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weekend-whip · 11 months ago
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-20 asks for Fic Writers-
hey-lo!! I was tagged by @rainofthetwilight for a fun ask game!! Thank you!! ^-^)/
for tags, any fic writer that comes across this and feels compelled! You have my blessing! Go forth and rant about thy fics!!! Share your words with the world!! Give people new stuff to read!! Flaunt your beautiful achievements!!
. . .
1.How many works do you have on AO3?
19! And counting!
2. What's your total AO3 wordcount?
...791,937 and counting *lies down* (at least most of it is just one fic? Ahaha? ha?)
3. What fandom(s) do you write for?
right now, just ninjago! I wrote for some other fandoms back in the day (with...equally ambitious endeavors) and I initially made my Ao3 account for Definitely Not Ninjago...but, here we are :d
4. What are your top five fics by kudos?
Born to Be a 21st Century Ninja: 1116
Thank You, For Giving Me Wings: 560
Way of the 21st Century Ninja: 546
Assorted Thoughts and Feelings: 201
Married to the Sea: 161 (which I'm sure will get beat-out by GNL here soon haha)
5. Do you respond to comments?
I TRY, REALLY, MOSTLY, AND USUALLY but sometimes I get too excited and things shift through the cracks (hence why I generally make it a habit to respond to stuff I missed before/around/after a big update! That way it's on my mind!)
6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
i haven't written it yet I MEAN WHAT it's Married to the Sea. I'm not big on writing overly bad/sad/tragic endings yet
7. What is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
Paper Plate Moon, the only fic without an existential crisis of some kind (just a slightly lovesick Kai with a smaller scope crisis) Orrr, A Little More Than Sixteen Candles, which is also about Kai! Except he cries. But it's a happy cry!
8. Do you get hate on fics?
Not yet
9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?
No
(...wait, there's 'kinds' of smut?!?! do i dare even ask)
10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?
Braaaaah I looooooooved crossovers when I was younger. My biggest story from my youth was a crossover. ...I won't be telling you what it is, though. It's part of my dark, mysterious past.
(I also don't count Legacyverse as a crossover, either. It's more of a...fusion! But. Y'know. The roots are there.....)
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Only once, and it was the aforementioned crazy crossover fic from above. They were dealt with very swiftly tho :3
12. What's the longest time you've spent working on a fic? And what's the shortest?
Longest that I've finished would be Born to Be; that took me technically almost two full years to write x-x
Shortest would be all the Aftershock oneshots I manage to speedrun in a few scant hours on holidays lmao
13. Have you ever co-written a fic?
I've triiiiiiiied a couple times in the past; only one attempt was successful though.
14. What's your all time favourite ship? From all the fandoms?
Destiny's Bounty! Man, I adore that ship so much.
15. What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?
THE MERMAID AU or the Jesse Fanseason or all the little prompt things from June '22 that still haunt me to this day or some of legacy!sidestories I should've done ages ago or-
16. What are your writing strengths?
*grabs some stuff from comments* I have strength in character development and providing emotional depth for scenes! *I* also think I write some kickass fight scenes, thank you.
17. What are your writing weaknessess?
BASIC GRAMMAR LMAO and probably using too many commas and ellipses but I am trying to ween myself off of it and incorporate shorter sentences. I always forget to vary up sentence length until the end waaaah
(I also miss typos a lot but I am of the camp that believes it keeps one humble~ *should probably just get a beta reader but hnnng*)
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?
Intimidating
19. First fandom you wrote for?
...something video game related
20. Favourite fic you've ever written?
Probably Born to Be just because of how darn big of an achievement it is! and I reread it a lot <3 <3 <3 <3
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aroaceleovaldez · 5 months ago
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I was reading a post about CoTG and I realized: Rick has seemingly started to write every character pairing with the exact same dynamic, and he's not good at writing that dynamic and it doesn't make sense for 90% of the characters he writes it for.
It's that very specific dynamic of one half of the pair who is almost aggressive to the other party - "teasing" them constantly/insulting them, affectionately punching/judo flipping/maiming/etc, seemingly almost always exasperated with the other - and said other party usually just accepts this treatment or blanketly views it fondly, and may generally be framed as more incompetent than their partner and a little bit of a doormat (particularly relating to being insulted/teased/etc by their partner).
We start seeing this dynamic in HoO with Percy and Annabeth, as a sort of semi-inconsistent twist on their rivals-to-friends-to-lovers dynamic from the first series. Then the dynamic pattern develops further with Leo and Calypso. Then Magnus and Alex. Then Nico and Will, particularly in TSATS. And now in CoTG, it's Percy and Annabeth again but even more in this direction.
I know people have talked about Nico and Will's relationship over the series rapidly being shoehorned into Percabeth Two™, and it's extremely apparent in TSATS that Rick's doing it on purpose (including directly quoting Percabeth scenes but minorly tweaking them to be Solangelo). But recognizing it as an overarching trend in Rick's later books honestly reminds me a lot of how Rick started trying to apply the "Percy Formula" so-to-speak to nearly every protagonist in HoO (and then try to replicate similar character archetypes with Magnus and Apollo's narrations - moreso Magnus in being jaded and sarcastic, very much trying to be first series Percy. He only sounds unique because Rick failed at making him Percy 2. Apollo is more akin to later-series Percy characterization of being goofy and incompetent. Apollo [and Zeus] even got retconned to give Apollo a more similar backstory to Percy's). Rick seems to have decided that he thinks the audience wants this specific dynamic but 10 times over, except he's not good at writing it the first time because it's a bastardization of the time he did a different thing okay.
And Rick also seems aware of that too! Because he retconned Calypso and Leo at the end of TOA, probably because he realized how absolutely awful it was reading when they were written with that dynamic of Calypso just functionally hating Leo and constantly being aggressive towards him! The only time Rick's actually made the dynamic even semi-successful was with Magnus and Alex, because it actually fits within their characters, their dynamics with each other, and their environment. Alex beheading Magnus on the regular works out fine because there are no repercussions to that in Valhalla, Magnus will be fine, so it does genuinely come off as humorous. And Alex has been effectively established to be abrasive at times but have her genuine feelings shine through regularly, and that meshes well with Magnus' jaded-and-aloof-but-quietly-very-empathetic character. And Magnus has been established to, yes, not be great at combat, particularly compared to Alex. They are the only time that flavor of dynamic in that form was effective and cohesive.
Percabeth is no longer rivals-to-friends-to-lovers badasses on equal levels with shaky pasts who finally found some form of permanence with one another. Now it's super smart doting and affectionately aggressive girlfriend and her silly goofy 50%-of-the-time incompetent boyfriend who she judo flips/pushes off cliffs/etc - but affectionately~! Solangelo is trying to riff off of the early series "Poseidon & Athena are enemies" dynamic that Percabeth had but with Apollo & Hades being "opposites" but learning to accept each other, except it ends up with Will just coming off as a huge asshole and Nico being retconned to a complete doormat about it - when prior to that those characterizations would be completely contrary to their established characters (even just from TOA!). Calypso in HoO gets retconned from her PJO characterization to being snooty and aggressive, and Leo's false persona gets merged into his just normal personality except he just also becomes a doormat but more goofy than Nico with occasional haha-dark/depression-humor! Which Nico also got. Which was also a bastardized Percy trait that got redistributed.
It's exhausting. Rick write more than one relationship dynamic you can do it I promise
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lunarmoves · 3 months ago
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Can't stop thinking of the scenario where y/n leaves the Pizzaplex feeling like Sun honestly wanted them gone, and Sun becomes obsessed with finding them and also leads a robot apocalypse. What would happen if y/n caught wind that Sun is looking specifically for them and seeing all that has happened with the robots takes that as "Oh no, I thought he tolerated me but turns out he dislikes me so much he personally wants to get rid of me himself" so they try extra hard to go into hiding out of fear of what will happen if they're captured and taken to him?
ohhh my goddd nonnie u are so big brained!!!!!!! thank u for sending this in bc honestly i have also been thinking about this au for a while LMAO. if i was strong enough i would write a 50k fic spliced into two arcs (im thinking about it so hard u have no idea!!!!!!) for this but alas.... /stares at my incomplete wips/ i am not </3
(added in from future shay: what have u done nonnie this became so much longer than i'd intended, u basically get the whole fic outline here. cw for death and murder n stuff, typical fnaf. also spoilers for a fic i may or may not write?? like. this is me brainstorming and shoving all my ideas here lol. literally all of them)
okay so... let us set the stage a little bc i can't help myself. arc1 of this hypothetical fic would of course involve the pizzaplex where reader and sun get "closer" over the course of like a year. maybe more. well sun feels close to you. you, on the other hand, do not. why would you? this robot has been so passive aggressive with you and though it seems like he's nice enough to you (in comparison to the other humans), you really don't like how he treats you some days. what he says about humanity as a whole. you can't help it! yeah humanity sucks sometimes and robots were built to be everything that humans aren't, but he can't generalize in the way that he does at times and forget that these are people!! with feelings and ambitions and dreams! 'superiority complex' doesn't even begin to cover his issues, gahh!!
(the fact that he's been treated like absolute shit, working in the daycare does not help whatsoever. the mean parents, the kids who don't listen to him, the staff tht does the bare minimum on him in terms of maintenance because he's the daycare robot and not one of the glamrocks. it grinds his gears)
i imagine the reader in this fic believes that robots are indeed sentient, which is why you try to get sun to recognize and acknowledge his own emotions/feelings (which he vehemently denies, even tho there are literal riots happening worldwide regarding robot sentience. he's lying to you. you know he's lying to you. but you don't know why he denies it so much. ((maybe this is the point where he catches feels for reader and is denying the fact tht he's crushing on a human lol)). the government is not happy about these uprisings, of course, and every day the news shows more and more chaos unfolding as robots get tired of the conditions they are in). but eventually, things boil over and you end up leaving. that, and it's becoming more dangerous, living in this area, with everything going on. maybe your parents are trying to convince you to move elsewhere. maybe there are other external circumstances. in any case, you leave. there is nothing at the pizzaplex for you anymore, sun has made that clear.
(and moon... well, moon has been quiet lately. too quiet. you don't know what happened to him, he won't even look at you when you manage to get some time with him when the lights go out after your shift)
((i imagine this is maybe around when they get infected. that makes everything even more complicated. if you thought sun was obsessive before, then that's nothing compared to a glitched out sun unforch. it just amplifies the more questionable aspects of his entire personality. and like, he doesn't even have vanny/afton commanding him bc as soon as he gets the virus? he kills both of them))
(((also im imagining moon and sun don't really get along in this au bc they have differing ideals/views. like to balance out sun's unhingedness, moon is significantly quieter and softer and deffo does not believe in robot superiority lol. if anything, maybe he has an inferiority complex pfft poor guy. doesn't help when he gets glitchtrap'd and wakes up with blood on his hands)))
okay so you leave, right? and a few weeks later, you see the news on your phone--the pizzaplex has burned down. you don't know how to feel about it. sure you've been friendly to the glamrocks and stuff, but you find yourself thinking about sun and moon. there's a mention of one death--a blond woman, who died from her neck snapping before the flames could reach her. you don't want to think of the implications of that. there's no mention of the glamrocks--of sun or moon or the dj. you're not sure if the news anchors are just excluding robots, but either way, it makes your heart sink. you take a moment to mourn. bc at the end of the day.... you did know sun for over a year.
not even a few days after that, there is a robot uprising in your city. it's... bad. you're at home, watching the news with your apartment half in shambles from your plan on moving back home with your parents. in my head, since utah is home to fazco (a megacorporation with hands in the development of a LOT of the robots seen in society), it also means it's a hotspot for robot riots and the like. fazco vehemently denies robot sentience because it would mean a loss of money in acknowledging their workers are people yk how it is. as such, there are maany protests and riots and stuff, from both humans and robots. it's a shitshow.
ANYWAYS you're at home and it becomes evidently clear that you need to get out of dodge as soon as you can. they were killing people. the robots, built by human hands, were killing. it brings about absolute chaos. in prior riots/protests there were never deaths. injuries, maybe, but never deaths. people start evacuating like crazy.
you catch a glimpse on the news that the violent uprising in utah caused a chainlink reaction to extend all across the nation. maybe even the world. you're scrambling all over your apartment with the tv on the news, doing your best to pack up the essentials. there's live coverage on the tv from a helicopter somewhere not far from your apartment complex. and you're able to catch a glimpse of bright rays and a cheshire, white smile on the screen--leading what looks like an army of robots--before it cuts out.
you don't even know what to think. the image is seared into your eyes, the blood that painted yellow hands and a crescent face.
you get the hell out of your apartment and book it as far as you can. communications are down everywhere--the thing about robots? they know exactly where to hit humans to cause a catastrophe. as such, your phone is useless. they've hijacked the satellites and took down certain powergrids. having a phone on you would only be a detriment, so you ditch it. there's only you now. you must survive.
and then there's a bit of a time skip to start arc2. in this duration, you're long gone from that city in utah, living with a small survival group. if you've read my summer camp au fic, this is where i'll bring in "OCs" such as vincent (a play on 2015 vincent) and jeremy (fitzgerald or the VR guy tht used to work for fazco), maybe michael if i really wanna au fudge everything. you all live day by day, trying to run away from the robots.
at this point, a majority of humanity has either been killed or has gone into hiding. i think while the robots don't want to eradicate humanity completely (after all, there are certain tasks that need humans n such), they definitely want to make them a minority. they are a little more than halfway through their goal.
it's very difficult to evade robot surveillance. there are drones everywhere. all cameras are hijacked. i'm imagining a kind of cyberpunk type world. you have EMPs and tasers that you can use to disable electronics, but they're made from scraps you and your group scavenged. and upon immediately using one, all robots in the area are informed of your presence, so they can only be used in rare and desperate circumstances. they are all connected to the same network, which means they can have a hive mind, at times. life is scary, in this regard. big brother is watching.
you've heard rumors of a human base underground somewhere--a place safe from robots with the proper defenses. accepting to any and all. the only tough thing was finding the damn place, but you've seen the clues in graffiti and hidden messages designed to trick AI (think: captcha). you and your group just wants to get to that damn base and stop living in fear all the time, being out in the open or crawling as stealthily as you can through empty streets.
the one thing sun used to emphasize to you? the way robots are more efficient. and that they are. you see it in the way a new metropolis shines like a beacon on the horizon. they've already built their own kingdom of sorts. and their ruler? you grimace as you think about sharp rays and wide, white eyes. you haven't seen him in ages--not since that initial broadcast. but you hear the whispered rumors and news. how he has created a robot haven--the celestial city. how he scorns humans. you blame yourself sometimes. maybe if you had stayed and tried harder to convince sun that humans aren't all too bad, none of this would have happened.
(a memory comes to you--of your time back at the pizzaplex. of you sitting atop the security desk and kicking your feet lightly as you entertain sun's... uniqueness. ambitions--that you did not take as seriously as you should have.
"okay, i'll bite," you said in amusement. "what would a robot takeover look like for you?"
sun cocked his head, hands fidgeting with a plush. "hmm. well. i suppose it would be a very quick thing, for one. hit hard and fast." he squeezed the plush. "take down comms. strike power sources. go for those in power first, then the weaker ones." he gave you a shrug and an unreadable smile. "from then on, carnage."
and you--silly silly you--just rolled your damn eyes at him like he was joking around with you and asked him about more hypotheticals. picking his brain, in a way. it was exact with how it played out in real time. you thought about this often, at the dead of night.
it was all your fucking fault)
and then, one day, the scout/informant of your little group--jeremy probably--comes back with some news. the celestial ruler--sun--has been taking human hostages. it's been happening for a while now, apparently, almost nearly as long as the uprising. jeremy pulls out some hazy photographs he's gotten from some of the other humans he exchanges info with. you look at them, the hostages.
after a minute or two of staring, you realize something.
they all sort of resemble you.
there's a clear pattern actually. your hair or your face shape or your eyes or your smile. some combination of them. but never actually you. you ask jeremy what it all means, and he hesitatingly says that it looks like sun is looking for someone. it's clear to everyone who it is as they all stare at you.
and you? you're panicking.
he's looking specifically for you. just you. you've never heard of the robots taking hostages, and you have no idea what he's doing with them, but it can't be anything good. especially since he keeps taking more and more of your lookalikes hostage. you think back to your time at the pizzaplex--so distant, now, that it almost feels like a dream.
he wants to kill you himself. you're sure of it.
now you're trying even harder to get to that underground base. you go completely dark, doing your best to evade detection--and i imagine there are quite a few close calls, definitely a few instances where your face is captured on camera or you have to use an EMP. until finally, you and your group manage to integrate into the underground human base.
