but I can’t tell anyone since Dad gets set off by anything that even reminds him of the guy.)

Who else is there? That’s right, Mertz and Turbish. Turbish and Mertz. Two peas in a pod. Plus Mrs. Mertz. Don’t get me wrong, they are idiots. Totally incompentant. It’s a wonder they’re still alive. But they’re sweet. And they try. They’re not good at anything but they try. Sometimes I don’t want to try but they tell me I always can.

(I’m waiting for the day they realize they could have a better life. It’ll be weird not having them around the palace.)

I even kind of like Merkimer. As a pig, not a human. God, he was an awful human but he’s a funny little pig. He lets Luci ride on his back sometimes. Both of them like it way more than either of them will ever admit. It’s cute. I think they’re friends. If they’re not, Elfo and I will start plotting until they are. Or maybe not. A Luci-Merkimer friendship might be too much for Dreamland to handle. They’re kind of a lot, even on their own. Merkimer always kind of had a big head and it only got bigger when he accepted his new life. It’s actually kind of inspiring how happy he is now. 

(I don’t want him to change but he already has. It makes me sad sometimes.)

And Bunty. Oh, Bunty. And Stan! The world doesn’t really deserve Bunty. Stan does though. I think they’re the ones who taught me what real love is. Bunty always showed me love as a kid, she was like the second mom I never had but actually did have because Oona was there. But she gave me something neither Oona or Dagmar could. I didn’t really understand it until I saw her and Stan and their family together. I still don’t. They’re really sweet.

(I’d give them everything. I know they just see me as some spoiled princess though.)

I want what those two have. Or what Odval and Sorcerio have. What my dad had with Dagmar or Oona. What Elfo’s had, and Luci’s had, and Derek’s had, and the knights have had. It feels like everyone’s had that kind of deep love at some point except me. I didn’t even realize until I was talking to Mora. 

I’ve had the chance to have it. Merkimer, that brother of his I accidentally killed, that one time Pendergast made a pass at me, that Steamland guy… I don’t think any of it really would’ve worked out though. I’ve had a lot of things with guys and there’s been kissing and touching and I’ve always enjoyed it but I think I always knew it would never go anywhere. That it will never go anywhere. And I can’t even blame my dad because it’s all me. It’s always been me. And I’m okay with that? Maybe? I don’t think so but I’m not really good at understanding my feelings. It’s just another thing on the pile of things I won’t work through.

I think I understood what I had with Mora though. It wasn’t… romantic but it felt like it almost was. We just… clicked. It felt right. She was tough and funny and she didn’t hold anything back. She followed her dreams and didn’t let the world get her down. That one night we had together, I felt like we were alone in the world.

Mora gave me the ocean and the stars.

She was beautiful. Maybe that’s what was missing? None of the guys I ever screwed around with were beautiful. Not like Mora was. Not like a woman can be. I really felt like this was it but there was still that disconnect. Like something was there but not quite. Like something was missing. I don’t know what it was.

But then she just left. I had that dream and I just felt so happy. I’d never felt happiness like that. And I never felt pain like the pain I felt when I woke up and the necklace was gone. I definitely would’ve cried if Elfo wasn’t there. I might’ve actually cried a little bit. It’s kind of hard to hear anything when Elfo’s sobbing. Some of those tears might have been mine.

Did I love her? I don’t think so. Not like Elfo loved that boat. It wasn’t romantic. But it was real. It gives me hope. I don’t think I’m capable of the same kind of love everyone else seems capable of and that’s not even a slight at me. It’s just reality. But what I had with Mora, however brief and imagined it was, tells me that’s okay. I don’t need the kind of love everyone else has. Not when I have so many others in my life.

Still, I hope I see her again, even for a second, just to feel that kind of happiness again.

I think that’s what that elf meant when he said we are just mosaics of everyone we love and that mosaic shows everyone we love how beautiful they are. Mora was beautiful and she didn’t see it but maybe she would if she saw how I looked at her. 

Stars and the ocean, I’ll never forget them. They’ll be a part of my mosaic forever.

Other AroWriMo Fics By Me, Posted on Ao3, Posted on FFN

[cartoonfantic8]

Nico Di Angelo AU - Part 1

Spoliers for the entire Percy Jackson Serise. If your not caught up do not read.

