#only political post I'll make I promise

[nubelo]

You guys wanna do some transgender operations on illegal aliens who are in prison later today? 👉🏽👈🏽🥺

[revivify-inn]

Also voting is scary sometimes! GO WITH FRIENDS! Make a hang-out of it! CALL your shy friend who doesn't like to leave the house, call your friend who can't drive or is far from the polling place, make a silly day of it! Afterwords go buy a treat or play a game. It's not so scary or such a mental burden if you have a reward in mind.

No friends in your area? Ok! Play Tamagatchi! Get them on a Discord call in your headphones. That'll get you right up to the doors of the voting location. End the call. Vote. Leave the building. Call them again, and play games! Give yourself treats!

Voting is important! You want to have people ask next week, "You did vote, right?" And you have to go, "No :( I was putting off the inevitable because I don't know how to and it was intimidating."

Relatable. But for Fuck's Sake this is the Biggest Reason I have seen to Give Yourself a Little Treat. HELL, a BIG Treat.

Go. Vote.

Friendly reminder that almost half of the states in the U.S. have same day registration! This means you can go to the polling center for your location, register there, and cast your vote same day. So if you are over 18, are a U.S. citizen, and live in one of the states listed below, it is not too late to register and vote! I’m going to put notes for some of the states where voting is extra important due to the political climate of the state.

California

Colorado

Connecticut

D.C.

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Iowa - recent polls indicate state could flip from red to blue

Maine

Maryland

Michigan

Minnesota

Montana

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina - swing state! Could go red or blue

North Dakota - voter registration not required

Utah

Vermont

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin - swing state! Could go red or blue

Wyoming

You can go here for more info on voter registration

I also have a huge list of voting resources here

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Antiusurpation and the road to disenshittification

THIS WEEKEND (November 8-10), I'll be in TUCSON, AZ: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

Nineties kids had a good reason to be excited about the internet's promise of disintermediation: the gatekeepers who controlled our access to culture, politics, and opportunity were crooked as hell, and besides, they sucked.

For a second there, we really did get a lot of disintermediation, which created a big, weird, diverse pluralistic space for all kinds of voices, ideas, identities, hobbies, businesses and movements. Lots of these were either deeply objectionable or really stupid, or both, but there was also so much cool stuff on the old, good internet.

Then, after about ten seconds of sheer joy, we got all-new gatekeepers, who were at least as bad, and even more powerful, than the old ones. The net became Tom Eastman's "Five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four." Culture, politics, finance, news, and especially power have been gathered into the hands of unaccountable, greedy, and often cruel intermediaries.

Oh, also, we had an election.

This isn't an election post. I have many thoughts about the election, but they're still these big, unformed blobs of anger, fear and sorrow. Experience teaches me that the only way to get past this is to just let all that bad stuff sit for a while and offgas its most noxious compounds, so that I can handle it safely and figure out what to do with it.

While I wait that out, I'm just getting the job done. Chop wood, carry water. I've got a book to write, Enshittification, for Farar, Straus, Giroux's MCD Books, and it's very nearly done:

https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Adoctorow+%23dailywords&src=typed_query&f=live

Compartmentalizing my anxieties and plowing that energy into productive work isn't necessarily the healthiest coping strategy, but it's not the worst, either. It's how I wrote nine books during the covid lockdowns.

And sometimes, when you're not staring directly at something, you get past the tunnel vision that makes it impossible to see its edges, fracture lines, and weak points.

So I'm working on the book. It's a book about platforms, because enshittification is a phenomenon that is most visible and toxic on platforms. Platforms are intermediaries, who connect buyers and sellers, creators and audiences, workers and employers, politicians and voters, activists and crowds, as well as families, communities, and would-be romantic partners.

There's a reason we keep reinventing these intermediaries: they're useful. Like, it's technically possible for a writer to also be their own editor, printer, distributor, promoter and sales-force:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#intermediation

But without middlemen, those are the only writers we'll get. The set of all writers who have something to say that I want to read is much larger than the set of all writers who are capable of running their own publishing operation.

The problem isn't middlemen: the problem is powerful middlemen. When an intermediary gets powerful enough to usurp the relationship between the parties on either side of the transaction, everything turns to shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/direct-the-problem-of-middlemen/

A dating service that faces pressure from competition, regulation, interoperability and a committed workforce will try as hard as it can to help you find Your Person. A dating service that buys up all its competitors, cows its workforce, captures its regulators and harnesses IP law to block interoperators will redesign its service so that you keep paying forever, and never find love:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2024/02/13/1228749143/the-dating-app-paradox-why-dating-apps-may-be-worse-than-ever

Multiply this a millionfold, in every sector of our complex, high-tech world where we necessarily rely on skilled intermediaries to handle technical aspects of our lives that we can't – or shouldn't – manage ourselves. That world is beholden to predators who screw us and screw us and screw us, jacking up our rents:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/yes-there-are-antitrust-voters-in

Cranking up the price of food:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

And everything else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

(Maybe this is a post about the election after all?)

The difference between a helpmeet and a parasite is power. If we want to enjoy the benefits of intermediaries without the risks, we need policies that keep middlemen weak. That's the opposite of the system we have now.

Take interoperability and IP law. Interoperability (basically, plugging new things into existing things) is a really powerful check against powerful middlemen. If you rely on an ad-exchange to fund your newsgathering and they start ripping you off, then an interoperable system that lets you use a different exchange will not only end the rip off – it'll make it less likely to happen in the first place because the ad-tech platform will be afraid of losing your business:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Interoperability means that when a printer company gouges you on ink, you can buy cheap third party ink cartridges and escape their grasp forever:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Interoperability means that when Amazon rips off audiobook authors to the tune of $100m, those authors can pull their books from Amazon and sell them elsewhere and know that their listeners can move their libraries over to a different app:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

But interoperability has been in retreat for 40 years, as IP law has expanded to criminalize otherwise normal activities, so that middlemen can use IP rights to protect themselves from their end-users and business customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

That's what I mean when I say that "IP" is "any law that lets a business reach beyond its own walls and control the actions of its customers, competitors and critics."

For example, there's a pernicious law 1998 US law that I write about all the time, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the "anticircumvention law." This is a law that felonizes tampering with copyright locks, even if you are the creator of the undelying work.

So Amazon – the owner of the monopoly audiobook platform Audible – puts a mandatory copyright lock around every audiobook they sell. I, as an author who writes, finances and narrates the audiobook, can't provide you, my customer, with a tool to remove that lock. If I do so, I face criminal sanctions: a five year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offense:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

In other words: if I let you take my own copyrighted work out of Amazon's app, I commit a felony, with penalties that are far stiffer than the penalties you would face if you were to simply pirate that audiobook. The penalties for you shoplifting the audiobook on CD at a truck-stop are lower than the penalties the author and publisher of the book would face if they simply gave you a tool to de-Amazon the file. Indeed, even if you hijacked the truck that delivered the CDs, you'd probably be looking at a shorter sentence.

This is a law that is purpose-built to encourage intermediaries to usurp the relationship between buyers and sellers, creators and audiences. It's a charter for parasitism and predation.

But as bad as that is, there's another aspect of DMCA 1201 that's even worse: the exemptions process.

You might have read recently about the Copyright Office "freeing the McFlurry" by granting a DMCA 1201 exemption for companies that want to reverse-engineer the error-codes from McDonald's finicky, unreliable frozen custard machines:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

Under DMCA 1201, the Copyright Office hears petitions for these exemptions every three years. If they judge that anticircumvention law is interfering with some legitimate activity, the statute empowers them to grant an exemption.

When the DMCA passed in 1998 (and when the US Trade Rep pressured other world governments into passing nearly identical laws in the decades that followed), this exemptions process was billed as a "pressure valve" that would prevent abuses of anticircumvention law.

But this was a cynical trick. The way the law is structured, the Copyright Office can only grant "use" exemptions, but not "tools" exemptions. So if you are granted the right to move Audible audiobooks into a third-party app, you are personally required to figure out how to do that. You have to dump the machine code of the Audible app, decompile it, scan it for vulnerabilities, and bootstrap your own jailbreaking program to take Audible wrapper off the file.

No one is allowed to help you with this. You aren't allowed to discuss any of this publicly, or share a tool that you make with anyone else. Doing any of this is a potential felony.

In other words, DMCA 1201 gives intermediaries power over you, but bans you from asking an intermediary to help you escape another abusive middleman.

This is the exact opposite of how intermediary law should work. We should have rules that ban intermediaries from exercising undue power over the parties they serve, and we should have rules empowering intermediaries to erode the advantage of powerful intermediaries.

The fact that the Copyright Office grants you an exemption to anticircumvention law means nothing unless you can delegate that right to an intermediary who can exercise it on your behalf.

A world without publishing intermediaries is one in which the only writers who thrive are the ones capable of being publishers, too, and that's a tiny fraction of all the writers with something to say.

A world without interoperability intermediaries is one in which the only platform users who thrive are also skilled reverse-engineering ninja hackers – and that's an infinitesimal fraction of the platform users who would benefit from interoperabilty.

Let this be your north star in evaluating platform regulation proposals. Platform regulation should weaken intermediaries' powers over their users, and strengthen their power over other middlemen.

Put in this light, it's easy to see why the ill-informed calls to abolish Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which makes platform users, not platforms, responsible for most unlawful speech) are so misguided:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

If we require platforms to surveil all user speech and block anything that might violate any law, we give the largest, most powerful platforms a permanent advantage over smaller, better platforms, run by co-ops, hobbyists, nonprofits local governments, and startups. The big platforms have the capital to rig up massive, automated surveillance and censorship systems, and the only alternatives that can spring up have to be just as big and powerful as the Big Tech platforms we're so desperate to escape:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/23/evacuate-the-platforms/#let-the-platforms-burn

This is especially grave given the current political current, where fascist politicians are threatening platforms with brutal punishments for failing to censor disfavored political views.

Anyone who tells you that "it's only censorship when the government does it" is badly confused. It's only a First Amendment violation when the government does it, sure – but censorship has always relied on intermediaries. From the Inquisition to the Comics Code, government censors were only able to do their jobs because powerful middlemen, fearing state punishments, blocked anything that might cross the line, censoring far beyond the material actually prohibited by the law:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/22/self-censorship/#hugos

We live in a world of powerful, corrupt middlemen. From payments to real-estate, from job-search to romance, there's a legion of parasites masquerading as helpmeets, burying their greedy mouthparts into our tender flesh:

https://www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/visas-hidden-tax-on-americans

But intermediaries aren't the problem. You shouldn't have to stand up your own payment processor, or learn the ins and outs of real-estate law, or start your own single's bar. The problem is power, not intermediation.

As we set out to build a new, good internet (with a lot less help from the US government than seemed likely as recently as last week), let's remember that lesson: the point isn't disintermediation, it's weak intermediation.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/07/usurpers-helpmeets/#disreintermediation

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

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en (Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

[unrelaxing]

From a country where voting is not a choice, but a duty, it's interesting seeing American discourse every four years on whether or not voting matters. This year there's an added layer, because Joe Biden has been supporting Israel's genocide against Palestine. Now there's a pervading sentiment - both in and out of the US - that voting for Joe Biden supports Palestinian genocide, and it's an American's moral duty to withhold their vote in support of Palestine.

I guess the question I ask is: how is withholding your vote effective activism?

If you don't vote, and Trump wins, he says he will deport pro-Palestine demonstrators. He says he supports Israel's right to defend itself. If you vote independent, and Trump wins the same thing happens.

If Biden wins, he will continue his support of Israel.

So: Is voting really the battleground for the Palestinian genocide, when either outcome leads down the same road?

And what other battles are being fought in this presidential race?

Gun laws - Biden passed "the most significant gun safety legislation in more than two decades", the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. It includes enhanced background checks for gun purchasers, and prohibits individuals convicted of domestic violence towards a romantic partner from purchasing a gun (wherein the past a 'boyfriend loophole' had existed, wherein the law only applied if an individual was convicted of domestic violence against a spouse or cohabitant). Trump has promised to overturn Biden's new laws.

Healthcare - Uninsured Americans are at an all-time low under Biden's administration, with only 7.6% of Americans being uninsured in the second quarter of 2023. The number of people who signed up to Obamacare in 2024 is at 21.3 million - and Trump plans to repeal it.

Climate change - Biden's Inflation Reduction Act invests 300 billion dollars towards clean energy. Electricity generation from renewable energy sources — including wind, solar and hydropower — surpassed coal-fired generation in the electric power sector for the first time in 2022, making it the second-biggest source behind natural gas generation. At a recent dinner with oil executives and lobbyists, the Republican promised to eliminate Mr Biden's new climate rules and environmental regulations if they donated $1bn to his campaign.

Much has been said about Trump's second term beyond the above three points. @batboyblog posted a very clear and concise graphic on Trump's plans for his second term.

The BBC has also posted about Trump's plans for his second term, which I'll screenshot:

Trump is now a felon, but I was really shocked to learn about how little impact this has on his ability to run as president. His supporters are likely to stay by his side, because they believe in these policies.

Biden does not have the same luxury. I don't think he should have the same luxury. Still, I feel like it's important to point out that Trump and Biden's opinions on Israel and Palestine align, but there are a plethora of other issues they do not align on. As a voter, as an activist, when given two political parties, why would you choose based on the similarities as opposed to the differences?

Ways to help Gaza.

Vetted gofundmes.

Other links to help Palestine.

[heyimkana]

Untitled

Pairing: Yuuta Okkotsu x Female Reader

Word Count: 5K (I feel like I should apologize but if you’ve seen my other works, this is considered super short I’m being fr rn)

Summary: Yuuta is your new neighbor, and everyone loves him because of his sweet and kind personality. He has a crush on you, but you’re a married woman, so you can’t reciprocate his feelings the same way. But when your husband starts cheating on you, you can’t help but turn to him for comfort.