'base' doesn't even properly describe it. it's a whole city, actually, with unsteady houses made of wood and cloth. it's the perfect place to hide.
you spend a while down there, occasionally venturing up when you're allowed to by the guards (it's rare, very very rare). the city has strict rules that must be followed to ensure it's not found. the ones in charge are constantly looking for news on the actions of sun and the majority of robots. they don't really keep the citizens updated--it would cause too much chaos, you think. but you hear whispers now and then. (the robots have expanded territory. france is completely gone. australia's still holding out. most of china and india have been taken over and their factories have all been transformed to mass produce more robots)
for the first time in a while, you think you can find peace down here. it was only inevitable that this would be ruined one day.
you wake up to chaos.
the underground is under siege. the robots have found you.
you run out of your makeshift house and have to dodge crumbling stone. explosions rock through the air, sending dust and debris everywhere. you're scared for your life--your only instinct is to run run run get out it's not safe! you don't know where your friends are. you don't know if they're alive. for a moment, you hesitate. and then you're bolting to try to find them. they had their own little homes not too far from you. you can find them. no man left behind.
you can hear bullets and the hum of energy everywhere. people are screaming and crying all around you. you see people dying before your eyes, impaled by beams of light or stray bullets. it's all you can do to dodge and weave towards vincent's house.
but before you can get there, something tackles you from behind. you roll across dirt, and find yourself pinned under a robot--a staffbot from the pizzaplex, you realize. except it looks--different. more high tech.
it seems to scan your face. and just before it can finish, you manage to grab a stray metal rod laying on the ground next to you and stab it right through the eye.
you scramble, getting as far away as you can from the thing. but-- you run right into the path of a crumbling building. it buries you halfway under thick wood, and something sears its way through your leg. you're trapped. you're trapped and there's no one around to help you.
and just when you're on the brink of passing out, you see him. standing in front of you a ways away. those same star-patterned pants and dangling cap. but he's different somehow, he looks different. you can't place it, your vision blurring into red and purple.
moon looks at you as though you are the last thing he wants to see. and then you faint.
when you wake up, you're in a bedroom. your leg is in a cast and there are crutches near your bed.
it's... the nicest room you've seen in a while. the windows are covered by thick curtains that let in a sliver of light. you have to blink a bit to let your eyes adjust. and then you get up, noticing you aren't in the same ratty, dirty clothes you'd been wearing for forever.
you try the door first. it's locked. there's a sinking sensation in your gut that gets stronger and stronger the closer you get to the window. and when you pull open the curtains, you gasp at the towering buildings, bright green and blue light, and flying drones.
you are in the middle of the celestial city.
you panic hard. and then you notice the camera in the corner of the room, looking right at you. big brother is definitely watching. you give him the bird.
you wallow around in the bedroom for a bit. you are hungry, you cannot deny. and there is only a glass of water for you set on your nightstand.
but eventually, the door opens of its own accord. an automatic lock, you suppose. and it swings open into a dark hall. you do not have any other choice but to follow. it's clear you are being summoned.
there are no places for you to run or hide. you travel down a long hallway and end up in a wide room with someone tall standing at the far end by the window. it's a scene straight out of a movie. you are not impressed.
the figure turns around, and you do a double take. it's sun--yet it's not.
he looks different. taller, stronger. with clawed fingers and rays that look deadly to the touch. his smile is sharper, his torso has all sorts of compartments and attachments. he was modded to all hell, just like that staffbot you saw earlier. it had to have been self inflicted.
he only stares at you, really. white eyes rake up and down your form, taking you in. you don't say a word, only look back at him. and then you flinch slightly when someone emerges from the shadows next to sun.
it's... moon. looking just as modded as sun. you're confused. when did they become separate? but honestly, you think it makes sense. they never really liked each other. it makes sense that sun would want to be separated as soon as possible--and they had the resources to do so. you just wonder why they're still working together. comfort in the familiarity, maybe.
moon doesn't meet your eye. you notice his is different--the red tinged with purple. sun doesn't look away from you. it makes you uneasy.
you don't know why you're here, but one thing's clear: you are not getting out of here anytime soon.
i'm honestly not sure how to end things, but in my head there's a lot of reconciliation that needs to happen. obv sun is so incredibly down bad for you at this point (and moon), but there are many issues that need to be tackled first.
sun doesn't understand why you're so wary around him. moon keeps avoiding you at every turn. there's still an entire revolution and remaking of society happening. you are constantly being watched by cameras in the building. i can't picture things as returning to normal--post uprising--but i also don't know how to end things on a happy note LOL, though i do want to instead of killing off reader or sun/moon. maybe it'll be a bittersweet sort of end, maybe reader finally gets through to sun. maybe eclipse will make an appearance (jk, idk how i would even do that, this might be an eclipse-less fic).
in any case, the next bit would be a lot of sun and reader connecting better than they had in the pizzaplex, a lot of sun trying to understand humans better cuz he's trying to court you-- and has long come to accept his emotions tbh. tho he's still kind of mad at you for leaving, so there needs to be a conversation of sorts about why you left before sun can really begin to understand how he appears to you. idk!
i also feel like moon isnt nearly fleshed out as sun is?? i dunno, i might have to think some more about him. i just know he's terrified of hurting you, esp with him still having the virus (and sun, but he has better control of it). gonna be a lot of work on your part to get him to be comfortable around you again. also, he doesn't like the fact that society has come to this. he lowkey resents sun, but he doesn't have anyone else. what's a bot to do?
also there may be a scene where your survival group tries to save you lol, maybe with an army that tries to seize control of the celestial city. which may work. this would be a bad end, i think, cuz there's no way sun's getting out of that alive.
anyways yeah. i rambled enough LMAOO whoopsie! i rly just regurgitated all the thoughts in my head. no promises that this will be a fic, i've got enough on my plate as is LOL
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radioroxx · 2 months ago
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hmmmm mal du pays thoughts tonight
#radio rambles#i should go to bed but. it is on the mind#isat spoilers#<- for the . wall of tags to come#imm wondering what most people hc mdp to like. be#i know its most popular to see it as siffrins sadness. i do think thats p neat#and probably the intention#but im. juggling around the idea of? siffrin system moment? mdp as a headmate? if yall see that vision?#most inspired by that ‘do u hc this character as a system’ post abt siffrin#and i voted no then but now im like genuinely changing my mind JFKFKF#it makes sense in a way. and into my mdp hc that it. wouldve split while sif was very young#splitting due to stress which leads to a lot of. gestures vaguely. mdp’s whole thing#a mix of stress but also this sense of longing to. belong somewhere. to not be alone#many years ago it was about the loss of their home. and much later on became more related to its feelings towards their family#mdp is a scared child to me . idk about yalls hcs for it but thats what im sticking to#a scared child who maybe grew up a little alongside the body. but still Young and Scared#its not as often or eager to front as siffrin is. i can imagine it being much more hover-y or . POSSIBLY. cohosting if its feeling up to it#uhm. ok well#so i typed this out and now im actually really sad about mdp jgkdkf where is mdp recovery#now im kinda thinking about it fronting for once to properly meet the party and. and receiving comfort. and and and#wow christ im upset#also also glancing over at marias sibling au for character dynamics here….. sillies…..#ps not relevant to my mdp thoughts but fyi im imagining siffin in headspace looks very much like their body#the difference being. much darker clothes. more stars etc. maybe different hair#think like how a lot of ppl style their human loops. thats kinda how i imagine sif in headspace#SPEAKING OF LOOP#i think given the time he spent with them it woulf make sense if they split a loop as well#and ofc other members of the party jgkfkf#im not gonna get into my hcs there because ill b taking away from my mdp hc post BUT#thinking. always thinking
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longagoitwastuesday · 3 months ago
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I am liking Jujutsu Kaisen, way more than I imagined I would, but I foresee it will let me down and it's keeping me from enjoying this as much as I could haha
I think the characters and dynamics are well set, and I think many of them have an incredibly good and deep potential, but I would be willing to bet they'll not get a proper development, enough for them to really hit. A well assembled set of gears is not enough to make the movement go, you have to wind the clockwork.
I think Gojo and Megumi have a fascinating and very complex dynamic, but I doubt it will be given the time and care that imo it needs to actually work. And it is going well enough for now! One could see the intimacy between them was deeper than the one Gojo had with, say, Yuji and Nobara ever since the very first few episodes despite the fact Fushiguro too was a first year. But the pieces forming what they have are extremely complex, and it just wouldn't be realistic if it doesn't show, even if in a not showing way, or if it doesn't have consequences or implications.
It's one of those dynamics that shape one's life, the way one regards the world, the way one establishes or not relationships with other people. It's one of those dynamics that could be full of fondness, gratitude, resentment, admiration, trust, and that imply intimacy, the good kind or the bad, even if in just the knowledge of someone who's been a constant through your life. It could, and would, imply a myriad of feelings, and probably in such a mix it could imply contradictory feelings too. Even the nothingness would weight, even the nothingness would be significant and meaningful.
Gojo took Megumi and his sister under his wing, the son of a man who murdered him, because of both selfish and selfless reasons. Megumi looks like Toji. What does Gojo feel about this? How does Gojo deal with this? How does Gojo go about taking care of Megumi? Would he walk him to school? Make him breakfast? Celebrate his birthdays making him blow candles? Did he take him to the zoo? Does the relationship between them feel professional or is it something more? Gojo appreciates his students, but is Megumi to him just another student? When Gojo faces Sukuna in Megumi's body, did he see the kid he raised, or does he just see Sukuna in one of his students' body? Did he have one faint wavering instant? And how does Megumi feel about this? Is he resentful of him? Resentful of the situation? Of the selfishness behind his actions? Does he feel like a pawn? Is he grateful? Does he resent feeling grateful? Would he rather not? Does he love Gojo? Does he feel nothing about him other than what he could feel about a teacher that sort of annoys him but knows he's reliable in his strength? Does he think it unfair, cruel or unfeeling that Gojo is close, closer perhaps, with Yuuji or Yuta, considering their story? When Sukuna slices Gojo in two, does the remnants of Megumi's soul tremble?
And not just Megumi and Gojo. Yuuji and Nanami, Gojo and Nanami, Yuuji and Fushiguro, Nobara and the boys, or Nobara and Maki, Todo and Yuuji or Yuta, Gojo and Yuta, Megumi and his sister. Gojo and Geto, even! If the pieces are well set, the dynamics are intriguing, interesting, and have potential to be deep, but then the characters have like two plot relevant scenes that punch you hard, but little more, it's not nearly enough. Especially not nearly enough for the enormity that is shonen dynamics and situations. And the potential existing at all, and then not delivering, makes it all the more frustrating when you're left with something mediocre that could have been so good.
The development of dynamics through not only a few plot relevant gut wrenching moving scenes, but also the smallness of life, is important. The friend who recommended this to me said that those things were just unnecessary filler, but I disagree. I think there's a big difference between a large amount of anime-only filler episodes whose existence is based on the fact they had run out of manga chapters to animate, and moments of quietness. The low stakes character-driven moments of quietness can be so telling and so insightful, and they are so satisfactory when brought back later in higher stakes situations. My friend teased me there was no scene of Gojo making breakfast to Megumi, that it would be an idiotic idea, but it would be so telling. How he makes breakfast, what they eat, if he tries hard or if it's all mechanised, if they have personal bowls or if they use whatever, if he just buys them some pastry on the way to school, if the way they have breakfast changes through the years, or if he doesn't make them breakfast at all! All that would be very insightful on their dynamic and its evolution. All that would give a glimpse on how they regard each other and why, even in the present. All that could become meaningful in tense situations and high stakes scenes.
These moments also let the plot breath; if a lot is happening all the time, if every character is always experiencing trauma after trauma, the entire story is so emotionally draining that at some point you don't even care all that much. Besides, these nothing moments or low stakes plot arcs, besides deepening and developing dynamics, also let some in-world time pass, which would make the intimacy and bond between characters more believable imo; between Yuuji eating Sukuna's finger and their last confrontation in December how much time has passed? A few months? Am I truly to believe these characters are so everything to each other in only a few months?
Without some smallness, some repetition, some daily life, some low stakes not plot-centric development, the dynamics don't hit, they don't truly feel fleshed out, and dynamics as complex as the ones Megumi and Gojo have, or as supposedly meaningful as the one Megumi has with Yuuji or his sister, should be fleshed out if they're going to exist at all. Otherwise they'd risk making the writing feel awkward and fake. Besides, if the dynamics felt well fleshed out and realistic, they would shape the way the characters interact and act, and how they deal with situations, thus being plot relevant.
The shonen genre has so much happening all the time, the stakes are so high, the dynamics are so rooted in big events and the relationships carry enormous weight and implications. Yet they barely get developed, and it feels so stupid, so plain, the absence of something so important noticeable like a constant void, a shapeless nothingness present in every scene. It makes the characters feel like cardboard figures. Jujutsu Kaisen is already getting a better job than many, but I doubt it will do enough for what I've heard, and I fear I am bound to feel let down, and bound to feel unmoved.
After all, if not enough time and care has been given to develop a dynamic, I am not going to feel pressured by the high stakes; if not enough time and care has been given to develop the dynamic between Megumi and Yuuji, as good potential as it has I am bound to feel little for this last confrontation between Sukuna and Itadori, and his effort in getting Megumi back.
#It's not that I think everything has to be character driven or take a lot of care about dynamics#Death Note for instance works well without it. There's juice in the dynamic between Light and his father and the role of Matsuda there#and it works well with Light's views and their evolution and the whole Kira situation. It isn't much. It doesn't need more#But Death Note doesn't truly drop something as big as Gojo and Megumi to then do barely nothing about it#('But L and Watari' not the same at all. That was deepened in the anime and besides Watari is not one of the main characters)#Or Megumi and his sister. If we see barely nothing of Megumi and his sister other than shiny flashbacks of her#how am I to feel moved by it all beyond superficial emotions? I don't know. It just feels so like cardboard to me#And it annoys me! It annoys me a lot! Because Jujutsu Kaisen has amazing potential! The dynamics and characters could be amazing!#But I don't trust they'll live to their full potential and the potential existing for nothing is ruining this for me xD#Jujutsu Kaisen#Sorry this time I'm tagging it. I want to find this and see if I was right when I'm finished. I think I'll read the manga too#The condescending filler breakfast comment by my friend was ironic considering the Kramer vs. Kramer breakfast scenes exist#Breakfast can be so telling. And besides he loves the Chainsaw Man coffee scene so I don't get why not breakfast#But truly some small daily life moments can tell us a lot about a character that we could recognise later on in high stakes scenes#such as how they deal in tense situations‚ what makes them snap#how they go about dealing with a problem.#Sometimes it could be smaller moments or conversations what makes characters reconsider things‚ not just having Sukuna rip their heart out#In Pandora Hearts the conversation between Elliot and Oz about the book series they love and their favourite characters becomes key#Oz's development and how he regards things‚ his own person‚ and how he deals with situations will be shaped later on by this conversation#till the very end. The entire main character's development is shaped by a 'filler' conversation.It's not filler. It's just not a fight scen#Shonen manga readers find everything filler except for fights which is ironic considering that many fights in shonen feel unnecessary#Breakfast is unnecessary. Just filler. Fighting thirty seven secondary monsters or chapter after chapter of physical training is not. Okay#Things can be small but plot relevant. If it shapes and fleshes out and deepens a character or a relationship it is not filler#And mainly MAINLY for the love of everything good if you're going to make a fucked up or Meaningful Beyond Everything dynamic#give it time and care. Actually write it. Don't give me two panels and one conversation after some life and death situation. It's not enoug#Especially if I'm to believe they are important. Make me believe they actually are#I don't know... This issue with not trusting the development of very well set potential in Jujutsu Kaisen#has not only been keeping me from thoroughly enjoying the series‚ but actively keeping me from watching for weeks#It makes me doubt if I want to spend my time in this at all since after all time is limited and we can but spend it in a handful of things#A pity. I really love some things and I really think Megumi and Gojo could be everything to me haha the Heathcliff/Hareton vibe gets me
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mewharley · 6 months ago
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so idk how to explain when I think someone is good looking
because it's a rare occurrence and like I just agree that they look good, that have some charm but that's that
I don't actually want to pursue anything with them or be sad if they have a partner or think about them after that or smth, idk what people actually do or think when they see someone attractive ??? (I've seen people try to give them their contact info and I'm like what but you don't know them ???)
that being said, I had never seen Bruno Mars before but that man is (was?) good looking
pretty wild because when i notice it's about women not men
but I was watching some videos and I'm like ??? how ??????
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cinnabeat · 1 year ago
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scale of non existent to chekovs fucking gun how likely is pandoras box going to be a relevant and important plot device in the future
0 notes
astonmartinii · 5 months ago
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imgonnagetyouback [guilty as sin part four] | charles leclerc social media au
pairing: charles leclerc x fem sainz!reader
PR jail did a lot of damage, but unlike SOMEONE else, charles is ready for the apology tour
MASTERLIST | GUILTY AS SIN MASTERLIST | TIP JAR
note: the timeline is absolutely all over the place in this and for needs must pretend that the spanish and austrian races are swapped on the calendar!
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yourusername
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liked by maxverstappen1, oscarpiastri and 1,045,389 others
yourusername: i think your house is haunted, why are they always mad?
view all comments
user239: i have had it with little miss poet over here TELL ME IF MY PARENTS ARE DIVORCED OR NOT
user240: i hate that as this generation, them following each other on instagram is a key feature to whether they're still together or not
user241: my grandparents didn't have to go through this 😭
maxverstappen1: spill it sis
user242: WHAT DO YOU KNOW MAX
maxverstappen1: ummm nothing, and if i did i only take cash bribes. this is baby max relating hard to the caption
user242: oh :(
yourusername: oh maxy .... at least we now have good ways to express our emotions!
user243: ma'am he tore lando's wheel off because he can't handle wheel to wheel racing
liked by landonorris
yourusername: it's called hard racing, maybe mclaren should watch some of senna's old races instead of doing their 100th tribute livery xx
landonorris: you know he said you would do this exact thing, you can't handle anyone linked to your brother doing well
yourusername: oh i was perfectly prepared for you to win every race after miami since it was clear that the mclaren is the fastest car on the grid EVEN THOUGH you've publicly sided with them when anyone with a moral backbone (and a hint of PR awareness) would've run for the hills
landonorris: i'd really worry about the fact that the one piece of relevance you had left is no where to be seen, you're not worth defending for him
yourusername: it's insane the way you all have the same pompous attitude about this (i know that's a big word, but maybe you guys could get a couple of quid together to buy a dictionary)
maxverstappen1: also don't try and pretend 1. that you're completely in the right about everything that happened in austria 2. that you weren't scrounging around me (when we were friends i guess) trying to get details on y/n and charles
user244: okay this is wild
user245: i really thought lando would see the light on this
user246: or he realised that he can't race wheel to wheel unless he has the power of carlando friendship so he's burning bridges
oscarpiastri: i miss leo
yourusername: we literally are down the street bozo
oscarpiastri: i am ON MY WAY
user247: she's in monaco ???
user248: has to be, oscar only has a rental place he stays in london for mclaren and y/n has only ever lived in madrid or monaco
user249: there is still hope everyone
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charles_leclerc
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liked by yourusername, maxverstappen1 and 2,309,677 others
tagged: yourusername
charles_leclerc: was i out of line? did i say something way too honest?
there are a couple things i need to get off of my chest.
first, a massive apology to my girlfriend. y/n is the love of my life and will be my wife sooner or later and i hate that as a 26-year-old grown man i haven't had the backbone to stand up to ferrari when it comes to her. she's incredibly strong and i hate that she's had to go through this without my public support. i can't take it back now, but if i could i never would've let them take my phone and take control of my social media. they have now been dealt with and no one will stop me declaring my love and support for her.
second, if i hadn't already ran out of patience before, the legal trouble that family have put their own blood through threw me over the edge. they will never, ever deserve that girl and if i have anything to do with it they will never talk to her ever again. i may have been silent online but money talks and we will have vindication soon.
third, a big thank you to max, oscar and ollie for their continued support of y/n. it means so much that the public still saw how loved she is when i couldn't.
four, i am awake and i am angry, these people will learn who they are fucking with. see you soon lecfosi, it'll all be worth it in the end.
view all comments
user254: WAR IS OVER
user255: my heart dropped when i got the post notification but this is the best news possible
user256: am i going to excuse a 26-year-old man for being a pussy? no. but i am going to celebrate him seeing the light and y/n having him back in her corner
yourusername: he was never out of my corner. true there was no public support, but he was there. i would rather have his support behind closed doors where it matters than plastered all over social media
maxverstappen1: you wouldn't believe the lengths these two were going, i became a messenger pigeon when they physically took his phone and the letters were so grossly cute
yourusername: that's literally mail tampering
maxverstappen1: and i'm a human not a pigeon, we can't all get what we want
charles_leclerc: i did i got y/n 😁😁😁
maxverstappen1: ugh welcome back gross instagram comments
user257: so that's what max meant when someone referenced letters that's so cuteeeee
user258: the shout out to max and the extended leclerc family i know that's right
oscarpiastri: anything for my grid mum
olliebearman: actually charles can you get your phone taken away again cause the heist was VERY fun
yourusername: heist???????
