#recurrent rule

[jimin-updates]

We have work to do 💪🏻💪🏻

Remember, we need Who to stay in the top 50 in week 20 or it will leave the Hot 100 no matter where it is charting because of the “recurrent” rule

We have a little over 12 hours left to change this prediction; we can do it by maximizing premium streams and sales.

If you need funding reach out to the accounts below:

Let’s do this for Jimin!

[coreagroup]

Transformations in Machine Translation

The field of machine translation has undergone remarkable transformations since its inception, evolving from basic rule-based systems to today’s cutting-edge neural networks. Early machine translation faced significant challenges in handling the complex nature of language, particularly the absence of perfect word-to-word equivalence between different languages and the vast variations in sentence…

[tahbhie]

How Plot Progression Works—Myths and Facts.

Let me start with a myth.

Last week, a writer approached me with their half-finished draft, unsure how to continue. Apparently, they got writer's block in the middle of the work. For about thirty minutes, we discussed the book freely as if it were a finished and published work.

Then I realized the issue.

☞ The problem?

From the conversation, I noticed that the writer's thoughts and ideas, which they voiced for the book, totally contradicted what they had written.

Their book followed a sequence of events. It was well-calculated, and the plot progression was on point but only to a certain level. I noticed robotic recurrences.

Something like this:

Scene 1— a sudden revelation

Scene 2— an unexpected fight

Scene 3— introduction of a new character

Scene 4— a conflict

Scene 5— another sudden revelation

Scene 6— an unexpected fight

Scene 7— introduction of a new character

Scene 8— a conflict

Meanwhile, all these elements didn't tie to each other in the story. They just performed different roles in each scene and were rendered useless in the next and every other scene that followed.

☞ Why did this happen?

Among other reasons, being extremely rigid with writing advice is a main factor.

Writing advice is great, but don't bend your style to suit the rules; bend the rules to suit your style.

Here's a clearer example of what I'm talking about.

Writing advice often says to keep readers on the edge of their seats within the first five pages, but this doesn't mean introducing unrealistic problems that don't fit your story. For example, introducing a sudden and improbable conflict just to add excitement can disrupt the flow and believability of your plot

During our session, I already understood how to assist, and we were setting our comfortable hours when the writer suddenly said, "I was told to include conflict in the middle of the book, then I ran out of ideas when I got there. I could have added one just a few pages in because I believe it would do well there, but again, I was unsure if that would make sense."

Now, who said conflict can't start a book? When you start your book with a conflict, you just have to ensure that you build towards 'the reason' behind the conflict so your readers can understand.

☞ Should I follow every writing advice with a closed mind?

No, you shouldn't. Remember that you are writing that book because you want to, and your idea was great enough to convince you to actually write. You need to enjoy the process and create what you truly want to create. Follow instructions flexibly.

Now that the myth is out of the way, let's talk about things that make a plot.

➜ Basic plot elements.

Initially, your plot should have the following:

✧ Protagonist ✧

Who are readers following in the story? Make that clear in the first few chapters. If you're writing from a first-person point of view and plan on switching between characters, aim for a maximum of two characters. It becomes clear that those two characters are an important part of the story; hence, they get the privilege to narrate the story from their respective views.

✧ Goals and objectives ✧

What is your protagonist after? Here's one thing you should know: your character doesn't have to know what they want at the beginning of the story. They may be as confused about their life as anyone reading, but as the story unfolds, they find a goal worth reaching and discover the needed strength to reach the goal.

✧ Antagonist ✧

What/Who is standing as a threat? A threat is hell-bent on ruining your protagonist and stopping them from achieving their goals. An antagonist could be an object or a human. It all depends on the concept you aim for. Funny enough, the antagonist could be a lie that starts out seemingly small but ends up being harmful. The rom-com movie "Upgraded" is an example of this concept. The lie the art enthusiast told was the greatest trouble she faced.

✧ Conflict ✧

What are the problems the protagonist faces? Problems can start from anywhere over anything, and you can choose to make them mild and solvable at first while building up to something larger.

✧ Resulting consequences ✧

What happens after the protagonist faces the trouble and tries to solve it? Did they lose anything? Hurt someone? Earn support from people they least expect?

✧ Character arc ✧

How has the journey shaped your protagonist? After going through something they probably never saw coming, how has it changed them? For a timid main character at the beginning of the story, do they finally become brave and display a different side of themselves?

All these are important for a well-rounded story as a whole.

Join the Writers' Universe and connect with like-minded writers.

➜ Secondary plot elements

These elements help you shape the above category.

● Setbacks

Let's use movies to illustrate this. There are certain points where we lose hope for the main character, almost convinced they've lost. We see them at their weakest points, hurt that the antagonist got them good. These moments are the setbacks. The protagonist is made vulnerable.

● Loss

What did the setback cost them? The reason I intentionally labeled this as loss is because to move a plot forward, some things need repairing. Since most loose ends were already from the beginning of the story, adding a fresh loss piques the reader's interest. It doesn't have to be the death of someone. It could be the brutal end of an alliance formed on an emotional scale.

● Break of a new dawn

I just wanted to get creative with the title. This point marks the pivotal change of events, and once again, there's hope for the protagonist as they find solutions to their problems. In this stage, they discover hidden abilities within themselves (this isn't limited to fantasy).

And there you have the important sections of plot progression. But keep these few things in mind. To ensure you're not leaving a huge gap in your plot, try to:

┗→ Introduce elements that work for your story:

It's common to believe something works well simply because it did in your favorite book. You might want to reconsider that with a different mindset.

┗→ Tie elements together:

Of course, this doesn't apply to all, but try to create a link between events in your story. If a fight occurred in a scene, link it to a cause in a few scenes ahead. This can lead to another conflict, this time on a larger scale, without having to introduce something entirely different.

And back to the question that birthed this post:

ᴥ Should conflict come early or not?

It depends on your work, but it can come early. That's not taboo.

There was a movie I watched featuring a female lawyer as the protagonist. The movie started with the kidnap of her only child, and the rest of the scenes drove us to the 'cause,’ then more conflicts, setbacks, and finally resolution. We were also able to explore the character’s personality based on the decisions she took in different emotional scenes.

She tried to keep her calm in some scenes while she just flat-out threw a tantrum in others, but overall, she was a strong woman who was broken by the incidents occurring and then rebuilt. I read a book with the same premise: the main character was a tween who misplaced something precious and decided to go on an adventure to search for it, and that was what the story was built upon.

I always tell writers one thing—own your book. The first draft seems to be the toughest one of its pair, but if you don't allow yourself to freely express your thoughts, there will be no first draft or story at all.

✧✧✧✧

Struggling with any stages of writing? Send me a message, and let's sort it out for a suitable fee.

✧✧✧✧

Do you want to create characters readers are compelled to start a fandom for?

Check out "My Characters and I" extensive coaching session. Understand the secret behind every attractive character. The slots are limited, and this opportunity closes once capacity is reached. Don't miss it; you never know when you’ll stumble upon these golden gates again.

[koiukiy-o]

orphic; (adj.) mysterious and entrancing, beyond ordinary understanding. ─── 008. the email.

-> summary: when you, a final-year student at the grove, get assigned to study under anaxagoras—one of the legendary seven sages—you know things are about to get interesting. but as the weeks go by, the line between correlation and causation starts to blur, and the more time you spend with professor anaxagoras, the more drawn to him you become in ways you never expected. the rules of the academy are clear, and the risks are an unfortunate possibility, but curiosity is a dangerous thing. and maybe, just maybe, some risks are worth taking. after all, isn’t every great discovery just a leap of faith? -> pairing: anaxa x gn!reader. -> tropes: professor x student, slow burn, forbidden romance. -> wc: 3.3k -> warnings: potential hsr spoilers from TB mission: "Light Slips the Gate, Shadow Greets the Throne" (3.1 update). main character is written to be 21+ years of age, at the very least. (anaxa is written to be around 26-27 years of age.) swearing, mature themes, suggestive content.

-> a/n: yum. good night, see you next week <3 -> prev. || next. -> orphic; the masterlist.

On the board: a rough, sketched spiral that narrowed into itself. Then—without explanation—he stepped back and faced the room.

“The Julia Set,” he began, “is defined through recursive mapping of complex numbers. For each point, the function is applied repeatedly to determine whether the point stays bounded—or diverges to infinity.”

He turned, writing the equation with a slow, deliberate hand, the symbols clean and sharp. He underlined the c.

“This constant,” he said, tapping the chalk beneath it, “determines the entire topology of the set. Change the value—just slightly—and the behavior of every point shifts. Entire regions collapse. Others become beautifully intricate. Sensitive dependence. Chaotic boundaries.”

He stepped away from the board.

“Chaos isn’t disorder. It's order that resists prediction. Determinism disguised as unpredictability. And in this case—beauty emerging from divergence.”

Your pen slowed. You knew this was about math, about structure, but there was something in the way he said it—beauty emerging from divergence—that caught in your ribs like a hook. You glanced at the sketch again, now seeing not just spirals and equations, but thresholds. Points of no return.

He circled a section of the diagram. “Here, the boundary. A pixel’s fate determined not by distance, but by recurrence. If it loops back inward, it’s part of the set. If it escapes, even by a fraction, it’s not.”

He let the silence stretch.

“Think about what that implies. A system where proximity isn’t enough.”

A few students around you were taking notes rapidly now, perhaps chasing the metaphor, or maybe just keeping up. You, however, found yourself still. His words hung in the air—not heavy, but precise, like the line between boundedness and flight.

Stay bounded… or spiral away.

Your eyes lifted to the chalk, now smeared faintly beneath his hand.

Then—casually, as if announcing the time—he said, “The application deadline for the symposium has closed. Confirmation emails went out last night. If you don’t receive one by tonight, your submission was not accepted.”

It landed in your chest like dropped glass.

It’s already the end of the week?

You sat perfectly straight. Not a single muscle out of place. But you could feel your pulse kicking against your collarbone. A kind of dissonance buzzing at the edges of your spine. The type that doesn’t show on your face, but makes every sound feel like it’s coming through water.

“Any questions?” he asked.

The room was silent.

You waited until most of the students had filed out, notebooks stuffed away, conversations trailing toward the courtyard. Anaxagoras was still at the front, brushing residual chalk from his fingers and packing his notes into a thin leather folio. The faint light from the projector still hummed over the fractal diagram, now ghostlike against the faded screen.

You stepped down the lecture hall steps, steady despite the pressure building in your chest.

“Professor Anaxagoras,” you said evenly.

He glanced up. “Yes?”

“I sent you an email last night,” you said, stepping forward with a measured pace. “Regarding the papers you sent to me on Cerces’ studies on consciousness. I wanted to ask if you might have some time to discuss it.”

There was a brief pause—calculated, but not cold. His eyes flicked to his watch.

“I saw it,” he said finally. “Though I suspect the timing was… not ideal.”

You didn’t flinch. “No, it wasn’t,” you said truthfully. “I was… unexpectedly impressed, and wanted to follow up in person.”

You open your mouth to respond, but he speaks again—calm, almost offhanded.

“A more timely reply might have saved me the effort of finding a third paper.”

You swallow hard, the words catching before they form. “I didn’t have anything useful to say at the time,” you admit, keeping your voice neutral. “And figured it was better to wait to form coherent thoughts and opinions… rather than send something half-baked.”

He adjusts his cuff without looking at you. “A brief acknowledgment would have sufficed.”

You swallow hard, the words catching before they form. “Right,” you murmur, choosing not to rise to it.

Another beat. His expression was unreadable, though you thought you caught the flicker of something in his gaze. 

He glanced at the clock mounted near the back of the hall. “It’s nearly midday. I was going to step out for lunch.”

You nodded, heart rising hopefully, though your face stayed calm. “Of course. If now isn’t convenient—”

He cut in. “Join me. We can speak then.”

You blinked.

“I assume you’re capable of walking and discussing simultaneously.” A faint, dry smile.

So it was the email. And your slow response.

“Yes, of course. I’ll get my things.” 

You turned away, pacing steadily back up the steps of the hall toward your seat. Your bag was right where you left it, tucked neatly beneath the desk—still unzipped from the frenzy of earlier note-taking. You knelt to gather your things, pulling out your iPad and flipping open the annotated PDFs of Cerces’ consciousness studies. The margins were cluttered with highlights and your own nested comments, some so layered they formed little conceptual tangles—recursive critiques of recursive thought. You didn’t bother smoothing your expression. You were already focused again.

“Hey,” Kira greeted, nudging Ilias’s arm as you approached. They’d claimed the last two seats in the row behind yours, and were currently sharing a half-suppressed fit of laughter over something in his notebook. “So… what’s the diagnosis? Did fractals break your brain or was it just Anaxagoras’ voice again?”

You ignored that.

Ilias leaned forward, noticing your bag already packed. “Kira found a dumpling stall, we were thinking of-”

You were halfway through slipping your tablet into its case when you said, lightly, “I’m heading out. With Professor Anaxagoras.”

A pause.

“You’re—what?” Ilias straightened, eyebrows flying up. “Wait, wait. You’re going where with who?”

“We’re discussing Cerces’ papers,” you said briskly, adjusting the strap across your shoulder. “At lunch. I emailed him last night, remember?” 

“Oh my god, this is about the symposium. Are you trying to—wait, does he know that’s what you’re doing? Is this your long game? I swear, if you’re using complex consciousness theory as a romantic smokescreen, I’m going to—”

“Ilias.” You cut him off with a look, then a subtle shake of your head. “It’s nothing. Just a conversation.”

He looked at you skeptically, but you’d already pulled up your annotated copy and were scrolling through notes with one hand as you stepped out of the row. “I’ll see you both later,” you added.

Kira gave you a little two-finger salute. “Report back.”

You didn't respond, already refocused.

At the front of the lecture hall, Anaxagoras was waiting near the side doors, coat over one arm. You fell into step beside him without pause, glancing at him just long enough to nod once.

He didn’t say anything right away, but you noticed the slight tilt of his head—acknowledging your presence.

You fell into step beside him, footsteps echoing softly down the marble corridor. For a moment, neither of you spoke. The quiet wasn’t awkward—it was anticipatory, like the silence before a difficult proof is solved.

“I assume you’ve read these papers more than once,” he said eventually, eyes ahead.

You nodded. “Twice this past week. Once again this morning. Her model’s elegant. But perhaps incorrect.”

That earned you a glance—quick, sharp, interested. “Incorrect how?”

“She defines the recursive threshold as a closed system. But if perception collapses a state, then recursion isn’t closed—it’s interrupted. Her architecture can’t accommodate observer-initiated transformation.”

“Hm,” Anaxagoras said, and the sound meant something closer to go on than I disagree.

“She builds her theory like it’s immune to contradiction,” you added. “But self-similarity under stress doesn’t hold. That makes her framework aesthetically brilliant, but structurally fragile.”

His mouth twitched, not quite into a smile. “She’d despise that sentence. And quote it in a rebuttal.”

You hesitated. “Have you two debated this before?”

“Formally? Twice. Informally?” A beat. “Often. Cerces doesn’t seek consensus. She seeks pressure.”

“She’s the most cited mind in the field,” you noted.

“And she deserves to be,” he said, simply. “That’s what makes her infuriating.”

The breeze shifted as you exited the hall and entered the sunlit walkway between buildings. You adjusted your bag, eyes still on the open document.

