#she has no name yet but ive been thinking about her backstory

[ebonytails]

What do you guys think about her

[slowd1ving]

IV. REVISED: THE CONCEPT OF FRIENDSHIP .・゜DAN HENG NSFW

One of the theories pushed forward in this universe—a common conjecture between scientists throughout the stars—is that there are disturbances in a system that is being observed, versus one that is not. This is astutely named the observer effect. And this situation is the first proper example he’s seen of that. Dan Heng feels that as soon as he takes his eyes off you, you’ll phase back to a space between these dimensions, like some specter there are only myths about. when data nerd Dan Heng finds the forbidden dictionary and masters the hidden art: synonyms male! engineer reader warnings: eventual nsfw, kind of but not really spoilers to dan heng's backstory, amab reader

HONKAI STAR RAIL MASTERLIST

DRINKER OF THE MOON, DEVOURER OF DREAMS MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION

PREVIOUS PART

There’s a certain art that comes with avoiding people, and Dan Heng has practically mastered it by now. From evading the monsters that habitually trespass on his path, to eluding the red-eyed man from Dan Feng’s convoluted past—no one can deny his experience in these twisted matters. 

Unlike his predecessor, he has no qualms in ridding himself of problematic situations by simply taking his leave. And though he may be labelled a coward, he can’t find it within himself to care. Honour and dignity is important—he’ll acknowledge that gladly—but making the pragmatic decision is something he’ll continue to prioritise. 

When you’re a fugitive, it’s all you have left. 

So, why hasn’t he left the Express yet?

A week prior, the brief vacation finally reached its conclusion and he stepped back onto the train. It was easy at first—you were busy reading over the contract negotiated by Mr. Yang with Argo-II for their bronze. There was no time for you and him to be alone. Not even in that fateful kitchen. 

His nightmares had ceased temporarily due to the lingering effects of the Argonian booze, so there was an easy excuse to save him from the regular nightly rendezvous. But at what cost?

All the rational cells in his brain are urging him to leave the Express far behind. It’s a honey-trap, they scream—he’s becoming too dependent on its security. There is also the pressing issue of your presence, but he’s intentionally avoiding thinking about it. 

He should leave. 

Dan Heng has overstayed his welcome. 

“—oh, Dan Heng, perfect. Do you remember where the information for the Migrides Embassy legislature was, from when I asked for it a few weeks back?” Himeko’s request jolts him from his reverie, and before he’s even aware of it, his deft hands pick out the correct file from the archive shelves. “We’ll use their own courts against them to uphold our honour.”

He frowns. I’ve gotten too acclimated to living here. 

“Are you feeling alright?”

The man in question tears his eyes away from the small bag that sits in the corner. It’s a sharp reminder of his obligations—moving on before he lands himself in an even bigger mess. 

“Perfectly fine, Himeko,” he bites his tongue, afraid that his sour mood will taint his polite words with curtness. 

She tilts her head, and her blood-like hair spills from her shoulders in a clean decapitation. The action is an ominous prelude to her next words. 

“You didn’t have an argument with him, or anything?” 

Sometimes, she’s also annoyingly perceptive. 

“No,” he replies carefully. “We’ve just been busy with our respective lines of work.”

“...If you say so.” It’s clear she doesn’t believe him, and the long look she gives him only reinforces that notion. He can’t bring himself to meet her eyes; they seem like they’ll unearth his unease about being near you, forcibly prying any reason from him. Behind his back, his nails dig into his palms. “The tension doesn’t suit you. Talk to him sooner rather than later.”

She exits the archives then, and he’s left wondering about the meaning embedded deep within her words. 

What tension? That dream was an error; like the fields of ‘Asphodel’, he would’ve never dreamt about you had he been in his right mind. 

Sure, he might be avoiding you, but he’s not tense. He’s my friend. The awkward feeling will dissipate in due time, so Dan Heng’s making the tactful decision to elude you and get over himself. And Himeko’s right, he reluctantly accepts. If he wants to inoculate himself against making things even weirder than they normally are, it’s necessary to ease back into the regular back-and-forth of friendship with you. 

Friendship—the word’s bittersweet on his tongue, for some strange reason. 

It’s both fortunate and unfortunate that he’s unable to see you for the next few days. 

After all, you personally descend to the Migrides cluster alongside Himeko—an unlikely pair, but one that absolutely makes sense—in order to finally beat the Embassy at their own game. It’s strange, though. Where he should find relief in his chest, there’s only a heavier, tighter burden to carry. 

It hurts. There’s no rhyme nor reason to his erratic pulse, not any more. For those few days, there’s not a trace of your presence and he’s growing listless. 

Contradictions. He’s full of them, forcibly driving a wedge between the two of you, yet he can’t deal with the overwhelming lack of you.

“You’re spacing out,” Mr. Yang cuts into his thoughts. There’s only a wooden chequerboard between them, but it feels more like a chasm that simply cannot be bridged. “And losing.”

Check. His rook is promptly sacrificed in the bloody battle, but it’s not like he’ll win. With a drawn out sigh, he tips his king flat onto the board. 

“There’s something on your mind, I’d wager.” Mr. Yang stares long and hard at the easy victory he’d gained—one of Dan Heng’s most embarrassing moments in chess, but it’s not like he’s particularly engrossed in the game. 

“What gave that away?” 

It’s a curt response; he’s tired of the constant reminders of you. Still, he holds onto the hope that maybe—just maybe—the bespectacled man isn’t referring to you like Himeko had. 

Mr. Yang simply looks at him with that flat gaze, and he loses that kindled ember of hope he nurtured. 

“Forget it,” he shakes his head, and for a brief moment Dan Heng feels relief that the topic has been dropped. 

“I’m sure you’ve got it under control. I’m sure you’re not running away from communication.”

Sometimes, he’s reminded that Mr. Yang is more sardonic than he lets on. 

And there’s something so hilarious in the way he musters up his courage to approach you first, only for you to slide open the door to the archives first. 

Thump. For a heartbeat or two, he’s spellbound by your return—yet he can’t bring himself to say anything. He ducks his head back into his book when you look over: piercing eyes glaring right into his soul. There’s a faint rustling of plastic against plastic as you slide out several files, though not a singular word from your lips. 

Aeons. He can feel his face heat up as the rough mixture of soap and metal hits him. You’re here, but he can barely think, let alone formulate any sort of sentence. 

When he looks up after a few minutes, you’re still there—and noticing his eyes on you, you give him a brief nod whilst you read over your selection. 

It’s too much. It really is. 

Dan Heng leaves the small room with paper trailing behind him and a pulse too erratic to be considered healthy—the rushed action elicits a small noise of surprise as he brushes past you. He avoids your eyes, but can’t evade the mandarins still clinging to your clothes and now his. 

The bathroom door is locked, yet your presence is etched onto his skin. 

This is friendship?—he scoffs. Friendship shouldn’t taste so bitter, not when his stomach is writhing uncontrollably. Not when he feels his tongue go leaden and skull grow heavy. There’s something wrong with him. It’s clawing from his insides—raw scars are left on tender flesh. 

Even when he knows the coast is long clear, it takes more than a half-hour for him to slink back to the archives. Why? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know, not when the lingering remains of you still hover around the enclosed space. 

If he had one word to describe this feeling welling up inside, it would be torturous. 

Shameful. 

He can’t sleep. 

Long past the time he usually takes the first steps into the dream world—or in his case, the cacophony of nightmares—he’s still tossing and turning. It’s not the sticky heat that seems to plague him, but rather the anticipation of something finally happening that keeps him up. It’s stupid. His mind is hazy as he checks the time on his phone, yet not hazy enough to slip into that wreck of a slumber. 

00:34

His fingers tap mindlessly on the screen. Nothing. No messages, no mail, not even a scammer he could mess with for once. He’d work on finally updating and organising information about the smaller planets near Penacony, but even that’s barred from him via Pom-Pom’s stern insistence that there not be more than one sleep-deprived fool on this train. He doesn’t particularly wish to know the conductor’s wrath, so he does what they say. 

00:40

It’s a disgusting sort of lethargy. He can’t will his eyes to stay closed, yet he can’t bring himself to summon Cloud-Piercer either to numb his mind from his thoughts. 

He grits his teeth, and he can feel each molar grind against another. Bone against bone. 

Pathetic. 

He checks his phone one last time, and turns it off for good. Perhaps if he wasn’t so unlucky this night, he might have seen the message that came up just a few minutes after it powered off. 

01-04-XXXX

<Frankenstein & Co.> 02:59 > [robot.jpeg attached]  02:59 > Yeah this one looks like you lmao

<You> … < 03:04 Wow. You’re such a comedian. < 03:04 If you ever need a gig with the Masked Fools I’m sure they’ve got plenty of vacancies. < 03:05

03:05 > Cope bro 10:56 > Btw Welt picked up takeout from the Space Station 10:57 > Hurry up before I eat your share too

(+4 unread messages)

21-04-XXXX

<I’ll get you a satanic… mechanic> 00:55 > We’re both shit at communicating  00:55 > I’m coming to the archives in half an hour to put back the files, since I know you’re probably awake. Might as well talk it out.   00:56 > If you’re sleeping I won’t bother you  00:57 > We’ll just figure it out tomorrow I guess

Dan Heng has never been particularly fortuitous. Perhaps that’s why the message only gets delivered and not read. Perhaps that’s why he staves off the urge to check out his schedule for tomorrow in favour of rest. 

When they call him unapproachable, maybe luck also thinks of him that way. Sure, Dan Feng’s had his own share of misfortuned days, but tonight might just be the unluckiest night in this incarnation's life. 

When does it start?

In his memories, it might’ve been triggered by the gradual heat spreading across his limbs. His skin is molten across flesh: scorched to its very bones. Everything’s so tight—it’s no wonder that he throws his shirt into the corner next to him. He’s left breathing heavily in only sweatpants, and still they’re too cumbersome, too constricting. 

What’s the cause of it all?

It might’ve been catalysed by the dizzying feeling playing on his mind that started a while ago. He’s entranced: wandering through a fog that seems to have no end, all in the hopes of catching a glimpse of whatever’s making his heart flutter all hummingbird-like. 

Or maybe it’s the faint traces of you still clinging to the air. 

At first, he can’t quite pinpoint where it’s coming from. When he turns his head on his pillow, the strands of a clean soap grow stronger—so he reaches out. His fingers brush against soft fabric, and the man freezes with his fist clenched around your sweater. 

It’s yours. 

Somehow, your presence hasn’t yet been washed out from the threads. And for whatever damned reason, pressing it near his face is lulling him into a better stupor than that cursed drink ever did. 

It’s not enough. 

He buries his face in the material—by now, he’s practically drinking in all the intricacies of your scent. Inhale. Notes of orange peel, the subtle shift of soap, and the disorienting tang of diesel. Exhale. His mouth is half-open: too caught up in the throes of whatever this is to close. Unbearable. That’s what it is: a deep tension right below his navel that forces him to slowly lose his senses. 

One hand is firmly clenched around the fabric pressed to his face, while the other discards the stifling blanket that’s only suffocating him further. But as he does so, he accidentally brushes against the front of his sweatpants.

His heart skips a beat, then bangs against his ribcage particularly loudly. 

“Ah,” he gasps out. A chaotic pulse registers, deafening, along his ear canal. There’s a realisation that trickles honey-slow through his brain. It’s not like he’s explored this way of tiring himself out.

Aeons. 

He’s never felt so perverted. 

He’s never felt so conflicted. 

Was it not enough that he had that dream about you back on Argo-I? 

Aha must be gleefully orchestrating this twist of fate—he’s sure of it—as this defies rational thought. He should not be getting turned on to the smell of his friend that invades his senses and overwhelms him so completely. 

It’s not him, he justifies weakly. It’s just the feeling of there being another person. Well, with that sort of logic, Nous is itching to accept him into the folds of the Genius Society. 

There’s that strong, bubbling shame that lays heavy in his chest; however, the tightness in his lower abdomen is catalysing its destruction. It doesn’t help that he’s losing himself in the warm scent of you, and the shortness of breath that comes with covering one’s mouth and nose in thick fabric. No, it definitely helps. Shame aside, he somehow hasn’t crossed the precipice of perversion; the hand that isn’t lodged firmly against the material is merely resting atop his bare torso. 

He can’t bring himself to trail his fingers lower. 

It’ll help with sleeping, he rationalises once more. His head is heavy, and his self-control is slowly slipping as he keeps breathing you in. 

What would he say? If you saw him—face flushed, nuzzled into your clothing; chest bared with hardened nipples from both his arousal and the stream of cool air; sweatpants tight across his hips—what would you do? Would you leave in disgust (eyes trailing briefly across the body of what can only be called a pervert)? Would you curse him out in that rough voice of yours (then never speak to him ever again)?

Would you help him out?

The very thought of it makes his pulse bloom vibrant in his head—desperate to be heard, desperate to rip through his skull. It is also a sobering notion. 

He turns his body until he’s flat on his stomach with his face buried in the sweater currently draped over his pillow. The action is meant to rob his breath and calm his racing thoughts, but this really isn’t his lucky day. 

“Mmh,” he whines into the fabric when the pressure of his weight exerts itself right on his crotch. It was an accident, he later swears, but he can’t bring himself to move from this position. His mind is growing numb—not in the way he wants it to—but something so carnally perverse it brings an even greater flush to his face. 

Despite the futility of the gesture, he can’t help but squeeze his eyes shut in one last desperate bid for sleep. In his mind, he’s begging for slumber without having to resort to that. However, it’s fruitless: pointless in every sense of the word. Him attempting to relax even further just makes the warm sheets brush against his naked chest—and with his eyes closed, it feels more like hands gently cupping around the area. 

He gives up. 

He feels so much shame that he’s delirious on it as he grinds against the thick material of the futon. Dan Heng knows he shouldn’t be doing this—rutting himself against his bed desperately while his teeth leave small marks in your sweater—but the irrational part of his mind has long taken over. 

It’s not enough. It’s nothing more than a brief morsel of pleasure—far from being able to sate his hunger and quench his thirst. 

The hour is late enough that he doesn’t feel particularly cautious as he turns back to face the glimmering ceiling. There’s an unspoken rule on the Express: don’t step into the Archives once the light goes out. Therefore, he abandons the caution he usually employs in this small space and slips his cold fingers past the waistband. 

He hisses as his frigid hand wraps around himself, thumb brushing just past the leaking tip in a way that is simultaneously overbearing yet simply not enough. 

It’s not like he’s never done this before, but it was more of a perfunctory experiment rather than anything—and being chased by a homicidal maniac does little to get him off. 

His other hand abandons the plush material of your clothing to tug sharply at his nipples—jaw clamping down on the threads to prevent the rushed moan from leaving him as he rolls them with gelid fingers. He’s sensitive: every harsh application of pressure shoots straight through his neurons and into his brain, and that’s slowly frying. 

“Mmh—” he slurs around the fabric in his mouth, practically gagging on it as he paws at his tits. 

The garment obstructing his vision and airways feels so empty that he can’t help but assign some sort of meaning to it. What would it be like if it were replaced by him instead?—he thinks, and the very notion causes his cock to twitch within the confines of his fingers. Your hand might be twined through his hair just like this: tugging on the strands as you manoeuvre him to fit exactly against you. Your thighs might clamp around the sides of his face like this: locking him there while he takes you down his throat. 

It could be him, and the concept is shoved to some disused, forgotten corner of his mind with just a phrase. 

He’s just a friend, and the words taste bitter in his mind.  

As if to forget, his fist hastens its pace and he’s rocking his hips into the motion. It’s rough—nothing like how he usually would be so methodical with this. Then again, it’s clear that he’s not trying to emulate his own ways while his hand wraps around himself; but he doesn’t want to acknowledge exactly who he’s imitating. 