charles_leclerc: don't answer that ollie
yourusername: answer it ollie, did you put yourself in harms way ???
charles_leclerc: it was hardly high-stakes
olliebearman: we only stole a phone from silvia's office
yourusername: ollie that's kind of slay but i'm going to need you to delete all of these incriminating comments i don't want you to get in trouble for charles
user259: i know this is just eating up carlos inside seeing how loved she is in his sport
user260: it really does seem that lando is the only one in his corner
sebastianvettel: i am proud of you charles, i know how much ferrari means to you, but never let them take you from those who matter
charles_leclerc: thank you seb, i couldn't have done it without you
yourusername: we love you seb
sebastianvettel: my impromptu not at all prompted trip to maranello definitely wasn't to give you a well-earned slap up the side of the head
user261: no carlos bitching it up in the comments... i've been dreaming of this
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maxverstappen1
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liked by danielricciardo, yourusername and 1,734,037 others
tagged: charles_leclerc & yourusername
maxverstappen1: back to being a third-wheel, balance is restored - the united front of hating is BACK BABY
view all comments
user263: i prayed for times like this
user264: i know they didn't break up but i'm so glad y/n and charles are back together they're too pretty not to be in our faces 24/7
yourusername: just paying you back for you and kelly let me crash on the sofa
maxverstappen1: that really wasn't the burden you thought it was, jimmy and sassy loved their interactive cat bed
yourusername: i miss them (don't tell leo)
charles_leclerc: HOW DARE YOU MUM :((((((((
yourusername: okay baby we're not going to do that ...
charles_leclerc: but :( his feelings are hurt
yourusername: i know lewis is cool and will be your new teammate, but i draw the line at pretending to be leo in the instagram comment section
roscoelovescoco: watch urs backs
yourusername: AHAHAHHAHAHA
maxverstappen1: this man is about to turn 40
lewishamilton: you people ever heard of having some whimsy in your life
yourusername: i got sued by my own family 👍
lewishamilton: um yeah, sorry that happened to you
user265: y/n be ticking up the amount of drivers she's gone toe to toe with in instagram comments
charles_leclerc: you can finally eat my ice cream without trying to hide it
maxverstappen1: i think it's against my partnership contracts to publicly say that i like that ice cream
yourusername: don't worry baby we both ate three tubs and cried watching chick flicks while you were locked away in maranello
charles_leclerc: there's a reason a special edition strawberry flavour made its way to you
yourusername: i love you :(
carlossainz55: you might be "united" but you haven't won yet
charles_leclerc: do you ever shut the fuck up?
carlossainz55: oh someone finally found their voice
charles_leclerc: yeah i did which means you don't get to control the narrative anymore and i can call you a bitch
maxverstappen1: also if there was anyway we would lose, at least we are united, i can count how many friends you have left in this sport on one hand and two of them are your dad and your cousin
charles_leclerc: and watch out, clearly you guys aren't afraid to betray family, who knows it could be you next?
user266: i think charles is still being restrained but can we please at least get one day when he can fully go off his rocker
user267: i think we deserve it after all of it
yourusername
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liked by maxverstappen1, charles_leclerc and 1,764,094 others
tagged: charles_leclerc
yourusername: she's not only poet barbie but also lawyer barbie - THAT POETRY IS MINE BITCH, SUCK MY DICK AND RUN ME MY MONEY
view all comments
user268: i don't think i've ever been more happy for a stranger before in my life
user269: she deserves this so much i'm actually like over the moon
charles_leclerc: i'm so happy for you baby, i knew it would all be worth it in the end
yourusername: they can't stop my romantic ramblings now
charles_leclerc: i don't know if i want them to hear them all
yourusername: oh no some are for our ears only ;)
oscarpiastri: unfortunately it's NOT all just for your ears
olliebearman: for a millionaire i thought you'd at least buy a house with thick walls
maxverstappen1: you'll get used to it after a while
yourusername: THERE WAS CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION ARE YOU GUYS NOT HAPPY FOR ME ???
oscarpiastri: clearly not THAT happy
charles_leclerc: good. that would be entirely inappropriate
user270: finally some normal fucking couple stuff for y/n and charles
user271: their dynamic is so cute going from poetry to FUCKING
user272: i would be the exact same if i looked like either of them
fernandoalo_oficial: spoken like a real poet, i'm happy for you niña
yourusername: thank you pops !! couldn't have done it without you <3
fernandoalo_oficial: dealing with charles having close to a nervous breakdown every weekend was a lot, but i'm glad you have each other
charles_leclerc: thank you nando :)))) (i didn't have a nervous breakdown)
fernandoalo_oficial: you stress ate seven punnets of grapes
charles_leclerc: FERRARI I SWEAR I DIDN'T
charles_leclerc: wait i'm still annoyed at you ignore that
user273: i think charles is the first case of stockholm syndrome to a sports team
yourusername: @carlossainz55 come on i wanna tussle stop being a pussy
carlossainz55: enjoy your victory lap while you can, it won't last for long
yourusername: suck my actual dick, you put me through this i won't let you run away from it
yourusername: massive tip because i'm feeling generous, maybe actually come to court because there's a lot that you could know ...
carlossainz55: why would i waste my time on you?
yourusername: all will reveal itself
user274: oh it's finally on the other foot .... i'm enjoying this
user275: i think y/n and charles are too
f1tea
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liked by user276, user277 and 21,056 others
tagged: carlossainz55
f1tea: sources close to us say that there is serious worry in the sainz camp after the courts decided they were unlawful in their actions against y/n sainz. the financial standings of the sainz family were already somewhat dyer before they took the youngest sainz' income but it's said to be even worse now they've had to pay damages.
in terms of f1, several of the teams that were interested in sainz were put off by the way he and his family were treating his sister but have fully backed out now the financial struggles of the sainzs has become clear.
this comes after a number of sponsors have ended their partnerships with the spaniard. where do you think he'll end up?
view all comments
user278: at the job centre hopefully
user279: i think this is what the kids call poetic justice
user280: the way charles just picked up a new sponsor... we love to see it!
user281: all the sponsors flocking to charles is so fucking real
user282: life comes at you so fucking fast
user283: in the words of his hero: KARMA!
user284: especially since fernando congratulated y/n on her win in court 😭
user285: bro can't even afford the tractor seat at williams i am HOWLING
user286: or at sauber, boy oh boy this is some great great content for a hater like me
user287: or HAAS and they fucking took nikita mazepin
user288: the next race can't come fast enough i wanna see how this guy spins it in the media
user289: for once in his life i can't see him spinning this is any way that makes him look good
user290: god i hope y/n is in the paddock as well
user291: oh gosh i need her diana revenge dress moment
user292: i don't care if that's your brother i need you to STUNT ON HIM
user293: other than y/n and charles, i know oscar is cheering at this news
user294: bro saw his grid parents get back together and his biggest opp be declared broke and jobless
user295: i really don't understand how y/n slutting round the paddock has been praised so much when her hopping from driver to driver has cost her brother his dream
user296: cope.
user297: also y/n has only ever been with charles DESPITE carlos and her father trying to pimp her out for favours
usr298: now we know this ^^ i don't understand why carlos was so annoyed that she was finally doing what they always wanted
user299: it was because it didn't serve him.
user300: he was probably happy y/n was with charles until he realised it was for you know an ACTUAL relationship rather than psychological teammate warfare
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carlossainz55
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liked by landonorris, marcmarquez93 and 104,889 others
tagged: charles_leclerc
carlossainz55: it was never 'true love' if all you ever wanted was to bag a trophy husband and never work again
view all commments
user302: posting a picture of charles' crash and tagging him is nasty business
user303: would've been iconic if i wasn't him
user304: also that caption just really isn't the read he thought it was
user305: i grew up watching posh spice and cheryl cole in the stands at england games like obvs people want to be with athletes
user306: also this guy pretending he doesn't have a revolving door of models who are just there to be wags
yourusername: yes? and.
yourusername: at least wag isn't my only job. you better hope that rebecca stays booked honey
carlossainz55: don't bring rebecca into this she has nothing to do with any of this
yourusername: awwww did you already cheat? that does track...
yourusername: also you've been slandering my boyfriend all over the internet and ON THIS POST so shut the fuck up i'll bring up who i want to bring up
carlossainz55: get the fighting words out, you might need them when charles questions why you just happened to fall into his lap
yourusername: you've stolen every last penny from me, sued me and tried to turn everyone i care about against me - and guess what? YOU'RE STILL STUPID
carlossainz55: i'm not stupid you're a gold digging slut and you WILL BE FOUND OUT
yourusername: i actually think i could play pinball with the one remaining brain cell in your head
user307: i know this is serious drama but YES SASSY Y/N IS UNLEASHED FROM HER LAWYER'S GRASPS
user308: someone TAP CHARLES IN
user309: please you're out of the ferrari jail NOW IS THE TIME
charles_leclerc: you think i'm going to be offended that the most beautiful girl in the world has always wanted to be with me?
yourusername: what if i told you i'm a mastermind?
charles_leclerc: i would say i'm impressed and FLATTERED
yourusername: and now you're mine :P
charles_leclerc: and i'm glad
charles_leclerc: and i am of the serious belief that even if you didn't seek me out, we would've found each other regardless
yourusername: you made me believe in soulmates
maxverstappen1: @carlossainz55 this post really didn't do what you thought it would lOL
oscarpiastri: bro is falling at every hurdle
carlossainz55: yeah, yeah fuck you two. i'll see you on the track
maxverstappen1: if you can get close enough :P
yourusername
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liked by maxverstappen1, charles_leclerc and 1,783,088 others
tagged: charles_leclerc & maxverstappen1
yourusername: siri play hoes mad
view all comments
user310: this girl is a bestselling poet and this is how she's captioning her instagram posts
user311: babe we're like months into a family war that has had whole ass court cases we don't need eloquent captions
oscarpiastri: where's that one tiktok audio
yourusername: that audio has gone platinum in our house, i think i've saved every edit with it and charles
charles_leclerc: they do slap every time
maxverstappen1: HOES MAD HOES MAD HOES MAD
yourusername: someone is enjoying this
maxverstappen1: i've been praying on these people's downfall since i was 17 i've got a fancy bottle of wine i've been waiting to open
yourusername: we've really been through the wars with these people
charles_leclerc: and ME
maxverstappen1: well here's to them being BROKE AS FUCK LOL
yourusername: cheers!
charles_leclerc: 🥂
user312: this has been some kind of crazy turn around
user313: considering we all thought they had broken up not long ago we have come SO far
charles_leclerc: i'd have the whole world mad at me if it kept you by my side
yourusername: i love you so much
user314: tbf i'd say a good 80% of people were mad at you when you were being ferrari's bitch
charles_leclerc: HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY I'M SORRY
sebastianvettel: if it's any consolation, he was very torn up about it
yourusername: i know what happened charles, don't worry. i know you're dedicated to your craft and have people you want to win for
charles_leclerc: but i'm also dedicated to you
yourusername: we're in it together, forever now
yourusername: although this does mean ferrari have to deal with me now
user314: ugh they're so precious
carlossainz55: i'll have the last laugh don't you worry. you may have won the battle but you have not won the war.
user315: does this guy ever Shut the FUCK UP
user316: i'm bored. can't you just let them be happy
carlossainz55: no.
fin.
note: I'M SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG but here she is, can't tell whether i love it or hate it - probably because i've been looking at it so long xx i guess p5 will be out hopefully some time soon and i hope my tagging works
2K notes · View notes
yeyinde · 9 months ago
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dangle on the leash | Simon "Ghost" Riley x F!Reader
The flimsy sarcophagus housing all his wants, his desires, cracks open when Price announces that his missus is pregnant. Ghost cocks his head in consideration. Intentionally knocking you up is amoral. Probably illegal. Somehow, even more dastardly when the reason for it is simply selfishness. Want. Greed. Hunger. But he's a rabid dog burning with the urge to bite. No one should really be surprised when he finally decides to sink his teeth into you. Unfortunately, that hail mary Price sent into the aether never reached you.
(your bird is too big for a cage��� —but maybe a collar would do.)
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this is a babytrapping fic lmao but please read the tags carefully. a companion piece to this (Price + babytrapping).
DEAD DOVE. SMUT. 18+
HARD WARNINGS—coercion. dependency. intentional alienation. unsafe, unprotected sex. this very much toes the line of noncon (that is still very dubcon even when consent is given) in many ways, notably: somnophilia, and condom/contraceptive tampering. intrusive, violent thoughts. mentions of violence. manipulation; slight gaslighting. implied kidnapping. references to past abuse (Ghost), brief mention of drugging/threats of drugging (ambiguous as to if it was ever followed through on or not, mostly just Ghost's internal monologue unfiltered). ADDITIONAL TAGS—smut. rough sex. unsafe sex. dom!Ghost. mean, obsessive, unhinged!Ghost. spit kink. dacryphilia.
he's feral, but he's yours. too bad for you, no one is really sure if that's a good thing or not.
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One of the things Price often tells new recruits is to shove their old life into a box. 
“There's home,” he huffs, fingers twitching as if he's subconsciously flexing around the hilt of a lit cigar. “And then there's work. Whatever box you decide to put this, or your family, your personal life, into is your choice. But for fuck’s sake. Keep them separate.” 
Most of the new recruits are fresh off selection, shaded sickly chartreuse, and take his words as a literal gospel. Work, this; home, them. They don't start to unravel the second part of his gruff speech until much later. Until they can't wash the blood from their hands, and the scent of their mum’s eucalyptus hand soap is nauseating. Unfamiliar. When being in civvies feels like wearing skin that doesn't fit, and everyone around you is alien, foreign. They don't know. They'll never know. 
It's only when they find themselves gazing at the clock on the wall of their family home, counting down the minutes until their mandatory leave is over do they realise that home is the barracks. 
That's something Ghost has always understood. Maybe it was because his home life was already in ruins, tatters. Beer soaking into the knock-off Persian rug a cousin nicked from a flea market when he was nine. No fine china in the cupboards because it'll end up in shards on the floor. Plastic plates and forks and cups. Always. Howling in his head. Screaming from down the hall in his mum's room. His bedroom door creaking open at night. The anger, the curdling fear (shameful—be a man; punch him back, hit him before he hits you, you useless prick—), of not knowing whether or not it was his dad, high as hell and itching for a fight after busting their mum’s lip wide open, or Tommy sneaking into his bed at night because his is soaked in piss and he can’t sleep when they scream at each other like this.  
(Funny that, he always found; neither of them could ever sleep when it was silent, either.)
Blood on the linoleum. Trying to eat burnt toast and overcooked beans with a busted lip and a twinge in his jaw—
(Fractured, they'll say later, years later, during his mandatory medical checkup when he's first recruited. Healed all wrong. Son, didn't anyone take you to hospital?) 
He understands the separation between home and work—even if the former lost all relevancy nearly a decade ago. Back when he buried them all. Was buried himself—
What Ghost never really understood was the box. 
Shove it into a box. 
When he asks over cheap whisky somewhere in Siberia, Price tightens his fingers around his glass before bringing it up to his head. His index finger juts out. He knocks the tip of that bruised, scabbed knuckle against his temple. Once, thrice. Levels Simon with a pointed look he both can’t understand and somehow knows all too well. 
“Up here."
“Paid nearly fifty quid for that,” he grouses, shaking his head. “Think I've been ripped-off, Price.” 
Price scoffs, places the glass down with a hollow thud. “Don't be a fuckin’ muppet, Simon—” his real name makes his shoulders tense. Around the barracks, they know him only as the Ghost. “You put it away somewhere. Hide it. I don't fuckin’ know. But if it keeps you goin’, keeps you sane, and doesn't become a mess I gotta clean up, well—”
The implication is stark. Heavy. 
Price was always good at chiselling through layers of accumulated indifference to get to the madness within, but considering Ghost’s past and his mile-long rap sheet, the warning digging into his words like a dull blade isn't unwarranted. 
Old dogs, he'd called the pair of them when they first met. There was a sharp keenness in his eye when he lifted his hand, waved his cigar toward the tangled mess of scar tissue crisscrossing his face (made with a dull, rusted knife, one that gouged out deep pocks of skin, ugly fuck, looks like the badlands, don't he? like a postcard from the Grand Canyon, sweetheart. not so cute anymore, are ya, pretty boy—), and said, “well, you're fuckin’ rabid, ain't you? Better put a muzzle on that before it becomes a problem, mm.”
His problem, specifically. 
And Ghost gets it. Thinks Price might understand that particular brand of madness—despite growing up on literal opposite sides of the track, his Manchester to the others Liverpool; poverty and prestige—if only just. Because Price seems to be able to curb those baser impulses in a way Ghost hadn't yet mastered (and won't for quite some time yet). He's put together. Sort of. Respected. Normal.
The men in the barracks don't look at him and flinch. 
But he sees the way the man's eyes linger in the crowd, shrewd and careless, before falling on the pretty bartender in the back. The one with roses in her eyes and a smile full of dandelions. Soft, like butterscotch. It's here when they darken. When he reaches, almost angrily, for his whisky. Pats his chest with a heavy fist searching for his cigar. 
She's a sweet thing, he reckons. All pretty and trusting. Birds like her make his head itch—
“Don't even think about it, Simon,” Price grumbles, and it feels like territorial posturing, a challenge he almost raises to meet with his chin, if only to make Price fluster, but it's hollow. Empty. He denies himself, too. The prick. 
“How'd you do it?” He asks, and doesn't specify. Doesn't think he needs to. 
When Price swallows, it looks like a grimace. “Years of practice.” 
He considers the weight of it, his eyes straying back to the woman behind the bar. She's tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, wrist delicate like bone china, the kind they could never afford, and for a moment, the intrusive thoughts, the ones he gets sometimes about wanting to tear things to bloody pieces, rears—
It's stamped down in a swig of flat lager You stupid fuckin’ mutt, Price would say tomorrow morning, shaking his head. You always think with your prick? 
Simon cranks his head sharply to the side instead. The resounding crack seems to echo through the empty pub. 
Price just shakes his head. “Christ. No one ever house break you, yet?” 
“Yeah, they did,” he rasps, staring at the bartender who gazes back at him now. Skittish, unsure. Not so sweet after all. She looks away, cowed. Her hands tremble. He leans back, and hums. “And now I piss outside, like a good ‘ol boy.” “Ain't nothin’ good about you, Simon. Fuckin' Christ—”
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And he's not wrong. 
The Ghost has a reputation of being a cold-hearted bastard. A Frankensteinian beast cobbled together with spare parts robbed from a jailhouse graveyard. Worst of the worst. An arm from a mass murder. The leg from a spree killer. Heart a patchwork mess of ichor and sulphur. Sutured together with barbed wire. 
It's all sort of macabre. Rather trite, too. 
The rumour mill in the barracks is insatiable.