“I marked something in this section,” you said, tapping the screen. “Where she refers to consciousness having an echo of structure. I don’t think she’s wrong—but I think it’s incomplete.”

Anaxagoras raised a brow. “Incomplete how?”

“If consciousness is just an echo, it implies no agency. But what if recursion here is just… a footprint, and not the walker?”

Now he did smile—barely. “You sound like her, ten years ago.”

You blinked. “Really?”

“She used to flirt with metaphysics,” he said. “Before tenure, before the awards. She wrote a paper once proposing that recursive symmetry might be a byproduct of a soul-like property—a field outside time. She never published it.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “She said, and I quote, ‘Cowardice isn’t always irrational.’”

You let out a soft breath—part laugh, part disbelief.

“She sounds more like you than I thought.”

“Don’t insult either of us,” he murmured, dry.

You glanced over. “Do you think she was right? Back then?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Then: “I think she was closer to something true that neither of us were ready to prove.”

Anaxagoras led the way toward the far side of the cafeteria, bypassing open tables and settling near the windows. The view wasn’t much—just a patch of campus green dotted with a few students pretending it was warm enough to sit outside—but it was quiet.

You sat across from him, setting your tray down with a muted clink. He’d ordered black coffee and a slice of what looked like barely tolerable faculty lounge pie. You hadn’t really bothered—just tea and a half-hearted sandwich you were already ignoring.

The silence was polite, not awkward. Still, you didn’t want it to stretch too long.

“I’d like to pick her mind.”

He glanced up from stirring his coffee, slow and steady.

You nodded once. “Her work in subjective structure on pre-intentional cognition it overlaps more than I expected with what I’ve been sketching in my own models. And Entanglement—her take on intersubjective recursion as a non-local dynamic? That’s… not something I want to ignore.”

“I didn’t think you would,” he said. 

“I don’t want to question her,” you said, adjusting the angle of your tablet. “Not yet. I want to understand what she thinks happens to subjectivity at the boundary of recursion, where perception becomes self-generative rather than purely receptive. And many other things, but—”

He watched you closely. Not skeptical—never that—but with the faint air of someone re-evaluating an equation that just gave a new result.

You tapped the edge of the screen. “There’s a gap here, just before she moves into her case study. She references intersubjective collapse, but doesn’t elaborate on the experiential artifacts. If she’s right, that space might not be emptiness—it might be a nested field. A kind of affective attractor.”

“Or an illusion of one,” he offered.

“Even so,” you said, “I want to know where she stands. Not just in print. In dialogue. I want to observe her.”

There was a beat.

Then, quietly, Anaxagoras said, “She’s never been fond of students trying to shortcut their way into her circles.”

“I’m not trying to–.” You met his gaze, unflinching. “I just want to be in the room.” 

There was a pause—measured, as always—but he understood your request.

Then, Anaxagoras let out a quiet breath. The edge of his mouth curved, just slightly—not the smirk he wore in lectures, or the fleeting amusement he reserved for Ilias’ more absurd interjections. A… strange acknowledgment made just for you.

“I suspected you’d want to attend eventually… even if you didn’t think so at the time.” He said, voice low.

He stirred his coffee once more, slow and precise, before continuing.

“I submitted an application on your behalf.” His eyes flicked up, sharp and clear. “The results were set to be mailed to me—” After a brief pause, he says, “I thought it would be better to have the door cracked open than bolted shut.”

Your breath caught, but you didn’t speak yet. You stared at him, something between disbelief and stunned silence starting to rise.

“… And?”

He held your gaze. “They approved it.” He said it matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t a gesture of profound academic trust. “Your mind is of the kind that Cerces doesn’t see in students. Not even doctoral candidates. If you ever wanted to ask them aloud, you’d need space to make that decision without pressure.”

Your heart skipped a beat, the rush of warmth flooding your chest before you could even fully process it. It wasn’t just the opportunity, not just the weight of the academic favor he’d extended—it was the fact that he had done this for you.

You looked down at your tablet for a beat, then back up. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I wasn’t sure it would matter to you yet.” His tone was even, but not distant.

Your chest tightened, heart hammering in your ribcage as a strange weight settled over you.

You leaned back slightly, absorbing it—not the opportunity, but the implication that he had practically read your mind.

You swallowed hard, fighting the surge of something fragile, something that wanted to burst out but couldn’t quite take form.

“And if I’d never brought it up?” you asked.

“I would have let the approval lapse.” He took a sip of coffee, still watching you. “The choice would have always been yours.”

Something in your chest pulled taut, then loosened.

“Thank you,” you said—quiet, sincere.

He dipped his head slightly, as if to say: of course.

Outside, through the high cafeteria windows, the light shifted—warmer now, slanting gold against the tiles. The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. 

You’re halfway back to your dorm when you see them.

The bench is impossible to miss—leaning like it’s given up on its academic potential and fully embraced retirement. Dog is curled beneath it, mangy but somehow dignified, and Mydei’s crouched beside him, offering the crust from a purloined sandwich while Phainon gently brushes leaves out of its fur.

They clock you immediately.

“Look who’s survived their tryst with the divine,” Mydei calls out, peeling a bit of bread crust off for the dog, who blinks at you like it also knows too much.

“Ah,” he calls, sitting up. “And lo, they return from their sacred rites.”

You squint. “What?”

“I mean, I personally assumed you left to get laid,” Ilias says breezily, tossing a leaf in your direction. “Academic, spiritual, physical—whatever form it took, I’m not here to judge.”

“Lunch,” you deadpan. “It was lunch.”

“Sure,” he says. “That’s what I’d call him too.”

You stop beside them, arms loosely crossed. “You’re disgusting.”

Mydei finally glances up, smirking faintly. “We were betting how long it’d take you to return. Phainon said 45 minutes. I gave you an hour.”

“And I said that you might not come back at all,” Ilias corrects proudly. “Because if someone offered me a quiet corner and a waist as sntached as his, I’d disappear too.”

You roll your eyes so hard it almost hurts. “You’re projecting.”

“I’m romanticizing,” he counters. “It’s a coping mechanism.”

“So,” you ask, settling onto the bench, “Mydei, did you get accepted?”

Mydei doesn’t look up. “I did.”

Phainon sighs and leans back on his elbows. “I didn’t. Apparently my application lacks ‘structural focus’ and ‘foundational viability.’” He makes air quotes with a dramatic flourish, voice flat with mockery. “But the margins were immaculate.”

Ilias scoffs immediately, latching onto the escape hatch. “See? That’s why I didn’t apply.”

“You didn’t apply,” you repeat slowly, side-eyeing him.

“I was protecting myself emotionally,” he says, raising a finger. 

“Even after Kira asked you to?” you remind him.

“I cherish her emotional intelligence deeply, but I also have a very specific allergy to what sounds like academic jargon and judgment,” he replies, hand to chest like he’s delivering tragic poetry. 

You snort. “So you panicked and missed the deadline?”

“Semantics.”

The dog lets out a sleepy huff. Mydei strokes behind its ear and finally glances up at you. “I still can’t believe you didn’t apply. The panel was impressive.” 

You hesitate, staring down at the scuffed corner of your boot, when your phone dings.

One new message:

From: Anaxagoras   Subject: Addendum   Dear Student, I thought this might be of interest as well. – A.  

There’s one attachment.  

Cerces_MnemosyneFramework.pdf

You click immediately.  

Just to see.

The abstract alone hooks you. It’s Cerces again—only this time, she’s writing about memory structures through a mythopoetic lens, threading the Mnemosyne archetype through subjective models of cognition and reality alignment.

She argues that memory isn’t just retentive—it’s generative. That remembrance isn’t about the past, but about creating continuity. That when you recall something, you’re actively constructing it anew.

It’s dense. Braided with references. Challenging. 

You hear Ilias say your name like he’s winding up to go off into another overdramatic monologue, but your focus is elsewhere.

Because it’s still there—his voice from earlier, lodged somewhere between your ribs.

"A brief acknowledgement would have sufficed."

You’d let it pass. Swallowed the dry implication of it. But it’s been sitting with you ever since— he hadn’t needed to say more for you to hear what he meant.

You didn’t know what to say. Maybe you still don’t.

But you open a reply window. anyway.

Your thumb hovers for a beat.

Re: Still interested Nice paper, Prof. Warm regards, Y/N.

The moment it sends, you want to eat your keyboard.

He replies seconds later.

Re: – “Warm” seems generous. Ice cold regards, – A.

The moment it sends, you want to eat your keyboard.

It’s a small, almost imperceptible warmth spreading across your chest, but you force it back down, not wanting to make too much of it. 

Then you laugh. Not loud, but the sort of surprised, almost nervous laugh that catches in your chest, because somehow, you hadn’t anticipated this. You thought he’d be... formal. Distant. You didn’t expect a bit of humor—or was it sarcasm?

Your fingers hover over your phone again. Should you reply? What do you even say to that? You glance up, and that’s when you see it—Ilias’ eyes wide, his face scrunched in disbelief, like he’s trying to piece together the pieces of a puzzle.”

He points at you like he’s discovered some deep, dark secret. “You’re laughing?”

You groan, dragging a hand over your face, trying to will the heat out of your cheeks.

He doesn’t even try to hold back the mock horror in his voice after peeping into your phone. “Anaxagoras is the one that;s got you in a fit of giggles?”

Ilias gasps theatrically, pressing a hand to his chest. “Wait. Wait wait wait. Is he funny now? What, did he send you a meme? ‘Here’s a diagram of metaphysical collapse. Haha.’” He deepens his voice into something pompous and dry: “Student, please find attached a comedic rendering of epistemological decay.”

You’re already shaking your head. “He didn’t even say hello.”

“Even better,” Ilias says, dramatically scandalized. “Imagine being so academically repressed you forget how greetings work.”

He pauses, then squints at you suspiciously.

“You know what?” he says, snapping his fingers. “You two are made for each other.”

Your head whips toward him. 

He shrugs, all smug innocence. “No, no, I mean it. The dry wit. The existential despair. The zero social cues. It’s beautiful, really. You communicate exclusively through thesis statements and mutual avoidance. A match made in the archives.”

“I’m just saying,” he sing-songs, “when you two end up publishing joint papers and exchanging footnotes at midnight, don’t forget about us little people.”

You give him a flat look. “We won’t need footnotes.”

“Oh no,” Ilias says, pretending to be shocked. “It’s that serious already?”

You stomp on his foot.

-> next.

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[inanaincarneetinsidus]

Vedic/ Sidereal observations

- If you have any proeminent Jyestha placement please go buy an evil eye protection, it can be any jewelry with eye imagerie on it not only the classic cristal one that we often see but make sure that it is very visible on you.

The evil eye that is often projected on jyestha is basically a curse, people see your potential even though you crawl in dirt like a scorpio you see. They observe your resilience evolving in a state without resources and fear what you may become once you acquire this abundance, so they manifest your failure DON'T EVER TELL ANYONE YOUR PLANS even if they are family idc

- If you are one of those that went through rahu/ketu antardasha as an adolescent/young adult saturn mahadasa don't got nothing on you , I would say that first the energy of Saturn is difficult because it requires you to actually put in the work: you can not escape it, however when you finally submit and accept it you will often harvest the fruits of your efforts.

Ketu does not work like that at all, your current actions don't actually matter in a ketu ruled period it is your past karma that is resurging, Ketu will take away everything that you actually have not only material possessions but also intellectual ones: opinions, your self-image relationships, everything that makes you appreciate the material world, you cannot truly try to girlboss your way out of a ketu dasa the best thing that you can do is SURRENDER, meditate, be introspective, journal, practice yoga and pick a solitary sport and allow yourself to contemplate life

- Saturn in the 4th house, conjunct moon, or in cancer will destroy the health of the mother, pls it is not a norm at all most of the time saturnbin the 4th/cancer will indicate that the mother was very strict and austere

- Mercurials and Martians shouldn't expect empathy from anybody sadly, I don't know why but society seems to agree on the fact that they do not deserve to be understood, taken with softness and respect one thing I think it is due to is the fact that they often appear as very stoic, they keep their emotions often to themselves conserving a very cold even bitchy appearance so people often treat them badly based on this impression, they are often met with the 'you think you are better than us ?' anyway

-I've seen many western astrology post saying how many celebrities have scorpio moons right and it make so much more sense when you see that most of them have their moon in sidereal libra rashi, since saturn is exalted in libra, and saturn is the one who grant tangible material abundance, libras have a natural understanding of how to manifest that abundance: they know how to manipulate the material world, using Māyā.

- Ketuvians how about stoping to hide under the guise of disgust and admit that all you really want is to be included and cared about ?

-Purva Ashada men will have the most long, luscious hair ever beyond that they are often stunning and they conserve a kind of androgynous appearance if often they physique is very masculine with hard features they will have the softest voices, most delicate manners ever, it would be so cool to see them take care of a pet. On a darker side this nakshatra is very recurrent in cult leaders even fictional ones lol

-Dhanista and Revati would do great in bellydancing since both of these nakshatras have instruments associated with them, rhythm is innate to their functioning.

- Rohini women are so funny to be around when they get over their insecurities, they are sometimes so insecure it's just hurtful for me to see that, they will break off their bonds with people especially other women over jealousy and not realize that they are the problem, acting like pick mes, making subtle diss and wonder why they are left alone at the end ! If everybody as a problem (as in you are in an argument ) with you and you are not nodal (ketuvian or rahuvian) you are probably the problem 🤷🏾‍♀️. A little introspection shouldn't scare you 😙 that's how you grow as a person

- I strongly admire Anuradha people, their resilience is unmatched like their bone structure, the most gorgeous faces like they were sculpted by Michael Angelo himself

- Mars and Jupiter are bestfriends so you will notice that in real life most bestfriends have this combination of placements or they can have Venus/Saturn too as these two planets are also best friends

- Purva Phalguni/ leo men are so vulgar lol, they scare the hell out of me, Venusian men in general they act like they will eat you alive 🥲

- Rahuvians deal with a lot of mental issues I've seen mostly chronic depression that can lead to suicide in some cases 😕 if you have proeminent rahu placement, try get more in touch with you ketu placement it has helped me a lot, for example ketu in the first house: self-care, protect your energy and your space do not allow anybody to enter it, take extra care of your body exercise, meditate. Ketu in the 6th house: put yourself at the service of other people, in the 11th house: force yourself to join a community, an organization etc

- I've recently saw an interview of Mia Khalifa and she talked about her childhood and her struggles with her weight and turns out she has a Virgo moon in hasta, it made realize how much Virgo women often struggles with their alimentation in general, they have many toxic behaviors regarding the consumption of food and many many of them have had ED or still have it. It's crazy to see that when the constellation of Virgo symbol is an ear of wheat so it associated with bread and eating in general and the natives of this sign have abnormal behaviors towards food.

[heliosunny]

You. Author. The way you write characters as a yandere was amazing especially the way you write a story. (Especially the hsr fanfics you made)

Is it alright to request a self-aware au! For yandere soshiro x reader where he finds out he's being watched and can hear the reader's voice whenever they watch an anime?

Like the reader knows about him (since they also read the manga) and he has been obsessed with their attention and wants to drag them into his world.

It started as a feeling.

A strange, crawling sensation at the nape of his neck, just beneath the roots of his hair. The kind that made the skin prickle, the muscles tense, the breath catch in his throat. There were no eyes peering from the shadows, no lingering gazes from those too terrified to meet his. This presence wasn’t there, not in any way he could define. And yet, it was constant.