It’s still not enough.

The garment stretches taut across his motions: too constricting for him to reach that high that he senses clouding the edges of his consciousness. Before, these sorts of actions were experimental—not meant to induce pleasure or buzz his mind, but simply a perfunctory exploration of his own body. Yet now, it’s clearly evolved into him chasing the haze as though he’s nothing more than some slut. 

He hisses as he slips the waistband of his pants down with a tacky hand—the darkness enveloping him only makes the cold air sharp against his sensitive skin. 

The darkness also grants him reprieve; it reminds him that he’s alone in this moment, and no one will know of his sins come morning. 

An absence of light also leads to his other senses growing more profound. Neuroplasticity. The term refers to the nervous system and senses rewiring themselves due to various stimuli, such as losing a sense. 

Without sight, he can clearly hear the sticky shick-shick as he fucks into his fist. He can hear every shift of skin against skin—every lewd squelch when he pumps his hand downwards. He can hear the rustling of clothing as it adheres to the pre-cum spilling from his tip. He can hear each bitten groan as it leaves his lips, muffled against you. Or at least, your sweater. 

Most of all, he can hear the desperate drumming of his racing heart as it acclimates to his sudden hunger for ecstasy.

+8 unread messages

21-04-XXXX 

<I’ll get you a satanic… mechanic> 00:55 > We’re both shit at communicating  00:55 > I’m coming to the archives in half an hour to put back the files, since I know you’re probably awake. Might as well talk it out.   00:56 > If you’re sleeping I won’t bother you  00:57 > We’ll just figure it out tomorrow I guess 01:14 > You really should turn on your read receipts sometime 01:14 > I can’t tell if you’ve read these or not but I’ll assume you’ve seen them  01:14 > Since you’re usually still up and around at this time 01:15 > I’m almost done with writing up the Migrides report for the Society, so I’ll be there in like five to ten minutes? I’m turning right back if you’re asleep though 

His pulse damn near bursts out of his chests as he speeds the motions of his hands up: one clenched tight around himself, while the other draws crude circles into his hardened nipples. It’s not perfect, not by any means—it’s sloppy and undignified, so unlike how he is that he half-wonders what possessed him. 

But the rough, hurried pace allows him to dissociate from himself briefly. It’s not he who ravishes himself, but the careless approximation of you pressing hard against his weeping cock: jerking it this way and that as tears leak down his flushed cheeks. 

As he imagines you knelt between his legs, the debauchment—the shame—paints his cheeks a garish red. There’s no way to take it back; he’s already crossed a line he shouldn’t have, and he can’t stop himself from doing so. Every time he forces the image into the forgotten recesses of his mind, you’re there again: spreading his legs while you make a mess between them. 

He can’t stop. He can’t stop. You’re not allowed to stop, not when he’s almost trespassing the brink of pleasure. Hurriedly, he twists his hand—your hand—just so and his stomach heaves as though on a particularly rough starskiff. 

His skin feels feverish—on the very brink of delirium and madness—but there’s still something missing. 

More, his body begs. He’s so empty, and the feeling is so foreign he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Or, more accurately, he knows full well what to do, which is precisely why he’s so hesitant to even formulate the thoughts and go through the motions. 

Slowly, his fingers trail down the vertical dip in his stomach, past the valley of his waist, and nestle neatly between his spread legs. 

There are two crucial things that he’s unawares of, much to his detriment. One, that the time is precisely nineteen minutes past the system hour—the sand in the hourglass paves the path to your arrival. Two, the door to the archives isn’t nearly as soundproof as he thinks. Of course, he’s experienced this himself—hearing the bass thrum through the panels of your own door—but it’s not occurring to him that this applies to his own as well.

Instinctively, he muffles his whines and moans, just in case. But honestly, it’s hard to focus on cutting off his noises when he’s roughly jerking his palm while fucking himself on his fingers. 

It’s hard to focus on anything, except the faint trail of metal still lingering in the air. Human-loved liquor rarely weaves those blessed by Long into its viscous spell, yet somehow the merest whisper of your presence forces upon him unmatched drunkenness. 

And you’ll never know the effect you have on him. Not when he’s so painfully hard, not when he’s stuffing himself with his fingers and pretending it’s you. Sweat laves him tonight, and he is baptised in the filth of his own lust. 

“So close,” he slurs in his delirium. At least in the cover of the endless night, when the only light comes from the glow of data, his body is as honest as his thoughts. 

Which is to say, not very honest at all. 

There’s something missing—something so slight, yet profound enough to add a counterweight to his tipping into ecstasy. He can’t move past the precipice; blankness simply eludes him. Though, whenever he thinks of you, that path to hedonistic pleasure is that much clearer. 

The steady hum of data calibrating itself to Astral Express standards should be the primary sound washing over this enclosed space, but the low whir is delegated to the sidelines. He’s chanting your name in broken, garbled syllables; if it were any louder, there wouldn’t be any relative machine humming to speak of in the first place. 

In fact, the same word practically drowns out any other awareness he has of the environment. Maybe if he hadn’t been mindlessly spilling your name from his lips, he might’ve been just the tiniest bit luckier. 

Alas, Dan Heng’s soul is far less fortunate than one can imagine. 

This set of banal coincidences—a lack of soundproofing, his weakening senses, and his decision to turn his phone off for the night, him avoiding you—all culminate into his impending doom. 

In the first heartbeat following this revelation from fate, your footsteps slowly make their way from your room: feet sinking into plush carpet with a languorous sort of amble that doesn’t belie the neurotic twitch of your hands as you walk towards the person who’s avoided you successfully for however many days. In any other set of circumstances, he would’ve picked up on the tiniest of disturbances outside and nearby his door: down to the very buckles of your outfit clinking together, down to the creak in your boots as you shifted impatiently. 

In the second heartbeat, you pause outside the door—hand poised to knock in an awfully ironic mirror of him just a few months ago. 

How naive. If he saw this picture right now, he would’ve told himself to never board this Express. 

You pause outside the door, and it’s reached a point where the sounds escaping his parted lips are lulled. Or, more accurately, they escape with each exhale—natural as crying, to the point where one might think he’s having a particularly vivid nightmare. There’s nothing to suggest what’s actually going on.

This, therefore, is the last moment he has to not screw this up any further. 

But—

There is a very strong ‘but’.

—Dan Heng has already established his inaptitude for fortune. 

Had he seen you right now, he would’ve witnessed the turn in your shoulders as you accept the small noises as him just having a nightmare. Plausible explanation. There’s enough circumstantial evidence and midnight encounters to immediately come to that conclusion, then leave him to inevitably wake up on his own. 

However—however—you simply don’t turn away fast enough. Or, Dan Heng has the worst timing to ever exist. Maybe it’s the first reason for this calamity, maybe it’s both, but looking back on it, it was definitely the latter explanation. 

He’s so close. 

As he’s hastily sliding his hand up and down his weeping cock, while his fingers probe at unfamiliarity, your name slips from his mouth once more. These fateful sound waves ripple and poke past the wooden door, far enough to reach your ears and freeze your steps. 

“Dan Heng?”

He must’ve hallucinated it. But that’s your voice, so hushed and tender that his flesh throbs beneath his fingers. 

Shivers descend on his body—so profound his vision goes white for a brief moment—and thick ropes of cum spurt out onto his stomach. He’s so sensitive, but he needs so much more: rocking back onto his fingers while his slick walls clamp down onto them. 

“Ah,” he whines out, in tandem with the door opening. 

Finally. 

That grabs his attention, and his hips stutter to a grinding halt as his head turns to the side. Glossy eyes lined with unshed tears stare at the mirage to his right—it’s you, illuminated by the low glow of the data banks and the dim light in the background. 

No. 

You’re real. 

His breath hitches. Like a deer caught in headlights, he’s frozen; except in this scenario, it’s much worse than a quick hit-and-run. Dan Heng’s a mess right now. There’s globs of white pearled across his chest and stomach, there’s the fact that one hand is still cupping his hard dick, there’s still the image of the fingers of the other hand nestled deep between his legs. There’s the drool leaking from his parted lips; there’s his fucked-out, hazed expression complete with burning cheeks; and perhaps the most incriminating factor, there’s your sweatshirt still draped across his pillow.

Aeons. No amount of explanations will ever save him. It’s why he can’t bring himself to scramble to piece together his shredded dignity.

“Uh,” you begin intelligently. There’s some sadistic (wholly unconcerned with his own situation) part of him that notes that this is the first instance he’s seen of you being struck dumb like this. 

It’s dim enough that you need a moment to process it, but he watches your eyes adjust. You take in his half-naked state, exactly where his hands are still positioned, and finally, that damned sweatshirt. 

He swallows, but no words escape his mouth. And frighteningly enough, he can feel himself twitch against his cold palm. 

“I really wasn’t expecting this when I came to confront you about avoiding me,” you mutter, firmly looking elsewhere as he pulls the sheets so they cover his legs and sits upright. “Did I cause some crisis within you? Is your attraction to me the reason you’ve been so distant?”

“I’m not…” Distant? Avoidant? Attracted to you? 

“I’m not interested in my friend like that,” he replies thickly. “I just needed to sort myself—ah—out before I could continue that relationship.”

If this were anyone else, this conversation would’ve ended a few minutes ago. If he were any closer to you, he would’ve left this area as soon as possible. Maybe it’s because you’re so distant that it’s possible to keep talking like this, like he isn’t still getting off on your words and the texture of his sheets on his painfully hard dick. 

There’s the evidence of his shame on his cheeks—such a dark red he feels lightheaded. 

“Ah, right,” you nod in understanding. “Because I didn’t hear my name being called out, and that’s definitely not my jumper lying there. You’re not interested.”

“Exactly,” he lies. He can’t gauge what exactly you’re probing him for, but he knows that you’re offering a chance out of this mess. 

This was a mistake. He screwed up—letting his irrational mind entrance him with you. No doubt, this was all due to the strange dream he had back on Argo-I that catalysed this disaster. He’s not interested in you—his friend. 

“Dan Heng,” you breathe. “You’ve been evasive ever since we returned from the Argo.”

He stiffens, watching cautiously as you lean against the doorframe. 

“I’ll leave after you truthfully answer one question of mine.” Your cadence is casual enough that he can’t hear judgement nor disgust within. Just kick me out, he wants to say. If he could, he’d want to undergo rebirth this instant so he’d forget all about this. 

“Why aren’t you yelling at me?” he blurts out.

“Do you want me to yell at you?” you counter. “It’s natural behaviour for people, is it not, to release tension this way?”

And perhaps, it is your indifference that is the most galling facet of this situation. 

“What do you want to know?” he instead asks, rather coldly. Do anything other than look at me like that! But here you are, picking at your nails as if he’s not just bared his vulnerable body in your presence. 

It’s weird, so weird, and if the Masked Fools ever picked apart his memory and witnessed this scene… Well, he doesn’t even want to think about the numerous ways they’d publish it. This is perhaps the most humiliating and bizarre experience he’s ever had; worst of all, it appears completely one-sided. 

“Dan Heng.” You shake your head in disappointment. Slight mockery coats your tongue, and he flinches with the sudden heat in his abdomen. To think, you’ve never called his name in this realm before today—but the shame he’s experiencing has caused the sudden influx in your vocabulary. It’s hilariously, painfully ironic. “I was wondering why it was the Argo cluster in particular that triggered this.”

An ominous prelude to your question.

“You lied to me on the last day, didn’t you?”

The dream. The damned dream. You know. Somehow, you’re aware of what exactly it was that he’d dreamed. 

He holds his breath. 

“But I won’t be as cruel as to ask that just yet.” So what will you ask in its stead?

You shift until you’re at your full height, and he’s hyper aware of the piercing—knowing—glint in your eyes as you assess him. “Out of all your days at that bar, did you happen to spot the blinding red poster behind the counter?”

Now that you mention it, he does faintly recall the edge of crimson in the deep recesses of his memory. Mutely, he nods (after all, he doesn’t trust himself to not stick the final nail in his own coffin).

“Perfect,” you drawl sarcastically. “Then, can you tell me what was written on that poster?”

No. He finds that he can’t. And what is the reason for that? He doesn’t know. 

(He does know. For the same reason his blood chases the heaving gulps of oxygen, his gaze flitted only to you for that brief week—but that will go unacknowledged by him.)

“Archivist—” and it’s the first time you’ve used his title so callously, so bluntly. “—for someone whose job it is to collect information, you sure didn’t do a good job at knowing that overconsumption of anything is bad for your health.”

His fingers twitch. Shameful. How utterly shameful it is—how abhorrent—that even as your words cut through skin and flesh and reach tender marrow, his heart rate quickens with adrenaline. 

“Do remind me,” he mutters. Perhaps if he were a little wiser, he would’ve searched up the drink as soon as he left the Argo, ignoring the prickles of chagrin that pierced him as he thought about it. 

“Overconsumption of this particular drink can lead to migraines and hallucinations.” Yes, he faintly recalls the sound of those words as the bartender warned him about all those neatly lined coupe glasses. Just like a fool, he didn’t pay much heed to the warnings he heard as though it were mere alcohol. Easily handled, easily managed. Except it wasn’t. 

“That’s not all, is it?” For the first time, he can see your slight hesitation as you mull over the final consequence. 

“No. There’s also the ability to project into dreams that aren’t wholly your own.”

Oh. Oh. His mind reels. 

You were there, and you saw all of it. 

“You—” he cuts himself off as he notices you standing only a foot or so away, peering down at him as you reach for your sweater. Your scent invades his senses—so much more potent than the insignificant material bearing only traces of you. 

“I’ll be taking my leave.” You’re still leaning over him. The folds of your clothes brush just right past his naked torso, and he flinches back as though he’s been scalded by the proximity. “Thanks for confirming what I needed to know, friend.”

It happens as you’re beginning to move back. Unprompted, his hand reaches out to grab your wrist and you drop the sweater you were holding. 

Surprised, you stare at him with your lips parted. The distance is insignificant; in fact, he can feel the warm gusts of your breathing right on his collarbones. 

“So you do want me,” you comment smartly, and he averts his eyes to look anywhere but your laughing gaze. 

“I still don’t,” he mutters, but his voice quivers far too much to hold only truths. He’s my friend, and nothing else. 

“Then, should I go? Leave you to deal with this alone?” The words brush honey-sweet against raw skin—they brutally remind him of your position. You’re kneeling slightly on the futon, back bent a crude seventy degrees as you lean over his legs to grab your sweater once more. A rough palm is firmly planted by his side (he’s terribly conscious of the warmth it radiates) while the other is locked in his own grasp. 

“Are you offering?” he challenges: pure irreverence dulls his cadence. 

“If you ask nicely, I might help out my dear friend.” A crescent smile is present on your face; innocuous enough, but he can sense the sharpness just waiting to cut him. It was a mistake. Getting involved with the Express was a horrible mistake. Every time he inhales, he can smell those mandarins and the soapy scent of you—the metal, the caffeinated drinks, you. Even your terrible, doom-ridden smile has long turned sweet; the only danger it brings is the heated surge straight through his stomach. 

He’s willing to help. 

“And if I don’t ask nicely?” It’s not like him to be this brash, but Aeons know just how insane he’s feeling tonight. 

“Then I bid you good luck in whatever you were doing before,” you whisper, moving to disentangle your fist from his shaking fingers. 

And he admitted I’m just a friend too. 

Selfishly, he refuses to let your arm go. 

“Dan Heng?”

“If it’s just for tonight…” he exhales. After tonight, the regular back-and-forth would be reestablished, right? His bottom lip wobbles, and he catches your eyes flickering to the small motion. 

“You act like you’re doing me a favour,” you sneer. Is it normal for his pulse to accelerate as you look at him with such disdain? Is it normal for his heart to drop when you wrench yourself free of his grasp and stand to head to the door?

