#so sorry for some of the obvious narrative

[ponyboyssophie]

What if I offered you a hero-princess dichotomy and you took it and said fuck you I'm the princess and I'm riding away with my demon now

[james-stark-the-writer]

just finished Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, and it is a game written by cowards for cowards.

the final twist genuinely ruins the game. it's so stupid as a narrative decision. i hate it so much. it almost makes me understand what the people yelling about The Last Jedi being too subservient to its themes were yelling about (OBVIOUSLY not the ones that were being bigoted and loud and wrong about it, but just the ones who had actual issues with its narrative directions/execution). genuinely, the twist takes what could have been an extremely solid 8.5, maybe a 9/10 game down to a 4/10 game with nothing of interest to say deluding itself into thinking it's saying anything of worth by thoughtlessly repeating patterns as if that's supposed to generate meaning without any real effort of actually committing to that meaning, or seeing the world as anything beyond its basic binary worldview of Good and Bad.

putting that twist in fundamentally cuts the legs out from any actual, interesting and substantive critique it could have leveled at the legal system and our feelings about people on trial and their perceived guilt or innocence, and it just ends up reinforcing it as a power of good that Will Ultimately Prevail In The Search For Truth, as if that is even remotely a thing any legal system is concerned with, especially the one in the game that mostly just stumbles into The Right Choices because it's a game controlled by the player. it's frankly ideologically incoherent to the point of saying nothing because its critique is unfocused and toothless. best it can muster is "maybe some people are corrupt and lying, but if You take Advantage of The System, you can beat them" as if malicious compliance is supposed to change the system. fuck off.

ran out of tags but. i'm serious about this lol, i really hate it as a narrative and ideological choice. the game threatens to say something bold and interesting and then just pulls the rug out from underneath you. it sucks. it's very much like 12 Angry Men in that way, i think, except at least that movie Knows what it's saying and that its basic premise is its ideological downfall, this just doesn't really feel like it says anything much interesting or coherent, ultimately, because the criticism either drowns in the length and comedic nature of it, or just ultimately isn't focused and pointed and nuanced enough to actually say something meaningful. like ik someone's gonna do a "kid's game" thing but hello, kid's shit has always been nuanced and just bc it's "for kids" doesn't mean it has to abide by some binary ass morality that flattens all its interesting critique, especially when you're constantly led, structurally, to the more interesting and nuanced narrative choice only to have a twist completely ruin it and making it all feel like a waste of your time. plenty of things are nuanced and interesting and "for kids" without deflating their themes and messages by writing a stupid twist that undercuts the interesting parts of its arguments.

[soppingwetrat]

genuine question btw, is there any reason that Nikola Orsinov has both a male name and surname, or is that just like a little character quirk?

[artistcheez]

I think I single handedly made the funniest thing I ever will make last night

[noisyghost]

(I started sketching this design nearly immediately after season 2 ended but just now had some time to clean it up so. Excuse me rambling out loud here)

TLDR; I actually really liked the initial design + direction for Warwick-Vander (I <3 human faced werewolves)! But the show design kinda felt like a transitory state between Vander and Warwick to me, so I wanted to try my hand at blending his Arcane design with his in game design. Like a "what would he look like if the transformation kept going" kinda thing. There's a few things I'm not fully settled on, but Im mostly satisfied :)

(rambling under the readmore, its 3 am as i type this lol)

When season 2 first started, I sort of had it in my head that the narrative would have Vander "die" for Warwick to finish the transformation into his final form, forcing Vi and Jinx to finally say goodbye together. Well! That didn't happen lol. I mean. Vander did "die", but whatever was left behind isn't really Warwick. I'm not quite sure what they were going for, either with him or with how Jinx "dies", its all just a little messy when i feel like there was a more obvious narrative conclusion.

Visually i think the final design in the show is cool removed from context, but it doesn't really make sense to me in regards to the story. Like. Warwicks whole thing is that he curbs his violent impulses by killing "bad guys" in the undercity. League lore is a hot fucking mess and I don't even go there so I get that they (the writers) were playing fast and loose but I can see why so many Warwick fans were less than pleased with where the show leaves him, because it doesn't really feel like the same character outside of his initial experimentation.

In my own idea palace, Jinx fakes her death and leaves Warwick to be Zaun's new mascot. Having this literal monster that eats bad guys and saves innocent people in the process become a new symbol for Zaun feels like a no brainer to me. Imagine the iconography they'd make for this thing! And it brings Vanders whole schtick back around; he still "dies" but the Literal Memory of him lives on in Zaun, still protecting the people he cared about most. You get the bittersweet ending of Vi and Jinx having to move on because hes not really their dad anymore, but their memory is what keeps Warwick "human", still with Zaun even if Vi is doing Piltover shit and Jinx is off exploring the world.

Idk! I know the implication that Jinx faked her death is there, but whatever happens to Warwick seems to be like they didnt really have the time to fully explore the ideas they were going for, so a couple characters just got kinda left floating at the end there. If Ekko and Jinx werent going to run away together, I wanted to see Ekko befriending Warwick so they could fight to make Zaun a better place.

I have more coherent ideas than this but it's 3 am when im typing this so sorry if im not eloquent enough to properly explain what im thinking. Ekko and his weird dog that used to be his uncle. Imagine.

[andhumanslovedstories]

The constant thing on nursing as a profession on this website is getting kind of exhausting to me. I am so truly sorry that people have had negative experiences with nurses and they absolutely do not deserve that. But it’s such a massive profession with such a huge diversity of people and practices and people paint it in such broad strokes and it’s starting to kind of hurt my feelings :/ Thoughts? Am I just being a baby/does this ever bother you?

Honestly the constant negativity I saw towards nursing was why I started writing about nursing so much more. It's not that I think that negativity is incorrect--people HAVE had horrible experiences with nursing, some nurses do abuse their power, and that even without abusing power it is easy to hurt a patient. I seek out and appreciate those accounts, people should share those, people have every right to talk about their experiences. But if we're being human about it, yeah, it does bother me to see posts that call me and everyone I work with mean girls. I don't think those posts shouldn't exist, and at the same time, it is frustrating that it seems to be the dominant narrative about nurses in the particular parts of the internet where I spend time.

A big annoyance to me is that SO MANY CRITICISM of nursing is gendered! We're catty, we're bitches, we're mean girls, we're "the female versions of cops" like there aren't female cops and male nurses. And frankly, the worst nurses I have worked with have overwhelming been men. To be clear and to state the obvious, many male nurses are good at their job. We also know that female-dominated professions get valued less than male-dominated, and that men in those fields disproportionately get leadership positions.

And I've listened to patient complaints about some nurses who, sure, may have had a bad interaction with the patient, but who I KNOW are superb, brilliant, and compassionate professionals. They're also women of color who don't smile.

Nurses are the tip of the spear, as people talking about med errors love to say. Nurses are at the bedside, present and available to be mad at. We wake you up for vitals at 4 am, enforce fluid restrictions, tell you there's no more pain meds, and take ten minutes answering your call light when you desperately need to pee. Nurses are very accessible to be mad at.

There's weirdness about the perception of nurses in general. We're angels, we're heroes, we do stuff that no one else could, we're caregivers, we're nurturers, we're miracle workers, we're the people in the hospital who do "the real work*," this work is our calling, and this work is exclusively wiping butts and hand out pills. And by the way, wiping butts is degrading work. That's why we're angels. A guy shook my hand in the grocery store today because I told him I was a nurse. That's wild. Fun to be a mean girl angel cop hero.

(*untrue. you could not pay me a billion dollars to do the work doctors, surgeons, PTs/OTs, lab techs, social workers, pharmacists, and a thousand other specialized and often much less visible professions do.)

[cbrownjc]

I swear THIS is why the show feels like it has to hold some of ya'll's hands in the Inside the Episode features. The narrative, as it is right now, isn't supposed to give you an accurate picture of Lestat right now. You are getting other people's POVs of him and events that happened, with those people's opinions and accounts colored over with their own biases.

And that is why Lestat's portrayal so far hasn't been book-accurate. Because that is the freakin' point. 🙄 Armand told a version of events from TVL that makes himself look good and is NOT about telling the truth. How much more obvious could they have made this? Because there were clues everywhere that -- if you know the actual story of TVL -- that tell you it wasn't accurate. (Starting with the fact that Gabrielle -- who, in the book, was there for the majority of everything that was shown in the episode's flashback with Lestat -- was not there in Armand's version of events.)

Look I get it if you haven't read the books, and so are not sure if what Armand told about all of this was true or not (and you're not sure what to think about Lestat either). If you haven't read the books feeling that way about this is not only understandable but also by design. Non-book readers are not supposed to know if what Armand was saying was true or not right now. You are not supposed to fully know what is true or false about Lestat even. Because you guys are still getting to know Armand's character, and assessing things about him episode by episode. Right now, you all may think one thing about him only to have that opinion change by the end of the season.

And all non-book readers have to go on about Lestat are other people's opinions and stories about him at this point. Which, depending on your opinion of the people telling it, will shape your opinion of him right now. And again, that is also done by design.

But book readers I'm sorry, I'm just rolling my eyes at some of you at this point if you are thinking like the above anon or something about the show "hating" Lestat or whatever. After everything this show has done to lay out the unreliable narrator aspect and that POVs can be biased aspect and, most of all, what you all already know about Armand's character . . . that is your hand the producers and writers and Assad himself were holding in that Inside the Episode feature explaining the narrative to if you actually believe that this is how Lestat is going to be portrayed on the show going forward.

As I said in another post, the show is very much using a Rashomon Effect when it comes to its flashback storytelling right now. But I feel very much that that is going to change when we get to Season 3 and Lestat finally begins to talk for himself and tells events that happened from his own POV. (And will instead become one about Truth vs Illusion).

I think after this episode we may have to give up hopes of the writers portraying Lestat well at any point. They just don’t like him for whatever reason.

... You did hear ASSAD saying that Armand portrays Lestat in a certain light to make himself look good, right?

POVs people. It's a TALE. Told for an effect.

Of course Armand in Dubai would not tell how he kidnapped Nicki, tortured him, force-fed on Lestat and killed all his coven. He's trying to come across as the kind, generous, knowledgeable ancient vampire you can trust!!

You know?????

[meanbossart]

Ask compilation: Mommy issues, Hair Stew, spicy blood, and some vague art advice from a guy with no formal art education.

Been a minute since I did one of these!

Thank you all for your messages and for your patience, as always I'm incredibly sorry that I can't reply to all of you!