Then, he heard you.

A voice, just barely above a whisper—drifting through the static of silence.

It was so quiet at first that he thought it was inside his head. But then the words came. Clear.

"He looks different in this scene. The shading makes him seem even colder than usual."

The words had no source, no direction.

He turned sharply, scanning the dimly lit room, his fingers curling into fists. No one.

"I love this part. He looks so cute."

Who was speaking? No, where were they speaking from?

It wasn’t the voice of anyone he knew. It was smooth, thoughtful, laced with a kind of familiarity that unsettled him more than anything. Because who could possibly speak about him like that? With such certainty? With such knowledge?

If someone had been watching him all this time, unseen, unnoticed…

Then perhaps it was time he started watching back.

The voice didn’t leave him.

At first, it was sporadic—fragments of sentences slipping through the silence like whispers through a keyhole. But as time passed, it became clearer.

The more he listened, the more he began to understand.

The voice—your voice—wasn’t just talking about him. It spoke of things it shouldn’t know. Thoughts he had never uttered aloud. Events that had yet to unfold.

And the most unsettling part? It was right.

The first time he heard you say something about his future, he dismissed it. A coincidence. A meaningless murmur in the depths of his mind.

Then it happened again.

"This is where he starts to realize something’s wrong."

He started noticing the cracks.

A shadow cast by nothing. A brief flicker in the air, like a painting losing its color for a fraction of a second.

And then, one day, he saw you.

Not clearly. Not fully. But just enough.

A glitched reflection in a darkened window. A hand resting where there was no surface. The faintest outline of eyes, always watching.

"Found you."

You had been watching him all this time.

Now, it was his turn.

Soshiro was nothing if not methodical. Once he confirmed your existence, he did what he always did—he studied.

Patterns. Recurrences. The times he could hear you most clearly.

Every story had rules.

And every rule had a loophole.

He began speaking back.

"Can you hear me?"

Nothing.

The second time, he made sure you would hear him.

"I know you're there."

It was subtle at first. The way the air around him seemed to pulse, as if something on the other side had reacted. Had flinched.

The more he pushed, the more he could see, hear, feel. He caught glimpses—distorted reflections, the glow of a screen where there should have been darkness.

You were real. And you were so close.

He just needed to reach you.

And he would.

The mission was simple. Eliminate the threat.

But the moment the kaiju appeared, something was different.

The air was wrong. The sky pulsed with colors that had no name, bleeding together like ink soaking through paper. Space itself seemed to bend, and in the center of it all, the beast let out a roar that made the world shudder. The kaiju’s claws tore through the air, but instead of leaving destruction in its wake, it left something else.

A hole.

It wasn’t fire. It wasn’t smoke. It was nothingness, gaping and endless, edges flickering like static on a broken screen. It crackled, twisted, spread out like a wound in reality.

He heard you.

Louder than ever.

"Oh my god—what is that?!"

If he goes near it, will something happen?

The voices hit him all at once, not whispers this time but clear, distinct. As if you were right there.

He turned sharply, his attention no longer on the kaiju, no longer on the battle. His eyes locked onto the tear in space, and for the first time in his life, he felt something close to hope.

This was it.

The cracks in his world had always been small—fleeting glimpses, fractured reflections, an endless chase with no way to reach you.

But now?

This was a tear. A wound wide enough to slip through.

Wide enough to pull you in.

Soshiro took a step forward. Then another. His pulse roared in his ears. He ignored the shouts of his team, the kaiju’s guttural growl, the chaos unfolding around him. His world was breaking. And this time, he was going to break through. The portal flickered violently, unstable, unpredictable—but he had always been good at forcing things to go his way.

"Come here."

The moment his fingers brushed the edges of the portal, reality fractured. A sensation unlike anything he had ever felt ripped through his body—a pull, deep and consuming, as if something was unraveling him from the inside out. For a brief, terrifying second, his vision twisted and he saw something beyond comprehension.

He saw you.

Your eyes wide with shock. Your breath caught in your throat. The glow of a screen illuminating your face in the darkness of your room.

The static howled around him, but he was faster. His hand shot out, fingers closing around your wrist. Your gasp barely reached his ears before the world lurched.

A force yanked you from your world, dragging you through the spiraling abyss between fiction and reality. You had no time to scream. Everything blurred into a cacophony of white noise, a crushing weight that swallowed you whole.

You didn’t know how long you had been unconscious.

There was no sense of time, only a deep, disorienting emptiness. Your body felt heavy, weighed down by something invisible, as if reality itself was pressing against you.

"Are they alive?"

"Shit—where did they even come from?"

"They must’ve been caught in the kaiju attack. Civilians weren’t supposed to be near this zone..."

"Damn lucky they're breathing at all. Get them back to base."

Someone knelt beside you. A hand brushed against your cheek.

"They're fine. Just need some rest."

Even in your hazy state, your body knew that voice.

Soshiro Hoshina.

Memories flashed in jagged fragments—his hand gripping your wrist, the sensation of falling, being pulled through something.

As you slowly forced your eyes open, blinking against the bright lights above, the truth crashed down on you with suffocating weight.

The world around you wasn’t yours.

You were lying on cold concrete, surrounded by figures clad in gears, their expressions wary yet confused. Towering buildings loomed in the distance, sleek and industrial, lined with neon-lit signs in a language that wasn’t your own.

This was the world you had watched.

The world that shouldn’t have been real.

And standing over you was him.

Soshiro’s lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

"Looks like we found a survivor."

The others exchanged uncertain glances.

"They're not in the registry. No records of their ID or whereabouts."

"We’ll have to run a background check—"

"That won’t be necessary." Soshiro’s voice was calm, steady.

He crouched beside you, close enough that only you could hear his next words.

"I already know who you are."

Your body still wasn’t listening to you.

It couldn’t be real. And yet, the cold concrete beneath you, the weight of unseen eyes on your trembling form—everything screamed otherwise.

"But... there were no reports of missing persons in that sector."

"Then it must’ve been an error in the reports." His tone was level, absolute. The kind that brokered no argument.

A few hesitant murmurs. Then, grudging acceptance. No one questioned him.

Why would they?

He had planned for this. Anticipated it. And now, he was using it.

You forced yourself to sit up.

"I—" Your voice cracked, weak from whatever had happened to you. "I need to—"

"You need rest."

Soshiro’s fingers curled around your wrist just slightly—just enough to let you know you weren’t going anywhere.

"I’ll take responsibility for them" he announced. "They’re under my watch until we can confirm their situation."

Another silence.

Then, reluctant agreement.

"Come on" he murmured. "Let’s get you home."

-----

The moment you arrived at base, Soshiro barely gave the others a chance to intervene.

"They’ll stay with me."

"Are you sure? They might need—"

"I’ll take care of it."

And just like that, you were his to handle.

"You’re not going to say anything?" His voice was calm.

You swallowed hard, your throat painfully dry. "What am I supposed to say?"

"You’ve been watching me for a long time, haven’t you?"

"I told you, didn’t I?" His voice dropped. "I know who you are."

Panic clawed at your chest. "Hoshina—"

"Soshiro."

Before you could move, he was already there, closing the distance between you.

"I’m the only one who knows the truth. The only one who can know." His voice softened, but the intensity never wavered. "Do you understand what that means?"

"It means you belong to me now."

"You can’t just—"

"You don’t exist here. No records. No past. No one would ever question it if I kept you for myself."

Despite the overwhelming wrongness of your situation, despite the way Soshiro's eyes devoured every flicker of emotion on your face, you still had an advantage.

You knew something he didn’t. What happens next.

Your lips parted before you could stop yourself. "Soshiro, you need to listen to me."

"Oh?" He tilted his head, eyes sharp with intrigue. "Giving me orders already? That’s bold, considering your situation."

"I know what’s coming. The kaiju attack—this wasn’t just random. The next breach—"

He raised a brow, interest piqued. "Next breach?"

"In two days." The words tumbled out before you could stop them. "The defenses won’t hold—"

You stopped yourself.

What am I doing?

Soshiro was silent. Then—he smiled.

"That’s interesting." His voice pleased. "Really interesting."

"Tell me...how exactly do you know that?"

You hesitated. "I—I overheard something."

A lie. A weak one.

"Is that so?"

You nodded quickly, hoping to press your advantage. "It doesn’t matter how I know. What matters is that it’s real. You need to prepare."

He hummed thoughtfully, his fingers tracing lightly over the sleeve of your borrowed uniform.

"You’re full of surprises" he murmured, voice almost affectionate.

You forced yourself to meet his gaze. "You believe me, don’t you?"

"I suppose I don’t have much of a choice."

Your shoulders sagged slightly, relief washing through you.

After that conversation, everything changed.

The medical team checked you over, confirming what everyone already assumed—you were exhausted but fine. No external injuries.

But you weren’t allowed to leave.

"For your safety" they said.

You weren’t even sure whose orders it was under.

The next morning, you were moved to different quarters—no longer the medical wing, but somewhere more secure.

And the first thing you noticed?

Your new room was close to his.

You had tried not to overthink it. Had tried to convince yourself that it made sense for them to keep an eye on you. You were an unknown factor. Of course they wouldn’t want you roaming freely.

---

You were getting a grip on things now.

Ever since you arrived in this world, everything had been overwhelming—Soshiro’s obsession, the suffocating control, the knowledge that you weren’t supposed to be here.

But now, you were thinking. You weren’t going to be trapped forever. One way or another, you’d find a way back. For now, though… staying here wasn’t so bad.

You were surrounded by your favorite characters. The ones you had only ever seen through a screen or read about in the manga. It was surreal, almost like a dream.

A dangerous dream, but still…

You couldn’t deny the excitement that lurked beneath the fear.

For now, all you needed to do was survive.

You followed the routine they set for you. Ate when they told you to eat. Rested when they told you to rest. Answered when they asked questions. But you never gave too much away.

And when they finally let you roam, just a little, just under supervision—you took the opportunity without hesitation. Which was how you found yourself outside, breathing in the cool night air, your thoughts clearer than they had been in days.

"You shouldn’t be wandering alone."

Slowly, you turned.

Soshiro stood just a few steps away, his figure bathed in the dim glow of the hallway lights. His uniform was slightly unfastened—like he had just come from unwinding after a long day.

"I just needed some air."

"I see. Though it is interesting that out of all the places you could have gone, you ended up here."

You stiffened. "I didn’t mean to—"

"Didn’t you?" His smirk was lazy, teasing—but his eyes told a different story. "If you wanted to see me, you could have just said so."

"I wasn’t...."

"Relax, I’m joking."

You weren’t so sure.

-----

"Come in."

"What?"

Soshiro gestured toward his door, expression unreadable. "You once said you wanted to clear your head, didn’t you? What better way to do that than a conversation?"

You hesitated.

Still, you forced yourself to act normal. To nod as if this was just a casual talk.

"Alright."

Soshiro stepped aside, allowing you to enter first.

And the moment the door clicked shut behind you—

You realized you had just stepped into the lion’s den.

Soshiro’s room was surprisingly… neat.

You weren’t sure what you expected, but the space was organized. Weapons displayed on one side. Tactical reports neatly stacked on his desk. A few personal effects tucked away—nothing sentimental, but small details that made it feel lived in.

"Sit."

You glanced at him before lowering yourself onto the chair he motioned toward. Soshiro didn’t sit right away. Instead, he leaned against the desk, arms crossed, studying you.

"Now that we’re alone" he mused, "why don’t you introduce yourself properly?"

You blinked. "Properly?"

He raised a brow. "The others know you as the mysterious civilian who appeared out of nowhere." He tilted his head. "But I know better, don’t I?"

Your hands clenched slightly against your lap.

He was testing you.

Seeing how much you were willing to admit.

Fine. If playing along kept you safe, then so be it.

"My name is Y/N" you said truthfully.

No point in lying about that.

"I… I can’t explain everything. Not yet. But I do know things. Things about this world. About you."

"I knew about the kaiju attack before it happened. And I know more."

Still, he said nothing.

So you pressed on.

"That’s why I spoke up before. I didn’t want you to walk into a disaster blindly."

"So you’re looking out for me?"

"I guess you could say that."

"That’s sweet."

His voice was warm. You barely had time to react before he leaned down, just close enough.

"But you know," he murmured, "I don’t mind disasters."

"Because no matter what happens…I always get what I want."

You had hoped to see the rest of the team eventually.

If you were stuck here, you might as well take advantage of it, right?

You wanted to meet them. Kafka Hibino, especially.

But Soshiro made sure that wouldn’t happen.

"You’re still under observation" he had said smoothly when you mentioned it. "No need to trouble yourself with unnecessary interactions."

"Unnecessary?" You frowned. "But—"

"You're safer like this" he cut in, his usual smirk in place, but his tone was final.

And just like that, the conversation was over.

Your shoulders tensed as you sat back against the chair in his room, frustration bubbling in your chest. You were stuck. He wasn’t going to let you roam freely, wasn’t going to let you get close to anyone but him.

Your stomach growled, snapping you out of your thoughts.

Loudly.

Your face burned.

Soshiro raised an eyebrow, clearly amused.

"Hungry?"

"Yeah, I should probably—" You moved to stand, ready to finally leave this damn room—

But he stopped you with a single look.

"Stay."

"I can just—"

"I’ll bring something in for you."

"I can get my own food, you know."

Soshiro simply smiled, but there was something behind it—something firm. "I know."

That was all he said before stepping out, leaving you alone in his room.

No matter how much freedom you thought you had, it was always on his terms.

-----

After your medical checkup the next morning, you were finally allowed to walk back on your own. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

That’s when you heard it.

The rhythmic sounds of combat.

The sharp whoosh of a blade cutting through the air.

You glanced to the side and noticed the training room door was slightly open. Curiosity got the better of you.

Slowly, you peeked inside.

Soshiro was in the center of the room, moving with deadly precision. His blade sliced through the air effortlessly, his stance fluid, every strike calculated and precise.

Holy shit.

You had read about his skills. Had watched them play out before.

But seeing it in real life? It was mesmerizing.

The way his muscles tensed with each movement, the sharp glint of his blade as he executed each strike flawlessly—he made it look so easy.

You barely realized you had been staring until he finished his set, his blade lowering as he exhaled slowly.

Then—

His eyes locked onto you.

For a moment, neither of you moved.

Then—his smirk returned.

"Enjoying the view?"

Your face heated instantly. "I wasn’t—!"

"You were."

Before you could think of an excuse, Soshiro tilted his head toward the room.

"Come in. If you’re going to stand there gawking, you might as well do it properly."

You shouldn’t. You knew you shouldn’t. But the way he was looking at you—like he was daring you to step closer—made it impossible to resist.

Soshiro hadn’t moved an inch since calling you in, but his entire presence shifted.

Again, he was studying you. You forced yourself to stand still, pretending not to notice the way his gaze lingered.

"Are you going to say something useful, or just keep staring?"

His eyebrows raised slightly, surprised by your sudden pushback.

"Hah. Brave."

Soshiro leaned back, running a hand through his hair, the amusement in his expression only growing.

"Alright, alright. I’ll stop… for now."

You relaxed slightly.

But just as quickly, he tilted his head.

"You flinch too easily, you know."

You gritted your teeth, refusing to take the bait.

"Though," he added lazily, "I don’t mind. It’s kind of cute."

Your face burned instantly.

