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joanjournal · 2 days ago

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Surveying Mass Extinctions - Part 1

Patterns of Extinction, taken from Marshall, 2023

Mass extinctions are when a large sample of biological clades undergoes a geologically-brief period of die-off that is statistically higher than the background rate of extinction (Marshal, 2023). Most of the organisms that have ever lived died out through the regular trials of natural selection, but on occasion the Earth's conditions changed so rapidly that many different species could not adapt in time.

These extinction events were some of the driving forces that shaped the evolution of life, typically be "reshuffling the deck" or weeding out a few key taxa, thus paving the way for new life to flourish. So what are these mass extinctions and just how did they change the world?

In this post, I will be providing a brief account of our current understanding of each extinction event: when they occured, their causes, and the victims and survivors. As you'll come to discover, the pop-science view of "five big mass extinctions" is complicated by evidence suggesting that some singular events are best seen as two or three, while others have been neglected by mainstream coverage.

Great Oxidation Event

When? - ~2.4-2 Billion Years Ago (Paleoproterozoic Era)

Cause - When photosynthesizing bacteria evolved the Earth's atmosphere did not contain free oxygen, being mainly CO2 and nitrogen. The process of photosynthesis converts sunlight into sugars which takes in CO2 and expels oxygen. The abundance of prokaryotes engaged in this chemistry released oxygen in enormous quantities. While much of it initially was absorbed by dissolved iron on the seabed, the rest rose into the atmosphere. This increase in free oxygen changed the air content and triggered global cooling (perhaps spawning glacial periods).

Victims - It has been generally proposed that the newly oxygenated atmosphere had negative effects on the then-common anaerobic bacteria & archaea, who should have suffered a mass extinction due to oxygen poisoning. While direct evidence for this had been lacking for some time, recent geochemical work suggests "a rapid reduction in primary productivity of >80%" that "imply a collapse in primary productivity" (Hodgskiss, 2019).

Survivors - Aerobic prokaryotes would have flourished in the aftermath of the Oxidation Event, while anaerobic forms would have migrated and adapted into areas still free of oxygen. It has been argued that the evolution of eukaryotes was spurred by the changes, but so-far this is controversial (Fakhraee, 2013).

End-Ediacaran Extinction Event

When? - ~541 Million Years Ago

Cause - An event little-studied and sometimes doubted (MacLeod, 2015), recent work posits that Ediacaran communities were generally low-diversity and "quiet"-ecologically (Darroch, et al. 2015). The gradual evolution of new animal life (a.e. not an explosion as typically described) at the bridge of the Cambrian corresponds with ecosystem-engineering that simply pushed many of the Ediacaran species to extinction.

Victims - The mysterious "Ediacaran fauna": a collection of soft-bodied, basal-animals. Dipleurozoans (e.g. Dickinsonia), trilobozoans, and cephalozoans (e.g. Spriggina) went extinct.

Survivors - Petalonamids like Charnia, frond-shaped stem-eumetazoans (animals with tissues, nerves, and muscles) were the only classic Ediacaran forms to make it through. Genetic and fossil evidence shows that the ancestors of many living animal groups were around at the time: they likely contributed to the extinction in the first place. This event marks the transition towards the so-called "Cambrian Fauna" of marine invertebrate biodiversity that characterized the next 40 million years.

Archaeocyathids (Stanton F. Fink, CC BY 2.5)

End-Botomian Extinction Event

When? - ~513-509 Million Years Ago (Middle Cambrian Period)

Cause - Recent work points to roughly 4-pulses of the "Cambrian Explosion" (Benton, 2023). By 513 MYA, this had ceased, and marine invertebrate faunas were abundant in the world's oceans. Evidence from sulphur isotopes suggests that volcanic eruptions in present-day north Australia led to a rise in CO2 and anoxic conditions on the continental shelves (Hough, et al. 2006). Such shifts are prime conditions for disrupting and destroying reef ecosystems; the early Cambrian saw the rise of archaeocyathids, reef-building relatives of sponges, that supported marine communities.

Victims - The last of the petalonamids died out. Archaeocyathids and the reefs they built perished. There were losses among brachiopods (obolellates died out), trilobites (the spiny olenellids in particular), and it has been proposed that the halkieriids & Wiwaxia - potential stem-mollusks - were victims but there are some issues with stratigraphic-dating and there is tentative evidence they survived into the Ordovician.

Survivors - Paleontologists recognize a "Cambrian Dead Interval" following the Botomian in which marine biodiversity was low for a while (Brannen, 2017). The climate was fairly cool and geologists have found evidence of coastal ice within tropical zones that likely kept surviving invertebrates in check (Runkel, et al. 2010). For context, the Burgess Shale community is thought to have come into being following the extinction event.