DU drow saved Arabella in act 1 and obviously helped her out in act 2. He's surprisingly soft on (most*) kids and always has been, even as a Bhaalist (though he did consider them all Murders In The Making back then).

Arabella is no different. He thought her efforts to stop the druid's ritual were comically charming and appreciated how much Arabella seemed to successfully look after herself. They got along really well while she was around, though she probably spent more time with the more "approachable" party members at DU drow's own insistence.

And he is just biased towards less domesticated animals! Dogs are fine but DU drow appreciates cat's knack for self-sufficiency more. Also, they are pretty and elegant creatures - both things he enjoys in animals as well as people.

As for favorite cat, Malta. Easily.

First of all, interesting question!

It's a mixture of both. I draw conclusions from stuff I observed (Astarion's ass grabbing and confidence during sex, The Dark Urge's entire characterization, the obvious oral fixated vampire connection, Orin's barefootness) and more minute stuff that's already based of off personal headcanons I have - but of course, its all pretty limited to things I can personally stomach. I'm not necessarily into the same things they are, but I can get them, if that makes sense.

And thank you so much!

How dare you. He's clearly a Foetus man.

I'm really glad you like her!!! I honestly love that scenario even more than I thought I would and have a lot of plans to draw more of it.

And potentially! I honestly hadn't thought about that, but I think female elves do tend to be a little shorter than the males, so she might shrink down to 5'8, 5'9 or something. Kind of a negligible difference because I would still like for her to be a pretty tall woman.

The epilogue party isn't really a "canon" event to his story, since it wasn't out when i finished the game and - and while very satisfying from a gameplay POV, I don't find it narratively interesting.

BUT his epilogue party would look pretty full save for Halsin, Karlach and Lae'zel. We'd have a God Gale, a Selunite-ish Shadowheart and a Blade of Frontiers Wyll - as well as Spawn Astarion, obviously. I Haven't given it much thought, admittedly! And there isn't much reason to do so since A Novel Experience serves as the Actual epilogue to me.

He puts the blame for Yenna's death wholly on Orin. It's one of those things he avoids reflecting on entirely and Yenna's name will probably never leave his mouth again. Considering he allowed her into camp and personally failed to convince Orin to spare her life at the temple, I think it's a guilt too difficult to circumvent, were he to entertain it.

Because he has a father figure already, which left room to fantasize about an idealized maternal one. It's also his bias towards femme people.

Hello!

Unfortunately I can't give you an easy answer for this one. I have drawn a lot and for a long time, and I've always enjoyed dynamic poses and put a whole lot of effort into capturing motion in a way I'm satisfied with - and often I STILL feel as if certain aspects of my art are stiff!

I think working on being a little "looser" with one's art and playing with lineart weight helps tremendously. Understand things like foreground/background division can also help to give your art dimension, and inevitably that movement you are looking for. Unfortunately, I'm self taught and not very educated on the matter myself 😅 I can do it, but explaining or teaching it is something else entirely.

It dips in his stew 😔

The usual pet names! Darling, Lover, Sweetheart, he's been known to let a "baby boy" slip out. DU drow is more known for the literal name-calling.

.... And neither of them is a "daddy" person, for sure.

He has no idea and he thinks that's pretty damn funny. He likes how his dick looks, and he is kind of glad that he gets to enjoy it without having any memory of how it got to be that way - he's definitely assuming Bizarre Sex Accident, though.

He will eat whatever is available without complaint if he has to for survival, but he does enjoy a nicely prepared dish! From rustic home-cooking to the gourmet dining. He's most definitely fond of onions - as well as meat, fat, and heavy seasoning. I don't know what that means for the way his blood tastes, maybe it makes it specially hearty... Which Astarion might like, based on his Spicy Food comment in act 1.

Either way Astarion does not feed on him after the campaign is over, so that's not something they have to worry about!

He's.... Okay with Minsc. He definitely doesn't take him too seriously but they've had fleeting moments of meat-head-like understanding between the two of them, not that DU drow would ever admit to it. He kind of sees him as Jaheira's beefy pet.

He is profoundly suspicious of Boo.

This ask was a little buried in my inbox, so I hope you have been able to secure work since then! Patreon subscription completely aside.

That's a tough question because there is definitely a degree of luck involved. I'd say find your niche - be that a genre, character, or fandom - and then find the niche within that niche you feel comfortable in and where you can meet people of similar interests, and who might be interested in your art. Don't go in making selling pitches, obviously, actually try to make friends and lift each other up.

At that point, if you're both persistent (-in your craft, NOT in chasing after validation!) you will be able to sell a few commissions or get a few bites on patreon or a similar platform! After that, its a matter of letting your work speak for itself.

This is very simplified of course, and a summary of a process that usually takes many many years to develop unless, once again, you get very lucky. But I do think persistence and passion tends to reward folks who stick with it!

I know some artists use advertisement and reel trends on instagram to get more eyes on their work as well, and I've seen a few get a lot of success from it, but unfortunately I don't know anything about that side of things.

[centrally-unplanned]

Recently I have heard a bunch of people discussing Sarah Paine, a professor at the US Naval War College. Dwarkesh Patel uploaded a bunch of her lectures to his YouTube, Noah Smith (jokingly) referred to her as the One Good Historian, etc. She appeals to, in particular, the "neo hawk" camp around rising competition with China.

She had a video on Japan in WW2 which, given that that is my area of expertise, I thought I would watch...and it is weird, man. She has the cultural bent to her analysis - she approaches analyzing Japan's strategic decision-making from in part their cultural obsessions with bushido, the imperial system, etc. This is an "old guard" approach that modern historiography tends to downplay - for example, interviews with captured POWs (who didn't surrender) during the war generally showed not that they were motivated by a deep code of honor (though ofc it was there), but by propaganda from their own government that if captured the US would torture and execute them. Bansai charging makes a bit more sense now, right? But Paine isn't dogmatic about it, and it isn't like the cultural factors played no role in Japan's thinking, so this is a matter of taste.

But much more off-putting are these sort of "communist menace" vibes that run through it, where she portrays Japan as inordinately concerned with the communist forces in China as some sort of big threat. That just is not true, they did not consider them very relevant, and it leads to a bunch of weird statements. Like okay, ~27 minutes in, we have this quote:

[China in the 1930's] is a mess. It is coalescing into a bilateral competition between the Nationalists under Chiang Kai Shek and the Communists under Mao Zedong, fighting with increasing dosages of Soviet aid. And the Japanese are appalled with all of this, and so it is time to surprise everybody again in 1937 - when they invade all the way down the Chinese coast.

Essentially pitching a narrative of growing communist/nationalist civil war provoking Japan into action to intervene. Which, I am sorry, what? This is a map of China in 1937

With Nationalist China/The KMT ruling most of the country in some form and the Communist forces ruling a rump state fortress in the mountains. By 1934 the civil war was pretty much on a standstill, and in 1936 (involving a kidnapping of Chiang, diplomacy baby!) they even signed a ceasefire to unite against the Japanese. And while she can weasel-word her way out of this, most people's read of that phrasing of "Soviet aid" would think it was going to the Communist forces to help them, right? But that isn't true! The Soviets in the 1930's were giving far more aid to the Nationalists, backing them as the obvious winners and hoping to court them as an ally against Japan.

There was no rising communist threat in China in the 1930's - instead there was a growing unity in China under the KMT to oppose the Japanese that was causing Japanese military planners to fret. Which would justify Japan's "surprise intervention"...if they did that intentionally, but they didn't! The war was started essentially by mistake, and Japan (and China) both tried to negotiate a ceasefire multiple times before it spiraled out of control due to aggressive local commanders.

(This also is the case for Japan's "other" surprise she mentions, the invasion of Manchuria - it was a strategic ploy to expand the empire, yes, but by the local 'Kwangtung Army' in open defiance of the government's orders! Not exactly 'high strategy'.)

In isolation any one of these - and other examples in the video - could just be awkward phrasings or interpretive differences, but in aggregate I think this is a level of revisionism that I can't stomach as being in good faith. It is just one video but these are pretty basic mistakes to be making. I don't think this person is a good historian, which definitely makes me question her expertise on the present-day CCP.

[jellyfemmedyke]

sorry to ramble in your inbox but its kinda fucking me up how "trans man with a cishet boyfriend who misgenders him behind his back" is like seen to be a person to make fun of in the general queer tumblr space instead of a person who is in a vulnerable situation. i know that there is trans men who are also women and there are trans men who are genuinely okay with dating a cis man who considers himself straight but people talking about these hypothetical couples arent talking about these situations but rather about "haha stupid trans man doesnt realize hes dating a bigot"

theres this attitude that the hypothetical cishet boyfriend is actually a conservative so it should be obvious to trans man that he doesnt respect his identity but i feel like its less "oh its obvious that this specific man is a bigot" and more "obviously cishet white men are bigots" and its weird how people laugh at this person instead of acknowledging that even if you are dating a bigot its usually not a big win for you personally. like the bigot cishet boyfriend isnt going to be okay with his trans man boyfriend starting testosterone. like we can sympathize with emotional abuse happening towards other groups but when its gay and mspec trans men its like "oh he should have known that would happen" or "its his fault for dating a bigot"?

of course people have the same making fun of the victim narrative with afab nonbinary people who date cishet men who misgender them [and im sure this bleeds over to affecting all nonbinary people if people arbitrarily decide theyre afab if the nonbinary person refuses to tell them personal information about themselves but the larger narrative always specifies that this is an afab person] and its almost like a "this is what you get for being attracted to men" sort of thing.

and also i theres something to be said about warning people for signs their partner or potential partner doesnt respect their identity but considering i imagine its a common anxiety among trans and nonbinary people who are into that sorta thing to wonder "am i ever going to find someone who loves me and is also accepting of me for being [insert gender here]?" its sort of fucked up for it to be common to basically claim "yea if youre dating a cis man who said he was straight before he started dating you but says he respects your identity hes probably just straight up lying to your face" and then laugh at the person getting misgendered for not knowing they were being misgendered.

anyway sorry for this big ramble i cant even remember specific instances of this to reference so i might seem like im making up a guy to be mad at but i swear this is like a general attitude and almost running joke i see around. anyway. have a good day.

