#that's what i get from exploring the idea of actually having children one day

[vole-mon-amour]

.

[sorryimananti-romantic]

Ateez as Dads-

collab with loren @eightmakesonebraincell who shares the same single braincell as me bc we know we're not the only ones obsessed with the recent ateez x children content

(disclaimer: i don't like babies. but the idea of ateez handling babies? adorable. loren, however, loves kids so here's the outcome)

Hongjoong

"hold this thing, i don't know what to do with it."

"that's your child, hongjoong."

looks like the frightened hamster meme when the baby starts crying out of nowhere

sometimes sleeps through the baby crying its lungs out at night LMAO but that's only when he's exhausted asf

bet he'll write a song or two about fatherhood too and you'll be like 'what would you know about it you slept through the night'

may be uncomfortable at times but when he starts bonding, you'll see it in his actions

like when he reforms cute little things like clothings or shoes for his baby, adding little dangly things to the crib

or when he makes cute accessories for the baby

matching reformed things omg

super stylish matching parent-kid duo

the bonding literally happens with the smallest moment like one day the baby is crying in his arms and tugs at his shirt with its little fist and he's done for he loves his kid 10000x more all of a sudden

and when the baby calms down immediately after coming into his arms? he'll die of happiness

and when the baby recognises him in a group of people??? new level of dad unlocked

literally melts whenever the kid runs across the room to fly into his arms or calls him daddy

paints the room for his kid and gives them a wall in their room to paint whatever they like

lets the kid paint his nails and they could even have that one matching painted fingernail omg

later when the kid grows up they'll have uv lights and like the latest stuff for nails but you bet hongjoong's gonna dry that nail paint by blowing on it-

literally the most supportive, allowing the kid to explore beyond conventional boundaries and guiding them along

also very attentive esp when they start growing up and observing

he'll make sure he answers all of their curious little questions to the best of their understanding

and surprisingly, he won't mind his kid in his studio

like how adorable is it when you find your kid in his lap, sharing earphones as he composes?

he just loves it when they sit on him or when they lie down next to him/on top of him when he's resting that's his therapy

Seonghwa

more of a mother than the real mother

knows exactly what to do like he's raised six kids already (i'm looking at you ateez)

wakes up at ass o clock in the morning to shush the crying baby so you can get some sleep :')

mother-coded that's what he is

you'll definitely be learning motherhood from him LMAO

but jokes aside he's actually the best partner you could have asked for in such a situation

he's so so patient with the kid and you

esp you

he understands when you're overwhelmed and when you need a break

so he's always willing to give you some space and takes care of the kid in the meanwhile which is so :')

so you try your best to return it to him in every way as well <3

you'll both be figuring this journey out together and that's the best part

bonds with the kid so good

esp when they start going to school and he literally can't wait for them to get home so he can hear about how their day was

lives for the gossip he gets from his kids about school too LOL

he'll be like yass give me the tea come on

also pretty much behaves like a kid when he's having a good time with his kids

like he goes 'no it's my turn to select the ice cream flavour you have to try this you'll love it i'm not hearing a no-'

kids teach him new slangs but you bet he'll stick to the good old 'no cap' and 'yeet'

gets matching stupid stuff like those green alien glasses for him and the kid-

you just know your kids will love him more than you and you accept it. you don't mind that at all bc he's such a lovable person

he'll always be running around the house with them trying to catch them or letting them catch him

they will watch animated movies together and draw together and make legos together they're gonna share that obsession

he's there. always. in every moment of their life :')

Yunho

curious to learn

but that doesn't stop him from playing with the baby like they're a toy boi has no fear

he's always gushing over how small and cute and adorable they are

he'll also be a bit scared at first to hold the baby in his arms but will get used to it real quick

loves feeding them and cleaning them with you

he's got some sort of magic to him too he can soothe a crying baby in seconds

plays with them/holds them like they're a cat/puppy

gives them rides on his shoulders and they love it you can hear their laughter ring around the house

teases you about how they look nothing like you but if they do look like you more, he'll be scanning them for one similarity that he can boast about.

"he's got my smile. see?"

loves playing with their hair and combing and styling it

also loves it when you all match unintentionally when going out

the type to play with the kids in the most unconventional ways when you're not looking

almost accidentally drops the baby at least once a week- i said ALMOST okay he's good at catching.

kids cling on to his long legs and he effortlessly walks like no big deal omgg

would even swing his legs like an amusement ride which might possibly earn a scream from you-

also once used the laundry basket as a rollercoaster for the kid. you can imagine how that ended. no living beings were harmed tho-

HE'S A FUN DAD OK

literally his kids are always running around him asking him to do sth fun with them or tell them jokes or play with him

teaches the kids the latest trends

makes dancing tik toks with them

he's actually also the super responsible dad, always dependable. you literally have nothing to worry about esp bc he can be serious when he needs to be

he allows the kids to take challenges, believing the kids need to grow at their own pace and that getting hurt is also a part of growing up

teaches them to be kind, to respect people, to always smile

goes on dates with them to the amusement parks, aquariums, carnivals etc and when they're older they go fishing or go-karting

Yeosang

(sincerely apologise for using a photo with alcohol in a post with babies BUT DOES HE NOT LOOK BABY HERE???)

the babiest of dads

googles whatever the baby does as if that will give him the answer

notices every little thing the baby does

follows instructions like a robot

forgets that the baby is actually a baby and they can't really do their stuff themselves so he has to do it for them-

like for example after a meal he clears the high chair and forgets he needs to help the baby off the chair until it wails LOL

is always worrying about what the baby is feeling esp when it is crying without a reason

always fusses about the little things bc he cares so much :')

sometimes you have to sit him down and tell him that it's okay if the baby is crying-

he even enjoys simply watching the baby esp when they do stupid stuff or play around with food

"that's disgusting but so adorable"

gets taught the latest trends by his kid but still ends up using them in the wrong contexts lmao

yeosang and the kid wailing about the mom on their way home until yeo takes the wrong turn and the kid glares at him and points to the right direction

yeosang and the kid in the shopping mall and yeosang gets lost

goes to the counter to pay but taps his pockets bc he can't find his wallet and the kid sighs loudly and hands it to him

yeosang taking his kid to the parent teacher meeting and he forgets HE'S the parent

he may be forgetful and zone out at times but he's actually very responsible. you never worry whenever you leave your kid with him and go out. you can depend on him <3

you'll see him mature as his kids grow up too, like you can literally see him learning fatherhood

doesn't mean they won't open dexter's laboratory when you're gone and clean up the mess before you come-

sees cute posts about lunchboxes with octopus sausage and seaweed characters on the rice but canNOT replicate it even after spending hours but the kids flaunt it like a masterpiece at their school <3 (loren you're so right for this)

his kids' friends WILL have a crush on yeosang. the teachers might too. how could you not??

his kids gon be the prettiest istg-

San

i'm sorry to break it to you but you'll have to take care of two babies <3

as loren said 'normal children learn behaviours from their parents. san learns behaviours from the baby.'

pretends to cry when the baby is crying so he can also receive hugs and kisses from you

he's actually the most responsive father ever, like he'll know what's actually happening with the kid instead of pretending to know

it's like he's connected to them on an astral level

so he's pretty much a natural caretaker

like he said, he knows how to give love

so he'll never make you feel less loved as well

he'll keep reassuring you how imp you are to him esp now that you're the mother of his child and he'll always be grateful to you for bringing this blessing into his life

but he also has his moments LMAO like i can just imagine him playing with the kid in the most babiest of manners

to the point the kid refuses to listen to you

the kids will always ALWAYS choose him whenever they're asked the 'who do you love more mom or dad' question

and even though that makes you pissed momentarily bc pls who wouldn't get pissed you find it super adorable how much your kids love their dad

safe place.

tells his kids early on what's good and what's bad. no compromises

teaches them when to be sorry and when to stand up for themselves

taekwondo together <3 he'll make them show off at family events or stuff and demand that the audience give good reactions otherwise he's gonna pout sooo hard

he'll make sure his kids don't laze around. chores? yes. exercise? yes. nap-time? necessary. homework? don't even dare to say no. play-time? HELL YES

teaches traditional games to his kids too and makes them interact with other kids to play instead of video games so early on

the video games are HIS okay they can't touch it until they grow up

kids go to him for help in school work and he'll sit there all zoned out wondering when the hell this got included in their syllabus

will refuse to give up until you catch him tired and scratching his head in confusion

"i'm pretty sure education gets tougher every year."

"whatever helps you sleep at nights san <3" LOL

loves spending time together, all of you, anywhere as long as you all are together <3

Mingi

9/10 times will cry when the baby cries

but also really good at taking care of them and it amazes him too

calms the baby down with the cutest most concerned face ever so he looks more baby than the baby

pretends to sleep when the baby wakes up crying in the middle of the night

until you poke his stomach and go 'don't you fucking dare' and he starts laughing helplessly

but then takes the reins and lets you sleep if you look too done <3

jokingly tries to gaslight you into thinking it's your turn to settle the baby but you bet you're keeping tabs too

but when he sees how tired you look, he'll never ever complain no matter how tired he may be himself. will even tuck YOU into bed

the type to sit in the lounge with some kid's show on with the kid itself and you give him snacks to feed the kid

but at some point he got a taste and now he's looking at the packaging and going 'this shit good' when it's actually some baby-friendly snack 😭

and then suddenly it's all gone and the kid is glaring at mingi with angry eyes 😭😭 and he's like pleasure is temporary my child-

but now he has his own fav baby snacks too.

does freestyle rapping about the misery of fatherhood LMAO

also does lame stuff like tapping on the baby's shoulder and when they turn to look at him he has his finger out so it pokes the baby's cheek like-

gets matching shades for him and the kid

hangs out with them a lot, even if it's inside

hears every story they have to tell but also they just looooveee to hear stories from him bc he's a good storyteller

even though half of the shit is made up but he pretends it actually happened-

"one time i saw your mom ugly crying in a shop. i asked her what the matter was. she saw me and fell in love instantly."

"wasn't it the other way?"

loves swinging his kids in his arms whenever he comes home and then you stand there all pouty and he runs after you-

can't scold kids to save himself. can never. always bursts out laughing whenever he glares at them. so you do that for him.

now you're the antagonist in the house

can't handle when his kids are being adorable like he'll just clutch his heart and pretend to faint

best father-kid dynamic bc he's the playful but responsible dad

Wooyoung

he's a natural at this come on

"i feel like he's more my sibling than my own child"

always has his baby in his arms to the point you have to snatch it from him bc you can see he's tired

takes care of everything- from bathing them to feeding them. he's so good at it too

you love him even more bc he may tease you to bits but you never thought he'd be a cooperative lovable menace too

talks to the baby in baby language and they actually hold conversations

and when you join he'll just make fun of you LOL

starts treating you like a baby too when you're tired and you're not sure you hate that you might actually start doing it on purpose too-

taught the kid the art to charm people so they're throwing random cheeky compliments around

like they'll go to a shop and the kid will compliment the shopkeeper and they'll be like omg so precious and hand freebies

and those freebies would be wooyoung's earnings btw aint no way the kid gon have those

will train a family of cutest loveable menaces :')

the chef dad

creates masterpiece lunchboxes for his kids that even the teachers are tempted to steal

i can just imagine the girl friend (also crush) of wooyoung's son at school having a big fat crush on wooyoung and wanting to marry him like come on😭😭

then the son gets super grumpy about it and woo sits him down and asks what's bothering him

then he'll teach him how to bake cookies and the son ends up sweeping the girl off her feet omgg

woo placing his hands over his kid's hands bc they're too small to properly hold the piping bag when they decorate cakes and cookies and cupcakes

them playing in the kitchen and throwing flour on each other and you come and look all smugly at woo bc yes you're gonna clean this mess later on

but you end up joining them :')

dolls up his kids and asks them to kiss him on both his cheeks before they leave

and you bet the kids love that routine

hugs. all the time. hugs.

makes sure to capture these moments for memories if you haven't already and he'll love looking back at these days <3

Jongho

best dad

makes sure he doesn't forget to take care of you as you take care of the baby :')

always gets surprised when the baby does sth new

priceless reactions from him, esp when the baby first says a comprehensible word or takes its first steps

always spreading his arms whenever he spots the baby so the baby can crawl/walk/run to him

swings them in the air and does those little throws

the strong dad. the one who's carrying the kids effortlessly- one on the shoulder, one under the arm, walking as if they weigh nothing

jongho's kid: hi i'm hungry

jongho: hi hungry, i'm dad

overuses every dumb dad joke ever to exist but still finds it super hilarious and sometimes you'll end up laughing along

"back in my days-"

"ah shit here we go again."

bc you know dad jokes aside he's actually a super funny guy when he wants to be

the type to team up with his kid to tease YOU

whispers shit in their ears like 'go pull out your mom's hairclip as revenge for her not letting us hang out in the snow with ice cream last night' when you're super occupied and gets a good laugh out of it

taps your shoulder and then looks away when you glare at him but ends up pointing at the kid like the kid's the one who did it-

when the two are a giggling mess it's hard to differentiate who's the actual kid from the parent

sings with his kids a lot. might vocally train them a bit too

road trips are gonna be so much more fun when everyone's singing at the top of their lungs

when his kid is older and starts to get school assignments that require some form of art like creating a model or designing a poster, his kid is definitely going to score an A because jongho can and WILL help and end up over-achieving LOL

will plan with his kids on days like valentine's or mother's day or anniversary, prepare to get serenaded by the lot

he involves them a lot in everything so they grow up super smart

loves doing stupid things with the kids too like he'll literally be the one following the kids at times

but you love it bc you never have to worry about anything with him ;-; <3 he's also super protective

unless there's a bug in front of you. then you're all on your own.

[donutz]

yeah fs! It would be alr if you did one where reader continuously like rub Catnap's ears! ^.^

Okay! ^_^

Catnap x touchy(not weirdly) reader

—☆You are a human in this

Being a little kid, who’s an orphan, at a big place with a bunch of toys can make you quite interested in things. There’s a lot to explore, people to meet, toys to see, and a bunch of colors to look at.

When you’re basically living in this factory, you can get bored. Even with everything that’s going on.

But if you’re being taken care of by some toys? You can’t really get bored.

Especially at 5 years old.

There’s these animals, called Smiling Critters. And they take care of you! They all love and cherish you. You were shy, but they really brought out your social side.

Anyways let me stop rambling, there was this cat. That cat didn’t interact with the children, unless it was bedtime. But during the day, he was gone.

Well, not completely. Sometimes he was but you have no idea where he was at those times. When he was actually here, just not interacting with kids, you’d always see him in a high place. Watching everybody.

But when you stare at him for too long, he moves. Yet you still find him every single time.

You wished he didn’t run away from you :(.

Since you’re a good kid, you went to sleep at the times you were supposed to.

But since he came out when you’re supposed to sleep. One night, you decided to stay up and roam the halls.

“Why are you gonna stay up?”

“Because I wanna see the kitty!” You whispered to your friend.

“What kitty?”

“The one that comes out at night!”

Your friend was a little wary after hearing that, they didn’t know that!

“That’s spooky…”

“Well I like cats!”

“Are you gonna come with me?”

They shook their head, making a mumbled, ‘auh auh’ (Idk, I tried my best trying to give that a word)

“I’m too sleepy…”

“Okay!”

Then, after that you waited, until it was bedtime. You opened the door, looking at both sides, making sure there wasn’t any other critter lurking around.

Then, you stepped out.

It was quite cold in the halls, but it was fine you had your robe, long pants and slippers.

You looked back one second, turned around and there he was!

You let out a gasp, “Kitty!” And gave him a hug.

He looked at you, processing. Why were you hugging him?

Whatever. You needed to sleep. But they said to not use the gas. He doesn’t care about what they say, but he didn’t want to give you nightmares.

Plus, you were pretty warm.

So to not let go of that warmth, he picked you up.

“Oh! Kitty you’re so strong—!” He looked up at you, carrying you with one arm, he put a finger over his wide smiling mouth.

“Oops, sorry.. ^_^” He carried you over to your room, wait. Where was your room?

Great, now he had to ask.

“Where’s… Your room..?”

“Oh, I don’t know!”

.

.

.

“O-kay.”

He could take you up to the ‘adults’ but—

You started petting his ears. “Your ears are so fluffy!” You said while whispering.

Out of his control,(kind of) he started purring. You let out another gasp, “You purr too?”

“...”

“You really are a kitty!”

Fun fact, you loved cats.

Another one, you just might be his favorite kid.

Since he didn’t want to take you to the adults, and didn’t know your room number(even if your friend tells you multiple times) he took you to his critter room. Even if no kids were allowed in there.

All of the critters were asleep, except for him, of course.

He placed you on his bed, and went on it too.

And he stared. Waiting for you to sleep.

“Oh yeah, what’s your name kitty?”

“... Theo…”

“(°〇°), Theo.. That’s a cool name..”

He got off his bed and started to leave. Because of this, you did it too, and followed him. Though he knew you were doing this he didn’t stop.

He randomly sped up and ran to another place. It was so abrupt, you weren’t able to catch up!

By the time you turned a corner, he was gone. But his lavender scent wasn’t. You followed and followed it. 

Until it led to the school. Even if you’re not supposed to go there at bedtime, you wanted to catch up with Theo.

And you can want to catch up with Theo at any time!

Oh great! You found him!

But he was bigger. Lankier. He wasn’t the smaller and plush cat you just saw.

That’s still Theo.

So you didn’t care, you followed and followed, until it led you to a big play area, with different colored soft blocks used as a structure.

This place is really big. Anyways, Theo!

You saw him go to this smaller area, you went inside and saw him. Sitting, bending over just to see you.

“Theo!” You exclaimed, raising your hands in celebration.

Of course, you gave him a big hug.

“That was a nice game of tag! But I’m sleepy…”

Theo used his long tail to grab you, gently. He brought you to his bed, and sat you there.

“Oof!” Then he wrapped himself around you, cuddling against you.

You turned around and laid against him.

“You’re so warm, Theo.” You softly held his tail. And as you went to sleep, you could hear a loud purr.

.

.

.

After that, you found Theo every time he was hiding, but instead of just looking you called his name.

But every time you did, he left.

A day after that he told you to not call him out. Just stare at him. But when he’s down, actually on the ground, you could come to him, but call him Catnap.

He doesn’t want them to get mad at him again.

And now almost routinely, because sometimes you wanted to just sleep, you went out of your room at bedtime just to see him.

It got so bad that he even allowed you to just hug, rub his ears, and play with his tail whenever.

He even started coming down even more. Just for you.

The critters noticed, Dogday even asked about it but Theo stayed silent.

You were special. Special to him.

Even after all these years. Even after getting adopted. Even after you arrived.

Coming back to the place that was once called home.

[greenerteacups]

Hi GT. I hope this message finds you well. I am sending all the good vibes and we'll wishes your way! ♥️♥️♥️ I hope you've had a wonderful summer.

I'm such a big fan of your work. Lioneheart is amazing and has stuck with me for such a long time.

I was wondering if you had any other stories you'd like to explore one day (even if you never get the chance to write them.) Whether it be fanfiction or original work, I was just curious because sometimes I feel as if I have hundreds of stories inside that I could tell, and I am not sure how to pick just one and see it to completion.