Before you could snap back, the door suddenly creaked open behind you. You turned just in time to see someone step inside—

And your breath caught.

"Oh—sorry, I didn’t know anyone was in here."

Reno Ichikawa stood at the entrance, glancing between you and Soshiro.

"Forgot something?" Soshiro asked casually, his smirk easing into something more relaxed.

Reno nodded, stepping inside.

You barely processed their conversation.

Because holy shit.

It was Reno Ichikawa.

Standing right in front of you.

Looking just as cool as you had imagined.

Seeing Soshiro in action had been one thing, but Reno was on another level of admiration. You couldn’t stop yourself from staring.

"You’re staring again."

Soshiro’s voice was barely above a whisper, meant for you alone.

You suddenly regretted stepping into this room.

Reno, completely unaware of the tension. "I’ll be heading back now. See you around."

You barely managed to nod in return.

Then—he was gone.

And the room fell into silence again.

"I see."

"See what?"

"You have good taste."

You weren’t sure if that was a compliment or a warning.

Maybe both.

The tension in the air hadn’t faded, even after Reno left.

If anything, it felt heavier.

But you didn’t care about that right now.

There was something more important to ask.

You inhaled sharply, forcing yourself to hold his gaze. "Soshiro."

His smirk widened just slightly. "Hmm?"

"How did you find me?"

"Find you?" he echoed, tilting his head, pretending to think.

You clenched your fists. "I shouldn’t be here." Your voice was steadier this time, firmer. "You know that, don’t you?"

Soshiro exhaled slowly, the corner of his lips twitching—not in irritation, but in amusement. Like he was watching a small animal puffing up to look threatening.

"You’re here now, though" he said smoothly.

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s the only one that matters."

"Soshiro, I need to go back."

"Go back?" he repeated.

"I don’t belong here. You know I don’t. I—" You hesitated, forcing yourself to continue. "I don’t even know how I got here. But I do know that this isn’t where I’m supposed to be."

"You're right."

"You’re not supposed to be here." His voice was calm, matter-of-fact. "You came from somewhere else. Somewhere you shouldn’t have been able to cross from."

He knew.

"I heard you long before I saw you" he continued, voice quieter now. "And when I finally did see you—when that portal opened—I knew I couldn’t let you slip away."

"So you—"

"I pulled you through."

A simple confession.

Spoken so casually, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Like it hadn’t completely ripped you from your world and trapped you in his.

"Then you can send me back, right?"

Soshiro’s gaze darkened.

That had been the wrong thing to say. And you just realized that.

Your heart was pounding.

Soshiro had you trapped.

One moment, you were standing your ground, demanding answers. The next, he had moved too quickly, too smoothly—pressing forward until your back hit the wall.

Now, he was leaning over you. One hand braced beside your head, the other resting casually against his hip. His gaze flickered with amusement, but beneath that, there was something else.

"You look nervous" he mused.

"I—"

"You don’t have to be."

He leaned in. He noticed your fingers curled into fists at your sides. "Soshiro, move."

"Hmm." He tilted his head, considering. "And if I don’t?"

The door suddenly swung open.

"Vice-Captain, the Captain requires—"

The voice stopped abruptly.

You turned your head just in time to see one of the officers standing in the doorway, eyes widening at the scene before them.

Their gaze flickered between you and Soshiro, clearly piecing together what it looked like.

A knowing smirk crept onto their lips.

"Oh. Sorry to interrupt you, Vice-Captain."

And with that, they slammed the door shut again.

Your face burned. "Wait—!"

But they were already gone.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

For the first time, Soshiro looked slightly surprised. Then, he laughed.

"Well, that was unexpected."

You wanted to die.

You shoved against his chest—finally, finally making him back off. "Get off!"

Soshiro chuckled, raising his hands in mock surrender. "Relax, relax. I’m letting you go, aren’t I?"

Your glare could have burned a hole through him.

----

You were exhausted.

The day had been too much. The conversation, the way he cornered you, the way people looked at you after the incident in the training room—

You just needed sleep.

You pulled the covers over yourself, staring at the ceiling for a moment before finally allowing yourself to drift off.

And you never noticed the door to your room creak open.

Never noticed the soft footsteps approaching your bed.

Never noticed the figure standing over you, watching.

Soshiro stood there in the dim light, hands in his pockets, gaze unreadable.

His usual smirk was absent.

Instead, he was quiet.

Watching the slow rise and fall of your chest.

Watching the way your fingers twitched slightly as you dreamed.

So fragile.

So untouchable—and yet, his.

His fingers twitched slightly, as if debating something.

Then, slowly, he reached down—

But stopped just before his fingers could brush against your skin.

"Not yet" he murmured under his breath.

And with that, he turned away.

The door clicked shut behind him.

----

The next morning, Soshiro was preparing for his mission when you found him.

You hesitated for a moment, watching as he adjusted his gloves, his expression sharp and focused. He looked cool, as always, but there was something else today—something heavier in the air.

He must have sensed your presence because he turned to you, raising a brow.

"What? Come to see me off?"

You exhaled, shifting on your feet. "Something like that."

His smirk was lazy, but his eyes studied you carefully. "Gonna miss me?"

You rolled your eyes. "I just…" You hesitated, then sighed. "I can’t say anything much, but… I hope your journey in the future is just like what you hope."

Soshiro’s smirk faltered.

You looked away. "I don’t want you to suffer. You have great people around you. I just… want things to go well for you."

You weren’t sure what you expected—another teasing remark, maybe. But when you glanced at him again, his gaze was unreadable.

"Hah."

A soft chuckle, quieter than usual.

He looked at you for a long moment before finally speaking.

"That’s a dangerous thing to say, y’know."

You frowned. "Why?"

"Because now I’m going to make sure you stay by my side long enough to see if your hope for me comes true."

"Soshiro—"

"Gotta go." He stepped past you, voice light again. "Be good while I’m gone, yeah?"

And just like that, he was gone.

Leaving you with a sinking feeling in your chest.

-----

You had spent the day at the base, finally starting to get used to things. Despite the strangeness of your situation, there were people here who were easy to talk to—people who weren’t constantly testing your every reaction.

So when you found yourself chatting with a small group of Defense Force members, you let yourself relax for once.

Laughing. Talking. Feeling normal.

A shiver ran down your spine, and you felt it before you even turned around.

The weight of his gaze.

You slowly glanced over your shoulder.

Soshiro had just returned from his mission, still in uniform, still looking as composed as ever—except for one thing.

His eyes locked directly on you.

His usual smirk was nowhere to be seen.

But you didn’t have time to process it—because in the next moment, Soshiro was moving toward you.

The conversation around you faded as his presence swallowed the space.

"Having fun?" His voice was casual, but there was something off about it.

"Soshiro—"

"You seem pretty comfortable" he murmured, glancing at the others around you.

"Should I be jealous?"

The people around you exchanged glances, sensing the sudden tension in the air.

Soshiro didn’t move closer, didn’t touch you—

But he didn’t have to.

Because the weight of his presence was enough to make your skin prickle.

You were his. And now, everyone else knew it too.

The whispers started the moment Soshiro left with you.

You didn’t have to hear them to know what they were saying.

They all thought you and Soshiro were together.

And the worst part?

You didn’t correct them.

Because deep down—

You liked it here.

At first, you had been desperate to go back, convinced that you didn’t belong in this world. But time passed. You got used to the base, the people, the feeling of being surrounded by characters you had once only known through a screen.

You had wanted to meet them, hadn’t you?

And now, you were here.

It was dangerous, sure. But so was real life. And here, you weren’t just watching anymore. You were living.

So when people assumed things about you and Soshiro

When they smirked and whispered and looked at you with knowing eyes—

You let it happen.

Until eventually, there was no need to go back.

But right now—

Right now, you had bigger problems.

Like the fact that Soshiro was mad.

And you were definitely about to see him.

You didn’t have to go far. He was already waiting for you. The door to his room was slightly open when you passed by, and before you could react—

A hand shot out, grabbing your wrist and pulling you inside.

The door clicked shut behind you.

Your heart jumped. "Soshiro—!"

"You’re getting too comfortable here, y’know" he murmured.

"What are you talking about?"

"You stopped trying to leave."

"You haven’t even mentioned going back."

"Well—"

"And now everyone thinks we’re together."

He tilted his head, studying your reaction.

Waiting for you to deny it.

But you didn’t.

Soshiro exhaled sharply, his grip loosening.

"I knew it."

"Knew what?"

"That you’d give in eventually. You belong here after all."

You looked away, heat creeping up your neck. "Shut up."

The room was quiet after you told him to shut up.

But unlike before, Soshiro didn’t tease you for it.

He just… looked at you.

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "You really aren’t trying to leave anymore, huh?"

You hesitated. "…No."

You expected him to gloat. To smirk and make some smug remark about how he’d won.

But instead—

"I should’ve let you go."

"What the heck?"

He didn’t look at you. His gaze was fixed on the floor, his expression unreadable.

"From the start," he murmured. "I should’ve let you go when I first realized you were here. Should’ve helped you find a way back."

A bitter chuckle left his lips.

"But I didn’t."

You stared at him, completely thrown off.

"I was selfish."

He finally looked up, and for the first time, you saw it.

The guilt.

"You were never supposed to be here," he admitted. "And I knew that. But I didn’t care. Because the moment I realized I wasn’t just imagining you—the moment I heard you—I couldn’t ignore it."

Your chest tightened. "Soshiro…"

"I told myself I was protecting you. That this world is dangerous and you’d need someone to keep you safe."

His voice dropped lower.

"But really? I just didn’t want to lose you."

You didn’t know what to say.

Because he was right.

He had been selfish. He had kept you here when he shouldn’t have.

But at the same time—

You had stayed. By your own choice.

"I should be asking if you resent me for that" he said quietly. "But I think I already know the answer."

"I don’t."

"Even though I trapped you here?"

"You didn’t trap me." You exhaled slowly, choosing your words carefully. "You gave me a choice. And maybe I didn’t realize it at first, but… I made my decision. I want to stay."

For a long moment, Soshiro didn’t speak.

He huffed out a small, almost breathless chuckle.

"You’re really something else."

Finally, he let his usual smirk return, though it was softer now.

"Guess that means I don’t have to feel too bad about it, huh?"

You gave him a look. "I didn’t say that."

His smirk widened just a little.

"Yeah, yeah. I get it."

For the first time in a while, Soshiro felt like he could breathe again.

If you were happy here

If you chose to stay

Then maybe… Maybe it wasn’t such a terrible thing after all.

[wonton4rang]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

pairing: bnd legal line x reader.

warnings: +18, smut, rough sex, spitting, and idk lmk if i missed something.

summary: bnd legal line mtl (most to least) to rough sex.

note: this had to be discussed and i can't go to sleep without doing so !!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

sungho; even though it wouldn't be his go to type of sex, he would do it more often than you'd think, taking you from behind while he held your neck with one hand and held your arms in your back with the other, he would moan in your ear, pressing his body more onto yours and making you feel so full while your cheek pressed against the cold wall. he would tell you how good you feel and his hips would be accelerating their pace before he came inside of you, showing some possessiveness he usually didn't have. i also strongly believe he would have a small/ recurrent strength kink.

riwoo; he's a wild card tbh, i can't seem to read him that well when it comes to sex or maybe i am not paying attention, but i do think he could have his days, switching from cowgirl to doggy style, his hand having a grip in your hair and you almost crying out on how hard he was fucking you. it felt good, specially because it was a weird thing to happen during sex w u two, it made you excited and it made him feel bigger when he handled you like that. pulling out to come in your ass is the ultimate thing he would do to show his "dominant" side. and btw, you know about dancer stamina right? cause if you always did two rounds, you'll do at least four of five before he lets you go today.

jaehyun; myungjae has such a whiny voice and a hyper and sweet personality that we all the time see him as a mere sub but oh, let me tell you that he can also be very rough when it comes to fucking you. i feel like he would be drinking with you or just very happy and horny when he tells you about this thing he wants to try, it was basically him overpowering you and yes please!! he would hold your legs open with his hands on your thighs, pressing them down and watching how his dick gets lost each time he pounds into your soaked pussy, i can definitely see him lowering one of his hands so he could play with your clit and maybe even insert his thumb with his cock in your pussy. telling you how dirty you looked taking his dick and finger into your pussy like a slut, dirty talk would be his thing 100%

taesan; i just know he is messy and i don't make the rules!!! he would grab your hair, spit in your mouth with a grin on his lips and fuck you so fast and rough you can barely think straight. he would fuck you in missionary because he needs to see your face, he needs to feel you close and he certainly needs to be able to spit in your mouth after slapping your face once or twice. he ain't much of a talker but he would let smalls "so pretty, so hot" that would give you a hint on how good he is feeling, as if his moans and the way his dick twitched inside of you were not enough. i don't think it'll be a reccurent thing tho, he is probably more into regular sex rather than rough but he has a HUGE size kink that takes over every once in a while.

leehan; and the prize to the messiest mf goes toooooo, hear me ouuuuut. every time he went up to you and told you he was horny and needed to fuck you, you just knew what was coming (asides from u two yk) you regularly got on top of him and ride his dick but when his hands gripped your hips and he dropped you on the bed just so he could straddle in the back of your thighs and fuck you in prone bone??? you were quite literally fucked, he wouldn't show mercy on you, fucking you fast and hard, so deep that it even made you shake each time the tip of his cock hit your cervix. that until he layed you on your back, slapping your pussy after spitting on it, he is so dirty and you can tell he is enjoying it way too much when he smiled at you before slamming his hips against yours once again.

overall, taking into consideration the frequency with the one i think it'd happen, for this one i think I'll go:

MOST.

leehan. not a surprise.

sungho. he is actually really close to leehan's place tbh. not because he would like rough sex itself but he just likes the dominant part of it, how strong he feels during it.

jaehyun. iykyk, he can be cute but he is a man after all, and he is also a very energetic person so he would fold you a thousand times and come back for more.

taesan. i personally think he would enjoy it A LOT but it's just that his personality doesn't show this eager desire of rough sex :') i've said it before but i don't think he is really into sex in general and he does gives off vibes of being more in a "calm" side so yeah.

riwoo. almost same as taesan's, but i also think it's because he is a submissive person so it wouldn't be something very reccurent.

LEAST.

what do y'all think?

[diejager]

Hallo! Truly loved the MonsterAU stories! Wonderful, amazing writing!

Would it be possible for you to write: what if human!reader was turned into a chimera?

Akin to this:

Feel free to ignore!

Chimæra

Pairing: Monster 141 x Chimera!reader

Cw: science experiment, human torture, human testing, gore?, blood, canon-typical violence, unethical human experiments, kidnapping, child abuse, malnutrition, child neglect, tell me if I missed any. Wc: 3.6k (A/N): credit to @bluegiragi’s monster 141 designs.

They were tipped off by an anonymous source that some shady and highly illegal things were being done in a small and remote town near the border of Belarus, their ongoings unknown to both the government and public of their country, but someone had given Laswell a file containing all the horrific tests conducted within the closed walls of the innocuous-looking compound —a laboratory dressed as a simple military base. The folder held snapshots of emails and files sent between scientists and researchers, small indications of what was being done to both humans and monsters, yet withholding important intel about certain things. It disclosed the location, the names and faces of every worker and leading figure in the compound, the number of security and their schedules, and what was done, but not what was truly happening, it left small clues, sublet words here and there with hidden meanings —never clear images, blurry ones as if the person was in a rush.