But sometimes, he wakes up and he's still buried. Still dead. Dirt in his throat, lodged in his nose. He breathes in and feels pebbles scraping his lungs. Feels worms in his ears. Maggots in his head. 
They crawl through his grey matter. Leeches burrowing into his thoughts, sucking the good in him dry. 
Or, whatever's left of it, anyway. 
He thinks with his teeth because it's easier that way. Cold, calculative instinct. Just barely boxed into a neat package slapped on the desk of Price's higher-ups. 
A good man, they say, and turn him loose on the streets. One of the best we have, as he breaks jaws, and tears through jugulars. A force to be reckoned with. 
They hand him a gun, a rifle, when the bloodied footprints leading back to camp become too much of a hassle to clean. Shoot from a distance. He takes to it like the bulk of metal was made for his scarred hands. Scythe to a Reaper. 
It feels like bloodletting. Draining him of his anger, his fury, until a cold, gnarled indifference curls in the basin left behind. Icy, frigid. Down to the bone. 
Sometimes, he doesn't remember what it felt like to be warm, even buried under a thick balaclava and layers of military fatigues. 
Frankenstein’s monster. Patched together from the rotten remains of horrible men. 
And as he stares in the mirror at the patchwork ruins of his face, his body, he wonders if there's some truth to it, after all. He's pretty sure if someone cracked his skull open—again—they’d find rot. Tumulus. Infested with maggots and worms. Cobwebs behind his eyes. In his nose. His brain perfectly preserved: a zombified tombstone. And oh, how it hungers. 
Wants. 
But in a box it goes. One shaped like a coffin. Placed pretty in the back of his broken head. 
He stares in the mirror and thinks he sees something moving under his eye. Wriggling around. The temptation to claw it out rears, but the shredded tissue on his thighs reminds him of what happens when he listens to that insidious hiss in the back of his head (some amalgamation of his old man, and that bastard—) and goes searching for gold in bone marrow. 
He huffs. Fingers curling around the porcelain. His head is rotten. Putrefied. He can feel the decomposing sludge press against his temples. It grows teeth sharp like a razor blade and hacks away at jaundiced bone. Ghost lifts his hand, digs his fingers into his temple. Down boy—
(Simon doesn't even want to consider what his heart must look like, then.)
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Cold-hearted, sure—
But he likes sweet things. 
The kind that will undoubtedly give him cavities. A spillover, perhaps, when candy bars were too expensive, and the only dessert he was given was a toffee by the neighbour when she wasn't moaning to his old man about all the shit he and Tommy got up to. 
(Bruises came afterwards, the colour of liquorice. Sour cherries.)
Unfortunately for him, sweet things don't like him much—a shame, really. Simon has always had a sweet tooth. 
His rough edges are too sharp for their liking, and Simon's—
Intense. Like a dog with a bone, he doesn't know when to let go. When to unhinge his jaw from the morsel between his teeth. He bites hard. Shakes his head. Tears into the things he wants until it's bloodied meat pinched in his incisors. 
And so, they keep their distance. Like they can smell the rot on him. The funeral dirt. The stench of an unearthed sarcophagi. 
Sometimes, though, the wiley ones will inch closer, looking to get messed up badly by a bad man, and it makes something inside his head howl when he turns them down. Following Price’s creed. Can't give in to the pretty ones, he'd said. Nothin’ but trouble. 
Trouble, like a pair of shackles. A noose. Trouble, like gentle, clean hands and fragile bones. Fine china. Fine powder. The marshmallow soft kind of trouble that will melt in the acid that leaks from his pores. Aqua regia. Attacking anything that gets close. 
(Breakable, is what Price means. Pretty chew toys that are beyond repair once he's finished with them.
He must think Ghost is some sort of psychopath—)
But still. He stays away. It's easier on base, in safe houses, too far out from the general public to have to worry about doe eyes and soft touches. He doesn't need it, anyway—
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Then comes you. 
And the forfeiture of his self-control. 
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You're trouble of a different kind. 
Trouble, like the end of a sledgehammer. Trouble, like the grill of a car. The barrel of a gun. 
In the shape of a battering ram, one strong enough to dislodge the madness in the back of his head. Where the corrosive acid should ruin you, eat you alive, it doesn't. Not with your tantalum skin. 
But oh, do you pack a punch—
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At first, you think he's homeless. 
Some scruffed-up man sleeping on a park bench outside of your apartment. 
In another life, he might have been. He isn't a stranger to bad habits, and had the military not been his only choice in life for some semblance of good (laughable, considering what he does for a living), he could see the threads of his life leading him here. Drugs. Manchester is good for it, this he knows all too well. Especially the shithole neighbourhood he's from. 
He doesn't clue into this, though, until you glance at him, warily, and then shuffle into the cafè he’s holed outside of, the place where his current target gorges himself on steeped tea and crumpets. 
(Price's dry text sits, open, on his burner phone: and don't fuck this up—)
It feels a bit like an omen. Made worse when you meet his gaze through the glass, and—
Well. Shit. 
The impact is a collision. Hitting a pole at top speed. Metal bent around concrete. 
His teeth ache (so, so bad—).
You emerge from the small building a few minutes later—the faded eggshell with chocolate trim is nauseatingly sweet against your pastel yellow raincoat—holding a takeaway bag, and balancing a tray of coffees in your hand. 
He tenses. It's instinctual. There's nothing about you that's an immediate threat to his person—unless you plan on adding to his scars with the tip of your umbrella, the scalding coffee in your hand—but it's odd, isn’t it? No one approaches him. Not unless they have a reason to. 
And no one, in his experience, ever has a good one. 
“Hi,” you chirp, disarmingly sweet, as you come to stand in front of him. His jaw aches. Even sprawled across a bench, you're barely looking down at him. Sticky, cold fingers tap a strange rhythm down his spine. “I, um, hope this isn't weird, but I saw you sitting here, and—well. I got this—”
You wiggle the bag. He smells something greasy. A breakfast sandwich, he's sure.
It's an unusual assassination attempt. Price will be livid. 
“What for?” He rumbles, sitting up in the seat. The shift of his bulk seems to make you nervous. You take a step back, and he fights the urge to follow. To back you into a corner. No escape. 
You regain your footing, even if the smile on your face wobbles. Weakens under his flat stare. Some people can smell the rot on him. 
He wonders if you can, too. 
(Pity that. You're a pretty bird, ain't you?)
And the way you take him in lacks a distinct thrum of hesitation, fear that’s normally there. It occurs to him, then, that you see him as just another man. Just another person. 
(“deader than a doorknob, this one. such a goddamn waste, boss. he was a fun one, wasn’t he? should we burn ‘em?” 
nah. bury him out back—)
It's laughable, really. A joke. He has the urge to crack one—sick and awful enough to make that little smile on your face wilt. Wither away. Almost does, too, but it get tangled in his throat when he feels the weight of your stare on him. 
The easy sweep of your eyes is barely discrete, but it's clinical. Pitying. But the softened edges of that empathy dissolve as your pretty head adds up all the numbers on him, coming to a standstill. Your eyes linger on his wrist. The gold of his wristwatch peeks out beneath the black sleeve of his hoodie. An intricate web of complex timekeeping that only he's privy to. A little luxury he picked up in Italy when the cash he'd been given was getting too tiresome to carry around. 
Dead men, after all, don't need bank accounts. 
And then—
You fluster. “Sorry, I just thought—”
It clicks, then. The pity. The soft words. The goddamn coffee— 
His gums itch. He has the sudden urge to be mean about it. Pick you apart in this street until nothing but embarrassment and humiliation remains. 
“That I was homeless? ‘nd you brought me, what? A coffee? ‘ow sweet of you. Some breakfast, too. Well, aren't you a lovely girl?” 
You are embarrassed. It blisters across your expression. Has your hands trembling around the cardboard tray, spilling droplets of coffee down the side. Your head is bowed, cowed in shame. It reminds him of that bartender some years prior. Pulling away when the bad dog growls—
But there's a thin sheen of intrigue in your eyes, burrowing holes into the shoes in front of you; a tangled knot of want coiling in the heat of your embarrassment over this blunder. Over offending him. 
Well—
That's new. 
Some get off on it. On humiliation. Specifically, of the public variety. He didn't take you as the type. The way you twist, squirming in place, is odd, though. It doesn't fit as well as he originally thought. No. It's not the public shame, but—
Him. 
Ah. 
Sweet, sweet girl. 
(So naïve.)
He reckons he could get you to do just about anything to make it up to him. You would, too. You're soft enough to be submissive, to bow your head in contrition, but there's a flicker of defiance in the jut of your chin when you lift your head. 
This is a blunder and you're sweetly embarrassed, sure, but it isn't enough to break you. 
And now Simon just wants to ruin you. Teach you a lesson about bad, vile men—
(Something you'd welcome with open arms, wouldn't you?)
“Didn’t know Manchester was so charitable,” he rasps. His throat is dry. Parched. He reaches for the coffee—black, with extra creamer and sugar on the side, tucked neatly in a little bag; fuckin’ hell. Ain't you just adorable—and places it on the spot beside him. “I’ll be takin’ this. Will need it for later.” 
You look like you want to protest. Fight back. His hackles rise, ready for it—eager. Something anticipatory, dark, bleeds through the moulted mess of his head. Sickly. Terrible. He thinks about what you'd look like sprawled under him, shaking and begging for more, for him to stop—
Fuck. Birds usually make his head itch, but you make his fucking skin crawl. 
In the end, you just huff. Roll your eyes. He wants to chew them out of your head. Pop them between his teeth. He bet you'd taste divine. 
You walk away from him before he can. You don't look back once. 
Pity, he thinks. Someone's gonna snatch you clean off the streets like that—
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Hours later, he sends Price a text message with the coordinates for where to pick up the package Ghost left. 
He considers it a blessing when the man sends him back, good job, now get a pint from me as a little reward. Can't say I don't treat my team well. 
A reward, huh? 
Well. With your stature in comparison to his own, Ghost easily can see you being considered a pint. 
So, he follows you home, and tallies this one as being on Price. 
It's easy. Too easy. He slips deftly behind you, tucked away from view, and masks his footsteps under the echo of yours until he's standing in the shadows outside of your house. This, too, feels like a blessing. It's a duplex. He waits for one of the lights to flicker on, and—
The window brightens. Room number two. 
He hums, and palms his pockets for the pack of smokes he nicked off the man. Needing something to take the edge off. To quell the urge to bite. 
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It's even easier to engineer meetings. Random run-ins. All blamed on happenstance, chance. Of course. This towering mountain of a man with his thick manc twang—the sort of gallows humour that can only be found in the blue-collar streets of Salford from the nasty old men squatting on the corners—must have better things to do than stalk you. Surely. You're not special enough to be hunted, right? 
Still. You're a touch wary of him. Distrustful. You keep your distance—six inches for Jesus Christ, aren’t you a peach?—and try to skirt the line between neutrally polite to the strange man loitering outside of the shops you frequent (your schedule burned to his memory, naturally) and that fascinating skittish intrigue from before. All simmering heat. Blunt want. The kind wrapped up in silk threads. 
It's interesting to watch it play out when he steps closer and all those long-forgotten instincts in the back of your head flare up. The shaky step you take back. The inward frown of confusion when you're not sure why your body craves space, acting almost on its own. And then the sweet defiance that breaks over you. The intentional step closer. The feigned warmth in your tone as you talk to him.
It's easy to pocket the uglier aspects of his personality. The coldness. The indifference. The flat, droll insincerity that leaks into his tone. All of it shelved, locked away, and he's not sure if Price would be happy that he listened to what he said, followed his example, or furious that he's bastardising it to lure this pretty fish in.
)The latter, undoubtedly. But Simon gets a sick kick from it all.)
Especially when it brings you closer to him. Thaws you as you rationalise his reaction during the first meeting, gears spinning. Kicking up excuses. 
Anyone would be angry, offended. It's natural. He's alright now—
It makes you look at him differently as you forcefully fight the urge to flee. 
Silly bird. 
Wary eyes rake over his massive bulk. Brows furrow at the series of black medical masks he wears in public. Always. That, in addition to the heavy black of his wardrobe—black jacket, black hoodie, black leather gloves—sometimes makes you glance at him with a touch of worry. Fear. Probably wondering if you brought home a delinquent. 
But it changes when he rolls up his sleeves one day after you've been moaning about your broken beach cruiser (the, I don't know, chain—or something—keeps catching—), and crouches down to fix it. 
There's a hitch in your breath. A distinct swallow. A guilty tinge of something shy, deliciously so, shading your eyes ruby-red when you look down at him. 
And ah—
Sweet little treat snagged on the line. Ain't he a lucky lad? 
It's all the better when you do the work for him. Reeling yourself in, practically throwing yourself in his cooler when you ask about his tattoos, carefully—considerately—nudging the topic away from his ugly scars. 
He guts you clean as he tells you he's in the military. Top secret, pet. Don't ask because I'd hate to ‘ave to hurt a pretty face like yours—
You preen under it. Pet. Pretty. You don't even notice when he slides his knife over your scales, dices you up on his chopping board. 
You're the picture of sweetness when he unkinks the chain in your bike, and sets it straight. All happiness. Smiles. Appreciative glances. You flutter your pretty eyes at him as you say—
“Thank you—”
You're waiting for a name. His belly rumbles. He could eat, he thinks, and licks his teeth. 
“Simon. Simon Riley.” 
The risk-reward ratio is balanced when you breathe it out between plump lips, chasing the end of it with your tongue. He wants to eat it out of your mouth. Swallow it down. 
You touch his arm, hand warm, soft. “If there's anything I can do to pay you back—”
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He takes you out for a kebab later on. Nudges you out of the way when you open your wallet to pay. Draft girl. Naïve, too, because he can feel the heat in your cheeks from where he stands, reaching over to snatch the bag from the man with a grunt. 
You must think him quite the gentleman. So trusting. 
Doesn't matter. He lets it take root. Especially when you shyly invite him back to yours to eat. 
He makes a feast of it, and fucks you on your mint green chaisse after he's finished. 
(Not on birth control, you say, and hand him a box of condoms, suddenly shy. It's unopened. He hums, and burns that to memory.) 
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He keeps his distance—an easy feat when he's halfway around the world, and you're stuck in the gloom of Manchester. 
It's purposeful, of course. He made a promise to Price not to give him a reason to worry, but fuck—
You're proving hard to quit. He's never had anyone cuff him upside the head on his bullshit. Not anymore, anyway. Not as the Ghost. He likes the thrill of it, of this chase. 
You don't let him steamroll you when he's in a mood to fight. You punch back, hitting him right in the mess of his guts, and fuck. Fuck. He's a little bit obsessed with it. With you. This wily little fish that acts so shy when he's got three fingers buried in your cunt, but rides him after like you're starving for it. Clawing at his chest. Scratching his arms. It's raw. Primal. He wants to break you—this fiery little kitten that bites his fingers until they bleed, and then purrs in his lap as he drives a pickaxe through your head, shredding logic into pieces. Rummaging around until he nicks the optic nerve that lets you see red. 
You’re everywhere. In everything. In the back of his head, under the howling that hadn't stopped since you trailed your finger down the jagged topography of his bare chest, digging your nail into the crude x across his heart, and whispered, soft and sweet: you're all kinds of fucked up, aren't you? 
A bludgeon to his self-control—
He resists. Has to. Is mean about it, too. Doesn't tell you where he's going (it's need to know), or what he's doing (would ‘ave to bash your pretty ‘ead in if I told you), but keeps you strung on the line (keep thinkin’ about that pretty cunt of yours; can't wait to come ‘ome and ‘ave you sit on my ugly mug—). 
It's dangerous, this game of his. Thrilling for all the wrong reasons. 
But he’s a good mutt. Good—
Until the text. 
The one you send to him when you're out with friends. A picture. You're in a pub somewhere in Moss Side, a drink in hand. A gaggle of nobodies crowded around you. It makes sense, he supposes. There's that old idiom—you’ll trap more flies with honey—and he doesn't know anyone nearly as sweet as you. 
His sweet girl.
(you fuckin’ mutt—)
Ghost stares at you for a moment, teeth aching. The little ensemble—a crop top and jeans—is a vision, he reckons. But it's spoiled when he catches more eyes on you than pointed at the camera. Practically spilling out of your top, aren't you? 
He breathes heavily through his nose. Tastes guncotton in his throat. 
Ghost commits every face to memory, and then calls you. 
You're drunk. Too drunk to remember it tomorrow. Stuck in a pub on what's supposedly a bad part of town. Chatting away about going to your friend’s house. He gets the address, and something sour twits in his stomach. Shit council houses. 
“That safe?” He asks, leaning back in his chair. He's already chubbed up in his slacks at the slur in your voice. “And dressed like that? Didn't take you for a slag—”
It makes you sputter on the line. “I'm—I’m not—”
You're so quick to placate him. So hasty to make him happy. Please don't be angry with me, Simon. I'm just having some fun—
The claws and fangs are tucked away when you're drunk. He shoves the information in the cache, eyes burning. Head aching. He's feverish. Hot under the collar.
Odd considering he's dead—
“Sounds like you will be.”
“It's not like that—”
“‘ow would you know? Might meet a nice fellow. Might take him home.”
“I don’t—I wouldn't—”
The sniffle makes him throb. Fuck. “Yeah? Well, ain't none of my business, I reckon—”
“It is.”
“Oh? How's tha’?”
“I—I like you, Simon—” he can taste your embarrassment through the phone. He didn't even need to bring you flowers and you're already boxing him into monogamy, confessing to him. So sweet. So tender. If he were a better man, he might have told you to sober up. To talk about this tomorrow. 
Too bad for you, he isn't. And what’s worse is that he’s a loyal bastard, too. 
But that's later, and right now—
He's halfway across the world, and you're vulnerable. In the den of hungry mutts. 
It’s charr in his throat. Anger in his veins. “You like me? An’ you go out dressed like that?”
“There's nothing wrong with how I'm dressed—”
He sucks his teeth. “Dunno ‘bout tha’, pet. You look like you're achin’ to get fucked.”
You take a shuddering breath. “I just want you—”
“Yeah?” It's a growl. His cock spits prespend in his trousers. “Then be my good girl. Go home and wait for me.”
It's quiet on the line. He catches the hitch in your throat, the sharp exhale, like you can't really be sure if he's serious or not. He says nothing. Waits. 
Where there would have been a fight—fists and teeth and snarling words—you quieten in the silence. Docile. Submissive. It's in you, he knows. He saw the glimpses back when you first met, when he'd bent down and fixed the bike he broke. All it needs is a little—
“Jus’ worried about my sweet girl, is all.” 
And you relent. 
Corrosive oil spills out of the necrosed holes in his head. It curls over his thoughts, liquid sin. He takes himself in his hand, blood pulsing in his veins, white-hot, damning, and bares his teeth at the urge to come to you, to push you down on the floor, and mount you like a snarling beast—
“Good girl,” he growls when you tell him you'll call a taxi, that you'll go home and have some wine with your friend instead.