First of all, thank you! This is a fun one. I have a few enduring ideas for longfics I may or may not ever write (i.e., ideas that would have been projects already if I didn't have an ongoing longfic). I don't get stuck in them mostly because I try to remind myself that the idealized story you imagine when a concept occurs to you will never actually exist as it does when it's unshackled by the constraints of execution. What you'll get if you actually sit down and hack it out is (1) a real and imperfect piece of writing, and (2) the satisfaction of having written it, which is by far the more reliable source of motivation, if we're being honest. That being said, here are some ideas I've always wanted to explore, if and when I finish Lionheart:

I've always wanted to write a longform canon-divergent Tomione fic about Tom Riddle's 7th year at Hogwarts. Big honking political melodrama ft. the original Knights of Walpurgis, a Triwizard Tournament, and realistically functioning time travel (hence why this one's always been kicked down my list of projects, because writing a time-travel plot is like running through a minefield made of trampolines). I've already got character concepts sketched out for the Hogwarts cast — sooooo many fun ideas for the teenage Walburga. But I'd still need about a week of solid fic preproduction on the plot alone before I was ready to boot up and start writing, and it'd take at least 250k words — closer to 300k, if I'm being honest about myself. So this probably won't see the light of day anytime remotely soon, if ever.

A canon-compliant Dramione war fic, diverging from the Malfoy Manor chapters in Book 7, picking up from a speculative thread I read once about what would happen if the war didn't end after Voldemort died at the Battle of Hogwarts. I've always thought it would be fascinating to see who Hermione and Draco would become if they were actual soldiers in the war (and my disappointment with how Book 7 handled the "war" of it all has been established). That being said, Book 7 of Lionheart will probably give me a lot of similar ideas to chew on, so I don't know what my appetite for this one will be once I'm finished with it.

Durmstrang AU. This one's barely a fic concept so much as it is a mental moodboard — I just want to worldbuild the hell out of Durmstrang. And the international wizarding world, generally. It's a delicious sandbox.

A longform canon-compliant fic or series of fics about the previous generation of Blacks (Sirius/Bellatrix/Narcissa, namely). If you look at the books, there's a huge amount we don't know about the fall of the Blacks. I always found it bizarre that the sisters and Sirius seem to be the only ones left by 1995. No one else has a claim? No one else from this all-powerful wizarding family wants to step in and claim this big honking townhouse in the middle of London? Or its attendant fortune? Dude, what happened? Also, we don't see nearly enough of the Black family melodrama in canon. They lose 4/5 children of a generation in the span of almost single decade. And then (presumably) all of their parents die in the span of another. Goddamn. Just imagine the character work you could do there.

A No Chosen One/Voldemort Wins (The First Time) AU where Hermione never gets her letter, and meets Draco much later in life as a self-taught witch. The dynamics I have in my head for this are really enjoyable, and it would be a chance to finally write Hermione POV, plus the Draco I've cooked up for this universe is [chefs kiss]. I also just love the idea of Hermione as a feral witch-child running around muggle London. I love it a lot.

[linkspooky]

Dr. Venture vs. Enji Todoroki: How to Write Bad Dads

This is a post comparing two shows about two abusive dads who are the main characters instead of their children. My Hero Academia is a Shonen jump manga that takes inspiration from American comics and shonen manga. Whereas The Venture Bros is an adult swim cartoon that started out as a parody of Johnny Quest, and grew into a seven season long character study of former child star Rusty Venture.

The idea for this post came from the fact that I've noticed a common hot take from MHA fans that Endeavor's redemption arc is bad because it's wrong to make an abuser the main character.

I've always disagreed, and used The Venture Bros as an example of a show where making an abuser the main character works. Rusty is actually a well-liked character in the venture bros fandom. So my question is if these characters are both abusers why is one of them generally accepted and the other one so controversial?

Before we begin I want to say this is a story with fictional characters. Don't bring real life into the equation. We are doing literary criticism here and only talking about the events that happen in the story.

Anyway, My Hero Academia and The Venture Bros seem like the weirdest shows to compare but they are actually pretty similar. They are both comic book shows that are commentating on the comics they're inspired from.

What My Hero Academia is to Spiderman and Dragonball Z, Venture Bros is to Tom Swift Novels, the Hardy Boys, and old Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. They also make the decision to focus on the characters as people rather than heroes. They are telling the stories of real people that exist in a world overflowing with both heroes and villains.

1. Meet the Venture Brothers

If you've heard of the Venture Bros then you've probably heard of the premise that it's an adult parody of Johnny Quest. Johnny Quest for those of you who have a life and therefore haven't seen every old Hanna-Barbera Cartoon like I have is a show where eleven year old Johnny Quest travels around the world with his super scientist father Dr. Benton C. Quest and their bodyguard Race Bannon, going on adventures in Jungle Ruins or fighting villains.

In the Venture Bros the main character Dr. Thaddeus Venture is an emotionally abusive and neglectful father who constantly exposes his sons to danger in his trips around the world. Their bodyguard Brock Samson is a ultra violent and is basically a thirteen year old's idea of what a cool manly man is. The titular Venture Bros, Hank and Dean Venture are sheltered children who are constantly being chased around by men in costumes trying to kill them.

So the basic premise of the show lies in it's dark deconstruction of shows like Hardy Boys, Johnny Quest, these Tom Swift-esque stories where young boys go on adventures by showing the real dangers that children would be exposed to in that kind of life.

Between Johnny Quest, the Hardy Boys, and Tom Swift, what is up with these pie-eyed youths chasing pirates and international diamond thieves and stuff like that? They would get their throats cut the minute that stumbled upon a hideout. And that would be the gag. - ART AND MAKING OF THE VENTURE BROS.

The show does explore Hank and Dean's trauma, but despite the title of the show they are not the main characters. The protagonist is Doctor Thaddeus Venture who himself is other victim of the Boy Adventuring Lifestyle.

Dr. Venture: "Who was, for 43 years, the only son of Dr. Jonas Venture? Who, from the ages of 3 to 17 accompanied him on hundreds of adventures the chilling memories of which rouse him from sleep in a cold sweat to this day?"

Thaddeus used to travel around the world with his father the super scientist Dr. Jonas Venture who was a far more successful super scientist and hero. He's the former star of the "Rusty Venture Show" a cartoon based off of his travels with his father.

Jonas who continually neglected and gaslit him throughout his childhood to the point of not allowing him to go to therapy. He gaslit him so hard there's a scene where he literally pretends to be Rusty's therapist to tell his son to stop complaining.

Rusty: "So I don't know. Sometimes I wish I could just be a normal kid and go out and play with kids my own age and stuff. The only people I get to hang out with are grown ups. The only time I get to leave the compound is to go someplace creepy, like the Bermuda triangle, and then I get kidnapped, by grown ups. And I'm not even sure I want to be a super scientist when I grow up anyway, but I feel all this pressure because of my fa-It feels weird telling you this stuff." Jonas: "Remember Rusty, in here I'm your doctor not your father. Now let's get back to it shall we. You were telling me how you're ungrateful for all the opportunities your father's given you and you blame me for all your problems."

Rusty is both a washed up child star, and a faiilure to his father's legacy. He never formed an identity outside of being the star of the Rusty Venture show or the son of Jonas Venture. He drags his kids all around the world on crazy super science adventures because that's what he knows.

The central premise of the Venture Bros is that Rusty is basically stuck and cannot meaningfully grow up into an adult and his own person, despite the fact he is now a single father trying to raise two sons. The central theme is about three generations of one family, and what it says about the complicated nature of family itself,

As Rusty is both the victim and the perpetrator of the abuse it makes sense he is the main character the story centers around because he's the central link between Jonas and the Twins.

The themes can be summarized in one line said towards the end of the show:

BEN "Just a watch. Tells the time in two time zones. That fourth hand there? Little date window? Those are called complications. Complications make a watch special. More complications the more value. Read the engraving Jonas put on the back there. Elige Tua. It's Latin for Choose your family. Blood doesn't make a family, love does. Choose your family and remember that complications make it special."

In other words it's a seven season long show on how family is complicated.

2. Keeping up with the Todorokis

My Hero Academia is about a lot of things, but the central premise is that in a society where he quirk you were born with can determine a lot about your life, one boy without a quirk sets out to prove that anyone can be a hero.

If Complciations make it special is the central theme of Venture Bros, then the central theme of My Hero Academia is two sentences. "All People are not created equal" and "Anyone can become someone's hero" both said at different points in the story. The story itself is about Deku's attempts to overcome the first statement, that he was not born equal but he deserves to be a hero as much as anyone else because he represents the true spirit of heroes. That heroes don't just show up to beat the big bad, a hero saves people.

The story isn't just about Deku though. We're not even going to talk about Deku in this post, but rather the Tritagonist Todoroki Shoto.

Todrooki is introduced as a foil to Deku someone who is born with an extremely powerful quirk, but who's been groomed from childhood to be a hero.

Shoto's father Enji Todoroki is All Might's ultimate rival. In the world of MHA hers are highly commercialized and ranked by popularity and achievements and Enji has been number two his entire life. He decided to conceive of an heir that could surpass All Might instead.

He purchased a wife with an ice quirk for an arranged marriage to selectively breed for a child with a fire and ice quirk. When Shoto was born he raised Shoto up as a hero, forcing him through grueling training sessions from a young age, and beating his wife when she tried to intervene for Shoto's sake.

That's a lot and I didn't even cover all of it. After this reveal of Shoto's backstory, Enji seems like he's only going to be a one note abuser to give Shoto a tragic backstory to angst over.

However, later on in the show Enji ifinally becomes the number one hero only to realize how empty his lifelong dream has been. He feels remorse for the family he destroyed in pursuit of that dream and starts wanting to make ammends. After this , Enji basically becomes the second most important character of the "Todoroki Family" arc. . A lot of focus is put on Enji's attempts at atonement to the point where some accuse him of stealing the spotlight from his victims.

These two families have a lot in common. They are basically families who are not allowed to have normal lives because the patriarch of the family is a costumed hero. The hero is also someone who is generally well-respected and is considered extremely successful in their chosen career, but are terrible to their family members. They are a hero to the world and a villain to their own family.

If there is a central premise to the Todoroki Family outside of MHA's analysis of what exactly makes a hero, it's this:

Todoroki Shoto: "As a hero this endeavor guy is pretty darn amazing. But it's just like Nasu said. I'm not ready to forgive you... for abusing mom. So, heroics aside. What sort of dad are you going to be? That's what I want to find out?"

The challenge is if Endeavor can choose his family over being a hero.

You can se the parallels in Venture Bros, as Rusty's main struggle is to try to be a father to his twin sons and help them grow up while at the same time struggling in this dangerous worlds of super science. Rusty is a super scientist constantly getting chased around by guys in costumes, but he's also a normal father trying to raise two sons into adulthood with basically no idea what he's doing because he doesn't have a frame of reference for how fathers are supposed to act or what a normal childhood would even look like.

The comic book super scientist, and the comic book hero are expected to act like real fathers to their sons.

However, as I said above in Rusty's case it's pretty uncontroversial that he is the main character of his story, whereas Enji starts fights within the fandom very time he appears onscreen.

Why is this exactly?

It's not because it's offensive to have an abuser be the main character, but rather how these characters are written and how well they fit into their stories. As I said Rusty is naturally the main character of his story because he's the central link in the chain of abuse, but should Enji be the main character of the Todorokis? Does he fit as well as Rusty?

3. Who's your Daddy?

So as stated above Enji and Rusty simultaneously exist in worlds where heroes exist and yet they are also normal people who are expected to provide for their families and raise their kids. They both exist in what is basically the marvel universe, though in the case of Venture Bros it's the Marvel Universe fused with old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Because of this world some of the things both Enji and Rusty do are things that have no real life parallels. For example Rusty once created a machine using the soul of a dead orphan as a power supply. You can't do that in real life so I'm not going to use that as an example.

Both of these stories are drawing on real life parallels of parental abuse I'm going to be talking about those to tell what kind of neglectful parent each is.

Rusty raised Hank and Dean Venture as a single parent with the assistance of their body guard Brock Samson. They live on the Venture Compound and only leave when Rusty needs to take a trip around the world. Obviously, there's not many real life examples of parents taking their kids into egypt to fight mummies.

However, Rusty's main flaw as a parent is how much he shelters his children not allowing them to make their own choices. They are homeschooled until they are eighteen and almost never allowed to leave their home unsupervised. Rusty could be compared to a helicopter parent that feels the need to micromanage every aspect of their child's lives, sheltering them so much they're unprepared for the real world.

Rusty is a weird combination of controlling and neglectful, because while he doesn't let either of his childre go to public school aor interact with kids their own age, he constantly exposes them to danger. He is often disinterested in his kid's lives and puts most of the burden of protecting them and raising them on his bodyguard Brock, while he chases after whatever super-science project is occupying him at the moment. He's neglectful to dangerous extents too considering they're always getting cahsed around by crazy men in costumes.

Also, he lets them die a lot.

Hank and Dean have died several times over, only to be replaced by clones that Rusty grew in a lab with all the same memories. Once again there's no real life parallel to this, but it's interesting in the context of the show itself.

How do these children survive being chased by villains and constantly kidnapped? The answer is, they don't.

They die, and then Rusty just clones a new pair of boys. That in itself should make Rusty irredeemable but the show presents it in a more ambiguous light.

Dean: "You're telling me I'm a clone, that I'm not even Dean, that I'm some stupid science experiment." Ben: "No, no, no. You're Dean. There's no other Dean, you're it, flesh and blood. Look I was conceived in the back seat of a packard, you were conceived in a tank. So what?" Dean: "So I have no mommy? No nothing!?" Ben: "Dean, you have it all wrong. You have a mommy, and your dad is your dad. They made you by getting drunk and forgetting to wear a condem like everybody else, and your dad loved you so much that when you got a boo-boo, he kissed it and made it all better and made it go away." Dean: "You brought me back to life." Ben: "Yeah okay, well you and your brother had some pretty big boo boos. Have a kid one day, Dean. Hold it's lifeless body in your arms, and then tell me how wrong it is. Jonas, me, and yes your dad, saw it as nothing more than a fucking band-aid for a really big boo boo."

In the story itself it brings up the argument that if any parent was holding their dying child in their arms they'd want to bring them back somehow. That in the logic of the show it's the same as using magic to revive someone from the dead. At the same time it's not because Rusty's let his sons die multiple times and never changed his lifestyle because he can just keep replacing them with clones.

Super-science aside, it is kind of a metaphor for Rusty's parenting as a whole that his sons have been cloned and replaced so many times they're perpetually sixteen and never allowed to grow up. Rusty's so neglectful he's never taken an interest in raising them and this is the result, they literally do not grow up.

It's also probably relevant to mention that Rusty himself is a clone and died and was replaced multiple times much like his sons, and the technology for cloning Hank and Dean was invented by his father Jonas.

However, after season 3 the cloning lab gets destroyed, and the body guard Brock leaves the family. With the safety net removed Rusty actually starts taking a more active role in both of his child's lives. This is basically a mirror to Endeavor's moment of realization after getting number one hero that his entire family has grown up without him and they all resent him.

Season four onwards Hank and Dean develop into their own people outside of Rusty. He responds to them in different ways but he's actually parenting them this time instead of shoving them away like annoyances. Hank becomes rebellious and fights back against Rusty for a long time after Brock leaves because he no longer has a role model and Rusty's response is to always get strict and punish him.

Whereas when Dean rebels not only does Rusty tolerate it, he also spends a lot more time in Dean's life trying to push him into the direction of being a super-scientist like him, supporting his efforts to go to college, while basically ignoring Hank. It's a running gag in the show that Dean is obviously Rusty's favorite, but even when playing favorites Rusty by this point in the show has reasons for why he's making those parenting choices.

Rusty: "Dean believes in this crap! He should have been Rusty Venture, Boy adventurer. Hank got this life thrown at him. And he fights against it. Just like I did."

Rusty playing favorites comes from an attempt to overcorrect for both children. He rejects Hank because he believes Hank doesn't want to be a boy adventure and therefore pushing Hank away from his family and the Venture lifestyle is what he needs. Whereas, he believes that Dean embraces the super scientist lifestyle and he tries to mentor Dean into another scientist like himself therefore he gives Dean most of his attention because he thinks Dean needs that guidance from him.

Of course, Rusty is totally wrong about his sons. If anything Hank is the one who wants to be an adventurer whereas Dean just wants a normal life away from his crazy family but parents often misunderstand their children. He's not actively malicious, he's just misguided in what he thinks is best for each of his sons. He's not really even playing favorites in this case he's choosing to parent his sons differently based on what he thinks is best for each of them, it's just in this case father doesn't know best.

Rusty isn't a stagnant character, but also there's no big redemption arc for him the way there is Endeavor. Rusty never narrates about how he needs to atone for his past mistakes. The result is Rusty is a far more amoral character than Endeavor because he's not trying to atone but the narrative also isn't trying to spin Rusty in any way. It's just showing you Rusty as he is, and with all the bad things he does he's still capable of loving his sons.

The question isn't really "Is Rusty redeemable?" but "When is Rusty gonna grow up?"

Then there's Endeavor (everyone starts booing) who is simultaneously a much better, and far worse person than Rusty.

Enji is honestly more comparable to Jonas, an incredibly successful hero who built a career and an empire in heroics and fame and then tried to force his son into that same lifestyle.He's the exploration of that same idea a supposedly great man with skeletons in his closet. Enji technically has saved thousands of people (such as Hawks one of the other main characters). A person who is so good at playing the role of a hero no one would ever expect there are skeletons in his closet.

"Rusty's father was more successful than you could ever imagine. Jonas Venture Sr. was a manipulative narcissist admired by the world for his scientific accomplishements and his hyper-masculine James Bond meets Doc Savage public persona. He's a geniuine villain who was able to take everything he wanted from the world by seamlessly fitting into the role of everyone's hero." [Source]

Jonas is like showing everything nasty about using someone like James Bond as a male power fantasy. He treats women like objects, he thinks he's aboe good and evil, he's effortlessly charming and suave and uses that to get what he wants out of people. Enji similiarly is everything that is wrong with the ideals of hero society. A society that glorifies flashy, strong quirks that are the best for taking down villains. The only person who even seems to care that he's number two is Enji himself, beause Enji is otherwise rich and succesful, a pillar of the hero community, and allowed to get away with a lot because of his position and influence.

Enji is at least a better hero than Rusty, because Rusty is an incompetent mad scientist who does stuff like mutate college interns into four armed freaks and build death rays.

However, as a parent strip away his status as a hero and Enji is little more than a show parent, pushing his children into a life they don't want in an attempt to live vicariously through them. Once again, resembling Jonas more than he really does Rusty. As Jonas forced Rusty to be a boy adventurer, and then made a cartoon out of it to make money like any show parent.

It's also the idea that generation put that kids into films and it was a very horrible selfish thing to do, they were doing trying to live out their own lives through their kids. That didn't exist before that was something that boomers brought to the world. "Oh I can't be these fun new things I'll make you be it." I think Jonas was a pioneer of throwing his kid at the world. I think Jonas was something of a boy adventurer himself, and made his kid be it. But also put his kid on TV to cash in the residuals. Jackson Publick, DVD Commentary

As stated above Enji gave up on his ambition to be the number one hero and so he decided to create a son with the right quirk to surpass All Might. He then pressured a woman into an arranged marriage, basically purchasing her from her parents and conceived four children until he got his designer baby.

Chapters 301-302 the wrong way to put out a fire, detail the slow descent of the Todoroki Household from Enji entering an arranged marriage with bad intention to create an ideal child to be heir to his legacy, into a full on child abuser. Enji is written like a normal person falling into a cycle of abuse, he never intended to hurt his children at first. Abusers aren't evil monsters, they're just people. Most abusers don't even think of themselves as abusers.