“Where are you going?” He hates how it sounds like he’s whining like some damn mutt, hates how hard he feels at the slightest hint of your displeasure, hates you for making him feel like this. 

“Locking the door,” you remark. “I’m not like you—so desperate that anyone can just walk in and see you with your legs spread.”

“Mmh,” he sighs out at each blunt syllable that leaves your cruel lips. He’s too far gone to feel shame about it; more accurately, you made him this way. Nothing’s in his head except you—his mind’s whirling as you kneel back down at his side, heart pounding desperately out of his chest. 

His eyes squeeze shut as you ghost closer; fear poisons his vessels as he moves back slightly. 

“No kissing,” he insists, since that will feel far too much like that dream. Something so intimate doesn’t belong here—his only goal is to break away from this night and resume his friendship as cleanly as possible. 

“Okay.” He can picture your raised brows as you wonder exactly what about a kiss is more amorous than the very act of intercourse. “Just the lips, or everywhere?”

Against his will, his face flushes a far deeper red than it had previously. Crimson is fading into your vision—as visible as his glossy, tear-lined eyes—and he knows you see it clearly. How can you not? After all, he can feel the heavy pressure of your gaze as you look directly at his face. Not his body, nor his clenched fists, but right at his face. Strangely, that feels far more intimate than anything else. 

“Just the lips,” he stammers. 

Aeons willing, his heart won’t stop anytime soon. While it feels like his very cells will collapse in on themselves with how hard his pulse thuds, he hopes they’ll continue enduring just a little bit longer. 

“Okay,” you breathe once more—except this time, he doesn’t hear it so much as feel it brush gently over his collarbone. Blooming like flowers, your mouth leaves a meadow behind on his clavicle; he can’t help but throw his head up to be closer to you, to allow you to mark him up more. 

Every place you suck a bruise into burns white-hot. He knows he should pragmatically stop you from claiming the base of his throat and above (if only to preserve his dignity when he faces the rest of the Express come morning) but he can’t bring himself to hide this: for one night, he lay in your arms. 

He knows that he should’ve limited you from placing your warm mouth anywhere. What will he do tomorrow? When he sees the blossoming violets seeping into his dermis in the morning, how will he look you in the eyes cordially while knowing it’s your fault? While he waits for his sore body to recover, how exactly will he maintain friendship?

“Don’t worry your pretty head so much,” you whisper, and oh, you must’ve seen the furrow in his brows while getting some air and admiring your handiwork in the dim light of data shelves. A palm splayed flat on his bare chest—warm, just like the man it’s attached to—pushes him firmly onto his futon once more, until his back hits his pillow and his elbows prop himself up. It’s a testament to your words: forget the turbulent thoughts, and just think about this moment. 

Pretty, he thinks drunkenly. He thinks I’m pretty. And though it’s, quite frankly, stupid to be flustered over that when there are plenty of better reasons to be flustered right now, he can’t help but squeeze his eyes shut even tighter at the word. 

Your mouth moves lower, teeth grazing the grooves of his abdomen—and his back arches into the sensation of soft lips. 

“Aeons— ah—” he moans as you lave your tongue across where the still-sticky rivulets of cum remain. To make matters worse, the rough pad of your thumb rubs callous circles against his nipple: sensitive from his earlier toying. But oh, it feels so much better than when he’d given them his amateur attention. He can’t help but shudder into the touch: so robotically precise he wonders whether you view people like your machines too. Does he do this with others as well?

The question creates a sickening, furious heat in his gut. One of his hands lifts and grips your shoulder, digging through the loose shirt you wear and into the firm skin beneath. 

He finally opens his eyes to look down at you—your brows slightly raised as you continue cleaning up the mess he made from the side, tongue darting out to catch every last drop—and his dick stiffens painfully from where it’s still covered. 

Salty, he thinks he hears you mutter to yourself. Maybe that’s the last straw, or maybe it’s you washing your tongue over your lips as if not to miss anything. Neither of those things matter—he needs you to expedite whatever you were going to do, now.

“Hurry– hurry up,” he gasps as your other hand brushes his hip bone, dangerously close to where the sheet covers. 

“So impolite,” you mock. Suddenly, that same hand wrenches the sheet down, and he lets out a groan as his naked flesh is bared to the cold air once more—he sees you don’t miss his reaction. “Not even a please.”

You’re the one who’s impolite, he thinks—ogling at him while you’re still fully clothed. 

“Sure have a lot of demands for someone who got caught calling out my name,” you reply, and it’s then he realises that maybe he didn’t think that at all. Still, with a fluid motion, you discard your shirt to the side and he’s left gazing at the expanse of your skin once more. Just like in that dream. 

“Now who’s ogling?” you continue quietly, but he’s much too fixated on seeing the bare flesh that unconsciously, his hand reaches back up to trace the plains of your shoulder. Then, his focus shifts as you reposition yourself so you’re practically straddling his legs, essentially trapping him under you. 

His tongue flickers out to wet his lips. 

Thankfully—thankfully—that’s not the thing you notice as your eyes finally trail down. 

“Mmh—” he whines as your calloused hand grasps his stiff cock. You’re gentler than he thought you’d be—though it’s precisely that sort of friction he’d been looking for in the first place. It’s almost cautious; you swipe your thumb across his leaking slit experimentally, and he can hear his own breathing become more rapid and shallow. 

“So pretty,” you murmur. “Just like the rest of you.”

He blinks, and suddenly he’s looking down to where your gaze lies: where your hand almost dwarfs his flesh, where his mushroom tip glistens from his earlier release, and where you’re slowly pumping it from shaft to base. 

Yes, he thinks, it is a pretty sight—but only because you’re in it too. 

He freezes. 

I can’t think that way. 

Dan Heng gasps as you remove your hand from him, shamelessly licking up the remaining liquid from your hand. The very sight causes his mind to go blank: body burning, stomach churning.  

“Why’d you stop—” he slurs his words, lids blinking slowly despite the scalding flush of adrenaline spreading through his limbs. “—not fair.”

Gently, you grab the hand that rests on your shoulder, pressing a small kiss to it while he hears the sound of a zipper. The sweet gesture forces his eyes open completely—if you moved any closer, you’d be able to hear his maddened heartbeat. 

“I’m not stopping,” you assure him. Warm fingers easily thread through his, and he gasps as your dick presses against his. His teary pupils can’t bear to look down—feel how you’re rubbing the pieces of flesh together in a dizzying rhythm.

Just like clockwork, he presses his freehand to the back of yours: stuck together in perpetual motion. He can hear the soft shick-shick as you move your palm up and down; feel the heat of your skin as it radiates into his own cold hands; see the faint smile as you stare at him beneath you. 

It feels so good—and normally, he’d never give in to the facetious pleasure that waits to slit his throat while he’s in its tender embrace. 

Pressing his lips together, he removes his hands from yours and loops them around your neck. If he feels closely, he can sense the steady race of your pulse—something that belies the surprise you hide in your languid expression. Like this, your body is forced closer to his (or more precisely, his body is forced closer to yours). 

You sigh out as his nails dig into your fragile human flesh; he’d think you were in pain had it not been for the small exhales you’d let out as you sped up your pace. When you hiss out—breathing shallow from him, from the man cursed to be Dan Heng—he can’t help but throb in your hold. 

He’s had that effect on you. Not anyone else, not those people pressed against you in the club who wanted your fragments, but him. 

“So infuriating,” you grind out with gritted teeth. He buries his face in the valley between neck and shoulder, breathing in the soapy scent from the juncture as your hands become harsher. Rougher. 

Dan Heng occupies his loud mouth by suckling right onto your neck—stealing his breath away while the pleasure builds up in the pit of his stomach. 

You lean back slightly, and suddenly the hand that was propping your weight up firmly grabs the side of his waist—and he thinks he can see the stars within the confines of these four walls. You notice—of course you do—the ragged panting coming from him, and he can see the grin forming on your face in his mind. 

How shameful. 

He stares back with crescent eyes and dark red cheeks lining them. 

“Pervert.” Two syllables. Two syllables, accompanied by a harsh squeeze of his side, before he comes undone. Arching into you with a choked cry, more strings of cum spurt from his tip: coating his stomach and yours with an unmistakable affirmation of your words. No, word (singular), because for whatever Aeon-forsaken reason, his body chose in particular to respond to your insult. 

Spit connects his mouth to your skin—face still in your shoulder as if to hide from you. His chest rises and falls rapidly: tits pressed against your own chest as he whines with the overstimulation. 

It’s no good. Your hands keep moving, and he’s still so painfully hard he can barely breathe. 

“‘M– I’m not,” he garbles, even as you poke at the sticky liquid dripping from his sides. 

“Are too,” you murmur, but the teasing doesn’t comfort him the way he thought it would. No, tomorrow when your regular back-and-forth is reestablished, he’ll only think of this night—how you feel on him, how well you touch his body. 

“Don’t stop,” he whimpers as you pause the movements that keep driving him to many brinks. 

“I’m not.” He’s putty under your hands as you twist his body with such deftness that he wonders where you get it from. Lugging around heavy machines certainly does leave you with some muscle there—he doesn’t realise the position he’s in until he feels your torso move against his plush ass. 

His chest presses down against the futon, face barely escaping the same fate as he turns it to the side to avoid suffocation. If he had to describe this situation, it would be humiliating—arched straight into the air with you kneading the soft expanse of flesh like it were fucking bread. 

It finally sets in. 

He’s about to get fucked by his closest friend in this cycle—and he hates how stiff the thought makes him. 

But surprisingly—since you’re so damn full of surprises—you instead part the sensitive flesh of his thighs and instead fill the gap there. He’s so empty, but in this position, your tip catches against his every time you drill into the space; that (begrudgingly) makes up for it. Somewhat. 

“Stop delaying it,” he groans as he feels more of his cum dribble down onto his sheets. What more do you want from him?

“Dan Heng,” you instead hover over him, grasping his waist like handlebars. He hates this so much—how easily you manoeuvre him, how good the pain of your nails feels against his touch-deprived skin. 

Most of all, he hates how depraved he feels—using his closest friend for this. 

“Has anyone ever told you how pretty your thighs are?” you groan above him, and he swears he can feel the vibrations right against his cock. “Or how gorgeous your waist is?”

It should be insulting. He’s a guard and archivist, not some object to ogle at under your heated gaze. Yet, contrary to his expectations, he can only suppress the violent urge to just cum on the spot from those words. You like his body. 

Not as a warrior, not as a weapon for the protection of the Luofu, but simply because he’s beautiful in your eyes. 

“No,” he replies through a breathy moan, clutching desperately at the shirt you discarded that’s lying right next to his face. You notice, of course. Nothing really escapes your sharp eyes, not even when it’s dark and he’s trying to hide. “I can’t say anyone has.”

“You’re so cute.” And when you say those three words, you press a quick kiss to the nape of his neck while one of your hands lazily jerks him off. 

However, that’s not what pushes him to the brink. It’s when you finish—hot streams dripping down his inner thighs as you let out a muffled groan right next to his ear. That’s when he shivers. That’s when his heart pulses extra loudly for one beat and his breath hitches. That’s when his body tightens and he spills once more onto his sheets. 

“Ah,” he gasps as he continues thrusting weakly into your hand. Your body’s heavy as you lean your forehead into his neck: warm breath tickling his nape and making his whole body shudder from the sensation. 

“Are— are you finally going to–” he’s cut off as you pull away from his thighs; scalding residue is left between them, and every time he shifts it squelches. 

“Man, your biology really is different.” He can feel you smile against his skin as you don’t let go of him. He’s practically caged in by your body at this point—but strangely, he doesn’t seem to mind. “Already eager to go?”

“Don’t avoid the question,” he grips the material of your shirt so tightly he can feel his nails dig into his palm. “Actually, don’t answer my question with a question of your own.”

“Still so vocal,” you shake your head slightly. Much too casually, you tighten your grip around him in a ring and he has to clamp his jaw shut so as to not let out any more wanton noises. He can’t give you the satisfaction of proving yourself right.

“You’re just too slow.” He doesn’t know why he’s provoking you. 

“You’re just too impatient,” you hiss. 

It’s worth it. It’s worth it when you nudge at his hole with your tip; worth it when you stretch him out just around the shaft. 

“Mmph— more,” he moans shamelessly at the burn. When he attempts to sink down further, your hands grip his waist in such a way that prevents him from moving an inch. It hurts, more than his fingers did—but he can’t help wanting to just take it. 

“You sure?” 

In one fell swoop, you bury yourself to the hilt in his tight hole—and he practically screams at the sudden intrusion. His body tightens almost immediately, yet the relief never comes when he feels your fingers tightly wrap around him to prevent release. 

Tears stream down his flushed cheeks, and he can clearly see the sadistic smile on your face as his glossy eyes meet yours—ruining his climax while there’s not a single speck of remorse in your ruthless gaze. 

“Fuck you–” he grits out. Stemming his tears is a futile attempt. 

“That’s your job,” you grin. Pulling out just so your tip remains, it doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure out what you’re going to next. “Remember, Dan Heng, patience is a virtue.”

He’s still reeling from the ruined orgasm when you slam into him again. The man swears he can feel you in his very throat as his chest tightens from the impact—and the broken moans he’s been suppressing come out once more at full volume. 

You don’t give him any time to adjust; rather, you set a pace so thorough that the gummy spot inside of him is hit every time. Still, there’s no mercy for him—your hand prevents his release on each occasion he gets close to it. 

He can feel your own body tense up. Maybe, as a gesture of goodwill, that’s when you finally let go of him and take hold of his waist once more. On his skin, your hand is tacky from a mixture of both you and him. 

Using both hands, you pull him into you just as your pelvis collides with his own flesh; with each plap of sticky skin against skin, he lets out a cut-off mewl that simply fades into the next. Over and over. 

This is a special form of madness. 

“Please, please—” he doesn’t even know what he’s asking for, only that it’s the only thing he can say at this moment. 

It seems this has some effect on you—he can feel your abdomen stiffen as you grit out a question. “Where do you want it?”

“Inside,” he breathes. Perhaps that’s your last straw. Perhaps his voice like this is too much for you; not even a minute later, he can feel searing rivulets seep deep into him—so warm and slippery. 

“Hng–” he moans out. The feeling’s too much. With a desperate sob, he’s finally allowed to cum too: an awful, mind-numbing sensation that wracks his whole body with ruined pleasure. His chest heaves up and down—milking you for all you’re worth as he continues to ride it out. If you look closely, you’d see his legs practically giving out as you loosen your grip on his waist ever-so-slightly. 

Your body looms over his trembling one, pressing kiss after kiss to his spine as he cries it out. 

Discordant breaths slowly dissipate into calmer ones—your comforting weight grounds him firmly to the present. 

When… did I start thinking that way?

As he’s soothed into stupor, he notices how your scorching palms slip from his sides and hold down his clenched fists—twining finger against finger in such a tender gesture he can feel his very shoulders deepen into carmine. 

You’re half-hard inside him, but he still needs so much more. When his sniffles die down, he notices you staring unabashedly at him: a mess, he’s sure, but he sees how enraptured you are. That, for some reason, makes the comment die down in his throat and replaces it with a poignant question. 

What do you think about me?

(But that’s not a question you should be asking your close friend, not when he’s firmly lodged within you with his chest pressed against your back.)

You rub circles against the slight veins that line the backs of his hands—rough shapes that somehow retain the essence of your mechanical certainty. It’s so fucking intimate he can’t help but feel his whole face burn: to the bitter point where he’s pressing it right against his tear-stained, sweat-stained pillow. 

“Want more,” he slurs, hissing sharply as you lean back far enough on your heels that you manage to seat him firmly in your lap. It’s so much deeper that he has to stifle his whines while you gaze at him with that annoyingly perceptive look. 