Early Dresbachian & Franconian Extinction Events

When? - ~502 & 497 Million Years Ago (Late Cambrian Period)

Cause - A series of extinction pulses that are little known. Attention has been drawn to the Steptoean Positive Carbon Isotope Excursion or SPICE, a return to anoxic conditions due this time to coastal upwelling (Bond & Grasby, 2017).

Victims - Trilobites experienced particularly high losses, with the flat-bodied redlichiids dying out and the genera-records of North America and Australia lowering over time (Bond & Grasby, 2017).

Survivors - Marine invertebrate communities remained low in diversity compared to earlier times.

Cambrian-Ordovician Extinction Event

When? - ~485 Million Years Ago (Late Trempealeauan Age)

Cause - The culmination of punctuated Cambrian extinctions, with eruptions in southern Africa contributing to even-lower anoxic conditions in the oceans.

Victims - Among other invertebrate losses, trilobites were reduced in clade-diversity to such levels that they never recovered from their peak in the Cambrian.

Survivors - Despite the losses among trilobites, modelling suggests that a few clades may have entered symbiotic relationships with sulphur-bacteria, ensuring their survival in hard times (John & Walker, 2016). Brachiopods radiated into entirely new groups following the extinction event, while conodonts (lamprey-like early vertebrates) truly began to flourish afterwards. Evidence from Morocco and the United Kingdom show that some of the Cambrian marine fauna survived into the Ordovician (Botting, et al. 2023).

Anatomy of a Bryozoa zooid (SLP456, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Late Ordovician Extinction Events

When? - ~445-444 Million Years Ago (Mid & Late Ashgill Epochs)

Causes - Following the various Cambrian extinctions, marine invertebrate faunas underwent a radical shift called the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event: the new "Paleozoic Fauna" constituted mainly of brachiopods, bryozoa, echinoderms, graptolites, and cephalopods and remained in place for roughly 230 million years. Two pulses of extinction are recognized at the end of the period, having commonly been attributed to the rise in the Gondwanan Ice Sheet in the southern hemisphere (a sort of proto-Antarctica), which caused a drop in coastal sea levels while simultaneously chilling the tropical oceans. Additional factors have been proposed, including a convergence in volcanic activity that reduced oxygen-levels in the seas and further cooled the climate. Recovery of black shales in North Africa and Arabia indicate that this rapid icehouse cooling was just as rapidly followed by severe greenhouse warming (Brannen, 2017). This is not consensus, however, and other proposals have been work-shopped including volcanic global warming (with no glaciation involved) and extraterrestrial events (Bond & Grasby, 2017, Benton 2023).

Victims - The first wave of extinctions primarily hit free-swimming and planktonic forms, and "multi-branched" graptolites were hit very hard. The second wave of extinctions was less severe, but overall both periods saw significant loses in sessile (fixed to the ocean floor) organisms (including crinoids, "inarticulate" brachiopods, and bryozoa). The iconic giant nautiloid cephalopods like Endoceras died out.

Survivors - Evidence points to a lessening in regional marine faunal diversity but a broadening of geographic ranges for particular organisms. Trilobites, brachiopods, and bryozoa did survive, but now they were a shell of their former variety. Perhaps the most remarkable post-catastrophe boost was in the early vertebrates: jawless fishes had evolved in the Cambrian, but following the Ordovician they radiated, developed paired fins, and gave rise to jawed fishes or gnathostomes.

Silurian Extinctions

When? - Between 432 and 420 Million Years Ago

Cause - A series of three little-known pulses of extinction during the Middle and Late Silurian Periods. The first (the Ireviken Event) seems to correspond to deep-ocean anoxia, while the second and final (the Mulde & Lau events) follow a drop in sea levels

Victims - In the strata in which these extinction events occurred, there were significant losses among trilobites, graptolites, and conodonts. There is evidence to suggest a fall in plantkonic-productivity (Bond & Grasby, 2017)

Survivors - Rugose and tabulate reef-builders remained unaffected

Zlichov, Daleje, Chotec, Kačák & Taghanic Extinctions

When? - Between 410 and 386 Million Years Ago

Cause - Five minor pulses of regional extinctions throughout the Early and Middle Devonian Periods, attributed to sea level rises and oceanic anoxia

Victims - Goniatites and agoniatitids, relatives of ammonites, suffered losses, as did trilobites, conodonts, brachiopods, bryozoa, and a little-known group of lophophorates called tentaculitids. An additional group of reef-builders - the stromatoporoid sponges - also experienced declines along with certain rugose and tabulate coral taxa

Survivors - While there were losses among marine invertebrate clades, no major groups died off altogether.