In fact he's shown positively bonding with his first born son who seems eager to learn to use his fire based quirk. He even mentions that he was alright at the time with the idea of Toya being the one to succeed him and letting go of his quirk experiment.

Enji only had kids to carry on his legacy, and only bonded with Toya because Toya was eager to participate in the training and become his heir. However, to give Enji some backstory it's quite clear the death of Enji's own father at a young age left him with no idea on how a father should act.

At a young age Enji witnessed his father attempt to save an innocent girl only to end up a burnt up corpse, and probably at that point conflated strength with being a good father. If his father had been strong enough he would have survived and continued to be a father to young Enji. At that point it's almost understandable that Enji thinks in his mind that earning his keep as the patriarch of the family, and being a powerful hero who will come home alive is the same thing as being a good father.

So Enji conflates masculine ideals of strength and heroism with being a good father, all the while not actually showing up to parent his kids. When Toya seemed like he could live up to Enji's expectations and be strong as a successor everything seemed fine.

However, Toya turned out to be disabled at which point everything in the household began to spiral out of control. After learning Toya could not use his quirk without burning himself, Enji tossed Toya aside and left raising him entirely up to Rei and then pressured her to have more children until one with his ideal quirk would be born.

Toya did not like his father ignoring him and began acting out for his attention. The response of everyone in the household was to politely tell Toya to shut up, because Enji while not being a parent is the money maker and authority in the household no one can stand up to him. When Toya's acting up got too out of hand, Enji would even hit Rei instead of just personally dealing with his son.

At the same time Shoto was finally born and being given his perfect heir after four attempts, Enji eagerly began training him. When Shoto resisted him, Enji stepped up to threats of physical violence and long grueling training sessions to force him to learn. All the while Toya continued to mentally spiral.

One day after his flames turned blue Toya asked his father to meet with him on Sekoto Peak. However that day Enji didn't show up, and Toya lost control of his flames starting a massive forest fire that killed him. Rather than changing anything after his firstborn's death, he doubled down and pushed Shoto even harder.

While being a far worse person, as a parent Rusty is far less malicious. He neglects his kids similarly to Enji at first, but when the safety net is removed and he can't keep cloning them anymore he actually does start taking a personal interest in their lives. Maybe it's too little too late because it's the 14th version of Hank and Dean but he does hear the wake up call and change his ways as a parent.

Enji always doubles down on ignoring his sons in favor of heroics when given the chance to be a father.

Even post redemption arc Enji behaves in the same way. There is no point in the story so far where Enji actively chooses to help or be a parent to one of his sons, when he can choose to be a part of a big important battle instead. Let me break out the list:

In the Pro Hero Arc Shoto sets the challenge for Enji to show what he can be like as a father rather than a hero.

In the internship arc Enji trains Shoto up as a hero but not a father. When he brings the family home to dinner they're attacked by a villain and Enji stands and watches as his son Natsuo gets kidnapped y a villain because he felt like it would be too awkward if he saved Natsuo because then Natsuo might feel inclined to forgive him.

In the War Arc aftewards Toya is revealed to be alive the entire time, and when given the chance to see his dead son come back to life, Enji not only does nothing but he sits and watches as his oldest son tries to kill his youngest without trying to talk to or appeal to Toya.

After the war arc, Enji doesn't bother looking for Toya and goes back to his job as a hero hunting down AFO. He also makes a promise to Shoto that they'll search for Toya together, only to break that promise multiple times.

In the second war arc, when Enji is given a chance to face Toya face to face, he instead sends his other son Shoto to fight him, while Enji fights against the big bad instead as the number one hero.

When Toya is literally dying and about to burn himself alive in front of him, Enji who has chosen to run away from Toya too many times by this point picks the murder suicide option and chooses to try dying with his son in a heroic sacrifice.

Every single chance he is given to act like a father, he acts like a hero instead. Enji Todoroki never steps out of the role of the hero Endeavor. Internally he's changed, yeah. He's remorseful now and realzies what he's done wrong. However, externally he hasn't. He doesn't do anything different. He neglected his family for his job his entire life so his way of making it up to them is... to keep going to his job.

The problem isn't whether or not he deserves to be redeemed, but rather that there's no change in his actions. Endeavor at the beginning of the story would have shown up to fight AFO in the war arc too, because being the hero is what he does. It's the only thing he does. The story never asks him to be anything other than a hero.

Which is I think a fundamental difference in Rusty and Enji in how they're written. Rusty is a flawed parent, but he's still a parent.

He does favor Dean over Hank, but that favoritism takes the form of him giving Hank more chores when Hank acts out, but when it's time for Dean to rebel giving him space and letting him have his own separate room in the attic. It's Rusty letting Dean have access to the family checkbook so he'll have spending money at college, but cutting Hank off from the checkbook because they agreed if Hank didn't want to go to college he needed to find a job to support himself.

Rusty is parenting these children. He's parenting them very badly, but he's still their parent. Enji never wanted to be a parent to begin with, he wanted to be his kid's abusive gymnastics coach. He wanted a prodigy that he could push and push until they won gold at the Olympics.

If you ignore the fantasy elements then you're left with how these men are shown interacting with their kids in their day to day lives.

Rusty has absolutely no idea what he's doing, so even when he has good intentions he screws up. However, he is making an effort to guide these kids.

Enji was an intentional manipulator more in line with Jonas. He controlled everything in the household, and was actively trying to groom Shoto into someone who would obediently carry on his legacy. He made the choice to isolate Shoto from his siblings so he'd have more control over him. Rusty keeps Dean and Hank away from kids their own age and from having a normal life because he never had a normal life. He doesn't even know what a normal life looks like.

Enji for most of his life didn't want kids, he wanted heirs. He even purchased a woman so his heirs would turn out with the right genetics, and tossed aside the ones that were disabled or born with the wrong quirk.

Rusty made the decision to become a parent on his own. In the last twist in the series it's revealed Dean and Hank had no mother. They were conceived in a test tube, raised in an artificial womb by Rusty himself. He is both their father and their mother. Kids were a deliberate decision on his part. He wanted to have a family, probably because his own childhood was so deprived of any familial love.

Dean: Okay, so who is our mom? Rusty: Seriously, Dean haven't we had enough family history for one day? I don't even know who my mom is. All you need to know is that the person who gave birth to you. I promise they do.

Remember as stated above the central thesis statement of Venture Bros is "Elige Tua - Choose your family". Rusty chose to bring those kids into the world because he wanted to be a father, it's an active choice his character makes.

Whereas the central statement of Endeavor's arc is "So, heroics aside. What sort of dad are you going to be? That's what I want to find out?" but we never witness Enji doing anything outside of being a hero.

Even post-redemption the only time he ever spends with Shoto is when they're either doing quirk training or working as heroes together. Toya as a character presents this challenge to him, because he's Enji's son, but he's also a villain who's killed innocent people. If he's acting as a hero he has to put a stop to Toya, but a father is supposed to put the safety and well-being of their children above everything else.

We never see Enji make that choice to be Toya's father over a hero. Which is why in story he comes off as a worse father than someone like Rusty, because he never makes any attempt to emotionally bond with his children.

Rusty will sit Hank and Dean down and tell them stories from his childhood. He'll find common ground with his sons to bond over because they've both been subjected to the boy adventurer lifestyle.

Rusty: Dean what are you doing? Dean: Hyperventilating into my knees. That smell a little like spit up... because I spit up a little. Rusty: Dean, you just baby burped onto a speed suit. Not a super scientist alive that hasn't coughed a little acid onto his speed suit. Dean: Really? Rusty: Why do you think these things are like 95 percent polyester? You can clean off fear-vomit with a wet nap. Dean: I thought you were used to this. Rusty: Dean I remember when the action man would wake me up with a gun pointed at my head. He'd just hold it there and pull the trigger. I'd hear the click really loud because it was right against my forehead. Dean: So it echoed. Rusty: Right, it sounded like he snapped one of my teeth out. Click! Then he'd go, "Not day Rusty. Not Today." Dean: Golly, and you took it because you had to? Rusty: No Dean, I took it because I was Rusty Venture. Boy adventurer. I didn't ask for this life, Dean, but it's mine. Sure, I fall down in the Speed Suit but I get up and Wet-Nap my puke off.

We never get any moments like this with Endeavor and his kids.

He only goes so far as apologizing for his past abuse. Yes, maybe it's cathartic hearing an abuser apologize for what they've done but that's not the question the story was asking. It wasn't asking "Can Endeavor be forgiven?" It was asking "What sort of dad are you going to be?"

The narrative challenged him to learn to act like a father to his family, and he never did. He stayed in the role of hero from beginning to end. It might be cathartic for his victims to hear him say sorry, but it's not good for Endeavor as a character because he hasn't changed and we've learned nothing about him. We already knew he was sorry at the beginning of the arc. Endeavor is sorry and knows he's done something wrong has already been established, but by Endeavor stepping out of the role of hero and acting like a father we could have learned something new about him or his character but no he stays the same from beginning to end.

They're both awful people but at the end of the day Rusty is a father, and Enji is not.

Stories are kind of like essays your English teacher used to force you to read. You need to make a thesis statement in the story itself, and then have evidence to support that thesis statement. The theme of Venture Bros is choose your family, and family is complicated, and in support of that theme we have Rusty choosing to connect with his sons. Jonas is basically nothing more than Rusty's biological father. Rusty's chosen a different way to connect with his sons, and he is their dad, and they can bond about the complicated lifestyle of being a Venture together.

The actions Enji takes in his story don't line up with his thesis statement. The Todoroki Family subplot is supposed to be about how one family was messed up because Enji only chose to have a family to further his career as a hero, and choosing his career again and again made things worse. The thesis statement was that Enji needed to choose to be a dad, but he's never shown doing that in the story.

So Enji as a character seems like he doesn't fit in with his narrative. Which is what I said at the very beginning about Rusty and why he works as a main character. Rusty is the center, because he's had this horrible life inflicted on him by his father, and he's in the process of raising his sons but he still has a chance to choose to be better.

Enji could also work as the center of his story, he has a chance to choose his family over his work as a hero, but he's ultimately not the one who does that, it's Shoto. Which yes Shoto is the main character of the Todoroki plotline, but by the end Enji's gotten as much screen time as his son. If the plot was going to focus on Shoto and his choices to begin with then he should have been the central point. You spent a lot of in story time asking this question with Enji on whether or not he's going to be able to choose to be a father over a hero, and who Enji is outside of being a hero only to not give the audience any answeres.

This again has nothing to do with Enji the person and whether I think he's likable or not, because Enji's a fictional character. He's an idea. If writing is communication, then a writer is trying to communciate some idea with every character in their novel. We're asking what is the author trying to say with Enji, and do they do a good job of getting that message across?

4. What's the Big Idea?

So the above section was mainly about the personal arcs of each characters: How do both of them fail at fatherhood and do they learn to be better fathers over the course of their narratives?

However, these characters are part of a much bigger world. How a character interacts with both the world around them, and the extended cast of characters is another way a story relates it's theme.

Venture Bros and My Hero Academia both exist in comic book worlds. There are people running around in costumes calling themselves heroes and villains and fighting each other on the streets.

In My Hero Academia heroes are basically professional athletes who sell sports drinks and pose for ads and compete for rankings on a big board, and heroics for the most part has been reduced to a day job for people with particularly powerful quirks. Heroism is an entire industry that's for profit, and run by the shadowy hero council who has far more power over their society than they let onto. You could compare Endeavor being the top hero to him is like a combination of being the best pro athlete, and also the best salaryman ever.

Ironically, the worldbuilding of Venture Bros is pretty similar. In Venture Bros. the villains are all unionized. There is a super villain trade union. It's a secret organization known as the guild of calamitous intent, which makes villainy into a bureaucracy.

All villains in the world have to register with the guild. If you're a part of the guild you receive the protection that the guild offers, as long as you follow the guilds rules and regulations. There's lots of small rules, like you can't torture someone who's having a medical issue, and if you're fighting a good guy and they have a doctor's appointment you have to let them go.

They even rank heroes and villains by their threat levels called "EMA LEVELS (equally matched aggression) and then assign you a hero who's about your equal so you won't get killed by someone way stronger than you. The guild basically decides who you're allowed to fight as a villain and picks a hero for you. The act of being someone's arch villain is called "arching" you show up to harass them once a week like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, fight them, then do it again next week. You're not allowed to kill your hero and you're supposed to follow specific rules. The tradeoff is the heroes won't kill you either, because you have guild protection.

The Monarch: I don't know, just keep it cat and mouse not cat and missile. JJ:: So it's a game? We fake fight? That's ridiculous. The Monarch: No, it's like fencing, it's about the art of the fight. JJ: Well, I'm about to deliver my killing stroke. Then what? Dr. Girlfriend: Then the guild steps up their game. You throw a rock, they throw a knife. You throw a knife, they come to your house when you're sleeping and murder your family. The Monarch: Look Dr. Venture you call the guild and you get the damn rulebook, I'll be waiting.

The justification for why the guild exists is that in world if you didn't give the villains a system with a bunch of rules, then you'd have a bunch of crazy people in costumes running around causing havoc.

Brock: You wanna what? Shoot him? And all his men and his wife? You could steal his cattle, too. Maybe burn his village down? JJ: It's an antiquated system. I mean my father did this fake arch enemy nonsense in the sxities. Maybe my brother is good with this namby pamby guy in a costume chases you around nonsense, but I'm not. Brock: Hey no disrespect Jonas, but it isn't so easy. These guys like their system. It's what they do. You take that away and you're looking at a bunch of pissed off nut bags with ray guns, and giant -- i don't know, a giant octopus / tank with laser eyes.

The villains and the OSI (who are like the GI JOE) of this world have signed a very long and detailed treaty that keeps both sides in a cold world stalemate and lets them fight every week like how the good guys and bad guys fight constantly while maintaining a status quo where neither side wins.

In MHA heroics is a commodity. It's commercialized and sold to the public. Heroes are like professional athletes selling you sports drinks, it's a spectacle to the public, and it's even intentionally made to be that way by the Hero Commission who use heroes as a bright shining light to distract the public while they do shady things like assassinate antigovernmental protestors from behind the scenes. The entire of hero society in MHA is built on the spectacle of heroes.

In Venture Bros heroes and villains are a spectacle too. It's just a job to them. Heroes and villains both show up to work, get in their costumes, fight each other and then go home. In Season 6 of Venture Bros, a parody of the Avengers is actively charging people to provide their services as heroes in the city of New York and you have to sign up for a protection plan if you want to get saved. Then the local mob boss takes a cut of the protection money they're charging.

In both settings the ideas of heroes exist, comic books exist, but the heroes themselves are incredibly mundane, they're just people showing up to jobs and making money for the most part. The only difference really is that in MHA the villains are societal rejects and trauma victims, whereas in Venture Bros they've unionized. In Venture Bros the villains and heroes basically fake fight under strict rules. Even in MHA though the villains need to exist in order to give the heroes someone to fight in front of the public. "Villain" is an actual legal term for a certain kind of quirk criminals with more than three strikes who gets sent to a super max prison if they're caught.

Both of these works are making comic book heroes and villains seem a lot more mundane by deconstructing them with this layer of realism. By making the roles of "hero" and "villain" seem much more mundane, and therefore more human, it also asks us to look at the characters who call themselves heroes and villains as human beings.

The Venture Bros like many richer takes on superhero stories really likes to play with the concept of identity. It's the idea that Good and Evil, Heroes and Villains, are just roles we play. They're not something fundamental or innate they're constructed by the world around us. In the show the main villainous organization the GCI is really just a bureaucracy of larpers sustaining their violent rolelplaying through organized crime. Rich and powerful lunatics who built the world around a game they wanted to play. There's really nothing of substance keeping Rusty on the "Good Guy" side. The good guys are also a mix and match. Shield, GI JOE, FBI. Another exmaple of people who never grew up. Only these people are running things, playing out their childhood power fantasies. They're barely less insane and blood thirsty than the bad guys. So what's even the point of being a good guy in the first place? That's the world Rusty is caught between...[x]

MHA and Venture Bros are both works that feature societies that divide people into two distinct categories "hero" and "villain" and then go on to show that these two categories are not as black and white as they would like us to believe.

Venture Bros features Brock Samson, a character who is ostensibly on the side of the good guys who also highest body count of nameless henchman who we see him gleefully kill onscreen over and over again. There are members of the OSI who are just as trigger happy as the guild so what's the difference between them besides what they've decided to personally identify as? On one side you have the Larpers who are roleplaying villainy, and on the other you have the military soliders who think they're real life GI JOES.

In My Hero Academia you have heroes who are essentially state sponsored peace keepers who suppress anyone who disrupts the status quo with violence, and villains who are rejected from that status quo who eventually turn into violent terrorists. While yes heroes have the responsibility of protecting innocent civilians, most of what heroes do is fight villains, in fact heroes with quirks suited to rescuing people aren't nearly as famous as ones with flashy violent quirks like Endeavor.

You have two sides and one calls themselves villains and the others heroes, but they both use extreme violence as a way to accomplish their goals.

Rusty and Enji are two characters who are caught between these two categories which aren't as distinct and separate as we'd like to believe they are.

Enji is basically the first deconstruction of heroes in MHA. He's a hero who's not interested in saving people, but instead wants to be the strongest and does everything in pursuit of selfish glory.

He's simultaneously the hero with the single most resolved cases in history, but at the same time he's always number two to All Might because he's not "super" enough of a super hero. In a manga where Deku's natural desire to save others make him a candidate to b ahero even without a quirk, we have a character who's a hero for purely selfish reasons. One that only cares about having the strongest quirk because being the best is all that matters to Enji.

In many ways the way Enji treats his family is more like a villain than a hero. Main villain AFO himself comments at one point he wasn't able to manipulate Toya, because his father did too good of a job manipulating him already. In fact you can draw a parallel between his actions of manipulating and grooming Shoto to be his heir, to how AFO raised orphaned child Shigaraki Tomura as his successor.

This is a good use of Enji's character, because making it hard to label him as hero and villain makes us think about who he is as a person instead.

There's an entire episode of Venture Bros dedicated to a villain Mentor named Dr. Henry Killinger, showing up and basically mentoring Rusty Venture when he's at a low point. He gives Rusty money, workers, gets his business up and running again and at the very end reveals that he's setting Rusty up to be a villain to arch his brother as a hero. Rusty is tempted with the idea that he'd make a much more successful villain than he ever would be a hero (because as a hero he's kind of just a loser) but he still chooses to be a hero at the end of the story because he doesn't want to fight his brother.

At which point his mentor, all his hired men, all just walk off and he loses all the money he would have gained and he goes back to being a mediocre super-scientist.

"Doc has the whole thing laid out for him clear as day. This role is here for you. Waiting for you to claim it. You have your nemesis. You have your means. You have the ability and the pain. You can do this and you'd be good at it. And Rusty can look at all of that, everything he's been through and say, "Yeah... but I don't wanna be evil." [x]

Rusty walks away from the chance to be a villain, but he's not exactly a hero either. He runs illegal cloning farms, he does lots of unethical scientific stuff and he's not even remotely the hero his father was considered to be.

Because he doesn't fit well into the category of hero or villain, the show instead asks you to evaluate who Rusty is as a person. He's one of the few characters in the show that's capable of stepping out of those categories.