Content Warnings: alcohol, swearing, adultery/cheating, age gap (Yuuta is in his early twenties, reader is almost in her thirties), unprotected sex, also Yuuta going down the yandere route at the end I'm not playing so if it's not your cup of tea don't read

A/N: wrote this in one sitting after aleks @yuutito said something about yuuta and older woman that rewired my brain (how dare she went to sleep after casually telling me this like I wasn't going to just just sit there thinking about *redacted*-ing this ver of him in 124352 different positions). i was supposed to be watching my kids playing in my backyard but i wrote this instead. pls don't call child support. this is also supposed to be a drabble 🤡 🔫 i was going to send it to her on discord but a few people were asking if i was dead (girl, only on the inside lol) cause i haven't posted in a while so hi everyone guess who came back from the war (i'll go through my inbox asap i promise ily)

P.S: don't use your brain when you read this cause i certainly didn't use mine when i wrote this only my dick

Yuuta Okkotsu is your new neighbor. 

He lives across the street, and you’re not close to him, not yet. He’s younger than you, much younger than you—a fresh graduate from a reputable university who’s lucky enough to be able to work from home. He doesn’t go out much, but he’s friendly, always leaving good impressions around the neighborhood. Everyone knows Yuuta. Everyone loves Yuuta. 

The first time you asked about him, purely out of curiosity, was when you greeted your neighbor next door, an older woman living alone ever since her late husband passed. She just got home from, what you assumed, another trip to the clinic. You saw him stepping down from her porch after making sure she was okay and bidding her with a polite bow. You traded smiles with him, but he didn’t stop for a conversation. You just saw his face turn scarlet at the sight of you, and he dropped a quick “Hello” before he bolted.

“Who was that?” you asked.

“Oh, he’s our sweet neighbor Yuuta.”

“Sweet neighbor Yuuta,” you laughed a little. “He just moved here like three days ago, and everyone calls him that.”

“Because it’s true!”

“Uh-huh, and what did he do that was so sweet to you?”

“He’s helped me with my chores—washing the dishes, bathing my cat, mowing my backyard. He saw me having trouble crossing the street yesterday, so he offered to take me to the clinic today. Such a sweet boy, that man. Very handsome, too.”

That last part you could agree with. Instantly. 

You see Yuuta occasionally, always by coincidence, like maybe in the morning when you leave the house to put out your trash or grab a newspaper. He always seems like he’s eager to strike up a conversation but gives up before he can, simply because his heart can’t take it. You know he has a crush on you; it’s clear as day. He’s young, and he’s in love. It’s cute. But you’re married and committed, so that’s that. 

You meet him more frequently when he starts going to the same local supermarket. You bumped into him in one of the aisles, with him approaching you first because he saw you struggling to get that ketchup bottle on the top shelf. He’s so polite, and he’s, indeed, very sweet, especially to the elderly, always taking his time to humor them when nobody else seems to pay them any attention. He grabbed the bottle for you, and you ended up chatting with him while waiting in line. He offered to help carry your groceries, and you were thankful because you weren’t sure you could bring everything alone. He walked you to your car, bade you good night, and told you to take care. 

He’s your sweet neighbor Yuuta. 

Things haven’t been going well with your husband. It’s fight after fight after fight.  At first, your relationship became so strained because you couldn’t conceive even after two years of marriage. The truth is, you don’t want to have a baby, not too soon, not when you still want to focus on living your life, but he wants it terribly, and if you want your marriage to work out, there’s no other choice but to try. You’re somehow glad that the universe seemed to work in your favor, at least for now.

You’re unsure if it’s your fault or his—you don’t have the money or time to get yourself tested. Nevertheless, he kept trying, turning your sex life into a string of dull experiments, one after another. It didn’t come as a surprise that after a while, he gave up. What did come as a surprise was when he started cheating. 

You have reasons to back your assumptions from all the evidence you’ve found along the way. The lipstick stain on his shirt, the hint of female perfume in his car, the way he never left his phone out of reach, terrified of you looking into it. It’s enough. 

It’s Friday night. Your husband won’t be home until late. Still got a bunch of stuff to do at work, he said, which is another way of saying, I got my secretary sucking my dick since you barely even bother anymore. Which is true.

You’re tired of him. You’re tired of having sex with him where he only cares about him cumming inside you and nothing more. You’re so tired of fighting. And now that he's cheating on you, you grow too tired to care. About him. About your marriage. About everything.

So, you head down to a bar one night just to distract yourself. And there he is again. Yuuta. Sitting by himself, watching a football game on the big screen with a beer bottle in hand. He looks rather… lonely, a new face that makes your heart twitch a bit. His solemn look makes him more gorgeous in a way, more mature, more mysterious, and girls love that, don’t they? A slightly dangerous aura to a very sweet face, unapproachable yet inviting.

But that doesn’t last too long because the moment he sees you, his face brightens entirely. He smiles, standing up from his seat to greet you, and you meet him halfway. You end up chatting all night. He’s a fantastic listener, and he’s so kind and thoughtful with each word, comforting you the way you need the most. It’s embarrassing that you nag about your husband like this, but he seems genuinely interested in helping you convey your emotions, and you just can’t stop. It feels so liberating.

Yuuta buys you your favorite drink but also reminds you not to get too much alcohol in your system. You begin to trust him, knowing for certain he won’t take any advantage of you. He walks you home right after. It’s true that he lives right across your house, but he makes sure you get inside safely. He leaves only after he sees you close and lock the door behind you. You spy on him from the window, wanting to see what he does after you’re gone. You see him rubbing a hand over his face, flushed from ears to neck, looking extremely happy that he got to spend time with you. 

He’s so cute, you think to yourself. Like a high school lovesick boy, kind of cute.

Yuuta then notices your husband’s missing car, meaning that you’re alone in the house. He looks sad on your behalf, which is so kind of him to think about your feelings that much. Then he turns upset, as if he was thinking, how dare he stay out so late, leaving her without protection like this. Looking visibly worried, he then texts you, “Let me know if you need anything, okay? My door is open for you anytime.” You smile and promptly reply to him with, “That’s so kind of you, thank you.” 

He’s your sweet neighbor Yuuta.

These friendly sorts of private meetings between you and him go on for a while. Your husband often arrives late, usually drunk out of his mind or too tired to stay for a chat, and he heads straight to bed without even giving you a goodnight kiss. It hurts, but it’s fine. The more your husband breaks your heart, the harder Yuuta will try to mend it and make it whole again. And he did. Every night, when you’re lucky enough to see him, you’ll feel like a heavy weight is lifted from your chest. You feel… happy, even in this terrible situation, and it’s all because of him. 

You usually hang out with him at the bar, but sometimes you don’t feel like going for a ten-minute drive, and you choose to just cross the road and knock your fist against his door. No matter what hour you visit, day or night, for a morning latte or evening tea, he always greets you with the prettiest smile.

He’s your sweet neighbor Yuuta.

Weeks passed by, and now you spend most of your free time chatting with him, sitting on the couch in his living room, and talking about yourself more than you ever did with your husband. He likes listening to you talk about yourself, and he tells you that you shine so brightly when you talk about the things you’re passionate about. He always stammers out his praises, looking like he’s seconds away from combusting into flames just from calling you beautiful or something. He’s so young, so inexperienced yet passionate when it comes to love and romance, and it shows.

You ask questions about himself, too, and you can understand why it’s addicting for him to watch you speak, because the second he does that, he’s breathtaking. 

You find out that he likes the things you like, he’s watched the movies you’ve seen, and he’s read your favorite books. It’s not just a coincidence, is it? Maybe you’re a match made in heaven. But even so, nothing happens. He’s too respectful, and he makes you respect yourself. You’re married, and he’s a close friend of yours. That’s it.

He’s just your sweet neighbor Yuuta.

One morning, you find a bouquet sitting on your porch. Oh, right, today’s our anniversary. Your husband has this habit of sending you your favorite flowers on your anniversary. He does this every year, which is nice of him, but you really didn’t think he’d send you one this year, seeing how he barely exchanged more than three sentences with you. So now that you receive his flowers, you’re beginning to think, oh, maybe he’s trying to fix things between us. You’re not sure if you want that, though, not anymore. Most of your heart already belongs to someone else, which is terrible since you’re married, but you can’t help it. 

You pick up the flowers anyway; too pretty to be thrown away. You open the card attached to it. I will love you forever, it says, written in his handwriting. The way he wrote the letter f is a little different. Looks like he wrote in a rush, you presume. Either that, or he just didn't care enough. And it’s whatever; you didn’t expect much anyway. You appreciate the thought until your eyes land on the name he wrote.

That’s not my fucking name.

He must have sent flowers to his secretary at the same time and had his card switched. That fucking cheater.

You thought you didn’t care about him anymore, but God, now you’re livid.

Yuuta shows up at the perfect place and at the perfect time. He invites you over to have dinner together at his place. “J-just, you know, as friends,” he says, unconsciously giving you the confirmation that he does not think of you as a friend. Not at all.

So you come over in a beautiful red dress later that evening, and he stares at you, completely in awe, for a good three seconds. “You, umm—” He blushes madly, his head so full of steam he could barely think. “You look like… like a goddess.”

“Thank you,” you simper. That was so corny for him to say, but he meant every word, which makes it endearing. “You look amazing, too.” And he is. God, he looks so handsome in his black buttoned-down shirt, and his parted hair, and his sweet, sweet smile.

I want to fuck the shit out of him.

It’s the monster inside you who speaks it. The part of you that’s been neglected for so long, that’s never been touched in the way you wanted to. And it’s screaming, begging for Yuuta to love you.

But no. We’re friends. We’re just friends, aren’t we, Yuuta?

Yuuta cooks, too, apparently. Every dish looks fucking delicious, and everything else is perfect. The table setting decorated with your favorite flowers. The scented candles with your favorite fragrance set up romantically on top of the cozy fireplace. The soft music playing in the background, a piano instrumental of your favorite song. It’s like a date. A celebration. Like something you should’ve had with your husband today.

“You did all of this on purpose, didn’t you?”

“Hmm?”

You gesture to your surroundings. “We’ve read the same books and watched the same movies. Okay, fine, maybe we have the same taste. But this song, those flowers, everything you’ve set up in this room, you did all of these for me, didn’t you?”

He pauses before he tucks his chin, avoiding your gaze. “I just… wanted to make you happy,” he confesses bashfully. “Is it… Is it too much? Do you not like it?”

“Yuuta, of course, I love it.” You stroke his arm, washing his worry away. “I just… I’ve never had someone care about me this much before…”

He melts under your touch, and there’s so much he wants to say, but his lips form nothing but a sad smile. He caresses your face with tender hand, his fingertips quivering slightly when they land on your cheek. His heart must be beating like crazy right now, you smile to yourself, leaning further into his touch to soothe him.

“I would do this every day for you if you let me,” he whispers, promise behind each word. “I would make you happy, so happy you’d forget what sadness feels like. What loneliness feels like.”

That stirs something inside your chest. “And what do you want in return for that?” You slide up a hand, testing his limit.

He stops your hand by covering it with his own. For a second, just for a brief second, he emits a different feeling. There’s intensity behind his gaze that burns you as if he wanted you all to himself. And that’s understandable. No man, especially one who’s so desperately in love like him, would want to share his woman with someone else, but he knows the situation they’re in, doesn’t he? It’s just not possible for you to be together, not now, not completely. Maybe that’s why he switches back in a blink, smiling until his eyes crinkle adorably. “Nothing,” he answers. “As long as we can be friends like this, it’s more than enough for me.”

He’s a terrible liar, you think, slightly amused. It’s cute how he tries so hard to conceal his feelings and you still can read him like an open book.

The food tastes as amazing as it looks, even down to the last bite. You don’t talk about the bouquet, afraid that you’ll ruin the mood, but Yuuta is always so attentive when it comes to you. He asks you what happened, and he hugs you the second he sees tears brimming in your eyes. You’re not sad. You’re fucking angry. And thank God Yuuta is there to let you vent your frustrations. You go as far as telling him almost every little shitty thing your husband did to you behind your back, as well as the slutty secretary that’s been sleeping with him for money. It feels relieving to finally say their names out loud, with so much hatred, so much rage, and to have Yuuta respond with, “No matter how pretty she is, she’s nothing compared to you. Your husband doesn’t deserve you. If I were him, I would’ve—” he stops himself, just in time, flustered and mortified under your gaze.

You’re older. You’re older than him by eight, no, nine years even. You know what’s going to happen if you encourage him to say the words he’s been dying to say. You know what it’s going to do to your relationship. But fuck that. If there were one man in this world who knew how to treat you like you deserve…

It’s your sweet neighbor Yuuta.

So, by the time the two of you move to the couch with some wine in your system, you lean forward, letting your fingers trace the protruding vein on the back of his hand. His eyes widen at the way your dress does very little to hide your cleavage, but he averts his gaze right away, being the gentleman that he is. But tonight, you want him to be the opposite of that. You don’t want him to be sweet; you want him to let his desire win. There’s a monster hiding inside him, something much more terrible than your own. You sometimes caught its glimpse when he thought you weren’t looking his way. The amount of obsession that fogged his eyes, his fixation over you, turning his sapphire blue eyes so dark, so deep, so intense, like he wanted to have you locked up in his room, tied up and used and thoroughly fucked until you found no strength to stand and no will to escape. It should’ve been a scary thought, but it wasn’t. It was… exciting.

“I want to hear it, Yuu…” Seduction lays thickly in your voice as you lay a gentle hand on his cheek, guiding his eyes back to you. You stare up at him from underneath your lashes with this look in your eyes that makes his breath hitch in his throat. “If you were my husband…” You wet your lip, your tongue a sinful dance to his eyes. “What would you do to make me feel…” You purposely drop your gaze to his lips, letting him catch your message. “…loved?”

You watch him gulp, goosebumps breaking on his skin. You watch his eyes fall to see the way you rub your thumb over the bumps on his knuckles. You watch them turn half-lidded as they linger a second too long on your lips. And you watch him break all control he has over himself, and you let him devour you the way you’ve been wanting him to.

He’s your sweet neighbor Yuuta.

And he tastes even sweeter with your cum on his tongue.