He’s reminded of your strength when you tug at his legs and manoeuvre him so he’s facing you, on your lap, while still stuffed full of you and his cum. There’s fat globs of white dripping from him in a frothy ring, but you clearly don’t care about any of that as you lean back on your palms impassively. 

“Your turn,” you prompt. 

And oh, as he feels himself get split apart at this angle, it’s a wonder he doesn’t fall apart at that instant. It hurts, relying on his legs to rise and fall on your dick—over and over—but by the Aeons he can’t stop his tears from being shed and his mouth from letting out some of his most embarrassing sounds. 

He’s so dizzy he almost collapses—but his hands digging into your trapezius muscles provides a tentative support to his shaky frame. 

“Jerk,” he gasps out as you palm him callously, meeting each bounce of his hips with your pelvis thrusting upwards. He can’t stop the whines that leave his spit-shined lips; every sticky skin-on-skin sound is accompanied by such. 

He can’t go as fast as he wants, nor can he go as high as he wants, but that allows him to observe the irritated glint in your eyes as you duck your head. 

“What are you— ah—” he whimpers as your teeth graze his puffy nipple; his back curves into an arch unconsciously to press his tits more to your face, and he can’t help but feel embarrassed at how easily his body responds to your motions. 

As your tongue laves wet circles round the areola, while your hand roughly strokes him and you fill him up so, so good, he clutches at your body for dear life when he feels that familiar feeling building up in his stomach. 

“So close,” he bites out, shuddering in your grasp as you bite lightly around the nipple. Combined with the twisting motion of your hands, and the irresistible smell of sweat and metal bleeding from your skin, it’s no surprise that he cums in glistening ropes: painting your skin once more. 

More tears leak from his eyes as you don’t slow down. Well, you do, but only to use the tight grip he still has on your shoulders to push him down so he’s under you once more. You resume just as quickly; by this point, it’s clear you’re chasing your own release. 

Beautiful, he thinks through hazy eyes. 

He glances to the side briefly, spotting the bag he vowed he’d carry out of here in time—then back at you. 

There’ll be more passengers. More people, vying for your attention like this. Will you treat them like this? Like friends, as he’s so aptly put it?

He pulls himself closer to you, watching as your eyes widen in brief surprise at the sudden proximity. 

“What’s wrong?” you murmur. “Want me to–”

You’re so considerate it makes him sick. Is this how you view friendship too?

Where is the boundary?

Gradually, you bring your hips to a slow roll as he continues staring directly at you. He almost whines at the loss of motion, but the dilated look in your pupils is enough to keep him sated. 

Need him. He squeezes tight around you; as soon as your eyelids flutter shut, he kisses you on the lips chastely—the brief contact of your lips against his is enough to almost make his eyes roll back in delight. 

Your eyes practically flinch: blown open in abject surprise as you stare at his bashful, flushed expression. He definitely can’t leave, but Aeons this attention makes him want to retreat back into himself. 

“Dan Heng,” you whisper. “What happened to your rule?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he mutters. “Not anymore.”

He’s not expecting you to immediately cup his face with a shaky hand, kissing him feverishly while you continue grinding against him languidly. The salt on your lips—the taste of himself—is enough to have him cum against you one last time in weak, watery spurts. 

He moans into your mouth: hands clutching at you for dear life while you shudder with your own climax. Never has he felt so spent; not even after hours-long battles. Sure, he’s felt cold detachment from the blood on his palms, but he’s burning at the moment. A veritable comet streaking right across the galaxies, made of all the cold ice he can imagine—but lit up as white-hot as a star. 

If he had to explain the feeling of prodding his tongue into your warm, wet mouth, it would most likely be the best sensation he’s ever experienced. He can’t stop: too drunk on your taste to think about anything else save you. 

When you have your best friend’s dick in you, it’s pretty hard to think of him as just a friend. 

“Not going anywhere,” he mumbles into the scalding skin of your neck. “I’ll stay right by your side.”

“What—changed your mind about us just being buddies?” you query mockingly, running your fingers into the valleys above his hips. This weight; it feels safe being caged in your arms like this, as though he’ll sleep without nightmares every night he’s entrapped like this. “Felt too good for a friends with benefits situation?”

“Shut up,” he huffs, weakly poking at your arm. “Don’t want you treating your other friends like this.”

He can feel you stifle your laugh. 

Perhaps, if he really looks at it, the standard TUL dialect definition of friendship applies to this situation. Mutual trust and affection. 

“Okay, okay,” you accede. There’s a fluttering sensation in his chest that accompanies his reddened cheeks, and it’s not due to the strenuous activities from a moment prior. “You’re mine, then.”

The clumsy framing somewhat fit at the beginning, but no longer. 

And if he really looks at it, he should reread the whole dictionary to make sure he doesn’t misunderstand any more of these concepts. 

　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　   ☾

[whumble-beeee]

hiiiiiii bee

im so fucling curious what the backstory is behind deeby and lana omg. meant to send a more coherent ask but post work braincel decrease is hitting me hard. also the dutch petname thing scared tge fuck out of me the first time.

ps this is also thw first time ive anon named myself

love - 🌿🚫 anon

God, mood about the post-work braincells. Also, I mean this with so much love, but it means so much to me that I managed to scare the shit out of you with that lol. He gets. Just so much worse. Let's just say everyone in my discord servers I introduce him to universally hate him with a passion. Get ready.

ALSO technically parts of Declan and Lana's backstory are giant spoilers, including what will be one of the bigger plot twists, so I can't tell you just yet. HOWEVER, what I can do is reiterate and highlight things I've already said in-story, plus what's gonna be revealed soon when I actually upload her character profile lol. All that under the cut.

So the first time you really first start hearing about Lana is in Chapter 7, where we also meet Vaughn for the first time. In that, we learn that 1. Declan and Lana are ex boyfriend and girlfriend. As in they actually used to date. 2. Lana is Declan's boss now in some capacity (and was the one to order Stan's kidnapping), and 3, Declan fkn hates Lana. So much more than he hates Vaughn.

In Chapter 8, we learn that 4. Vaughn and Lana are currently dating. That's not really too relevant, but it's really funny to me because their relationship is... something. I'm sure you can imagine. It's very mutually manipulative and they both know it, its awesome.

Anyway, then in Ch. 9, through Stan and Deeby's yelling match, you learn that Declan and Lana's relationship is complicated and he refuses to talk about it, but 5. he's kinda obligated to do whatever Lana says or face unspecified consequences.

Skip to Chapters 11 and 12, the ones with Marcus at the convenience store getting harassed, where we first meet Lana in person. We learn a lot about her, mainly that she 6. acts pretty bubbly and ditzy but is actually pretty smart, 7. is completely fine with SA, 8. is manipulative as hell, 9. feels safe enough to fuck with Declan's plans because despite how much we know Deeby to exert his will over others, he wont do shit to stop her. and 10. The big one: she was the one to give Declan his burn scars (with acid btw. everyone in the story has a weapon of choice, bc superhero lol. Lana is injectable poisons, gasses, acids, etc.). This is mostly just something you could assume, but when she gave him that burn scar, that was the turning point when Lana started manipulating Deeby.

Chapter 15, it's mostly just more of the same, Lana telling Deeby to keep Stan for longer, and Deeby can't argue back, he hates Lana but he has to do what she says, whatever.

So, to put it all together for you: Lana has Deeby under her thumb for some reason. She acts fake, she's manipulative, she's relatively smart, and she dated Declan which means she would get to know some of the more intimate details about him that she could blackmail him with. Also something happened between them where she literally burned him with acid, and now she is his boss (she's the CEO of Supramed Corp. actually, which would be revealed whenever I get around to posting her character profile lol) and makes him do bounty hunting jobs as well as basically whatever she wants. That's what we know so far.

You'll learn more about Lana as a person as well as the nature of their relationship as time goes on, and a lot of Declan's behavior has been partially shaped because of her. There's a lot more to her that hasn't been uncovered yet, although the context clues are all there in the story. I just pointed out the specific ones that relate to Deccy.

Also, one last thing to leave you with. I focus a lot on eye color in this story, it's always very important, it tells you a lot. Lana has bright blue, sky blue type eyes. Can you maybe think of another time I've described a character with eyes like that?

(also if you have any questions feel free to ask in another ask or the comments lol, idk if any of this is even comprehensible)

[callsign-rogueone]

ok but!! ive been reading some fw theories in the subreddit, and one that has a lot of diff opinions on is whether liam has a second signet or if he was wielding ice in that scene, especially since deigh’s name means ice. what are your thoughts, do you think it was just a mistake?? and what about liam in your universe?

[insert that clip of Cardi B going: “I’m glad you brung it up because I’ve been dying to talk about this for a minute”]

FOURTH WING AND IRON FLAME SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT. this ramble is not going to be proofread, nor supported with textual evidence, because I have a migraine. but if anyone wants to jump in with page numbers and quotes or things I missed / got wrong, please feel free! 

in short: I think it’s possible that Liam did have a second signet.

first, my only hangup on this theory: what are the odds of two riders in the same squad, in the same year, having the same signet (Ridoc and Liam)? I know some signets are more rare than others, but that’s still a very slim chance when there’s 20+ signets out there that we know of, and RY will probably come up with more (fr, I need to know what Garrick and Aaric's signets are. I hope they're something unique, that we haven't seen yet.) but here are a few arguments in favor of two-signet Liam:

one: I don’t think it was just “RY putting the wrong name”.

Ridoc wasn’t there at Resson, so RY would have to have confused the two boys entirely for it to be a mistake. besides them both being perfect little bbs and adoring fans of Violet, they’re not alike in appearance, dragon color, nor backstory -- what is Ridoc’s deal? like why did he want to become a rider? I need to know for my next gfverse chapter 😭 and the mistake would also have to slip past multiple rounds of editors and proofreaders as well, which is possible, but not probable.  and was Ridoc's signet even confirmed at that time? maybe this is me forgetting things, because ADHD, and it’s been a while since I’ve read FW in full, but the first time I remember hearing about Ridoc’s signet is in Iron Flame — when they’re at RSC and he’s like “I could force the locks open with ice”. that confused me at the time because I didn’t know about (or remember) his signet. and then it really clicked for me later, when he makes an ice pack for poor Brennan after Mira decks him lmao. is it mentioned earlier than that? when I search “ice” in my FW ebook it shows me every instance of “voice” and "nice" and “office” etc., too, and I'm not scrolling through all that 🙄 and neither of the reference sites I like to use have a page number listed for him getting his signet or the first time it’s mentioned. as another aside: look how gorgeous Ridoc is here. smash. EDIT TO ADD: it is mentioned in Fourth Wing, in one line on page 289 (as identified by @hockeyspiral23 - thank you!) but he doesn't actually use it. no wonder my adhd brain forgot about it when there were bigger issues at hand lol they also pointed out that it could still have been a mistake, if RY meant to have it be another one of the barely-mentioned marked riders who aren't part of the main gang, as ice-wielding is "a common signet" (FW p. 289), and there were a few students we never really met apart from Resson (including Masen and Soleil. RIP.) so it could have been one of them. another possible explanation that I just came up with for the mistake category -- unreliable narrator? the events of that day were incredibly distressing for Vi, and she literally gets poisoned and loses consciousness and doesn't wake up for three days (following the theory that FW and IF are her diary, written in an ancient language and translated by Jesinia later) so it could have been a blur / hard to remember and VIOLET could have gotten it wrong. If I were RY, and it was a genuine mistake, this is the explanation I would give lmao

two: Deigh meaning ice is another tally in the “not a mistake” column.

RY likes to have the dragons' names refer to their current rider's signets. (Tairn = thunder, Aimsir = weather...) but not all of them match (Tiene = fire, I think, and Mira makes shields.) Liam and the ice is only mentioned once, at Resson, but there are many characters who we don't see getting their signet -- really just Vi's sex-induced lightning, and a mention of Sawyer nearly killing someone in a swordfight on accident. and Sloane's siphoning, too. okay, maybe this isn't a great point. but I still want to hear how they figured these things out! especially Bodhi. and Xaden's second one. poor thing couldn't tell anyone, even his best friend, and had to figure out how to manage it entirely on his own (he had Sgaeyl, but that's it.) and maybe Liam didn’t realize he had the ice until Resson, and just started slinging icicles at the wyvern once he figured out that he could. though that's kinda unlikely, I guess, since he would have channeled in November or December and Resson wasn't until July... hm.

three: Deigh could have been the dragon of Liam's relative, giving him a second signet like Xaden has with Sgaeyl.

it’s my understanding that Liam, like all the marked ones (except my addition of Darling and her little sibs) were military kids, and his mom is mentioned in IF as being the one to weave the protection runes, which I believe requires a level of magic that only a rider would have. so he has at least one relative who was a rider, and therefore probably more. ngl, at first I thought it was mad suspicious that his parents were executed separately from everyone else’s, but then we didn’t meet them in Aretia, so I guess they really are dead. but how mf heartbreaking would it be if they were alive -- and the first time they see their son in a whole year of him being gone at Basgiath, it’s Xaden carrying his body into the fortress 😭 and Vi and X crying and apologizing to Mama Mairi for not being able to save him… I’M SO SORRY. IT JUST CAME TO ME, AND I HAD TO WRITE IT DOWN. if any FW writer wants to write that AU, go for it. we could all use another good cry. there seems to be a trend of the dragons who had Tyrrish riders purposely (and "illegally") bonding the descendants of their previous riders. - Xaden has a second signet from Sgaeyl as his grandfather was one of her former riders, allegedly, but he "didn't make it out of the quadrant"? so he had a kid (Fen, Xaden's dad?) before graduating? is that why Xaden mentions that his dad hated dragon riders in one of his letters to Vi? - and then I believe Imogen has the dragon of a relative, but not a direct relative, so she doesn't have a second signet, but the one she does have is just really strong? I feel like they glossed over that a little too quickly, and it remains unclear to me how that whole thing works. - and now maybe Liam, too?

I might tack more stuff on below as it comes to me, or RB with commentary, but I think that's all I've got for now.

but regardless of if it was a mistake or not, I’m not planning on putting it in Liam and Spark’s story — just his farsight, which is confirmed multiple times. if Spark believed in the gods, she’d thank them for not giving him something as destructive and deadly as her water, but Li’s still gonna have some issues with it, because I feel the need to project my issues onto my fave characters, and everyone loves some mild hurt/comfort that’s resolved with cuddles and a nap, right? 🥰

[fishsprout]

SPLATOON 3 NINTENDO DIRECT SIDE ORDER ITS HAPPENING ITS HAPPENING OH MY GOD

okay. analysis time

MY GIRL AAHHH SHES BACK!! okay SO. inkopolis square. but dead. its a bleached coral forest basically. there seems to be this sorta of,, electricity thing going on throughout the trailer that we can see on the lobby tower. overall looks dope as hell

WE HAVE THE FULL FIT!! FOR BOTH GENDERS!! okay first of all what are those ink tanks? sorta looks like those IV bags. same with the outfit,, the shoes sorta look like casts and the clothes look like some sort of sensory deprivation tank suit. a lot of medical vibes going on from the white color and everything. i love it

PEARL BOT! no questions about it, marina definitely made this for her (the wives :D) its interesting that pearl isn't actually there (marina isn't either, ill talk more about my theory later) but she can still talk to us through this robot. also love how marina added the sliding eyebrows to make it more expressive LMAO

i love how we can ride pearl bot as well. i think this will be an important feature, wonder if we can control her when this happens :O

okay what are these? i think the first one on the left is a mem cake, not really sure what the others are though

okay im seeing a theme of electricity and we can see in the background it sort of glitching, so i think side order might a simulation or something. the huge orb in the middle is definitely some fucked up zapfish (where you end the level im assuming), but its glitching and then a ton of the skeleton creatures come out of it

it looks like a ton of dead fish (dedf1sh...?),, we havent seen any octolings that you need to fight yet so these seem like the new enemies replacing them for side order. though i do wonder if we'll ever encounter an evil octoling (or inkling or salmonid, who knows) also are these an entire new species? or just some simulation creature

i also love how instead of ink, its the same electricity we've been seeing used to summon the weapons. this whole realms creation definitely has something to do with marina since its side order and its super technologically advanced

okay WOA numbers. definitely something marina would implement. i don't have much to say about this but yea, im loving the tech-y themes going on. it also seems like pearlbot is helping you fight these guys since she is shooting lasers at them. if she's sorta like small fry, i wonder if we will ever get to use her as a bomb, or if she is automatic

also its confirmed that the octoling is indeed agent 8! i was like 90% sure but im glad its definite

okay the biggest thing about this trailer, DEDF1SH!!!!!!!!!