"That's the great thing about him. Sometimes being disillusioned just means you can see through the whole thing. Sure the whole super science villain game feels stupid. It's not going anywhere. No one's accomplishing anything. It's all violence and roleplay. But at the end of the day it's still real. And it still means something to us. Choosing to be a villain means choosing to be a bad guy. It means relinquishing the premise that you could ever do better, ever actually help anyone. And that's not who Rusty is. He's a scum-bag, but he's a grown up. Even in a show with brilliant characters, old pros, and actual supermen, Rusty is the adult. And adults don't put on rubber masks and terrorize people for fun because that would be fucking silly." - [x]

Rusty spent his entire childhood being terrorized by guys in costumes, so he's now the cynical straight man pointing out how ridiculous this all is. He's the one normal person among the crazies.

Rusty is just too incompetent to ever be like his father. Jonas Venture is scum bag, but he's also a well-respected scientist and a world wide hero. Everyone in the scientific community thinks that Rusty is a joke, and his friends just barely put up with him

Jonas gets away with it because he perfectly fit what society's idea of a hyper masculine strong hero was, and no one questioned it or how he treated his son, whereas because balding, impotent, pathetic Rusty falls so short of toxic masculinity's standards he doesn't get the same respect or leeway that Jonas did. Jonas Venture continually got away with murder, and Rusty can't get away with anything.

He's a pill-popping, middle aged man who ran his father's business empire into the ground who continually gets laughed out of any scientific conference he tries to attend.

He can't be a hero. He can't be his father. He fall short of toxic masculinity's standards. He falls short of everyone's standards. The only way in which he's better than Jonas is that he's a much better father to both of his sons. His greatest triumphs as a character come from bonding with Hank and Dean. Jonas for all his accomplishments wasn't capable of bonding with Rusty because he didn't really care about anyone but himself. Jonas Venture is someone who perfectly fit society's standards of toxic masculinity, but he wasn't a person outside of that.

"Jonas Sr realized this too, but to him, it was a joke. To him it meant being above everyone. Rusty can't be above everyone so he has to meet them at eye level. Part of the bitterness of growing up is realizing that we're all just chidlren who got old. No one knows what they're doing and when you come to terms with that you can look down on people or give them the respect everyone deserves. How you treat children says a lot about how you treat people which in turn says a lot about you." [x]

Now returning to Endeavor we run into the same problem that we did earlier. This whole post is comparing Rusty and Endeavor because they are the protagonists, but Endeavor is far more like Jonas. He's someone who sees through the hero system and only cares about climbing to the top out of his own self interest. He knows it's a game, but he wants to win at the game.

Enji even sort of looks like Jonas.

They're both extremely bulky men at peak levels of physical fitness. Meanwhile Rusty is a balding, short and out of shape middle aged man.

In story Jonas is still widley beloved by the public and is constantly praised, while no one but Rusty is aware of his faults, but there's a reason for that. Jonas is someone who is basically allowed to do anything he wants, because the patriarchy means all of society is built around letting men like Jonas succeed.

Jonas is also someone who literally uses his position as a hero to manipulate people into getting what he wants and glorify himself.

Jonas can casually destroy people's lives, all while still believing he's the good guy because in his world being good guy is just a role to play and he plays it well. One of the best three episodes of the series is the Morphic Trilogy, the opening to season 7 where some of Jonas's past crimes are revealed.

In the past he tricked a married man into making a sex tape with him, and then when that man Don Carraldo aka the Blue Morpho turned out to regret that, he used the tape to constantly blackmail him into doing his dirty work. Killing people in secret while Jonas Venture remained Squeaky clean. After years of being forced to act as a mercenary for Jonas, the Blue Morpho died in a plane crash. Jonas then revived his best friend as a cyborg. He got bored of his new cyborg within a few months and reassigned him to babysit his son Rusty. The cyborg glitched and started to strangle Rusty and then he snaps his friends neck, and throws the cyborg away in the garbage.

Jonas can just completely destroy a man's life because he can. Because everyone around him enables him and no one is going to stop him. Because this is how people in power act when they're given too much power. Because might does not make right.

He's the gold standard. He's the ideal. Who would question him?

Enji occupies a similar position in the story, where he fits the role of a hero so well that even when his family abuse is revealed to the public basically every character and their mom is tripping over themselves to defend him.

Jonas is constantly praised in story years after his death and every bad thing he's done is swept under the rug, but that's because number one Jonas was a manipulative monster, and number two it shows toxic masculinity is a false ideal. This is how Jonas who everyone thinks is the ideal man's man, really acts. This is what he gets away with it, because the thing society glorifies are toxic and bad.

When people bend over backwards to defend Endeavor what does it say exactly? Because we're supposed to believe that Enji's willing to work for redemption even if people don't forgive him. We're not supposed to think Enji is a manipulative monster intentionally twisting people around his finger like Jonas was.

There are some ways Enji is like Jonas, especially in his backstory. He did use his money and influence to buy a woman. Rei was definitely not going to get the option of divorcing him if she actually wanted to leave.

However, in the present time we don't see Enji doing the kind of manipulation that Jonas does, because really he doesn't have to. Hawks does it for him. There is a character in the narrative named Takami Keigo / Hawks who is a little boy that Enji indirectly saved as a child by putting his father in prison. Because of this he is obsessed with making Endeavor live up to the hero he imagined him to be when he was young, and does everything he can to prop Enji up behind the scenes and make him look like that hero to the public.

Hawks is a whole other can of worms, but in effect what this means is there is someone manipulating public opinion in favor of Endeavor so he'll be able to shine in spite of the numerous skeletons in his closet, it's just not Endeavor himself. Hawks also takes away a lot of the active decisions on Endeavor's part. When Endeavor chooses to ignore Toya in the latter part of the story, it's not Endeavor's choice, he's just following Hawks plan to fight AFO. When Endeavor makes a public apology, Hawks is the one who wrote it for him.

The result is that Endeavor comes off as less of a Jonas, after all Hawks is the one manipulating his public image. On the other hand, he's also less good of a character because he's not making choices anymore. It'd be better If Enji was trying to manipulate the public into forgiving him in the wake of his scandal, because that'd be an active choice on his part. When a character makes a choice it tells us something about who that character is.

Horikoshi doesn't want us to think that Enji is the kind of selfish monster that Jonas is, but then who is he supposed to be?

The entire point of this post is to compare Enji to Rusty, but Enji's far too successful to be Rusty. Rusty is a failure in basically everything he set out to do in life. He's the butt of the series jokes. He's the victim in as many ways as he's the perpetrator. He had a lot of money and then wasted it all. None of his inventions are succesful. The scientific community thinks he's a joke, or they don't even know who he is. Women won't even go near him. No one ever defends him. At no point in the story does someone stop and say "Hey, Hank I know your dad's an asshole but he's really good at science so that makes it okay."

Rusty's such a failure at being a hero that he's forced to be a person. He's as equally narcissticic and toxic as his father, he treats women like objects for sex and comfort like his father does, he just doesn't get away with it. You can't point to some heroic feat of his that justifies his toxic behavior because he doesn't have any.

The story however can't stop singing Enji's praises for what a good hero he is. He's never forced to step out of the role of hero and be a person like Rusty is, and because of that the message of his character becomes confused.

Are we supposed to think he's a manipulative narcissist like Jonas is? Are we supposed to think he's an incredibly flawed individual trying to figure out how to be a father late into his kid's lives like Rusty?

Rusty has a clear role in his story, and what the author wants to say with Enji is unclear.

Everyone praises Jonas to death and no one can see him for the terrible purpose he is, because that's the point. Venture Bros is about failure. It's about the death of the space ag optimisme. It's about how much the boomer generation sucked.

From the Radiant is the Baboon Heart Commentary. Question: Did Jonas only keep Rusty around for the press and his cloning tech or did he actually care about him? Answer: . The show has a villain called the monarch, but if you watch all the show the villain is Jonas Venture Sr. He is a bad dad. What you need to realize is that in this kind of baby boomers gen x millenials kind of thing we are of the generation that had bad parents. For the good and the bad of it. The good was we were all left alone by our parents, and we had a freedom in our thought that I don't think the millennials have. Because we made the millennials, and we were like You know what Our parents suck and we're gonna be great parents." And they helicoptered them and they gave playdates. [...] I did hate the boomers, they were awful fathers they were terrible people they did horrible things to our world, and at the time they were celebrated as good people. They were a bunch of hippies and they failed and they did everything wrong that they wanted to fix [...]. You and I are lost people we observed our generation. We are fully aware of it. We observed our parents generation. My actual father was a classic distant father, very bright had a lot of work to do, but I observed that generation and the way that toxic masculinity was set in stone. Just branded onto their tombstone. Toxic masculinity. Our generation grew up wanting to be adults, childhood was something that was not examined. When people were growing up we wanted to be grown ups, we wanted to wear suits, it was something you guys don't have. It was a very different way to grow up. So we wanted to be like this generation that immediately we looked at and went oh my god they're monsters. So Jonas Venture Sr. is a monster.

Jonas is a commentary on how much the boomer generation is glorified, and how much they suck if you look at them critically at all. It's written by authors who were observing basically three different generations of parenting, the way boomers parented, the ways Gen-Xers did in response to that and now the way millennials act as they reach adulthood. Rusty can't escape Jonas' shadow because Toxic Masculinity is set in stone.

The role of Jonas in the story is to serve as an antagonist to Rusty and be the cause of Rusty's struggles, and also his impetus to change because Rusty doesn't want to be like his father. Rusty and Jonas both exist as characters to show the author's observations on parenting through the generations, and yeah it's a very american idea of parenting and family but it's you know... a cartoon made in america.

What is Endeavor's role of the story? If he's a criticism of toxic masculinity he's not criticized enough, because the story spends just as much time glorifying him his obsession with strength and power as it does criticizing him. There's no scenes like this for Rusty to show off how cool he is, or how determined. The story wants you to believe that there's something redeeming in the fact that Enji is always struggling to be the greatest, even though his obsession with being number one is what caused him to abuse his family in the first place

It's criticizing and praising Enji's obsession with power in the same breath, because My Hero Academia can't fully deconstruct toxic masculinity the way that Venture Bros can. It keeps trying to find something redeemable in Endeavor's toxic pursuit of power, but that's the whole point. Toxic masculinity isn't redeemable, because toxic masculinity is toxic. There's nothing wrong with masculinity itself, or the values people traditionally consider masculine but the kind of hyper-aggressive pursuit of physical strength Endeavor chases after is toxic masculinity. In Endeavor's mind men are warriors, protectors and providers and nothing else, and he never learns to be anything else either.

MHA would never treat Endeavor the way Vbros treats Rusty, constantly humiliating him or making him the butt of jokes. It would never make Enji out to be weak or pathetic the way Rusty is.

The central concept of Endeavor is struggle. His chosen hero nae "Endeavor" means to try hard to achieve something. His entire character is based around the concept of struggle. His central struggle is that he's a normal guy trying to compete with a superhero like all might, and everything he does he struggles with even if that struggle is pointless.

However, in the actual narrative itself he doesn't struggle. He definitely doesn't struggle the way Rusty does. Rusty's a lazy, incompetent, and entitled man sitting on a pile of money he didn't earn who thinks he's entitled to more who fails at all he sets out to achieve. Rusty never gets what he wants, and even when he does get what he wants like when his brother leaves him a billion dollar corporation in his will, he bankrupts that company in two seasons. Struggle means that the world isn't going to give you what you want and you keep trying anyway.

Endeavor's never subjected to nearly the same amount of narrative punishment that Rusty is. He's still well-respected. People defend him. He fights in all the major battles of the series and gets victories. No one's disgusted when they hear that he's a wife beater. We are told that he struggles, that the central concept of his character is struggle, but the narrative keeps handing him wins and cool moments.

As I've said above several times, Enji's never really forced to step out of the role as hero because he's not a failure the way Rusty is.

My Hero Academia hits some of the same notes as Venture Bros. It's criticizing apanese hegemonic masculinity, specifically that of salaryman masculinity and the way men in japan completely put their careers over their families. Read about it here in this convenient power point presentation. Enji is essentially an incredibly successful salaryman who has completely disappeared from his kid's lives in order to earn money and success and believes that he's still entitled to be a father because he's performed adequately in his role as earner of the household.

The story does show how giving too much power to the patriarch of a household can cause a house to fall apart. It shows that traditional family roles aren't all they're cracked up to be. Enji is assigned the role of father but he doesn't live up to it. The very rigid and traditional Todoroki Household crumbles because basically everyone fails to live up to their roles. The father isn't present. The mother isn't a good caretaker. The first born is defective. The youngest is given all the responsibility of the first born. No one is able to live up to those roles because maybe those rigid set in stone roles shouldn't exist in the first place.

Once again though, that's all in the backstory. Enji never changes from the Pro Hero Arc to his last showdown with Toya. The story never tells us anything about who Enji is as a person. Therefore, it also never comments on Enji's role as the patriarch. What is Horikoshi using Enji to say about patriarchy besides... it exists?

The story shows you how destructive the idea of patriarchy that Enji represents can be in the backstory, but because Enji doesn't do much for 90 percent of the story it never says anything about how Enji can learn to be a father or if it's even possible for him to be a father this late in the game. Because Enji's story isn't about fatherhood ultimately, it's about him becoming a less selfish hero.

Which might just be a problem with the whole of MHA. Venture Bros is about who the characters are outside of their identity as heroes and villains, but MHA is ultimately more about the optimism of heroes and what it means to be a hero than these characters personal lives.

Rusty is never going to be as sucessful as his father. He's always going to be mediocre, ad even if he's sympathetic he's still a scum bag. However, Rusty has one thing his father doesn't have which are his two sons who he made a deliberate decision to get closer to. Unlike a serial user of people Jonas, Rusty has the ability to actually love and care for people and he chooses to make those connections.

Endeavor never chooses to be a father. He didn't choose to go to Toya's side. He was too busy being a hero and fighting the big bad. As a result of that we never learn anything about Enji as a character outside of being a hero because he never chose to be anything other than a hero.

He also never failed. As I said the narrative kept handing him wins. You'd think never choosing to see Toya would mean he can't save Toya in the end, but in the end of the story Toya's just fine. There are no consequences to his choices. He's revealed to be an abuser to the public but he gets to keep being a hero. Enji never really fails in some big way that forces him to rfelect and change on his actions, so he just keeps doing the same thing from beginning to end.

Which is why Enji doesn't work as a character compared to Rusty. He doesn't fail. He's supposed to be a flawed protagonist struggling against himself, but he never really loses. He's too much like Jonas and not enough like Rusty.

"I think Jonas was something of a boy adventurer himself, and made his kid be it. But also put his kid on TV to cash in the residuals. He was just a shitty parent. When he went to bed he was just, he was moral, and he was fighting the good fight. When he woke up he ignored his son and made his son do terrible things. He voted for nixon like a good american. He was a winner and our show is not about winners. Our show is about losers and people we love." Jackson Publick. n

[solaris-amethyst]

💫Did I even deserve you?💫

✨Pairing: Vampire!Seonghwa x dead!gn!reader ✨Prompt: Vampire Seonghwa is still miserable many decades after losing his soulmate. ✨Word Count: 3.4k ✨Genre: angst, vampire au, soulmate au 🌙Warnings: talks of death, reader is mentioned but not alive in this story, no use of y/n, mentions of Seonghwa not feeding for a long period of time, lost of a loved one, mentions of how he wishes he wasn't on this earth anymore, grief, ghosts, let me know if I missed any warnings! ☀️️Authors note: Got this idea into my head and wanted to explore writing angst in this setting. It is very different from what I usually write and I have worked hard on this one and I am quite pleased with the outcome.

The moon was high up in the sky, illuminating the forest in a light wash of grey. Highlighting the fog that is developing the forest and the castle making it look eerie and abandoned. Cobwebs dancing around windows and moss climbing up the bricks together with the roses that are climbing parts of the castle.

Both beautiful and dangerous.

It was said that sometimes you could see ghosts walking past the windows. Some even claimed to have seen a ghost in the rose garden. Walking around and calling out for their beloved but no response.

Young children were warned not to go there. It was dangerous and better to stay away from a place that would most likely fall in a few decades. The road to the castle was brittled with rocks, thick trees and bushes.

It was not a pleasant road.

Despite that there was a lone figure hiking their way up to the castle, dressed in a black robe. The figure was walking very slowly as if every step towards the castle was painful, making him hurt deeply. Despite that, he continued on with heavy footsteps to the one place he called home.

The owl up in the tree hooted familiarly once he was spotted and the howls of wolves could be heard throughout the forest. None of this bothered the man, for he knew that no one would dare to try and hurt him. A man of the night, a bloodthirsty bloodsucker as the humans once had called people like him.

Now he and his family were nothing more than a mere legend.

A myth.

Something humans wrote stories about without believing they actually existed. Sometimes the man wishes he no longer existed in this world.

It would be easier than walking around the world knowing your fated one was no longer walking this earth.

Unfortunately he was doomed to walk this cruel earth until the end of time as it was now.

The closer he got to his home the more dread and sorrow filled his entire being. He used to be filled with such happiness coming back here but now that was all gone.

The grand doors to the castle opened welcoming, sensing one of its masters returning home. The candles lighting up as he entered the hallway and walked down towards the place where he knew his brothers were residing.

They were expecting him after all. Like they do every year around this time when he gets back from his three month search around the world for anyone who could help him bring back his fated one to life.

And like every year he came back unsuccessful.

It was as if the world was taunting him. Taunting him for not being careful enough. For not appreciating what he had and for being arrogant thinking he could best fate and death because of who he was.

Seonghwa

Your voice.

He stopped what he was doing. Only the wind was blowing in from an opened window. The figure looked around carefully, not making much movements, for us mortals it would have looked like he was completely still.

He shook his head gently. It must have been the wind. It cannot have been your voice he heard.

You are no longer here he told himself as he continued his walk towards the room his brothers were in. He could not have heard your voice whisper his name in the wind. You were dead, no longer walking this earth and it felt like his heart was breaking into thousands of pieces every single day when he remembers that.

He remembers your smile, your laughter, your kindness. Everything that he once took for granted he now misses with such intensity that he does not know what to do with himself. It is like the joy he once had is now gone, sucked out of his body leaving behind a cold empty shell.

He starts walking again. He knows his brothers have heard him arrive and he knows that they are waiting for him. The closer he gets the more he can hear them. Shuffling around in the living room, living their normal lives.

Not stricken by grief.

The doors open once again welcoming, just like the front doors to one of its masters returning home and the noise dies down as he steps inside looking around at his family. They are all there. The first ones he notices are the two brunettes sitting together on the sofa. Yunho, Yeosang. Then he sees the them, San, Wooyoung. The latter holding a large book, open on some random page that they seemed to have been discussing before he arrived. He searched for the youngest of his brothers who he found standing next to the tall blond man near the table. Jongho. Mingi. He counted them in his head, he looked around, searching for the leader of his coven. He found him, standing near the big window gazing out into the garden. Hongjoong.

A part of him felt a little better after doing the count. For some reason he had worried they would not all be here when he came back despite the fact that they were always there. No doubt. They would always be here to welcome him home after his long journey.

The blond at the window turned around and when their eyes met he gave him a smile.

"Welcome home Seonghwa. We have missed you." He said taking a few short steps forward to greet him. Taking him into an embrace which he returned.

"I am glad to be back." Seonghwa replied even if it was only half the truth. He was glad to be back seeing his brothers but in reality he was not overly pleased being back without a solution to his suffering.