Devonian Reef, showcasing rugose & tabulate corals (James St. John, CC BY 2.0)

Late Devonian Extinctions

When? - Between 372.2-358.9 Million Years Ago

Cause - Long recognized as a singular extinction event (and one of the "Big Five", the Late Devonian is better understood to have encapsulated perhaps two pulses of extinction. The first was largest of the two, the Kellwasser Event, followed millions of years later by the Hangenerg Event which closed out the period. There have been issues with poorly-dated strata, and this has led to conflicting data suggesting times of global cooling and warming (Brannen, 2017). A leading contender for the two pulses had been the rise and spread of terrestrial plants: the evolution of root-systems lead to widespread weathering of rocks and soil run-off, which triggered a particularly deadly combination of ocean anoxia and poisonous planktonic blooms akin to red-tides (Smart, et al. 2023). There is also evidence to suggest volcanic activity played a role in at least the Kellwasser Event (Benton, 2023).

Victims - This was the peak for reef-building organisms during the Devonian, and these events led to such a great loss in rugose & tabulate corals, with the stromatoporoids going extinct, that these ecosystems never recovered. Overall marine life suffered tremendous extinctions across invertebrate and vertebrates groups. Trilobite diversity was cleaved once again, e.g. lichids, corynexochids, harpetids, odontopleuridans, and phacopids. Cystoid echinoderms went extinct. Pentamerid brachiopods went extinct. Most of the jawless fishes and all of the jawed and armored "placoderms" went extinct (think of Dunkleosteus & Bothriolepis).

Survivors - Trilobites only barely made it through the extinction event, with only the proetid clade surviving. Bivalve and gastropod mollusks - originally minor elements of the marine fauna - began to experience a rise and spread of variety. Fish diversity, though severely depleted, did eventually recover under new adaptive radiations, particularly among cartilaginous and lobe-finned groups. There is little evidence to suggest that land floras and faunas were effected by the changes.

Serpukhovian Extinction

When? - Between 330 and 325 Million Years Ago

Cause - A significant mass extinction at the end of the Mississippian or Early Carboniferous Period. Recent isotopic studies point to (you guessed it) deepwater anoxia spreading to shallow coastal waters (Hu, 2022).

Victims - The Mississippian seas were originally home to massive groves of crinoid forests supplemented by surviving rugose corals, but following the Serpukhovian Event these environments experienced a major turnover. Major brachiopod groups suffered losses, as did conodonts.

Survivors - Marine invertebrate faunas remained low throughout the rest of the Carboniferous Period.

Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse

When? - ~305 Million Years Ago

Cause - The famous coal forests full of giant arthropods and reptilian-esque stem-amphibians were only a Pennsylvanian or Later Carboniferous phenomena. The fossil record points to a widespread span of these forests across present-day Europe and North America, which at the time strode the equator (Benton, 2023). On the paleo-continent of Gondwana in the southern hemisphere, glaciers spread and facilitated a massive drop in global sea levels. The coal forests were situatied in low-lying wetlands, and so the great majority of these environments collapsed as the world cooled and dried.

Victims - Coal forests were primarily formed of lycopods, which suffered losses and declines. Within the forests, early tetrapods experienced a drop in species richness (Dunne, et al. 2018).

Survivors - There is evidence of a transition in flora between the coal forest lycopods and tree ferns, which in turn led to a shift in the development of "fixed-channel" floodplains and river systems (Davies & Gibling, 2011). Despite the declines, coal forests did survive in small pockets, with ecological members like Lepidodendron and the giant griffinflies making it to the end of the Permian Period.

Olson's Extinction

When? - 273 Million Years Ago

Cause - Recent research supports a small extinction event occuring at the end of the Early Permian Period (Brocklehurst, 2020). The causes are still being studied, although a rise in global temperatures has been implicated based on the taxa that were effected, whom primarily inhabited wetter environments.

Victims - Among the synapsid "protomammals", most of the early-branching forms went extinct, including edaphosaurids, ophiacodonts, and sphenacodontids (e.g. Dimetrodon). Reptiliomorphs and temnospondyls also experiences losses, as did the fern-dominated floras they relied upon.

Survivors - Therapsids, derived synapsids with more mammalian-traits survived and radiated into several new clades. Seed-bearing plants, including ancestral conifers and ginkgoes, survived and later flourished.