Despite not having clear indications of the illegal activities, Laswell had enough to have 141 sent to take it down, to bring the dehumanising lab to its ground and burn it down. She didn’t have trouble convincing them, it was telling enough to let them read the condensed files for them to read, to see themselves the monstrosity being done to children and monsters they took, kidnapped from around the world to be left at the deceitful hands of crazed scientists. There wasn’t much to be found outside it, the base wore the facade of a benevolent patron, bearing the crest of kindhearted investors wanting to rebuild rundown houses and reconstruct rough and broken roads and paved streets in the town they took to hide. It worked for the most part, they profited from this by acting without raising any suspicion from anyone, neither the authorities nor the people. 

“Christ,” Gaz swore, looking down at the words in the file he received, the teased truth and the dreadful treatments through a thick layer of secrets and subtle wording, the only clear intel was from the straightforward emails sent to and from researchers and the heads of the facility, unabashed and shameless bragging of their success and the narrative to which these subjects could be used. “Why did it take so long?”

A recurrent theme of these was about a certain subject, it was about C34, spoken with such pride and joy about their creation, the work of the new world and the future made within these walls. Most emails were the exchanges between them about C34’s training, the ongoing treatments and every successful mission and exercises, they spoke of C34 as if they were a dog, a rabid mutt they captured and took on the task of domesticating it. It was demeaning, degrading and cruel, to look at another being as something lower, something needing domestication —it went against every rule and law put in place to protect humanity, the many conventions sworn to protect the goodwill and security of the innocents.

“We’ve had our suspicions before,” Laswell sighed, the images of the screen switching with the small click of her control, laser pointing at the images of various weapons cache and illegally procured weapons. “There was a slip up in the shipping, it was dropped here-” she motioned to a circled area in the map, a closeup of a secluded road near the town, “and we were able to retrace it to the facility. We needed more intel about the facility before acting and we needed to know what we're facing here, if we should send a team or send you.”

“What now?” Price tilted his head back, smoke leaving the sides of his frown, a deep and unpleasant one. He couldn’t even look at the intel given with a straight face, the shadowed truth of cruelty and dehumanising acts done by humans. “Figured you send us after seeing this, Laswell?”

Laswell nodded, jumping to another slide, showing blurred images of subject C34, a blurry figure, tall and imposing in every way possible. They stood high, stature seemingly one belonging to a monster or hybrid: on four legs and the wide, familiar shape of wings, everything about C34 cried monster. Perhaps one they captured as a child, taken from their mother and kept in this cell. There were many pictures of this one, blurry and disfigured, but others had smaller shapes, the size of children with various characteristics. 

“Steamin’ bloody Jesus!” Soap spat, disgust dripping from his tone in waves, unending as were the other’s curses, each holding their level of horror and repugnance. His face was wound tight, brows dipped lowly and lips pursed, he balled his fists, anger rising within him with every image he saw, the deplorable conditions and the care given to the monsters —what could they even expect from this shady company engineering monster and human DNA to fit their preferred narrative, for money, for reputation, for strength. “We ‘ave tae do somethin’ about this, Price!”

Soap - Johnny - had always been the more emotional one, letting his good heart lead his decisions when the situation seemed to fit it. His wolf made him more susceptible to emotional attachment, a pack mentality driven deeply into his mind and heart, he was viciously loyal and wore his heart on his sleeve, uncaring of how he’d be hurt by a betrayal, he simply saw the best in the world, something many couldn’t after a while, but Soap could, Johnny was a good man at heart. That’s why he reacted the most out of everyone, voicing his distaste and hate, his need for revenge and the sanctity of the lives being stolen in the facility. 

Soap pushed Price to agree, seeing no reason not to lead the breach, to uncover everything done to innocent lives. His eyes connected to the man hidden in the darkness, his blue eyes gleaming with fierce justice, a contrast to the wraith who lay in silence, abhorrent and seething quietness. Ghost peered at him, head tilted up with white pupils darkened by black eyes, death layering off him with calmness. He gave Soap a curt nod, affirmation for him to continue to voice his mind, to help those in need. 

“Seems like it’s been decided, Kate,” Price gave her a lopsided smirk, amber eyes narrowed with what could be read as anger, teeth sinking into the girth of his cigar, ash falling. “When are we going?”

Her lips parted in a proud grin, eyes gleaming with something dark and wrathful. She leaned on the table, head held high and shoulder broad while she flicked off the projector:

“Wheels up at 1500 tomorrow.”

You stared down the man before you, watching him tremble under your cold gaze, steps hesitant to approach you despite being seated, body prone on the hard floor you called a bed. He was new, possibly recently employed and his boss - or his direct manager - played a dirty game with him. It was some kind of rite of passage for every new employee courageous enough to accept their recruitment, all bright-eyed geniuses wanting to build their place on earth with forthgoing discovery, desperate and narcissistic; yet they were so easily tricked into you cage, locked in by cackling and grinning guards and coworkers. 

He smelled young, fresh-faced and a bit nervous, most were when they first saw you. You remembered everyone who walked in, the smell of fear and anxiety, the disgusting scent oozing off their bodies, rotten and putrid like a rotting corpse. You would’ve gagged and choked if you weren’t used to it, having grown close to the smell of death, calling the reaper your friend. You weren’t bothered by him, only the cart he was wheeling over, a big and heavy cooler that smelled fresh. He was made to bring you food by his boss, a cruel joke played on every new scientist who was always so eager to meet you before cowering in terror once the lock clicked. 

Standing before your third cage, he unlocked the small hatch and, with effort and a loud grunt, pushed the cooler into the hole, big enough for a big cooler but small enough to fit your arm through it. You waited until he stumbled away, distancing him from you before reaching for the container, it was light, weighing little in your palm. They fed you raw meat, sometimes buying the fresh catch of a Belarus hunter, usually an elk or a wild boar, but if they were lucky, a bison or a bear, other times they would have conserved meat shipped from outside the town, bigger cities or outside the border. 

Today was an elk, the meat cold and free of rot, it smelled as good as a fresh kill did, bloody and heady. You ripped into it without care, tuning out the loud retch from the scientist as you gorged on your meal, claws tearing it in half and biting into the bloody meat. Blood rolled down your lip, painting your cheeks crimson and staining the cream-coloured rag they considered a shirt. It would be changed after your meal, as it always was. Despite the elk weighing around six hundred kilograms, you finished it quickly, with pointed teeth cutting and pulling flaps of meat and ligament, blood spraying and dirtying the metal ground near the hatch. 

It was filling, albeit cold. You cleaned your hands of blood, licking it off like a grooming cat, tongue laving over the sharp edge of your claw and under your blunt fingernails. You peered at him from under your lashes, eyes gleaming in the darkness. You watched - pleased with yourself - him shudder, face growing green with unnerve at your show. You knew he was desperate to leave, to get a breath of fresh air outside of your cell, you understood his fear and wanted him to suffer for helping your owner, the man watching over your training, but you wanted him gone before he emptied his stomach on your floor. So you pushed the cooler out, clawed arm breaching past the hatch to leave it farther from your cage. 

He left hastily, legs shaky and face pale. 

“I want a bison next time,” you growled, words rolling off your tongue huskily from its rare use. 

It looked as inconspicuous through the NVGs as it did in the pictures, a few grey buildings built lowly to hide an immense labyrinth dug into the ground, secret passages crossing unending halls with locked doors and tipped with surveillance cameras to watch over the whole facility. They studied the very walls that made this place a secret fortress, from the body to its heart, like mounting a brigade against a castle, Laswell’s team found the few hidden entrances that connected to the lesser-used passages, winding through many hallways and wide vents, big enough for humans but too tight for monsters the size of C34. Task Force 141 led the mission, infiltrating the base under the darkness of night where they could crawl and slink through shadows to catch what they hunted. They were joined by Marines, all experienced and skillful, wearing scars like a badge of honour. It would either be a quick in and out, or a long and strenuous infiltration. 

Price took Gaz and led half of the Marines through the west, breaching the lab from above. They pushed in steadily, relaying information and physical cues to Watcher - Laswell - with a body cam recording everything they saw, the facade they wore above ground, hiding their dark enterprise. Ghost, as usual, has Soap watch his six, following closely behind him with puppy-like loyalty and the other half of the Marines. Team Two’s - Delta - mission started through the underground passage they sniffed out, a long and unwinding hall that went straight through the heart of the facility. Ghost’s team went dark, needing the cover of silence to stay hidden in a highly protected area of the base to run this clandestine mission. They spoke only when needing to, to make calls, to reaffirm intel or to let both Bravo and Watcher know a change, the tech team in the temporary safe house a few miles away from the compound watched through the cams, from the subtle change in the air to a jarring lead to what was happening. 

While Price and Gaz worked on creating a distraction, taking a load off team Delta’s shoulders, they could work through the system faster and more efficiently with the fire taken off their backs and front. It was controlled chaos for both teams, creating a mass discordance within the enemy lines: panicked higher-ups at the sudden attack, while they had a small squad of personal soldiers, they were unprepared, taken by surprise by both teams attacking on two fronts; and confused mercenaries, their quiet and boring schedules made them lose the edge of suspicion, of wariness towards what awaited them and the sheltered job with little to no action apart from a few failed escape attempts by the subjects.

“Delta 0-1 moving in,” Ghost mumbled into the coms, his team following him closely, rifle held tightly with the muzzle pointed forward as they crossed the threshold of section C, heading towards the one holding the monster subjects. 

They left behind them groups of bodies, slumped over the walls or limp on the ground, blood painting the sterilised and glossy walls, turning the once white hall into a grotesque place, dead bodies covering the length of the corridor like the ones they walked through before, leaving the stench of death that even the Marines could sniff out. It wasn’t clean - they weren’t aiming for it to be clean - but they wouldn’t need it to be clean when the Laswell would send a clean-up team to deal with this, Ghost would steal a bite before they arrived, quenching his hunger for revenge with them. 

A few guards stayed to watch over the cells, doors unlocked by a keycard that most guards kept in their back pocket, Ghost would have to take one off a dead body. Under Ghost’s cover, Soap dashed to the other side of the hall, taking a few with him to corner the mercenaries, boxing them into a closed hallway until they all died. Despite a few of the Marines taking shots, bruising the skin under their plate, black and blue blossoming like a bloody flower under the thin layer of skin, they kept their heads high and minds clear, moving forward without a misstep or hesitation. Soap swiped a few cards from the bodies, throwing one to Ghost. 

“Delta 0-1 to Watcher, can you hear me?”

“Solid copy, Ghost,” Laswell voice rang out clearly, reaching his ears in seconds.

“We found the cells,” his eyes roved over them, white paint over thick, cement walls to hold whatever they locked into the cells, perhaps the children the saw or the big one, C34.

“Do you have the keycards?”

“Affirm,” Ghost growled slowly, hearing Laswell's confirmation to continue. “Going in.”

He tapped the pad, a loud beep ringing in their ears as the lock’s mechanism creaked to life, unlatching from its metal hold to let them in. Both he and Soap walked in, leaving the others to watch their backs while they surveyed the first room. It was dimly lit as it was bare of any decorations apart from a visible toilet, a small sink and a few metal beds. It looked like any usual cells they came across, made barren and empty of anything useful to prevent the prisoners from escaping or causing a ruckus, but the people they kept in these cells were children. Soap swore under his breath at the sight of children huddled together, seemingly no older than 12, he lowered his rifle. They were backed into a corner, three older kids holding a younger one in their arms, protecting her from them, from whoever meant to harm these children. 

They looked malnourished, left to slowly rot in these cement boxes until the scientist found something worthwhile in them, their cheeks sunken in, eyes droopy and swollen with bruises - they were beaten, it made something ugly rear its head inside Ghost dead heart - and lips dried. One was armless, having wings that they used to cover both of their cellmates, naked with only feathers covering their body, this one looked more like a harpy than it did human. The two others had arms, both having the lower half of a mammal, neither of them was sure which four-legged mammal it was, but one had a pair of wings, while the other’s back was bare of anything. 

“We’ve found the children.”

You could hear the chaos from your cell, the blaring alarm and the smell of death. The building shook from its foundation, vibration emanating from both the ground floor and the basement, just farther from your hall, the closed and sectioned-off area. They separated you from the defective ones, all your young mistakes they made after achieving success —you. They tried to recreate it, but it never came out how they wanted it. Maybe it was a mistake on their part or maybe it was the lack of a certain gene in their DNA, a subtle difference that you and the rest had. You didn’t want to know and you didn’t want them to succeed a second time, it was painful, the shift, the tests and the change, the storm of pain, terror and confusion weren’t worth this power. 

You could hear the booming sound of gunfire, a loud ricochet of the bullet when the nitrocellulose sparked and sent the bullet outwards, finding its destination in the warm flesh of human guards. You usually enjoyed this kind of chaos if you knew what started it, and laughed when something caused trouble for your captors, but you were cautious of this one. You neither knew who thought to disturb the peace nor did you know who was behind this, their scents strange and the sound of steps unknown. All you knew was that their steps were heavy, out of breath but pushing their way into - what you thought to be - section C. The place they kept the young and willful. 

You might be blinded by your cell, but the guards outside your confinement knew how to talk, their chatter and barking orders loud enough for you to hear through the thick walls. From them, you knew they were strangers, unknown players on your board of pawns. You didn’t know their goal, whether they were here to let you out or keep you in a cage of their making, but you knew they were a gamble on your fate. As the noise got closer, you sat down, crossed your paws and waited, cautiously awaiting to see what your verdict would be.

Strangely enough, there was a different section, separated from the other one by many gates and stricter security, but they were able to break through it. Security was concentrated in one hall as if the monster they locked at the end of this hallway was of big importance. It had higher security, stronger and thicker. Ghost wondered if it was to keep the monster in or keep people out, either way, this meant that they found the thing they first came here for: the trained and dangerous subject C34. 

Ghost was apprehensive about opening this metal door, built taller than any doors he’d seen, it was as wide as it was tall, metres over what would be considered normal for a human or monster, similar to the wide gates that protected British castles, tall and imposing, but the most worrying was it’s vast amount of security measures. He thought back to the blurrier giant he saw in the picture, their shape indescribable and otherworldly, almost alien-like. His eyes met Soap’s reassuring ones, standing steadfast and unyielding to do good in the world. So with a nod, Ghost worked through the locks and scans of the heavy, metal door made to keep this cement cage closed. This door clicked loudly, echoing down the hall with ominous intent, foreseeing something damming and destructive. 

Yet they hadn’t expected to see another cage within the cage, a box made of reinforced glass, large and robust and inside of it was another cage, a rough metal one with bars for walls, a sick joke of a bird’s gilded cage. It would’ve seemed almost exaggerated to have three layers - three different cages - to keep one subject safely locked up until he caught sight of the monster. Lying on the cold, metal ground with legs folded in, tail curled around them and staring at both him and Soap with cautious curiosity. It looked like a gryphon if it were more reptilian than a mammal, this monster had a human torso, a head wearing a stoic expression, dressed in rags. Where there would normally be legs was the body of a bird, an eagle perhaps from the golden-brown plumage and reptilian legs from the knee down, followed by a fully scaled back, hind legs and a strong tail. Each toe was tipped with a sharp claw, big and deadly if it got its hands on someone, it could easily rip into anyone without putting in much effort. The biggest thing about it was the folded wings, feathered and equipped with a talon. If it could fly, these wings would be powerful. 