It’s happening too fast, yet it feels like it’s not going fast enough. He starts by holding you by the face, slotting his lips against yours, passionate and gentle at the same time. He pulls away for a moment to see your reaction, and when you kiss him back, he lets out this sinful moan that causes your stomach to churn.

He’s so fucking sexy. Even without trying, he is. 

In the next second, he’s eating you out on the couch, spreading your legs, and kneeling on the floor with his head trapped between your thighs, wanting to get as much of you as you can give him. When his tongue circles your clit, and he’s moaning against your heat, it feels so good you almost run away, not used to experiencing this much pleasure. It’s scary how easily he plays with your body. How fast he can tell which part of yours likes to be licked, which ones want to be sucked, and which ones want to be fucked. He moves agonizingly slow, but each touch feels so right that you find no reason to complain. He’s sure to take his time with you, to make you feel loved in the way a wife should be when her husband makes love to her.

He takes hold of your thighs, holding you tight, but you want it even tighter to the point of leaving bruises all over your skin so you can show them to your husband later. His gaze is intense, constantly keeping his eyes on you. Your expression turns him on, making him ache so bad within the constraints of his pants that his eyes turn watery, desperate for release. He’s too ashamed to ask you to touch him, and maybe he doesn’t want to be touched, not yet, he just wants to focus on pleasuring you for now. So he keeps sucking your clit into his mouth, and he slides one hand into his own jeans to grip his cock tightly. He fucks his fist as fast as he fucks your hole with his tongue, groaning, whining, whimpering against your cunt. He’s pathetic. You love it.

You push him down to the carpeted floor after you drench his mouth and chin with your juice, and you push his fingers, coated with his own cum, into your mouth. He curses once at the sight, and it’s so sexy when he does it. After all this time hearing him talk so softly, so innocently, hearing a low, “Fuck, you're making me lose my mind,” tumbling off his lips is such a fucking turn-on. 

You tear yourself away from your dress before you rip open the buttons of his shirt, not caring if the two of you are in the middle of his living room, visible for anyone to see if they dare take a peek through the window. You wish the light in the room were brighter. It would’ve been a lovely show for your husband if he came home to see you riding another man’s cock, using Yuuta to your own satisfaction, and watching him make you cum the way he couldn’t. 

Yuuta, oblivious to your thoughts, is gasping out your name, one arm hiding his beet-red face while his other one is gripping your thigh. “W-wait,” he flinches, his breathing tattered. “You’re going—too fast—”

You know you are, but it’s so good that you can’t stop. His cock rubs your walls so deliciously as if it was made solely for this purpose. You cum so fast, so hard, and he follows almost right away, unable to hold it even longer when he sees you looking like that when you cummed. 

Your body is still trembling when he suddenly lifts you off his cock and guides you to his face. “Ride me again,” he says, begging. “Please, Angel, I want to taste you again.” And you do, sitting on his face and letting him lick, suck, and lap at everything that seeps out of you.

He’s staring at your swollen clit, licking his lips and seemingly dazed as he rubs his thumb softly over it. “I’m sorry I came inside you,” he says, genuinely feeling guilty about it despite you giving him permission to.

You shiver, still feeling so sensitive for receiving so much stimulation at once. “It’s okay. I can’t get pregnant anyway,” you laugh it off. “I haven’t gotten myself checked yet, but we’ve been trying for two years, and nothing has happened yet, so…”

His gaze darkens. “I see,” is the only thing he utters before he scoops you in his arms, carrying you to the bedroom. You’re surprised; you really thought that was it. Both of you came twice already in, like, fifteen minutes. That’s enough, isn’t it? But he’s still young, and he has a lot of energy that leaves him insatiable. If you let him, he’ll have you for the entire night.

It’s not a bad thing, not at all.

So you kneel in front of him on the bed, bite the corner of your lip to drive him even more insane, and stroke him slowly with your hand. “You still want to fuck me?”

“Yes,” he breathes out, the muscles in his abdomens tautening. “Yes, Ma’am, please…”

Ma’am? You almost laugh. How does he keep getting cuter and cuter?

“Okay.” You reward him with a little kiss on the head of his cock, robbing a soft whimper out of his mouth. Lying down on the bed, you spread your legs, sliding two fingers down your body to do the same to your cunt. “Come here and love me again, Yuu.”

He obliges in a split second. Yuuta has so much love to give, and he lets his mouth, his tongue, and his cock paint a perfect picture on your body.

Everything feels like heaven until he suddenly stops in the middle of thrusting his hips, earning himself an impatient whine. His blue eyes have lost their warm, pretty light. They’re as dark as the night, but lust and greed are the perfect colors for him. He sits on his knees, resting your ankles on his shoulders, breathing heavily. 

“Yuuta?”

He’s not listening, too captivated by the way his tip slides in and out so easily. You’re so fucking wet for him; it’s embarrassing, but Yuuta would take a picture of you like this in a heartbeat, with your wedding ring still wrapped around your finger and his cock sheathed deep inside you, should you allow him to.

He splays his hand over your stomach, giving a little pressure to your womb. You squirm, suddenly feeling like you no longer have control over anything, over him, not like the way you did before. It’s frightening and thrilling at the same time. “Yuuta, what are you—” Your jaw turns slack at the sensation when he thrusts inside, just once, just to see how far it goes within your walls. He’s so hard and thick and throbbing that you could practically feel him poking from inside of your stomach. And perhaps he’s thinking the same thing, his eyes glistening when he feels a bulge forming under his palm. He swallows. He looks… hungry.

“You said you couldn’t get pregnant,” he says, running a tongue across his lower lip, his eyes still fixated on the way you’re taking him so well, all stretched out and tight around him. “You know what I think?” He pulls himself out completely, shivers in his breath. “I think you’re wrong.” He slams his hips forward so abruptly, and with so much force, you have one hand shooting past your head to keep a safe distance away from the headboard. 

“Yuuta—” You gasp out, struggling to match his rhythm. “Wait—”

He only smiles a little, chuckles a little. He’s so far gone. He leans forward until you’re pressed chest to chest, folding you in half before he laces his fingers together with yours. “I think you can get pregnant.” He moves closer to your ear, whispering with his lips caressing your lobe, “And I’m going to show you how.”

He fucks the breaths out of you, swallowing each cry with his mouth, embracing you so tightly you can feel his heart beating against yours. “I’m sorry,” he pants, “It hurts, doesn’t it? I—” He’s interrupted with a low groan, feeling you clenching around him.“—really am sorry—” He smashes his lips against yours, smothering you with his kisses, too. “I know I’m being too rough, but I can't—”  He has one hand gripping the top of his headboard, giving him more support to drive his hips even deeper. “I can’t—stop—” He fucks you again, and again, harder each time until you find yourself unable to make sounds. “You’re so good... You feel so good around me... My angel…” You’re being folded, handled, trapped, and he fucks you until you’re drained, until you’re filled, until he’s spent. "I'm sorry... I'm sorry... Just a little bit more..." He kisses your forehead and your cheek to soothe you down, cradling your head as he buries his face in the crook of your neck. His hips start to move erratically. “Don’t ever leave me… I will love you forever, so—ah, God—” He chokes out a sob when he feels you spasming around him again, reeling in another wave of orgasm that hit you so intensely, you see white.

It takes him a little over an hour until he finally lets you go. For now, at least.

But once he gives you a chance to breathe, he cleans you up so gently, dabbing a warm towel over your skin, peppering kisses as soft as butterfly wings down your back, your thighs, your chest, before ending his journey at your stomach. He rubs the supple flesh of your belly and smiles, completely satisfied after giving you his everything. And it scares you a little bit because… You might really end up getting pregnant this time.

“I have to go before he comes home,” you say, feeling your body ache terribly when you try to raise yourself off the bed. They’re not shown vividly yet, but there will be bruises in the morning in places you’re not sure you can cover. 

Yuuta hugs you from the side when you barely have one foot on the floor, whispering against the bare skin of your hip, “I’m not letting you go.”

It makes you happy. You feel so wanted, so loved, even after all the affection he gave you all night. The truth is, you don’t want to leave. Ever. To walk into your own home after experiencing what heaven feels like… It would be torturous.

“I wish I could stay with you, too.”

“You do?” He looks up with big, round eyes, hope residing in each one of them. “Would you stay with me forever?”

“If I could,” you reply and it’s true. God, if only you could stay forever with him, let him love you this way, forever. That would be perfect, wouldn't it?

“That makes me happy…” He takes both of your hands, kissing you on each wrist before he does the same to your palms. “That makes me so happy…” 

It tickles, so you laugh a little. He makes the same sweet sound, the sound of a boy in love. 

“I really need to go, though…” You whisper, hypnotized when he starts pushing your digit past his lips. It’s warm and wet inside his mouth, waking up the butterflies in your stomach. He keeps his eyes on you, looking so sensual as he sucks around your finger, enveloping it from base to tip. “Yuuta…”

“I understand.” He pulls away, ending it with a kiss. He seems disheartened, his smile doesn't shine as bright anymore and it hurts you. "I guess you left me with no choice."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay." He returns your embrace, just one more time before you have to let him go. “Can you turn around for me, please? I want to give you something,” he softly smiles. “A present. It will be quick, I promise.” 

You do as he says, excited at the thought of it. What will he give you? Knowing him and how he went through so much effort to prepare a dinner for two friends, you just know it would be something incredibly romantic. Yuuta kisses your nape, open-mouthed and lingering. You nibble on your lip to suppress your moan as he trails his lips from between your shoulder blades down to your spine. 

“Yuuta,” you sigh, squeezing your thighs together. You’re aching for him again, and it’s dangerous. Your husband can come anytime soon. “I know what you want, and really, I wish I could stay,” you say from the bottom of your heart, looking over your shoulder to see him, and you’re immediately answered by a kiss. He presses his chest to your spine, one hand cupping half of your neck and your jaw to keep you in place so he can deepen the kiss. His mouth moves with fervor, filling you up with desire, and if it weren’t for the sound of your husband’s car moving into your driveway, you would’ve let him take you there for another hour or two.

“I need to leave. Now.” You break away to gather your clothes quickly. Except you can’t.

You can’t move your hands.

Robbed out of your balance, you fall face-first to the floor. Your breath catches, your heart plummeting to your stomach when you realize you have your hands tied behind your back. You feel something rough grazing against your skin. There’s a rope ensnaring your wrists together, and it’s digging painfully into your flesh every time you struggle to break free. 

Panic rises quickly to your chest. You look up, your body froze with terror at the sight of him smiling at you. 

He’s not your sweet neighbor Yuuta. Not anymore.

This is the monster you caught a glimpse of before, in full form. His handsome features suddenly feel unrecognizable, not when you can no longer witness the warmth in his eyes.

What is happening? You breathe fast, frightened beyond your mind. Why is he doing this?

“I told you I’m not letting you go,” he says, walking slowly toward you. With every step he takes, your urge to escape grows bigger.

The second the dread sinks in, you part your lips to scream for help, but he clasps a hand over your mouth just in time. “Sshh shhh shhh,” he whispers, bringing you back to your feet. “We wouldn’t want your husband to find out, would we?” 

You try to kick and toss your body around, but he’s strong, much stronger than you could ever imagine him to be. From your peripheral vision, you see him taking out a syringe from a drawer behind him, fitted with a hollow needle to inject the clear liquid into your skin. You feel your heart pounding in your throat, your scream muffled as he sinks it into your skin. “There, there. Off you go, honey,” he whispers in your ear, as you begin to lose your will to fight. Your consciousness slowly wanes away with each second passing by. “I’m so sorry, Sweetheart. It’s only scary at the beginning, I promise.” He tosses the syringe away, now empty. “Oh, I almost forgot to ask. Did you like the card I gave you?”

The card? What card?

Oh.

Oh, no.

“I’m sorry for tricking you like that,” he says with a little pout. “Truly, I am. I didn’t want to lie to you, but I had to do something to push you over the edge. I knew you liked me too from the start, but you wouldn’t make the first move. You kept staying faithful even when your husband was cheating on you like that. I admire you for that,” he sighs, utterly smitten by you, but only for a second before his tone drops. “But I was getting impatient, you see. And I knew you were, too. I watched your favorite movies. I read your favorite books. I learned everything about you and did everything you liked, but you still wouldn’t leave your husband for me. So you left me with no choice. I have to make you understand,” he slides his hand up your stomach, passing the valley between your breasts before he chooses to linger there, squeezing, teasing, pleasing. “That no one can touch you like I do. No one can love you like I do.”

You can feel him kissing your neck, licking a stripe up from your collarbone to the spot below your ear. “It was quite tricky copying his handwriting like that. There’s one letter I still can’t do very well even now. But it was enough to trick you, so I think everything’s fine in the end,” he chuckles, the sound filling your chest with horror, though you could barely register it now, not with the drug flowing in your system.

“You asked me what I would do to make you feel loved if I were your husband.” He carries you closer to the window, letting you see, with all the little power you have left, your husband closing the door of his car. Yuuta embraces you from behind, his hands tangled around your waist as he lets you rest your head on his shoulder. “I’m gonna show it to you.” You watch your husband make his way to your porch, oblivious to what’s happening in the dark room across the street. “I’m gonna love you, Angel. I will love you forever. With all my heart. And I’m gonna take my time. I’ll be so thorough with you that once I’m done, you won’t be able to spend a second of your life without me.” 

Your husband closes his front door, and with it goes your last chance of escaping, if there was even one.

You start losing strength in your legs, in your arms, but you’re still able to cry, and so you do just that. It won’t help you, nothing will help you, no one will help you, and no one will know what he’s doing to you, not when everyone thinks so fondly of him. 

“Oh, Sweetheart, don’t cry.” He kisses your tears away, landing an even softer one on your temple. “Don’t be afraid of me, my love. After all, it’s just me.” He meets your eyes in the reflection of his window, smiling with his hand holding the front of your neck.

“Your sweet neighbor Yuuta.”