I absolutely see that too, and I think it's a mixture of straight up victim blaming, because oh noo how dare you WANT to date *gasp* cis men

but it come with an intense transandrophobia and exorsexism because there's a lot more sympathy when it comes to cis women dating cishet men "poor things uwu" but when it's trans men or in this case non binary people assumed to be women, it's always "see I told you so" smug superiority. (cis women get this too, because of misogyny obviously, but it's different and worse for trans men) People are just waiting for a chance to be misogynistic and trans men are an acceptable target. This is honestly extra fucked up when we remember that trans men experience some of the highest rates of domestic violence and rape in the community though.

being trans is such a vulnerable place to be in, and a lot of people, trans or not are insecure or just want to be loved, that's normal. A lot of people are willing to accept certain behaviors from their partners that are bad, because of those reasons as well, victim blaming, and ESPECIALLy telling trans men to toughen up or "what did you expect" is apart of the toxic expectations that get placed of trans men as well. I could honestly go on for hours about this. good ask,anon

[blueraith]

It's wild to me just how badly Vi's arc is misunderstood in S2. The claims I've seen that it was bad because she didn't join up with Ekko to help liberate Zaun or didn't "have enough stuff to do."

Big 'ole S1 Vi analysis under the cut because some "hot" takes seem to forget that Vi's S1 arc even exists.

Like, sorry, but that was never the direction her character was going to go. This was spelled out for us in the very first episode of the show when Vander is giving her that lecture.

"When people look up to you, you don't get to be selfish."

"Whatever happens, it's on you."

This is the first conversation in the show that carries an impactful character building statement. We are effectively being given the start of Vi's character arc verbatim.

She is not allowed to be selfish.

And as S1 Act 1 progresses, and Vi expresses a will to fight, to rebel, to revolt, she is constantly and consistently shut down and discouraged from that way of thinking by her father figure. She's fifteen years old or so, Vander is the only authority figure in her life that she respects. Why wouldn’t she internalize any of this as is, let alone after all the tragedy she's forced to endure at the end of this act?

Then we get to tragedy. Vander tells her two very specific things before and after the showdown with Silco.

"Take care of the family."

"Take care of Powder."

You know. Not, "hey, take over my mantle as Hound of the Underground."

Or "lead Zaun to freedom" or whatever the fuck.

He tells her to look after their family. The people closest to Vi.

And I don't know how many of you are older siblings. Or even older sisters. But I question if some of Vi's most heated critics are either neither of those things or lack any knowledge of sibling dynamics, period. When you are handed this tiny baby from a young age and are told "this is your baby sibling, you have to help take care of them, we won't always be here but they'll always have you" by your parents, that shit sticks with you forever. For better or worse.

If you're parentified on top of that through either circumstance or abuse, then that sentiment turns toxic. Vander, as well-meaning as he is in his talks with Vi, inadvertently presents a pretty black and white viewpoint. When paired with Vi's reaction to his (first) death and learning what Powder did, it becomes even worse.

Think about it. Most people seem to focus solely on Vi's anger issues when she strikes Powder for obvious reasons. But there's this selfishness that Vi temporarily succumbs to when she hits Powder as well. She's not thinking of Powder's emotional state or devastation as she realizes what she's done, Vi is mired in her own grief and anger.

She then walks away from Powder to take a moment to herself and presumably recollect her own composure, also a selfish move.

Now, when I call these actions selfish, I'm not assigning any negative connotations to them. Selfishness is not always a bad thing, putting yourself and your own needs first does not make someone a bad person by default. It can be healthy to take some time for self-care.

The "issue" is that Arcane is a tragedy. The narrative punishes Vi for lashing out and temporarily leaving Powder by having Marcus kidnap her and Silco adopt her sister. Not that Vi even knows that much when it happens. For all she knew, Silco murdered Powder.

So, then Vi spends something like seven years in Stillwater in constant limbo wondering if Powder is even alive. The sheer guilt she must have felt at "failing" to protect her baby sister would have likely been agonizing.

Seven.

Years.

Then she gets out. And all Vi cares about is finding her sister. She doesn't care about the Hexgem besides the fact that it's directly related to Jinx, and Caitlyn lied to her by ommission about it.

She's not trying to retake the Lanes in Vander's name. She only cares about bringing Silco's empire down because of what he did to her family. She wants her sister back first and foremost, she does not care to stick with the Firelights and even leaves Ekko and Cailtyn on the bridge initially to go after Jinx.

It's really her burgeoning feelings for Caitlyn that ever cracks this near obsessive compulsion to chase after her sister. Vi was going to choose Jinx until the point Caitlyn was injured and then the both of them were shot at by Jinx.

Even the moment she falls in love with Caitlyn is tied to her guilt about leaving Powder. The story she tells while they're on Caitlyn’s bed, her obvious grief and guilt over her sister. She's mired in this moment of pain until Caitlyn reaches out to comfort her. Like, Jinx and Caitlyn have always been intertwined in Vi's arc after she meets Caitlyn. There is no overarching thread to connect Vi to any of the political plot points in this story.

Vi's arc is character driven. Always has been. She's motivated by her warring desire to protect those she loves with EVERYTHING she has, and this by now guilty pleasure to finally develop something purely for herself.

It's why she pushes Caitlyn away during the infamous Oil and Water breakup. The class differences she's citing are an excuse, an easy thing she can point at to push Caitlyn away. What's really going on is that she failed to get the Council to decisively act against Silco. She's failed Jinx again in her own mind, he's still out there poisoning her mind, and now she needs to take care of him herself. Caitlyn proved to be a distraction from her goal, and so must be removed.

Even after teaming up with Jayce and then going her own way, Vi does not go after more shimmer factories. She's not rallying the Lanes to revolt with Hextech weaponry in (on) hand. She immediately goes to the Last Drop to challenge Sevika, someone she hates specifically because she'd betrayed Vander. She had every intention to confront Silco right after that.

Then we get the tea party, and Vi has to come to terms with the fact that the sister she loved is fundamentally changed in more ways than one. She's given an ultimatum to choose between her self-imposed duty as an older sister and Caitlyn. The only relationship Vi has ever formed purely for herself.

And she can't do it. It's an impossible choice. Jinx ends up triggered intensely, Caitlyn is struck by indecision and doesn't take the shot because of Vi's pleas, and Jinx goes on to fire that rocket.

Like this is just Season. One. Every single important character moment Vi has is tied to either Jinx, Caitlyn, or both. This is not a new thing S2 did with Vi's character. Her arc was always about how much she was giving to other characters without much thought to herself.

I just don't get how some people expected that to radically change in S2. It was never going to happen. I'll probably make an analysis on S2 Vi as well, but this is already getting very long. It's also a good way to remind some folks that each season of this show does not exist in a vacuum. I've read a lot of takes that seem to just... ignore S1. It's pretty bizarre.

[narutouzumakiarchive]

How to deal with the homophobic and horrible ss, nh, sh etc. stans? Just reading their content makes me feel gaslighted and makes me want to quit my little sns blog, because I feel isolated.

First of all, I'm sorry you feel that way. The best thing to do is honestly to just ignore them. The canon ships, in particular, are horrid and are consequently routinely subjected to lots of criticism by people outside of the carefully constructed echo chambers of canon shippers. SS/NH fans cope with this by harassing SNS shippers who have been a particular source of insecurity for the entire run of the show. There's a reason why they routinely steal from the sns dynamic to prop up their ship and have to rely on fillers and novels and databooks, etc. instead of working with the manga.

This brings me to my next point. Part of the reason they are so emboldened is because the "victors" are the ones who write the story, and they've used this to control the narrative and recontextualize what actually happened during the original run of the story. So, something you should know is that SNS fans have always been right about the core of the manga.

While there were obviously endgame SS/NH believers, the idea that Sasuke/Sakura and Naruto/Hinata were mutually in love was not a unifying factor in those fandoms.

In the Naruto Collector Book 3, there was an interview in which Kishimoto himself acknowledged the fact that Sakura and Hinata's feelings of love were unrequited. This interview is practically lost media, and is conveniently never discussed but the book is still available. The collector series has other interviews with Kishimoto as well.

But the main point is that this interview was released in 2007, long after we were already into Part 2 of the manga. This firstly debunks the idea that there was a secret budding love story that was sabotaged by SP, though you don't need any interview to tell you that Sasuke literally only thinking of Team 7 during Sakura's love confession, or Naruto not reflecting on any special moments with Hinata was proof enough of the lack of romance. More importantly, however, this is connected to my point about belief in "true love all along" was not a unifying factor in the SS/NH fandoms. Many of them were aware of this interview (see the respective examples of a SS fan and a NH fan reacting to it below) and thus spent their time taking solace in databooks and writing longwinded posts about how mutual romantic development weren't required for endgame.

What DID unite solo/multshipping SS in particular was the belief that Sasuke considered Sakura special, and thus, she would be the one who helped heal his heart. And this belief is where the real "war" between SS/SNS lied. If you look at old SNS posts, you'll see that there was never a unifying belief that SNS would be canon either, for obvious reasons. You'll notice that many posts were prefaced with some variation of "regardless of the nature of their bond...." because it wasn't so much what they were to each other rather than how significant they were to each other. You'll see a lot of posts about them transcending traditional relationship categories.

So this was the primary context in which SS and SNS fans argued. You can see below just some of the drivel that SS came up with. They have always been relentlessly insecure harassers who used to attack SNS fans for simply seeing the direction in which the manga would go.

They ignored Naruto making Sasuke's heart beat repeatedly, they ignored Naruto being tied to Sasuke's sharingan transformation — which later in the manga was explicitly called out for being the reflection of the heart that SNS fans postulated it was. They ignored the fact that Sakura was rendered fungible [a fact you can see reflected in the interview below when Kishimoto discusses what makes Team 7 special and completely evades mention of Sakura] and that Kishi usurped moments that could have been special for Sasuke and Sakura by including Naruto (eg. Sasuke bringing up not wanting Naruto to worry in the FOD, Sasuke thinking about Naruto to keep the curse mark at bay as well despite the fact that Sakura was the one who was explicitly worried about him, Sasuke including Naruto and talking about precious nakama in the fight against Gaara despite the fact that Sakura was the only one in mortal danger, etc.). They ignored the fact that Sasuke quite literally hierarchially ranked Naruto as a more intimate friend than Sakura. Harassed SNS fans for pointing out the basic setup in the manga that served to reinforce SNS fans' interpretations because they constructed a version of the manga that was wholly centered on the special and unique "bond" between Sakura/Sasuke.

All this lasted to the war arc. They twisted themselves in pretzels to argue about how Sasuke leaving Sakura to burn in lava and outright stating that her and Kakashi's lives didn't matter was him repressing his super secret feelings of care for her while attempting to downplay the mutual affection displayed in the SNS bond. Even the more "neutral" pro team 7 SS fans looked for ways to subtly denigrate SNS' bond. Sasuke makes no mentions of Sakura when the 10 tails is about to blow up the shinobi alliance? Who cares because at least Sakura's face doesn't have a cut across it (yes, they really did misinterpret pro SNS moments where Sasuke individuated Naruto as negative). And they did all this while making anti Sasunaru clubs and hiding in forums to complain about how SNS was getting too much focus in the manga (something older fans can attest to) because deep down many of them saw the writing on the wall.