He understood why they kept it locked, it was neither man, monster or hybrid. It was a beast of human creation, a creature made to be at the peak of its condition. It was smart, he could see it, the glint in its eyes and the pursed lips, mien kept monotone and calm —observant. 

What did Laswell sign them into? 

Taglist: @craxy-person @crowbird @dead-cipher @iwannabealocalcryptid @iizx7y @mxtokko @yeetusspagheetus @capricorn-anon @perfectus-in-morte @sae1kie @yeoldedumbslut @tallmanlover @distracteddragoness @konigsblog @vxnilla-hxrddrugs @havoc973 @angelcakes-22 @cassiecasluciluce @ramadiiiisme @ramblingsofachaoticthinker @ki-cant-spel @im-making-an-effort @love-dove-noora @jinxxangel13 @daisychainsinknots @0alk0msan @mul-pi @danielle143 @dont-mind-me-just-existing-sadly

[spnbabe67]

Come and Go Between My Bedsheets

Kinktober Day 16: Cunnilingus (Jake Seresin)

Pairing: Jake Seresin x Fem Original Character

Warnings: Smut, Oral (F. Rec.), Fingering, PiV, Sex as a distraction, Angst

Summary: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer right? What happens when Tatum decides she has kept Jake too close?

Word Count: 2097

Authors Note: Title based on the song Into It by Chase Atlantic

Tatum knew that this thing between her and Jake was slowly migrating away from casual to something more involved. And for the most part, she didn’t really mind it. She knew she had the infamous Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin wrapped around her finger. Most of their escapades started with him seeking her out, which in and of itself wasn’t a big deal. But what was, was the fact that Javy, along with a couple of their mutual friends had noticed the change. 

They’d all been drinking in the common area a couple nights before when Javy offhandedly mentioned how Jake had changed, that Jake hadn’t mentioned a girl since they’d all arrived on base. Javy had playfully smacked Jake on the arm, teasing him about his friend holding out on him. Jake had expertly avoided the line of questioning, directing their friends, already half drunk, to another topic all together. He’d caught Tatum’s eye when the others weren’t looking, winking at her with that smug look on his handsome face. Tatum had glanced around, flipping him off, but ultimately returning his grin. 

But despite the easy-going nature of their relationship, that little voice in the back of her head nagged at her to ‘Be careful’. Tatum knew that this casual, secret, friends with benefits type dynamic ultimately had an expiration date. She had laid down ground rules when they both decided that this dynamic was going to be recurrent. They’d agreed not to see anyone else and that either one of them could back out at any time. She tried not to think about it too much, instead distracting herself with her work, and after that going for long runs to the point where she collapsed into bed afterwards. But tonight, not even her normal run and workout could drown out that insecure feeling. So after her shower, still wrapped in her towel, Tatum had shot off a message to Jake, asking him if he was busy. She toweled off, pulling on a pair of shorts and a sweatshirt, trying not to listen too closely for the buzzing of her cell. Tatum wasn’t so sure she liked the way she was waiting with bated breath for Jake to answer her, it only cemented the fact that she knew what she had to do. So when Jake texted her back, telling her he wasn’t doing anything, Tatum took a shaky breath, steeling herself before heading over to Jake’s room.

Jake was sitting at his desk, reading over some paperwork when Tatum slunk into his room, locking the door behind her. He looked up, eyes roaming her form as she walked over to him.

“Surprised to get a message from you. I-” Jake was cut off as Tatum dipped down, crashing her lips to his. 

Jake let out a surprised grunt at the forwardness of Tatums affection. He placed his hands on her hips, making to pull her onto his lap but she pulled away, tugging her sweatshirt off, tossing it to the floor. Her dark hair fell over her face, making a curtain between their gazes. Jake itched to reach up and brush the locks away from her features but she stepped back out of his reach before he could.

He sat back, watching her shove the clothes off her body. “What brought this on? Not that I’m complaining.” A kind of uneasiness slowly creeped in, whispering cautions to him. He reached out, grabbing her arm, thumb brushing the inside of her wrist. “Hayes, slow down. No need to rush.”

Tatum sighed, pulling her arm from his grasp. “I’m here, naked, and saying yes.” She shimmied her shorts down her legs before walking over to sit on the bed. “So are you gonna come over here and fuck me, or not?” 

Jake shrugged mentally, pushing away that nagging feeling in favor of pulling his own t-shirt over his head as he walked over, dipping down to recapture her lips. Tatum’s hands slid over his waist, her fingertips trailing across the muscles of his back. Jake reached down, grabbing her thighs to move her up the bed, placing her down gently. Tatum pulled him in, her thighs wrapping around his waist to keep his body hovered over her own. Jake planted a hand by her head to steady himself. He knew she was strong, you’d have to be a fool to miss her carefully toned muscles, but man did her legs hold fast around him. Her panting breaths and wandering hands encouraged him, trailing open mouthed kisses down her jaw to her neck. His other hand caressed up and down her side, sliding up to cup one of her breasts. 

Jake kissed and sucked his way to her chest, wrapping his lips around one of her peaked nipples. He groaned as her hand shot to his hair, tangling in the strands to hold him against her chest. She arched up towards him as his tongue swirled around the bud, teeth grazing it. Tatum’s breathy moans had all his blood rushing south, his cock pressing against the zipper of his jeans. Her body was warm, her skin soft, under him. He could never get tired of her, how gorgeous she was, how easily they went back and forth. Aside from Natasha, no one else had been able to keep him on his toes as well as Tatum. 

He pulled off of her breast, a string of saliva connecting his lips to her. Jake moved to the other one kept pliant by his hand. He nipped at the erect tissue, earning him a loud moan falling from Tatum’s plump lips.

“Stop teasing.” Tatum gritted out, tugging harshly on his hair as if in emphasis.

Jake pulled off her breast, placing a kiss to the valley between them. “Patience isn’t your virtue, is it?”

Tatum muttered something that sounded like ‘shut up’ and Jake chuckled against her belly as he kissed his way along her stomach, teeth nipping her skin. He rearranged her legs so that her thighs were thrown over his shoulders, her soaked core in his face, right where he wanted to be. He’d never admit it to Javy or his other friends, not in a thousand years or facing the worst torture, but he enjoyed eating a woman out, eating her out. Tatum’s thighs immediately wrapped around his head as he laved his tongue along her core from her entrance all the way up to her clit. He laughed lowly against her, wrapping an arm around her thigh and across her hips. Jake licked and sucked at her clit, letting his teeth graze it every so often just to hear her beautiful moans muffled by her legs against his ears.

Jake swirled his tongue around her clit as he brought his other hand up, slipping his index finger inside her, feeling her walls squeeze around it. He had to hold fast to her hips as she bucked up, chasing his mouth. He gave Tatum a reassuring squeeze to her thigh, enthusiastically mouthing at her core. He curled his fingers up, searching for that spongy spot within her, smiling against her pussy as she moaned his name. Found it. That’s why he loved this, hearing her moan, feeling the way her thighs clenched around his head, knowing he was making her feel good. Jake slipped in his middle finger alongside his pointer, scissoring them inside her. Soon enough he felt her inner walls throb around his digits, her thighs pressing against his head even tighter. Then he felt her shudder under his arm, felt her clamp down hard on his fingers. Tatum moaned his name loud enough for him to hear it despite her legs acting like earmuffs.

Jake licked his lips, savoring the taste of her as he gently removed her legs from his shoulders, crawling up her body to kiss her deeply, letting her taste herself on his tongue. Tatum responded in kind, fervently moving her lips against his, her hands finding the button on his jeans. Jake assisted her, shucking his pants off and tossing them to the side, nearly moaning as his cock was freed from the tight confines of his boxers and pants. He trailed his hand up her leg, positioning her thigh high up on his waist as he rutted against her. Jake sucked in a breath as Tatum reached a hand between them to grasp his painfully hard cock. She slid her hand along the underside of him, guiding him to nudge against her entrance. 

Jake moaned as her warmth enveloped him, her walls fluttering around him as he worked his cock into her in short thrusts. The sting of her nails digging into his back and shoulders was nearly drowned out by the heavenly feeling of her pussy. Jake dipped his head back down to kiss her, sweeping his tongue into her mouth, dragging it across the roof of it. He ground his hips into hers, setting a long and slow but hard rhythm. Tatum moaned into his mouth and he could feel her body wind under him, her chest pressed against his. Jake slipped a hand down her body, feeling every devine curve and dip until he found where they were joined, brushing his fingers against her clit. Tatum moaned his name, pressing her forehead to his as his hips pistoned into her. 

He could feel the telltale shaking of her legs against his waist, her nails scratching his back. Jake kissed her hard, trying in vain to channel all the feelings that had built up in his chest through that kiss as she came around him. Jake moaned her name, his own hips stuttering as her orgasm triggered his own. He spilled himself inside her, rocking his hips through both their orgasms. Jake carefully pulled out, already missing her warmth as he stretched out beside her. He pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder, but he knew something wasn’t right as Tatum didn’t return his attempt at aftercare like she normally did. 

Tatum sighed through her nose, clenching her teeth. It was like her heart was splintering in slow motion. Jake was being so sweet, kissing her shoulder, hand brushing up and down her arm. She swallowed hard, rolling out of bed. 

“Hayes.” Jake called after her. “Tatum. Where you goin’?” 

Tatum was glad her back was to him as she blinked away tears that had started to well up in her eyes. She bent down, pulling her clothes on. “We can’t do this anymore.”

“What are you talking about?” 

Tatum could hear the confusion in his voice and it damn near made her lose the already slipping hold she had on her emotions. “This. Us. Whatever we are.” She rasped, pulling her sweatshirt over her head. “We agreed at the beginning that either of us could pull the plug. This is me pulling the plug.”

“Why?” Tatum turned to see Jake scrambling to get off the bed. “Did I do something wrong?”

“Jake,” Tatum breathed, backing up towards the door. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.” 

“Don’t make- how else am I supposed to react?” Jake pleaded. “Tatum, I-”

“Don’t say it.” Tatum cut him off, unable to stop the single tear from escaping, rolling down her cheek.“Don’t, just don’t.”

Tatum walked over to the door, twisting the knob, ready to walk out. She was seconds from breaking down, the raw pain clawing at the back of her throat.

“Tatum please.”

“Goodnight, Jake.”

Tatum swallowed her tears the best she could as she shut the door behind her. She wasn’t totally conscious of where he feet were taking her before she ended up at a door that wasn’t her own. Natasha had just shut off her lamp when Tatum knocked at her door. She took one look at her friend, at the way Tatum’s eyes were red rimmed, glossy with tears, and pulled her into a hug. That was when Tatum allowed herself to cry, allowed for the hairline fractures on her heart that developed from the moment she stepped foot in Jake’s room to explode her heart into a million little pieces. She sobbed into Natashes shoulder, letting her friend guide her to the bed, holding her tightly. 

“I fucked up, Nat.” she sobbed.

Natasha stroked her friends hair, pressing a kiss to her hairline. “It’s gonna be alright, Tatum. It’ll be alright.”

When Tatum decided what to do about her and Jake, she felt so damn confident this was the right choice. But now? After seeing how Jake reacted. Now, Tatum wasn’t so sure. 

[koenigami]

swimming lesson gone wrong with wriothesley. tags : fem!reader, fluff, pining, reader cannot swim wc : 1,4k

-

Rays of sunshine glimmer in the reflection of the sea while its distinct salty odour invades your nostrils, a light breeze sweeping through your hair. And while desperately trying to tame the wild locks, you realise that this could be such a wonderful scenery to enjoy if it weren’t for your clammy hands and the gigantic ball of doom resting in the pit of your stomach.

“Can’t we just sunbathe?” You sound rather sheepish as you let your naked toes wiggle in the sand, feeling the tiny corns slip through their crevices while you unconsciously dig yourself deeper into the ground beneath you. 

“We can.” Wriothesely states throwing a lazy grin at you over his shoulders before shedding each layer of fabric off his body, revealing scarred, bare skin and muscles that would make any other woman let herself drown in the sea just to get rescued by this adonis of a man. However right now, it’s not his astonishing looks that make your pulse ricochet but rather the sight of the recurrent waves that wash up on the shore and retreat back to the sea. Others consider it a pleasant, even relaxing movement while your body reacts as if it were the most vile thing you had ever laid your eyes upon, leaving you with nausea and dizziness. “But not now. Ever heard of work first, play later?” 

The lighthearted chuckle that he lets out when you mockingly repeat his words is enough to ease your mind for at least a little bit. Though in lieu of being in need of his comfort, you would much rather appreciate it if you could just stay on dry land, sprawled on your dry towel in a dry bikini. Instead, you feel the tight, stretchy fabric of the one piece swimsuit that you’re wearing cling to your body in a way that seems like it is restricting and suffocating you more and more with each passing second. 

Your fear is evident, Wriothesely can tell by the way you’re unintentionally making yourself look smaller, arms folded over your chest, and gaze not going any further than five feet in front of you. The view of the vast ocean obviously intimidates you now that you know that you’ll soon be inside of it. 

With tentative steps, he pads through the hot sand and approaches you. “You know that you have the last say in this, right?” What the sun does to you on the outside, is what his deep, steady voice does to you on the inside. You redirect your stare when you feel a reassuring hand of his settle on your shoulder, forcing you to look into another deep pool of blue. “We don’t have to do this today. Or at all.” 

Even though he’s speaking his words truthfully, Wriothesely has to admit that it would appease him a lot if he knew that you would not sink like a rock as soon as you stepped into water. 

“Is there anything that you can’t do?” He had uttered his rhetorical question earlier this week after you brought him a freshly brewed cup of tea and the exact documents of a newly admitted inmate. Getting his hands on them had turned out to be not quite as easy as he had initially thought, though with you being a renowned lawyer at the Palais Mermonia and having more than a handful of connections, you had managed to get access to all the official papers that Wriothesley needed. Leaning your hip against his desk, you lightly tapped your chin in thought with that sweet smile of yours that could brighten even the darkest corner of his office. 

“I can’t swim.” You confessed simply as if telling him that the sky was blue. “P-Pardon?” 

Wriothesley’s reaction was one that you were used to, especially because most Fontanians reacted similarly after telling them that you were a non-swimmer. Being afraid of water while living in a region that was surrounded by nothing but water and even ruled by the hydro archon; yes, a little ironic. 

You don’t remember what part of your conversation had deviated into Wriothesley offering you swimming lessons on your free days, and what part of your brain deemed it smart to accept said offer, but what you know was that there is no going back. 

So with a deep sigh and lopsided smile, you reassure him that you want to do this. That you can do this. 

-

In fact, you cannot do this, you realise once you feel the waves slosh around your waist.

Their weight pulls and pushes you back and forth, and even though you’re aware that it’s not some incredible strength, you and your fear stricken mind can’t help but imagine scenarios of you helplessly being carried through the depths of the ocean like a weightless leaf being thrown around by the winds. 

“You’re too tense.” Your lips part in a silent gasp when warm air tickles your ear, and Wriothesley’s hands settle on your upper arms. The light, barely tangible circles that his thumbs draw along your skin are something that he does unintentionally, though they make your stiff shoulders drop the slightest bit and let the air flow easier into your lungs. 

You’re safe; a constant reminder to yourself once you become aware of his proximity as the steady rhythm of his breaths lulls you into a trance.