"just another bystander who got sucked in." what sucked them in? my theory is that marina somehow trapped them in a simulation she made of a world thats orderly- maybe she made it after the final fest?or is this an already existing place? maybe some whirlpool was created after octo expansion and this place exists under inkopolis square?

SHE HAS A NAME!!! ACHT!!!! also i am so glad all of the fan theories were correct and she isn't evil, just still partially sanitized. i wonder if that will be a factor in the story? more dedf1sh lore?

her glasses are different! since she doesn't have the hypno shades anymore she prolly has much more awareness now since she isnt being brainwashed, though she is still sanitized- but i think the music is counteracting the effects of that since shes a dj and shes always wearing headphones

also why is her arm bandaged? what happened to her? also all this time i thought she was wearing a tshirt LMAO

i am a huge dedf1sh fan and i have quite a few theories about her, so i hope she is an important character in the story of side order and we get some backstory

ESPECIALLY ABOUT HER HISTORY WITH MARINA!! they are both djs so that probably is important, but i am really excited to learn more about them. i think marina mightve gone missing and we are looking for her too?

the color chips seem to be like, stat boosts? and also 8 started to gain color once you add them! its sorta like deep cut's colored fingers. wonder if this will be a new feature after the dlc! i loveee customization options

this seems to be the respawn animation which !?!?!? IS SO COOL!?!?!

i have no idea what this is but. oh my god. i am so excited for this. its happening.

[schmafs]

happy webcomic day! my comic, where the heart is, is still running over at @wthicomic and on comicfury! it's been a real joy to work on it so far and im very excited to keep going with it :)

that aside, here are some webcomics ive been enjoying the past few months! check em out, tell a friend–itll really make someones day!

dead or alive “Wanted alive for fraud, Clay is on the run. Blackbell is wanted dead for 13 counts of murder. The two meet in the town of Nowhere as they attempt to evade capture. When secrets from their pasts come back to haunt them, Blackbell and Clay soon find out their paths are more intertwined than they initially thought.”

(action, western)

dead or alive is a western with incredibly charming characters and a fun adventure overall! im so interested in some characters’ backstories (namely blackbell). i know it’s gonna go so hard…

arc of the spark “Bangaroo, a hot contender in the Spark Wrestling League, seeks to bring his lost family back together by wrestling his way to money and fame. The league has other plans for him however, as he unwittingly finds himself tangled up in its dubious, shady underbelly.”

(action, mystery)

a fun story that, to me, is reminiscent of saturday morning cartoons! great character designs and phenomenal action sequences.

it’s all a dream in the end “A catlike protagonist wakes up to find themselves asleep, and meets a colorful cast on their journey to waking up; a clown, some talking meat, a dream copy of her younger brother, and a rabbit that claims to be in the same never-ending-dream situation. Along the way, she learns to trust people she should, fear things she should fear, and maybe just enjoy the moment sometimes as she moves from dream to dream.”

(horror, surreal, marked tws for blood, violence, and strong language)

this comic is recently finished, and boy is it a neat time. the surreal (and, well. dreamlike) elements in it are really fun and well thought out and it’s a comic i keep meaning to reread so that i can see all the bits of foreshadowing the author laid out towards the beginning of the comic. great color schemes overall, too!

phantomarine “Phantomarine is a spooky-but-sweet fantasy webcomic about a ghostly princess and her perilous journey across a haunted sea, hoping to save her soul from a devious, shapeshifting death god known as the Red Tide King. Expect all manner of maritime mysteries – monstrous sea creatures, sacred lighthouses, strange afflictions, accursed marauders, feuding gods, grand sea battles, and a heaping helping of humor in-between!”

(fantasy, adventure)

im not quite sure where to begin with phantomarine because it’s just that good. bursting with heart and with beautiful scenes and color palettes overall. the worldbuilding in it is also very well thought out (particularly with regard to the religion of the world).

maladious “It’s 2002, and sixteen-year-old Julian Lewis has just debuted as the newest member of Olympos, America’s premiere superhero team. Admittedly, he's kind of terrible at his job–-but he’s got the heart of a hero and the best mentors he could ask for.

However, when a mission to intervene with a low-tier villain attack reveals that an old foe isn’t quite as dead as he’s supposed to be, Olympos must untangle a web of new enemies and old ghosts in what is undoubtedly their greatest challenge yet.”

(horror, action, thriller, rated 16+)

maladious is another comic with a charming art style, but i think the most interesting thing about it by far is the mystery the author is cultivating. i can tell they’re cooking something, but i don’t know what yet and i want to stick around to find out!

invincea and the warriors from hell “Orphaned and mute from infancy, Invincea has never had an easy life. But when what little she still has in a world that rejects her is violently torn away, she sets out to find justice.

Lost and wounded, she soon meets the mysterious bard Lon Quillow, and together they are catapulted into a cross-country string of adventures bringing them closer together as they learn about humanity, empathy, and the deep desire of all people to be understood and accepted.

What has been lost can be found again…”

(fantasy, adventure)

i absolutely adore invincea. the characters are all incredibly charming and the art style is delightful to look at and very reminiscent of cartoon saloon’s work! im so curious about where the story’s going to go next!

tiger, tiger “Tiger, Tiger is a story of a young noble lady, who steals her brother's identity and his ship to sail across the world to find love and adventure, and to write a book about her favourite subject: the fascinating life cycle of sea sponges!”

(fantasy, adventure)

this is one ive been reading for a while! once again, the characters are all very charming, likable, and authentic in a way i cant quite explain. absolutely gorgeous grayscale art in this one.

golden shrike “Something has shifted in the world. Sheltered deer twins, Runi and Nero, will get to see it all unfold.”

(fantasy, adventure)

the author consistently draws these beautiful natural scenes with equally beautiful colors, and i really enjoy the lore theyve put together about the deer world!

starbord: the journey home “In a part of the universe alien to them, all that Zachary Higgins and J.C. Coleman want is to get back to Earth. There's only one problem: nobody's ever heard of a planet called "Earth". Stuck with an experimental spacecraft and trapped in a galaxy teetering on the brink of total war, they'll turn to unlikely friends and face uncanny foes in their journey home.”

(action, science fiction, adventure)

going back to the idea of authentic characters, each and every character in starbord feels authentic to me. theyre all really well written and the main characters in particular feel like people i could meet in real life. the story is also compelling!

inhibit “Victor is a resident at a home for kids who haven't yet proven that they can control their powers. With a transfer only a few weeks away, he has one last chance to prove he is capable enough to go home to a normal life. But just when he most needs things to go smoothly, everything starts to fall apart, and he finds himself tangled in the plot of a mysterious arsonist…”

(science fiction, adventure)

this one’s got some great mysteries going on, and at the moment the plot is ramping up and i seriously cant wait to see what happens next! very likable characters here, too!

a d6 story “A tale of The UnKing. As a familiar horror infiltrates Folia City, a crew of unlikely heroes must fight to save their world as they know it..”

(horror, action, science fiction)

im not sure where to begin with this comic aside from the fact that the hook is absolutely crazy. you just have to trust me on this one.

milos from home “An anxious Torchic and classically amnesiac protagonist Eevee take a shot becoming a Rescue Team. Also something's screwy with the world at large, but one step at a time.”

(fantasy, fan fiction, adventure)

this one’s a pokemon mystery dungeon fancomic, and the author has some really interesting takes on pokemon culture and interpretations of what certain pokemon look like! i care so much about each character :,) except for one. i’ve never wanted to punt a rat (dedenne) into the sun so bad in my life.

first song “10 years ago, a private company opened a portal. It went wrong. Our material plane was smashed into the land of the dead; Limbo. Spoon was at Ground zero of the explosion but survived, and now he wanders the wasteland with his guitar and the demon that inhabits it - encountering ghosts and other survivors on a quest to return to his childhood home. At the same time he is hunted by a mysterious woman who is single-minded in her drive to find him.”

(science fiction, supernatural, post-apocalypse)

i just KNOW the author of this one is cooking something crazyy. we’re still pretty early on in the story, but i can feel it! the fact it’s in black and white also goes a long way in establishing the vibes of the whole thing.

inheritors “The setting is a post-apocalyptic, alternate Earth. Most of the planet was destroyed by a rogue AI program, called Apollo. However, one continent was able to be saved by the goddess Athena, and was able to evolve and adapt to urban life today. Now, Apollo is making his presence known within the existing cities, and new information is coming to light. Who created Apollo? Where are the gods, now? Most importantly, what does it mean to truly be human?

As if all of that wasn't enough pressure, Space-Time's grandson is having an identity crisis over the sudden realization that he's going to outlive everyone he's grown close to. So y'know, there's a whole existential crisis sub-plot along with the mystery surrounding Apollo, the gods, the world of Faerie, and some strange, alien newcomers in the city.”

(action, science fiction, modern fantasy, drama. marked tws for topics of religion, depression, self-harm, bullying, child abuse, attempted suicide, and struggles with identity)

this one’s also pretty early on in the story as well, but i was immediately captivated by the silly little drawings in the first couple pages. i also know the authors of this one are cooking very hard with the worldbuilding! definitely check this one out so youre here whenever things start getting wild!

[fictionfixations]

dick (nightwing) with aventurine's memories

(i dont know if this makes sense at all im tired)

ive been thinking of one of the batbros with memories of aventurine because. okay so yknow birdwatchers the discord server. i took a word cause its my birthday word (which is starting to be soon) but the original idea i had for it isnt getting the brainworks going so i wanted to mix it with my recent fixation which is aventurine (well actually hes starting to get a little old since ive been sitting on this idea for awhile but hHH)

but THEN i felt like i actually had a decent idea so now im sharing it to you because. i dunno. i dont really feel like i can do it justice? write it well??? (itd be my first hsr work LMFAO)

so uh. spoilers for dick's backstory, as well as 2.1 penacony. ALSO Danganronpa 2 because comparisons (also that anime with dr2 cast i dont remember the name)

aventurine as dick (slowly getting memories over time) (like child. kakavasha. teen/adult, aventurine.)

his luck has him notice the tampering of the wire whatever it was called that led to his parents death. he tries to tell them, they dont believe him. hes lucky enough to be the survivor. (think… you know that one oracle i think apollo blessed/cursed?? cant remember if it was first blessed but then something happened and then cursed or if it was at the same time. she could tell the future except no one would ever believe her.)

he has memories of space travel. of people outside in space. hes shocked to find theres no interaction of the IPC here, theres been no sign of life outside of this planet 'Earth' (..and was it really such a strange thought to imagine that 'aliens' could look just the same as them..? he wrinkled his nose at the ugly green thing with wide eyes. it was unnerving.)

he finds signs of a 'space enjoyers!' or whatever club and he goes and they're just like 'what are you talking about? its all just. fiction.. even we know that.'

i cant remember what year it takes place in and if the moon landing has happened yet (or what year hsr is in but i imagine far far in the future)

I dont really know how aventurine's luck works. and. i. honestly have not been paying too much attention throughout the story. my one exception was penacony, aventurine was the SOLE reason i paid attention in penacony ive only played up to 2.1 (thats not because he faked his death, its more that my recent-est fixation now is fanfiction because penacony has so much stuff going on it hurt my brain that i took a break) cause hes lucky but he gets. branded.. maybe its like nagito's but his is confusing too? (nagito is the ultimate lucky student in danganronpa 2, which is basically a talent that person has)

remember in the anime i think he got hit by a truck or something. or maybe that was after. he got hurt, went to like the vending machine, it dropped all of its drinks for him (so good luck), and then maybe it was after he got hit by a truck. uh

no it was a car (sorry im too used to truck-kun LMFAO) actually wait it was a truck somehow i only saw the head and thought 'huh thats a normal car' my dumbass

... truck.

ALSO i cant remember if he was trying to intentionally do something. but. i. remember he was trying to get like a medicine(???) something something. i dont remember why. but it was either he grabbed the wrong one or he grabbed the right one, EXCEPT he bumped into someone so their bags switched. so that meant

i REMEMBER NOW. OKAY OKAY. i think he grabbed the one that was meant to i think cause you. to. maybe. poop more? IDFK i forgot it was something that made someone ill probably. (cant remember his intention and if his luck turned him to the wrong one)

but so he bumped into someone and they switched bags accidentally. so she added what he got into the food mixture (which was meant to make them big and poofy) which made the judges not happy

meanwhile i think there was an enlarged animal...

dont ask me what happens after i have no clue if that was accurate since this is very edited but i couldn't find a better video but so he was trying to make his classmates ill i guess. but he got the wrong thing

to be fair the girl he bumped into and caused to fail was also kind of a bitch i think so i mean... (YEAH she is i went through the wiki)

so i kind of went off topic (i havent talked about danganronpa in so long)

maybe its like a set meter. like. experience a certain amount of bad luck and then get tremendously good luck (but you dont get to choose when probably)

which wouldnt be the same if aventurine had never lost? unless its like his big loss and trauma and er slavery (i feel like i should be using lighter words but i dont know lighter words for this kind of thing)

and for every win of a bet its using up very small amounts of luck (and thus his winning streak). (although probably not. i havent been able to see why hes fortunate in some places and unfortunate in others but that might be because i also haven't been thinking about it too hard)

in which case. i wonder. what was his intention in his 'death'? to permanently die, or to fake his death? cause it could drastically change the meaning.

cause yknow how nagito kermit sewer slide-d because he wanted the 'traitor' i think to win? (by basically making one of the other students be the one to have killed him so they wouldnt be able to win guessing who did it unless by pure chance) except his luck backfired on him and the one who ended up having killed him was the traitor, which WAS able to be figured out and thats how they survived

so was it something like that? where he wanted to die but his luck decided at that moment to just not? i wonder.

i havent even MADE it to penacony in game though (ive watched other ppl play) im like to the quest to where youre about to go to it but im too anxious to start. on the other hand i did the quest with topaz in jarilo(? Im SO BAD with names)

but i dont really know what the ipc does and if theyre well known. but im basing it off what topaz said (with a lot of skepticism cause aventurine)

so anyway thats my half-baked idea.