Now SNS fans, on the other hand, displayed the critical reading skills that the SS fandom lacked — and I don't mean that facetiously. They picked up on the fact that it was significant that Sasuke lost control of himself when Naruto showed up. They understood the significance of Sasuke specifically asking about the status of the 9 tails given the prior context of Sasuke specifically needing to kill Naruto because he wanted to become stronger. They recognized that Naruto was specifically singled out with a cut precisely because he was special by picking up on the patterns peppered throughout the text. They also respected the Team 7 bonds established in Part 1 — they had no need to undermine it because there was a confidence in Naruto/Sasuke's relationship being special — while understanding the disadvantage in the fact that Sasuke and Sakura dynamic always included a "we" (see example from a 2008 analysis below). They knew there would be a reconciliation in which the tension between duty and desire would be resolved and would lead to Sasuke accepting his heart/inner child which would lead him to Naruto.

And lo and behold, 698 came and SNS fans were validated while SS fans were livid and angry. They complained and harassed SNS blogs and threw tantrums and cried about the manga being retconned. It's so easy for them to pretend they knew everything in hindsight, but the receipts don't lie. There has never been anyone more in denial about the core facts of the manga than SS/NH fans. Don't let them prevent you from supporting SNS. The SNS bond was validated.

Even to this day, they have never gotten over the fact that Sasuke confirmed their worst nightmares which is why they have to cope by literally cropping Naruto out of panels (Look at the 97 likes — and this is tame for them), spreading poor translations, and taking glee in the idea of Kishimoto not being the arbiter of canonicity, so they can take refuge in material not written by him, because they hate what he did write.

As I type this, they are getting made fun of in different languages and SS fans are coping by pretending that anyone who points out the dysfunction of their implied no kiss couple has has no literacy and is ignoring 700 chapters of development, the development in question being Sakura still acting infantile while Sasuke remains indifferent.

Why should you feel isolated because you want to support the main bond when SS fans even have to lie about the poorly written filler novels that were expressly created FOR them (eg. Sakura forcefully kissing Sasuke and then Sasuke immediately grabbing Naruto and leaving Sakura to fall off the motorcycle they were all riding on; A scene SS fans repeatedly lied about and repeatedly misrepresented).

Unfortunately I've nearly run out of images and I didn't even get to finish highlighting all of the lies of SS or discuss NH fans the way I wanted too but please, don't worry about the hate and the homophobia. A significant part of it is them lashing out because of insecurity.

Then and now, nothing has changed.

They hated the fact that Kishimoto wasn't concerned with Hinata's unrequited feelings and patiently waited for Sasuke to fade into oblivion so Naruto and Hinata could ride off into the sunset. When that didn't come, and Naruto prioritized Sasuke even after Hinata's confession, they took to harassing SNS fans. All they have is a retcon movie that Kishimoto wasn't even devoted to, which is why, in addition to lionizing scenes from the film, they even have to read panels incorrectly to achieve some satisfaction.

SNS is amazing and enough to keep me occupied, but another way of dealing with the hatred and homophobia (which is the main point of this post) is remembering why it's so rampant in the first place. The reason you feel gaslighted is because they are literally trying to rewrite history (these people have even lied about how much their novel sold and had to be corrected by a sale tracking account).

I haven't even scratched the surface, but you can see a few more examples here, here, here, and here. Giving in to their bullying is how the liars win. Don't let them!

[sgiandubh]

Prophetic

Every single time things look hard to decipher or farcical (and this is one of those farcical times), I remember a long post by @hardblazesong, dealing with BTS aspects and the intricacies of this cesspool of a fandom. I am yet to read something more clear and more bravely stated than the things she wrote almost eight years (!) ago, even if I do not necessarily agree with everything. Especially as far as SC's sexuality is considered and examined, for example - but that is secondary, to me.

Every word in this quoted passage was confirmed by what happened next, for example. And then, some more, if at all possible:

This is exactly what happened, rinse and repeat to oblivion. 'No one above D level status', with the odd lap dancer/Hooters waitress thrown in, for variety. Gross? Effective on the short term perhaps, to quench thirsty/insistent/too close to the real thing rumors and found tidbits, yet damn penalizing on the long run. MPC's dwindling subscription figures are testimony to it, as are the mediocre projects coming his way. And now he sorely needs a seriously good one to keep his rep at a decent level. You see, the entire kilt-cladded, warrior daddy imagery/fantasy is also quietly wearing off, as OL is coming to its merciful end. But believe it or not, S will survive even this life-changing experiment with fame. The key question here is 'how' and I have no definitive answer to it. But I am confident, and this Soroptimist approach of mine will always be my guilty pleasure, as far as S is concerned. Perhaps the only one, since the guy won't ever make me turn my head for him in the street. Not even sorry about that. But as I have already told you, I do like an underdog and know how to spot them, when I see one.

Now, as far as C is concerned, the 'low key thing' turned into the perfectly artificial farce we all know about. It is my sincere belief at least 85% of her Taliban Stan crowd is simply paying lip service to what they chose to believe and are constantly being reminded of by their trolling Sopranos. So much so, in fact, that it all reeks rather of Pollyannaism than critical thinking, no matter how brutal or self-assured they may sound. And at this point in time, with zero communication on the topic and C who apparently DGAF about narrative continuity when it comes to this, it's only fair to say more oil is being quietly, constantly thrown onto those embers of suspicion and legitimate, logical doubt.

As for going political, we all saw what happened with S's Gaza comment, didn't we? Case in point to never cross obvious red lines and allow your own emotions get in a mix you cannot control and which must not have been addressed, to start with. Especially when you are, above anything else, a media product manufactured on purpose for reaching the widest potential audience. MAGA Mommies crowd included.

Also, this:

Again, this is exactly what happened, and consistently so. Proof of this are the multiple times I had to excuse myself to powder my nose in the middle of a Zoom call or meeting, whenever my cellphone was blinking with concerned messages about this or that insignificant turn of an apparently endless, boring and disingenuous AF narrative. Shippers are worried and potentially even hurt every single time a Fitness Harem representative shows up on the roster. S knows that - how could he not, he is part and parcel of it? Trolls know that: in fact, this is their bread and butter in this fandom. And the reason this happens is an unnecessarily cruel and by now pathetic bout of schizophrenic trivia deliberately being thrown in, from time to time, for... eh... for reasons. Whether this is for 'protection' (complete quiet would be way more decent and effective, I think) or diversion, or remaining relevant, or even shits and giggles is entirely secondary, one more time. These allow to address all the factions of this fandom at once, using what are by now some lazy, well-tried and accessible plot devices (SM twisting reality, cheap pap walks, timeline innuendos, etc). Again, this is wrong and harmful, in the long run. It is refusing to see the forest for the trees and completely ignore the fact this is building the wrong persona and the wrong brand. Back to that sore need for a really good project I have mentioned before and own reasoning nicely tied in, thank you.

As for how SC feel about us, shippers, I suppose things are clear. I don't think they like us, and to be blunt, how could they? Mistakes have been repeatedly made, especially when it comes to projecting going completely, tastelessly out of control, the hyper sexualization and objectivation of both S and C (naively dirty fanfic, anyone? come on, we all read it!) and the liberties some took with decency, as far as C is particularly concerned. And by this, I don't mean stalking - that is pushing Covfefe Pics really too far and being a perfect hypocrite about it, when we know the entire faction was demanding proof, on many tones & in many ways and kept on pressuring for something along those lines to happen. To me, however, the most toxic part of it was definitely Jess' unfortunate drooling all over someone else's love story. It definitely had an impact and it was definitely been used as such, until it wasn't. The rest of all that obsessive approach are just spin-offs, but the bad seeds were gleefully planted there and then.

Before landing here, I carefully weighed in my options. And I chose to be primarily interested in business and legal paperwork simply because it so happened that an irritated reaction while on an Athens taxi ride prompted my arrival here. Then I realized it was the only way to bring something new to an already stalling body of public lore and keep it simple and real. What I did discover and what the trolls across the street chose to dismiss as trash is, in fact, evidence enough of the chasm that exists between what people are being served and supposed to gobble up, no questions asked, and a reality that certainly is more nuanced. This is what really makes me tick and this is why I am still here, while there are so many more useful and enjoyable ways to keep myself busy.

Rest assured, though: I am not going anywhere, even if from time to time life and a very strenuous job take precedence. I hope you can understand this. In the meanwhile, you have been so many witty, kind and warm people coming along my path, that I would feel like betraying you (and myself!) if I went away. And no, I have never felt more sure about SC than probably now, even if this 'SC' doesn't necessarily coincide with your own version of that saga.

Newbies can read the entire @hardblazesong's post here: https://www.tumblr.com/hardblazesong/678440162606350336/the-time-has-come-shipsters-to-write-a-lengthy?source=share

Thank you for reading this very long comment, summing up all the thoughts that nagged me while I was simultaneously translating and slaloming between my two mother tongues, while in Tunis. I am rather good at compartmentalization, you see. This post is also a clumsy homage of sorts to all the brilliant, brave and bold women, past and present, of The Shire, who have tried and managed to see beyond the thick veil of deceit this entire #shitshow is. The fact so many of us, across so many cultures and personal circumstances, saw the same damn thing and questioned it with integrity and wit, should be arresting evidence there are more things.

PS: I think we can all agree on the fact the Biggest Troll in this fandom is 'Erself, the Flip-Flop Blue Nailpolish Goddess. But that's a different story.

[kingofthecotas]

lion's den | ao3

marc at the 100km race in 2026 | 3.4k

i have. compressed the timeline. for narrative reasons 

----

Luca catches him just before they pile out of the house, towards the changing room and the bike shed. It’s not difficult for him: Marc has been hovering, peripheral, all morning. Pecco tried his best to pull him into a conversation, but Bezzecchi turned cold and Valentino appeared from the kitchen and that was that.

Marc fixes the unsure set of his face the second he realises he’s being observed instead of politely ignored. The smile is enough to convince most people—it usually is. 

“You know…” Luca visibly picks through his words before he says them. “You don’t have to forgive him.”

Marc tries not to allow the smile to falter. 

“If you are doing this for Pecco—that is kind of you. But you do not have to forgive him.”

“I think…” And Marc tilts his head, calculating what he can afford to reveal. Luca—he likes Luca, has always found him reasonable. “Too late for that, maybe.” 