"How was your journey around the world? Did you find what you were searching for?" Hongjoong questioned even though Seonghwa suspected he already knew the answer to that just like the rest in the room listening in on their conversation.

"Unfortunately I have yet to find someone or something that could help me bring back my loved one." He told him, his shoulders slumping forward. He tried to put on a neutral face but Hongjoong was smart, he could see through his facade quicker than anyone else in their coven. His eyes had shown a glimt of understanding as he nodded carefully.

"You look awful, have you been feeding at all when you have journeyed???" Wooyoungs voice pierced through the air, clearly targeted at him and he could only shrug his shoulders opting not to look at the younger vampire.

"I do not feel hungry anymore Wooyoung." Was the only thing he could give as a response and if he had not already been dead the look Wooyoung sent him would have put him 5 feet under the ground as they spoke.

"You have to feed Seonghwa. It is not healthily to avoid feeding for as long as you have! Lat time I saw you feed was three months ago before you left!" Wooyoung stalked towards him "Are you telling me you have not feed in three months??"

They stared at each other for a long while. He knew all of them already knew the answer. It was the same every year and like every year before this year Wooyoung always grew furious when he figured that he had been neglecting his own health.

Again.

He could feel the energy around him tense up. The others were clearly not happy at all with this and yet despite that Seonghwa could not get himself to care about it. Had it been the other way around he would have been furious, furious at his brothers for ignoring their health and not eating but since it was him and not them he found himself often not caring. He would rather wallow in his grief, allowing the ugly feelings tormenting him to come to the surface in various ways.

"How is my beloved? Are they still safe in their casket?" He asked, voice cracking at the word beloved.

The very thought of you not being there or the possibility of something happening to you whilst he was gone was terrifying to him and he had to fight hard to stop the tears wanting to well up in his eyes.

Wooyoungs furious eyes soften instantly when he had asked the question and the other looked at him with sympathy. Yunho nodded confirming that you were still safe, still protected in the garden he had grown just for you.

"They are safe Seonghwa. We have made sure nothing could harm them whilst you were away." San said, giving him that kind smile only San could give someone when they needed it the most. Seonghwa felt like he could see the stars in his brothers eyes at that moment and it never failed to amaze him how much love and adoration could be seen in Sans eyes and how it was always something very real. It never faded or changed no matter how many decades had passed and right now he was thankful for it.

For the love and compassion his brothers were showing him.

"Why do you not sit down? Tell us about your journey? What has changed in the world since last time you went outside?" Hongjoong questioned whilst leading him over to the big chair, gently guiding him to eventually sit down in it. A blanket was placed over him, Mingi moving with utmost care to wrap it around him to keep him warm. He almost let words of protests out until he saw the worry in his eyes.

"Your beloved would not want you neglecting yourself like this." Was all he said with a low rumble before standing up and walking over to Jongho.

That stung.

His heart ached at the comment Mingi had said. Everyone had heard it. It was impossible for them not to hear him. They just pretended like nothing had been said but he knew they were silently agreeing with him. Agreeing with the statement that you, his beloved, who no longer walked this earth, would not want him to neglect himself and his health.

He wants to respond. To deny what Mingi has said. He has rationalized in his head that you would be okay with what he is doing so he can bring you back and the two of you can live together again like you did before.

The rest of his coven sits down all looking at him with curious eyes. Waiting for him to start telling them about his journey.

"It is all the same. Nothing has really changed in the outside world. We are still myths and legends. The only thing that has changed amongst humans is their greed. I would say they have become even greedier and distrusting than before."

"Humans have always been greedy and distrusting Seonghwa." Hongjoong cut him off before sending an apologetic look when he glared at his coven leader.

"I would say they are even more so now than before. I searched through every country on this bloody earth and I found no one. No one who could help me bring my beloved back. The sights I saw when wandering should have taken my breath away but all it did was make me angry. Furious that they were not next to me witnessing it all. At one point on a cliff looking out at the ocean I screamed. I cursed everything living and dead that day. I was so angry and I still am." Seonghwa spoke, his hands fiddling with the blanket as his eyes darken in anger.

His brothers look at each other in worry. They had hoped after many decade that Seonghwas fury and anger would dwindle down but it only seemed to grow with each year. Wooyoung looked at his older brother and friend in sorrow, he had been close to you, Seonghwas beloved, when you were still living and breathing. He understood the pain and anger Seonghwa was feeling but he also knew that you would not wish this upon anyone. Once having confided in him that you would want them to move forward to be happy, not to forget but to eventually come to cherish what had been rather than constantly living in the past thinking of what you could have done together if only things had gone differently.

"And I-" Seonghwa started but stopped once he heard it again.

Seonghwa.

He looked around. He swore he had heard your voice again. This time it could not have been the wind for no window was open.

"Hwa? What is wrong?" Yunhos voice brought him back from his thoughts as he turned to look at him.

"Y-you did not hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Nothing." He shakes his head "It was nothing."

"Perhaps you should go and rest?" Yeosang chimed in and the others agreed, nodding their heads.

Seonghwa looked at them before glancing around again, he was sure he heard you but now since none other than him seems to have heard you he wonders if some rest would actually help him.

So he nods and he can see the other's shoulders drop down in relaxation as if they had been expecting him to put up a fight and argue with them about resting.

"Perhaps I should... but I would like to go see them first." He feels stupid, like a child asking for permission to do something when he is the oldest in the coven. He could do whatever he wanted and if that was to go out into the rose garden and visit you then he could without permission.

He stands up before anyone can answer what he has said, he lays the blanket back on the chair before he strides towards another sets of doors which will lead him back to a corridor and down a few flight of stairs before he can enter the garden.

The doors open immediately for him and he makes a point of quietly thanking the castle for opening its doors for him. He remembers the first time he had gone out on his three month journey. When he had come back inconsolable wanting to leave that room to go see you the castle had refused. Refused to open its doors and windows for its master to go wherever he pleased.

Not until he had calmed down and only the silent tears were staining his cheeks had he been allowed out. It was after his brothers had held him close, allowing him to grieve in safety and then being given a cup of blood to drink by Wooyoung to help stabilize himself.

After that the castle had always listened to him. And now he was walking with a sense of purpose, he had to see you again. It always pains him to be away from you for three months when he spends almost every single day around you. Tending to the roses or cleaning the glass casket you lay inside whilst talking quietly to you about his days or how much he misses you.

As he walks out of the door and into the garden he stops in his tracks when he sees something or rather someone walking ahead of him.

You.

He cannot stop himself before he rushes forward and just as he is to grab your hand you vanish.

"No... No no no no no!" He mumbles to himself, now sprinting towards the rose garden, you cannot be gone.

You cannot.

Seonghwa almost trips over the steps leading up to where you lay and he stops at the casket breathing heavily gripping it tightly as he takes you in.

You are still there. Untouched. Just like the way you had been when he had left three months ago.

"My beloved." He whispers and just like that the tears are welling up again in his eyes.

Seonghwa. My love.

Seonghwa gasps as he hears your voice again turning around since he can hear your voice from behind him. He had not expected to actually see you. You are pale, standing there and he notes as he falls down on his knees in shock that you are slightly transparent.

"My beloved. My love." He says while the first tear fall down his pale cheek. His voice is growing thick with emotion and when you look at him with those sad eyes he cannot help himself from crawling up to you trying to take ahold of your hand in his only to realize he is unable to.

"No. Please no. Please." He whimpers looking up at you as the waterworks starts afresh.

You have to let me go.

"No! No no no no please I cannot do that. Please I am sorry I cannot live in a world without you. Please do not leave me." He pleads over and over again trying to take ahold of you but he keeps going through you. His eyes looks almost wild as he tries everything to be able to hold you.

You can see how his heart breaks over and over at not being able to hold you and you know you cannot be visible for much longer.

I love you.

When Seonghwa notices that you are disappearing from his view is when he goes into hysterics. He wails for you to come back to him, he screams in fear, anger and grief and it echos loudly throughout the entire forest. He roars in anger, smashing a statue before breaking down again near the casket. Sobbing over and over again that he is sorry, that he wishes you would come back to him. He asks for death to take him once and for all so he can reunite with you.

He grips his head as he cries, wails and screams in fury and sadness. It is like an explosion he cannot control. Seonghwa is unsure of how much time has passed but he finds that he does not care. All he cares about is that he saw you and he could not hold you one last time like he wished he could. He contemplates for a moment to destroy your casket just so he could hold you in his arms again but he physically cannot make that move.

He cannot destroy your last sleeping place. That would be like spitting on your entire existence if he did, so he finds himself hurting himself and the statues and rose bushes around himself in a fit of anger.

Up in the castle seven figures are looking out of the window from the room they still were in. Hearing Seonghwas wails of agony and grief pained them. It was as if someone was driving a spear into their non-beating heart over and over again.

"I wish I could take away all his pain and suffering. All this grief." Jongho mumbles before leaning close to Hongjoong, hiding his face in the crook of his leaders neck as said man brings an arm around him to bring comfort.

"I never want to find my soulmate... It will only bring even more anguish to him. He will constantly be reminded of his own soulmate who he no longer has. I do not want to make him go through that." San says, tears building up in his eyes.

"You cannot stop it from happening San. Do not deprive yourself of the happiness of finding your soulmate because Seonghwa lost his. That is not something he would want. He would want you to be happy. You know that San." Yunho said whilst giving the younger a sad smile, tears also in his eyes as Seonghwa continues to scream and wail out apologies, curse words and asking for you to come back to him.

"Grief... What is not grief if not love persevering. It is proof of how much he has loved and cherished his beloved. He was just too blind in the moment that he thought he could best death and now all these years later after death won he cannot handle it. Because he has yet to fully accept that they are gone. He has yet to accept that they are gone. It might take years until he gets over the stages of anger, denial, depression and guilt. We will be there to help him through it all. I was thinking of going with him next year so he will not be alone on his journey." Hongjoong says eyes sharply focused on the figure down below.

Eyes slightly widening when he sees something or someone behind his brother before it disappears. He could have sworn it looked like you but he must have been wrong. It was probably the tears in his eyes clouding his vision.

It could not have been you.

You were dead.

Gone.

Forever.

[neonpaperlanterns]

Hello! I noticed you were open to any ideas or prompts and I thought of one

Reader being a worker of playtime that was Assigned to help dogday taking care of the children (this happens before the hour of joy) and reader has Cynophobia (extreme fear of dogs) and so when they first land their eyes on dogday, panic

Reader tries to avoid talking or being near dogday as best as they could, Which would confuse and made dogday feel guilty thinking he did something wrong to upset them

So dogday being the sweet pup he is tries to comfort and show reader he's not a bad guy

It's a bit long sorry ^^"

[A/n: I almost feel like I should make this a full series. Just to explore the development more]

He's a dog

Everything is fine, it’s perfectly, totally fine. You aren’t freaking out. Yeah totally not freaking out. These palms are completely dry and your heart is beating at a completely normal rate.

So what if things didn’t turn out how you thought they would? You were adaptable, you could roll with the punches. Even if… Even if the punches were this. 

“Alright everyone, we have some new members joining us today!” Says the giant talking DOG. 

This. Is. Fine!

You got this as long as—

The dog is touching your shoulder. His voice echoes in your ears and yeah no.

Nope. 

Nope. 

You have got nothing. Nothing! 

No—

~~~~~~~~~~

Your eyes flutter open. Breathing deeply you stare up at the ceiling. It’s a mix of yellow, red, and blue. The paint is chipping in the red part, showing that underneath the ceiling is just plain gray concrete. 

Hm. Where were you? 

“Oh you’re awake!” The voice was cheerful, sunny even. Looking over you are filled with regret. Standing in the doorway of what you now understand to be a nurses office was the dog. Every muscle in your body seized up and it felt like your throat was full of cotton.

“I was so worried when you fainted. Are you alright? It didn’t say anything in your application that you were susceptible to dizzy spells~” He kept talking, his hands? Paws? His appendages moved around animatedly. You couldn’t take your eyes off of him as he moved closer. His words turned to white noise as he loomed over you.  

If there was some divine being watching from above why did they hate you? Had you done something in a past life to warrant such ire? 

“Oh dear, you look like you’re going to faint again. Is there something I can help you with?” All you could do was blink owlishly at his concern. Words were unable to come as you stared at him. You were sure you looked akin to a deer in headlights. You watched him cough awkwardly into his fist. The smile never left his face but it wasn’t as genuine as before. 

For what felt like forever you stared at each other. 

“Okay, um I’ll leave you to rest. And when you feel better I look forward to working with you!” Some of that sunny disposition returned to his face. You did nothing but blink and watch him shuffle out of the room. 

He said he looked forward to working with you. The sentiment was not returned but you were sure you wouldn't be seeing him much. You were assigned to be the helper of the unicorn. So you were sure you would be able to avoid him as much as possible.

~~~~~~~~~~

There must be a god and they must hate you. They must find your suffering to be the ultimate entertainment. You had thought you were meant to be CraftyCorn's helper. You could have sworn you were. But no! By some unholy sick twist of fate you are actually the assistant to him. 

The desire to cry on your second day of work was overwhelming. But you held it in. Somehow. You had already fainted on the first day you did not need to get a reputation. So you sucked it up. At least you tried to suck it up. It didn’t help that DogDay was so tactile and friendly and inclusive. 

You were living in your own personal hell. 

“Hey there my happy helper!” If DogDay noticed you flinch, he didn’t say anything. But he did slow down and there was still some distance between you two. 

You stared at him. 

He stared at you. 

A cough escapes him as you fidget. 

“I uh need your help with one of the kids. It’s Isabelle.” You didn’t know all of the kids yet so you weren’t actually sure which one Isabelle was. But you nodded anyway and trailed after him. You may not like this but you did like the kids. You would bear it for them. 

~~~~~~~~~

DogDay had no idea what he did wrong. He watched the other Smiling Critters with their helpers. Everyone was getting along. It was so nice to watch the others but then he glanced over at his own helper. Who sat with their shoulders hunched up around their ears and a perpetual thousand yard stare.

He had thought that maybe you were just shy. Not yet used to them but he has seen you interact with the others. You were quiet but happy. Talking freely and playing with them and letting the children climb all over you. But the moment he walked over you would freeze up. Any pretense of joy wiped from your face and replaced with a blank look. 

He confided in Catnap and KickinChiken that he felt like you didn’t like him. Catnap had simply flicked his tail at him but KC told him that was impossible. He said that DogDay was a rad dude and his helper just needed time. 

But it’s been a month and every attempt to get to know you was met with either silence or your rapidly walking in the other direction. He just didn’t understand and it was driving him crazy. Had his first impression been too much? Did he come on too strong when he came to see you in the nurse's office? 

He wished he knew. He just wants to be your friend.

~~~~~~~~~

You were starting to feel like a jerk. At every turn DogDay was trying to be nice to you and at every turn you would bolt away or shut down. And he definitely noticed. How couldn't he? You weren’t known for subtlety, especially not in this situation. 

Though with the forlorn looks you were getting from DogDay you wished you had been. 

“Hey Happy Helper.” You watched as his hands did a lackluster wiggle. He wasn’t looking at you and they just made you feel even worse. 

“H...H..” You swallowed thickly. “Hey Bodacious Boss.” Did you just say bodacious? To your boss? From the look on his face he was just as shocked as you. Though you don’t think it was because you said bodacious. Probably.