Disclaimer - I don’t own the characters or any of the books plot. That is owned by Rick Riordan not me I sort of own the idea. There is other people in the internet who have this idea, this is just my take. Also I got most of the information of the plot and details thanks the the Fandom Wiki so credits to them.

AU - Nico Di Angelo was the child of the prophecy instead of Percy Jackson. Pretty much the serise as a Solangelo cannon instead of Percbeth. Some things are different but most things are kinda the same like the quests.

P.O.V - So in the orignal series it’s all in Percy’s POV but I got the idea that it switches POV’s like “Heroes of Olympus”. This is switched between Nico,Will,and Bianca

The Lightning Thief

Arrival at Camp

A twelve year old boy and thirteen year old girl were taken out of there military school by a lawyer (Alecto in disguise) to go to a Camp for them to be safe. There names were Bianca and Nico Di Angelo.

On the way they were attacked by the Minotaur which was chasing the limo.

Alecto told them to run to Percy’s tree and tell the people at the camp there that there haftbloods. Bianca and Nico ran towards a big pine tree but the Minotaur caught up to them. To protect her brother Bianca killed the Minotaur with her bare hands and somehow survived. Bianca and Nico fainted by the pine tree and before Nico passed out he yelled Help.

A camper immediately saw them and rushed them to the infirmary.

Nico woke up and saw a cute blonde hair boy (Will) rambling about how Bianca killed the Minotaur with her bare hands and how these kids are powerful. The boy noticed and got him a glass of water. Nico asked “Where am I”and “Where’s Bianca”. the boy said “Your okay and your safe” calming him down. Another boy (Lee Flecher) came in and told Will to take Nico to Mr.D and Chiron.

The blonde hair boy took Nico to two men both in there late 40s and Bianca who Nico immdently hugged. The men introduced both as Mr.D and Chiron. Chiron asked the blonde hair boy who he called Will to set up a place where Bianca and Nico to sleep in Cabin 11. Chiron explained to them about the Greek Gods and how there real. Nico was in shock while Bianca thought that it was all fake. Chiron asked them if they had ADHD or Dylexisia, if they’ve had an absent parent figure, or if werid thing have happened around them.

They both said yes and we’re taking it in. Chiron asked if they had any parents. Bianca responds with “Are mother died and are father was never around but after are mom died, are dad that we never met sent us to this hotel for a few weeks and then to a miterally school.” Chiron said “That’s strange, the records say - never mind there probely wrong. Mr.D told them to go to Hermes Cabin which Luke led them to since he was passing by.

Nico saw Will and went over to him. He thanked him for fixing his arm. Will blushed and told him that he didn’t and that was Lee. Will said that he really wants to be a child of Apollo because he loves working in the medicence field and that Lee let’s him help sometimes. Will asks him that if he knows the game Mythomagic and Will teaches him

Over the next few days Will and Nico became inseparable and did all there activitys togther. Until a few days before the Capture the Flag game a Aries camper was roughhousing with there sibling, which resulted in a wound on there arm. Will quickly fixed and healed with magic (Like Magnus Chase’s healing magic) and was claimed by Apollo. Nico was heartbroken. His best friend was claimed. Will and Nico still spent there free time togther but it wasn’t the same and Nico was all alone execpt he had Bianca

The Claiming

On the Capture the Flag game the captins were Athena and Aries. Athena took the Hermes and Apollo cabin while Aries took the rest. Nico and Will were on border patrol being kids but Will was asked to help in the infirmary as an Apollo kid so Nico was alone. Nico heard something in the woods and went to go look at what is was. It was a hellhound and it almost attacked Nico but Bianca stopped it and the hellhound backed away. Everyone saw what happened and were shocked. Bianca hugged Nico and made sure he was okay and then they were claimed by Hades. Everyone had fear in there eyes including Will.

No one talked to them after that and if they did they had fear in there voice. Everyone treated them differently as they were the black sheep of the camp. Chiron ended up letting them stay in the big house since the Hermes Cabin were terrified. He also gave them a new schedule so most of the time they wouldn’t be with the other campers.