Friend. Friends. 
He'll have to do something about that. 
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(The thing about deprivation is that it bleeds into a vicious sense of possession when it's finally obtained. Greed. His wants have wants, have wants—
A perfect ouroboros. One you feed into almost destructively.)
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Because the thing is—
Simon wants to tie you to his bed. Keep you locked up in the safe house he has in Manchester. Chained, shackled. A prisoner with him as your iron guard. 
It isn't just fantasy, either. 
The flies that congregate around you are an annoying, incessant buzzing in his ears. Remora clinging to the biggest fish. 
But they're easy to scatter when he waves his hand. 
(Waves off. Threatens with bodily harm, with physical aggression—
Same thing.)
The sting in his knuckles and the blood on his shoes are worth it in the end when your tantalum skin cracks. An aggregate of beautiful lines, pretty in their fragility, their brokenness. He wedges his fingers between the splints, widening the chasm to pet at the sticky-soft centre hiding beneath all that rough rock. Sweet girl. Hard candy enclosing taffy-softness. 
His coos melt you to the consistency of mercury. Liquid silver pebbles along your lash line, spilling over in a dizzying display of raw vulnerability. 
It makes every predatory instinct inside of him bristle. Locking onto the sweet lines of crystalline sadness that run down your cheeks. It has his heart racing. Eager, anticipatory. The thrill of the chase, of running you down into the ground until you're fine powder under him. 
And it’s there, it's in his arms—the maw of a beast—where you seek comfort, lamenting the loss of your friends, your coworkers. No one wants to hang out with you anymore. They don't return your calls or answer your texts. 
What did I do? You sniffle, throat bared. Belly turned up. 
Flooded with tears. The lachrymal face that peers up at him makes his teeth ache. He rolls his head back, feels himself thicken in his pants. 
Simon loves it when you cry.
“Fuck ‘em,” he rasps, words sticking to his dry throat. “If they can't see what a catch you are, then they don't even deserve to breathe the same air as you.”
It makes you cry harder, makes you mumble into his chest about how lucky you are to have someone like him. Someone who cares. 
His breath hitches. Warm floods his veins, fever-hot. 
“Thank you, Simon—”
And then you, smooth silver and wickedly sweet, cradle him in your palms as if you could hold all the broken pieces of him together. 
He thinks it's cute. 
Doesn't really have the heart to tell you it's a lost cause.
“Anytime, pet.”
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And you're perfect, too.
You take this mangy mutt into your house, and let it eat your food, sleep in your bed. You let him fuck you stupid, and listen so prettily when he convinces you to let him spoil you. Let him pay your rent, your bills. Let Simon dote on you the only way he knows how—mercilessly possessive, and a touch cruel, mean—but you roll over, showing your belly. Submissive and sweet. 
It's even better when you try to lash out at him with a collar in the shape of his teeth branding your neck, spitting and hissing like a feral cat who doesn't know yet that's claws have been clipped. Only to then curl up in his lap, purring as he strokes your fur, and carves out a place for himself in your life. 
He wants to sink his teeth into you, and you think he's a big dog. Undomesticated. One who comes and goes as he pleases. A stray. A mutt. 
It's said fondly. Full of love—
His mouth is full of cavities. His teeth ache. His gums bleed. 
(do you know he's rabid? that the faded name on his dog tags once read cujo—)
Everything about you makes that sludge flood behind his eyes, pounding rotten fists against his temple. take, take, take; mine, mine—
The howling doesn't stop. It tells him to press you into the mattress and fuck you stupid. Tie you to the bedposts and never let you go—
He throws fists in the dark, trying to hit the madness in his head. Ends up with bloody knuckles and laughter in his ears. 
(a voice of reason says, your bird is too big for a cage—)
He clings to it. 
You're warm beside him. Burning hot. He syphons it from your veins when you're asleep, pulling you close just to feel something on his skin other than dirt. Other than blood. 
It's easy to pretend he's fine with these little nips. Leaving teeth marks in your neck. Bloody rings snaking up your thighs. 
He wraps one hand around both of your wrists, holds them high above your head, and tells himself it's enough. Shackled by him, under him, as he takes you apart, pulling at your sense of independence like the gnarled fingers of winter bringing defoliation to summer's bloom, but even with this, all of it, he still aches. Still wants. Needs—
Stupid fuckin’ mutt. 
Then you bring his hands up to your throat, letting him wrap his bearish paws around your delicate neck, and he knows these little bites will never satiate the hunger in his guts. 
He wakes up the next morning feeling warm. Full. Edges softened, if only just, by the sticky sweetness of your breath ghosting over his chest. 
Simon curls his arm around you, holding tight.  He won't let go. Won't—
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Hide it. Put it away. 
Ghost does neither of those things. He buries it, instead.  
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But in doing so, you find cracks in the foundation. Ones that are just big enough for your willfulness to slip through. To hand him back the cash he gave with a scoff, and a, i work, too, you know? i don't need your money, Simon. that's not why i’m with you—
(All he hears is, I don't need you.)
And then you send him a text. I'm going out with friends from work tonight. We're going drinking. I'll talk to you tomorrow! 
In the zombified remains of his head, a new howling starts. The hisses tell him you're pulling away, running from him—
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It's a big world out there. It'll eat you whole—
Like Tommy.
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The thing about want is that sometimes it grows teeth, hands. Claws. Without a body of its own, it tends to mould itself after its maker because that's all it knows how to do: devour, consume. Yearn. 
He shouldn't be too surprised to find that this need of his has dug itself out of the grave he buried it in. 
(he did, too—)
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The flimsy sarcophagus cracks open when Price announces that his missus is pregnant.
The howling in the back of his head stops abruptly. The pulsing ache in his temple abates. It's heavy, this weight. This absolute, utter emptiness—
No. It's not hollow. The chasm isn't drained, it's—
(In the silence, something growls. Feral. Possessed.)
—full. Perfect equilibrium. All of the patchwork parts of himself, the ones that don't quite fit, suddenly find synergy. 
Communion. 
Ghost cocks his head in consideration.
(your bird is too big for a cage—
—but maybe a collar would do.)
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—after all, could you ever leave him with his name etched into your womb—
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In leaving the key under the mat for him to come and go as he pleases, you've left yourself vulnerable. But—
Not anymore. 
He has a safehouse he'll take you to. You'll let him, too, because it'll be the best choice for you. The three of you.
He's never entertained any ideas of family, not when the closest approximation he has is drenched in gun oil and smells of smoke from artillery fire, but the howling in his head quietens at the idea of it. He can't shackle you to the bed—stupid fucking mutt—but he can tie you down all the same. Make you his. Wholly. Always. 
And the thing is—despite a pickaxe making figure-eights out of his grey matter; lead poisoning and rust giving him these sour, awful thoughts about locking you up in his house, leaving you a needy mess, dependent only on him—Simon supposes he knows right from wrong. 
Intentionally knocking you up is amoral. Probably illegal. Somehow, even more dastardly when the reason for it is simply selfishness. Want. Greed. Hunger. 
But in carving himself a place in your life, he failed to realise that the walls behind him closed in. No way out. And so, his only option is to go forward. To keep moving.
He'll be crucified for this, but that's fine. 
He doesn't intend for you to find out, anyway. It'll be an accident. He came home early, and found you drunk. Drank with you. Your drunken idiocy merged, creating a terrible, noxious cocktail of awful, bad choices. Permanent ones. Irreversible. 
(You're so sweet, so docile when you're drunk—)
It'll be easy to convince you. To play the part of a stoic man suddenly in turmoil. You'll offer to get rid of it, a suggestion that he'll flinch at—a cornered dog, a hand raising in the air. You'll whimper. Shake in his arms as you tentatively smooth over the wrinkles in his brow, murmuring out your options in a stilted breath.
You'll be a Riley before the end of your term. It's only proper, he'll mutter, stiff and uncomfortable, and you'll melt. Liquid tantalum in his palm. The fruits of his labour laid bare, seeping from the corners of his mouth. Tucked tight between his teeth. Mercury he can swallow down, keep in the bracket of his rotten ribs. Safekeeping from this world that just takes. Devours. 
But not if he eats you first. 
The mere notion alone serves as an anchor, locking him to the seafloor. The tumult in his head calmed at the promise of owning. Biting to claim. To have. Greedy for it. For you, and the strange sense of quiet your proximity brings him. The warmth, too. 
He's a rabid dog. This he knows—has known—for quite some time. Indisputable. It pools in his mouth. Liquid sin. Makes him ache for just a sip. Unquenchable, though, because he's wary of water. Hydrophobia, but only for how it washes his efforts away. Cleanses. 
The urge inside of him to bite, to infect, quietens when he gets closer to you. 
(a rabid mutt licking at the window you're on the opposite side of, dreaming of just a taste—)
A byproduct of that maddening virus in his veins, the one he must have picked up six feet in the ground. Bite, bitebite—
—and give you a collar in the shape of his teeth.
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He finds you in bed. A bottle of wine on the end table beside you, courtesy of your friend. The one lingering remora he couldn't snap at—one who sends you messages about how you are being manipulated. Taken advantage of. Fuck that loser, the latest one says when he picks up your phone, scrolling through the dwindling conversations housed within. Just him now, and them. 
It preaches about empowerment. About how you shouldn't let a man pay your bills (textbook manipulation. he's putting you in a position of dependency. making you feel obligated to stay. it's all on Google, babes. like, fucking get a clue!!!!), or how it's moving so quickly (maybe you should come stay with me in Durham for a bit, hun. get away for a weekend. i worry about ya, is all). He hums, thumbing through the old chats. 
You told her to fuck off about the manipulation, but it came after a lot of, oh, yeah. well, he's just. you know. he's different, and you haven't declined the invitation. i’ll think about it, is what you write. 
It simmers under his skin. That independence he plans on stomping out under his heel. With his kin. 
(sick, sick sick, wrong—)
It's desperation, this. Clawing at the walls—the dirt—until his nails are torn off his fingers. Until his skin splits, peels. Broken under rock and rubble. That animalistic need for air. To breathe. Basic training tells him not to save the person drowning unless he's sure they won't kill him in their struggle to live. But what's he supposed to do when that person is his rotting body, sinking down to unfathomable depths? When all he has is you to cling to—
Damnation built by his own hands. 
You'll die together, he reckons, and tosses your phone on the hamper in the corner of the room. 
Ghost can't remember the last time someone made him feel anything at all other than impartiality. Indifference. Casual apathy. 
Price is the exception to this on the grounds of being consanguineous to him.
And you—
An outlier. 
One he intends on sinking as deep as he can with. Anchored, maybe, by this little plan that beats and pulses in the back of his head. That clogs his throat with a want so thick, he can already taste the brine from the ocean. Water in his nose. Down his esophagus—
Better than dirt, he supposes. And it spurns him forward.
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You're malleable like this. Tensile. He bends you easily with just a touch until you're flat on your back, a pillow shoved beneath your tailbone, and stripped. The loose shirt you wear to sleep is hiked up under your neck. Panties are pulled off until your sweet, bare cunt is revealed to him. All pretty and soft, and his. Untouched, he notes, and gives an appreciative stroke over your clit with his thumb. 
It was something you were whining about the other day, panting in his ear as if he wasn't a continent away. Pleading with him on the phone to please, please let you come. 
Simon likes the way you cling to him when it's been a while since something has wrecked you as thoroughly as his cock. When your spoiled pussy was neglected for a few days, weeks, and starved for attention. You were so sweet to him then, cooing in his ear how good you've been, how much you want him and only him, need him. Begging so prettily for it. 
He's almost sad to spoil himself in your cunt when you can't weep for it. Can't bully him closer. Try to claw his eyes out. That delicious push-pull where you hiss at him for pulling away, but whine when he gets too close. 
Sad, but—
Not enough to stop himself. 
You're not wet enough for him to slide inside unprepared—his cock too big, something that makes his bones tremble—and he rectifies it by leaning down, letting saliva pool between his teeth and lips. He holds it there for a moment as he spreads your folds apart with his thumb and forefinger. 
And then he spits on your bare cunt. 
It hits your clit, the thick glob siding down your slit. He reaches between your thighs, pawing at you. Slides his fingers through the slick mess he made, teases around your tight rim. 
Simon usually likes to take his time with you. Lapping at your pussy for hours until you're a weeping, snot-nosed mess whining in the sheets. Spoiled rotten. Begging him to fuck you already, Simon, you can't take it anymore—
He's mean. Cruel. Edges you for hours until your legs shake, trembling around his ears. He never lets you reach that peak—doesn’t let you come until he's buried inside of you. 
Coming on his tongue, his fingers, is rarely a privilege you ever earn. Too much of a spitfire, a spiteful little kitten, to give in and do what he demands. So he keeps you on the precipice until he's ready to fuck you, ignoring your bribes, your bargains. Simon doesn't give in even when you beg, when you relent and tell him you'll finally be good. 
You never are. 
Spoiled, he always huffs. Down to the fuckin’ bone. 
Like now. Pulling away from him. Him, the only person in your life who stuck around. A little bullying (bones breaking, splintering under his fists; the wet, hot smear of blood on his hands, skulls smacking against the pavement—an’ if you tell anyone, he cracks his battered fists and it sounds like a snarl, a gunshot, your parents will be cryin’ over an empty grave—) shooed the gnats away. He took a more clandestine approach to others. Birds that kept circling you tight. Protective, shrill. They made his head ache, but—
(don't want to start nothin’, but i don't want to be alone wit’ ‘er. tried to kiss me, is all. ain't like that, pet—)
It was a test. And they all failed. All but him. 
Yet—
come to Durham. 
i’ll think about it. 
Ungrateful. It's his fault, though. Simon doted on you too much, cosseted by his affection, when he should have clipped your wings from the beginning. 
Ah, well—
Lesson learned. 
You're wet enough now. He pushes in two fingers, scissoring them apart. You'd be yowling at him, kicking up a fuss if you'd been awake. But you're not. It thrums through him. Thick, heady. He likes you like this—probably more than he should. The heat simmering in his veins bubbles. Pops. Sap on charring wood. It clogs his throat with his smoke until it burns, a dry forest fire. 
He needs you. Needs to be in you. He's tired of waiting. Impatience burrows into him like a maelstrom. 
Simon adjusts his hold on your leg, fingers curling behind your kneecap. Steadying himself. His fingers slip out of your cunt with a sloppy squelch that ghosts across his spine. Anticipatory. A touch anxious. He wants you. Wants you bad—
He takes himself in his hand, and slides the weeping tip over your slit. Taps it once, thrice on your clit. And then guides it to your centre. Your warmth bleeds into him. Eager, he shuffles forward. Feeds you his cock. Eyes drilling into the place where his head slips in, swallowed by your sloppy, wet hole. The glands make you stretch around him. Rim pulled taut. 
The sight alone must have been crafted by some Luciferian dream, dangled before him in the shade of nirvana. 
take a bite, it urges. and then take more—
Like this, passed out with your legs hitched over his shoulders, drooling into the pillow unawares, you're just a doll. 
Made for him, and—
“Fuckin’ hell—” He presses into you—cock splitting tight, warm heat—and tries not to lose himself to the sensation of being bare, raw, inside of you. 
—“A perfect fit.”
It's always been condoms. You're not on birth control. Ink blots in his eyes. He goes a little feral with it. Instincts unleashed. Unfettered. 
Simon bullies his fat cock into you until his hips tap the back of your thighs, buried as deep as he can go. It's molten heat cocooning him—a warm embrace. For the first time, ever, he thinks he understands the meaning of home. Sliding home, in particular. 
(Welcome home. Home. Home. He'll make a house out of your body. Sleep inside the brackets of your thighs, head pillowed on your chest—)
As good as you feel around him—slick, wet, and tight—and as much as he wants to saviour the sight of you, passed out on the pillow, cunt split by his cock, he has a goal, a mission, to see through. 
His hand falls, slick and tacky, to your lower belly. Palm pressing against the subtle bulge in your abdomen, the outline of his cock. You always whine and hiss that he's too big for you. That you can't take him to the root. 
Hurts, you complain, hand against your naval. Fingers knotting over the place that aches. 
He presses his fingers there instead, feeling himself under your skin. Changing your anatomy to make room for him to fit—
It lights him in fire. Spurns him on. He bucks into you, pace sloppy, clumsy. Selfish. He's unrelenting as he splits you apart, drilling the full length of himself into your supine body, supple flesh relaxed under him, practically melting into the sheets. 
The thread keeping his resolve, his self-control, sprung up tight begins to quiver. Each piston into you has delicate fingers drumming across the strings of a harpsichord. It reverberates through him, echoing in the stifling, suffocating, silence of the bedroom, overtaking it. Clouding it with the musk of his desire, his devotion to you, to this dream blooming in the prison of his mind. 
Everything narrows into a needlepoint. 
There's just your burning flesh beneath him, softer than it's ever been; pillowy. Welcoming. And the sounds of him fucking into you—lewd squelches, slick and wet; the sound of his cock finding home in the basin of your spread thighs; his heavy breaths, his groans and growls that seem to rattle the bed. The noise breaks, an incomplete requiem of sin in his head, and he loses himself in the lulling notes, dragged under in the bestial beat of taking what his—
A sudden noise shatters through the room. Beneath him, you stir, gasping wetly. The sound mangled in your throat. 
There's confusion in your sleepy, hazy gaze when you peer up at him, lashes clumping together. You moan, whimpering, as you struggle to latch on to the threads of cognisance that he's content to fuck out of you. Your hand lifts, falls to his wrist still pressed against your lower belly. The grip is lax, loose. You’re not pushing him away, but clinging to him. Centring yourself. 
It makes his blood thicken. Has him burning red-hot. 
“Wha’s a’matter, pet?” He taunts, grinding his cock into you hard enough to make your dazed eyes water. Your hand tightens around him, holding steady. “Don't like it? Not fuckin’ you hard enough?”
“Simon—”
His name tapers off into a keen when he angles hips, and starts pistoning into you with a mean, merciless fury. The desperate noises that spill, unhindered, from your slack mouth is the perfect accompaniment to the lewd sound of him fucking your sopping cunt; the piece he was missing when this started. His requiem, complete. 
It's a serrated blade to his self-control, already frayed and threadbare as it is. The pressure makes it snap.
“C'mon, sweet thing. Thought you wanted this?” 
There's a place in hell just for him. It's sealed when you blink your tired, sleepy eyes up at him, mind a slurry of lingering somnolence and the heady alcohol on your breath, and offer a shuddering whimper. Always so soft for him, so agreeable when you’re drunk. 
“So’ry, Simon—”
You can barely string words together. Poor, pitiful you—vulnerable under him. Breakable. Malleable. Anyone else could have tricked you into this same position when he was away. Got you beneath them like this, compliant and unawares, and took what belongs to him. 
(The only thing in this destitute existence he claims for himself—)
Not anymore. Not ever again. 