After a moment of silence with you staring at each other, DogDay recovered first. He was looking at you now and he was smiling and his tail was wagging. Seeing him light up made you feel a bit better. Your hands were still clammy and there was a lot of saliva pooling on your tongue but it was nice to see him happy. 

~~~~~~~~~~

“Can I ask you a question?” DogDay picked at the fur on his wrists. It’s only been a week since you spoke to him and boy was he nervous. He didn’t want to ruin whatever this was. 

“Hm?” You were making sandwiches for the kids. It would be lunchtime soon. Shuffling in place he took your noncommittally hum as que that you were listening.

“Do you like me?” He watched as your shoulders stiffen. That blank look slowly creeping back onto your face.  

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-” 

“I’m afraid of dogs.” You blurted out stopping DogDay in his apologetic tracks.

“What?” It was his turn to blink owlishly. Not really sure what to say right now.

“When I was younger there was an incident…” You waved your hand in the air, like you didn’t want to remember it. “Anyways it messed me up and ever since I have been terrified of dogs.” You continued to make sandwiches.

“I’m a dog.” He says rather dumbly. 

“I know.” You nod as you heave a sigh.

“I’m.. I’m sorry.” He frowns as he pulls at his ears and he can feel his tail sag against his legs.

“Please, don’t be.” You look up at him, a tight but genuine smile on your face. Your hand shakes a bit as you raise it in his direction. 

“I like you. You’re my Bodacious Boss.” DogDay felt his tail twitch as he tentatively took your hand.

“I like you too, my Happy Helper.”

[alexanderwales]

Pitchposting: Generation Ship

(Pitchposting is a way of giving away ideas that threaten to grow in my mind until they become draft documents. They are free to a good home, though there's no guarantee that I won't try to write them at some point.)

Alright, hear me out: it's a generation ship, one expected to reach its destination with an entirely new generation of people who never knew the homeland, except instead of being a scifi concept, we're doing it as mundane as possible.

I think this is one of those ideas that only appeals to me because I immediately start thinking about the logistics of it all, and there's something in the mundane, gritty realism that really appeals to me. Mostly I'm worldbuilding and problem solving, trying to get at what it would actually be like for people to have been at sea their entire lives, to have a ship that either needs to endure the waves or be rebuilt as it goes.

I was going to say that this needs to be fantasy, but I guess technically it can be an Alderson Disk or something. An Alderson Disk has a habitable circumference of approximately a billion kilometers, a sailing ship can go maybe eighty miles a day, that's a ballpark of 12.5 million days to circumnavigate the disk, which is 34,000 years. That's a hell of a lot of generations, twice as long as we've had agriculture. (But you could also just have it be a fantasy world that's larger than our own, with a generation ship that was only trying to flee to greener pastures that are a hundred years away.)

The purest version of this story is a world that's just water, to match the void of space. The ship sails, repairs are made from flotsam and jetsam and driftwood from unspecified places, rainwater is caught and put into barrels, pitch is used for patching, fish and kelp are hauled up from the ocean, birds are captured from the sky, and the ship must necessarily endure storms and swells.

I've always felt there was something compelling about constrained living situations, places where everyone knows everyone and you have to make it work because there's absolutely no way out — where you're on a knife's edge because there's only so much preparation you can do. A generation ship needs to think about absolutely all of its needs and how it will deal with the deterioration of all things over time, along with problems that might only crop up once every hundred years, or problems that won't become apparent until long after the ship has left the dock.

Let's say you have a sailing ship the size of one of the largest sailing vessels of the 19th century, a thousand people all told. The families are carefully braided to prevent accidental incest, everyone has their position in life, every master has at least one apprentice but probably more so gout or cancer don't eliminate the last person who knew how to make more pitch.

This is clearly an Idea story, one that starts with a ridiculous premise and then explores it, but one of my favorite things about idea stories is finding the characters and the conflicts within them. For a generation ship, the biggest, most obvious conflict is the conflict between generations: the old people who once knew dry land, the middle generation who will likely die before the destination is reached, and the children who will be the beneficiaries of all this travel.

We have a woman who was born to the sea, who loves the sea, who loves the travel and takes great joy in knowing that she's probably not going to see the end of it until she's ancient. We have the grizzled sailor who's nearly risen to the rank of captain and sees the whole mission as utter foolishness. A boy of thirteen who is obsessed with writing stories about the land they've set off toward and keeps his telescope on the horizon, hoping that the predictions were off, that they're somehow two decades early. A girl of sixteen who doesn't feel suited to the marriage that's planned for her, who is secretly in love with her best friend. A scientist who has been quietly advancing the state of knowledge with every new fish brought up from the deeps.

And then there's the plot, which there are so, so many options for. I would start the novel with simple sailing, a few chapters of the daily routine, the personalities, their petty fights with each other, and the stress of being in the middle of unfathomably deep waters whose depths are only glimpsed when the nets bring up something new. Then ... an island, another ship, sea creatures that have a glimmer of intelligence, a storm that makes the ship limp, spoilage that threatens starvation unless drastic action is taken, a political squabble that might bring all the plans crashing down.

Maybe it's a book about being trapped by the past, or about hanging on by what feels like a delicate thread, or about how systems are fragile and careful thinking and brave leadership are the only things that will get us through.

Mostly I think I want to be a geek about a ship that needs to survive in the ocean for a hundred years, and I do not have the time to write this novel, not when there are so many other novels to write.

[hana-no-seiiki]

Is there a part 2 to Yandere Male makima reader x hsr? I absolutely love this story??!

I'd like to imagine reader playing along with caelus's antics of digging through trash cans and possibly helping him find other trash cans to dive lol

Dan heng and reader having mutual thoughts because there are two troublemakers of the astral express.. (yk who)

I don’t usually write these things (asks for updates) but since you caught me at a nice time…

YANDERE HSR ( THE NAMELESS ) x AEON OF CONTROL! READER

These are moreso antics and headcannons rather than a proper sequel to the previous one so…

warnings: major canon divergences, soft yandere themes.

・❥・ You and Pompom mostly have the same duties mainly keeping the express clean, checking its stability, tending to visitors, etc.

・❥・ However you take more of a authoritative position with your duties.

・❥・ Though you created Pompom, they have no idea you are an Aeon. You kept it that way so that Pompom wouldn’t be too compelled to follow you when you diverge paths with the Nameless.

・❥・ You were the one that redressed March and taught her sewing when she arrived frozen one day. As such, she can be a tad too attached with you. Often flirting with you in front of the other crew members. (A fact that most of them hate)

・❥・ You know the photo wall she has in her room? Well in that gallery of hers she has a secret folder of just you. You doing your daily maintenance, you repairing Pompom’s stitches, you just b r e a t h i n g. Yeah.

・❥・ Dan Heng and you often spend hours together in the archive. You had the penchant of checking, and rechecking the organization of things. Your long periods of time together led to him feeling the most safe around you. You already knew of his secrets, but having him divulge it nonetheless still felt like being let into a state secret.

・❥・ Himeko has a suspicion you two aren’t related. In fact you have a feeling she already uncovered what you are. She is however, far too in love with trail blazing and being your sister that she doesn’t do anything to risk the status quo.

・❥・ Welt has the biggest love-hate relationship with you. You haven’t done anything bad per se. In addition to that, you’re the reason Himeko got to explore the stars, but memories of the past still haunt him. Each day he sees you handling the youngins edges him closer and closer to finally letting of go of his resentment.

・❥・ When Caelus isn’t dying inside by being close to you, he likes to be smug by showing how much “care” you put into him. Like the youngest child smirking at the older children as they get the most love and attention. Sometimes he gets himself injured on purpose to get your eyes on him and him alone.

・❥・ Unfortunately due to your presence destabilizing the Stellaron, you don’t get many chances to pamper the boy.

・❥・ Though you did give him a giant wearable trash-can, complete with breathability and protection against the elements.

・❥・ You also don’t go out much and prefer to watch over expeditions. You also make sure never to use your full power as to not alert other aeons aside from IX of your endeavors.

BONUS!

・❥・ Elio and Kafka vehemently worship you. The latter’s domination comes from your blessing.

・❥・ Though they aren’t aware that you took the shape of a human male since you are able to erase yourself from Elio’s scripts.

・❥・ Which leads to Kafka flirting with this handsome man not knowing he’s actually her god.

[yoificfinder]

Hello!!

I would just like to ask for Royalty au for viktuuri please and thank you! ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧

every calculation falls silent by @thehobbem [T, 29K]

With an engagement arranged behind his back, Emperor Victor only wishes to have one last day for himself as a free man.

But the last thing he will be is free, once he meets someone who seems to have the exact same plans, and perhaps motivations, for today.

In Fire, In Whispers by @voxofthevoid [M, 12K]

“What do you think he meant by friendly stabbing?” Viktor asks, deceptively casual as he winds a lock of his hair around his finger.

“Sparring, probably.”

“Ah,” Viktor sighs, his disappointment loud and theatrical. “And here I thought he meant the other kind.”

Yuuri feels himself heat to the roots of his hair.

“Not here,” he snaps, hands clenching at his sides.

Viktor’s eyes sharpen, the veneer of pleasantness finally leaving his face.

“My mistake,” he says, his smile thin and icy. “You seem tired, Prince Yuuri. Let me escort you to your bedchambers.”

~

In which Viktor and Yuuri are the princes of warring kingdoms but manage to fall in love anyway.

My Love, We Deserve the Softest Eternity series by @japansace [G to E, 88K]

"A baby," Yakov gripes. "Not even a thousand yet, and he thinks he's in love!"

My Name on Your Lips by @feels-like-fire [E, 108K]

Yuuri Katsuki has been betrothed to the High King's son, Victor, since he was just a child; furthermore, as an omega, he's forbidden from practicing magic in combat. For years, he's been able to put off the former because the Prince was traveling abroad, and gotten around the latter by practicing with his mentor in secret.

Now Victor Nikiforov has finally returned home, and Yuuri is being summoned to the capital for their wedding. He needs a plan to put off marriage long enough to find a way to break the betrothal, while keeping his practicing from being discovered.

If only the Prince didn't have other ideas.

(Or, the swords-and-sorcery arranged marriage AU. Updates weekly.)

On Your Every Word by @stammiviktor [M, 71K]

It starts, as most things do, with an extravagant banquet.

"Dance with me?"

He’s holding out his hand. It’s an offering, an invitation, and a dare all in one.

The onlookers part and a blinding smile graces the dancer’s lips.

“Of course, Your Highness.”

(A Royalty AU, with a twist)

The Phoenix Lives by velvetcadence [E, 5K]

Prince Yuuri has banished yokai from the world. Now home from his travels, he must navigate another adventure: his arranged marriage to Prince Viktor Nikiforov.

But Prince Viktor is hiding a secret, one that may upset the fragile state of their marriage.

Please Leave a Light On When You Go by adjit [T, 19K]

Everyone knows tales of princesses trapped in towers and guarded by evil dragons, but, actually…

Yuuri is here by choice, thank you very much, and Phichit is quite a nice dragon, all things considered. It’s just that the knights who keep trying to rescue him don’t seem to be getting the memo.

And then there’s Sir Nikiforov, just another knight like the rest, except that he’s not. Because after he realizes that Yuuri is not, in fact, in need of rescuing, he drops it. And stranger still, he decides to stay.

the promise i'll make series by lily_winterwood @omgkatsudonplease [M and E, 102K]

When Crown Prince Yuuri of Japan escapes his army of minders at his Saint Petersburg hotel, he thinks he’s found the opportunity to explore the city as a commoner. When investigative journalist Viktor Nikiforov discovers the Crown Prince of Japan on a park bench in Saint Petersburg, he thinks that he’s found his ticket to redemption at the magazine he writes for. But like the stories of those stranded during the White Nights after the bridges go up, neither of them had anticipated falling in love. (Roman Holiday AU)

Roses of May by @cuttlemefishwrites [E, 47K] *WIP

At age five, all children are assessed for talent and beauty in the City of Hasetsu and the other eight cities of the Empire. Every year, five are branded with the mark of a rose before being carded off to the Emperor’s palace where they are trained to become Roses, or sacrifices to be sent every May to the Ice Spirit that lives in the castle at the top of the mountain. Roses never return, except for Katsuki Yuuri, who shocks the Empire when he appears again two years after his departure with a silver crown on his head and a blond baby in his arms, demanding the Emperor step down or face the wrath of his husband, the Ice King. But, not everything is what it seems.

The Dragon Prince and the Winter Swan by @sophia-helix [E, 121K]

Yuuri Stark is a noble son of the north, returning to Winterfell in disgrace after the latest disappointment in his checkered tourney career. He hasn't given up his dream of becoming a knight, but maybe it's time to find himself a new path, settling down at home.

Prince Victor Targaryen is the greatest swordsman in Westeros, but he no longer finds joy in competition. Things are uneasy in King's Landing, where politics are shifting and dangerous, and he seizes the chance to escape north in search of the young man who came so close to beating him in a tourney last year — and was so beguiling at the banquet afterwards.

Together they begin a journey to the great tourney of Harrenhal, with intrigue, honor, friendship and love along the way...and inevitable political conflict ahead.

(A Game of Thrones fusion with 90% less grimdark)

Technically Arranged by @ajwolf84 [E, 78K] *WIP

Yuuri is a tech genius working in Silicon Valley, but he never would have gotten this far if not for the support of the Russian Royal family who offered him a full scholarship to the elite Rostelecom Academy and have been supporting his education ever since. Of course, this help didn’t come for free. He’s now considered a member of the Royal family, which isn’t so bad, other than the inordinate number of weddings he has to attend. There’s also the small stipulation that he is technically a candidate to become the Prince’s consort, but that’ll never happen…

The Tsesarevich Lives by mothedestiel [E, 50K]

An Anastasia AU. Victor is an orphan with no name, no family, and no memory of a time before he was ten years old. Could he really be the missing Nikiforov heir? An adventure across Europe with two conmen will lead him to the answer.

The Vastness of Space by @shysweetthing [E, 17K]

As chief communications officer on board the Interstellar Alliance Fleet’s Star Ship Victory, Yuuri doesn’t have to think about who he actually is on his home planet. He just has to listen to his captain, do his job, and…not fall in love with his best friend, the ship’s science officer, Victor Nikiforov.

Well. Two out of three’s not bad.

Then his mother calls with the worst possible news: She, the Empress of New Nihon, has arranged Yuuri’s marriage.

There’s only one thing Yuuri can do: Fake a boyfriend, and fake one fast. Who better/worse to play that role than the friend he wishes was more? What can go wrong? It’s not like Yuuri can fall more in love...

With Two Hands by whatsup_buttercup [E, 28K]

“Do you think he’ll let you get a picture with him?” Phichit’s voice comes through distorted by the long chain of communications systems and the great distance between them.

“I imagine some official photos might be taken,” Yuuri offers.

“You should try to work ‘I became a translator because of you!’ into conversation. You know, casually.”

Yuuri takes a large sip from his mug of tea, refusing to be baited. “We’ll see.”

Yuuri Enchanted by the__magpie / @wecalleverythinglove [T, 58K]

At birth, Yuuri Katsuki was given the gift of obedience, although he quickly learns as he grows up that it is a curse. He has to obey any command given to him, even if it puts him or others in danger. Too afraid to face the terrifying outside world, Yuuri stays in his home town of Hasetsu, until a chance encounter with Prince Victor urges him to venture outside of his safe bubble. Determined to break his curse, Yuuri begins on an adventure involving fairies, ogres, true love, and courage he never knew he had.

-----

Other people's rec:

Equivalent Exchange by writingfromtheshadows

The Nature of Things by Zombubble

Thanks for the rec, @tanouska, @kittygoeswoof90! 💙

[cyren-myadd]

Avatar official account posted their screenplay of the Sullys arrived at the Metkayina clan on their TikTok. This part here caught my eye. Neytiri has a secret shame that her kids are half half-human.

What's your thoughts?

oh man, I have some really mixed feelings about this ngl...

First thing I want to say before I get into my rant is remember that not everything in the old script is canon, so Neytiri feeling ashamed of her children isn't canon as of right now, but there's a possibility this will be confirmed in a later movie.

A little self-disclosure, I'm engaged to a guy who is from a different race and culture than me, and I'd like to have a kid with him at some point. My partner and I have discussed the fact that our kids would be mixed, and we've already made plans to teach them both of our native languages and make sure they're exposed to both of our cultures. Even though my kids will be different from me in some ways, I don't care, I'll still love them no matter what and I can't imagine ever being ashamed of their differences-- especially since I was the one who chose to have children with a man who was a different race/culture.

While Avatar is completely fictional, the romance between Jake and Neytiri is a clear allegory for a real-life mixed-race couple, with their children's "hybrid" traits being an allegory for real-life mixed-race children feeling insecure about their features. Obviously, not everything is a one-to-one allegory, since Neytiri has been directly and violently victimized by Jake's people and most modern mixed-race couples in my country deal with more systemic forms of oppression instead, but the allegory is still there.

To be completely honest, if the writers actually follow through with this line from the script and show Neytiri being ashamed of her children on-screen, I might actually start to hate Neytiri. Her other character flaws, like her chauvinism, her resistance to change, and her hypocrisy about Jake vs Spider, are completely understandable, especially since she's been through unbelievable amounts of trauma because of humans. I still like Neytiri a lot even with her flaws. But being ashamed her own kids? The kids she chose to birth/adopt, knowing they were hybrids? These two babies right here?

I am really, really trying to be understanding here, 'cause Neytiri's been through trauma that I could never imagine, but still... ma'am those are YOUR babies. I don't think any kind of trauma justifies being ashamed of your children for something they have no control over.

Whenever I see that screenshot, all I can imagine is Kiri or Lo'ak finding out their mom feels ashamed of them. Could you imagine? They would be absolutely crushed. I think Lo'ak especially would have some kind of a crisis over it, since he's already so insecure about being a hybrid. Even Miles freaking Quaritch, the vengeful colonizing monster, isn't ashamed of his son being so different from him.

For the record, I know the only reason I feel so strongly about this is because I'm projecting my own feelings about being in a mixed-race relationship and planning to have mixed-race kids onto Neytiri. But I feel the way I feel, and if this ever becomes canon I would never be able to look at her the same way, so I'm hoping this idea stays in the old script and never sees the light of day again.

No matter what happens, this is James Cameron's story, and I trust him to deliver a fantastic movie even if I don't like everything about it. Besides, this is only one line. It doesn't go in-depth into the nuances of Neytiri's feelings. Maybe if they choose to go with this concept and flesh it out better, I'll change my mind about it, who knows.

I'm also gonna add this here, cause I know how tumblr is: these are just my personal feelings on the topic-- my personal feelings that are completely subjective and are greatly effected by my own life experiences. I know some people like this idea and think it would be a great thing to explore for Neytiri's character, and if you think that, then great, good for you, no hate to anyone with a different opinion.

[sunny-fox]

I wonder about pet SAHSR what about Aeons as a pet if you okay with doing it if not you can ignore this request

Ooh I've never thought of this idea before!!

There will be a part 2 for this -

Pet! SAHSRAU (Part 4)

Warnings: cult behaviour, possible spoilers for Aeons' stories, mention of death (Akivili)

Notes: characters turn into animals, highly possible out-of-character, they/them pronouns for all Aeons, Sunny has very little understanding of the Aeons' backstories 🥹

------------------------------

Golden Retriever! Akivili who's extremely curious. They used to explore the universe with their followers before their death, but now that they have been granted a second chance to live, they want to explore this world with you! Akivili acts quite friendly towards humans, especially children - you've never seen them bark at or bite anyone. Akivili loves car rides as it is the closest experience they have compared to rides on the Astral Express. Each time you say something along the line of "Let's go on a car trip", Akivili immediately stands up straight (if they had been lying down), tail wagging furiously in joy.

Norwegian Forest Cat! Nanook who just...destroys your home. They're the Aeon of Destruction, after all. Nothing is safe from Nanook's teeth or claws: they'll chew or scratch on almost everything. Keep your important documents or trinkets in cupboards, plastic boxes, drawers - basically anywhere that Nanook can't reach easily - lest they turn into pieces the next day. But exclude their destructive behaviour, and you'll find that Nanook is actually not much different from the other pets. Though they may seem a little tsundere (just like Pom-Pom) and pretend that they don't like cuddles, Nanook still constantly seeks recognition from you. They want to know if you think that they're the best pet you've ever had.

Greyhound! Lan who still has their hunting instincts. The "prey" / gifts that they bring to you are quite...unusual. You've received pebbles, wild fruit, branches, leaves and whatnot ever since Lan came to your home. Those were the "normal" gifts. Sometimes Lan brings home clothes from your neighbours' clotheslines and pieces of cardboard (you don't even know where they found them). You scold them every time they bring your neighbours' clothes to you, telling them you're lucky that your neighbours don't start a fight with you due to said problem. Eventually Lan stops giving you anything except for pebbles, as you always give them a pat on the head when you receive pebbles and polish each one properly before keeping them.