One day they went to the forge to make weapons with Cabin 9. The Hephaestus kids were all terrified. Becknodorf didn’t care there were children of Hades and told them if his siblings gave any trouble talk to him. Bianca made a sliver bow and arrow and Nico makes a black Celsetial Bronze sword.

The Prophecy

Later that night in the big house. Nico couldn’t sleep because he heard noises from the room above him. He went to check it out and the Oracle started to speak to him and gave a prophecy to him.

“You shall go west and face the god who has turned,

You shall find what was stolen and see it safely returned,

You will be betrayed by one who calls you friend,

And your journey shall be a fight till the end”

Chrion finds a terrified Nico and tells him a prophecy has been issuied. He calls a councilor meeting instantly. It was pretty much all the oldest campers in the camp with the exception of Annabeth because the head counselor for the Athena cabin was in the infirmary thanks to a grusesome sword fight with Clarisse and she went instead.

While taking Bianca decided to go on the quest since she could not leave her brother alone. Even though Annabeth has been waiting for her chance she decided not to go because two children of the big three will result in a “death trap” which Luke whispers in her ear something about being nice. Nico tells them the lines of the propchey and they all unpack it. They also explain to the Hades’s kids about what happened at the solstice and what’s at stake in which Nico is internally freaking out since the fate of the world is on his shoulders

They still needed a third quest member. Nico asks Becknodorf but he declines since he’s needed at camp. Bianca thinks that no one wants to come since there children of Hades but Nico still has some hope. The next day Will gives Nico a “Quest kit” packed with ambrosia, necter, a first aid kit, and money. Will tells him how this quest is important and he’ll do great. Nico dosen’t and says “I can’t. The fate of the world is in my shoulders and I don’t even have a third quest member”. Will calms him down and tells him he’ll go and Nico hugs him and says “Thank you”

Nico and Will tell Chrion and he announces it at Breakfest. Bianca is shocked but happy. Most of the camp is shocked that a son of Apollo is going on a quest with two children of Hades. The Apollo cabin is mostly mad execptially Micheal Yew.

After breakfest Will goes to his cabin to grab a few things before the quest. Micheal Yew is infuriated and yells at Will on how he’s going to get himeself killed and how he can’t trust children of Hades because there evil. Will yells back and tells all of his siblings how Bianca and Nico are good people and how there all judging them for their dad which is stupid. He leaves the cabin and is off to Percy’s tree. Before he leave Lee tells Will he’s proud of him for standing up for his friends and that he’s going to do great on the quest.

Bianca, Nico, and Will are by Percy’s tree off to find Zeus lighting bolt. Before they leave though Beckendorf gave Bianca a magic rope he made, to help her in tricky situations.

Starting the Quest

After Nico, Will, and Bianca are driven into town, they take a bus into New Jersey. When they get on the bus, Zeus send monsters after them which Bianca defeats with her bow and arrow

They escape to Aunty Em's Garden Gnome Emporium. After they are served food, Aunty Em wants to take a picture of them to use as models for her statues. However, she tries to turn them to stone instead of using them as models because she is Medusa. Nico cuts off her head, and they leave. They find a lost dog, return it, and get $200. They buy train tickets with that money and get off at the Gateway Arch.

When Nico is alone on the top, Echidna reveals herself, along with her pet, the Chimera. Nico battles the Chimera and is poisoned during the fight. Before he “dies” he prays to his father that Bianca and Will will be safe on the quest. Before Echidna kills him Nico accidentally shadow travels away ( there were shadows around him. I know it dosen’t make sense but I have to work with it) to the ground beneath him.

Going Futher West

Weaken, Nico tries to find Will and Bianca in which he dose. Will and Bianca are crying because Nico is on the verge of death. Will tries to use his healing magic but it isn’t enough. He was sobbing at that point and his tears healed him and took away the poison. They all cry happy tears and Bianca punches Nico is the shoulder and told him not to do that again.

The trio gets on the train and are taken to Denver.