[odysseys-blood]

ive been having fun looking through the cards on the intimacy page and seeing what all i can understand/intepret from them and i just wanna ramble a bit about each so thats going under the cut (currently i have owyn, delos, xiel, mishe and heigl so just them until i get the others. also a little bit spoilery ofc)

no particular order so starting w/ mishe

his has the most obvious pieces i think. cityscape with a clock tower when he was raised in one after being taken in by his grandfather. books on shelves surrounding him because thats how he preferred to live etc etc. i think the stars in the inner circle could represent the sky that he loved to watch at the top of the tower during the evenings dotted with stars with everything still and calm. * i think what im most interested in is the outer ring (w/ the zodiac symbols) bc it looks a little like a magic circle and might be a nod to where he was originally from also hes got a very calm and neutral pose but i dont think theres much to glean from that

even with how much time has passed and heigl knowing his wife is dead and gone it still looks like hes waiting for her. which is funny considering her name which i have been ao sad about for days. If you didnt know, her name was Laica (which im sure is supposed to be said like laika. yknow the dog that was sent to space on a one way trip) and she left one day (on their anniversary no less) and didnt come home. but hes still there and he looks like hes thinking hard, probably about all the time he missed spending with her in favor of work. theres ofc also the gravestones at the bottom and the candles for a vigil. also did a quick look because i noticed the roses in his hand and scattered around the edges, and 3 (in his hand) can mean "i love you" and 8 (around the borders) can be a symbol of appreciation. also the roses in the border look like theyre on textile and from his backstory laica seemed to enjoy sewing and knitting.

ok from here i have a bit less to say/its a lot less concrete continuing:

owyn's looks the most peaceful to me tbh. out of all of the ones ive seen hes the only one thats smiling and seemingly content. what i will point out though are two things: one being the eagle, which im wondering is just a bird he might know or if its the one that was the messenger between helsinf and whoever it was that was warning him about people pursuing beastmen like owyn, and the other being the flowers in the border. unlike with heigl's theyre kind og hidden behind the border designs which feels to me like it represents his past with experimentation (and from what i can tell it was probably experiments eith the vialis curse). i wonder if he still thinks about it at all

i think the first thing i noticed is just how. empty delos' feels. like its still just as elaborate as the others so i dont mean that it LOOKS empty..but it FEELS like it is. despite how confidently he appears for the most part in the actual story here it looks like hes trying to hide. he doesn't want to be seen and i think its a mix of not wanting to take on his father's duty as the zarketh yet (mix of not feeling worthy of the role as well as feeling that if he takes it then its the same as writing off his father as dead which u see in the current event) plus feeling shame for not being the protector he swore he would be even if nothing that happened to his family is his fault. because at the end of the day he was supposed to be there for them no ifs ands or buts. and while the ocean is an important part of zarcove and a symbol of it i think you could also take it for the feeling of him drowning in his own insecurities and grief and lonliness

i forgot who i saw point it out or if it was on here or twit ill look late but i really didnt notice at first that he isnt smiling. i guess bc it looks so close to his actual sprite and he has a small smile there but it rly is a blink-and-you-miss-it detail i like. honestly to me his feels a bit empty like delos' just instead that "emptiness" is filled w/ a pretty background that screams opulence but like. it means little to him because thats just what he was expected to inherit. honestly while it has a church look to it (which i wouldnt understand much rn how that would fit in anyways i havent unlocked his last room) it does also remind me of a bird cage a little and i wonder if the floating pages have anything to do with all of the books and general entertainment he just couldn't have while growing up

[iworshipsappho]

HI YES I HAVE SOME CERES QUESTIONS OMG

1) what's her backstory?? 2) how is she with animals?/ any familiars? (i'm guessing there's some aquatic stuff involved?) 3) do they trust easily or are they cautious?? 4) are they comfortable with hugs and hair ruffles and physical touch in general? 5) are there any similarities between you and him???? 6) why did you chose the name ceres, which is very pretty and awesome btw? 😭🫶🏼🫶🏼

HI HELL YAEH :3!!!!

ok so here we goooo

hmm her backstory is what ive been working on for a while now, and yet i only have a few titbits here and there. one really cool thing i figured out a few weeks back is that he is ex-nobility, as in either she left nobility or was kicked out. this lil piece of information is evident in the way they absolutely loooove gold decor and jewellery. im still not sure why exactly they left, but i wanna get that sorted by this week >:)

they fucking loooove animals, to ceres, animals > human or like person interaction. her favourite animals are foxes :33 they've befriended a lot of foxes and she probably has names for each of them bc even tho he looks really stoic on the outside, he's a big softie on the inside but is just too scared to show it out. mmm also since they're an earth genasi, they live in the his world equivalent of a merge between a minecraft spruce biome and an oak biome, wait i think i have a picture lemme just check

^^^ they live on this island !!!!

3. mmm they used to be verrryyy trusting in their teens, but something happened that made her put up a hard exterior and protecc the guy inside :((

4. again, they used to be, but etc etc happened and he hasnt really had any intereaction with people in years almost, the closest he's come to that is with the gnome village nearby who view her as a deity (i just thought of this might not be canon in the future aka in 10 mins lmfao)

5. !!!!! MMM SO we used to be the exact same person but then ceres became more ceres than me, so while yes there are a lotta similarities, he's also become a character who isnt entirely me lmao. mmm. our similarities are probably that we both find comfort in our hobbies, writing for me and wood carving for her, and sometimes would prefer to not have any human interaction, yers in their case, also they used to be like reallllyyyy talkative in her teens but then Shit Happened

6. I LOVE TALKING ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME SO HELL YEAH THANKS FOR ASKING ME HEHE SO i always wanted ceres to be associated with the earth, so immediately i thought of like greek gods who were related to earthy shit, and my first thought was demeter right, but i didnt want it to be demeter bc demeter didnt fit the vibes i was going for sooooo i went hmm whats the roman version, guess what. it was ceres!!!!! AND THE COOL PART IS ceres is also the name of a dwarf planet, its my favourite one now sorry make-make, but like its so cool bc the name ceres combines 2 of my oldest obsessions, greek mythology from when i was 10 and space shit, which i was obsessed with till i was like 7 and still retain some of the knowledge i got from like boring through 3 encyclopedias on space lmao

💜

[seldaryne]

haven't finished the durge pt yet (idc about spoiling anything though that has 0 impact on me enjoying the game fdgh) but i've been thinking Thoughts.

edit okay as i was writing this i went ahead and just read up on the backstory so i could continue my thoughts in a coherent manner lmfao

(lots of info here, apparently ive gotten Very attached to her in the last uh. three weeks give or take. kinda sorta chronological?? idk it makes sense to me lmao)

--

velrith probably definitely only settled on that name in act 2. prior that she was just called whatever people drifted to if they needed her attention. & she didn't really care, having a void for memories will do that to a bitch, but it can make introductions awkward or give them a weird 'im too good to even give you my identity' energy. not super great when paired with someone who doesn't really emote or put a ton of effort into masking tonal inflections. she pointedly allowed other people to do more of the talking as a result for a while & would get roped into conversations that way.

i'd like to go ahead and tie in astarion's frequent use of pet names here to this too. he's got a goal here, and can't just drop a 'hey you' every time he's angling for something. it's easier to fill in the blanks that way & make sure it doesn't come across as cold and calculated as the seduction actually is for a time. of course, the mental gymnastics weren't necessary here. aside from the fact that she's extremely intense about her oath & therefore is legally obligated to send cazador straight to hell on sight, he'd also have the same luck with a low-effort, straightforward 'do you want to have sex?' the lines are... usually fine, never actually crossing boundaries, but she does find a lot of them to be really goddamn weird & unnecessary when the point could be made in less than 10 words.

picture a distraught-looking sighthound & you have the general idea of the face she makes when he lays it on thick. she's giving her best shot at a socially appropriate expression. it's not working.

also on names, she can't say for sure if that's who she was before or if she just pieced together syllables that sounded like Something from memory. again, doesn't really matter either way, since she's not in any hurry to reclaim her former self. it's fine.

ketheric felt straightforward. a tragic figure who she did extend an olive branch towards, but ultimately felt nothing when it came time to bring her blade down (besides, isobel seemed like she knew what she was talking about when velrith confessed [suddenly coming back into her room just to point-blank tell her about the desire to spill her blood] certain thoughts of violence towards the cleric, and it felt like the sort of assurance she should be trusting, right? more than any of her own emotions, anyway.)

gortash gives her the ick. like, there's no other way to describe that one. he actually probably still would even without all the history (and the fact that he needed to repent for what he'd done to karlach), but the slimy over-familiarity was really the nail in the coffin there. velrith isn't smooth nor particularly socially gifted, but she has a certain air of formal pride she carries herself with. acting like you know her better than she does herself (even if it may very well be the truth!) is so beyond an overstep of what she's able to function with. stripping away everything else, if he even tried to touch her casually on the shoulder, he would have been liable to lose that hand.

orin troubles her. for the obvious reasons, but she also just... pities her. almost. pre-tadpole, velrith was honestly relatively similar compared to her current personality. colder and more able to justify slaughter, sure, but still staunchly refusing to compromise her own feelings for social games. she understood how the game pieces moved when she watched other people, even when she was younger, but if asked to copy the same techniques, she was only ever able to bludgeon straight through in a line. consequently, people don't really care how strange you are if you're just that good at your job. orin made a one-sided rivalry out of someone who otherwise just regarded her as a peer in the same arena, and now sees her as someone who wouldn't have been able to take the chance at redemption even if it had been on the table. she was too far gone, unable to stand on her own or cope with the fact that she would always be lesser than someone who genuinely could not have cared less about standings. maybe if velrith had feigned some interest, there wouldn't have been so much hatred. or maybe there would have.

either way, she sees orin in a depressing light. someone who had nothing and no one but the prospect of power, and who crumbled as soon as that chance at power was taken away. to let her live would have been to co-sign on her projecting those emotions outwards. velrith isn't stupid and knows there's a good chance she might have gone the same way if she hadn't been lucky enough to receive her parasite. in another life, she thinks that maybe she could have found a connection, and they might have saved each other (either genuinely or in a twisted version of the word). this isn't a thought she shares with anyone. she thinks about that death and their interactions for a long time afterwards.

her 'normal' childhood sometimes comes to her in fleeting memories that disappear out of her periphery if she focuses too hard. she thinks she liked her parents, and they seemed like nice people from what she can semi-recall. but she can also tell that there's always just been something wrong with her if she compares herself to other people. many of these snippets feature her looking anywhere but at her parents' faces, unable to express herself verbally in a way they could understand (the words were right, they way she used them was... her own, shall we say?). something flipped at some point, and all of the sudden she would stare too much at them, not blinking or looking away at the right moments. they'd seemed to squirm a bit under this. they always seemed a bit sad when they looked at her, as if they'd loved her but she was never quite as they hoped she would be.

she had to be taught what to do during a hug as an older child instead of leaving her arms limp at her sides. she knows that.

she doesn't remember killing them. she doesn't remember how it would have felt to receive her first order or how she was unable to do anything but listen to the violent urges.

there's more guilt for not feeling much towards them than there is for the killing.

the staring hasn't shifted again. she knows she looks at people too hard and/or too long, looks at them dead in the eyes and studies their faces, but she can't help it. one, it's good to be aware and alert. two, looking away doesn't seem to be the answer either. at least this way they know she's paying attention, right?

she thinks she shouldn't care about these things, that it's so ridiculous coming from her blood-soaked past, laughable that she'd wonder what it meant to have people relax in your presence instead of becoming more visibly anxious. but she wants to be good, she really, really does. she wants to be able to join a group like everyone else, slipping seamlessly into their words and laughing how they laugh instead of her own (the faintest of smiles and a soft rush of air running past her lips, blink-and-you'll-miss-it laughter that may as well not exist outside of her head). she doesn't hate herself for these things, because she doesn't know how else to be, but she does wonder. she wants to know what it's like for these things to be easy. bhaal's favourite hadn't been blessed with charisma, apparently.

consequently, she has a very hard time now figuring out how to actually connect with anyone, or what it should feel like to have friends.

it made her somewhat uncomfortable in the beginning to be asked questions by these people on a regular basis. not even personal questions, just things to signal that she existed to them in some capacity. gale remembers when she'd wrinkled her nose at a certain seasoning, and leaves it off her plate when he makes dinner going forward. lae'zel likes how she fights and asks her questions on technique, asking to spar so she could better understand the answers. shadowheart thinks they're alike with similar holes in their memories, and seeks out her company because of it. she doesn't understand, and for a while she even feels a bit suffocated by it. exposure therapy is really the only remedy here.

initially there are some reasonable assumptions on whether she just dislikes them all that much, or if she thinks she's better than them, or some other nasty reason. it takes approximately two conversations with her for everyone to understand that's not the case. it's like speaking to someone who only every studied social behaviour from an incomplete textbook and was visibly struggling to fill in the gaps in real-time. is she scary? yes, a bit. does she stare at you Way too much when you're speaking to her (at her, really, because you will be carrying that conversation until she's gotten her footing)? also yes. but she's really earnestly trying to sort herself out for the sake of the people around her, brain twisting around itself to learn things that were as easy as breathing to most. and it's sort of sweet, in its own way.

over time, she stops simply caring about these people based on her code of ethics. she starts to remember things about them too, her love language starts to show itself through gift-giving at an absolutely glacial pace, but it's noticeable to literally everyone despite that. a small trinket picked up at the market matching shadowheart's usual taste is pressed into her hand with only a nod before velrith is turning on her heel and almost running away. a tome is thrust at wyll with such startling intensity that the kindness actually comes off as a bit of a threat, but she looks visibly relieved when he takes it with a smile. so on and so forth. every incident like this, every blunt display of 'i notice you. i think you would like this. i thought of you today,' is accompanied by a hasty exit. task accomplished, but now the script has run out, so she's doing the same. she also finds it hard to look at people once the exchange has taken place, and is pretty sure this is an affliction only she suffers from.

she's going to push through it anyway, even if it makes her skin feel like its trying to recoil off her bones.

it also comes out in the protection. again, it's expected as a paladin of devotion, but no one is quite prepared for the molten fury that burns in her eyes or the weight of her voice whenever ghosts from the past arise. not only has she sworn her protection to those suffering from harm (and names like orin, gortash, cazador, viconia & more absolutely qualify as those who cause harm), but it feels personal. acting as shield and guillotine is when velrith is truly in her element, standing tall and embodying the virtues laid out in her tenets.

she is fighting internally just as much as externally, pushing back against base instincts to continue her sworn oath. driving her sword through the flesh of the emperor is just as much about defeating him as it is proving to herself that she is still capable of goodness. if she falls here, she can at least die knowing she was dedicated to rebellion until her very last breath.

this does not mean that she actually registers it when people like her, though. in fact, once she pieces together what her true nature is (she hadn't wanted to kick that poor animal, or make a spectacle of that nice bard's corpse, or try to rip out astarion's throat as he slept--but she had done those things, and more, and what's worse, some of them don't even to her like they would anyone else) she's pretty sure that the unanimous, logical choice would be to put her at a distance.

so she braces, prepares, makes peace with returning to the status quo & starts pulling away before staging her little ted talk. jaheira catches her first, though, and it gets to her. she's not spoken much to the woman, but she's... incredibly understanding, actually. so much so that it leaves velrith with a profound ache in her chest when she rolls over and tries to sleep again (jaheira's insistence, and her promise to stand watch all night in case she lost control again). being around jaheira hurts like hell, but she still seeks her out after that incident. she looks at her kindly but doesn't treat her with any more fragility than before. she's good-humoured when answering question after question about bhaalspawn, and stays honest the whole time too. she seeks her out when she isolates as much as she can on the outside of camp, dropping a sack of potatoes at velrith's feet and sitting beside her so that they can peel them in easy silence.

she likes that the most. sometimes it feels like velrith's head is too full; not from the parasite or the echoes of a murderous god, but from--she's not sure, actually, but it makes thinking hard, and speech tends to take a temporary leave as well. no amount of coaxing makes a difference, it'll return when it decides to. that's the bad sort of silence, the type that other people feel like they should fix so that everyone can be comfortable again. except jaheira, who apparently can figure out what she needs before velrith can even process that question. and sometimes, she just needs to peel some potatoes for a bit.

standing before everyone else, she prepares for the logical choice of rejection again. instead, she's greeted with shrugs, support, sympathy, but overall--not much of a change. that's the part that sends her off, only pausing just long enough to take a breath before excusing herself to the surrounding woods. it hurts so damn much, being loved like this. she wonders if any technicalities in her oath actually require her to slay herself at this point, just based on the implications alone. they should be appalled. fearful. cold. and she'd wound herself up so much inside determining this to already be the only end to her confession. bare your soul, lose what you'd only started to ease into, return to your duty.