Himalayan cat! Yaoshi who still doesn't get along with Lan. They often get into fights with each other. These fights could end in two different ways: Either Lan would win and Yaoshi is forced to leap into your arms to avoid getting bitten, or Yaoshi wins and chases Lan all over the place till they hide behind you so that they wouldn't suffer from another swipe of Yaoshi's claws. You immediately decided that their living areas had to be separated once you realised that their peaceful relationship / play-fighting was a mere facade, as Lan and Yaoshi try - well, used to try - their best to tolerate the other when they were in the same room with you. But when Yaoshi is alone with you, they're quite gentle and often demands attention. They love it when you stroke their fur and sing them to sleep each night.

[louloulemons-posts]

Oil At The Coffee Shop I

Eddie Munson X Fem!Reader

Summary : Moving to the small town of Hawkins you hoped your journey would be a smooth one, what we hope for doesn’t always happen.

Word Count : 1.7k

Warnings : introduction, not much eddie x reader interaction, very rambley, bestie steve, sweetheart uncle wayne, grumpy eddie.

Fic Masterlist

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

Moving away was scary, but you couldn’t stay put any longer. You knew if you didn’t move now then you would never leave, and you needed to go.

“That’s the last of it,” you brother smiled, putting a final box in your car. “You sure you’ll be okay without me?” you asked.

“Oh Im planning on calling you every day,” he smiled, “Seriously though, this is something for you. Aunt Callie wouldn’t have left it to you if she didn’t think so.”

“Only if you’re sure-“

“I am, now,” he turned from you, “Kids come say goodbye to your auntie.” Two children came running out of the house, their mother following behind.

“I’m gonna miss you so much,” you said squeezing them tight. “We miss you too,” your 2 year old niece spoke. “Will you come and see us?” your nephew asked.

“Of course Bud, and you can come and see me, and we can call!” Giving them one last squeeze you hugged your sister in law. “It’s gonna be strange not having you around, you take care of yourself okay?” she said.

“I will, and you too. Don’t let him start slacking off or I’ll come back and get him,” you laughed. “I’ll never slack off, now come here and hug me,” you brother smiled, opening his arms.

“I’m gonna miss you Scottie,” wrapping your arms around him. “I’ll miss you too Kid.” Rubbing your wet eyes and pulling away you climbed into your car. “Call us when you get there okay?” you sister in law spoke.

“Will do May, I’ll see you all soon!”

Soon enough you were off, driving away from your hometown to a small place called Hawkins.

You’d spent a lot of Summers there, your Aunt Callie had lived there. You’d spent your time playing in the lake and exploring the forest. It had been so much fun.

She had passed away a few months back, and soon you were sent a letter about her old shop. She’d left it for you.

If you weren’t swimming or running around you were in there with her. Helping her run the place for 3 weeks of the year. It was your escape, something you and Scott always looked forward too.

Hawkins had undergone some hard times, a serious of earthquakes and a whole bunch of nasty rumours. Now it was being built back up, physically and its reputation.

Your aunts shop, well your shop would be the next thing on that list. It would take a while to get there, but you hoped it would be an uneventful journey.

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

It was not an uneventful journey, “I swear to god next time I see that mechanic I’m gonna beat his ass,” you ranted, your car had broke down, only half an hour away from where you had to be.

You knew there was something us with it, but the smarmy man had said no it’s all in your head. He was just too lazy to take a look. Groaning you dropped your head onto the wheel of your car.

A knock on your window caught you off guard, “You alright miss?” Looking up it was thankfully someone you recognised. “Chief Hopper!”

“My god, is that really you! I haven’t seen you in so long, how are you?”

“Great, I’m good. How are you?”

“Wonderful, what are you doing here?”

“I’m actually going to be running Callies old store. My car broke down though.”

“I see. Well I can ring a mechanic for you, stay with you until they get here.”

“Would you?”

“Course, Munsons are the best.”

“Old Wayne Munson?” You asked.

“That’s him.” He left to make a radio call from his car, giving them an idea of your location. “They’ll be here soon.”

“Thanks Hop, so how’s life treating you?”

“Life’s good right now, got a wife. Kids.”

“Finally had the guts to tell Joyce how you feel?” He nodded, chuckling. “And the kids?”

“Well her two boys, mine now. Jonathan and Will. Then we’ve got a daughter, El.”

“Callie mentioned, gosh I bet little Wills all grown up now.”

“He’s 19 in a few months.” You let out a sigh, “Man you’ve made me feel old.” Hop laughed at that.

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

The catch up continued for a while, laughter and shared memories. Hopper was baffled by the fact Scott had a wife and kids of his own.

Soon enough a tow truck came driving up towards you, loud music playing. “Here we go,” Hopper said, motioning to the vehicle.

A man climbed out of the truck, clad in overalls and a grease stained white tee. Curly hair pulled into a bun on his head, hands cover in rings and tattoos here and there.

“Eddie, thanks for coming,” Hopper spoke.

“No worries, this the car?” he asked.

“Yeah it’s mine,” you motioned to yourself, and he met your eyes.

Dark eyes that looked like melted chocolate held your gaze. A face with light stubble, maybe from 2 days of not shaving. Wrinkles by his mouth, smile lines clearly, but darkness under his eyes.

He was beautiful. “Eddie this is Miss Callies niece,” he introduced you.

“Right, Eddie Munson. What happened?” he asked. “Well it was fine, it’s been making weird noises and then it just stopped. I had it checked over a few weeks ago but the guy wasn’t the best.”

“Well I’ll tow you into town, and then we can sort everything out at the shop.” He walked to grab his gear from the back of the truck.

“Great. Thanks for staying with me Hop,” you smiled at the older man. “Sure thing, Eddie you alright to take her into town.”

“Sure, you can get in. I’ll be with you in a minute,” he spoke, he voice was dull. Almost like he was bored, or tired or both.

Saying goodbye to Hopper you climbed in the van, waiting for Eddie to connect your car to the van.

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

“Here we are,” Eddie spoke as you pulled into a mechanics shop. This was the first time he’d said a word since you left Hopper. You’d tried to make conversations, only met with grunts and hums.

Climbing out you saw a few other guys around the shop. A older man walked over to you, “Hey Son, this the one Hop called in?”

“Yeah Wayne, says there’s been a strange sound. Had it checked a few weeks back but not thorough.”

“We’ll get it sorted for you,” the man, Wayne, smiled softly at you.

He had a kind face, old and worn, but you could tell he was a gentle soul. “Thank you so much, you don’t happen to have a phone I could use do you. It’s just I’m moving here today and all my stuff is in the car.”

“You got someone who can help?” Wayne asked. You nodded, “Right, okay come with me.” Wayne led you into an office space, a phone on the desk. “Take as long as you need, I’ll help Eddie check it over.”

Dialling a number in, you waited for it to ring. “Harrington.”

“Stevie,” you smiled, he spoke your name, “How are you?” he asked.

“I’m okay, I’m really sorry to ask though, can you help me out?”

“Sure, what do you need from me love?”

“Think you could come and get me and my stuff from Munsons Mechanics?”

“I’m on my way, I’ll be there soon.”

“Thanks Steve, you’re the best.”

“Oh tell me something I don’t know.”

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

A maroon BMW pulled up. You’d met Steve good few summers ago, he’d been playing basketball with your brother. You’d become fast friends, he was a sweetheart, a flirt, but a sweetheart.

He spoke your name, smiling widely. “Steve!” you grinned, he wrapped his arms around you tightly. “Hello you, god I’ve missed you,” he said.

“Thank you for coming.”

“Course.”

“Hey Mister Munson, would I be okay to start moving my stuff?” you asked the older man. “Sure, I’ve got some paperwork for you to fill out too.”

“You go do that and I’ll start moving your stuff,” Steve said, squeezing your shoulder.

“Harrington.”

“Munson, how you doing?”

“I’m alright. What are you doing here?”

“Picking up my friend,” he nodded over to you, who was currently filling in paperwork. Chatting away to Wayne as she did.

“You know her?”

“Mhm, childhood friends, Callies niece.”

“I’ve heard, never seen her.”

“She used to come every summer with her brother, makes sense you didn’t see her, was when you just moved here.”

He hummed, as Steve went and moved boxes between cars. “Right that’s the paperwork sorted, we’ll give you a call when it’s all ready.”

“Great, do I need to pay a deposit, I’ve got my purse.”

“We don’t really do that ‘round here, small town and all.”

“Oh I insist,” you pulled out a 50 and passed it to the man, smiling at him softly. “At least for fuel money for you coming to get me.”

“That’s very kind. Did you want help with the boxes?”

“Oh no it’s okay, I haven’t got much.” Smiling again at the man, you walked over to help Steve move the last few boxes.

“Thank you for the help, it was nice meeting you,” you spoke to Wayne.

“Course, we’ll give you a call. Nodding you climbed in besides Steve, “Thank you too Eddie.” He gave a grunt of your welcome and you were on your way.

“God I can’t believe you’re staying! It’s so exciting,” Steve said happily.

“It is, I’ve got a lock of work to do though. I know those earthquakes did a lot of damage to the shop.”

“I’ll help you fix it up, sure the others can too. Does anyone else know you’re coming into town?”

“A couple people, I mean Hopper was the one who helped me out when my car broke down.”

“Ah right, well Wayne and Eddie will get it fixed up in no time.”

“Don’t think Eddie likes me all that much,” you huffed a laugh. “Don’t worry about him, he’s grumpy all the time.” Nodding you head, you couldn’t help smiling when the shop came into view.

Climbing out of the car Steve spoke, “You go open up and I’ll start grabbing stuff.” Walking towards the door, you used the code to unlock where the key was kept.

Pushing it open a wave of memories took over, some new ones were about to be made.

~ / / / * \ \ \ ~

A/N: AHHHH! It is here, the first part of Oil At The Coffee Shop. I can’t wait for you guys to find out what’s to come I hope you like it 🤍

Thank you so much for reading 🤍

[chitty-chitty-bang-bang-bang]

Vlad, Viago and Deacon as parents headcanons [pt.2]

[Part 1] [Part 3]

Author’s note: I love writing this shit to a very unhealthy degree. I might make a oneshots out of this later. Also does anyone know Deacon’s nationality? Some say Polish, others say German. I’m still not sure.

Also, if some of you want pt. 3, please let me know what scenarios would you want me to explore specifically, because I am running out of ideas a bit…

When you first appeared in the house, Viago found some old suitcase in the attic and proposed that you’ll sleep in it, until they get you an actual casket.

You tried it, but couldn’t really slumber because of the constant nightmares and it was too scary to open the lid, because of the sun.

So you started sharing a coffin with Viago, at least until you felt calmer.

It resulted in him sacrificing a bit of his sleep to your rather constant tossing and turning, but he quickly got used to it.

He sang you German lullabies to put you to sleep or whispered some calming affirmations (you didn’t understand a word, but it was sweet).

He found these moments so precious, that he actually got upset, when you obtained your own coffin and started sleeping separately in the attic.

Since the attic was now technically your room, Vlad, Viago and Deacon decided to help you decorate it to your liking, so you went on the town basically robbing thrift stores and supermarkets by hypnotising the cashiers.

They helped you assemble the random ikea furniture you got, even though neither of you could understand the instructions on the box.

In your free time, you’ll often find yourself hanging around in Vladislav’s room, posing for his portraits. He likes your expressiveness, it really gives his paintings the right look. And so you won’t get bored sitting there for hours, he asks you about your life before you became a vampire.

You also speak a lot of Romanian together, because Vlad wanted you to know another language, so he only communicated to you in Romanian for a while and you unwillingly started to understand it with time.

If you miss your family, he will take you to your childhood home. Of course, you can’t really interact with them anymore, but you can at least watch and it might make you feel a bit better to know they are still living a good life and that they miss you just as much.

At one point all three of them realise, that you would benefit from some friends within your age group. So they take you out to an arcade pretty early in the evening.

Unfortunately, living with ancient vampires kind of killed any chance for your social skills to develop properly, so you ended up scaring a bunch of kids and getting very upset.

To compensate for it, Deacon called you along to watch videos on the laptop, that Stu set up. You accidentally stumbled upon Bill Nye reuploads and binged them together, because you thought he’s the smartest person to ever roam the earth.

All of them have some kind of a default nickname for you. Viago calls you “Mäuschen” (little mouse), Vlad calls you very simply “Child” and to Deacon you are “Rodent”.

Stu and Nick are kind of like uncles/siblings to you. When the three have to leave somewhere, they usually leave them to babysit you. You have a lot of fun together! Since all three of you still remember what it’s like to actually be a living and breathing human, you get to talk more about recent news and events, rather than reminisce about the past.

You are also the only person in the group, who can’t really steal your clothes from victims, since neither of the vampires is very keen on killing children. Mostly, they ask their newfound werewolf friends to pick something up for you during the day or steal it themselves during the night.

Considering you can’t go to a normal school, they decided to teach you at home. Vlad teaches you literacy and art, Viago teaches you sciences and history and Deacon teaches you actually important shit like hypnotising tax collectors, draining the blood of your victims into mason jars and looking cool as fuck.

If you call Viago “dad”, he will be over the goddamn moon. It’s like he accomplished a goal he didn’t even know he set.

If you call Vladislav your dad, for a moment he would almost feel this long forgotten warmth in his chest. It’s like his heart started to beat again.

If you refer to Deacon as “dad”, he will be very startled and confused at first. It’s a weird feeling for him to have someone trust him and depend on him so much. He won’t admit it, but he really loved that emotion.

The more you are around, the more they get into being parental figures.

Tagging people who asked for part two: @italakthoughts and @rthounasty (this is a fire username btw)

[writing-frenzy]

Isekai with the Kurosaki fam; now with some UraIchi spice

So, my brain has been dumping even more ideas for a fandom I can't write for, so I guess I'll dump all the ideas on the ground and sees what happens; also, partly inspired because of DevinePhoenix's Glass Body, Steal Wings and slightly be Cannon Ichigo in AU series by Williamcipher, especially the third of the series, because ye.

Anyways, so for me, I can never imagine Ichigo would part from his sisters and Goat-face easily, even in a normal au, because it's Ichigo's family, his friends, his lost, his life experiences that makes him who he is as a person; if he died and then transferred, a part of me wonders if he would ever try and get back home somehow. So my brain went-

Brain: hey, how about we have a thing that makes the entire family get into an accident :D

Brain: And, like, maybe a day before or when Ichigo was younger, he ended up saving a godly being's most beloved person, so the god is like; hey, I owe you, I'll reincarnate your family into my world; thing is, the world the god has is maybe connected in a way to an anime/webnovel/comic one of the girls or Ichigo's friends were reading, and Ichigo knows it because he was convinced to watch/read it as bonding.

It's a world of magic and fantasy, where words and names have power and things go bump in the night ever so easily. Ichigo and his Family find themselves in a cozy little hideaway, all confused but happy and relieved to be alive and with each other. Isshin in this au will be an awkward, not the best father but he loves and he tries, and he just wants the best for all of his children. (He is the unsarcastic B+ parent, because with all the shit in this au coming, Ichigo deserves this).

Isshin in their original world is descended from a sword wielding samurai family, and he's had the forms and everything beaten into him since he was young, and the reason why he never taught Ichigo was because he didn't know how to be a gentle teacher and he never wanted to hurt his boy. (it's why he's always given his children freedom and choice of what they want.) And coming into this new world, this new place, everyone can feel a change in their bodies, can feel power in their veins even if they don't know what to do with it. See, Ichigo's mom had a little something funky with her blood but didn't know it and Isshin is actually a human with spiritual powers but with their original world it never came out, and with the God giving them a boost/perks, everyone is learning how to control themselves first and foremost.

It's after a bit of convincing and Isshin making Ichigo promise to tell him if he's going too hard that he starts teaching him the family style, along with others in scrolls with phantom teachers to guide them along. It is rough, it is harsh, but it's Ichigo so he pushes on through and becomes better for it. (The two do agree to see if they can find better teachers for the girls though, as Karin wouldn't suit this style even if she would be good with a sword, and Yuzu seems like she would be better with magic then a blade.)

The family of four spends like three years here, learning all they can, devouring every book and all they can remember of the OG!Story of this place before they all have exhausted all the sources and knowledge of the cottage, can no longer progress in their skills as they have been, and had enough cabin fever to drive any sane person down the river. But they're not stupid, so first things first, Isshin scouting at first, then with his son, before him and Ichigo take turns exploring and scouting the area because they don't like leaving the twins alone. But as they're getting a lay of the land and comparing maps and such to reality, even getting a feel for their new magic gadgets and all, they come across monsters and such here and there Once Isshin is sure that Ichigo can handle himself, its only then they spilt so one can stay with the girls while the other explores for a few days, even if Ichigo is only allowed to do it for two days to his father's week.

After that, packing everything they need into magic bags and hammer space, the family takes one last look to their home of all these years, bows in thanks before they are off. It's not long till they join a trade caravan, Isshin trading his skills as a doctor to do so. They travel around for a bit, before in the end, they settle down in a bustling, safe city that never fell in the story, even if the story's protagonist and gang lives here with all their wacky and troubling hijinxs.

So, now that backstory and such is out of the way, let's get to some of the fun stuff. :3

Ichigo does not realize just how strong he actually is; see, in this world of magic and stuff, swords are... technically considered obsolete; of sure, in the story there is a Magic Swordman who is part of the Protagonist's party, but even there they mostly use the sword as fancy focus then to actually fight with it. But with the way Ichigo was trained, as well as both his and his father's lack of common sense for this world, for them it is as easy to cut down a monster as it is to cut down spells themselves. Neither Ichigo or Isshin understand how insane that is, because once a spell is out, you usually have to dodge it or hope it hits someone else if you can't counterspell it.

The Kurosaki's also avoid the Protag and his crew; lets not get involved in your drama, please and thank you (lol, just had the thought of how protective Isshin and Ichigo would get if the story was with a Harem Protag; both would be protective as heck over the twins because with either reverse or regular harem, girls usually get the shit end of the stick). Ichigo is just fine how he is, even if he keeps getting into fights because of random assholes, his charm flowing out and getting his own loyal friends without his knowing. Karin is way too interested in magical sports to care not to mention her age while Yuzu is getting fascinated by potions, alchemy, and cooking to care.

One day, after Ichigo has been feeding some tidbits to some strays, he finds what seems to be a tea and candy shop, with books to read. it doesn't have much business, being out of the way like it is, but there is the occasional regular coming out. Ichigo shrugs, he has time and so he enters this Urahara Shoten.

Somehow, someway, he ends up making friends with Geta-boshi, who as frustrating as he is, recommends good books and a listening ear. Things lead to one things, stuff happens, and Ichigo finds out this guy also has sword.

Sparring partner acquired, though it takes some convincing, a bit of bribing, but Ichigo is able to get the other to agree; he gets his ass beat easily, but Urahara is a harsh, but good teacher, and so Ichigo just thrives in the challenge.

As for Urahara, this guy is so fucking terrifying, just like in canon, how he is assassin sharp and quick with his blade even as he can spellcast at the same time, just watching Ichigo cut through his spells to meet his blade.

Kisuke: this is the most fun I've had in ages :D I wonder what else he can do if I don't tell him what's impossible.

These two end up getting involved in some harsh canon event disasters, Ichigo fighting with Kisuke, knowing the other man won't let him down. Kisuke, having someone he can trust lead the way, knowing, having faith the other can survive alongside him...

Just, these two bonding, getting closer, Ichigo introducing his sisters and Goat-Face who is giving that weird stare.

(On Isshin's part, he recognizes what's going on, and for all that he is not going to be a hypocrite, is not going to kick this Urahara guy as hard as he can and hide Ichigo away, he suddenly... completely understands Misaki's family's cold and hard stares as he had gotten, watching how the elder blond stares at his 20 year old son like he is sun, like he can't believe there is any light in his life again after being shadowed so long. He's pretty sure that is the same stare he had given Misaki as well, just as how Ichigo looks softer, warmer, happier the minute that Urahara guy stays by his side, just how his mother would melt around him despite her expression never changing.

So, Isshin won't say anything, especially since he can tell neither has a clue... but he will be doing the protective, embarrassing Father as much as he wants.)

So yeah, this is the idea :3 I also have another idea with a Mob Protagonist!Ichigo, where he comes to be a character never even mentioned in a story, and ends up charming local shop owner Urahara Kisuke, who is secretly the terrible, scary Puppet Master Benihime without knowing it. maybe I'll note it out when I feel like it, though if people want, they can ask questions about it.

[hhh-hemogoblin]

Quick and Dirty

Summary: You and Astarion were out on a date night once again. But this night was special and little did you know you'd be seeing stars in more ways than one. Who knew that Baldur's Gate's alleyways could be so inviting after dark…

Pairing: Astarion x f!Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word count: 4.5k

Tags: NSFW, Smut, They're having fun in a dark alley, Semi-Public Sex, Vaginal Sex, Creampie, Quickie, Banter, Established Relationship, Domestic Bliss, Second Person POV, Exhibitionism, Usual vampire behaviour

A/n: Another self-indulgent little one-shot, because I like the idea that those freaks cannot wait a single minute before going to town. I hope you'll like it! Any constructive feedback is welcome :)