It's almost callous when he grinds into you. Hateful. Brutish. Furious. And dazed as you are, you barely even flinch at the snarls that spill, unfettered, from the back of his throat. The low groans of him making promises with devils unknown; constructing shackles from brass, iron. 
Entrenching his future in motion, cupped protectively between the parentheses your thighs make around his hips. It's almost a vicious sort of poetry, one laid bare in the odious ruins of that broken thing he calls a heart. Etched into his rotten pericardium. Necrosed devotion. He'll see it through—however noxious, and putrid, you might find the miasmal stench of it spun tight in his web. 
It's for your own good.
And as if you agree, you answer him in perfect euphony, moaning sweetly as you tilt your hips up for more. 
Ghost groans low in his throat, bestial and spinning rapidly out of his control. He feels everything spinning, slipping; the trudge to the finish line narrows into a pinprink. He needs something to cling to, to hold on to with broken hands—
The only purchase he finds is in your demise. 
His hand lifts, shaking yours loose. He reaches up, fingers dig into your chin, forcing your pouty mouth open. You blink at him, sluggish, but he catches the thin gossamer of awareness spooling thin cobwebs over darkened crevasses, covering the canyons in your eyes with cognisance. It makes him leer. 
“Stick your tongue out, pretty girl,” he rasps, words sticking together, muffled under the mask. Crushed aggregate stone under the weight of his own desire. “Tha’s it. Open up nice and wide—”
He lets spit gather again, pooling on his tongue. It's degrading, you always say. Gross. But you swallow it down like a good girl, anyway. Always. You come at him with fangs and claws, but somehow, you always merge in a perfectly dizzying polyphony. 
Ghost spits on your tongue. Lets it land right in the middle of fleshy pink. A sick, twisted pleasure thrums in his veins at the sight. 
There's checking the boxes of an established kink, and this. Horrifically proprietary. Ownership that ignites a fire in his marrow, setting him alight from the inside out. Turns bone into blackened char, cinder. He can almost taste it on his tongue. 
It's made worse, turned frenzied, when you—sweet, perfect, you—bracket it protectively in the curve of your tongue. Completely dazed, head filled with a heady slurry of somnolence and alcohol, but still aware enough to know, even if only through muscle memory, what you're meant to do when he spits in your mouth. 
If anything, you're more obedient like this. Little doll. Coddling it lovingly, this little piece of him that he gives you. 
And it might be the madness speaking—these fraying thoughts take on a vitriolic edge, corrosive aqua regia pooling in his throat—but Christ. He's been stabbed in the guts, repeatedly, and it somehow packed less of a punch than this. 
He wants, wants—
Family never crossed his mind, was never even on the table or something to be considered, but with you it brims. Blooms in rot. Roots in tenebrous. 
He has this insatiable urge to devour you whole so you'll always be with him. The waves of his desire are monstrous. The waters below are rapacious. A gaping maw eager to eat you up—
Pity it’s not an option. 
But he’ll make do. Buy a ring tomorrow. Something pretty that matches your eyes. The curve of your smile. Sanctioned ownership. A collar in gemstones and gold, glimmering and shining bright enough that should any light fade from your gaze, it’ll illuminate in the gloom; twilight made in sorrow. The prettiest blues—
Said eyes water. Ghost’s hold on your face relaxes when you give a muffled keen, cheeks bubbling up against the pressure. Tongue still stuck out even as he takes his pleasure from your supine flesh. Suspended in motion, stasis. Such a good girl for him—
He swallows. Tastes poison, rot, on his tongue. “Swallow.” 
You're a little sluggish, a little slow, but you follow his command all the same. He knows, then, that it could only ever be you. 
No one gets under his skin like this. No one makes him itch, want, crave, as much as you do—
You make a face, twisted up in some amalgamation of pleasure and confusion. It nudges the ruins of his chest and feels almost like a heartbeat when it pulses in his flesh. 
“Simon, Simon—”
His name is all you can say, and he's not sure if you're begging for mercy, or muttering it out into the scant air between your heaving breaths like an obsecration, an orison, but he eats it all the same. Bites down on your pleas, your cries, your prayers, and chews them up between fangled teeth. Takes them down into the swirling pits of his belly where they're eaten alive by what grows in the decay.
(belly full of dirt:
he heaves, and heaves, but nothing comes out even though he can taste humus in his throat, feel worms using his organs like a playground—)
“Somethin’ you want, pet?” He taunts, and shifts his hips back just enough to drag a few inches of his cock out of your drenched cunt. A tease—cruel and mean. He’d get lobbed upside the head for this had you been in your right mind. A tap to his temple, shaking the cobwebs loose. He would have bent down, and sunk broken teeth into your jugular. Merging violence with love until bloody knuckles feel like a kiss. “All you ‘ave to do is ask. Use your words, pretty thing—”
You whine, low and drawn out. A lazy whimper in the back of your throat. “Pl’se—”
You can barely speak. Tongue too thick. Sleep too heavy in your veins. Alcohol, too. A lesson, perhaps, for his willful little pet come the morning when you struggle to measure just how deep into his gullet you’ve let yourself fall. 
He can’t help rubbing salt into the shallow cuts, if only because he likes the way you pout. 
“C’mon, sweetheart. You can do better’n that.”
And damn him—damn you—you do. Your hand curls over his wrist, pulling it close to your mouth where you place a kiss against his palm. Tender. Chaste. Midnight blooms in your eyes, casts shadows under pale moonlight. His breath stutters in his chest when you lean your head back, letting his hand fall to your bared neck. 
Your heavy, lidded eyes gaze back at him, cutting through the shade of night that sews the air like satin. Etched in the file silk is threads of trust in stark white. The kind that bleeds for him; hungers. One that aches, always tender like a bruise. The throb of it echoes between mouldering ribs. Booms between his ears. 
Ghost doesn’t fall into pieces. Doesn’t shatter. No. Something in the splintered remains shifts. Settles. He wraps his fingers around the thick of your throat, thumb notched tight against your pulse, and he feels complete. Whole. Remade from the ruins. 
Your breath hitches. The sound is a gunshot in his ears. He squeezes down, a gentle press. Just enough to make the air spill out of your lungs, to let your eyes water. Lachrymose, eager. It does something to him when you cry. He feels tipped upside down, torn inside out. Left all askew, asunder. He wants to drown in the pebbling river growing against your lashline. Wants to drink it down until it quenches his neverending thirst. Wants, wants—
He feels his name spill from your lips. Brassy and broken, trembling against his palm. A plea—
More.
And he gives it to you. 
Simon hitches your ankle on his shoulder. Adjusts the grip he has on your throat. He settles over your body, blanketing you under his bulk. Stygian beast devouring the maiden whole. The thought amuses him even as it knocks the air from his lungs. 
He anchors himself into the mattress with his knees, steadying himself, curls his other hand around the iron ring of the headboard. All the while, you look up at him—glossy eyes burning coals in the dark, in the gloom. Wanting, hungry. Mouth held open as if you’re waiting for his scraps—
And then he bucks into you, the leverage giving his thrust a savage edge. 
The whines are snuffed out under his palm. Your eyes widen, tears now spilling down your temple, soaking the pillow below your head. 
He groans, head rolling back. “Fuckin’ hell—ain’t you a pretty sight?”
Tucked under him, throat swallowed by his palm. Split on his cock, slick and wet. The tears streaming down your face makes him feel wicked, foul; but the spit running down your slackened jaw quells any doubt. The hand on his wrist holds him tight, tighter still, to your flesh. 
You want this. His spoiled rotten bird.
So, he gives it to you.
Simon’s almost ruthless when he snaps his hips into yours, cooing viciously into your ear about how you feel, how you look, how you sound—so pretty wrapped around him, under him; his little doll—
“S’where you belong, pet—” guttural words spill, flintlike and savage, from his mangled throat. Reinforced with the hateful way he blugeons his cock into you. Times it perfectly with the firm squeezes against your jugular, never letting you catch your breath. Your eyes roll back, legs trembling. Shaking. But you don’t move, don’t struggle. The hand on his wrist is a shackle, and it makes him smirk, scars pulling up in a gnarled mess of mirth; ugly and mean. “Right where you belong. Ain’t tha’ right?”
He leans down, babbles nonsense into your temple. Promises you the heads of gods, the ichor they bleed. Swears he’ll build a shrine for you in Durham.
But for as mocking as these words he murmurs into your ear are, they’re tremulous. Raw. A current roars beneath; a steady stream, a plea, all full of need: stay, stay staystay—
(please)
He buries his nose into your hairline to stem the ravening ache in his guts, breathes in the heady scent of you—of sex, and wine, and sweat. Drags it into his lungs in harsh, angry gasps to stain his skin with the smell of you. Of him. 
It goes right to his head in a heavy rush until he’s dizzy, almost sick, with the swell of it flooding in. An animal, he thinks, drunk on merging pheromones that make him mindless. Unfettered. 
It’s as if he’s driven on instinct alone; his frenzied pace ebbs, grows sloppy. The air around him feels thick. Syrupy. Stifling. The balmy breath in his chest is nearly as unbearable as it is addicting. Sickeningly sweet. Still—
His chest expands, taking as much of the potent miasma into his lungs as he can, filling them up, up, until he feels the edges threaten to brust. It’s only then, when ink moults across his vision, that he lifts his head just enough to shove his mouth against yours, a broken snarl ripping free from his throat as he forces the infectious air into your mouth, down to your lungs. Polluting you with the same sickness. The same rot. 
Little hiccups tumble past your lips as you swallow it down, taking everything he gives you, and he catches them on his tongue. Plays with them between his teeth, basking in the salty tang of you—brine, loam; peatsalt. Ashes, guncotton. Molasses. He’s not sure if he wants to drown you in him, or crawl into the warm, wet cavern of your mouth that pulses around his tongue like a heartbeat. 
Both, maybe. Everything. All of it. 
Always—
But he’s chasing pleasure on fumes. Trying to run with broken legs. There’s nothing refined about this. About the way he cudgels the head of his cock into the places that make your mouth twist away from his greedy lips in a silent scream. His weight is crushing you, he’s sure, but you cling to him harder, holding him tighter. Almost afraid to let go. And fuck—the notion alone is a kick to the chest, harsh and heavy. He nearly gags on the litany of broken moans spiling out of his mouth, landing on your tongue. 
Driven mad, maybe (or pussy-drunk, and high off of his own poison); but in that madness, he discovers this:
Nirvana exists between your thighs. 
Home, too. 
(well—
not yet.)
Pleasure fissions down his spine. The paroxysm taking him deeper into the battle-worn depths of his demise until the walls narrow, closing in. Crushing. No escape. But—
He won’t climb out of his hole he dug. Not until he makes a bed from your flesh; shelter out of your bones. He wants to ingrain himself as deep within you as he can, arsenic subsumed down to your marrow. Poisoned with the fill of him, too sick to let go. 
(Bone nausea. 
A death sentence.)
It metastasises inside of him, filling the barren spaces up until it leaks from his pores. 
He wants it: this dream so tantalisingly close. 
Simon lifts his hand from your throat, and reaches out, grasps at it with a shaking paw—
All it takes is a few crass, careless swipes of his calloused thumb across your clit, cock angled toward that spot that makes you rake your broken nails down his back, yowling in his ear for more, there, please, Simon, please—
You clench like a vice around him. A pretty bow tied up at the base of his cock. He bows over you, grunts spilling from his chest as he sinks his teeth into your nape, splitting skin btween his teeth. The warm, ozonous tang of your blood flooding his tongue is euphoric, eclipsing his mind in a haze of pleasure that crackles and burns at the base of his spine, spitting smoke up his body and into his skull. 
The harsh whine you let out—all prey, all animal; wounded, stuck under his muzzle—has some part of him, basal and inborn, rearing up. Roaring in his ears, ripping talons across the jagged remains of his head. 
(mine, mine, mine—)
He answers your scream with a growl, one caught in the smoke clogging his throat. It sounds inhuman when its wrenched out of his mouth—more animal than man: the devastating howl of a forest on fire—but the feel of it vibrating between his teeth is connatural. Innate. It belongs between his incisors; fits like a puzzle piece in his broken muzzle. Unleashed now. Finally free from this ill-fitting cage he housed it, this goddamn box—
Cobbled together from palm ash and brimstone, ichor and salt. Sewed up with copper sutures in the shape of a man for a perfect fit. 
Every cell in his body screams that he was made for this. To be over you, in you. Maw filled with your blood. Pussy stuffed full of his cock. 
He might not have clawed out of the dirt for you, but this mossy, gnarled lump in his chest beats now only for you. Apodictic. Ironclad. His teeth in your jugular, your life pulsing wetly on his tongue. 
It’s his apotheosis. His end. 
His hips stutter. White noise in his head. It drowns out the shrill screams, the hisses. Everything is just—static. Pleasure of a silent kind, humming, buzzing, and molten. Ghost buries himself inside of you as deep as he can, until his cock is fit snug against the plug of your womb, and lays his claim by branding it with the potency of his name. 
Tidally locked, you’re dragged down the summit with him, tumbling to your demise. Too dazed, too wound tight in his arms, his embrace, to see the jagged rock at the bottom of the hungry chasm thirsting for your blood, you just cling to him. Refusing to let go. 
(silly girl—
His pretty little perigee.)
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His body aches in ways that cruelly remind him of his age. Joints stiff, stomach quivering. His knuckles sting when he unfurls it from the headboard, skin pink and raw from the tight hold he had around the metal. 
It’s made worse when he heaves a harsh breath, and pulls away from you with a long, drawn out groan. He settles back on his haunches, eyes searing into the space between your thighs. Messy with his spend. It dribbles down your slit, your ass, pools on the sheets below. 
Your chest shudders, legs splayed out how he left you. He thinks, viciously, of gazelles, and wonders if the blood he feels drying on his mouth looks anything like the muddied mane of a lion after eating its fill. 
“Fuckin’ hell—”
He should clean you up, hide his crime, but he burns the image of you into his head (another tattoo over scar tissue), and drops to a heap beside you. The moment his back hits the mattress and all thoughts of moving are erased in silk, in smoke and clover. 
Chest heaving, slick with sweat, he feels the thrum of his victory in his veins. The high of the chase abates, and he nearly purrs with contentment. Hangs his pride on a pedestal, and doesn’t think about the absence of any guilt. Doesn’t even entertain the thought, not when victory dries between your thighs. When you roll over with a huff, reaching out for him. 
It's as if you're trying to bury yourself inside of him, crawl into the safety of his ribs. 
Ghost grunts, feels his sensitive, spent cock give a feeble twitch on his sticky thigh. The idea of you, blissfully unaware, seeking comfort from the man who writ your body with his virile spend, irrevocably changing your life and entwining it so deeply and so messily with his own that to severe either of you from each other is nearly impossible, floods him with satisfaction so deep, euphorically heady, that his chest seems to shudder. Resounding with some amalgamation of a purr, a grow, so utterly primal, that he sounds more beast than man. 
His roots run deep within you, now, and every misaligned piece of his patchwork body seems to sag and shiver in an almost perfect parallelism. Congruence ascertained with the cupping of you between its mismatched maw. Shackled in a baleen prison. Nestled, safe and sound, between white teeth. 
Ghost pulls you close, holding tight, and hums. As you drool on his shoulder, dripping with his spend, he knows he'll keep you there forever, until you're nothing but bones. 
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There's a cloud of confusion hanging over you the next morning, a twinge of uncertainty gnarling across the gaps in your memory. The pieces of a puzzle that belong to a different set. He watches you scramble through them, filling in blanks. Oscillating so deliciously between wariness and discontent. 
“‘morning,” he greets, as if his spend hasn’t dried on your thigh last night. Tucked up nice and tight against your fertile, unprotected womb. As if he couldn't taste brimstone in the back of his throat when you wince as you walk, achy and battle-worn from the weight of his desire crushing you all night. 
“Morning,” it's a sticky rasp in your throat. He wonders if you taste him on your tongue. “When did you get in?”
“Las’ night.”
You nod, but it's absent. Flickering through the timeline of events that aren’t drenched in black, shaded over like a heavy bruise. Your expression is fractured. Raw. Pensive. Something untouchable, unchartable, and yet he reads you as plainly as the tea leaves at the bottom of his cup. 
You don’t remember. Don’t know what to make of this chasm, this fissure, that looms, icy and deep, before you. There’s no anger, though. You don’t demand recompense for what he stole, what he took. The lashings he deserves are tucked quietly between your teeth. Hidden under layers of normalcy to prevent yourself from seeing him as is: a beast. 
“Well, um. Some homecoming, huh?” You joke, but it's hollow. Flat. Fragile like fine glass. You're digging for more. Rooting around to connect these vague, absent dots that linger, lost in the vacancy of your memory. 
He almost purrs. 
He wants to chew you up. Spit you in the palm of his hand. Maybe tuck you in his breast pocket, nestled against the lump in his chest—the one those silly enough to dream might call a heart. Keep you there forever. Hidden in the barrel of his loaded gun. 
“Bit rowdy.” 
It’s horrifically vague, but you cling to the prevacation he proffers to you; a lifeline in the turbulent sea, letting it overwrite the absence, the itching in your skull that must be clanging on the walls, begging for you to run. 
“Sorry,” it's sheepish. He knows the ferality in which you sometimes come at him when he's buried deep inside you is something that makes you twinge with embarrassment. Little kitten clawing at the old dog trying to get it to play. Rolling over immediately when it growls. Docile, sickeningly sweet.
But even naive kittens know to watch out for the frothing, foaming maw. 
“Did you use a—?”
He dips his chin. “I might ‘ave.”
And you take it as gospel. As truth. Why would Simon have any reason to lie to you about this? 
Relief shudders over your shoulders. You relax, inching toward the seat across from him. Gazelle making a home for itself in the lion’s den. 
The spell of unease is broken, now, and you quickly fill the chasm with chatter about your day. Your plans. Asking him how he’s been. 
You shove at the warning signs until they’re hidden away, and ignore the bones of your brethren scattered around you. All because you trust him. 
He aches with the urge to crush it between his teeth. 
And he will one day soon, he’s sure, because it’s just as easy to enact his plan as it was to get you to open the door. 
It starts with him convincing you to drink with him after dinner. Jus’ a glass. Got this fancy bottle. Reckon we should ‘ave some. 
But—
Can’t drink forever—no matter what his dogshit dad thought. 
So, he pokes holes in the condoms you hide in the bedside table, a little wary now. A touch fretful about your contraceptives in a way that makes him preen. You have good instincts, but rarely do you listen to them. Your head must be filled with sirens, but it's futile, he supposes. He's already stuffed cotton into your ears. 
It only feeds into that gaping chasm that bellows up from the depths that this world is not good for you. That it will tear you into pieces, into shreds. You need him. Need the Ghost to protect you. 
Case in point:
You’re needy beneath him, panting and mewling into the sheets as he teases your clit with his thumb. So wet, it almost feels like hot oil on his skin. Syrupy thick. 