the other shoe never does drop, though. it's gone so catastrophically well that she can't even make the tears flow properly (she's only done it once before that she remembers, but that should be adequate). instead, her sobs are muffled gasps against her hands, choking on her own confusion as she sinks to the ground, shaking.

of course, this comes out after the "incident", in the underdark, which means astarion has already seen her cry precisely once of something that seemed to her a similar scale. he's got a better handle on it, he'd like to believe, and he can sense that he's being silently volunteered for the 'fetch our bhaalspawn' quest. she's not hard to find either, an ice-white tiefling amongst the greenery with her head hidden in her arms, folded in on herself like she's not worth the weight of her own bones. it's sad, and a little annoying, actually, because if she was to insist that he possessed worth like it was the most obvious fact in the world, like he was strange for not feeling the same way, why shouldn't that same sentiment extend in her direction.

of course, there's little he can say to soothe in a way that matters, he's not going to make that mistake again, but he's at least able to bring her up for air. yes my love, perhaps it is foolish and unwise for any of us to stay around something so dangerous, but that argument can be made in many directions, not just yours. you would be the first among us to dismiss those very notions if they were coming from someone else, and have done so--multiple times, may i add--as bhaalspawn. if there's upset about the reveal, i'm confident that it's more to do with how you feel than anything else.

and really, what's she supposed to do with that aside from break even more (from relief, maybe? tension and fear of rejection that she hadn't known how to recognize, hadn't known she was holding onto? the understanding that this is not just from him, but on behalf of everyone else too?) and crumble into him.

against all odds, she is worthy of loving. despite her bloodline and her personal shortcomings, she is worthy of that much.

nothing in half-measures, as most paladins tend to be. does she remember when or why or even how she took the oath? not even a bit. but it's the only thing in her head when she wakes up on the mind flayer ship, the sole thing she's sure of, the only guiding direction she has. it should be enough to understand right and wrong, but it isn't for her. following the oath is a choice, something she can steady herself on when nothing else makes sense. devotion to her cause of protection, restoring some of the balance in the world that she lost before orin killed her. maybe that was why she lived; something needed her to right some of her sins before death arrived. or maybe a divine power was looking for someone who wouldn't be missed if they were lost in stopping the ithilids.

whatever it is, she does everything in her power to stick to it. until, of course, life happens (as it tends to) and she does something in the underdark. what did she do? she doesn't know, because she thought she was helping--that myconid was going to betray the colony that took him in when he lost all others. she raised her sword when it was clear a scolding wouldn't change his mind. and then... the sinking feeling that something was wrong.

something was missing. the only part of her that felt like it was anything was gone, and for the first time (maybe ever?) she gets emotional. there's no anchor anymore, no calming guide of tenets to follow.

the oathbreaker knight will find her later, she knows. at camp, she's distraught, and the little bit she dared interact goes out the window entirely. there's nothing anyone could actually say that would help, anyway. this does not stop astarion from trying.

glib as ever, were she in a more normal headspace she would have seen the dismissive comment for the hand-waving attempt at comfort it was. he probably knows there's nothing he can actually say to bring her down, but surely a joke (meant to reassure that she would be fine regardless, whether the oath stayed broken or was re-taken, she was competent on the field and he at least trusted her that much) would be alright?

it was not.

for all that he carried, he could not--did not--understand. of course he could be cavalier about it; despite all that was taken from him, he still had his own gods-damned name. he knew who he was, wasn't scrambling to put together fragments of his own ghost just to make some unimpressive small talk like she was. she has not yet chosen her name at this point, and that oath is where she begins & ends as a person.

he's silent when she snaps, unexpected. like a cornered animal about to tear its own leg out of a trap, daring anyone to come closer to 'help' so that they too can be maimed. a total loss for words, even when she stalks off to keep herself from acting out even further (who knows how prone she would be to violence now? not her!), raising her voice for the first time at him in pure grief.

he doesn't really get it, but he understand more in the middle of all that. the pieces click together in his mind, working themselves out during the berating. the gods never answered his cries, and so his outlook remained fairly bleak on the whole pantheon. paladins occupied a space at the opposite end of the spectrum, and he'd assumed that her more uptight habits were an offshoot from that (it's not like she gave him a ton to work with, either. he did his best from what he was allowed to see). for her, there may as well have been no gods involved in any capacity. it was simply the thing that kept her from fracturing entirely, now gone thanks to a misunderstood line in the agreement.

she still refuses to speak to him, even after she's begged for the oath back--she'll be good this time, really, she'll be good, she promises, it won't happen again, please--and received it successfully. she's not talking much to anyone, feeling both too exhausted and over-sensitive to even contemplate that. his apology isn't... good, exactly. but it's honest and that's really all she gives a shit about. things are still weird and cold for a bit, manifesting in a physical distance & reinforcing just how off his initial read on her was. but it's her first real brush with interpersonal conflict, so learning curves are expected. time and circumstance eventually help things settle, with there being bigger things to worry about.

she's quiet during sex. responsive and hyper-aware of her body, definitely, but still restrained. she enjoys the act, however, despite the lack of volume, and this shows through a readiness to explore and feel things. the ability to feel physical pleasure is something that at least seems to be something she has in common with most people. but she's overly permissive too, sometimes uncomfortably so; she's simply not attached enough to her body to have real concerns or strong preferences. at first glance, this seems to be deference, the need to be agreeable in every situation lest she tip the scales too much in her own direction.

he puts his finger on that after the third encounter, and finds himself taking a break from her for a while after as a result (once again, an act that she's absolutely fine with--god, has the thought of challenging him ever even crossed her mind in this department?). Further observation, however, reveals something else. her actions are exploratory. experimental. there's no frame of reference, she needs to establish preferences all over again for this version of herself. in fact, he sees that this extends to other tasks people ask of her as well. every action or accompaniment is met with the same reserved curiosity, considering what's being asked of her before ultimately deciding to try something new. perhaps that was why he felt like he was being intensely studied if he squints.

there's no doubt that she does see him. but she only sees enough to know that she lacks the connections to actually do anything with that. an unbalanced, vexing sort of safety net. (still, there was probably no one better for him to glue himself to than a paladin, and he tells himself that's why he spends so long trying to figure her out. because surely, her motivations can't be as obviously honest as they come across--can they?)

it's only after she tells him on the name she's privately decided to give herself (private for now, since everyone else will be informed in the morning) that he starts to realize just how much he enjoys kissing her. she's not nearly as practiced as he is, but gods, there's such a single-mindedness to the kisses it actually leaves him dizzy. her focus is so all-encompassing, the world around them may as well have been unravelling at its seams and she still wouldn't break contact. chasing pleasure but holding back just enough to keep her head above the water, prolonging the act as much as she can. he's been kissed before. many times, actually, but not like this.

there is... so much disappointment when rejecting bhaal doesn't actually change anything fundamental in her. on one hand, that really does mean that it's been her personality the entire time. that the good choices she made were hers, and they were worth fighting for.

on the other hand, fostering even that small seed of hope that she might become less of herself and more like other people had been a dangerous game. the distance remains, along with the lack of understanding and knowledge that some things would always be more hard-won for her, while others would simply be entirely beyond her reach. knowing this logically is one thing. accepting it is... entirely different. it will take time, and she will at least allow herself as much so as to properly grieve a version of herself whose body knew how to laugh freely.

she'll be okay.

[feather-is-a-bad-car]

im curious about everyones predictions for future chapters, how you think stories will be adapted from the source material in the books. (or if you havent read any of the books the sinners are based on a want to see your wild guesses!)

(my predictions under the cut, i havent read any after metamorphasis yet but im familiar with basic plots and stuff? i may get the themes or something of each book drastically wrong but honestly thats the fun of this)

canto V- ishmael meets up with all her old sailing friends!! (the ones who arent dead at least, maybe queequeg mets up with her and tells her about the tragic fates of the others), maybe she fights the whale? maybe she learns to accept that she never needed to kill that whale in the first place. either way, she wont be so haunted by that darn whale after this chapter. i saw someone say that her mili song should be a sea shanty nd i agree WHOLEHEARTEDLY. it will be a sea shanty nd it will be a BANGER.

canto VI- catherine appearance followed by heathcliff rampage, i have to assume theyll be very protective of each other, his mili song will start loud and angry then maybe get calmer in the second half

canto VII- don quixote isnt her real name. WINDMILL THEMED ABNORMALITIES. sancho appearance? spanish in the mili song? (unlikely but i can dream)

canto VIII- (i know next to nothing about his book) a visit to hong lu's family mansion, the sinners get to enjoy luxury for a few days! maybe theyll get to meet his siblings, maybe one of his siblings will be the main enemy? someone (dante, donqi or hong lu himself) finds out the secret behind how his family became so so rich and it starts the conflict of the chapter over it being evil (theres no way any rich peraon in THE CITY isnt doing something unspeakably bad, especially with how much of that sort of commentary ia in project moon games.) mili song has verses/phrases in chinese (much more likely than spanish)

canto IX- ryoshu is revealed to have been a big name artist, maybe famous enough that another sinner had heard of her nd gets to be shocked by finding out. shes also revealed to have a daughter who died, everyone is super shocked over how she could have a kid, maybe she learns over the course of the dungeon how to grieve for her instead of just smoking nd isolating herself to cope. after this shes more social with the other sinners

canto X- he killed someone, the other sinners find out. they all kill people daily for their job or in their backstory but its somehow different and (some of them) freak out over it. he may be a wanted criminal in the area they visit?

canto XI- we see all the war crimes outis committed, ive seen someone else predict that outis would betray dante, which i think would be interesting with how much she sucks up to them! we know that she doesnt actually think very highly of them from when she slips up a few times, but shes so militant that she has to respect their higher rank.

canto XII- either this will be the final one, or dante (maybe vergilius too) will have one afterwards. either way, a lot of mysteries will be revealed here. what the golden boughs do, how faust and vergilius met, why limbus company was founded, what mephistopheles even is and how faust built it, lots of secrets!

[kaibutsushidousha]

Why do you think the Proto Merlin we see is Fou in disguise? I haven't been following this theory very closely so I'm interested in the arguments people have in favor of this

It all started in Lilim Harlot when Sodom's called Merlin "Beast of the Planet". This term has only been used before twice, once in the old material books and once in Mash profiles, both times referring directly and unambiguously to Fou.

Her reaction to being called that is, quote: "Oops, don't say another word. I haven't told anyone about this yet.".

From that point beyond, it was a look back at all of Proto Merlin's previous content to see what changes with the new "she might be Fou lens". The interesting findings there were:

First Hassan's main criticism of her in Lilim Harlot comes from her discarding her crown out of a personal whim. This was initially taken as her refusing to take the Grand Caster crown, but under the Fou lens, we can assume it refers to Fou abandoning the Beast IV horns for Mash's sake.

Fou has a not-yet-explained ability to know what happens in other timelines, being aware of Tsukihime's Primate Murder. Meanwhile, Proto Merlin takes part in Arcade's plot because she knew this was a timeline where Cath Palug wasn't in Chaldea.

Proto Merlin's Arcade profile notes that she switches her personal pronoun to ボク in her more personal moments. That's a thing male Merlin also does, but ボク is an informal masculine pronoun, so it makes perfect sense for him to switch to it when dropping the formalities. Proto Merlin going masculine when she drops the mask was vaguely suspicious, and it's even more so under this perspective because her "mask dropped" way of talking is identical to Fou's.

Kawasumi debuted as Fou's voice before she debuted as Proto Merlin's voice. Not a real clue but a curious piece of trivia.

Weight: 20 kg is still very weird but significantly less weird than before.

Hero Creation and Dreamlike Charisma are ranked lower, which could be because they’re imitations.

Mordred in Arcade feels the need to triple-check if Proto Merlin really is Merlin, although this could be just due to Merlin suddenly being a woman.

The main difference between Merlins as emphasized in her Arcade profile is that Proto Merlin isn't locked in the tower like Merlin. Getting out of the tower is a main point of Fou's backstory.

In Arctic Summerworld, Fou is always keeping watch on Lady Avalon because he doesn't know what she came there for, but he's consistently less hostile to her than he is to male Merlin.

And she came to mobile as Lady Avalon, but her Class is Pretender, meaning she doesn't come with her True Name registered. This is an intentional choice on her part and a secret she successfully keeps hidden. Unlike Oberon, Faker, or Tenochtitlan, she never gets her True Name Reveal scene so Chaldea is officially unaware of who she actually is. The Merlin reveal could have happened in her debut event, but since it didn't, Merlin is now the anti-climatic answer. It isn't worth holding the secret months for that.

[astronomical-bagel]

Whats your monkie kid au about?

YIPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEE IM SO GLAD YOU ASKED!!!!! IVE BEEN WORKING ON A POKEMON AU!!!!!!!

(idk when the cutoff will be, but warning for a very long infodump XD)

okay listen i cannot emphasize how much thought has been put into this, i have backstories for each of the pokemon, i know how all of them met their trainers, ive designated the serious trainers with a specific type of pokemon they train, like. listen to me. i have put SO much thought into this and how pokemon would fit into the lmk universe and canon. im going insane.

anyways, heres some of the pokemon/trainer lineups. ive done..... a large majority of the important cast? i havent gone into azure's whole group, but i think thats all im missing. i've done a lot.

ANYWAYS take the traffic light trio, they were the first ones i did!

And heres how they met each pokemon! (I havent named any of them yet LMAO, but i will!)

MK

No specialty

Whimsicott

it flew into his face on a breeze when he was a kid (like ten), he begged to keep it. It evolves before canon starts while theyre playing together :)

Monferno

found during “A hero is born”, when climbing down the mountain (it kind of just followed him for a while until he noticed it and went :D!!). it evolved in s4 “the emperor’s wrath” against azure (when he fully accepted his monkey form)

Kubfu 

“Impossible delivery”, He runs into it (literally) on the way home down the mountain, and he keeps it bc why not

Mei

Dragon/Electric

Rayquaza 

Passed down through the family, kinda fucks off until mei calls upon it (mei can still turn into a dragon, needs to learn to work together with him and do JOINT ATTACKS)

Vibrava

Chosen at a store with her parents before canon, evolved when she used the dragon blade

Boltund

“The great wall race”, evolved during the training in s2 “this is the end”

Pawmi

Found in s3 special “this imperfect world” during training with redson, helped her conceptualize the storing and release of energy of the Samadhi fire and stuff

Red Son

Fire

Ponyta

Chosen w parents as a child

Tauros

Inherited from his father after he was trapped (the other pokemon didnt make it)

Salandit

Caught before his father was released, found in volcano 

Sizzlepede

Found in volcano cave (different one, still before dbk was released) and it tried to eat him and he was Delighted

Fletchling 

Found sometime around “revenge of the spider queen”. It was injured (fell out of nest? Hurt leg? hmm) but still tried to attack him and defend its territory, so he deemed it strong enough to become his teammate 

okay okay some notes:

Pigsy didn't want MK having too many pokemon, partially because of mess/healthcode violations, and also because of money reasons. he had just the one pokemon the for the majority of his life, and after 'A Hero Is Born' pigsy was 1. so glad that MK was alive that he didn't care and 2. mk promised to keep it away from the kitchen and pay for all of its needs itself and ect ect. it was very much a 'PLEAAAASEEE can I keep it 🥺' kind of thing. The Kubfu mainly stays at the training ground (its very dedicated), so that wasn't an issue.