For a short moment, you’re at peace. You let your fingers dance along the surface of the sea, dipping your hands inside and pushing the water back and forth as if being able to wield the power of hydro. Yes, you’re in control. You’re safe. You’re in control. You’re safe. You’re-

“Wriothesley-” There’s a sudden splash in the distance. Loud noise. Children screaming and laughing all of a sudden and ducks frantically quacking and flapping their wings as they flee the scene, flying away above your heads into the far distance of the horizon. 

You don’t realise how fast everything happened until you find yourself in the Duke’s arms, his sturdy chest against your soft breasts, so close that you swear he can feel the fast beat of your heart. He caught you. Of course he did. “Seems like we got some company.”

Looking past his shoulder, you see a group of people not too far away from you. Two adults and two children…a family. You watch the young girl and boy look up the cliff with wide sparkling eyes, amazed by their father as he jumps and dives into the water. Applause and more happy giggles and laughter follow, though all you can feel right now is the heat in your face as you unintentionally bury it back into Wriothesley’s neck. 

So that is what scared you. 

“Hey.” You feel his body vibrate against yours as he laughs, and you witness yourself refusing to look at him. “It’s alright. I should have expected that other swimmers might make you feel uncomfortable.”

“This is so embarrassing.” You miss his toothy grin as you mumble against his skin, pressing your face further into him as if he were a portal through which you could make yourself disappear forever. 

“It’s not.” And he laughs again when you smack his chest, a response to the hidden sarcasm behind his words. “Alright, maybe a little.” But he truly could not care less. You’re always so pulled together, so determined, so placid, so… you. Countless times, he has tried to get under your skin, be it with overly exaggerated sweet talk that would make you roll your pretty eyes in faux annoyance, or certain gestures just to get a reaction out of you. It never happened. You take everything he gives you with a certain naturalness that would make it seem as if his casual compliments are a matter of course, as if the gentle brush of his hand to get your hair out of your face while you work on a report is normal between people like you and him. Whether it is because you’re overly comfortable in his presence or because you’ve decided for yourself that you’re too far out of his reach to give his moves any mind, Wriothesley tries not to think too much about it. And if this current side of you might be one that not many people get to see, then he’ll absolutely make sure to treasure it like a precious, fragile gem. Just like he does with every other interaction that he has with you.  

[jimin-updates]

A little over 24 hours to go to make a difference for week 21!

Remember, if Who leaves the top 50 it will leave the Billboard Hot 100, so we need to work as hard as we can to keep Who competitive with the new releasees and holiday music 💪🏻

If you’re US/PR based funds are available for the ongoing buying party to boost digital sales and premium streams:

All we can do is our best, so let’s give it our all!

[sleepyspots-wc-designs]

Hey pal, could we possibly get a Nightstar/Runningnose kit? I’m imagining they find an abandoned kit that looks JUST like them, and no one believes the kit ISNT theirs lol

Local heavily stressed-out gay doctor and mayor duo “”“find”“” abandoned baby gorl.…

MEET: Ruesneeze

Found abandoned in a patch of bright yellow flowers, sneezing, by Nightstar during the exile of ShadowClan’s elders, little Ruesneeze was raised on stories of a great Clan who tamed the darkness and drove all the monsters within firmly out. The easily-anxious little molly found comfort in these tales, and was quietly thrilled when she was brought to ShadowClan upon the reported “banishment of the baddest bad guy”… She later, much later, learned the truth of this.

Due to her sickly nature and recurrent allergies, Ruesneeze was often found in the medicine den, and as such spent a lot of time in Runningnose’s company — and saw firsthand many of the interactions between ShadowClan’s priest and her adoptive father, and overheard many of their private conversations… Though, with Ruesneeze’s compassion and gentle nature, and her love for both Nightstar and Runningnose, she quietly vowed to herself to keep their secrets… All of them.

It was of no surprise to her when, come time for her early naming ceremony to supply a desperate ShadowClan with new warriors and hope, Nightstar named her after Runningnose.

Nightstar’s sudden death drove Ruesneeze into a deep grief, and back into Runningnose’s presence. The two derived comfort from one another, and often talked softly about what could have been… Until Ruesneeze, too, caught the same bout of greencough that stole her father’s life, and Runningnose promised to decorate her grave with the same flowers she was found in — despite never having been told of where the young molly had been left.

Please read the rules when requesting future hypokits!

This character may be up for grabs, for their design, storytelling, or any other personal use!Keep an eye on the status below if you're interested! :)

Status: CLAIMED! By @doritopaw101

[sam-keeper]

Susan Twist: Word Lord?

Many* people** are wondering about the theory held by certain Doctor Who fans*** online that the actress Susan Twist in the new season of the long running franchise is playing what's known as a "Word Lord".

Now, granted, many more are wondering whether she might, in fact, be Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter. That, my friends, is exactly the kind of question a Word Lord would want you to be asking.

Lemme break this theory down for you.

Throughout this whole new season of Doctor Who, the protagonists have been haunted by the recurrence, in different roles, of a stage and character actor who happens to have the delightful name Susan Twist. Like, not in the show, in real life. According to Russel T Davies, she was the only actor they could get due to an "actor shortage", which seems like a pretty terrible and even implausible dilemma, but luckily Davies has made lemonade out of this very real production constraint! Twist popped up in every episode this season, in some form or other. That's versatile writing! No wonder they brought Rusty back as showrunner.

But perhaps there's more to the story than just the unfortunate realities of filming in a country ruled by a failed regime...

The Doctor and his companion Ruby started noticing Twist's recurring roles over the past few episodes, though the plot of each episode intervened before they could put anything definitive together. It's one of a number of nods to the metatextual content of the show--literal winks to the audience, another character (Mrs Flood) directly addressing the viewers, a whole musical number about how there's "always a twist at the end"--that suggested maybe some authorial tomfoolery was afoot, that maybe something a little tricky or tongue in cheek was happening.

But what could the explanation be? Could Susan Twist really be playing THE Susan, a relative of the Doctor's that hasn't been seen in the franchise since the 60s? That seems a little silly, surely! Or could she be playing another character, like... the Rani? or the Monk? Both of them got namedropped alongside Susan at one point. Or maybe she's the portended head of Maestro and the Toymaker's extracosmic family. I guess there's a theory this is Sutekh, the evil alien god from Pyramids of Mars? Sure, seems fun.

But no. Fuck all that noise. I know what's really going on here and it just coincidentally involves a character that I'm feral about, and that no one else has even heard of, a guy called, somewhat fittingly, Nobody No-one.

No-one shows up in just one and a quarter stories by Steven Hall for Big Finish's series of audio dramas, first as a minor opponent (in 45) and then as a much more motivated and fearsome one (in A Death in the Family). In the latter story, he manages to--no points if you worked this out from the title--kill the Seventh Doctor. How did a character with such a low profile manage such a feat? Well, Nobody No-one has powers comparable to a Time Lord: he is a Word Lord.

Word Lords are one of the most delightfully bonkers concepts to come out of the early exciting and experimental period in Big Finish's line of audio dramas. Hailing from another universe, they're the equivalent of Time Lords for a reality where narrative rather than chronology drives all existence. It's like if the Anchoring of the Thread established not linear time but, I guess, TV Tropes instead. Nobody No-one regenerates like the Doctor, and has his own equivalent to the TARDIS: the CORDIS, or Conveyance Of Repeating Dialogue In Space-time, which is a memetic construct transporting the Word Lord through repeated phrases, jokes, coincidental number recurrences, and so on. The CORDIS is heralded by the number 45 popping up, and you'd better believe I sat up and noticed how many times that number recurred in the code pattern in Dot and Bubble! In Death in the Family there's a whole military organization the Doctor's mucking around with--No, not UNIT. No, not Torchwood. A different thing, one run by a human supremacist vampire hold on we're getting off topic--and Nobody casually reveals at one point that his CORDIS was bouncing around inside their "For King And Country" mantra for years.

Nobody No-one's real fun as a villain comes from his special Bullshit Powers. He's a Word Lord, so he's basically a memetic being, right? He IS language in some sense. Like, apparently his CORDIS crashed into the alphabet after his first encounter with the Doctor, annihilating the 27th letter of the alphabet and causing the English Great Vowel Shift. This story does a ton with the concept of "what if a guy was words".

But what makes him so dangerous is a quirk of his own identity. To grasp what a Word Lord can do, you have to think linguistically, dialogically. Imagine someone haplessly says: "but, nobody could have gotten into that locked room to kill the ambassador!" What would that allow a Word Lord to do? And imagine further:

"No-one tells the sun whether or not to shine." "Nobody could survive that!" "Nobody could just kill the Doctor!"

One slip of the tongue, that's all it takes for Nobody No-one to gleefully command godlike power.

That's Nobody, though. I don't think Susan Twist is just Nobody. I mean, No-one could seriously ask you to believe that this character who appeared in an (unfairly, given its quality) obscure audio adventure, written by an author who only ever wrote those two stories for Doctor Who, with a bunch of wild over the top and no doubt difficult to write around powers, is going to suddenly come back as a major character in the third tv revival of this 60 year old franchise. Like, Nobody would expect Davies to start referencing, I don't know, the Shalka Doctor either, surely. And I wouldn't ask you to make that kind of totally absurd leap, not even if I happened to be writing some sort of tongue in cheek article.

No, what I'm--I mean, what the fans are suggesting is that this concept of a Time Lord but for stories, who comes from a Borgesian narrative dimension, appearing in one and one quarter obscure audio dramas by an author who never wrote anything else for Doctor Who... what the theory proposes is that there's a SECOND one of those guys.

Just think about it, think about it like a Word Lord. What has the fandom asked itself about this season? Surely, one of the foremost questions is simply: what about Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter? She's been name dropped a few times, the Doctor doesn't say she's definitively dead... could there be some reveal here that Susan is alive? There's got to be, right? That's what they're leading up to!

There's just got to be a Susan Twist.

That, my friends, is exactly how she snuck into this reality.

Now, maybe the "Susan Triad" slated to appear next episode isn't this Word Lord proper but a kind of, I don't know, fictionsuit or vessel or entry point. I'm also not sure what a "Susan Twist" would even want, what the grand scheme would be. Unlike Nobody No-one, there's not a lot of word games you can play with "Susan Twist" beyond the obvious. But, maybe that's part of the point. Nobody No-one was a megalomaniac, a guy who really did just want to watch the world burn. The Doctor's companion Hex accuses him of being "proper mad", and he responds, "Mad? I'm FUUURIOUS!" followed by an explosion from the grenade he had tossed into the duck pond. Nobody is a brash, arrogant, chaotic, and... probably not that bright guy, who has the advantage of his CORDIS's many tricks and his incredibly versatile name. Perhaps this new Word Lord wants something other than chaos and destruction. Maybe she simply wants what we've already seen her achieve in the show: universal ubiquity. There's always a Twist at the end.

Actually, this would weirdly parallel another beat from Death in the Family. In order to trap Nobody, the Doctor weaponizes his own narrative against the Word Lord, tapping into the universal internet and googling himself in order to build a whole proxy universe based on his own life. From another perspective, he basically uses the entire narrative of Doctor Who--all the episodes, all the Big Finish audios, all the Doctor Who Monthly comics, all the Virgin New Adventures--as an ideatic missile. This is such a cool concept I'd feel guilty about giving it away, only it happens about a fifth of the way through Death in the Family. Seriously, this audio GOES places. Anyway, the suggestion is that the Doctor is so entangled with the history of the universe, so threaded throughout all these other narratives, that his history effectively is a world unto itself that a being of narrative like Nobody might get completely lost in.

That's a kind of narrative ubiquity if there ever was one. If I was a Word Lord I'd be sorely tempted by that. Nobody is: he appears a perverse counterpart to the Doctor (and personally I think David Tennant would do a GREAT job playing him if he ever appeared in the show). I can't help but notice, incidentally, that we just got an episode where the shapeshifting Chuldur quickly became obsessed with cosplaying as the Doctor, and Wild Blue Yonder also introduced a couple of not-things trying to copy him. Could this Word Lord be seeking to build a narrative as strong and inescapable as the Doctor's?

It would be an interesting way of incorporating some of these meta elements without slipping too far into a kind of self-referential morass. It feels like Davies has been dancing right up on that line this entire season in a way that's exhilarating, but that also has been a bit nerve wracking for me. The more metatextual storytelling has exited the realm of weird independent art and entered the mainstream, the more cloying it's started to feel. Like, when you engage the audience, entreat them directly to care about the characters or write tearful paeans to the necessity of the Hero as a Symbol, the more it can start to feel like a bit of a desperate exercise in brand management. Clap if you DO believe in fairies, and all that. Doctor Who certainly has some history of guilt here--sorry, Steven Moffat, but sometimes it does get to be a bit much. And it does risk standing the purpose of literature on its head, where ironically through characters lauding the virtues of storytelling within society, the virtue of having participated in a transaction consuming art becomes the foundation of fandom, and the actual literary content is assumed, but treated as an afterthought.

Davies has thus far instead treated the meta content in two ways: as a unique physics to be solved, and as a way of exploring a particular bit of social commentary (sometimes more than one at once). Goblins use a "language of luck" and a physics of rope and knots, the Toymaker brings the world into a State of Play, and Maestro introduces a State of Musicals. To challenge these beings, the Doctor must understand their particular ontology and exploit it. As soon as the Bogeyman in Space Babies faces real peril, all the children who were afraid of it rally to its defense, which doubles as both a commentary on the "Teatime Terror for Tots" charge thrown at children's media like Doctor Who--children LIKE scary stories and creepy, gross monsters!--and reinforces Davies's acidic anger at social and political abandonment of people who are inconvenient to the bottom line. Rogue plays gleefully with fanfiction tropes, and its positioning of the Chuldur as "cosplayers" would riiight up to the edge of being a little too navel gazing about toxic fans... if not for the fact that the Doctor and Ruby are also explicitly cosplaying as Bridgerton characters, and the episode is still giving fans exactly what they want in the form of a whirlwind gay Doctor/Rogue romance. This season is concerned with these sorts of metatextual games, without being subsumed by them and becoming entirely about self-referential brand building.

A Death in the Family is also, notably, only partly about Nobody No-one and his machinations and the counter-machinations required to stop him, set into motion by the Seventh Doctor and carried out beyond his death by companions Ace and Hex. Like I said, a lot of the seismic action of the story is over within the first 25 minutes. The Word Lord is really just used as a jumping off point to talk about a bunch of other stuff: truth, lies, choices made for ourselves or made for us by others... we see multiple information-worlds built in the story, some of them more subtle than others. At one point Ace tearfully proclaims that traveling on the TARDIS with the Doctor "is the only life I've ever wanted!" The Seventh Doctor retorts, with some audible guilt and distress, "No, it's the only life you've ever HAD!" In a very real sense, the Doctor has created the notional worlds that Ace and Hex inhabit, defining the contours of Ace's life since she was a teenager, and deliberately staying silent about Hex's traumatic family history, deciding for both of them "what's best". Nobody No-one in that sense is a pretext, in the best tradition of Doctor Who, to dig into questions about power.