***

[xoxoemynn]

For OFMD Tumblr friends who want a S3 and are scared of Twitter

First, no judgment from me. I very much get it. I resisted Twitter for a long time, and even though I'm now a bit more comfortable on it, it's still not my Fandom Home. There are a TON of valid reasons not to be on Twitter, but if you REALLY want to keep OFMD visible right now and help its chances of returning for a third season, Twitter is the best place to do it. Like it or not, Twitter is still the best social media platform for raising awareness and for instant news updates.

Tumblr posts don't make headlines. Topics that have been trending on Twitter do. And if we want this show to come back, we need to make OFMD impossible to ignore.

By now you've probably seen just how close we came to a S3, and if you're like me, you are RAGING and donning your battle jacket. But I get it can be intimidating to get on Twitter for the first time, so I thought I'd address some common anxieties I see. I'll put below a cut because this got a bit long, but I promise it's a quick read.

I don't know what to say! Where do I even start? That's okay! You don't have to create your own tweets (although it's great if you do). Amplifying other people's posts is also important. Go ahead and like/retweet/reply to other people's posts. This may also help you get an idea of what you may like to say in your own tweets.

Hashtags...yes? Yes! Although don't use too many or you may get flagged as a bot. The biggest one that seems to be emerging is #SaveOFMD. Other popular ones are #RenewAsACrew, #RenewOurFlagMeansDeath, and of course, #OFMD and #OurFlagMeansDeath.

Should I just be tagging all the streaming services? Per @renewasacrew, no. It's counterproductive. You'll want to tag one streamer at a time and be specific. Below is an example of a tweet I made the other day -- use specific reasons why that that particular streamer may benefit from picking up OFMD.

I'm scared. People are mean. Yeah, people are mean. But I will say the vibes over at OFMD Twitter are currently the best I've ever seen them. People seem to have united for the greater good and are being overwhelmingly positive and just trying to do whatever we can to save the show. (That said, again, I already had a pretty curated feed, and was very liberal with blocking users/terms I didn't want to see, but I've been able to spend so much more time in the For You tab than I ever have without being jump scared by something.)

But I don't know anyone there! Wouldn't I just be shouting into the void? Not if you use the hashtags! Fans are being really good about following those and engaging with the tweets. Plus, [Stede voice], I'm your friend. I'm xoxoemynn over there as well, I'll follow you back and engage with any of your posts that I see. Plus, what's been REALLY lovely to see is that SO many lurkers have come out of lurkerdom to support the efforts, and they are being welcomed with open arms, so you will not be alone. Again, I am telling you, vibes? Best I've ever seen them.

I can't get sucked into another social media platform, I don't have the time. The beauty here is you don't need to spend a lot of time. I've been on Twitter more in the past week than I have in the entire year I've had an account, and I'm still only on for maybe an hour total the entire day? I open the app, I check a couple accounts, I engage with a handful of posts, and I close the app. It takes all of five minutes. It's an extremely small lift that can have a very big impact.

My bet is on Zaslav expecting us to be upset, and that there may be a day or two of outrage, but then we'd move on. I'm sure right now he's trying to convince everyone that this is a fluke, and that it'll blow over soon. Don't let him win. Keep OFMD in the news. Be loud (but polite) and make Max and other streamers take note of what a passionate, loyal fan base this show has. Make their stocks continue to drop. Make it clear this is NOT just a fluke, it is NOT business as usual. It's a BIG fuck up with lasting consequences.

Twitter, for all its sins, is the best place to do this.

Now let's get our damned show back.

[broshot]

Ooo can you also do Nanami and Sukuna for the near death reader? Loved the ones for Megumi and Gojo!

a/n: hello!! of course I can do that♡ thank you for the request! I'm just a hater when it comes to sukuna so I'll be making him the most ooc there is! (I've never really written stuff for these two so I hope they're not too bad) also I'm so so so sorry for writing this so late, I've had a big writing block recently so this isn't my best writing but I just needed to post this for you all

here's the one with megumi and gojo!

cw/tw: gn!reader, hurt w comfort (angst to fluff), hurt reader, mentions of death + blood, confession in sukuna's part, probs a bit (or very) ooc,

♡♡♡

nanami kento

he wasn't a person who talked about his feelings, and he definitely didn't show them. he was polite and professional, not so polite when he was fighting but that didn't matter. he always had the same blank and bored expression on his face, sometimes it turned into annoyed and angry but he never smiled or looked sad.

until he met you. he fell in love with you instantly, though he tried to convince himself that he definitely wasn't in love. he wanted to share his life with you, both his good and bad days.

you made him smile and laugh, you made him happy. he swears the day he confessed to you was his luckiest and happiest day and he never ever wanted to lose you. he swore he would protect you.

but his promise didn't seem very true anymore. you were sitting against a wall with your head in an uncomfortable position. he rushed over to you and tried to wake you up as you seemed to just be unconscious, probably fainted and nothing worse.

"can you hear me, sweetheart?" he asked, softly lifting your chin up. that's when he noticed the deep cut on your neck. it was bleeding a lot, how did he not notice all the blood before?

"wake up," he said, feeling the panic rush up faster and faster. you need to stay calm, he thought to himself but it wasn't really working.

his hands seemed to work on their own as he softly pressed a piece of cloth onto your wound, trying to stop the bleeding.

"what's up? I'm in a tight spot right now." he heard gojo's unusually serious voice on the other side of the phone. when had he called gojo?

"uh, I need help. (name)'s bleeding a lot. could you send someone over?" he couldn't recognize his own voice, it sounded distant and a bit too high to be his.

"I'll be over in a second," was all he heard gojo say before a familiar frame arrived right next to him.

---

you opened your eyes and quickly tried to get up. the fight was all you had in mind, you couldn't waste even a second, you had to be there.

but you were stopped by a huge wave of pain all over your body. your head was hurting and so was your neck, and you were suddenly aware of how sore all of your muscles were. you were laying in a bed, probably in a hospital somewhere. before you could even think about what happened yesterday that got you in this position, you noticed nanami sleeping on the chair next to you.

"honey?" you whispered and to your surprise, he immediately wake up.

"sweetheart. you're alive." he breathed out before rushing over to you. he pulled you close to his chest, softly wrapping his arms around your body.

"yeah, I was-" you started but a sound stopped your words. you heard a quiet sob from him. he was crying.

"I thought I lost you," he sobbed, his voice wobbly and weak.

you didn't say anything. you just hugged him back.

"I don't ever want to lose you, love, never," he continued. "if you die I'll never love anyone again. please don't leave me like that."

"I'll do my best to stay alive for you," you whispered. "I love you.

"I love you too. I'll make sure you're protected next time."

♡♡♡

sukuna

the king of curses shouldn't fear anything, right?

so why was he shaking from fear right now?

"I'm not scared, I'm just angry," he repeated for the nth time in his head. he could never be scared, really. but still, being scared was the only thing that felt acceptable for him right now. he was scared he'd lose you, the love of his life, all because he wasn't careful.

he had been practicing to control his cursed energy in different ways and had accidentally hit you with a huge energy boost. it didn't fully hit you, but it made a deep cut on the right side of your neck. and you were bleeding. you were bleeding a lot.

he stood next to you as you laid on the ground. he couldn't fully process what was happening, but soon enough his knees gave up and he fell down next to you.

curses are able to cry.

he had never cried before this, he never had any reasons to cry before this. but he was fully sobbing while looking down at your body. he could almost see the life bleeding out of you and he couldn't do anything about it.

then he remembered a thing or two.

---

you felt a stinging pain on your neck as you woke up. you groaned and tried to sit up, but you were quickly stopped by a pair of hands.

"sukuna?"

"(name), you're alive," you heard him say.

"yeah, why wouldn't I be?" you asked. he stayed quiet. "sukuna.. what happened?"

he sighed before explaining the situation fully. "I'm really sorry for that, I swear I didn't try to hit you and I didn't do it on purpose, I feel really bad about it and to think that I almost killed the only person I truly love, I'm such a disappointment," he rambled.

you were speechless. the fact that he almost killed you was shocking enough but on top of that he also loved you.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what took over me. I was just.. thinking out loud and I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable-" he kept rambling but you cut him off by placing your hand on his cheek. he looked up at you, clearly surprised by your action.

"relax, you didn't make me uncomfortable. and I forgive you for, you know, almost killing me. and I love you too."

"wait what? you.. do you really?" he asked, clearly not believing his ears.

"more than anything."

♡♡♡

this is WAY worse than the last one omg I'm so sorry AAAAAAAA anyways, recommend characters you want me to do this with (if you want to see more characters w this prompt)

you can also recommend other stuff for me to write! :D

masterlist is on my profile but I haven't updated it in a while

[sugar-plum-writer]

Box Me Hard Tonight Boxer <3

Tags: Crazy sex; Nanami losing his mind; NSFW and more NSFW; Boxing terms not used the way boxing terms ought to be used cough; Nanami in a rut being hard and rough; is it even Nanami anymore? what have you done to him?; Fem!reader x Boxer!Nanami Kento; established relationship; marriage; MDNI; (18+)

A/n: I had the most delusional Nanami imagination. Normally I don't write him as I cannot write him properly. But today he summoned me to write on him. And thank you for 200+ followers! I am so happy and am kicking my feet right now! I have opened my asks feel free to check out the pinned post in my blog for more info on asks~

Synopsis: What happens when the promised surprise is you riling him up and breaking the control over himself he had so carefully crafted?

Word count: 1.8k

[Pic not mine I randomly found it on the internet; I'll change it the owner requests ]

Kento Nanami was a boxer turned UFC Champion-infamous worldwide for his tactics and combos, calm demeanor, polite nature but brutal and efficient fighting tactics.

Nanami focuses only on you as you rush towards him screaming in happiness, throw yourself over him and he holds you tight burying his head in the crook of your neck and inhales your scent god you smelled delicious

He had hustled towards you immediately once he was free from the press; had the seats specifically saved for you. You only deserve the best: the front row seats, the closest to his corner as the love of his life.

"Baby" he smiled at you softly compared to his ruthlessness in the ring as the reporters crowd around you and him trying to capture your pictures. He is a star, the sole focus- the champion the only "Kento Nanami"

His muscles flexed as the sweat dripped making his body glisten under the lights.

"Kento! we won! yay!", you kissed him excited unbothered by the people around wrapping your arms around his neck

"Yes, we did" he hums and melts under your kiss with a slight groan as he kisses you back, "So sweet- I can never get enough"- his fingers dig into the fabric of your shirt not wanting to let you go.

As the mob gets more violent trying to click pictures, the bodyguards around you struggle to keep them away. Seeing the crowd he immediately scooped you in his arms, "Let's go home, love", he smiled softly as he carried you effortlessly

"Yes Darling let's go home~", you chuckle as his bodyguards in a matter of seconds have you two inside the car through the back door.

"You were so amazing Kento!", you look at him your eyes beaming with happiness, "It's all because of your love and support darling", he kissed you softly as the car started moving

"Kento~ haha!" you laugh as he kisses you and you kiss him back, "Love let's go for a vacation, where do you want to go hm?", he looks at you lovingly. Every time Kento had his match; after the match, you guys would go to for vacation to relax and unwind.

The car ride continues peacefully as you and Kento keep chatting, "Kento you know~ I have something special prepared for you today", you look at him playfully as his eyebrows arch intrigued

"What is love?", he chuckles as he looks at you amused, his hand finds its way to your thighs, caressing small circles into it as he hums softly. Squeezing your thighs.

"It's a surprise~ be patient Kento", you giggle as you rest your head on his shoulder and pat his crotch area making him hard, "Be good for me won't you?"

Let grunted and looked into your eyes hotly as if wanting to stuff you full with him right this instant, "Fine- I'll behave for you love…", his hot breath making you shiver as he whispered, "If only I get a reward later"

Soon you guys arrive home; Nanami gives you his hand to take as he helps you get out of the car and kisses your knuckles lovingly but- the moment the door opens and shuts behind the two of you, he's on you immediately- pinning you against his large frame on the wall.

His hand finds you on your cheek, tilting your face up as he kisses you deeply; your tongues intertwined. Wanting to taste you like a man who finally found an oasis in the desert; he kisses you even harder.

"I cannot be patient"- he looks at you in the eyes hungrily, his hands touching and squeezing your body as he fondles your breasts; wrapping your thighs around his waist- picking you up into his arms as he walks to your shared bedroom

"Ah-Nanamin" you moan as he kisses you hard biting your lips and nibbling on them, "Nanamin hah-" you look at him breathlessly, "Box me hard in the bed won't you?" you whisper as you wrap your hands around his neck making him freeze

"What?", his eyes darken, "Is that a proposal love?", his breath gets heavy as his lips hover above yours

"Do you like it?", you cheekily kiss him and smile teasingly making him lose his composure, "Love it to the ring baby", he whispers making you blush;

He pulls you into another kiss making you moan this one being rougher, hungry, and, full of carnal desire; "Ah- hah Kento ah", you moan against his lips as his hands slide under your shirt taking it off you, his teeth graze your neck before leaving bites leaving a hickey as you squirm

"Kento", you moan as he kisses you deeply once again and pulls away leaving a string of saliva, "Yes darling?" he chuckles as he removes his shirt gazing at your body, his toned muscles flexing themselves under the dim light- a confident smirk is on his lips- a completely different look than how he normally looks at you, what happened to him?

"I wonder", You look at him up and down as you touch his v-line making him groan, "Baby this is a dangerous game you are playing", he whispers with his cock twitching in his pants- oh how badly he wanted to touch him their and milk his cock with your pretty hands

"Hah~", you smirk as you look into his eyes, "Really? well, I wonder how hard my boxer can knock me out tonight~", you smirk with your words instantly sending goosebumps up his spine

"You are just asking to be punished aren't you?" he groans as his fingers dig deeper into your waist your words stirring something carnal inside him- he always likes to be gentle with you- loves you and treats you like the treasure you are, but your words are slowly eating away his control bit by bit

"Punish?", you smirk determined to break his composure to see what animalistic desires hide behind his calm demeanor. You have seen him when he boxes- that hint of insanity in his eyes makes you squeeze your legs together so tight- making you desire him so much it's embarrassing

"Why? will you box my pussy till it's stuffed and knocked out all sloppy?", you smirk and say as you spread your legs open making his breath hitch and his cock harden even more as he gazes at you and that damp spot on your panties- the spot so reserved for him and his dick

"Baby.." he leans in close so fast making you jump back, "Do you know what you are saying huh?" he whispers as he lowers his head and with his teeth rips your panties off throwing them off god knows where animalistically officially losing it; making you shudder as goosebumps spread all over your skin.