They get off, and go into a diner. Ares comes in and tells them to get his shield at Waterland, and, in turn, he would give them a ride west

They go to Waterland and find out the ride was set up with a trap by Hephaestus. They get out with Aphrodite's Scarf and go back to the diner, and Ares shows them a Kindness International truck

Las Vegas

Once they reach Las Vegas, a bellhop from the Lotus Hotel and Casino invites them to come in. Bianca is a little  skeptical and says this place is familiar. The bellhop insists and says it’s okay. The argee and went in. The receptionist asks for there names and when Bianca says them. The receptionist says that Nico and Bianca have a room and asks if they want to renew it. Bianca didn’t trust them but ends up going so Nico and Will are safe.

Nico, Will, and Bianca are given a room. After they enjoy the perks of staying in such a luxurious suite, they decide to go down to the arcade.

Will finds a boy, Darrin, who thinks the year is 1977. Will asks a few more people what the year is, to which they answer 1985 and 1993.

Will finds Nico and Bianca and they immediately leave the hotel

They are relieved to find out from a newspaper that it is still the same year. However, 5 days have already passed, leaving only one day to retrieve the lightning bolt.

The Night Outside

That night they decide to camp outside so they can get some rest. Nico decided to take first watch while Will and Bianca slept. Will woke up in the middle of his shift from a nightmare.

Nico asks if he was okay and Will said yes. Nico knew he lied and asked him again. Will said he dreamt of Nico dying in arms like he did before. Nico promised him he won’t do that again.

Will saw there was something wrong with Nico and asked him. He blurted it out of how he hates being a child of Hades. How everyone thinks of him as an outcast and that they wouldn’t cared if he was dead. Will told him he would upset if he was dead. Nico was his best friend.

Nico thanked him and also thanked him for coming on this quest. They stared into each other eyes for a moment and then Nico quickly looked away. He asked Will why is the pine tree on the hill called Percy?

Will tells him the story of Percy Jackson the other child of the big three. A group of haft bloods and a saytar were chased by a Cyclopes. There names were Annabeth Chase, Luke Castellan, Grover Underwood, and Percy Jackson son of Posiden. He was very loyal and did anything to protect his friends. They were about to reach Camp but the Cyclopes caught up to them. Percy sacrificed himself to save his friends. Posiden was upset his only son was dead and turned him into a pine tree. That tree watches over the camp and once you reach it you know your safe.

Bianca who wasn’t sleeping the whole time but the boys didn’t know that, decided to take watch. Nico and Will fell asleep and Bianca defently knew something was between them.

Reaching the Underworld

While searching for the entrance to the Underworld, they encounter Procrustes. Since Posiden is mad that Hades had two children breaking the oath twice, he sends his son Procrustes to trap Nico and Bianca. He traps Nico and Bianca using his signature technique — causing them to lie down on a bed while being stretched by ropes until they are exactly the same height of the bed

Will tricks him into lying down on one such bed. Procrustes is killed, and the trio proceed to DOA Recording Studios, the cover place for the gates to the Underworld, then enter. There Charon lets Nico and Bianca being children of the Underworld but doesn’t let Will in. Nico says that if he dosen’t his father will hear about this. (Please tell me someone got that reference)

Inside, they discover that the entrance to the Underworld proper is being guarded by Cerberus. Bianca tames him and then Will plays with the giant dog by using a little red ball to keep him distracted, giving Nico and Bianca enough time to pass to see there father

They walk through the Fields of Asphodel and pass by the path to the pit of Tartarus. As they approach the entrance to Tartarus, Beckendorf’s rope try to pull Bianca into it, but she manages to slip out of it. They get into there father’s place.

Nico confronts Hades who believes that he and Bianca were just some spawn and that he dosen’t care about them. He only cares because he needs them to clear his name. Hades says that’s not true and that he cares he just dosen’t have a good way of showing it. He then explains there past of how he put them in the Loucas Hotel for about 70 years to protect them from Zues. He also explains about there mother Maria Di Angelo and how he begged her and there children to live in the underworld which she declined. He also explains how Zues struck her with a lighting bolt and how he needed to protect them. Nico and Bianca were surprised but understood.

While Hades was taking, Nico realizes that Ares has tricked him when he discovers the Master Bolt is in his backpack. He and his friends were teleported by Hades out of the underworld

Fighting Aries

Hades return Nico, Bianca,and Will back to an ocean. They reach the shore, meet Ares, and confront him. Nico then challenges him to a fight.