Luca’s eyes flicker for a heartbeat, too quick for him to catch even if the rest of his expression is perfectly controlled. Surprise. Marc had surprised him. 

Marc clearly isn’t as fucking obvious as he thinks he is. 

“Well, just …” Luca shrugs, looks him up and down. “It’s good you are here.”

“Good for Ducati?” Marc says, twisting Pecco’s words just enough that they sound mocking. 

“Good for Ducati. Good for the cameras, of course.” Maybe Luca—he doesn’t have blinders on, perhaps, the way Bezzecchi does. Knows Valentino, knows what he does, and loves him anyway. “Come on.”

The moment they step outside, there’s a phone in Marc’s face, wielded by someone in a VR46 hat. Good for the cameras. Good for Valentino.

He huffs out a breath that coils in the air, hangs like smoke, before following Luca to the changing rooms with something sickening in his chest, in his stomach. 

——

Pecco had suggested it first, after a particularly friendly debrief; he’d charged off into the Italian afternoon by three seconds, and Marc chased but decided the championship was close enough that twenty points was better than gravel. Things had stopped being fraught after Qatar—bizarrely, since Pecco had heard Marc behind him and locked the brakes, leaving Marc with nowhere to go but over his teammate’s sliding rear tyre. Gravel trap, Pecco helping him to his feet—and genuine shock when Marc accepted his apology without question. He’d watched Marc for an hour like he expected him to snap, before seemingly deciding he was safe. 

So things had been fine. And Pecco had been fine. So when Pecco won in Misano, clawed some points back, and suggested Tavullia—Marc had laughed. Good joke.

“No, I think it would be good,” Pecco said, his smile half-confused and half-polite—but not joking. “Good for the team.”

“Do you?” Because—Jesus, Pecco had been there. He’d been young, yes, but he was there.

“Just—you don’t have to.”

“Sorry,” Marc said. “Not a good idea, I think.”

“Okay,” Pecco said, unconcerned, and that had been that. 

——

Valentino snares him the moment he steps into the outbuilding, blinking at the same wooden walls he’d doomed himself in over a decade ago.

“Marc! Come here, come here, you need to sign.” And he’s being shepherded towards the table, towards the poster and the pens. Leaving his mark, he supposes.

Cameras. Marc smiles. “So I go right in the middle, no?”

Everyone laughs, indulgent, and Valentino even smiles in return before pointing out a spot for him. Marc does as he’s told; he’s walked himself into the lion’s den, so he may as well play before he’s torn to bloody ribbons.

“And the shirts, behind you.” Valentino is close, too close, a hot vein of lightning in the very centre of Marc’s awareness as they move together, entirely at his whim. 

Marc swallows, wonders if he shouldn’t have come. 

Valentino pulls the hem of the shirt, stretches it out taut, even though one of the hovering assistants had held her hand out to do the same thing—Valentino holds it carefully until Marc has finished, then does the same for the next one.

Then, “Allora,” and Marc is forgotten as Valentino turns to entertain, to hold court. 

——

In the end, it was Valentino who had extended the second invitation, the one that Marc felt like he couldn’t refuse. It was magnanimous, the way Valentino reached for him when he won his ninth title, perfectly positioned for the cameras to capture. Summoned, to kneel and kiss the ring: Marc could play the PR game too, and he acquiesced.

And maybe—

He’d been hot and tired from the race; high on victory; dizzy from champagne and the way his palm had burned, even through gloves, when Valentino had locked their hands together so Marc couldn’t pull away. 

But he’d known exactly what he was doing—what both of them were doing—when he said yes. 

——

Pecco watches them both, not nervous but something like it, over the top of Bezzecchi’s head. 

It’s cold, January-cold, a soft mist sitting over the track. Valentino has his hair tucked into a bright yellow hat, talking in a voice that’s clearly meant to be picked up by the ever-present phones. Marc listens, pretends to listen, smiles when he senses he should. 

“Ah,” Enea says at his shoulder, “we will be fine.” Enea—relaxed, easy. Everything is easy for him, even standing in this crowd of strangers. Marc’s selfishly glad he’s here, and quietly grateful to Pecco for orchestrating them being together. 

At the very least, Marc has something like a shield. 

“Better when you get out and practice, yes?” Valentino says. “Get the, ah, get the feel.” He’s being so attentive it’s making Marc itch, caught under the laser-beam of his focus with no escape. 

Marc swallows. Makes himself nod again. The eyes observing him narrow—and Valentino finally finally turns away. 

When Marc looks back at Pecco, he’s still staring. So is Luca. Not concern. Anticipation, maybe. 

“This was a bad idea,” he mutters to Enea, because Enea won’t care—and he doesn’t, letting out a loud laugh.

“Ah, I don’t know. Good for me. I might win this.” 

“We might win this,” Marc retorts, reflex, and Enea laughs again.

Fuck Pecco. It’s helping.

——

Valentino—fuck him—is right. As soon as the flag drops and they roll out for their practice laps, something settles, even on this plain black bike with his number stenciled in red on the front. Unfamiliar beneath his thighs, and yet he settles into it straight away. It takes a couple of laps, that’s all, before he can throw it into a corner and grin when it bites, when the rear tyre slides how he wants it to. Valentino pulls in before he does, perches on his bike to watch Luca with folded arms, but turns his head when Marc trundles down the side chute to the bike shed.

“Feels good?” Enea says, hair a frizzy halo.

“Yeah, good.”

“You hear that, Pecco? He’s going to win!”

“He usually does,” Pecco shoots back, and grins ruefully. It almost sounds like he doesn’t mind.

——

The day moves quickly: cameraphones; qualifying; a Sky crew that Marc tries his best to steer clear of. He knows he’ll be in the background, though, so he sticks close to Enea and Pecco, ignoring Bezzecchi’s glare. Valentino would be annoyed if someone caught Marc on his own, excluded.

And then—

And they’re lining up on the track, Marc steadying the bike in his hands, not looking at Valentino two spots over who’ll be swapping in the same time he does. The flag drops. Enea sprints.  

Away they go.

——

The bike feels good. Someone kind—Pecco, probably—had made some basic changes to the setup. It feels good, and it’s easy. 

Enea passed the reins over to him from second position, and Bezzecchi slid on his way out of the switch line, so Marc gritted his teeth and just—went. No one in front. A few bikes close behind, so he could throw himself at the apex of every corner, could hit the inside, could let the rear tyre kick out a warning. 

It’s heavy, all of a sudden, a thundercloud rolling in and pressing down—and plenty of people here have blue leathers with bright yellow, but Marc knows. Valentino is behind him. He pushes through the next turn a little harder. 

Corner after corner after corner, Valentino’s bike a growling hum in his ear. Hornet buzzing inside his skull. Marc almost misses the bell to start the final lap; Enea is yelling something as he streaks past that doesn’t carry.

One lap to go. One lap. He’s going to win.

And Valentino is going to look at him like he’s holding a lemon under his tongue, and even the cameras won’t be enough to stop his eyes going cold again, and—

Marc puts his foot down, as if to catch a slide. The crowd noise pitches up. Valentino pushes through on his inside.

The flag waves.

——

Valentino won’t stop glaring at him.

You won, Marc wants to howl, you won, what else do you want? He doesn’t say anything though, accepts his necklace of sausages, and tries to think of the earliest possible opportunity to leave. 

And Luca—Luca keeps glancing in his direction, eyebrows drawn together like he’s concerned, like he can sense his brother’s slow-burning anger beside him on the top step. Spark creeping down a fuse: it’s going to come to a head too soon for Marc to escape.

They let the fireworks off while Enea is pouring champagne down the back of his suit, and Marc yells, twists away, stupid fucking sausages thumping against his chest. When he opens his eyes, shivering, Valentino is still staring.

The fireworks crack. Marc blinks.

——

“This is nice,” Bezzecchi offers across the table. A harmless comment that’s like throwing a stone onto a thinly-frozen pond; the fragile peace shatters.

Everyone else is talking, laughing, eating, and it’s so loud, excruciating, against the tense bubble at the head of the table: Marc, pinned on a bench between Luca and Franky; Valentino, mouth pinched in that awful familiar way. 

“Normally it is just a barbecue,” Pecco tells Marc, gallantly ignoring the heavy silence around them. “Vale is treating us well this year.”

“To celebrate a good race,” Valentino says, voice hard. “The spirit of—competition.”

Marc stares down at his plate. 

“Was it—not a good race?” Luca says mildly. Marc wonders if kicking him is the way to go.

“I expect everyone to give their all on my track.”

“And you think I didn’t,” Marc says, too loud. Enea, further down the table, turns to look. 

Valentino huffs through his nose. “Maybe I expected too much of you.” 

“Okay.” Marc stabs his fork into a piece of salmon. “What did you expect, given that we have spoken, hm, once in the past five years?”

Pecco’s eyes widen, food abandoned as he glances between them. 

And Valentino’s lips twitch, as if to say there you are. That’s what he’d been expecting, because no one can get under Marc’s skin, splinters in nails, the way he can. “I did not expect you to fuck up on the last lap.”

“It’s happened before.” 

“It was a mistake, Vale,” Luca says quietly. 

But Pecco—Pecco stares at Marc. Pecco knows Marc. 

“A stupid mistake.”

Marc sets his jaw, something fluttering in his chest. Lion’s den. “I make mistakes all the time. I am dangerous, no?” 

Valentino ignores that. “Too stupid for you.”

Marc holds his gaze, doesn’t let it slide to the wine glass balanced elegantly in his left hand, until Valentino blinks, takes a sip, rings glinting on long fingers. Pecco exhales, as if released from a spell, and picks up his fork again; it scrapes against the plate, high and piercing, and that’s enough to break whatever hold had Marc bound to his seat. 

“Thank you,” he says, directly to Pecco. “This was nice. I think I will not be invited back.”

Pecco looks at him, then at Luca. “Marc—”

“See you at the team launch.” It’s a miracle Marc extricates himself from the bench without stumbling, feet numb from the cold. He should message Enea, apologise for leaving. Thank him for making it bearable. 

A chair scrapes behind him as he pushes through the door, out into the frigid air. Footsteps in the dirt. 

“Marc.” Valentino has been saying his name all day, and none of them have grated like this one does, this one with no one else around to hear it. “Marc!”

“I am leaving.” Marc keeps his gaze fixed on the house—he will have to ask Pecco to bring anything he forgets, will have to plead with him before the Ducati launch in ten days’ time. If he can just find the keys to his hire car—

“Why?” And even that’s sharp, like Marc failed a test. 