Oh shit- Oh shit you fucked up big time, you have never seen Nanami like this

But you aren't done yet hell you planned all kinds of vulgar things just to rile him up with a sharp breath you look at him and he notices as a devilish grin spreads across his lips

"Hah" you lean in and hotly whisper near his ears as his grip hardens on your hips bruising them and making you wince in pain, "Ya know… How about… You give me a fast jab with your dick-", you moan, "Then flip me over and do an uppercut as you fill me up-", his nails dig even deeper and he bites your shoulder bruising you like an animal in heat, "You slut you will be the death of me" he whispers and groans

"Then a side punch into my pussy from your dick as you fuck me from the side…and" your voice cracks as tears fill your eyes because of the pain but it felt so good, "Make me sit on top of you and do fast combos of uppercuts huh?"

Without any warning he stuffs his dick into your pussy roughly making you clench hard- your cunt desperately cries sloppily not used to harshness as she's always been treated like a princess not like a whore; working hard to adjust to his dick as he ruthlessly bullies his length inside you "Fuck" he groaned, "You are driving me crazy"

"Ah-hah-" you moan desperately, your nails digging into his back as he thrusts deep inside of you- hard, fast, and deep wanting to feel every inch of you around him, "Shit Kento! ahhh-", tears spill out of your eyes as you moan; your body aches with every insane thrust

"Hah-", he pants "You're absolutely mine, split so prettily on my dick my darling wife" he hungrily kisses you as his dick keeps moving, his one hand pinning your wrists above your head

There was not a hint of rationality behind his eyes as he was in a rut and just kept fucking you, even after you orgasm he kept going, fucking you through so many orgasms you'd lost count god he was treating you like a prostitute

Your eyes roll back at the sheer intensity wondering how you are even alive right now, "Kento- ah…hah~" you moan as your voice cracks, "Fuck- so perfect, so dirty and wet all for me hah", his hand bruised your skin where ever they touched

Your brain is so cock drunk you drool as he keeps going. He flips you over burying your face in the pillow roughly, his grip hard on your head and neck choking you all out as your vision goes white, "Kento- ah…I love you so much…I love your dick so much ah", you blurt out and choke even more as his grip on your neck makes you faint as you clench around him desperately not wanting to let go

"Oh yeah? Do you love my dick? Then take it like a good bitch! Don't dare let a single drop go to waste", his pace increases even more, making you go numb from sheer pleasure as your hands mindlessly scramble to grip the sheets to hold on for dear life as moans spill out from your mouth like a porn actress

"So fucking good!" he grunts and tosses his head back pussy drunk, you felt so good around him he can fuck you for days and nights just like that.

"ah- hah Kento-" you moan crazily as he and you reach the peak of your animalistic rut and desire, "Naughty girl.." he moans as he shudders with his climax approaching and he cums inside you hard painting your insides white, filling you up to the brim inside your womb, "You'll break my dick" he groaned as he panted heavily

"Hah…Kento…'tis so full ah…" you feel your brain short circuit as you knock yourself out dumb oozing out cum

Looking at you so fucked up, so messy, aroused him even more, his eyes darkens again with insanity behind them, "Don't knock yourself out now…you asked for this..I'm not gonna stop until you're a quaking mess" he whispers hotly near your ears nibbling on it as he sees his cum drip out of you; making his dick still hard enough to keep you up all night.

A full hand-on session of 'Technical Knockout' live; all by Nanami Kento for the love of his life

Link to masterlist!

[yan-critter]

Can you do more of Yandere Childe fics? And your art, it’s so delicious like 😍😍🫵👌👌

Do take requests? How about a yandere husband Childe with a childhood friend darling. The darling hasn’t seen him for a long time, and when they do, childe straight up proposed to her or have an arranged marriage of sorts, hehe

Take rest and drink water everyday for good health 🤭🤭

I like writing for Childe because of how versatile he can be! A lapdog one moment, a wolfhound the next. Glad you liked my art too! I wasn't sure about posting it but so far it's been well received so maybe I'll post more in the future. Anyways, I loved your request, it was such a fun scenario I might've gone a little overboard lol

Enjoy!

★━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━★

Childe, who returns to his hometown after years of absence as a newly crowned harbinger, enveloped in the nostalgia of a familiar place. Amidst the tranquil snow-covered streets, he stumbles upon you, his childhood sweetheart.

Now a fully grown adult, you’ve become a prominent figure in the village, obvious by the way the local children tug at your clothing for attention. He approaches you, all smiles, and you recognize him immediately. His tawny hair is as bright as ever, and it’s all the more beautiful in the snowy landscape of your home. You’re elated to see him, his presence stirring up old memories of laughter and innocence.

But something about him seemed different now, almost…

Unsettling.

Before you could even offer a greeting, Childe was already prattling off about what he had been up to, and how much he had missed. You laughed, amused by how little he had changed from the energetic child you knew back then. His cerulean eyes twinkled at your laughter, a light blush coating his face in response. You’ve gotten so lovely since he last saw you, a vision of beauty perfect to Childe’s tastes.

After a few minutes, you invite him into your home, hoping to continue the conversation away from biting winds and prying eyes. He readily accepts, and you falter for a moment as you notice the odd yearning in his tone. But you brush it off, assuming he just wants to get out of the cold as fast as possible.

Offering him a cup of tea, you sit together at a small table and begin catching up. Hearing about his difficulties rising within the ranks of the fatui, you begin airing out your own complaints. The town’s resources, your finances, your parents declining health as they grew older, the list goes on. His face lights up, offering a solution in the form of an arranged marriage, a proposition veiled under the guise of providing for your family. He was a harbinger now after all, with immense power and wealth, truly lacking nothing. He could make you happy!

Plus, he could finally fulfill the promise you two had made as children.

Taken aback by the suddenness, you politely declined. It had been so long since you had last seen him, and with how much time had passed you were both different people now. You hardly knew this version of Childe, the 11th harbinger of all things, and he had missed so much of your life as well. Besides, you were only children then! Making silly vows by the lakeside that didn’t actually mean anything. The man's face dropped, frozen in his seat as he absorbed your words.

“Didn’t… mean anything?”

In an instant, Childe's demeanor shifted, his once-charming smile contorting into a mask of desperation and resentment as he slams his hands down onto the table. The dam breaks, angry tears forming as he confesses his undying infatuation with you, revealing the depths of an obsession that had festered over the years. Adamant that you were being heartless, to deny him so easily when he was being so so kind. You were the only thing keeping him sane during his time in the abyss, pushing forward with the hope of marrying you once he escaped, and now you do this?

You want to be cruel? He can show you true cruelty.

Your heart pounded with fear as his tone turned sinister, threatening to use his connections as the newest lord harbinger to ensure the village would never receive supplies from the mainland ever again.

The sincerity in his voice makes you flinch, throat constricting with terror. He wouldn’t do that, would he? Doom all the people he once loved over, what, some old flame he hadn’t seen in nearly a decade? But as you look up and see his form looming over you like a predator, eyes glinting with a ferocity you’ve only seen from abyssal beasts, you’re certain he’s not bluffing.

The innocent, bright-eyed boy of your childhood now seemed like a distant dream, shattered by Childe's twisted desires. Every word he uttered dripped with malice, his possessiveness morphing into a chilling display of dominance. His power a dark shadow looming over the safety of everyone you love. You shiver, the realization of how easily he could have your entire town wiped out being nightmarish.

As the snowfall blanketed the peaceful village, you knew that escaping Childe's grasp wouldn't be without its victims. Who were you to say your life was more valuable than an entire community? A life with Childe would not be peaceful, a prisoner within his domain where the line between love and obsession blurred into a chilling reality. But he would take care of you, and you would be sheltered and safe within his grasp. They would be safe too. Your gaze is downcast as you compose yourself, silently mourning the freedom of the countryside you took for granted all these years. You couldn’t let them suffer, not for this. Not by him. Resigning yourself to your fate, you reach forward and embrace him, the venom in his expression melting away as he sighs. 

And as you stand there held against him, the spitting image of two lovers reunited, a thought occurs to you both.

You had to be his.

[windienine]

the best game of 2024 was an hour-long visual novel demo, and i can't tell you how it ends

attack and dethrone god.

okay. oh my god. soul of sovereignty by ggdg (of lady of the shard & deltarune fame) is discounted for only a few more days, so i need to get this one out while the iron's hot.

so: i'm inviting you along on another journey. we're following a polite gentleman of the wizardly inclination (loïc) who is approached by a sickly woman in dire need (ysmé). all she requests, in her plea, is an escort to guide her to the nearby temple. his decision to support her may turn out to be the most important choice he ever makes.

... have you ever enjoyed the kind of narrative that traps two people with heavily contrasting motives and personalities together in an unbreakable contract? do you like stories of absolute devotion?

i could look at this shot forever ngl

... are you compelled by immersive speculative fantasy worlds where the use and study of magic heavily influences the rhythm of people's day-to-day lives?

(really intriguing magical linguistics system going on here)

... do you ever promise too much of yourself to others, sometimes, even when it's a bad idea?

... if it was possible -- if you could -- would you abandon your humanity for the power to change your world forever?

and, whatever you may feel in your heart about the above...

do you want to see behind the eyes of a hot trans girl as she bullshits her way into a truly volatile level of power and influence and gets everything she wants?

(+ her pet dilf lovely assistant)

if even one of these elicited a "yes," i think you'll love this story.

i'll go out of a limb:

i think, if you open up your heart, you'll find yourself falling for both of the leads. It's a game that really wants you to look at it from every angle, take it apart, and ask questions about loïc, ysmé, their stories, and what they believe to be true about the world and one another. subtext -- especially the charged subtext this story throws at you and hopes you'll piece together -- is a beautiful thing.

the number of talksprites in this demo is kind of staggering

the jrpg-inspired world of the mosaic and its surroundings is as vibrant as it is profoundly lonely, color folded into every facet of its character as you move through it. appropriately, it's really invested in a lot of questions that arise not just from high fantasy as a genre, but from the modern fantasy sensibilities of jrpgs and the interrogation of what divinity even means in a world where the gods are forces you can interact with and draw power from, however indirectly.

what can i even say? that gg and toby fox's collab score for the prelude is downright heavenly and made it onto my work playlist right alongside the deltarune ost the day it came out on bandcamp? that gg's art, especially their use of light, conveys every scene with vivid beauty?

i wouldn't be posting so much of it if i didn't want to eat every CG. oh my god. he's so pretty. it's not even fair

beyond all of that, i think the game's main resonance point with people is that gg's writing is genuinely thoughtful. they use art detail and deft character writing to convey everything about the leads, using the limited time you get with it to paint layers and layers of information on who these people are and why they make the decisions they do. soulsov's roughly an-hour-and-change of text, expressive talksprites, and lush CGs is infused with so much heart and so much horror and so much intrigue that it leaves you feeling like you're a part of this world, carried along for the ride right alongside the two leads. gg clearly really adores these two, and that level of passion makes everything loïc and ysmé do shine even brighter. in spite of (or perhaps because of) all their friction and flaws, they're easy to love.

(it's really fun to read aloud as a script, too! ysmé's a hoot.)

i hope you experience it with high expectations and an open heart. i don't think it will disappoint. it is, perhaps, just a little bit magical.

i hope you see it through to the end!

[tanadrin]

Honestly, I *don't* want to mix things with proportional representation. I see proportional representation as an excellent way of increasing the importance of dealings between politicians and reducing the incentive effects of the voters. But in my ideal world I'll need to negotiate with people who do like proportional representation, and this system is a compromise I could get behind. Plus you can plug and play any three different electoral systems for different compromises.

First past the post is a bad, undemocratic electoral system. First past the post privileges large parties by making small ones unviable, and distorts the composition of parliaments by wasting votes. It can be gerrymandered in a way proportional representation cannot be. It produces highly unrepresentative outcomes. It is a bad electoral system! All good voting systems are to some degree inclined to more proportional results.

I've never heard the accusation that PR "increases the importance of dealings between politicians," but look. I don't know how else to put this. That is a stupid objection. Just absolutely boneheaded. You haven't thought about this at all, I reckon.

People hate on "politicians" as a generic class, but it's like hating on lawyers as a generic class. You need politicians. You want politicians. You want people whose specialized job it is to read legislation, fight about what should go in it, represent your interests, and come to balanced compromises about those interests. People percieve politics as messy, venal, and corrupt, and it can be all those things, but guess what? The alternative to career politicians is part-time citizens who don't know what the fuck they're doing, have no expertise in the legislative process, and therefore are at the mercy of lobbyists who can walk them like a dog because they're naive and inexperienced.

There's this especially (but not exclusively) American pathology that is a suspicion of government that works too well. This peculiar notion that if only we sabotage government a little bit it will keep tyranny in check and make politicians more honest... somehow. But filling government with random yahoos doesn't get you a noble collegium of Tocquevillian citizen-lawmakers, it gets you a pack of Marjorie Taylor Greens and Lauren Boberts. You know--morons. Americans will support all these ballot initiatives that fuck up government on purpose, like term-limiting legislators and keeping their salaries low so only rich people can afford to go into politics (and even then are only willing to do it as a stepping stone to other gigs), and vote for people who promise to make government work even worse by cutting the budget and lowering taxes, and then have the absolute gall to whine about how badly the government works. My fellow Americans, you did that on purpose.

(And there's this weird paradox where Americans all loathe Congress. Who keeps voting these creeps in? Well. You do. Congresscritters are generally pretty highly approved of by their own constituents. The stereotype of lazy, stupid, venal politicians always seems to apply to the other guys.)