He uses his sword to battle Ares. Nico eventually stabs him in the heel and Ares starts to bleed ichor. He is about to kill Nico when an evil force in the form of a dark aura convinces him to not strike Nico.

Ares then leaves, giving Nico the Helm of Darkness. Nico tosses it to the Furies, and they take it back to his father

Ending

Nico,Will,and Bianca fly back to New York City to give the lightning bolt to Zeus, despite the dangers of flying.

He proceeds to the Empire State Building and reaches the top, where Olympus is currently located. Zeus accepts the bolt and decided not to kill them. Hades was there to congratulate his children in not dying. Nico and Bianca have a short talk with there father before returning to camp.

Nico bumps into Beckendorf who reveals that he stole the bolt and helm for Kronos and then calls out a poisonous scorpion which stings and nearly kills Nico. Nico is unconscious after the attempt to kill him. Beckendorf manages to escape and leaves Camp Half-Blood. Will cures Nico and they, along with Bianca and Chrion discuss Beckendorf betrayal.

The camp beads are awarded, and the bead for this year - Nico, and Bianca’s first year is a white bead painted with a black helmet in the middle. Will’s was a black bead with a golden sun in the middle. Will leaves Camp Half-Blood to visit his mom Naomi Solace. Nico and Bianca stay at camp year around. The camp slowly learns to accept them and relized there kind, caring, funny people and didn’t judge them on there parentage. Sure some camper still have them dirty looks or talked behind there back but they didn’t care. They found a place where they belonged.

How was that? I worked pretty hard on it and I think it was great. This is going to be a serise and I’m planning on doing PJO and HOO but not TOA because I do not know how to write around that. I hoped you enjoyed that, I tried my best to make it different and tried for it to make sense. Thank you for reading.

@thatlitpollostan

[benisasoftboi]

Unorganised thoughts on Trails of Cold Steel III:

...I’m gonna need like a week to process that

I guess I know why people hate George now!

Could really use a good old reset from KeA right now

This is the best game in the Cold Steel series so far. Easily

I... there’s no way they’re all really dead, right? This series has been completely toothless about killing anyone who isn’t a villain until now, no way they’re permanently killing someone who’s been here since practically day 1, no way. Show me a body

And even then I’ll doubt it with all these revivals happening all over the place 

‘He’s HIDING’ I sob as I apply clown make-up 

Ben Diskin did not need to go so hard on the voice acting at Millium’s death he did not need to do that to me

My god when Angie drove into the graveyard and my PS4 popped up a little notification telling me it was a blocked scene, the tension in me... and I never saw that coming, I’ll have to see if it was foreshadowed at all by replaying CS1 and 2 some time

I saw Lughman being a baddie a mile away (a mysterious professor turning out to be evil in a Trails game? UNPRECEDENTED!) but he’s Alisa’s dad!?

Neat writing trick actually, since they probably knew we’d guess the former, they blindside us with the latter

I can’t express how happy it made me that the Rufus battle was Machias Jusis Elliot. My dream team!

Estelle and Joshua got mentioned so much I figured they’d make a surprise appearance at the end and save the day

:(

So. Characters:

Rean: Rean is once again moderately more interesting than he was before, but still the least interesting person in the game. I guess he’s got some guilt that’s actually justified now, that’s cool? 

I ship him with Crow, not because the pairing really appeals to me that much, but because being shipped with Crow would totally piss Rean off and I find that extremely funny

His relationship with Altina is the best relationship he’s ever had with a female character and it is 100% because she’s the only girl he’s never ship teased with

(I don’t have an issue with the concept of ship tease itself, I have an issue with Rean-ship tease because 1. I still truly do not understand why so many girls like him so much and 2. None of it will ever canonically go anywhere)

(Seriously I’m so tempted to write a breakdown of why every other guy in Erebonia is more desirable than Rean)

Juna: I like Juna. I realised early on that she and Kurt remind me of Estelle and Joshua, without being carbon copies, and that’s good. I also think her relationship with Rean was really interesting - ‘I don’t know how to feel about you because you saved my life, but it also wouldn’t have needed saving if it weren’t for your country’s actions, which you’ve played a major role in - but now I’m being forced to confront that you’re a human being too’ is a really complicated situation for her. It’s a lot more interesting than ‘I don’t like you because you accidentally got a face full of chest’, Alisa

I also really liked using her, I ended up loading her with the Platinum Pecky Medal and defensive stuff, and she was a wall, she took an S-craft from Arianrhod in her stride! My buff girl!