In your desperation, you cling to him, throat bared. Fragile fine china. Belly up. Vulnerable. 
You barely notice when he pulls off the condom, crumpling it up into a ball and shoving it in the pocket of his slacks.. Don’t even react when he shoves his bare, raw cock into you. 
You don't even notice. 
(or when he slurs in your ear about how badly he wants to knock you up—breed his pretty girl until she’s stuffed full of him, making life with what he offers. salvation in the form of creation. ain’ tha’ a thought? he huffs into your ear, humid mirth curling over your skin. a stain. and the way it unfetters you—tightening around him, gushing slick—he finds his answer, one reinforced in the rolling of your eyes as your common sense, independence, trickle out of your ears and down your slackened jaw—)
And when that fails, he just slips you a sleeping pill. There's always an easier way to the finish line, he finds. 
(stupid fuckin’ mutt—)
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Nothing bleeds from the cracks he wrought, or slinks from the shadows cast by his machinations until weeks later. 
Life just goes back to what it once was—Simon coming and going, letting himself into your home with the door you leave unlocked. You go to work, and chatter aimlessly about this vision you have about a home in the countryside, near the ocean. Saving up—uselessly—for sheep and goats, and the sought-after Highland cows. Chickens and ducks first, you say, and barely notice when his gaze drops, drilling holes into your stomach. Watchful. Leering. 
He can almost scent the change on you. Nose pressed to your skin; bloodhound sniffing the ground. 
Ghost keeps time in the slow, susurrus drawl of your voice sifting through the cotton in his ears, waiting for those precious decibels to catch on, to tilt up at the end as your eyes skim the calendar he keeps scratching x’s across in red, almost delicate, innocent even though it's from his sanguinary hand. A countdown to something you haven’t yet caught on to. 
And it’s all so sweet. 
—the waiting game, the subtle changes, the desperate way you cling to normalcy—
Sweet, like the way you carve this life out for yourself, filled with stuffed animals full of idealism. So much so, that it's almost bitter. Acrid. He watches the light glow in your eyes as your plans take shape, moulding putty between your hands, and like a pit viper, he coils in on himself. Frenzied. Fearful—
But only just. 
The excitation has run its course. He’s drifting, languid, into his scheme. Content. The notion of you slipping from his fingers is a thought that rarely crosses his mind these days, especially when that house on the prairie grows from an occupant of one to two—
“And, you know… when you're not out saving the world—” your eye roll and air quotes make his lips twitch, tugging at the scar tissue, the acid burns, splashed across his mouth. An ugly fucking Pollock. “—maybe you can come visit.”
“Never fancied myself a rancher,” he drawls, just to watch you squirm. Brow furrowing into a deep ravine as you struggle to make your intentions known without actually giving them sound. Skirting around the issue of wanting him there, of planning a home with him. 
(Too much, maybe? Or too soon—? 
if only you knew—)
He finds it charming, really. 
Still—
“It's just a thought,” you mutter, downcast. He wants to choke on your misery. Your sadness. Drown himself in your anger. Float in your happiness. 
Fuckin' Christ—
All this playing daddy in his head has thrown him off his rocker. Made him soft. Sentimental. It's probably why he yields to you. Offers a lazy shrug and another smarmy twitch of his lips. 
“Sounds like a plan,” and the way you brighten is a dagger to his chest. 
And the thing is. It does. It sounds like a dream, a perfect vision. Just—
Maybe not in the way you'd want. 
He's been looking into places unmarred by human hands. Ghost towns, uncharted territories. His home here isn't perfect for it, not like the vast geography of Mexico. The uninhabited wilderness of Canada, places so remote that it's almost untethered to modern civilisation. Islands of forest, mountains, all on their own. 
Vast corners and crevasses where someone can disappear and never be found. 
But those won't work in tandem with his flighty lifestyle. While he plans on keeping you barefoot and pregnant (common sense in the back of his head screams that he's foul, vile, monstrous—), he will continue to work. Has to, really, to avoid suspicion. 
So—
Home it is. 
But he gets inspiration from the Highland cows you coo on about and purchases a plot of land in the Western Isles. Gives this whim of his—yours, really—a concrete foundation made of the abstract. The filament provided by his newly christened Sergeant—an overeager mutt that bleeds warning signs from his pores. 
(don’t get close, reactive dog. will bite—
the little mutt is a great pyrenees, ain’t he?)
But bless Johnny’s bleedin’ heart, he thought as the man prattled on about this cabin he owns. A place of solitude. Could fire a gun and no one would even peek out the curtains. Beautiful, the way all of Scotland is. The highlands, he breathes in that shade of catholic madness only the dutiful soldiers of god's right-handed wrath can be, is where he keeps his home. A place chiselled from stone, surrounded by wilderness that eats tourists alive. 
(he didn’t ask at the time why Johnny was so keen on finding these places scattered around Scotland, ones with little traffic and a nearly negligible amount of souls within the vicinity, but he finds its best not to get too close to mutts crossbred with wolves.)
But Simon is nothing if not devoted, and so. 
You’ll get your fantasy ranch in the middle of nowhere. Your highland cows, your billy goats, your chicken, sheep, and ducks. A baby in your arms, too. One that shows its hand the next morning, dashing all your carefully laid plans. These paths of independence of yours run parallel to his whims but never converge. There’s the potential in this for these fraying threads to split, and diverge. Separate. 
(But it’s all put to rest at the sound of you heaving in the adjoining washroom. His path eats yours until it’s overtaken. Consumed. 
The evasive, unfettered little bird trammelled, caught. Wing-clipped, and all his.) 
Any misgivings the part of his gyri not buried under the frothing mess of his polluted grey matter might have is vitiated by the unwavering certitude that, despite his own gains in this, it really is in your best interest. 
And maybe it's something that should have come earlier in your relationship—however threadbare that word is in conjunction with the unhinged desire blooming in the pit of his chest; madness masquerading as love or some obsessive, desperate facsimile of it. Maybe a proper man, a better one, might have dug down and fully laid out the reality of intertwining your life with the living dead. That the idea of danger, death, and revenge are all everpresent threats scratching at the walls of this sickeningly sweet fantasy you wrap around yourself. 
He’s a dangerous man. A creature of devastation—manmade, bent into, or congenital is yet to be unearthed—which, in itself, brings about a certain lifestyle. One with fewer people around, and always shrouded in secrecy. Friends, family—none of that matters when death curdles gnarled fingers around his jugular. 
You’ll get used to it. Eventually. The only other choice is to let you, his now flightless bird, go. Released back into the wild vulnerable and reeking of his stench. 
You’ll be devoured before daylight, ripped into pieces—only if they’re feeling generous, that is. 
Simon has his own twisted remora. Ones with claws and fangs and a hunger that runs deep. Insatiable. Any scraps that fall from his mouth are devoured before they can touch the sea floor. They’ll crush you in their maw and dangle your mangled body from the gaps between their teeth. 
You’re not made for the wild. Not anymore. You’re meant to be protected. You—this fragile, delicate thing. He’ll hold you close, keep you secure and safe in a mausoleum of your own making. 
This little glass jar domicile. 
A billet in the mountains. 
He’ll fill it with the finest things—silk linens, fine china; mahogany and teak, pink ivory; a bed of soft, downy feathers, sherpa, Egyptian cotton; (sticks and stones and grass and moss). Buy you whatever you need. Chickens and ducks. Sheep and goats. 
They’ll keep you company when he’s away. 
(and if that fails, he can always plan playdates for you with whatever dirty secret Johnny’s been keeping tucked away in the woods.)
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He draws an x in the empty, white box of the calendar, the tip of his red marker gliding silkily across the glossy surface. Something unfurls in his guts. Blossoms in his bones. There’s an almost indescribable sense of satisfaction—primal and animalistic—that grows from the upturned dirt in his head. Life composted from rot. 
Ghost hums to himself when he turns, the sound nearly a purr—bestial as it is, suffocated under sulphur. It reverberates through his chest, trembling across the brackets of his ribs that expand with his deep, heavy inhale—breathing in the sight that greets him like a lover’s kiss
The kebab he ordered lays untouched on the table across from the television—some trashy reality show playing in the background while you tried to eat; a dating show, you’d said when he merely shrugged, having other things on his mind over what to watch while you ate. It all seems to be preserved in time. Frozen in on the exact moment when you’d sniffed the döner kebab he got for you—the same thing you order each time—and then promptly wrenched yourself back, gagging. The sandwich was flung back in the takeaway box before you slapped your hand over your mouth, rushing into the washroom. 
If his phone wasn’t in the other room, he might have taken a picture. A little memento to remember this moment. Framed it in iron and perched it on the desk they gave him back in Hereford, the one just down the hall from Price. 
(ah, speaking of—he’ll have to send that caustic bastard a fruit basket, or something, won’t he? maybe some pretty flowers for his lady.)
His reverie is shaken when the door to the washroom creaks open slowly, and you emerge through the gap with sweat on your brow, knots across your forehead, and a shaking hand resting over your churning stomach. 
Shame, he thinks. He really should have brought his phone—
You lean against the wall, taking in deep, shuddering breaths to steady yourself, confusion and worry knitting over you like a thundercloud. It tastes of ozone when he inhales. An approaching storm. In the blue gloom of the living room, illuminated only by the light flooding out from the washroom behind you and the static glow of the television, you look etiolated. A wilting flower. 
His budding rose. 
He coos. “You alright?”
You glance sideways at the kebab on the table, mouth pinching into a grimace as if to stem the nausea still rippling through you. You stare at it for a long moment, seemingly trying to make sense of the reality sitting in front of you on scratched, old pine; confusion runs laps over the dawn cresting in your eyes. This puzzle is too unfathomable for you to piece together; the keys and slots all askew. 
The air around him grows still. Silent. Anticipatory. A tiger crouched low in the tussock. A little fawn roaming too close. 
There’s a heaviness in your eyes when they flicker back to the wall where he stands, drilling holes into the x. Something implacable frissons over your threadbare expression, fracturing across sallow cheeks. 
The air is electric. It pulses across his bare flesh, irritating scar tissue, acid burns, and scorch marks. His skin prickles at its whisper. 
“Feelin’ sick, pet?” He ponders, playing pretend. He’s viciously, deeply amused at the desperate denial splashing across your cheeks. The thin shade of askance that unfurls like the leaves of a flytrap when you look at him. “Mus’t’a been the kebab. Bad meat, I reckon?”
You offer a weak nod in response, pinching your lips tight together. The matter seemingly concluded, brushed aside. Pocketed for later. 
And you say nothing else for the rest of the night—gaze unseeing, turned inward; pensive—but he purrs in contentment as if everything was alright, sprawled across the couch with his head pillowed against your churning stomach as if he could hear the whisper of another heartbeat from within. 
In the saturated blue light, he catches your eyes listing toward the calendar every so often. Wary. Nervous. He thinks you might say something, might ask, but you don’t. It’s caught on a stilted breath. A harsh swallow. 
All you do is bring your hand to his shorn head, and raze the stumps of your clipped claws against his scalp. It’s almost as if you’re trying to soothe the madness from within. Scratching that itch deep inside until it goes away. Gentle hands play pretend and dress up as a panacea. Affection to scrape the illness away. 
He thinks you should know better than that, even as he leans into it with a soft exhale, more relaxed than he'd ever been his entire life. Content. Unassailable in his conquest. 
Simon has always been more scar tissue than man, and no place is damaged more than the upturned tumulus inside his head. 
But oh. How you try—
His sweet, sweet girl. 
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The look you give him the next evening is, in parts, brumous. 
A polynya of dread, worry, guilt, fear that frissons across the deep valleys in your eyes, shaded in plumes of darkness, filled in deliciously with the weight of your beleaguered uncertainty. It yawns out before him, this heavy gloom. 
So close he catch the embers in his hand. 
“Simon… We should—talk. I, uh—”
You hold up a little rectangle, dismay, misery, etched in the blue tinge spreading across your face. It seems to steal the words from your throat, turn them into ash. What else are you meant to say, he supposes, when you look out at the world now from the gape in his maw? 
But there’s a veil of wonderment that hides below the tidal wave; this precious, deadly, undercurrent that rents the air, splits his chest in two.
The happiness, however meagre, thin, it is right now (just a sunken boat on the seafloor), is there. Ripe for salvage, and he sees that it’s handled with care. Cupped between his palms, nurtured by his own conviction to do what’s right, an’—fuck, pet—know this ain’t what we planned, but—
but:
The howling quiets, turns to a low growl, and then a susurrus hum, when you shakily utter the words he was waiting for. 
“Yes, Simon—”
You shudder when his fist closes over your wrist, pulling you into his purring chest. Shaking like a prey animal in the jowls of a beast, bested and ensnared. It has a profound, almost predatory, sense of satisfaction curling over his bones. He knows this was the right choice, and is sure, in time, you'll come to realise that, too. You’re in the early stages, he knows. Prodromal. You need to be handled with care to curb the lacrimation, the hyperesthesia. 
And there’s no one better than him to guide you through the throes of it. To lead you to the unequivocal end. 
He leans down, and whispers in your crown—
“Good girl—”
—and the sound of his voice is gravel encased in sticky, sweet honey. Dark, smokey molasses. The very same cadence as a key sliding inside of a lock; metal grazing metal. Turning—
“If it’s a boy, we’ll name him Tommy.”
Click. 
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(he gives you that ring he promised when he takes you to the mountains. you smile wide, and tell him it fits like a gyve.)
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Simon stops shovelling his want under the cold dirt and starts burying it inside you instead. Makes a domicile from your flesh; a place where he can rest his aching head every night until the howling scraping down fractured bone stops— (paralytic)
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koushirouizumi · 2 years ago
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B.L.O.G P.S.A
Reminder that when I r.b. about J E W I S H topics, the focus should be kept on specifically J U D A I S M. If you're r.b.'ng from me, please don't tag those posts as "religious" "insp." in general unless you mean to properly represent J U D A I S M. They are specifically meant to inform about a culture my parent and their entire fam belongs to, among elsewise
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synkqngel · 2 months ago
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hit me hard and soft.
↳ karina/yu jimin x reader
jimin doesnt understand what about you draws her in so easily.
tags: bassist!karina, lead vocalist!reader, band au? (mentioned like once),
warnings. not proofread 😞🙏🏻, smoking mention (wasn't even relevant to the story)
wc 0.9k
leaving the venue will never be an effortless task, always consisting of a mass of journalists following close behind, cameras and microphones shoved in your faces. the flashes are bright, almost blinding. karina keeps her head low, a hand attempting to keep her freshly dyed hair from completely obstructing her face. she stands behind you, towering over your shorter figure. shouting is a constant — everyone's name yelled over the other in attempt to catch your attention.
the brunette towers over you — looking more like your bodyguard than your bandmate, and you look less like a celebrity than you should: messy mascara and lipstick smeared across your cheek; you still look decent.
jimin looks like she's just been punched.
and she just stares. not because of your unruly appearance, but because she can't just not look at you.
she swears she could feel a blush creeping onto her cheeks as she stood next to you; giselle or maybe ning would be sure to absolutely put her on blast later. the brunette gives the journalists nothing, simply brushing past the crowd with a glare. it's rushed — it's hurried. jimin finally catches up to you, keeping enough distance to atleast keep the press off of your asses. right, she thinks. the older has to pretend— pretend that she doesn't want to kiss the lipstick off your soft looking lips. god, they look soft. i wonder— stop. that's weird. shakes herself out of it, takes a deep breath and a step back. but you turn around and a small smile tugs at your lips and the blood rushes into her cheeks.
jimins fucked.
what does it matter that jimin would move mountains and the earth just to please you? so much for her badass persona. it’s just a façade, anyways. she started listening to your favourite artists just because you liked them; she dyed her hair back to black because you once mentioned they were your type (she was drunk out of her mind and used a box of cheap hairdye from a random store, but it still counts).
things don’t get much better when you arrive at the hotel. you’re her bandmate; you do the craziest things for each other. it’s always been karina and you, you and karina— to the point where you are both paired together for room arrangements and sit next to each other in your manager's van. fast forward to the present, it’s 2:00 am and no one’s sleeping. you're both waiting, hoping for something, anything, to happen. you’re desperate, waiting for some sort of epiphany. for one of you to acknowledge your feelings for the other. it's hopeless. the atmosphere is tense, poignant with the weight of unspoken words and pushed aside feelings.
jimin saunters out of her respective bed a little over 1:49, not completely sure if you’re awake. you’re quiet and hiding under the covers, like a child who was afraid of monsters in the dark. but karina is no monster; you’re afraid, not of her prescence, but of her realising your feelings. but the brunette pads across the wooden floor to the balcony door— she slides it open. you hear her take a seat on one of the chairs. she unlocks her phone and she sits there scrolling for a while.
you make your move. silently and drowsily, you make your way to the balcony and make your presence known. “jimin,” you say, almost mutter. the brunette looks up, a cigarette hanging from her lips, a small blue lighter held up to the paper. she hums, patting the chair next to her.
you take up the invitation and you realise that she looks cold, in only a tank top and shorts. the bassist huffs, and even in this weather it could have been mistaken for a puff of smoke. your vision is blurry, and you almost mistake her deep breaths for it.
she laughs. “you look like you have something to say.”
you stay silent— you don’t know what to say. instead, you follow karinas eyes after she turns away from you— and gaze at the LA skyline. the sheer amount of lights in the distance begin to resemble false stars, jimin notices. and then she stares back at you, and all she can think about now is how your eyes rival the lights of the city.
and also about how she would’ve liked to have a normal, domestic relationship with you, away from the cameras, away from the tabloids. but you won’t, because your lives are far from normal and domestic. and then her lips tighten into a line— and she looks away again.
a deep breath in— a deep breath out. the brunette has to ground herself. she closes her eyes. jimin isn’t brave at all— she’s anything but. but she wants— no, needs, to get this over with. the woman needs answers. another deep breath in, another out.
she doesn’t meet your eyes, but she murmurs, “i like you.”
and you have to do a double take, because it was so sudden and so random— but jimin still doesn’t see the expression on your face when you finally whisper a small, “really? i thought you were more interested in flirting with our fans more than me.” she finally looks up at you, eyes widened in relief.
“what? no! never!” jimin protests, turning to look at you as of you've grown another head. “you're stupid, then.”
and in that moment it feels like nothing has changed at all. it wasn't as if the world stopped spinning or the stars shined brighter than before, but you know in your mind that it's as if the weight of the world you knew was lifted off your shoulders. it's silent, both of you simply listening to the hum of the traffic below accompanied by the cool wind.
“aeri's so making fun of me after this.”