And you will also note that since the abolition of things that used to facilitate deals between politicians in the U.S. congress--since the abolition of earmarks and chummy socials between congressmen and the post--generally, since the post-Gingrich upheaval in the House--it has gotten harder to pass even necessary, basic legislation, because it is harder to make the basic compromises necessary to keep government functioning. Having three separate legislatures that each can claim a different sort of democratic mandate isn't a recipe for good legislation, it's a recipe for paralysis and constitutional crisis.

[themildestofwriters]

Alternatives to Six Hundred Strike (ported from reddit)

There's been a lot of controversy about the first half of Six Hundred Strike. I'll admit, I'm not a particular fan of how it went down, but this is no shade at the animator -- they did a really good job and I did like it as an animation. I just didn't like the narrative of Six Hundred Strike, the jet-pack, and the like. So, this post is probably one of many talking about alternative interpretations for how Six Hundred Strike could've gone.

Godly Assistance. This is the most common headcanon: Odysseus was aided by the gods in defeating Poseidon. Top pick is usually Ares, though I've heard that Hermes could've helped out, or Hades, or even most if not all of the gods during God Games.

Anyone could come up with a motivation to explain any number of gods helping Odysseus.

Ares, because he was promised bloodshed and he will have it, or... because he respected Athena's sacrifice.

Hermes, because he is always helping Odysseus out.

Zeus, because he felt bad about what he did to Athena and decided to make it up to her.

The other gods in God Games, because, golly, Athena got them invested.

Yada, yada. Honestly, depending on what other sources of aid anyone ascribes to Odysseus, he probably only needs one god on hand to help, especially if we're going with the more "human" interpretation of the gods.

Poseidon's Trident. This one I feel like is under-considered. Poseidon's trident is a symbol of power, and I'm not just talking about in Percy Jackson. It is a weapon forged by the cyclopes which he uses as a catalyst for many of his godly feats.

It wouldn't take much to have Poseidon's trident be an object of power in and of itself. And, if it is, that means if Odysseus gets that trident out of Poseidon's hand, he's taking away a source of Poseidon's power. Furthermore, you could even have Odysseus himself empowered upon wielding the trident, which, if he takes it *during* the battle itself, would better justify how he was able to defeat Poseidon.

This can be alluded to without being stated in the animation. All we need is a look of "oh shit" panic on Poseidon's face when he's disarmed. It would give us enough information to know that losing his trident is a big deal -- and it can be foreshadowed in the Circe Saga if Odysseus disarms Circe's wand / staff in Done For.

Spirit of the Dead. Someone mentioned that Odysseus has his choir back up during Six Hundred Strike, and it wouldn't be that hard to assume that Poseidon summoned the spirits of the dead to torment and drown Odysseus.

"But the dead are Hades' domain!" Yeah, but they're also the dead who died at sea -- or at the hands Poseidon's own son. Polites and the six others who died at the hands of the Polyphemus. The five hundred and fifty who died at sea. Though it was Zeus' lightning bolt, you could argue that Eurylochus and the rest of Odysseus' crew still died at sea. And I'm sure we all know that Odysseus' mother drowned herself at sea, too.

About the only person who didn't die at sea was Elpenor, but, considering Odysseus' mother is there, he was easily replaced. Honestly, just makes the tragedy of Elpenor even funnier. Bloke didn't even get to invited to the fight.

Anyway, how does this help Odysseus? Well, what if whatever spell Poseidon was using to conjure and enthrall those who died at sea was, in part, broken by Odysseus opening the wind bag? Or, following my discussion of the trident, what if Odysseus disarming Poseidon broke the spell? Or, what if Odysseus wielding the trident himself broke the spell? As much as some might hate Odysseus, everyone would hate Poseidon more. It would take no convincing for them all to turn their wrath upon Poseidon.

The Wind Bag. Who knows? Maybe there was something more to the Wind Bag than just holding the storms of Poseidon inside. Regardless, opening the Wind Bag could've served Odysseus more than just serving as a jet pack (which, by the by, could still be a thing, just... maybe he's clutching onto it, instead of wearing it upon his back?). If the opening of the Wind Bag was surprising enough, and Ruthlessness showed that it could be, it very well could've distracted or even discombobulated Poseidon enough for Odysseus to act.

In Conclusion. In my platonic ideal of Six Hundred Strike, it would be all these elements that came in clutch, one after the other, that ultimately helped Odysseus defeat Poseidon. Ares would give him his second wind, which lets Odysseus get the second wind bag, and using the second wind bag (and the strength Ares gave him) he would've disarmed Poseidon. Then, wielding the power of the trident, he and the six hundred spirits at his command would've just beaten the shit out of Poseidon. And all of this segues nicely into Odysseus stabbing the shit out of Poseidon.

[syerra-637]

𝓨𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻𝓮 𝓪𝓬𝓽𝓸𝓻 𝔁 𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓮𝓻

Tw : Yandere behavior,toxic relationships, social isolation, emotional manipulation, invasion of privacy Genre: Angst Word count: 795 A/n: I wrote it for fem reader

You are a writer specializing in fanfictions about fictional celebrities, and your Tumblr account is starting to attract attention. Your style is sharp, sometimes dark, with touches of black humor.

One night, Adrian Blackwood, a renowned actor, stumbles upon one of your fanfictions during a bout of insomnia. The precision of your descriptions and the raw emotion in your words captivate him.

Adrian begins to anonymously follow your blog. Each new post becomes an obsession, and he stays up late to read your new stories. He discovers your Twitter and Instagram accounts, following you under fake profiles to keep up with your daily life and intimate thoughts shared online.

Adrian sends you a private message on Tumblr under a pseudonym, complimenting the depth of your writing and the accuracy of your insights. You respond politely, flattered by the attention from this mysterious reader. A regular correspondence begins, brightening your days with his words.

After weeks of correspondence, Adrian reveals his identity in a long, passionate message, confessing how much your words have touched and changed him. You are shocked and incredulous, but also deeply touched that a celebrity of his caliber could be your secret admirer.

Adrian insists on meeting you in person. He sends you an invitation to a VIP event where he knows you can talk privately. At your first meeting, Adrian is even more charismatic in person. His presence is mesmerizing, and you feel immediately drawn to him.

You sit nervously at the reserved table in the chic restaurant, casting furtive glances at the door. Every clink of glasses makes you jump, your heart pounding. When he finally enters, a magnetic aura seems to surround him. Adrian Blackwood, in the flesh, smiles at you with a warmth that melts all your apprehensions. "You are even more lovely in person," he says softly, taking your hand to place a light kiss on it. His deep blue eyes seem to read you, deciphering every emotion with unsettling precision.

Quickly, Adrian begins to show signs of possessiveness. He insists that you disable comments on your posts to "protect you from unnecessary criticism." He calls you several times a day, pretending to be concerned about you. He asks for photos to prove where you are and with whom.

Adrian starts sending expensive gifts to your home: designer clothes, jewelry, and even electronic devices to enhance your comfort. He proposes that you quit your job to dedicate yourself fully to writing, promising to meet all your financial needs.

When you express your concerns about his intrusive behavior, Adrian wraps you in his arms, murmuring reassuring words. "I just want to protect you, my love. No one understands how precious you are to me." His tender gestures and soothing voice make you doubt your own feelings, and you begin to believe that his intense love is normal.

You wake up in an unfamiliar room, the curtains drawn to let in a faint ray of light. Your head spins slightly as you try to recall how you got there. The door opens softly, and Adrian enters with a breakfast tray. "Good morning, my darling," he says with a sweet smile, placing the tray before you. "I found you exhausted last night. I thought you needed to rest." A shiver runs down your spine. "Adrian… I don't remember coming here… " "Don't worry," he murmurs, caressing your cheek. "I'll take care of everything."

Adrian subtly uses his celebrity status to isolate you from your friends and family. He invites you to exclusive events where you are the only person he seems to really see. He convinces you that no one understands you as well as he does and that your creativity will thrive better without outside distractions.

This story can take several directions: you might try to escape from this toxic relationship with the help of loved ones, or you might sink deeper into this unhealthy dependence, unable to break free from Adrian's grip.

You walk quickly down the street, casting worried glances over your shoulder. Every silhouette seems suspicious, every shadow a threat. You have finally decided to flee, to free yourself from Adrian's stifling hold. Suddenly, a firm hand grabs your arm, pulling you into a dark alley. You struggle, but his grip is too strong. "I told you, you can't escape me," Adrian whispers in your ear, his voice soft but menacing. "You belong to me."

Adrian strengthens his hold on you, using his fame to constantly monitor you, even hiring private detectives to follow you. Your world shrinks to him, every decision you make influenced by his obsessive love. You are caught between the allure of his affection and the desperate desire to regain your freedom.

[which-item-poll]

Heya! I post daily polls featuring items from various websites and ask "which item would you rather own?" Pretty simple!

Important Information:

- I just post whatever I find on the internet. You might notice a lot of Sanrio/kawaii stuff and that’s just because I’m obsessed, sorry whfjshf

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[a-star-that-burns-brightly]

CH2-13 Thoughts + CH2-14 Predictions

Hello DRDT Fandom! CH2-13 came out about four or so days ago as I'm posting this, and I finally mustered up the energy and mental strength to write down my overall thoughts, and also general predictions for what I think is to come in the next episode. A lot happened in this episode and we have a lot to cover, so let's get started! Before we do though, I think I should give us a reminder of where we currently are in terms of the swear chart and the bingo card, as of CH2-12 Swear Statistics

Bingo Card

Just like the last post, I'll be separating my talking points into character categories, so let's jump straight in with the big man himself...

Levi

Quick Disclaimer: I myself am still trying to unlearn the mindset that having low or no empathy is in any way a moral failing. If I say anything wrong or rude, please politely correct me. Remember kids: Your feelings, thoughts, and emotions, what you feel and how you feel them if you do at all, do not have any moral weight, they are simply aspects of your brain and you cannot control your brain. The only thing that has moral weight is your actions.

So as we learned in the previous episode, Levi has the murderer secret! And as we learn in this episode, he apparently killed four people, one of which being his father. DRDT continues to take Danganronpa's standard tropes and incorporating them in unique ways, in this case Levi represents the trope of the Chapter 2 Serial Killer reveal (Genocide Jack, Peko, Maki). I love that DRDT keeps doing this and I hope it keeps it up You know what else is staying consistent, though?

(x) Levi: That incident happened when I was in my junior year of high school. Levi: My junior year was also the year that Hope's Peak scouted me as the Ultimate Personal Stylist. Levi: To my understanding, it would've reflected poorly on Hope's Peak to recruit a murderer, so they pressured the court into not pressing charges.

US-HPA being morally corrupt as all fuck, that's what! Like no, seriously, it makes more and more sense as for why Xander David and Mai were most likely forming a revolution against this damn place, cause wow. The choice to scout out Levi during his Junior Year, when he was still in high school, is...interesting. Given that this Hope's Peak takes in College-aged students, why not just wait until Levi has graduated high school? In fact, that probably would've been even better because by then Levi definitely would've perfected his skills in styling by then, and thus would further justify him being enrolled in the academy. We don't know whether or not Levi was scouted before or after his incident, but given how Levi explains the events, I'm willing to bet this was after. Which...makes thing especially strange. But I'm sure it's no big deal. I mean, it's not like we have any evidence of US-HPA preying on vulnerable childre--

(x) Min: The Ultimate Contest for Eminent Students was made for a very specific target audience. Min: Those children who had no talents, who would consider spending their entire lives preparing for one single test for even a chance to become an Ultimate...

Oh. Well isn't that funny, huh?

Part of Hope's Peak's branding in general is the promise of a better future, which is something that Levi clearly wants. So I can most definitely see why the idea of being enrolled in the academy appealed to him. Levi being a delinquent in his teenage years definitely tracks, given how we know that his family was full of bad influences (including himself more than likely). And I am absolutely not surprised that Levi ended up killing his father. I think a lot of us theorized for a while that the person he killed was linked to his family.

I'd absolutely adore to learn more about Levi's family situation and what exactly their relationship with each other was, because "We were bad influences on each other" can mean a lot of things. Given the fact that not even the police cared about the death of Levi's father, I'd be pretty willing to believe that Mr. Fontana is a wanted man who has done a lot of criminal harm to others. That might even be where Levi formed the mindset that people are defined by their actions. Maybe, that's my best guess and it doesn't even include his mother and brothers, lmao. Anyway, that's enough of Murder, Corruption, and Daddy Issues. Let's talk about the other thing that was revealed about Levi this episode, or more-so put into words. His low, if zero empathy. Firstly, those who are headcannoning Levi is ASPD, I see you and I love you. So much. But I would be lying if I didn't admit that my first thought upon watching this scene was "Levi is so Autismcoded" lmao But in all seriousness, I absolutely adore this side of his character. In general something I've always loved about Levi is the fact that he, to put it bluntly, does not know how to act. He's constantly seeing what others do and copying them, and asking them for guidance when he doesn't know what to do. His first appearance shows him using Xander and Teruko's appearances to wager what kind of person they are, which is more than likely how he got into styling in the first place. He's basically masking and trying to appear as what he views as normal because he's aware that his lack of empathy is not something most humans possess. And his actions reflect that of what he thinks a good person would do in these scenarios, whether that be your friends not inviting you to an event, or someone profusely bleeding from their neck. To put it in simple terms: He's masking. I love that. It really reminds me of the experiences had by my neurodivergent friends, and even though Levi is not canonically neurodivergent, the fact that so many people headcannon him with ASPD or Autism really goes to show how DT-Dev nailed that kind of experience, and how well they wrote Levi's low empathy in general. Well-done, DT-Dev :D ...Also I think it's safe to say that Accomplice!Levi is not happening. Damn it, I really liked that theory lmao.

Ace

[not even three minutes later]

...See, this is why I always believed Ace was telling the truth about David and Arei's conversation, because wow this man is competing with the former in the Shitty Liar Olympics.