She should’ve just been the new protagonist ngl

Kurt: Kurt had a lot to live up to, seeing as his brother is my favourite minor character. And oh does he succeed, Kurt is my favourite of New VII, he’s a good straight man, he’s great in battle, I like his arc, I like his friendship with Juna, I like Kurt

Altina: I was not sure about Altina just... being a student now. But damn if she didn’t have the best character arc in the game. I only did her final bonding event on a whim, but it’s the best one I saw. My girl Allie deserves the damn world

I really, truly believe those three have a bond as well, they’re very well written as a group. This was a problem I had with Old VII, the fact that so many of them just... didn’t have relationships with each other. How do, say, Fie and Machias feel about each other? I have no idea. But this group has a fantastic dynamic and it makes that ending so much more effective

It’s like I praised Crossbell for, really - having a small core group is much more manageable in terms of giving them all equal screen time and getting me to care about them

Musse: Uh, kind of one-note and annoying, honestly. I don’t hate her or anything, but like... she’s either Being Mysterious or Hitting On Her Teacher (I hate it I hate it so much). It’s just hard to care about someone who’s clearly so fake, I guess? I’m definitely interested in her, but like... I don’t really like her

Ash: Poor boy. I thought Ash was such an interesting character (and man do I love having someone around who does not like Rean, and never really changes his mind about it). Ash is very well done imo

Alisa: Alisa is good when the issue is her family drama, and is so goddamn boring when it comes to Rean. Nothing new there

Elliot: I love his little ponytail I love it he’s so cute I want to hug him so bad

Laura: Winner of the ‘best new outfit’ award (was never that fond of her war outfit, but this one is perfect). Still good, but not notably so. I feel so bad for Laura, she tries so hard to matter, but she’s by far the character you’d have the easiest time lifting out of the game

And while I love Elliot... same situation really. You could go back to the start and have one character named Elliaura who likes swords and music and has two big-shot dads, and you wouldn’t lose much

Machias: Took down Rufus, yeah, destroy your best friend (boyfriend)’s evil family! Winner of the ‘worst new outfit’ award, AGAIN. Also winner of ‘dorkiest S-craft’. I did his final bonding event first, and according to Playstation trophies it’s the least popular one! Stop sleeping on my boy Machias guys, I know he was annoying in the first game but I love him :(

Gaius: Special award to Gaius for finally being interesting! Boy’s a Gralsritter now, did not see that coming!

And of course it happened off screen. Because god forbid interesting stuff happen to Gaius when we’re actually around

Oh also goddamn, that is a beautiful man

Emma: Don’t really like the new outfit. It’s kind of remarkable that she’s so important but I keep forgetting she exists. Exposition witch who sometimes just doesn’t deliver the exposition I guess

Fie: Still my fav girl. Wish there had been more focus on her feelings about her dad coming back to life. Like that she’s a bracer

Jusis: Wasn’t sure how to feel about his newly close friendship with Millium because I was concerned that I was meant to ship it (by far my least favourite thing about this franchise is that that was not an unreasonable concern, as it wouldn’t even be the most inappropriate relationship in this game alone). Very, very glad it was confirmed sibling-y (not that it’s stopped them before). He didn’t really get to do anything else, sadly, but he’s good as always

I did the Purebread contest with him, and he made bread from coffee beans Machias gave him, the Ferdibert Fire Emblem energy- 

“What are you doing underneath this scarlet Pleroma Grass?”

Milliam: :(

Sara: Doesn’t get much to do because this cast is bloated but like, I still really like her :)

Towa: Someone needs to check on Towa all her friends are dead or evil the poor poor girl (or uh. I guess Crow isn’t... hmm.)

Angie :(

My kids Tita and Agate are back and completely overshadowed by people teasing this almost 30-year old man about being in love with a 17 year old that he’s only ever claimed to see as a sister, I swear to god

The orbal gear looks so goofy lol

Stop mentioning Schera as just being ‘totally here, just off screen, ha ha’ give her a model! Have her be here!