He groans into the night sky, breath misting, before whipping around to glare. “Why? God, I cannot fucking win, Valentino. Maybe I am leaving too early, hm? Did you want to make a speech about what a disappointment I was?”

“No.” But that expression—lips pursed like there’s something sour behind his teeth. 

“Oh, of course, I am sorry.” The laugh that escapes Marc’s throat is sharp, a barking sound. “Did you not get enough on video? To show how—what a sportsman you are. All is forgiven. How kind of you.”

“Jesus, Marc—”

“Whatever I do—” And it sticks on his tongue, stings with the threat of tears. How humiliating. “Whatever I do, you will—you will find something. I am not staying here.”

Valentino stays where he is, halfway between Marc and the outbuilding. “There are no flights until tomorrow.”

“I don’t care.”

“You threw the race.” It’s not—it’s different, this time, not probing, not sneering. 

“I made a mistake. I finished second.” 

“Why?”

“I don’t know why—”

“Yes.” A few steps, and Valentino is close enough that Marc can see the house lights glint in his eyes. “You do. It was not a mistake. You are just clever enough to make it look like one.” 

Nausea almost sends him to his knees in the cold dirt, but Marc is well-practiced at ignoring his body’s cries. He folds his arms. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“If you were going to humiliate me by giving me the race,” Valentino says, closer again, “you should have made it more obvious.”

Marc closes his eyes, bites back the frustrated yell. “You are angry that you won?”

“I want to know why you think I need your help to beat you.”

“Fucking hell,” Marc breathes. “And what if I had won? Am I a dirty rider? What would fucking—what do you want? Because last time—” And he clamps his mouth shut, cursing his own slip.

No one can do that to him but Valentino. 

Valentino, who pounces. “What about last time?”

“You were—angry. Last time I was here. And you would have been pissed off if I had said no, or if I had qualified last and fallen off. You would have—nothing is fucking good enough. So I will leave, and then at least I am just the sore loser you always thought, yes?” He should turn now, walk towards the house. He should. 

“You threw the race,” Valentino says again, and now it’s as if he’s tasting the words, finding something new in them. 

“And I should not have bothered. Because everything I do—” Marc swallows down the sting in his throat; after all this time, he still fucking cares. “You decided who I am a long time ago. I don’t know why I thought I could do anything about that.” 

It’s silent, just puffs of breath between them, and Marc turns around. He can’t be pulled back in again: he won’t. 

“Marc.”

Just—twenty steps, and he’ll be inside. Closer to safety.

“Marc.” Like a scolding teacher, an indulgent king. 

“Don’t.”

Too late; a hand grasps his upper arm, stops him in his tracks—and then drops away like it had been scalded. “Fuck, sorry—I didn’t think—”

“My arm is fine,” Marc grinds out. “I’m going home.”

“Why did you come?”

“What?”

“You did not tell me—why did you say yes?” 

Marc scoffs. “Wouldn’t want you to look bad now you are finally feeling forgiving.” 

“Oh, so you are doing me this favour instead?” The words are hot, too close to Marc’s ear. 

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” 

“No.”

In, out. Breathe. 

“You haven’t asked why I wanted you here.” 

“Pecco wanted—”

“I don’t do anything I don’t want to, Marc.” He can—he knows how Valentino is standing, can feel it like a twist deep in his torso: knows how he’s leaning down, hands hovering inches from Marc’s jacket. “Ask me why.”

“I don’t care why.”

A laugh, ghosting against the back of his neck. Marc shivers. “So why did you come?”

“Good for Ducati.” 

“Of course.” Lips, pressed against the base of his skull, the first tense knot of his spine. 

Marc is so fucking tired. It would be so easy to pull away now, keep walking, never look back: even easier to close his eyes and sink back into him. He’s tired, so he says, “It should be easier for me to hate you.” 

And Valentino must be tired, or drunk, because his hands find Marc’s waist and he whispers, “I don’t want it to be easier.” 

“You never wanted anything to be easy,” Marc tells him, a little too aching. 

Silence, silence that pulls in everything around them: the breeze in the trees behind the track; the faint sound of laughter; the distant rumble of a car’s engine. Valentino’s hands are brand-hot through his clothes, different and so familiar. 

Silence, before Valentino moves, slips his way around so he’s in front of Marc, between him and the house now. His fingers slip under Marc’s hoodie, find the skin just above his hipbone, other hand on the back of his head. “I don’t. Which is why next time you will not give up the win.”

“Next time,” Marc echoes, absent, caught on the trail of fingernails across the back of his neck, through his hair. 

“You need to keep Ducati happy, no?”

“Of course.” They’re too close now, Marc knows it, knows he’s staring into the jaws of death. He wishes he cared more, wishes he weren’t leaning into Valentino’s hold. Wishes it weren’t coiling tight in his stomach. 

Ribbons of flesh: that’s all he’ll be when Valentino’s done with him this time. No need to carve new lines when the old scars still smart. 

“You are very fucking frustrating,” Valentino mutters, and it hits Marc in the corner of his mouth. Too close. Focused in. There’ll be no escape. 

“Always,” but he’s closing his eyes. Valentino was too close to do anything but lean forward, and he does, and Marc meets him with his mouth already open. 

——

The bed shifting wakes him up, makes him roll over and squint, before throwing his left arm over his eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Valentino pauses, trousers halfway up his thighs, a loose hoodie already pulled on. “Well, I did not think it was that bad.”

Marc lets his arm fall away; Valentino is pouting, entirely unoffended. In a good mood, for now. “It was not bad.”

“Good.” And now there’s a vulpine grin being levelled at him. “You have not changed.”

Marc has, so he glowers and bites. “And you are old.”

Valentino just snorts. “I could set the fire alarm off. The meeting point is by the track. You could get to your car without anybody seeing you.”

Oh. Marc swallows, suddenly cold. “Is that—do you want me to?”

“Do you want to?”

“Not particularly.”

“When I go downstairs,” Valentino says, instead of answering that, “and make two coffees, there will be questions.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Don’t you?”

And Marc thinks of Pecco inviting him, Luca watching him, Franky pointedly offering him a seat at dinner near Valentino. He smirks. “No.”

“Ah. I see.” Valentino taps a long finger on his chin. “Luca was telling me it would be good for my image, Pecco was saying it was for the team—we have been—yes.”

“Yes,” Marc agrees, then, “Do you—mind?”

Valentino drags his gaze down the length of Marc’s body, then up again. “Hm. No.”

“Good.”

“You never asked, you know.”

“Asked what?” But Marc knows. Why?

“Coffee,” Valentino says, as if he’s just remembered, and leans down like he might drop a kiss on Marc’s head before he catches himself. “Into the lion’s den I go.” 

Marc waits until the bedroom door closes behind him to bury his face in his hands. He sighs.

Despite himself, he smiles. 

[sharonccrter]

I saw this really interesting video, which talked about my two biggest gripes with challengers' discourse. Which are that everyone keeps saying Art is the heart of this movie, and secondly, the insistence that Patrick doesn't love Tashi, only Art. The creator pushes back against these two narratives, and I wholeheartedly agree. Patrick is arguably the heart of this movie.

Two of the most important scenes in the movie are the churro scene and the scene between p/t out in the storm, and they both centre around Patrick.

The entire movie is about passion and purpose in life, and Patrick is the passion.

I mean, a lot of people assume Patrick didn't really have feelings for Tashi, but the only person who says that is Art. Who is vying for Tashi and is his biggest competitor. The reason I empathise with Patrick is that he is genuine and loving to Art; he does love him. However, we are shown no evidence to suggest that Patrick is this shitty boyfriend, apart from what Art says when he's trying to get into Tashi's head because his jealous. We find out that they're talking every week while he's on tour (normal relationship shit). It's Art who insinuates that Patrick is cheating while on tour. The only person in this movie who says Patrick doesn't love Tashi is Art, and it's obviously very intentional.

I think the reason both Tashi and Art push Patrick out of their lives is because he forces them to comfort parts of themselves they are not yet comfortable with. I mean, it's obvious why Tashi would react that way to Patrick; she's just lost the most important thing in her life. However, I think it's tragic from Patrick's point of view as well. I mean, what did Patrick really do? He got into a fight with his girlfriend because she hurt his feelings.

And no, he's hurt was not about Art. The fight made him feel unimportant, which made him feel like she didn't actually care about him. And that's where Art comes in, because who was going around telling Patrick Tashi didn't give a shit? You bet ya. Art. Art absolutely got into his head. And even if he clocked it, in that moment, he still allowed it to get to him because he was emotional and upset. And because he was too hurt to support her, he was thrown out of Tashi and Art's lives.

And here's the thing, Patrick never saw Tashi as an idea. He saw her as a real person, unlike Art kinda did. Patrick wasn't going to let Tashi treat him like shit just because she was special. And, tbh, if Tashi hadn't gotten injured, I think it's something she would have eventually been grateful for. But instead, she got hurt; she pushed Patrick away, and Art slid into his place, telling her that she could be his entire world and the star. That's not healthy, and sorry to stay a little manipulative.

And let's talk about Art. Patrick and him were literally fire and ice. They always had this underlying desire. They were perfect opposites. Let's face it: Art could never replicate what he had on the court (and off) with anyone else. But instead of confronting his feelings, he took the first chance he had to get Patrick out of his life.

The girl I was watching said it perfectly, "Art and Tashi allowed themselves to find consolation prizes in each other and allowed them to run from parts of themselves they didn't want to comfort and in turn enable each other's worst habits."

Art tries to become a tennis superstar so Tashi can live through him, and Tashi gives him a family so he can finally be confident in who he is. But is there any passion? I don't know; I think at some point, it drained; nothing about what I saw on screen apart from their initial get-together screams passion.

Cue Patrick walking back into their life and showing them how they can feel. Art was always going to let Tashi live through him, but that was never going to be satisfying for her. Tashi needs to find a way to create an identity for herself, separate from him. And I believe it'll be the only way she'll live a satisfying life. That's why they need Patrick: to make them realise that and to help them rediscover their passion.

I think people think that Art is the heart because Patrick admits to being a piece of shit. But the truth is, they're all dicks; Patrick was just the only one who was willing to admit it.

[nvrsaidiwasinurcloset]

Obsessed - Ethan Landry x Fem!Reader - Part 2

This contains SMUT - Minors DNI

Part 1

Summary: You help Ethan get revenge on his ex that made his life hell.

Contains: Angst, Mentions of abusive behavior, Fluff-ish? idk, Oral - m and f receiving, rough sex, dom!-ish Ethan (If I missed anything, let me know!)