If Ace's sense of security around Levi wasn't already shattered, it sure as hell is now. Which is very upsetting to see, but also very entertaining to me as an aficionado of toxic yaoi. I was never really an Acevi girl, it was just never something I was attracted to (probably because for a majority of CH2 Part 1's airing I really didn't like Ace lmao), but this combined with the Other Thing I'll talk about later has definitely sold me on it. I hope they get worse.

I can't remember what post it was, but I remember seeing someone talk about Ace very much projecting a friendship onto Levi that was never really there between them, and looking back, I absolutely agree. I mean, where the two of them really friends? I do think that Levi does, or did, genuinely like Ace. I don't think he would've been hanging around him in Chapter 1 if he didn't. But it was simply just that, he liked Ace. Ace loved Levi, and saw him as his lifeboat in the midst of this scary unfamiliar situation. Even if everyone else either was annoyed by or straight-up disliked Ace, even if he could die at any moment, he could still rely on Levi as a presence of safety and security, but that all came crumbling down.

ace can you please change your sprite

The fact that Ace, the man famous for jumping to conclusions, not thinking anything through or in depth, and switching his opinions on others on a dime, is even asking for Levi's defense at all, is proof enough to me that even after everything Ace still wanted to cling onto the fantasy of their friendship he had built up in his mind. But upon hearing that Levi never cared about what happened to him, he can no longer do so. ...And why do I think Ace got attached to Levi so quickly?

(x) Ace: I was totally right all along to burn our friendship--No, I can't even call it it "Friendship." Ace: There's only one person in my whole life who I've ever been able to call my friend. That I ever thought, even for just a short time, that you and I were "friends" is an insult to his memory.

Yeah it's time to talk about this.

So for those who are not in the know, DT-Dev confirmed in a now-deleted ask that this friend of Ace's is named Taylor Riley.

(thank you to @/nicohakobyan / weightedblankett on twitter for providing this screenshot)

We know very little about this man other than his name, his gender, the fact that he was Ace's friend, and that he's dead. We don't actually know that fourth one, but I think "insult to his memory" speaks for itself lmao. As such, we do not know the details of his relationship with Ace... But I've made more out of less before, so let's get to talking. Here's what I think:

I think that Taylor was a presence in Ace's life much similar to how Levi was to him in Chapter 1: A strong protective figure that helped to make the scared-of-everything Ace feel a sense of safety. And then some form of incident happened that resulted in Taylor's death, leaving Ace alone, heartbroken, bitter, and terrified. That sense of security he once had was ripped away from him, and without Taylor, he doesn't know what to do with himself anymore.

And then in the killing game, he meets Levi, who provides him with a similar feeling of safety. Immediately he begins to project the memory of Taylor onto Levi and as such becomes attached, quickly considering Levi a friend because of it. And I'm not entirely pulling this idea that Ace was projecting Taylor onto Levi out of my ass, either.

Ace: dark blue/purple (reasoning: refuses to provide reasoning)

When we first got this answer, most people assumed this was referring to Levi, but I honestly think it is more likely that this is referring to Taylor. But those colors are still part of Levi's design, which automatically sets up a parallel between both Levi and Taylor Ace projected his relationship and the memory of Taylor onto a man he barely knew, and when that man lost his patience with him, his fantasy was swiftly kicked with the steel-toed shoe of reality. Hell, Ace's reaction after Levi snapped at him may had been due to his illusion of safety crumbling beneath him, but going down the road of this theory, Levi snapping at him might've been the first time Ace truly saw Levi and not Taylor. He had been giving this man a script and a role to play, and Levi responded by tearing up the paper and telling him to fuck off. In a sense, you could say that in that moment, Ace lost Taylor a second time.

Since I don't think Ace is going to be the killer as he was knocked out and thus did not have any knowledge of the murder mechanism (at least not including the theory that he tried to kill himself, which... Is a possibility, but I don't think that's the case). And if he does live past his chapter, I honestly think Chapter 3 will mark his breaking point. Any fantasy of Levi that he was clinging onto with his pinky has now shattered into pieces ten times over, the person who tried to kill him is still alive and for all he knows, could do it again whenever the hell they want to and people will take their side over his own. Next to no one in the cast likes him and they make that explicitly clear, and worse of all, he will still be trapped in this godforsaken...whatever facility this place is meant to be. So to cap off this section that got way too long, Ace Trauma Dump is on my Chapter 3 bingo card, and if we get to see Taylor and his design includes dark blue and purple I will actually become spaghettified. Please survive Ace, you are finally starting to become not C-Tier

Hu and Veronika

Lumping these two together because I have about the same amount to say about both of them and their secrets were revealed together. Hu's secret is the Hopeless Child one, and Veronika's is the Self Harm one. I think after CH2 Part 1 most of us predicted as such, but it's still very satisfying to be right. What I'm more interested is this supposed pact that they made off-screen. I have to assume that Veronika went to Hu pretty quickly to reveal her secret to her given her general disinterest in topics of suicide and self harm. So I'd wager this pact was probably made at around CH2-5. Not that that really tells us much about the actual conversation, but it's nice to have a time-frame for reference.

I don't expect the actual conversation to be shown because from what we currently have it doesn't really add much of anything, but it would definitely be cool.

(x) Hu: I've been quite selfish this whole time, keeping my secret because I didn't want you all to think less of me...

I've said this before in this post, but I absolutely believe that David eventually coaxed and pressured Hu into revealing her secret to him, as well as why she kept it for so long. And I also think David implanted, or I guess more accurately watered the seed in Hu's head that she was inherently selfish for not sharing her secret. That, I think we would benefit from a flashback, but maybe I'm just biased because I desperately want Hu lore. Please DT-Dev, I'm on my knees Hmm... what else?

(x) Veronika: After all, my own so-called secret isn't even the worst thing I've done. Isn't that so utterly disappointing for this motive?

Oh yeah there's that. What the fuck, Veronika? Like, I feel like this is something I should've expected this, but for some reason I didn't. I'll be honest here, I really have nothing right now. But whatever Veronika is referring to here, I feel like it has something to do with her 'dearest friend' mentioned in the CH2 Q&A (who's name is Alyssa Belyaeva.) What Veronika actually did? I do not have the slightest clue, you can never know with this girl. But no matter what she did, I will probably love her even more for it. Glad that DT-Dev seems to agree with the precedence of supporting women's wrongs.

Teruko

...So I'm glad to see we're all in agreement that that is not her fucking secret. I mean, I'm sure it applies to her. She is an orphan, her parents are out of the picture, and though we don't know the whereabouts of her brother and neither does she, she most likely assumes he's dead as well. But honestly, given the fact that again this is not her fucking secret, I'm starting to wonder if that's really the case... Can Teacher Tawaki theory still live on? I'll save that for another post.

Anyway what was I talking about? Oh yeah, that is not her fucking secret.

And this little bitch knows that for a fact.

I won't go too deep into this because there have already been people discussing it better than I could, but this silent agreement the two of them have to not share Teruko's true secret is so palpable and interesting to me. David knows that Teruko's secret isn't that, but for whatever reason, he is keeping his mouth shut. And he just gives Teruko that shit-eating smirk. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Teruvid? I fucking love Teruvid. But yeah, I still think 100% that Teruko's secret is that the killing game is all her fault. It just does not make sense for Xander and Min's secrets to belong to anyone other than each other as they are dead. And in general it just makes sense for Teruko's character and her role in the story. And I can't help but feel like Teruko's actual secret will be revealed at the end of the Chapter.

Eden

... I mean. Do I really need to say more? I swear I made this exact joke in the previous thoughts post, but I can't help it. It applies perfectly to this CG. When this CG, this fucking JUMPSCARE of a CG, popped up on my screen, I'm pretty sure I ran around in a circle screaming in my room for a total of ten minutes. The first of two times I would do that during this masterfully crafted scene. I want to think of some kind of insightful analysis, but the truth is basically in your face. Eden was the one who gouged out Xander's eye. Why did she do it? Where does this fit into the overall lore? I DON'T FUCKING KNOW What the fuck am I supposed to say? This CG is basically all we have, and we'll definitely have to wait for more information. Especially since Eden is totally the culprit, but we'll get to that in the predictions section. (yeah if you can't tell my writing juice is starting to run out, but if I get this out any later than today I will kill myself)

David

(...for a scumbag, he's kinda cute.) So first of all, David is slowly becoming the funniest character in the cast in my opinion, which is a huge achievement in a cast full of very funny characters. And in general I think as a character he perfectly captures DRDT's general tone of half-and-half both silliness and angst, like yin and yang. Secondly though, the big thing that David did in this chapter (besides keeping Teruko's secret and being funny) is lying to Eden about the rest of the conversation he had with Arei. Ultimately, I think David himself saw that action as a good deed.

Think of it from his perspective: This is a man who has had hope and change presented to him on a silver platter multiple times, and then had it violently ripped away from him. And the most recent example of that, Arei, presented him with a better future and the possibility of change only to be killed upon trying to act on said change. If he told Eden that Arei still had hope, that she still wanted to change, it would aspire Eden with that same hope that in his eyes is destined to crash down on her. So instead of inflicting that same pain onto her, he instead chose to say nothing at all Maybe I'm giving David too much credit, what he did was still at the end of the day, incredibly dickish. But that interpretation is what makes the most sense to me personally. That's all I really have to say in regards to David... So, let's move onto what was, in my opinion, the star of this week's episode.

Arei

Arei Nageishi.... Ohhhh save me Arei Nageishi.... Arei was already one of my favorite characters in the cast due to her personality, design, voice acting, and most of all the character development she had throughout the course of Chapter 2. But this episode, this scene... It cemented her a well-earned spot in my top four, sitting only behind Whit, Teruko, and David.

The flashback scene of Arei and David in this episode is honestly up there with some of the best scenes in the whole show to me, almost solely because of how it caps off Arei as a character postmortem, and the story that she, along with Chapter 2 as a whole, is meant to tell. This whole chapter has been themed around the idea of what classifies a good person, and this flashback scene provides such a great payoff to that theme and it is everything I could've ever wished for. The message I got from Arei's story is that, ultimately, the idea of a "Good Person" and a "Bad Person" are nothing more than just that. Ideas. And in being ideas, they are above anything else, arbitrary, subjective, and at the end of the day, incredibly meaningless when it comes to discussing actual human beings. Insistence on categorizing yourself and the people around you into boxes of "pure saint that can do no wrong" and "irredeemable demon who will burn in the pits of hell" is a fast track to viewing a complicated, colorful world into a few shades of black and white. That's how David views the world, and has viewed the world probably for years. And I'm going to be honest and say that I think before being confronted with the truth of David's actions, Arei was heading right down the same path that he had headed.

(x) Arei: Of course I wanted to change myself. Who wants to be a grab-bag of negative personality traits? There's not even anything positive you could say about me. Arei: Still, for the longest time, I thought it was stupid to even try. I'm rotten to the core, and I might as well be a different species from saints like Eden and you. Arei: A pig never hopes to grow up into a human, because it knows that such a metamorphosis is impossible.

And this is the line that really, really makes me think that. She calls David and Eden saints because (up until this moment) she viewed both of them as the ideal of what makes a good person, similar to how David views Xander. And on the contrast, claims herself to be rotten to the core, ontologically evil with no redemption in sight. She's even performing David's habit of self-dehumanization, likening herself to a pig in the same way David likens himself to a cat in the LGI video, which goes to show how this mindset of black-and-white is, above all else, a dehumanizing view on the human race that relegates people into cardboard boxes with the flaps taped shut. If she didn't find out the truth of David's actions, I am confident that she would've done down the same path that he did, becoming convinced that she will be a terrible person until the day she dies because she cannot reach this worthless standard of a good person that she has set up in her head. But we know that's not how it goes. Arei does realize that the man she once thought of as a saint might be, in his words, a lying manipulative scumbaggy piece of shit. And upon realizing that, the second half of the message unlocks itself. There is no such thing as irredeemability.

Change is a part of being human. Humans are not built to run in a hamster wheel for the rest of their days, reliving their mistakes over and over again wallowing in their self-hatred and guilt. Eventually, they have to get off the wheel and start taking the steps necessary to grow, change, develop and flourish to properly better themselves. (This applies to yourself just as much as it applies to the worst, most depraved individual you know by the way) The alternative is living in a four-by-four black box of self-loathing and relentless stagnancy, which is not productive for the person or the people they've hurt. It is only when you reject these black-and-white categories of "Good Person" and "Bad Person" and accept that no matter what you've done, you're capable of becoming better, that you can achieve true growth and change. The way this message was executed, especially through a character that dies before the halfway point of the story, is something that I marvel at as an aspiring storyteller. DRDT's beating heart will always be its character writing, and this scene is one of the primary examples of that. Thank you, DT-Dev, for making Arei Nageishi and the rest of your amazing cast of characters. :D

Extra Thoughts !!! - FURUYA FANDOM (me) THE TRACK PLAYED LETS FUCKING GOOOOOO!!! - I am very excited to find out more about Nico's attempted murder given all of the questions surrounding it. If the method of murder really was replicated, and Nico wasn't the culprit themself, you guys should take a wild guess who that implicates. (this is probably obvious by this point, but I really don't believe in the theories that suggest that someone other than Nico was responsible for Ace's attempted demise, be it Hu or Ace himself. I feel like it doesn't line up with the current narrative direction that Nico seems to be going in, the physical evidence of them stealing the turpentine, and...I'm gonna be honest, I just don't like it lmao. I'm sure DT-Dev would do it well, but just as a premise I do not favor it. Nico's attempted murder + subsequent regret from it felt like such a big moment in the chapter's narrative in relation to the themes of All That Glitters and the cast revealing sides to themself that weren't as prevalent before, as well as the themes of change and moving on from the past littered all throughout the chapter. I think if Nico's attempted murder was responsible by anyone but Nico, it would just dampen the impact of their overall story for me. That's just me though.) - WE FINALLY GOT ANOTHER NONSTOP DEBATE LETS GO BOYS!!! Nonstop debates I MISSED you - "Hey why does Whit know so much about hangi--" Look. This man is so unbelievably suspicious in every single way that for the sake of my sanity, I'm just gonna assume DT-Dev chose a random character to give the hanging explanation. It is the only way I will survive this chapter - But hey, at least we got this

- As always, I adore the new sprites we got this episode, especially Ace's new ones. It's probably the first sprite of his that actually appears emotionally vulnerable when he's not bleeding profusely from the neck. And of course, I loved David's shit-eating grin towards Teruko, I hope he never changes. - Speaking of Teruko, us getting Tutor Teruko was lovely. She is perfect, she is a little bit of everything all of the time.