For Mei, she chose the trapinch (the preevolution of the vibrava) at the pokemon equivalent of a pet store bc its a tradition in the family to get a dragon-type pokemon when they turn twelve. her parents showed her a bunch of options and she thought the final evolution looked epic. The Boltund is known for chasing fast things, including vehicles. it chased her until the finish line and she was delighted to have attracted such a fast pokemon. the pawmi was just a little guy that she was secretly messing with instead of paying attention to red son XD

okay there's not too much extrapolation i have to go into for red son, BUT. the fact that none of his pokemon have evolved was/is a major sore point for him, and his parents often were critical on whether they (and by proxy, red son) were strong enough. Now he and his parents are more normal about it, and ironically its the lack of stress and pressure that's going to make it easy for them to evolve now. smth smth friendship is an important part of a pokemon's health, its like a whole character arc for him.

AND THATS NOT ALL. I wanted to go over like... specifically why i chose some of these pokemon!! like, for MK, his pokemon represent different parts of him, like, narratively!

the whimscott is playful, loves pranks, and its kind of a metaphor for the more childish side of him? Which is why i made it his first pokemon! (I also chose it because it reminded me of the monkey kings cloud, which i feel like his younger self would have wanted sooo bad LMAO)

the monferno is obviously related to his connection to the monkey king, but most importantly it hangs in packs, and THEREFORE represents his love for his friends bc obviously that's a huge part of him, yk? (I also really like this pokemon for him bc it matches his color scheme XD)

And for the Kubfu, the episode it was found on is very important! the kubfu is known for how dedicated it is to its training both its body and its mind, as well as its "fighting spirit". Sooo obviously it represents MK's sense of duty and his want to train to be better! He and his kubfu train a LOT in season 2, when he's trying to prepare for the LBD. (Fun Fact: this was almost Wukong's pokemon, but i couldnt stop drawing connections to MK when looking at it because its got the little bandana and everything, and i thought it was too similar to him to be wukongs pokemon. i mean, if he already mentored that pokemon, that would make the fact that he's mentoring MK way less meaningful, yk?)

OKAY OKAY IM FINALLY DONE, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE ASK AND LETTING ME RAMBLE. PLEASE SEND ME MORE ASKS, I HAVE PUT JUST AS MUCH THOUGHT INTO EVERY OTHER CHARACTER'S POKEMON, AND I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY ON EVERYTHING. I AM NOT EXAGERATING IN THE SLIGHTEST MY GOOGLE DOCS FOR THIS IS ALREADY SO LARGE. IF YOU WANT YOU CAN ASK FOR SPECIFIC CHARACTERS OR GROUPS AND I CAN GIVE YOU ALL THE POKEMON THEY HAVE AND STUFF.

[kawaii-10105]

Its my city now ive been thinking about oc dynamics for the other brothers. I decided toto recycle some old fandom ocs from my preteen years bc its both funny and thematically appropriate.

The only new ones are like wendy and suzi. Suzi is sorta not new but so completely revamped and wasn’t ever really developed anyways.

I have to figure out like actual names for two bc they’ve only gone by nicknames. I also thought it would be fun to have more cartoonish/surreal characters instead of just regular people.

Kitti (nickname)- when i made her, she originally was a Boy Scout and kinda based off of spongebob. Now ive changed her to like a big sister like character except she really ISN’T. She’s the younger sister of twins, neither the brain or muscle behind their duo. She’s sweet, dense, and a stickler for order. She’s a mycologist and likes to hang out in the woods. She is dating oso im still working on their dynamic but theyre definitely childhood friends who find each other again in adulthood oso confuses her for her twin sister and is like: whoa, so you decided to become a girl!! Thats so cool can i see ur boobs since we’re old friends?? She meets oso thru totty who shes friends with bc theyre both girls.

Wendy - basically a small, loud little henchman or hypeman. She’s so so small in height and so round. She looks like a shark, has very pointy teeth, beady lil teeth, and is very scary except her voice is really adorable. She is karamatsu’s biggest fucking fan, and hyped him up as much as he does to the point where sometimes he’s embarrassed. I think she’s weird and funny bc she has a rich inner world completely detached from him that she never tells him about except for concerning bits and pieces. So far theyre my favorite bc i drew her telling kara when hes not there she goes to nurtitionland and hangs out with talking carrots. Kara absolutely adores her and tries to explain her appeal constantly but everyone side eyes him.

Sindri - I haven’t really figured it out yet bc Sindri was an oc i used to really adore. I remember having like a really lavish and dramatic backstory for him that was super serious but i kinda don’t wanna do all of that anymore but dont wanna erase all of it either. Slowly rebuilding him. I ship him w choro tho

Esaias- another recycled but kinda loved oc. He was like one of my least favorites but I had developed him a loooot. Almost all of his original characterization and background are the same, so he grew up in a paramilitary Christian cult ran by his step father and mother that only consisted of his immediate family. His childhood sucked but you wouldn’t know it bc he was the blacksheep, and thoroughly ignored but a lot of the family politics bc hes considered the illegitimate eldest. He’s actually really normal and nice and in Japan for grad school and to train under Fighting Yowai. He makes Ichi really nervous bc he’s like a normie or something but he also is really strange. They have a really funny dynamic to me but eventually hes kinda like a security blanket ichi carries and he is there basically like “damn bitch you live like this? Thats so cool can you teach me?”

Suzi - she didn’t have a very thick background, I made her when I was like literally 12 and didn’t like her very much to the point where her entire narrative was that i killed off her sister. Which is funny bc i love her now and so I killed her off too. She’s a ghost! Like a sadako/okiku type of ghost. Looks very scary and only jyushi can see her and at first he’s terrified of her but it’s really actually lighthearted and silly. His brothers are all weirded out by jyushi’s new imaginary friend but they are a loveydovey couple even tho shes dead and he aint.

And then tottys still mine

Oh i forgot nom (another nickname)

I ship her with nyaa. She’s a tsundere who is obsessed with looking cool, she’s the older twin sister of kitti and she is the biggest softie ever. Literally the brain and the brawn, she’s in love w nyaa and is a crybaby. She’s really moody too, friends with ichi and kara. She wants to be goth and alt so bad but shes just shein. The tallest of my ocs. She can only handle the responsibility of taking care of Kitti, so she cant cook or clean (kitti must) but she does everything else. She’s a drop out fashion student, and a cringefail girl. The only one who can make kitti, who comes across as a big sister character be a whiny baby. I ship her with nyaa bc i think itd be funny

[sunmoonjune]

i conked right back out after reading that first answered ask LMAO ive literally been sleeping 12+ hours a day bc i ended up taking sick leave from work and i also got my period so my body's really just been like hmm what other doozy can i give her but now i'm actually awake and my brain juices are kinda flowing so ive been doing some hard thonking about your comments. this is literally unedited word vomit none of my theories make sense but oh well HAHA

YOU'RE TELLING ME WE HAVEN'T EVEN HIT THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG YET???? brb getting my straw so i can drink up the ocean and reveal the iceberg

went back to dig around your past asks and you said a lot of the reason why the villagers hate her is bc of her father and the incident happens around 9-10yo that changes everything sO idk im gonna take some shots in the dark dont laugh at me ,,,,,, so men are usually the only ones meant to train to become a warrior and enter the trials,,,,,,, and ofc as bug's father is the chief of the village he's going to want a son to take over but then he gets two daughters ?? bc you did also hint gender plays a big part of her backstory so im thinking is this one of the underlying reasons in the first place why bug and soojin always had such a rocky relationship with their father even before the incident . . ...... .has bug's mother passed? i feel like she has passed. and i feel like something happened during her death that bug's father then twisted and pinned the blame onto bug. ????? maybe that's why the memories of villagers spitting out it's her fault is so engrained in her :((( and it would make sense why she had the need to make a sign for 'dead'. IDK THERES STILL SO MANY HOLES I CANT SEEM TO THINK OF A SOLID THEORY i need some more hints ;)))))))

HMMMM sometimes soojin wasn't there?? now i'm thinking was it bc yun and bug often found themselves receiving the brunt of bug's father's anger .: they were often punished together and chucked into like a cell or sth so it was just them two sometimes. but then what did YUN do that got him on everyone's bad side too bc him getting banished was fo sho just a convenient opportunity that presented itself for bug's father to get rid of yun. HMHM speaking of ,, he was banished for conspiracy and injuring an officer. yun's not the type of person to just do that for no reason (+ im willing to bet your $11 and my 60c that the situation was twisted to make him look like the bad guy) and im thinking did bug's father say or do something that finally made him snap therefore leading to his accusation HMM

WAIT ALSO ARE THE SCARS UNDER HER MASK IN THE SHAPE OF SOMETHING OR SPELL OUT WORDS ???? bc it's been hinted again and again that there's an awful injury underneath and you have it as the cover of the to-be-published version but you cant reveal it bc it's too big of a spoiler so that leads me to think her face has been deliberately disfigured to look like sth 👀👀

waiting for the published version of ltm to drop so we can get signed copies but also asfksdjg we're gonna need a commissioned version of ltm with the atz boys to purchase instead bc can you imagine the line 'you may have cost wooyoung his yunho' as 'you may have cost kieran his brandon' HAHAHAHAHAAHA I LITRALLY CHOKED ON MY OWN SPIT sonia and her random names always have me cackling HAHA

OMG ALSO ARE WE GONNA GET YEO TEACHING BUG TO DANCE IN THE FUTURE OMGGMGGGG THATS THE LITERAL CUTEST i can already see all the boys tripping over each other and manhandling each other out of the way (with love) so that they can reach bug first and extend their hand out to ask for her first dance dsgjkagfdg noooooooooo 😭💕

also none of my friends irl stan ateez so i have no one to tell and i dont use tumblr enough to have moots apart from you (i woke up at 5am that day and saw your notif and couldnt fall back asleep bc i was literally rolling around in bed giggling) so im gonna tell you but im a relatively new atiny and this is going to be my first comeback with the boys and im literally frothing at the mouth with excitement bc the concept teasers ??? I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

hehehe I SO enjoyed your theories OMG!! Keep sending them my way I eat up all your thoughts on LTM <33

we have not indeed reached the tip of the iceberg ;) but we're close

and haha I would never laugh at you xD this was a very interesting theory about her past and I can't tell you if you're right quite yet,, but I can say: yes, chiefs want a son to take over the title of leader. and bug's father ended up with two daughters... there will be MUCH more on this in the future >:D

onto the topic of bug's mother... this is a VERY important part of the next chapter ;) I'm so glad you've brought it up,,, again I can't tell you much about her until the release of the next chapter but bug's mother does play a VERY BIG role in why certain people despise her so much

I genuinely cannot wait to see your reaction to the lore bits in the next chapter xD it won't reveal everything quite yet but it does reveal some of bug's past so I'm VERY excited,, I hope you'll come back to update your theories after you read it hehe >:D bug's past is long and kind of confusing until I string it all together at the end, but I'm hoping some of you will be able to puzzle it out hehe ;))

as for yun and Soojin,,, part of why Soojin was not with them as much will be referenced in the next chapter I think,, but it may not yet be revealed,, but you are correct in that yun and bug were often on the receiving end of her father and the village's anger :( I can't tell you why they directed it at bug but most of the hate towards yunho simply emerged because he was always trying to stop them from hurting her (this is heavily implied throughout the series so I don't think it's spoiling anything...)

and yunho's banishment.... that will be brought up again as well... perhaps not quite yet ;)

bug's scars.... yes, these are VERY important to bug's past and her entire story! that's why they're the cover of my hardcopy ;) once we reach that part of the story I'll show you the cover so you can get an understanding of what they look like. beneath her mask is extremely relevant to her past and why the village hates her so much... I can tell you that the shape of the scars are less important than what they did to her face...

hehe when the published version finally goes out there's going to be new content in it ;) extra scenes and what not that weren't included here :DD and perhaps I will send signed copies out if you guys want them enough xD

AHHAHA NO I've settled on their names for the published version and I promise there will be no Kieran or Brandon's LMAO,, names in books are SUPER important to me cause they give me a BIG ick in novels xD I cannot read a book about a guy named 'jack' or 'daniel' or something HAHA

and the dancing <33 there will be some fluff in the future about the dancing scene I promise ;)

also omg!! none of my irl besties like kpop either :( I would be happy to be on the receiving end of your rants about the comeback hehe xD I've been an atiny since pirate king and each cb has been AMAZING and I'm very excited too!! me and 🪷 anon have been yelling at each other in messages every time concept photos get leaked xD

I hope this answered some of your theories (even tho I couldn't really say much xD ) thank you for them hehe >:D I LOVE hearing your theories about bug's past because I CANNOT WAIT to reveal it xD

also! do you have a name you want to be called? I've been calling you 'eight' in my head since I saw your first messages but I haven't asked yet xD

[kuroimarzipan]

To return the ask I was unable to answer for you: I'd love to hear your Kingmaker thoughts! Or Wrath, if you'd prefer.

HELP I MISCLICKED BEFORE I WROTE ANYTHING AND HAD TO EDIT THE POST LMFAO anyway im gonna answer for kingmaker only tonight cause i gotta go to bed and i spent too long writing shit out but i might reblog this and add answers for wotr on after work tomorrow lol

Favorite Male Character okay so i could be normal about this. i could. or i could let everyone here know that i mentally put together multiple AUs where esteem got together with dragn after witnessing like three lines of dialogue. yea the smith guy. the one without a portrait even.

BUT if i had to be more normal about it then its gotta be ekun. i just want that guy to be happy and i really enjoy how weirdly well he gets along with esteem. also he's like. the most ruthless good character ive seen in a while which i really find interesting. makes a great minister too. he just has this reassuring presence in your party like hes got your back you dont have to worry. also: dogy :^)

Favorite Female Character

okay so i went into this game assuming kanerah would be my fave and i was like. ready to finally not have to headcanon a romance and shit. and then this bitch named valerie came along. and oh my god she's such a piece of work. so principled. so hypocritical. so abrasive and easy to rile up. she's loyal because she's decided to be loyal. she turns on you for wanting to kill a guy early in act 2 and then turns BACK on him because he hits on her. she doesnt even realise shes gay. ever since she killed fredero because esteem pushed her to do it ive been thinking about it. ive not read the dialogue for her canon straight romance or whatever because honestly i dont care whatever the fuck im doing to her in my head is way more interesting to me. ive done all the stuff for her hellknight ending and im very excited heehee.

Least Favorite Character

kingmaker is interesting in that i had a really poor first impression of a LOT of the companions, but after having gotten to know them, i... honestly dont rlly hate any of them?? there's still a few companions that end up benchwarming for me bc i just like others more, but its really not been like wotr where the party lineup was so polarising for me lmao

WAIT I JUST REMEMBERED JHOD. fuck that guy. i dont even have a particular actually good reason either. i just think his vibes are rancid

Favorite Ship

specifically that moment when hegend drew his weapon and went to attack valerie and the moment combat initiated esteem hit him with the chains of light which was followed by a maximised empowered magma blast from kanerah which one shot him. that felt good

aside from that i kinda wanna see amiri and nilak reconcile at some point??

Favorite Friendship

i like that ekun the complete and utter loner was the person that taught esteem how to actually have friends instead of just manipulating people into appreciating her. i like to think he figured that out by the time his last quest rolled around. they have this kinda silent trust.

Favorite Quote

this was such a good moment to me specifically because of the circumstances of esteem having been chased out of its home because of what it is and then having tartuk tell it that it would never understand?? it was COLD AS ICE telling him that before dealing the killing blow and taking his crown. defining moments tbh

Worst Character Death (if any)

i have a feeling this is yet to come for me 🙃

This made me so happy you have no idea Moment

maybe its silly but thee loyalty these two have hehehe

Saddest Moment

TBH another thing i think is yet to come for me.... i know that last act is gonna hit hard

Favorite Location

the swamp witch's hut... i actually really love the old beldame and all the lil storylines going on in that map so so much it rlly helped me solidify a bunch of important things abt esteem's backstory too lol