It was a warm night in the Gate. The full moon shone brightly, illuminating the ripples in the bay and the belltowers alike: a glittery scenery. A soft breeze was blowing, just enough for the air not to be stuffy. It was almost midnight and this part of town was as quiet as it gets. Parents and children were already fast asleep, drunkards were still busy inside taverns, thug-business was still a couple of hours away and the sunrise would only be the grand finale for a night that was only starting.

What were you doing on this peaceful evening? Well, you’d just been out with your lover, in a fine inn, enjoying a delightful dinner. Every once in a while, seemingly at random, Astarion chose to take you out for a candle-lit dinner. “How cliché!”, you always told him, despite actually loving those quiet evenings the two of you spent together.

Those nights were little escapes, stripping you from the harsh reality of having to spend most of the day away from your dearest vampire. Without a solution for walking in broad daylight, he was sentenced to staying at home, “waiting for you to come back”, as he always put it, in the most dramatic voice he could summon. And so, every morning, you ventured forth, solving the citizens’ problems here and there, whether they needed an exterminator, someone to fish out a gold ring from the sewers or another mage to help out at Sorcerous Sundries, on particularly busy days. And every morning, without a fail, you kissed Astarion goodbye, while he mumbled something along the lines of “Why are you abandoning me again??” from under the sheets. With an almost heavy heart, you left the bed to get ready for the day, knowing that he would soon wake up as well. After all, his days weren’t exactly uneventful either, as he spent them reading, writing letters to faraway mages and healers or working on some elaborate embroidery to sell to the highest bidder (someone had to bring some gold to the household and unfortunately for you, luxury garments were a better trade than ridding a cellar of a horde of rats).

Those nights out were the ones you cherished: time you shared together, without distractions. Pure banter, bliss and love, nothing on your mind except the entrancing garnet eyes of your lover. After dinner, you usually wandered around the streets, your stomach filled with a hearty meal. You explored the dim alleys of Baldur’s Gate, in search for some nooks and crannies that you had never seen before, which proved a difficult task, considering the time you’d spent sneaking around and hiding between those very walls when you were on a quest to overthrow the Absolute. And then, you generally looked for a nice lookout, perhaps a belltower or an unoccupied balcony, from where you could see the moon in all her ethereal glory. Astarion knew that he wouldn’t be able to enjoy the scorching rays of sunrise anytime soon, so he relished in basking in the radiant moonlight. Even without any heat warming his skin, the light it offered was some sort of comfort. A fierce stance of resistance, a bold reminder that he would not spend eternity in darkness.

Opening up had never been one of Astarion’s strengths but you’d learned that, with time, he’d share both beautiful and haunting thoughts with you. And so you knew that all he wanted was to find a way to live in brightness again. You’d sworn to yourself that you’d make it our life’s work to make sure that this time, he got what he wanted, what he deserved.

Most times, you followed this unspoken routine, enjoying the night and making sure to come back home before the morning’s early hours, where you could still catch some sleep before the day started again. Tonight was not one of those nights. Tonight was one of the nights in which you didn’t even know you’d see the stars in more ways than one. Because some nights, dessert was served way after the main course, in the secluded privacy of your own home. A sweet and spicy moment of your own device.

Given his grim past, Astarion was only getting used to consensual intimacy again, which is why your love life was… spontaneous, to say the least. A sudden burst of flames inside both of your hearts, an immediate desire left to be satisfied. They could happen in the morning, before either of you had even left the sheets, or before lunch, when a ravenous hunger took over… And the meal was left to go cold on the counter while your bodies started heating up. You usually let him initiate it, so he could learn to regain control, but once the dance started, there was no telling of who’d be in charge that time.

You were just leaving the inn after a wonderfully entertaining supper, arms in arms with Astarion, when he gradually pulled you towards the right. “Why are you in such a rush?” you asked him, surprised by his behaviour. The high of the night hadn’t even been reached yet so there was no need to run home…

Instead of an answer, he stopped dead in his tracks and greeted you with a devilish smile. “Darling… Getting lost in your eyes was not enough tonight. I need to get lost in you. Now.”

The desperation in his hushed voice made the hair on your neck rise. You looked up to him with a lusty gaze and whispered “Let’s go home, then”, while tugging on his sleeve.

“Home’s too far. I can’t wait any longer. I want you here and now“, he said while towering over you and slowly walking in your direction, steering you into a dark and twisted alleyway. The assertiveness in his voice made you shiver deliciously and you complied, marching backwards in swift little steps, barely avoiding to stumble over your own feet.

Astarion’s magnetic gaze was fixed on your eyes, unflinching, while he kept driving you until you made it halfway into the narrow street. And he stopped.

“A dark, filthy, alley? Really? Couldn’t you have picked a nicer sp-“, you barely had any time for teasing. Shoving you into a wall and his tongue into your mouth was definitely a way to shut you up. In an instant, the whole world went black, as you felt your back crash against the brick wall.

Your lover was kissing you lavishly, and you were equally as generous, moaning into him, between pants, the excitement clearly rising within both your souls. His cool lips left your mouth, slowly moving to your jaw, your neck, your collarbone, hungrily sucking on the skin, nibbing at it, tugging at it with a sharp smile. You knew this ruthless show of passion would leave its traces, but in that very moment, you couldn’t care less. You indulged. He moved back to kiss you and in a wet battle of tongues, you got a hold of his bottom lip, playfully tugging at it with your teeth. He broke the kiss and grinned “Oh, no… I don’t think so… Tonight I’ll be the one playing with my food, sweetheart…”. This pledge made your insides churn, a light tingling, moving down your spine and straight to your core. This was going to be fun.

Astarion grabbed the collar of your dress and yanked you towards him, so that the two of you were pressed together tightly. Never letting go of your clothes, he planted a soft kiss on your lips and you knew that would be the last moment of respite for a while. His blazing eyes told you everything you needed to know. “Show me what you got…” was all you managed to utter, and that was all he needed to hear before entering a frenzied state of passion.

He gripped your collar tightly and lifted you off the ground before setting you down on a stack of empty crates against a house. He tucked a strand of hair behind your ear and whispered “Gods, you’re beautiful when you’re so eager for me”. His voice alone would have sufficed to make you come undone but you tried to pull yourself together, bracing for what was to come. Your partner ripped your dress open, exposing your breasts to the cool air. He grabbed your jaw with slight force, peered deep into your eyes before crashing with your lips again. All the while, his silky hands were wandering around your body, grabbing every bit of exposed skin they could reach. A rogue true to his craft, his movements were so swift that it felt like dozens of hands caressing your skin all at once. Goosebumps started to rise wherever his hands had been, your nipples perking up due to the contrast of your hot skin and his frosty fingers. You moaned into his mouth, leaning into him even more, one hand on the back of his neck, pressing him towards you, your other hand softly palming his strong broad chest.

He pulled away from your lips and stared deep into your eyes. Passion fuelled the burning embers behind his eyes as his lustful gaze took in every detail of your face. The only source of light was a street lantern that was barely emitting any light. His features were as angelic as ever in the dim light, yet tonight, he planned to be wicked. It felt as if the two of you were secluded in a cupboard of void, with nothing interrupting your evening programme. Although…

All of a sudden you broke the kiss, eyes wide open, visibly startled. Adrenaline coursed through your body quicker than ever. You peeked behind your lover’s head but couldn’t see anything except the poorly lit crates and cobble stones of the alley. “I… I thought I’d heard something”, you admitted. A playful laugh escaped his lips and he jived: “Darling, if there were someone skulking around, I’d have heard them before they’d even turned the corner”. He paused, looked to the side grinning and continued: “But, if you must know, there’s definitely a pair enjoying the same type of��� late-night trysts, a couple houses down. Quite loudly in fact, they’re pushing things off the table, in the kitchen perhaps?” Still amused, he furrowed his brows, assessing the situation “Such energy, he’s… Oh… Oh my!” A devilish smile was plastered across his face just a little longer, as he pondered the end of the street. He looked like a perverted voyeur enjoying the show. He then reverted to you, peering deep into your eyes and then glancing at your already swollen lips. “Well, it seems we’re not the only ones indulging in the pleasures of the flesh… Don’t you get distracted!” you said with a wink. This earned you an honest confession, whispered like a secret in between shared breaths: “What could ever distract me when my whole world is in front of me?”

You smiled, resuming your kiss, ravished by the fondness Astarion had just expressed. You flung your hands to the back of his head, slowly working your way into his tousled mop of hair, tugging at his curls and delicately scratching his scalp with your nails. Your legs were tangled around him and all you could do was pull him impossibly closer to you.

His full undivided attention now back to you, he cupped your face, kissing you surprisingly sweetly, before slowly letting both his hands glide down your chest, past your bare breasts, along your ribs and your waist. The slightest push of his hand made sure you were well sat upon the wooden crates. He slowly kneeled in front of you, his eyes still set on yours, unblinking, and a mischievous smile gracing his face. “I know we just had dinner, but I’m thinking that I’ve got some room left for dessert…” he hushed, as he playfully fondled your thighs. His hands reached the hem of your skirts, which he ever so carefully lifted all the way up, thus gaining access to your crotch. He caressed your thighs some more before pulling your underpants down in one swift motion and pocketing them hastily. There you were, half-naked in a darkened street, your core already slick and eager. He brought his face to your inner thighs, grazing the delicate skin with his fangs before kissing it softly, making his way to your cunt. “Your soft skin and your compelling scent are exactly what I need tonight, love…”, he spoke. Your pulse quickened, your skin was smouldering with every single touch and you could feel your loins grow impatient. You carefully bucked your hips forwards to grant him better access when he grabbed both your legs and placed them over his shoulders.

You gasped, at the first contact, the tip of his tongue expertly reaching for the main feature. It wasn’t long before his mouth had completely engulfed you, every movement of his skilled tongue making you shiver and pant. You could barely contain your little yelps, as he alternated between swift flicks around your rosebud and slower flat movements that pushed you further and further towards the pool of ecstasy. As if that wasn’t enough, he let go of your leg and added his dexterous fingers to the mix. An unexpected finger dug into you and your eyes opened in surprise. “Astarion!” you blurted out, which made him abruptly stop his ministrations. “Darling, I thought the idea of getting caught in the act here didn’t appeal to you…” He started, clearly teasing you. “If you keep making so much noise at this late hour, I’m afraid we’re going to have to take preventive measures!” He winked. You giggled at his words, trying to keep it down as he worked his way back to your core.

He inserted a second finger shortly after, which had your eyes rolling back inside your head. “Astarion, please, give me more…” you begged. His legendary accuracy did not fail him, even when his mind was clouded by lust. You were trying your best to make as little noise as possible but the lewd noises he made going down on you were about as discrete as an elephant walking through a porcelain shop. Your whole body was tensing up, pleasure building inside you. The sounds, the sensations, the scents… It was all so much: you needed to steady yourself. Even though Astarion’s hands were holding you firmly, you felt moments away from losing control and toppling over.

On instinct, you reached for the vampire’s head, fondling it, delicately sliding your fingers through his locks before grasping them firmly. You pulled his head into your mount, making sure that he knew just how much you were enjoying yourself. You started grinding your hips into his face a bit more and, right on cue, he tightened his grip on your body, almost digging his nails into your tender flesh. You two were impossibly close, almost merging into one, and the satisfied moans and vibrations emanating from him only added to the delicious stimulation he was already providing. Every flick of the tongue, every tug of his fingers, pulled at your every nerve. Your eyes were rolling back, your breath hitched, as you tried to contain all the praises and curses you’d be spilling in a more private context. “Hhh… Astarion, keep going just like that… You’re gifted…”, you whispered. To no surprise, you could feel him laugh in response. It didn’t take much more to send you over the edge, your body shaking, frantic whimpers escaping your mouth as you delicately reached for his jaw. Your sensitive cunt was still throbbing as you were riding out your orgasm, and he continued nonetheless, even if his tongue was working much slower now, tenderly tending to you.

Your body was just adjusting to feel again and you returned your hands to his crown of curls, knowing he particularly enjoyed that. At this point, you were practically massaging his scalp and you slowly made your way to his ears. His delicate elven ears twitched under your touch. He unlatched from your core within moments and peered into your eyes with a half-lidded gaze “Gods… Darling… I wasn’t quite finished yet, but something tells me we need to turn to other matters…”. Even in the dim light of the street lantern, you saw that he looked down at his crotch, which you could only assume was already bulging hard. You smiled in anticipation.

“Mmmh, come here”, he mumbled as he stood up again. He offered you his open hand: “M’Lady…”, he said in a ridiculously posh tone. You giggled and hopped off of the crates. You took his hand and answered him in an equally haughty tone: “My Lord…”. Raising his brow, his proceeded to spin you around twice, as if this were a courtly dance. He pulled you towards him, your back to his chest, and whispered wickedly in your ear: “… And now I’ll take what’s mine.”

With a push between your shoulder blades, he shoved you into the wall, where you barely caught yourself with your hands, gasping at the sudden changing dynamic. Despite not being able to detect his pulse, you could feel the urgency raise within him. One moment he was holding your waist tightly and the next, he grabbed your ankle from the ground, setting your foot on the crate. He pushed himself onto you some more so that you had to hold on to the wall and the crate in order to maintain balance. He pulled your skirt over your backside, exposing your thighs and buttocks to the fresh summer breeze once again. Towering over you, he planted soft kisses along the supple skin of your shoulders and neck while his hand wandered to your ass. His cool touch made you shiver as much as it heated you up, and you yearned for more of him. You could feel him, all of him, pressed along your body: his light breath on your neck, his broad chest on your back, his hard length on your ass.

“So tender…” He grasped your ass firmly, before stroking it for a moment and spanking your cheek without a warning. A little “Oh!” is all you managed to blurt out, as the sting of his slap subsided and a pleasant tingling sensation spread across the reddened area.

As he was looming over you, he traced your neck with the tip of his nose, breathing you in, audibly satisfied. Without needing to turn your head around, you could feel his plush lips smiling against your sensitive skin. You collected your hair with one hand put it all on one side of your head, exposing your neck even more. Of course he’d notice the invitation but you thought some reassurance might be in order. “I know you’re dying to bite down, sweet tooth… Go ahead.”, you uttered in a sultry voice. With time, you’d almost come to appreciate the sting and odd numbness of a vampire’s bite. “Well, darling, you don’t have to tell me twice”, he managed to spit, before getting dangerously close to your carotid artery. Without further warning, he plunged his fangs into your neck.

There it was again, that familiar sharp, icy pain, which pushed all the air out of your lungs. You still found it uncanny that his teeth were somehow even colder than the rest his body, but maybe it was only the mere shock factor brought upon by the sudden piercing of your skin.

The pain started to subside, as you carefully breathed in again, slowly giving way to a blunt numbness, engulfing your neck and going as far as your collarbones. As he meticulously drank from you, his grip tightened on your hips. His newly gained vigour filled his arteries one by one, starting in his chest and slowly travelling to all his limbs. His feverish bloodlust was almost satiated it seemed, as you felt his body grow warmer and warmer each passing moment. The grip on your body eased as well, before he started lapping at your fresh puncture wounds. Whether it was a somatic feeling or a real physiological response, it seemed that the ravaged skin slowly mended itself the more he licked it. Perhaps someone ought to investigate the regenerative properties of vampire spit…

Your scientific considerations were immediately cast aside, as you felt Astarion’s growing erection press harder and harder on your ass. “A bottle of the finest Thayan Red is nothing compared to a drop of your exquisite blood. Elixir of life, elixir of love… I don’t think I could live without it anymore…” He planted a soft kiss on your newly marked neck and you felt his hand leave your hip and adroitly unbutton his breeches. You grew more impatient by the second, you wanted him, you needed him. You felt his erection spring free, followed by a sigh of relief. “I hope you are ready, my love, because the anticipation is killing me”, he warned. With these words, he positioned himself at your entrance and you felt his tip slowly sink into your dripping cunt.

This time, it was effortless: your body gave way almost instantly. Thanks to Astarion’s wonderous attentions, your arousal had reached an all-time high. One sole thrust and he was completely buried inside you, which earned a sharp hiss from him. A low moan escaped your lips as you relished in how your lover’s cock was deliciously stretching you out. “Mmmm… Every single time I’m inside of you feels better than the last, how could it be?”, he uttered. “Must be magic?” you retorted, barely managing to form a coherent sentence. He chuckled at your nonsensical answer and kissed the nape of your neck.

One of his hands left your hips and wandered across your body, to your breast. He gently grabbed it, pulling you closer to him, making your back arch some more. He started slowly sliding out of you, taking his time so you’d feel every vein on his hard cock, before pushing his length back inside again. Though every thrust was agonizingly slow, a myriad of sensations sprouted in your mind. You couldn’t keep it to yourself and the obscene whines just escaped your mouth with growing intensity.

“Tsk, darling, what did we say about being quiet? As much as I love hearing you react to my touch, we can’t have you impersonate Sharess’ Caress’ number one performer in the middle of the street! Let’s make this right”. Without wasting a moment, he reached into his pocket, pulled something out and immediately went for your mouth. By stuffing your mouth with your own undergarments, he made sure all of your sounds were muffled, at the very least. You were pleasantly surprised by his initiative and placed your hand on Astarion’s, which was still on your hip, to showcase your support.

Seemingly content, he shifted his focus back to what he was doing, slowly picking up the pace whilst exploring your most intimate depths. The angle was perfect, the head of his cock hit your sweet spot with every thrust, making you quiver in ecstasy. You could feel the tension build up inside of your loins again, a pressing feeling that only intensified as your lover worked you up. Your grip on his hand became firmer, a subtle signal that you were approaching your high. Astarion sucked and nibbled at the supple skin of your neck, occasionally biting down on your shoulder, careful enough not to draw blood. His hand wandered down from your breasts to your nether regions, caressing your thighs and reaching your clit once more. That first touch sent a jolt of pleasure through your entire body. “Mmmmmhh…”, you voiced through your makeshift gag.

As his cock was rapidly slipping in and out of your slick cunt, his fingers started circling around your pink pearl, sending you into a spiral of engulfing sensations. You slowly started hearing less, seeing less, breathing less, feeling as if you were flying. You were huffing and grunting through the fabric, your eyes rolling back in pleasure, while you were rushing towards that sweet release once more.

Astarion was very much aware of your imminent climax and he had as little words left in him as you did. No more witty retorts, only devotion and surrender. He was groaning in your neck, almost whimpering at times, his body evidently reacting to yours: every time his thrusts made you clench, his length twitched in return inside of you. You couldn’t refrain yourself much longer, you had to let go.

Three… Two… One… One last thrust and you came crashing down, your soul leaving your body momentarily. The warmth flooded your body and mind once again, a numbing nothing and everything all at once. Your spasming muscles would’ve failed you, if not for Astarion’s firm hands holding you into place. Seeing you come undone had pushed him over the edge shortly after: as you were still riding out your high, you could feel him twitch as he came inside of you, thick, warm ropes of cum coating your walls. He panted into your ear, whispering your name, trying to speak “Hells… Fuck… This is…”. His pace slowed down, before he stopped completely, staying buried deep inside of you for a moment. Your heartbeat was stabilising again and he placed a reverent kiss on your jaw.

After you had both cooled down a bit, Astarion removed himself and helped you back up. You were still a bit shaky but you knew you’d be able to count on him for support. You turned around and stared into his ruby eyes. He seemed, content, relaxed, just as he should be. You matched his soft smile and ran a hand through his hair, placing a chaste kiss on his lips. He took your hand as you were ready to head home. “Needless to say, this was amazing, darling. Thank you for indulging in a little treat.” You answered earnestly: “It truly was wonderful. Anytime, my love.”

“Should we get going? I fear it’s getting fresh already and we both know you need to get ready for your beauty sleep…”, you added, taunting him a bit. “Indeed, I would not say no to a bath before sunrise…”

Upon leaving the alley, you crossed ways with a Flaming Fist who had just turned at the corner. You looked at Astarion and whispered: “Whew… Close one!”. Astarion made a grimace and rushed you towards the main street.

The way back was quiet, as you both enjoyed the early morning in the city, before any merchants had opened up their shop, only meeting a few drunkards along the way.

You were lucky it was only a short walk home, because with every step, you felt Astarion’s warm spend dripping out of you and down your thighs. Seeing how he smirked, he probably knew it too. Oh well, laundry day was due tomorrow anyway…