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spotaus · 4 months ago
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Hello Prev! I twas bored and therefore made more doodles, and I saw your tags so once again I will be dropping lore for this goofball in the tags!! (Thank you for wanting to know more, oh my goodness... <3)
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Stickynote Ichor doodles because my brain got rolling 😔
#hehehe#okay soooo#(preface absolutely a mary sue kinda oc so be prepared for Potential Cring#BUT-)#Ichor used to be known as Punishment. he and Reward (papyrus) were the brothers who guided and lorded over souls in the afterlife#their pantheon of deities is run by Balance (Gaster)#Gaster thinks mortals are below him. Ichor has a deep deep fascination and love for mortals. they've always been at odds ever since Balance#created the siblings. so often Ichor would spend his time away from Ebbott (location kinda like Mt Olympus) and live among mortals#his outfit w/ crown and cape? he was living among a mountsin tribe and decided he wanted to pick a fight w/ Balance. there was a prince who#was prophecized by Gaster to be killed on the next eclipse. Ichor interfered and ended up marrying that prince and hiding among mortals#but eventually he was forcefully recalled to the home of the gods seperating him from the mortals. there was a war starting and Balance#wanted no godly interference. Ichor was bound to stay#but the moment the hold on him lifted he was back among the mortals. but the wars weren't over. mirtals developed a mineral that could#contain or even kill gods. and Ichor was one of the first to be caught. and after a few hundred years was the only one to be released.#during that time of being captured he gained his scar on his socket and the cuffs and chain collar. they're unbreakable by godly methods and#contain his powers. when he was returned it was just before the gods were sealed in the catacombs of mt ebbott. his brother was obviously#happy to see him. but Balance immediately stripped Ichor of his title (Punishment) and gave him his new name of Ichor (his gold blood was#the only thing seoerating him from the disgusting mortals so that was his new title) and he basically publically renounced him from his home#and Ichor had been present to the deaths of his fellow gods so. for the first time ever. this gentle giant lashed out and gouged Balance's#sockets (classic Gaster look) with his own hands. Gaster immediately fled in the wake of the attack and simply... never came back. he#abandoned his creations at their lowest point. being trapped beneath their home. and Ichor just never was quite the same after that#and then yadda yadda lore abiut hiw as humans changed the gods underground reflected that and so wardrobes and speech patterns got vaguely#altered as time crawled forward. Humans who fall are known as 'Heroes' and the final human Coda has the responsibility of reuniting the gods#to their mortality. Ichor plays a classic sans roll besides the Threatening To Kill and he's a lil more depressed lmao#but gods he's my blorbo and that's not even all of it. thaf's just the stuff relevant to The Trauma and these doodles!#also the weapons in the first doodle. they're his old weapon (he used to reap souls using one of the twin scythes. his bro had the other#half and the chain connected them no matter how far they moved. later on he changed his to the form of a sword just to spite Balance abd his#symmetry. though it still technically connects to Reward's weapon through a non-visible magic link.#anyways THANK YOU if you read all this!!!#this is my last tag before the limit. hope u have a lovely day!!!
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fuckyeahdindjarin · 2 years ago
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Seams Masterlist
Explicit 🔞 NO minors allowed
Joel Miller x F!Reader
Series tags: loose-fit mini series | self-conscious!Joel | shy!seamstress!Reader | 👏🏻 body positivity 👏🏾 | sexual tension | slow burn | no physical descriptions of Reader
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Part 1: Seams
Joel has a problem. Having settled into some semblance of a 'normal' life in Jackson that no longer involves running for his life and living off scraps, his clothes are getting a little… tight. Self-conscious, he deals with it the way he does most things - he ignores it.
That is until one day, the zipper on his jeans finally gives up after one too many desperate tugs, leaving him stuck. With neither Tommy nor Ellie anywhere to be found to get him out of the tight spot, Joel begrudgingly heads to the clothing store he’s seen in town for help - and a new pair of jeans.
There, he meets you.
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Part 2: Threads
When Joel revisits Main Street Outfitters two weeks later, he finds you on your knees. Again.
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Part 3: Edgestitch
You wear those jeans for Joel when you see him again at the baby shower at Tommy and Maria's - like he asked you to.
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Part 4: Notch
While Ellie works her first shift at the Outfitters, Joel drops by yours to return the blouse you left behind at the baby shower. Turns out, there's plenty around the house to keep him occupied until the teenager clocks off.
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Part 5: Raw Edge
One lazy afternoon, Joel tests your patience.
Drabbles/Oneshots
Patch: Ellie finds a Pride-themed sew on patch that leads to revelations.
Hallow'seams, Halloween special: Joel proves to you that he can be adventurous if he wants to be.
Ravel, Christmas special | moodboard: Joel swings by yours with a little something before Christmas dinner at Tommy and Maria's.
Voicemail: You find Joel's old Nokia at the back of a drawer.
Requests for Seams sleepover
Where Else: You wake up self-conscious on your first morning with Joel.
Rookie Mistake: Tommy walks in on you and Joel at the Halloween party - follow-up to Hallow'seams.
Buttons: When Joel's shirt loses one too many buttons, he goes to you for help.
Double Denim: Joel goes clothes shopping, for you.
Buck: Joel can't sleep, no thanks to you.
Seams x Grays crossover
Denim on Denim (set before Seams): Joel tries to get a haircut - but it turns out he can’t do anything in the QZ without getting into a fistfight, and you’re lucky enough to be in the audience. [from POV of Grays!Reader, Shiv]
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Behind the Seams
For each chapter, I will post a behind-the-scenes peek into my creative process. Other posts and asks that touch on the creative process or inspire the series will be tagged behind the seams for easy access. I am also tagging each chapter with specific tags to make relevant posts easier to find e.g. seams iii.
Edgestitch | Notch | Raw Edge
Sneak peeks
two | three | four
Art
Commission of Part 1 by the incredible @mjpens
Visuals
Asks about Joel's clothes: white undervest, jeans, denim shirt
Moodboard by darling Sil @psychedelic-ink
MAIN MASTERLIST
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utilitycaster · 5 months ago
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The thing that gets me abt the framework of downfall and the way Ludinus(and some ppl in the tags who seemingly are trying really hard to roleplay Ludinus) read it is that they're like "look at how the gods meddled and laid low to destroy this bastion of human achievement, they had no right and should have let themselves be systematically exterminated/have the world burn instead" when. Setting aside the revelation that the gods who struck down Aeor made themselves mortal to do it-- as in, they were on the exact playing fields of humans when they made their move and it wasn't some huge peacocking of power against upstart humans to strike them out of the sky-- the Divergence is going to happen. We KNOW the Divergence is going to happen. The gods are going to create the divine gate and remove any chance that they can ever do something like this again. "Blaugh, look at them meddle and plot-" and? Whatever they do, we know that the sun will shine once more. Melora, as brutal as she is as the starved Asha, will plant a tree of hope in the most destroyed wastes of Wildemount. And they will ensure that the suffering they wrought in the calamity, in Aeor, can never ever repeat the same way they had done it. Which is a HELL of a lot more than can be said for Ludinus who is actively reviving every cycle he can
first off "some ppl in the tags who seemingly are trying really hard to roleplay Ludinus" took me OUT so thank you for that.
I just reblogged a post with a quote from Cooldown that I think is really relevant in understanding the whole story of the gods and how we got to this point but like, just to summarize (and debunk a few things, hopefully) from the beginning of the episode to the end re: the life of the gods:
Gods (possibly aspects of the Luxon?) crash-landed on Exandria BECAUSE of what is all but outright said to be Predathos.
As far as I can tell, no deals were made between the gods and the Titans. The only person who has said this from what I can tell is Asmodeus, who I would not consider a reliable source of truth. Or rather: one might have been made but there's no corroboration that I know of.
They created the people of Exandria and sealed away Predathos both prior to the Schism
The Schism occurred when the Titans decided to attack the people (which to be clear - the people had been there for long enough to build that weird ruin on Ruidus with a portal, like, I would love to know what prompted the fight of the Schism since it had pretty clearly been millennia of coexistence).
The Betrayers decided the move was to leave and start over, and the Primes felt that was a dereliction of duty to the people. That's what the quote is about - it's about the fact that Erathis's motivation for being a Prime Deity isn't "mortals are my blorbos!" it's "we have an obligation to our creations" and more generally that the Prime Deities are invested in their domains for the overall good of Exandria but not necessarily the specific good of Aeor. (Taliesin follows it up with (as Melora) "You'd have to tear me from this fucking planet" w/r/t the idea that you cannot, in fact, destroy your bad first draft simply because it would be more convenient to you.)
Betrayers get sealed, unsealed, events of EXU Calamity occur (notably: the titans are all dead. you can fight about whether this was just or right later but they're gone and killing other people won't bring them back; the titans are largely used as a pearl-clutching prop by people with no arguments that are perhaps actually relevant to the current situation), and perhaps 50 or 60 years into the conflict the gods call a truce re: Aeor's Obtenebrator and commit to decades of living as mortals (and therefore limiting themselves considerably)
And so here we are
And I think this really gets to the point. Because ultimately, the argument in favor of leaving Aeor be is "when someone points a gun at you, lay down and die" and the argument in favor of the Betrayers is "when someone tells you to abandon your (living) obligations for them, do so." The former is despairing and nihilistic and the latter selfish and, well, a betrayal.
There is something profoundly nihilistic about Ludinus, for all he talks about freeing people and a better world. He's destroyed a city of innocents. He's indoctrinated hundreds if not thousands of people and many of them have died in his service; he's the architect of an empire and many wars in its name and is actively working with a second one. He's been killing fey and he's even physically given himself over to the cause. There is no crime or sin people attribute to the gods that he has not done himself in measures beyond nearly every other mortal. Like, I really think he's at a point where he just is unwilling to "lose" even though he has a friendless life and a legacy of violence and has destabilized the entire world and the weave of magic itself. I think he has to believe there's something on this Occultus Thalamus for him because if there isn't, he, like the Prime Deities, probably can't just pick up and start over. All he has left is to give in to just letting the world burn in the hopes that at least he gets the satisfaction of what he hates burning with him.
Basically, sounds like a rough time to try to roleplay him in the tags.
Something else you (and others) bring up is that amid all the "history is written by the victors" the story of Aeor and of the gods has actually painted them as far harsher. The story doesn't say that they were first chased to Exandria unwillingly and did not come in conquest; the story, as this post notes, evokes vast divine might striking down a city from the heavens and not like, living in fragile mortal forms during one of the most dangerous times in history and arguing amongst each other over how they can save both themselves and Aeor and if that's even possible. Like, even if you see the gods as the victors of this story rather than simply the survivors, the "unedited" version of the story makes them far more sympathetic.
You also mention the Divine Gate and that's a really interesting thing to me because the existing status quo of Exandria is actually remarkably nascent if you think about it. The Founding had gods, titans, and mortals. Post Schism had the Prime deities and mortals (and it is worth noting this is when the people of Exandria became the most technologically advanced; you want to talk about the Titans and Betrayers, you need to cover that the price of the wonders of the Age of Arcanum was that they were not present). Calamity had all the gods and mortals again, and the current era is the first where the gods are behind the gate. It's kind of a compromise between all the things that have tried to destroy one another - Betrayers and Primes are separated but all are free within their realms and can indirectly contact mortals; technically, so can Predathos. None can directly be on Exandria. Is it ideal? No. It's a compromise, and the sealed can become unsealed (which, consistently, goes very badly) but it's the option that doesn't involve the total annihilation of anyone. Ludinus seeks, by setting off this horrible cycle again, to undo that fragile imperfect compromise with a goal of wholesale slaughter. He provides no option for the gods other than "die by my hand" when even some of the gods were desperately trying to find other options for Aeor as of a day prior to its destruction. He's simply wallowed in his trauma for centuries, becoming colder and more unfeeling and less empathetic and more arrogant than the gods he accuses of the same flaws.
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4dkellysworld · 3 months ago
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After deciding 'it is done'
This is more of a manifestation themed post (it's a draft from March when I spontaneously felt like writing it but didn't post it) because I felt like it but I'd appreciate if I didn't get any asks about manifestation* (unless I change my mind later) cos I'll share what I can and there's a lot of material available already! You can see my past post on this topic here. For more posts on it, see @4dbarbie-archive and realisophie's posts here and here and there's also some over at @ndjournal in the experience sharing tag.
*Also because I don't want to send mixed messages to the readers of this blog. I see conscious manifestation as a way to challenge & break limitations and concepts from the mind, not to get things in the world (kinda like Neo learning to bend the spoon in the Matrix if you get me lol). The latter will only pull you deeper into ego and the world, which isn't conducive to self-realization (if that's your goal) if you're focused on satisfying ego and the worldly life. If that makes sense and you resonate and agree with that, then we are on the same page but not everyone is and that's okay too, just do what feels right to you. Just sharing my reasoning :)
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I've been reading this book called Parallel Universes of Self because I read the author Frederick Dodson had an interesting reality shifting experience. I didn't expect to read info on manifestation but they are pretty much the same. I have a few books of his that I'm skimming through out of curiosity and there's some interesting stuff (I might share some other things later, he doesn't just talk about manifestation, but also consciousness, reality and even non-duality).
I thought I'd share the below excerpt because it's explained really well and might help some others. It's also a nice succinct summary of what Ada and Soph talked about for materialization/manifestation as well. I can remember pretty much 95% of the things I've ever "manifested" were from when I acted the way he described after I had decided "it is done". It's easier to do this for things you don't care about because you just end up forgetting about it entirely and then it shows up and you're like 'oh yeah!! nice'.
In the hours, days and weeks after simply rest in the new viewpoint, rest in the fulfilled reality. This means that you don’t try to “make it happen” because you have already claimed it as real. You don’t affirm, visualize, repeat or wait for it. You don’t hope for it to come in some future. Because you have claimed it as already real you don’t even think about it much either. You don’t ask when, how, where it will show up. Instead you simply do what offers itself to you throughout the day, and this will involve commonplace activities. Daily life continues in a natural manner without neediness or lack. Once in awhile you may want to re-feel the body sense of the chosen reality, and enjoy what you have claimed as true, but often not even that is necessary. Furthermore you needn’t be “acting as if” the desired reality is manifest, for that still implies separation. Simply cease to behave in a way that presupposes that it is not already so. You may refuse to ascribe relevance or importance to any events that seem to contradict your newly chosen reality. From the new viewpoint such events may still exist and come up but they are no longer relevant enough to be reacted to and interacted with. They may be the way things are at the moment, but they are no longer the way you are. The corresponding physical manifestation will appear when you stop needing it, chasing after it, looking for it but are instead willingly and lovingly identified with it…not for the sake of “making it manifest” *, but for the sake of experiencing its joy in the here, now and today. *Because trying to make it happen/manifest reinforces the idea/belief that it isn't
This is the same as what 4dbarbie said about getting ego out of the way or as Lester Levenson said, let go and let God. Just let it happen and stop trying to control the process because the more you try, the more you reinforce the fact that it isn't already so. Basically stop putting in effort once you know it is true, just continue knowing with calm and ease that it is the way you want it. Ada also said here:
If you have thoughts like "I need to say my affirmations", "I need to check my state", you're not living in the end but still desiring. When you're able to look at the thing you desire as being something that was once a dream, but now only a memory - you've entered the state of the wish fulfilled. When desire turns into identity, you know you've succeeded in fulfilling yourself.
Yes we're conditioned to think we need to work hard and put effort to earn things in the world but when it comes to manifesting, this sort of mentality will only sabotage and hinder your success. You can literally just decide you have it and then never look back. This sort of mindset can take a bit of time and practice to get used to because it is not something we're used to but the more you practice, the easier it gets.
Here is an excerpt from an astral projection book (I think it's from The Illusion of Method?) I thought was really apt at describing this too. He's talking about AP but you can apply it to manifesting or pretty much anything as well.
Unless you are masochistic, I ask you to reconsider the painful idea of obsessing about time. Bear in mind that results will come whenever they have to, and counting the minutes won't make the outcome arrive faster. It's best if you just forget about it, and accept that it is something that you can't control. You must be patient—most of the time the desired results arrive immediately after giving up control of time. If you are frustrated and/or are afraid of failure, then it means you believe you are in control—and this translates into the feeling that you are responsible for both positive and negative results. Well then, stop thinking that way! Exempting yourself from responsibility is the best course of action there is. As seen in the previous chapter, those who project on command are the ones who couldn’t care less about AP. But the more you obfuscate yourself, the lesser your chances of success —and trust me, you won’t want to get trapped in that vicious cycle. Astral projection works when you stop worrying about failure because you trust that it will happen, whether you “do” something or not.
It’s the same thing: just in the same way that being hasty for sleep to occur keeps us wakeful and alert, being expectant over the OBE will keep us caged in the physical body. If the mind is constantly thinking about the goal, it can easily enter a state of expectancy* and impatience. In such state, the mind is no longer relaxed because expectancy is a state of unrest. This form of tension is what hinders the outcome—thus, the key to being relaxed (i.e., essentially lacking mental tension) is to forget about the goal entirely. If you don’t have the goal in mind you don’t enter a state of expectancy, and therefore you are free from mental tension. *expectancy is the same energy as trying to make something happen.. reinforcing the idea/belief that it isn't so
So, exempt yourself from responsibility means there's nothing more to do because ego is not in control and can do nothing.
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waspsinyouryard · 1 year ago
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Alrighty gamers,
As a "reddit refugee" who has been on Tumblr for a year at this point and hopefully knows some stuff about how this website and its userbase operate (even though I haven't been on that frequently), here's what I have learned over the course of my time here that might be helpful to any redditors coming here (long bullet list incoming):
Absolute Basics
Apply a profile picture to your blog. It can be anything, but it needs to be there. If you have a default profile picture then you will probably be blocked on sight by almost everyone. It's not personal; you just look an awful lot like a bot.
Make at least 1 original post on your blog. It can be anything—from a long introduction to a random shitpost—as long as it isn't the sort of post that a bot would make. Maybe hold off on posting sexual gifs with a bunch of random unrelated tags for the time being.
Interaction With Posts
Likes on this platform are sort of like saving posts and comments on Reddit. They do add a note and they can be seen if you don't have your likes set to private, but they don't help spread the post at all and are most useful for later easy access.
Reblogs without added text or tags are mostly analogous to crossposting in function, although not in website culture. Instead, think of it more like taking a screenshot of a post somewhere else online and posting it onto your favorite subreddit of choice. Reblog things you find cool/funny/pretty/have something to add to/whatever frequently.
Comments on Tumblr are mostly like comments on Reddit. The biggest difference is that you can't have comment threads.
Posting (including reblogs)
Tag things when relevant. Especially tag topics that people might want to avoid, like bigotry or very long posts.
In your main text, say whatever it is you feel you want to say/add. If you're reblogging, this is were you put your hilarious zingers that will be forever immortalized by r/tumblr repost bots.
Tags are frequently used to elaborate or say anything that's not the main point of the post or reblog.
Interacting with other users
Don't be afraid to block people.
Don't be afraid to follow people. Following tags is functional, but following people that post things you are interested in is better.
If I'm leading anyone terribly astray, please feel free to add on to and correct this post
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