(x) Whit: If you're so inclined to complain, Sir Light Pollution, why don't you try and think of some good evidence? Charles: Light pollution? Whit: You know… Cuz he had stars, and now he doesn't, and light pollution makes stars disappear… or… or… something….. Charles: I am truly impressed…by how bad that was.

- I love these dorks so much. I can tell DT-Dev has a lot of fun writing them.

- Teronika Consent animation! I guess after Acevi's Soap Opera, DT-Dev decided to feed the yuri crowd as well. Love it when we get to see those little sprite animations, too.

Predictions for CH2-14 - The episode is 40 minutes long, the longest episode we have had so far. (40 minutes of DRDT content... I'm excited just thinking about it!) Because of that, I think I will just start with my biggest prediction: I think we're getting the culprit reveal this chapter. I don't think that just because of the length either. When you really look at it, we have basically used every piece of evidence at least once with the exception of three: - The conditions of the gym (which I assume will be discussed next) - The scuffs on the ground - The ball of starchy clothes All three of those pieces of evidence I think can definitely be cleared up in the span of 40 minutes, especially since full focus is now on the murder case. I don't necessarily think the trial will end in this episode, but I think we have at least one more trial episode to go before the post-trial + execution + ending of the chapter. - And as the culprit reveal is approaching, I have formulated a tier list of who I think is least - most likely to be Arei's culprit. I will provide my reasoning for each.

No. 17/16 - Xander Matthews + Min Jeung I mean, what it says on the tin. They're dead, and thus couldn't had committed the murder. No. 15/14 - MonoTV + Arei Nageishi There are explicit rules against them being the culprit. Rule 8 and Rule 11 in particular. No. 13 - Teruko Tawaki She is the protagonist. Didn't stop Kaede, but I highly doubt that's where DT-Dev is going. No. 12 - David Chiem Other than the previous five who I've all disqualified from being the culprit, David is probably the character I suspect the least. He has an alibi for the time of the murder, getting breakfast with J and Veronika, and thematically...well, he's basically being set up as the antagonist. I don't think we'll be rid of him this early lmao. No. 11 - Charles Cuevas Charles has a fear of blood and dead bodies, and though I wouldn't say that completely disqualifies him from becoming a culprit in the future, in a case like this with such a complicated mechanism like this where he'd have to be in very close proximity with the body at all times? I highly doubt it. He also has an alibi for the fish (He was with Whit). No. 10 - J Rosales J both has an alibi for the fish (Arturo following her around), and an alibi for the morning (getting breakfast with David and Veronika), and both of those alibis can be confirmed. I don't think she did this. No. 9 - Veronika Grebenshchikova I'll be honest, I really don't see Veronika committing a murder at all. She clearly wants to see this through to the end, and killing someone would come with the risk of her being executed, which I don't think she would see as a satisfying conclusion to her story. That, combined with the fact that she has an alibi for the fish (bothering Teruko) and an alibi for the murder (getting breakfast with David and J) makes me think she didn't do this. No. 8 - Nico Hakobyan You might think it's weird to place Nico this low on the overall tier-list despite them not having an alibi for the fishes, and their morning alibi being...somewhat flimsy but I'll get to that with Hu, but here's my logic. Nico was driven to attempt murder from very specific circumstances. That being, Ace's relentless bullying and abuse towards them. Nico has said before that they'd understand murder if the perpetrator didn't like the victim, and while I don't think they exactly liked Arei, I do not think they harbor the same animosity towards her as they did towards Ace. I truly believe that Nico would only ever resort to murder if they truly despised the person in question and saw no other solution. So that is why I feel comfortable placing Nico at eighth. No. 7 - Hu Jing Hu is also another character that I think some will be surprised to see so low, but I don't think this was her doing. She has an alibi for the fish (cleaning up with Eden), and though again her alibi in the morning is very flimsy (having tea with Nico in the morning,) I do believe she is telling the truth because if she was lying about her alibi, I think the brutally blunt Nico would call her out for it. I'm sorry, I just simply cannot imagine Nico letting that shit slide regardless of how many theories I read. Not to mention I can't really think of a motive for why she would kill Arei specifically when, if she really did want to kill someone, Ace is right there. No. 6 - Whit Young Whit is supremely fucking suspicious and a lot of his behavior in the trial is literal shenanigans, even more so given the fact that he doesn't have an alibi for the actual murder. But he does have an alibi for the fish (again, he was with Charles) which is the main sticking point of Whit!Culprit. His other sticking point is his lack of motive, both in terms of the secrets and Arei specifically. I don't know like- just look at this man, do you think he did this? /joke

No. 5 - Levi Fontana The number one suspect in the fandom for a while, and he's only at number five. He ultimately lacks an alibi for the morning, and his alibi for the fish was that he was doing his laundry... With no one else around. Shady as fuck. But I think given his principles discussed in this episode ("it is a good thing to make sure someone else doesn't die"), and the genuine desire to be helpful he has expressed throughout this trial, I think him being the culprit is unlikely. That's why I was adamant on him being an accomplice for a while because I still thought he had some role in the case, but oh well. No. 4 - Rose Lacroix I'll be honest, Rose is only this high because her alibi situation is worse than Whit's and Levi's combined. Both of her alibis are that she was sleeping in her room, which cannot be proven and can be very easily lied about. But other than that, I don't think she is the culprit. I think this case requires too many physical maneuvers for someone as lethargic as Rose to pull off successfully, and if she were the culprit I don't think she'd bring attention to the missing grippy tape at all. No. 3 - Arturo Giles Arturo does have an alibi for the fish (following J), but does not have an alibi for the morning. Unlike basically every other character here, something else that puts Arturo above them is that he was capable of overhearing Eden and Arei's conversation and forging the note. But there is also a discrepancy present that is also present with every character here, and that is the fact that Arturo did not witness Nico's attempted murder or the condition of Ace's body and the gym, so there was no way he could've replicated the murder method used for Ace on Arei. So though logistically he is a more likely possibility, I don't think it was him. No. 2 - Ace Markey Ace, to me anyway, is the second most likely candidate to being Arei's killer. He does not have an alibi for the fish and could've very easily grabbed them after David and Arei left the Relaxation Room, and he doesn't have an alibi for the morning either. He has a very clear motivation for taking a chance at killing someone, of "someone literally sliced my neck open not two days ago and I know I am not safe here I need to get the fuck out." If you choose to factor in strength, Ace is one of the strongest members of the cast and would be more than capable of the physical maneuvers made to kill Arei. Though I personally don't believe in this theory, if you think Ace attempted suicide instead of Nico trying to kill him, he has the murder method down lock too because he tried to commit it onto himself. He has been shown to be nosy, so it is not improbable that he listened in on Arei and Eden's conversation. And lastly, he is one of the only two suspects who was capable of stealing the grippy tape that was used in the murder. All of the evidence is practically stacked against him... But there are a couple of problems. One, if you believe that Nico did try to kill Ace, than the point about Ace knowing the exact method of death goes out the window. He was knocked out by the turpentine, and woke up in extreme pain in a blinding fury of rage and bloodlust, I don't think his surroundings would be the first thing on his mind. But a much bigger issue we have is the question of... Why would Ace take the tape? Following this theory, his murder plan wouldn't had started until the day after Nico's attempt on his life, it would make no sense for him to take the tape then. These two sticking points are why, though a likely candidate, I do not think Ace is the culprit. That award of main suspect goes to...

No. 1 - Eden Tobisa Yeah, if you've spent any time on this account you probably know I'm an Eden!Culprit truther. There are many well-written posts about this theory that I'm sure you've seen so I'll try to keep this short, but though the theory does have a few flaws to it, the big one being Eden's alibi for the fish that she was cleaning up with Hu, I think Eden being the culprit makes the most sense from an evidence, thematic, and motive standpoint. I know some people have dropped the theory upon the fork reveal, but DRDT is not unbeknownst to killing off characters with certain mysteries left unanswered. That is basically all for my predictions related to the culprit, but I still have some predictions for the overall episode. - Nico's gonna get placed in the hot-seat, obviously, which will definitely cause a reaction out of both Hu and Ace. And I honestly feel like the two of them are going to keep interrupting Nico until they eventually snap. And I hope that happens honestly because unless you count the "I'll kill you" line, we have yet to see or hear Nico when they're actually angry angry. Nico obviously doesn't like conflict, but they might have to get over that if they actually want to defend themself knowing the other two. - I'm still holding out hope we'll get a Random Guess segment lmao - And lastly: I need Whit to break the forth wall at least once I didn't put that on the bingo card for fucking NOTHING

Conclusion I'm gonna be completely honest, I do not have the energy to write anymore and I just want this out lmao. But overall, this was one of my favorite episodes in the whole series. I loved the Levi and Ace stuff, I like that we now have all the secrets, and like I said, the scene with Arei is probably one of my favorite scenes in the show. CH2-14 is going to be a wild ride I can already tell, and if we do find out who the killer is, you will see me screaming. Regardless of if it's Eden lmao.

UPDATED SWEAR STATISTICS CH2-13

UPDATED BINGO CARD

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a steddie "they reconnect after years apart" journey except they never got all that close post-Vecna to begin with. Like they spend a week in hell together, develop the sort of respect you have for someone when you have to work together to save the world, but it doesn't ever get much bigger than that.

They're just two guys who stumbled into each other's lives on circumstance alone and then spend the next decade seeing each other precisely once a year at the single shared holiday they both spend with the party.

New Years.

Eddie always spends Thanksgiving with Wayne and Steve is with Robin every 4th of July (running off and doing their own thing in a tradition everyone knows not to ask about) so the only time both of them end up at the Hopper-Byers residence every year is in that final countdown towards something new.

and they're not enemies and they're not-not friends either, but it's like that friend of your cousin who shows up to the party and you'll chat and make polite conversation and roll your eyes when they say something a bit out of bounds for two people who don't know each other all that well except.

Well, except, when you do that every year it becomes routine. When you do it every year it becomes, I know I'm not gonna have to continue this conversation in the morning so fuck it I'll be honest with you. When you do it every year, on the tipsiest night of the year, surrounded by people you trust in an environment that feels intrinsically safe it becomes--

"Did you quit your shitty job yet or are you still being a pussy about it?"

and it becomes--

"you're not still dating that same jerk as last year, right?"

and it becomes--

"wait, you hate playing Christmas music, why would you let someone talk you into that? Next time call me and I'll knock some sense into your dense skull"

and it becomes--

"I mean obviously a friends with benefits thing wouldn't work out, Steve, you're a serial monogamist"

and it becomes--

"Hey, it's good to see you again, man"

and it becomes--

"I missed your stupid hair."

and it becomes--

"I missed your drunk fucking rants."

and it becomes--

"I missed you."

Years pass, turning one into the next and it becomes I missed you I missed you I miss you.

Because they've been doing this long enough that they know each other, one night a year holding up the kitchen-counter-turned-bar and having their own little isolated conversation in the yellow glow of the only well-lit room in the house, and somewhere along the line they started knowing each other. Seeing each other. Understanding.

At some point it starts to ache, leaving that behind in the early hours of the morning and starting a new year all over again, counting down towards that final countdown when it all feels like it clicks into place. And later, at another point, they start to notice the ache.

They start to notice that they really are leaving something behind in the magic of that moment and it becomes a question of can this survive in the light of day?

It's 1995, about to tip over into 1996 when Eddie looks at Steve and doesn't see the guy pressed up against the wall of a boat shed, or the guy diving headfirst into a frigid lake so the rest of them wouldn't have to, or the guy walking away towards battle with something like uncertainty and something like hope both scrambling for purchase in his eyes.

It's 1995, about to be 1996 when Eddie looks at this guy from his past and realizes that just because he never knew him then doesn't mean he doesn't now, doesn't mean he's not allowed to get to know him now.

Eddie's not the guy who held that bottle to his throat anymore after all, not the guy who dove into that lake after him, who broke a promise and tried to be a hero. Ten years does a lot to a person and so when the Eddie of today looks at the Steve of today and says--

"I'm gonna kiss you at midnight this time, for the record."

--it doesn't feel like the ground is quaking, like anything has to shift to make space for the change that is Steve's slow smile around the lip of his glass in response.

They've been making space for ten years. They've been moving closer to each other a centimeter at a time in this well-lit kitchen, up against the counter-turned-bar.

"Well, if we're going on the record," Steve shrugs as a noise maker cuts through the warmth of their family's chattering throughout the house, "I know that already."

"Yeah?" Eddie's eyebrows shoot up, delight filling up his chest like the mystical hope of starting over. "How?"

"You get this look in your eye," Steve shrugs, "every time you plan on escalating."

Eddie chews on the inside of his cheek to keep from beaming too broadly, sets his glass on the sideboard and gives Steve a curious once-over.

"Yeah, that's the one," Steve laughs, this bright and full sound that it took probably three of those first New Years Eves for Eddie to earn, and it spurs him on.

It has always been becoming, the space between them, and it has always been becoming this, Eddie holding Steve's cheek assuredly with one confident hand and pressing their lips together in a simple, all-consuming, closed-mouth shout of a kiss.

"You didn't wait until midnight," Steve breathes when they pull away, and fuck Eddie has missed him, has found so much to miss in knowing him.

"Don't worry Cinderella," Eddie lets their foreheads touch, lets all that space officially close shut, "I ain't going anywhere when the clock chimes."