Don’t get me wrong, I loved seeing Josette again, I just don’t get... why? Why is she here?

Tio is back! And so is Randy, as a major character! I’m very very happy, I love them both

Michael’s fine, I guess? He’s kind of bland but I guess that’s kind of the point and I like him just fine. He serves his purpose well

I’ve never really liked Claire all that much, but she’s fine in this one again I suppose. A bit disappointed by the Lechter reveals really, I had expected more, to be honest

Aurelia is a fun character and I enjoy her as the principal. Want to see her fight Cassius

Want to see Cassius 

I love my girl Annabelle, but she’s the only reason I didn’t get all the character profiles (how was I meant to know I could even go to the highway at that point hmmm Falcom!?)

They picked a good selection of returning Thors students. Even Dorothee isn’t as annoying as she used to be. Hilarious that she’s the only one who didn’t get a profile

Juna gave a great big speech about how awesome the SSS are and namedrops everyone EXCEPT WAZY! My FAVOURITE Crossbell character! So offensive!

Oh speaking of offensive I took Machias to the Mishy show and was told he and Rean did a Mishy dance but they didn’t show it, what the hell-

Playable Olivier! Olivier back story! I could write a goddamn essay on why Olivier is such a great character. Glaring at you Falcom

I miss Mueller :(

Ada Grant is wonderful and I want better things for her

Rufus is a damn great villain just because of how much sense his actions suddenly make when you know that one little detail of him not actually being Jusis’s brother

I hate Cedric but like, in a way where I’m having fun hating him. That little bitch

Literally what do you even actually want Osbourne

I still cannot stand Elise. Something I realised playing this game is that one of the things that stops the Estelle and Joshua relationship from being as weird as it could be is that they don’t look at all alike, it’s very clear they’re not related in the slightest. Elise and Rean look like they really could be siblings, and come to think, so do Lloyd and Cecile. Which is also teased, to a lesser extent. It would be so much less uncomfortable if they just swapped Elise and Alfin’s models ngl (though still not good)

inb4 the final plot twist of the whole series is that Estelle and Joshua actually were biological siblings all along

This game looks so much better than its predecessors. Having the models being a little rounder and softer looking makes it look much more like an updated version of the original style than the complete departure that was CS1 and 2. Every time there was a flashback, Rean would be like ‘back then...’ and I’d feel compelled to say out loud ‘when we were shiny, and looked bad!’

‘Evil ancient magic corrupts people into making them do bad things!’ is... honestly a bit of a cop out that I did not expect from this series 

I found Rean telling Patrick ‘leave room for Aidios when dancing with my sister’ extremely funny. Rean would totally be a Christian summer camp counsellor in the real world

I honestly would have enjoyed it a lot more if Alfin decided to cause a scandal and have her first dance with Elise, but we can’t have such luxuries I suppose

When you get that book on dystopias, very clever to put the author on the last page. Seeing the name Gideon gave me such a start

Racquel was easily my fav new location

Leeves > Trista no doubt, maybe I’m just biased because it looks a lot like the village I grew up in but it’s just such a nicer design

Also the branch campus > main campus purely for being smaller, making the filler segments between field trips more bearable 

I prefer the longer but fewer chapters set-up, I think

There’s so many sad faces in this write up :( 

Back when I played Sky SC, I said something about how one of the themes is ‘you are not defined by your trauma’. I now think it would be more accurate to say that the theme of all the games (but especially the Sky arc) is ‘don’t let your worst experiences define you’

Because there are characters who define themselves by their traumas and worst experiences - and those characters are all villains, or miserable, or both. Like, they don’t phrase it as such, but the requirement to be an Ouroboros enforcer is ‘have trauma and define yourself by it’

And both Joshua and Renne’s arcs are about learning not to do that

Equally, the idea that ‘it’s much easier to not to define yourself by your trauma when you have a good support system that wants the best for you’ is a big theme as well

I just think that’s a really interesting idea for a JRPG series to tackle, idk

I can’t believe I’m at the last game! This series has been my life for the past near-half a year, what do I do when I finish it?

...go back and play Sky FC, maybe?