A/N: I SUCK because I've had this almost finished for TWO DAYS and I thought I was going to have the time to finish it. Also, if there are any spelling errors or whatever, I'm sorry😫 If I re-read something I've written too much I start to criticize it and this would've never gotten posted lmao

After your night with Ethan, you woke up determined to right the wrongs that your friends’ narrative created. You felt bad for him, because he was the sweetest, and he didn’t deserve all the hate he got from people that had no idea what the truth was. And the last thing you wanted was for the boy you were starting to fall for to change his mind and decide on transferring to a different school, even after he told you he’d stay.

Your friend kept texting you all night, so much that you finally had to put your phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’ just so you could get some sleep. Once you clicked on her message thread and had to scroll a few times to read all the stuff she’d sent you, you got an idea when you made it to the last text she’d sent.

‘How could you do that when it’s obvious I still have feelings for him?’

“Oh shit,” you said, rereading the message a couple times. “That’s it!”

You were about to text Ethan when you saw the ‘Good morning’ text he’d sent you, a sweet smile playing on your lips as you messaged him back.

You: Good morning

You: What are you doing today?

Ethan: I’m going to lunch with my friends soon, wanna join?

You: I wouldn’t be imposing?

Ethan: Not at all. Plus, I really want to see you

You: Where am I meeting you guys?

Ethan: You think I’m going to let you walk there by yourself?

Ethan: Meet me in front of your dorm in an hour

You: See you soon

When you walked outside, you saw Ethan leaning against the brick wall of your dorm. You ran up to him, a huge smile on your face as he pulled you close.

“Hey cutie,” he said, leaning down to kiss you. “How did you sleep?”

“I wish I slept a lot better,” you sighed, “Your ex was texting me all night.”

“Oh…why?” he asked, as he laced his fingers with yours.

“Someone told her I was kissing you at the party last night,” you said, his eyes growing wide at your words.

“What did she say?” he asked as he started to walk, leading the way towards the restaurant.

“That I betrayed her, that you’re going to hurt me just like you hurt her, and that she still has feelings for you.”

“Well, she can choke on her feelings,” he bluntly said, as you started to laugh. “I’m serious. She’s made my life hell.”

“I think I might know how to make things better for you, but I don’t know if you’ll like my idea,” you said, as he curiously looked over at you.

“What are you thinking?”

“What if you asked her to hang out? Like, just say that you miss her and you want to see her. Then you call her out on her bullshit, but record the conversation,” you said, as Ethan took a deep breath. “I can think of something else if you don’t want to be around her.”

“No, I think it’s a good idea,” he said, “I’m not sure if I can fake being nice to her, though. What if I see her and I just blow up on her?”

“I think you can do it,” you said, your thumb rubbing against the top of his hand. “Just think, you get her to confess that everything she’s said about you wasn’t true, and your life can go back to normal.”

“Normal sounds nice,” he said, glancing up to notice all the people looking at him. “I felt like I was invisible in high school. Now I can’t get people to stop staring at me.”

“Maybe it’s because you’re so cute,” you said, half-joking as you smiled at him. “I’m finding it hard to stop staring at you.”

“Stop, you’re going to make me blush,” he said, his free hand running across his face as he tried to compose himself from your flirting. “I think they’re staring right now because I’m with someone as beautiful as you.”

“Who’s making who blush now?” you asked, as he opened the restaurant door for you.

He led you over to the table where his friends were, introducing you to them as you sat down. You recognized Chad from the night before, and Ethan was just praying that he wouldn’t say something embarrassing.

“It’s nice to officially met you,” Chad said, “Ethan hasn’t shut up about you all morning.”

Ethan sighed in defeat as he looked over to his friend, “Seriously?”

“What? It’s true,” Chad shrugged, “He told me you convinced him to stay, which I’ve been trying to do for months.”

“I think things are about to get a lot easier for him,” you said, as Ethan smiled.

“She’s a genius,” he said, wrapping his arm around you. “Apparently my ex still has feelings for me. Fuck, I need to text her.” Ethan slid his phone out of his pocket and unblocked her number, before typing. “Does this sound okay?” he asked, showing you the ‘I miss you. can we talk?’ text.

“As long as you don’t actually miss her, then yeah,” you said, as Ethan started to laugh.

“Fuck no,” he said, as he pressed send.

“Wait…if she still has her feelings, why would she spread all those rumors?” Tara asked, as Mindy jumped in the conversation.

“She doesn’t want anyone else to have him.”

“That’s fucked up,” Chad said, as Ethan’s phone vibrated against the table.

Ethan looked over to you before he picked his phone up. You could tell he was nervous, you were, too.

“She asked me what I’m doing tonight,” he sighed, “She wants me to take her to dinner.”

“Do you feel comfortable with that?” you asked, his expression unreadable.

“Do you feel comfortable with that?” he questioned, “You know how she is. She’ll probably try to be affectionate.”

“I’ll kill her,” you said with a straight face as Ethan started to laugh. “I’m serious…if she touches you, she’s dead.”

“Ooh, what if we stake out at the restaurant,” Tara suggested, “We sit far enough away, but we can still see what’s going on.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Ethan sighed, “I could only imagine what she’d say once she finds out it’s all bullshit. What if she says I put my hands on her or something?”

“You’ll have witnesses. I’ll come,” Chad said, as Mindy agreed to come along, too.

“Okay, I’m meeting her at 7,” he said, as his hand rubbed against your leg under the table.

Once everyone finished eating, you and Ethan were invited over to Tara’s. Ethan had other plans though, asking you if you wanted to go to his dorm for a little bit first. You agreed, because you wanted to spend alone time with him before he had to meet with his ex.

“Are you sure you’re okay with me going out with her tonight?” Ethan asked, once you’d made it back to his dorm. “I haven’t even taken you on our first date yet, and I’m taking her on one. It doesn’t feel right.”

“I’m okay with it as long as you don’t get sucked back in,” you said, a nervous smile playing on your lips as you sat down on his bed. “She’s good at convincing.”

“I won’t,” he promised, as he took a seat beside you. “The only one sucking me in is you.”

“Do you know what you’re going to say to her?” you asked, trying to fight the blush that was spreading to your cheeks.

“Well, I thought I’d start the conversation with the ‘I’m happy you wanted to see me’ and go from there. I think I’ll bring up the rumors and stuff after we start eating,” he sighed. “I hope she doesn’t deny it.”

“Just say you won’t give her another chance unless she admits it, because I told you she was the one spreading everything about you,” you suggested, as he shook his head.

“I’m not throwing you under the bus like that.”

“She’s already pissed at me. Why does it matter?” you asked, “Because honestly, she’s not my friend, not if she’s that shitty of a person. I don’t care what she thinks about me.”

“What if she starts shit about you, too?” he questioned, making you scoff.

“What can she say about me? Everyone will know she’s a liar after tonight.”

You talked with Ethan for a while about the right things to say and do, and as the hours started to pass, he was getting really stressed. He laid back on the bed and pulled you close to cuddle.

“We should probably go to Tara’s soon,” he said, as his fingertips rubbed across your back. With the lack of sleep from the night before, you were starting to feel really drowsy with the soothing motions. “Fuck, I’m so worried that I’ll just snap once I see her. I feel myself getting angrier.”

“You have every right to feel that way,” you said, as your hand rubbed across his stomach. “But I might know I way for you to release some of that tension.”

“What did you have in mind?” he asked, already having a hunch with the suggestiveness in your tone. You didn’t say anything as your hand traveled lower, running over the slight bulge in his jeans. You felt him getting harder the longer you rubbed, his hips shifting as he tried to get comfortable.

You sat up to look at him before your hand reached up to the button of his jeans. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about last night,” you said, your eyes on his as you slid his zipper down. “No one’s ever made me cum as hard as you did.”

You started to tug on his jeans as he lifted his hips, making it a little easier for you to get them down.

“Do you want me to make you cum right now?” he asked, as you laughed and shook your head.

“No, baby. I’m going to take care of you,” you said, sliding his boxers down. He gasped the second his cock sprang free from the confines of his boxers, your hand moving to lazily stroke it as he watched you, his bottom lip in between his teeth. “I’ve been dying to do this.”

With his size, you knew you wouldn’t be able to fit all of it in your mouth, but you were determined to make him feel so good that the only thing he thought about on his fake date with your friend was you. You started with his tip, your tongue swirling around it. You paid extra attention to the underside the head of his cock because he kept gasping every time your tongue brushed against it. Then you slowly started to take him in your mouth, as his hand went to your hair.

“Fuck,” he sighed, as he watched you. He thought you were always beautiful but seeing you like this made him even more attracted to you. Your eagerness to please him just like he took care of you the night before showed him how down for him you really were, and the way that you thought of a plan to help him get his life back to normal had him falling for you harder than he expected to, at least this soon.

Once you started to gag, his hand that was resting loosely in your hair started to pull it a little, the feeling making you moan around him. You just kept going, the drool from all your gagging starting to drip down his cock. You reached your hand up to stroke what you couldn’t fit in your mouth, as your cheeks hollowed and how head started to bob.

“Shit, baby,” he groaned once your hand started to twist a little. “You’re so fucking perfect.”

His praise motivated you even more, your head moving quicker as he struggled to keep quiet. Not that he needed to be, but he had so many different sounds threatening to slip past his lips. He was fighting to keep his hips still. It was taking everything in him to not thrust into your mouth. You noticed that he was holding back, so you pulled away, your hand still moving as you looked at him. Your eyes were glassy from all the tears that formed, your lips were swollen, and Ethan was just so in awe of you.

“You don’t have to just lay there,” you said, the slight rasp in your voice from all the gagging quickly becoming his new favorite sound. “I can take it.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, as you mumbled a “Mhm.”

You took him back in your mouth, and it didn’t take long for his hips to thrust. Your hand kept you from taking more than you could handle, but you were still gagging so much. Every time your throat tightened; Ethan felt himself getting closer to the edge.

“I’m gonna cum,” he groaned, his hand tugging on your hair as his hips stuttered.

You glanced up to see him as his orgasm hit. His eyes were fluttering as the salty liquid coated your taste buds, his head rolling back. The grip he had on your hair loosened as you slowed down, before you slid him out of your mouth.

“How was that?” you asked, as he tore his gaze away from the ceiling to look at you. He had a goofy smile on his face as his hands reached out to grab you and pull you close.

“That was perfect, babe,” he said, as he started to get a little curious. “How’d you get so good at that?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” you playfully said, as he chuckled. “We really should go to Tara’s.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking if you guys go to the restaurant early, she would be less likely to see you,” he said, as his hands started to rub your back again.

“We better go now, because you’re going to make me fall asleep,” you said, pushing yourself off his chest.