The metafictional is risky, but it's a narrative tool like any other, and it fits with a long history of Doctor Who as a franchise reflecting on itself and its place in culture, with everything from the Mind Robber's suggestion that the Doctor himself might be an escapee from fiction, to Vengeance on Varos and Trial of a Time Lord's dramatization of Doctor Who's conservative culture war critics, to the Last Great Time War as metaphor for the show's cancellation. In a sense, behaving as though cosplay or fandom or whatever don't exist and couldn't possibly be the idiom through which characters--even weird alien characters--interpret their reality and act upon it might equally alienate the show from being about any wider culture beyond itself, endlessly, the same dalek and cybermen and Master stories recycling forever. My hope is just that as Davies barrels into the finale at full speed, it's this sense of a meaning for Doctor Who beyond its own lore driving him. The anger we've seen from him about social issues, the commitment to changing the show where it needs to grow, and the willingness to take big swings at continuity all give me some reason to feel confident.

Confident, of course, that he has seen the wisdom and logic of building his arc around Susan Twist being a Word Lord. What? That's what this article is about, remember? That didn't stop being a thing. Anyway, I'm excited for friday, when all of us pulling for this theory will be proven indisputably right, and you will all, in deference, subscribe to my Patreon.

* alleged ** hypothetical *** me, specifically

[birdhousesinyoursoul]

HELLO so I heard people talkimg about Stan having OCD and I just really really needed to clear up misconceptions about OCD and Stans character so if you like stan uris or mental health studies at all this might be fun to read for you

none of this is like drama relatef at all it was just a fun little thing i wanted to do so i could learn about mental health and my favorite characters at the same time

sorry if none of this makes sense i wrote it all in one go at 2am (feel free to add any info you want or clear up anything i might've explained poorly)

This started because I was sick anf tired of people saying stan has ocd because that just doesnt make sense towards any canon material (If you want to headcanon him as it, that’s fine, but please read through this so you can do it more accurately) and it seemed to be just a dramatic stereotyping of what OCD is.

After doing research, reading the literal DSM’s sections on OCD, I’ve come to the conclusion that: I was right, Stan very very much does NOT have OCD.

People said he has it because in IT 2017, he makes sure to clean the windows properly, and in the book he has germaphobia. That’s about it. I looked at other things I tried to find as evidence for him having OCD, but I couldn’t find anything else that fit. And this is not a case of opinion because I like to be as absolutely objective as possible in these types of things and see no point in anything otherwise

So anyway, I’ll try to put this all simply because if I get too complicated I’m gonna get lost and this will turn into a rant on literally anything because currently I’m unmedicated for my adhd

Why does Stan not have OCD? To put it simply, he does not fit any of the criteria. I do think he has germaphobia, but I believe that to be part of his autism (as it’s very, very common in autism) and/or anxiety.

To delve into that a liittle bit more, the OCD criteria is this:

A. obsessions or compulsions, such as recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses, images, that are, at some point, intrusive and inappropriate and cause distress. the thoughts, impulses, or images are not simply excessive worries about real life problems. the person attempts to ignore/suppress such thoughts as to neutralize them with some other thought or action.

Thinking back on the book, which is what I like to adhere to as much as possible, Stan does not have these thoughts recurrently enough that it is affecting his life. I can see that he has a fear of dirt and ick which sometimes spikes when he’s stressed, but otherwise he is able to go through his day to day life easily enough with these thoughts.

Other diagnostic criteria to fill up the cracks in this is that the obsessions or compulsions must be time consuming (taking up more than 1 hour a day) or significantly interfere with the person’s normal routine and functioning, or social activities or relationships. Stan is not shown doing things like this repeatedly and, in my mind when I try to follow stephen king’s writing and ideas as much as I possibly can, I do not think he would if the book were longer either.

But, I very much think these traits are there; And they fit perfectly into autism traits. I think right now is a good time to note that autism gets mixed up as OCD quite a bit because they have overlapping traits.

Now to defend my case for why he might have Autism;

He acts to put it quite simply, insanely fucking autistic. Alllll the fucking time. That man is incredibly autistic there is no denying this

His whole character is set on the fact that he is a very black and white person, very very rigid, and you can’t deny it because he literally killed himself over finding out he was wrong about the guidelines and rules he made up for the world. he is so autistic

A common trait of autism is having an abnormal way of speaking, like a weird rhythm, and Stan’s tone WAS described as pleasant but it was also described as abnormal and such..

Look at how much he likes birds. it feels a little obvious to me here lol

the meltdowns he’s had because, again, his routine and rules were interrupted

He was insanely good at math/accounting which I think also has to do with the need for rules he has, math is ruled and never changes 4+4 will always be 8 yada yada

Also stan just in my headcanon world has very very limited romantic and platonic feelings and I think thats common in autistic folks because we’re so different from other people

anyways im tired and i think you all get it by now if youve watched any of the movies or read the book Stan acts quite autistic. i swear im not self projecting pleas

[04k96]

I don’t care, probabilities is my favourite type of maths: reoccurring patterns within infinity

1. Mathematical Perspective: Chaos and Order

In mathematics, chaos theory and the study of complex systems suggest that while systems can behave unpredictably in the short term, underlying patterns can emerge over time or across large scales.

• Deterministic Chaos: Even in systems that appear random (like weather patterns), there can be underlying deterministic rules that, over long periods, produce complex but often recognizable patterns.

• Poincaré Recurrence Theorem: In certain types of systems, if the system has a finite number of states and operates under specific conditions, it will eventually return to a state very close to its starting point. This suggests that, over an infinite amount of time, even highly chaotic systems will exhibit some form of recurrence.

This means that even in infinite possibilities, certain patterns may inevitably repeat themselves, though the complexity and unpredictability of the outcomes may make these patterns hard to detect without long-term observation.

2. Physical Perspective: Entropy and the Universe

From the standpoint of physics, especially in the context of thermodynamics, the concept of entropy plays a crucial role. Entropy is often described as a measure of disorder or randomness, and in most closed systems, entropy increases over time (the second law of thermodynamics).

• In an infinite universe: If we imagine the universe continuing infinitely, patterns of energy distribution, formation of structures, or even recurrent cosmic events (like star formation) could emerge. However, over infinite time, entropy would likely dominate, and the universe would move toward a state of maximum disorder (heat death), where predictability and patterns would cease to exist in the traditional sense.

In this view, while local or temporary patterns could emerge (like the formation of galaxies, planets, and stars), over an infinite timespan, the decay into disorder could prevent large-scale, sustained patterns from emerging or persisting in the same way.

3. Philosophical Perspective: Infinite Possibilities and Recurrence

From a philosophical or metaphysical perspective, the idea of infinity opens up the possibility that every conceivable event or pattern could occur, but with varying likelihoods:

• Eternal Recurrence: The concept of eternal recurrence, first proposed by Nietzsche, suggests that all events in the universe will repeat infinitely in the exact same way. This implies that over infinite time, every possible pattern (even chaotic or unlikely ones) will play out, potentially more than once. However, this idea assumes that time and events are cyclical and finite in their fundamental properties, even within the context of infinity.

• Infinite Outcomes: In a truly infinite universe, some philosophical views posit that every possible outcome could eventually occur. This could mean that while large-scale patterns may emerge in some realms, in others, the recurrence of entirely new or unique patterns might overwhelm previously observable regularities. For instance, if there are infinite ways the universe could unfold, the probability of new, emergent patterns becomes higher, even if previously established ones still reoccur.

4. **The Role of Randomness and Probabilities

In the realm of probability, especially in statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics, randomness plays a central role. If we consider infinite possibilities, it’s important to understand that:

• Random processes don’t necessarily eliminate all patterns, but they can make the predictability of patterns much harder to identify over time.

• In some cases, infinite possibilities could lead to an infinite number of unique configurations (especially at the quantum level), but also ensure that patterns within those configurations would still be recurring, due to probabilistic laws and underlying constants of nature (such as physical laws that govern particle interactions).

5. Anthropic Principle and Human Perception of Patterns

The anthropic principle suggests that humans, as observers, are more likely to notice patterns that are meaningful within the contexts they experience. This means that the pattern recognition we see may be more of a human construct rather than an inherent property of the universe. In an infinite universe, while patterns may persist, the way we interpret or even recognize them might depend on our frame of reference.

Conclusion:

The likelihood of patterns recurring in every possible outcome over infinite time depends on several factors, including the nature of the system (deterministic vs. chaotic), entropy, the laws of probability, and philosophical interpretations of infinity. In a finite system, repetitive patterns may eventually emerge due to deterministic laws or chaotic systems, but in an infinite universe, new patterns could emerge continuously, often overwhelming earlier, established ones.

• Short term: Predictable patterns may emerge (chaotic systems, quantum processes, biological cycles).

• Long term (infinite): The decay of order (through entropy) might cause ultimate unpredictability, though some patterns (even very complex ones) might still emerge due to the deterministic nature of underlying laws.

[homestuckreplay]

Job Application: Timeline Manager

(page 1269-1283; figuring out the timeline)

OKAY. THIS IS GETTING CONFUSING. There is some figuring out of the timeline to do here before things get even messier, plus some new information on the Felt’s powers and some hints about the far past.

To be honest Slick is really smart with all this timeline stuff. I think he would be great as a Felt member whose ‘power’ is just understanding the interactions and nuances between all the other members’ powers and planning their operations around it. Most of them seem to be acting as rogue agents in individuals or pairs, without great communication, and Slick could whip them into the shape of a functional gang. Honestly not too dissimilar from how Jack Noir ‘oversee[s] various affairs of a DARK KINGDOM’ (p.955). It’s like he has this head for organization and management and SOMETIMES this overpowers his actual goals and morality. In this way I think someone could talk Jack Noir into being the beta kids’ band manager, something they definitely need post-Sburb if they are going to make it big in the post-apocalypse.

Slick’s businessman side is however balanced out by his Love Of Stabbing And Killing, which is often an equally big priority. He does show some uncertainty about timeline rules on page 1278, where he’s ‘not really sure if that's how it works’ but also doesn’t care because he’s about to break out the Big Knives. In this update we hear about Slick’s SABER RATTLE (p.1271), DOUBLE EDGED SWORD (p.1272), BAIT AND SWITCHBLADE (p.1277), and see the recurrence of OCCAM’S RAZOR, previously seen on page 329 when Dave was reading MSPA.

These are also puns, unsurprisingly for this intermission – sabers, swords, blades and razors are all sharp edged weapons, while ‘saber rattling’ is an overt and exaggerated threat of violence used to intimidate, and a double edged sword is something that has both positive and negative consequences. A bait and switch is where one outcome is set up and then replaced at the last minute, usually with a worse option, and Occam’s Razor is a philosophical rule saying that simpler theories should be privileged over more complex ones. This last one in particular fits well with Slick’s preference for fixing the timeline and getting things back on a more linear schedule – I think he’s in opposition to the author here.

So, as I understand it, this intermission has one main timeline (T1) where the bulk of pages 1154-1264 took place (in a roughly but not entirely linear fashion) right up until Slick pulls Crowbar’s pin from Die’s doll. At this point, Slick jumps to T2.

In T2, Crowbar is alive, and nothing from T1 happened. T2 is defined by a gunfight between the Felt and Midnight Crew, and spans pages 1265-1279, with a LOT of back and forth throughout time due to Sawbuck’s powers. Snowman has only been seen in T2, and Stitch dies only in T2. If we define the gunfight arbitrarily as ‘the present’, we also see the timeline’s recent past (p.1271), far past (p.1273), and near future (p.1277), but sadly never see the far future.

On page 1280, Slick returns to T1, at an uncertain point on the timeline. Sawbuck quickly gets attacked, jumping to a point on the timeline that precedes the whole intermission (but is part of its main continuity). By cycling back to this early point on the timeline, Slick explains how and why a bunch of clocks were already destroyed and covered in blood on page 1175.

We can also define T0 as the timeline featured on pages 1210-1211, from which Die jumps to T1, and T∞ as the timeline where Slick died before he could build this town in the first place (p.1215, 1236). Plus a whole bunch of timelines where various Eggses and Biscuitses come from.

I think that’s it. I think that’s the simplest possible way of understanding all this.

So, in the far past of both T1 and T2 (as well as T∞), we see the same pink and green wasteland, the planet before Slick built the town. I think there’s an interesting Slick-Snowman parallel here – jumping to a timeline where Slick is dead destroys the town (such that it was never built), while killing Snowman destroys the universe. Similar powers but on WILDLY different scales. And Slick is the Midnight Crew member Snowman directly speaks to (and stabs) on page 1267, so, what’s going on with those two? What’s their history from before Snowman went to join the Felt?

But. Maybe my absolute favorite moment in this intermission is the sight of the Straggler in the background on page 1273.

A SCURRILOUS STRAGGLER eyes impromptu desert skirmish. He dismisses them as a bunch of ill-mannered rogues warranting no further investigation. Although he gives a small nod of approval to the plain and serviceable HAT worn by one of the combatants which strikes him as an absolutely smashing display of good fashion sense. (p.1274)

This is the most explicit link yet between this wasteland and the Wayward Vagabond’s (p.248), with the similar wrappings and the ‘Years in the past…’ page title. It is a wilder post-apocalypse due to there being a fight in the desert, and one that sets up a time loop – Slick gets the idea to wear a smart hat from his past self, just like Jade getting into gardening and blue shirts by redirecting John’s package to her own past self (p.1136). Slick does not recognize his future self here, probably because he’s used to interacting with other near-identical chess pieces.

I still have no clue how some chess constructs escape Sburb, and how it’s decided which ones get out, but it’s fascinating to have it confirmed that 1. this phenomenon isn’t exclusive to Earth, and may be built into Sburb, and 2. these constructs go on living and develop personalities and agency that maps onto their initial programming, but also goes beyond it. And this accounts for the differences between Spades Slick (Felt planet) and Jack Noir (Earth), as Slick has had many years to move past that programming, and Jack is earlier in his journey, and has just committed his first act of rebellion. So perhaps it’s this moment of gaining a consciousness that goes beyond the computer programming that causes a NPC to want to leave Sburb, to realize that’s even an option. Which definitely reinforces by theory that Jack Noir will be the fourth character who appears ‘years in the future’ on Earth.

Finally, here’s a recap of the Felt’s powers, which we’ve learned most of since I was guessing them about a hundred pages ago.

Itchy – Can speed up time for himself and go very fast.

Doze – Can slow down time for himself and go very slow.

Trace – Can see people’s recent past via a trail of where they’ve been.

Clover – Uncertain, but he is knowledgeable, cooperative, and asks TIME RIDDLES (p.1252).

Fin – Can see people’s near future via a trail of where they will go.

Die – Has a small effigy with pins for each Felt and Midnight Crew member. Pins inside the effigy are dead in the current timeline.

Crowbar – Can ‘pry anything out of a time loop, stable or otherwise.’ (p.1252)

Snowman – ‘If you kill her you destroy the universe.’ (p.1268)

Stitch – Has large effigies for each Felt member (plus Lord English’s backup coat). Can use them to patch wounds and the fabric of spacetime itself.

Sawbuck – Jumps to a random point within the current timeline whenever his skin is punctured.

Matchsticks – Unknown, dead in T1/unseen in T2.

Eggs – Creates copies of himself whenever his egg timer goes off, destabilizing the timeline.

Biscuits – Hides in the oven until his timer goes off, successfully ‘traveling into the future’.

Quarters – Unknown, dead in T1/unseen in T2.

Cans – Unknown, but he is very large (p.353).

Lord English – Unknown, but he is ‘indestructible… killable only through a number of glitches and exploits in spacetime’ (p.1239)