Once you made it to Tara’s, Ethan was way calmer than he was before. You knew the plan would work, but now you had more confidence that he’d be able to keep his cool. When everyone said they were ready to go, Ethan wrapped his hands around your waist from behind you. You turned to face him, a sweet smile on your lips as he leaned down to kiss you.

“Thank you,” he said, as you curiously looked at him.

“For what?”

“For being amazing,” he said, stealing one more kiss as Mindy fake-gagged in the background.

“Okay, if we’re going to make it to the restaurant before them, we need to go now,” she said, as you hesitantly pulled away from Ethan.

“I’ll see you soon,” you said, following Ethan’s friends out the door.

Once Ethan and his ex made it to the restaurant, you could feel the jealousy building. You saw the simple touches against his arm, the flirty smile on her lips. You felt your blood start to boil as you huffed and turned your attention to his friends.

“You okay?” Tara asked, noticing the pissed expression on your face.

“She was touching him,” you said, glancing back over to see them seated at the table.

“You really like him, huh?” Chad asked, as you felt your cheeks start to heat up.

“Yeah,” you said, your angry expression turning into a smile as you thought about Ethan.

“He really likes you too,” Tara said, as Chad nodded.

“Yeah, I told you, he wouldn’t shut up about you this morning.”

Everyone kept glancing towards Ethan’s table, but you were trying so hard not to. You just wanted to focus on eating the food in front of you, even though you didn’t have much of an appetite. You didn’t want to see him doing what he could to get the confession out of her, but once Mindy mumbled “Oh shit.” you finally looked up.

“Are they arguing?” Tara asked, as Chad nodded.

“He looks pissed.”

You watched your friend try to grab Ethan’s hand on the top of the table, but he pulled it away before he stood up. He searched the restaurant for the table that you were at before he walked over.

“I got her confession. Let’s go, babe,” he said, as you stood up. He took your hand in his before he turned to Chad. “I’ll send you money for her food. Is that cool?”

“Yeah, we’ll leave soon. You want to come back to Tara’s?” Chad said, as Ethan shrugged.

“Not right now, I need to blow off some steam.”

Your heart started to pound, butterflies fluttering around in your stomach as he walked with you. You weren’t sure how he wanted to let out his aggression, but you really hoped that it’d be in his bed. He led you out of the restaurant, your hand in his. Once your friend saw, she jumped up from the table and followed you outside.

“Hey,” she said, grabbing your shoulder after she caught up to you.

“Don’t touch me,” you snapped, turning to face her.

“What the fuck was all of this?” she asked, as Ethan tried to pull you away. “Honey, he doesn’t want you if he asked me out tonight.”

“Honey, he asked you out tonight so you’d confess to all the fucked up things you’ve said about him,” you yelled, your words full of venom as she started to laugh.

“Aww, are you trying to get people to believe that he isn’t some asshole?” she asked, and your hands involuntarily clenched at your sides. You were furious with the smug look on her face and the snarky tone. “Good luck trying to prove it.”

“I’ll prove it,” Ethan said, as he started to play back the video so she could hear it. Her face dropped, before she tried to grab his phone from his hands.

“Aww, are you worried everyone’s going to find out how much of a lying bitch you are?” you asked, your tone matching hers as she started to get mad. “You can’t just fuck up someone’s life and get away with it.”

Your conversation with her wasn’t quiet, and people started to gather around. They were probably anticipating the altercation to get physical, but you refused to give everyone that satisfaction.

“You really are a shitty friend,” she said, making you scoff.

“You’re a shitty person! You spread so much shit about Ethan that wasn’t true. How the fuck do you sleep at night knowing you’ve been ruining his life all year?”

“He shouldn’t have broken up with me,” she snapped, “But it’s okay. You aren’t what he really wants. It’s cute that you think you’ll ever compare to me.”

“That’s the reason I am interested in her!” Ethan yelled, “She’s nothing like you! You told everyone I was controlling, that I was mentally and emotionally abusive. That’s what YOU were!”

She was about to say something, when she glanced around and noticed all the people with their phones out, pointed at her. You noticed some of the girls that you’d heard talk about Ethan staring at the ground, disappointed in themselves that they helped spread the rumors. Some of the guys that had gathered around shook their heads at her.

“That’s fucked up,” one of the guys said, before one of the girls jumped in.

“Yeah, you’re going to make all of us seem like we’re lying if something happens to us. That really is fucked up.”

You looked over to Ethan, your eyes wide as he tried to fight a smile from forming on his lips. He saw her little reign of terror crumbling, and it was so satisfying to watch.

She suddenly felt the urge to save face, walking over to Ethan. He backed away from her as she sighed in frustration.

“I’m sorry, Ethan,” she said, as he started to laugh.

“You’re only sorry because people know who you really are now,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You don’t care that you fucked this whole year up for me. All you cared about was making sure no one else wanted me, but how funny is it that one of your friends does?”

“Oh, we’re not friends,” you said, looking over at her. “Good luck finding someone here that wants to be with you after what you did to him.”

Ethan grabbed your hand to lead you away from her, as she stood there in the awkward tension. Once you and Ethan made it a block away, you both started to laugh.

“Maybe I didn’t need to record the conversation with her,” he said, “Almost everyone recorded that shit just now.”

“I’m happy for you, babe,” you said, as he leaned down to kiss you. It wasn’t a quick peck like you expected, your mouths moving together as you made out on the sidewalk.

“It was so hot watching you stand up to her like that,” he said against your lips once you pulled away to catch your breath. “Let’s go to my dorm. Chad’s going to Tara’s.”

“And what would we do?” you asked, a smirk playing on your lips as he smiled.

“I think celebratory sex is the perfect way to end tonight, followed by you staying over once I tell Chad he can’t come home.”

Once Ethan got you back to his dorm, he unbuttoned the jeans you were wearing the second you slid your shoes off your feet.

“Someone’s eager,” you giggled, as he led you to the bed.

“You have no idea,” he said, pushing you back.

Your legs were hanging off the side of the bed as he pulled your jeans and panties down your legs, the aggressiveness of it making you more wet than you already were. He dropped to the floor, sitting on his knees as he moved your legs to rest on his shoulders. He started with small licks to your clit, teasing you a little just so he could make you squirm. Your legs resting on him pulled him closer once he wasn’t giving you what you needed. He chuckled against you before he started to swirl his tongue around your sensitive bundle of nerves.

“Fuck, just like that,” you said, your hand moving to rest in his curls.

His hands grabbed your hips to pull you even closer to his mouth, a squeal slipping past your lips once you felt your ass hanging off the bed.

“I won’t let you fall, baby,” he said, before his tongue went back to your clit.

You felt two of his fingers brushing against your entrance, a low moan falling out of your mouth once he slid them inside of you. You glanced down to look at him and saw his eyes on you. He couldn’t stop watching the way your chest started to rise and fall quicker and all the cute little faces you were making.

He started to angle his fingers just right, pressing them against the spongy spot inside of you as he suckled on your clit. Your hand pulled his hair, the other one gripping at the sheets as your moans got louder.

You felt that feeling starting to build, your body getting hotter as he pressed his fingers even harder.

“Oh shit,” you whimpered, as he sucked harder on your clit. “Cumming.”

Your back arched off the bed as the legs around Ethan’s shoulders clenched around him, holding him in place as he kept fucking you with his fingers. He slowed down a little once your pussy started to spasm, the loud whines falling from your lips echoing off the walls as he worked you through it.

Once your body relaxed, he slid his fingers out of you, and gave your clit a few more gentle licks before he rolled you over, your wobbly legs trying to stabilize themselves as your feet rested against the floor. You were still so blissed out, your senses still on overdrive as you heard the sound of his zipper getting slid down. After he took off his jeans and boxers, you waited in anticipation as he walked over to his nightstand to grab a condom. Once he came back over to you, he ran his hands over your ass that was proudly sticking up in the air for him.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” he chuckled as he rolled the condom on.

He inched himself inside of you, soft moans slipping past your lips as he filled you up. When he stilled inside of you, he ran his hands over your hips as his cock stretched you out.

“You can move now,” you said, your voice muffled by his bed sheets.

He started off with slow, deep thrusts. He slid his cock out of you every time, his breathing getting heavier every time the tip went in and out of your entrance. Your hips started to move back to meet his slow thrusts, but he pulled back even further.

“Please, baby,” you begged, as you heard him chuckle from behind you.

“How bad do you want it?” he asked, as his hands moved from your ass to grip your hips. You huffed in response, as he slowed down even more. “If you want me to give you what you want, you better tell me.”

“I want it so fucking bad,” you pouted, as he smirked at how needy you were.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Before you could say anything else, he started to pound into you. He was pulling your hips back to meet his thrusts, your legs tingling as you struggled to hold yourself up. You were clinging to his sheets, whimpers flooding out of your mouth as he slammed into that spot every single time.

“So fucking tight,” he grunted, as you moaned in response.

Ethan had gone absolutely feral, one of his hands snaking under you to pull you back against him as he fucked up into you. He was squeezing at one of your breasts over your shirt as his other hand kept pulling your hips down.

“Are you mine?” he growled in your ear, this new side of Ethan turning you on more than you already were. You were trying so hard to form words, but they wouldn’t come out. The sounds of your wet pussy and skin slapping were filling the room as you felt the coil in the pit of your stomach getting tighter. “Are you too cock drunk to answer me?”

You nodded your head as he laid you back on the bed, your hands grasping at the sheets again as he fucked you even harder. Your whimpers were turning to cries as your legs started to shake, your orgasm taking over your body so strong that you swore you were going to black out from how good it felt.

“Almost there, baby,” he said, your pussy squeezing him so tight that he felt like he could bust at that feeling alone. After a few more deep thrusts, he moaned out, his cum filling the tip of the condom. He caught his breath for a minute before he slid out of you, smiling at the way your body was relaxed on his bed.

“I am,” you said, after he got rid of the condom and helped you get the rest of your body up on the bed.

“You’re what?” he questioned, as he laid down and pulled you close.

“I’m yours.”

After that night, your former friend only lasted a couple weeks at the university once everyone realized how she really was. She switched to online classes until she transferred to a college closer to her and Ethan’s home town. Your relationship with Ethan got more serious that he was bringing you home for the holidays. You were taking all these cute little photos in front of one of the light displays when you saw her with someone you assumed to be her new boyfriend, but she quickly walked away with him the second she saw you and Ethan.

“You think she’s going to do the same shit to him that she did to me?” he asked, wrapping his arm around you as you walked along the path of lights.

“No, I think she learned her lesson.”