Carnivorous gorgonopsian preying on herbivorous pareiasaurs (Dmitry Bogdanov, CC BY 3.0)

The Great Dying or End Permian Extinctions

When? - Between 259 and 251 Million Years Ago

Causes - Statistically this was the largest mass extinction event in Earth's history, but recent work points to it unfolding in two massive pulses: the Capitanian Event and the Changhsingian Event (Bond & Grasby, 2017; Benton, 2023). An increase in research over the last decade has shed new light on the multifaceted causes of this extinction event. Both events were encapsulated by a spike in volcanic emissions, with the Capitanian perhaps centered on the Emeishan Traps eruptions of South China and the Changhsingian centered on the Siberian Traps eruptions of Russia. Such activity lead to spikes in ocean anoxia and acidification, and the Changhsingian in particular had additional baggage. The Siberian Traps emissions were enormous, on the order of 1.8 million cubic miles of lava flows which are preserved today as flood basaltic deposits 1,300-9,840 feet thick (MacLeod, 2015). Such devastating volcanic activity over several hundred million years pushed C02 levels in the atmosphere and blotted out the sun, triggering a runaway greenhouse effect. This global warming was assisted by the melting of deep ocean methane and underground salts, and the release of sulfates from the volcanoes (which chipped away at the ozone layer). The oceans became choked with acid and were heated to 93-104°F (Benton, 2023), and the land was boiling and suffocating under an sky filled with 2,500 ppm of CO2 (Wu, et al. 2021). The only organisms to really flourish were sulphur-eating bacteria.

Victims - Life across all clades experienced declines and total extinctions, hence the designation of "The Great Dying". In the seas, all the trilobites, rugose & tabulate corals, eurypterids ("water scorpions"), goniatites, and strophomenid & orthid brachiopods went extinct. Fusulinid foraminifera (forams are shelled amoeba-like microbes) went extinct. Receptaculitid marine algae went extinct, and there were sharp losses among land plants, including the Glossopteris forests. This is the only major extinction event to affect insects, and five clades died out including the paleodictyopterids and giant griffinflies (meganisopterans). Many groups of therapid protomammals went extinct, including gorgonopsians, dinocephalians, and biarmosuchians. The parareptiles - early diverging forms with the anapsid-skull condition - also mostly perished. Lepospondyls, amphibian-like stem reptiles, went extinct, while only some temnospondyl groups perished (e.g. the gharial-like archegosaurids).

Survivors - It is estimated that life took several million years to recover, and the earliest Mesozoic Era was for the most part an empty place for some time. Surviving marine invertebrates were all smaller than their ancestors, and many aquatic vertebrates may have survived the devastation by retreating to the deeper ocean depths. Overall, therapsids, reptiles, and temnospondyls survived and would jockey for available land and freshwater niches, the outcome of which would be determined by further catastrophies.

This survey will conclude with the Mesozoic and Cenozoic mass extinctions in the next post...

Book Citations

Michael J. Benton. Extinctions (Thames & Hudson, 2023)

Peter Brannen. The Ends of the World (Ecco, HarperCollins, 2017)

Norman MacLeod. The Great Extinctions (Firefly Books, 2015)

Paper Citations

David P. G. Bond & Stephen E. Grasby, 2017. On the causes of mass extinctions (Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology)

Joseph P. Botting, et al. 2023. A Middle Ordovician Burgess Shale-type fauna from Castle Bank, Wales (UK) (Nature Ecology and Evolution)

Neil Brocklehurst, 2020. Olson's Gap or Olson's Extinction? A Bayesian tip-dating approach to resolving stratigraphic uncertainty (PNAS)

Simon A. F. Darroch, et al. 2015. Biotic replacement and mass extinction of the Ediacaran biota (PNAS)

Neil S. Davies & Martin R. Gibling, 2011. Evolution of fixed-channel alluvial plains in response to Carboniferous vegetation (Nature Geoscience)

Emma M. Dunne, et al. 2018. Diversity change during the rise of tetrapods and the impact of the ‘Carboniferous rainforest collapse’ (PNAS)

Mojtaba Fakhraee, et al. 2023. Earth's surface oxygenation and the rise of eukaryotic life: Relationships to the Lomagundi positive carbon isotope excursion revisited (Earth-Science Reviews)

Ashley P. Gumsley, 2017. Timing and tempo of the Great Oxidation Event (PNAS)

Michelle Hough, et al. 2006. A major sulphur isotope event at c. 510 Ma: A possible anoxia-extinction-volcanism connection during the Early-Middle Cambrian transition? (Terra Nova)

Malcolm S. W. Hodgskiss, et al. 2019. A productivity collapse to end Earth's Great Oxidation (PNAS)

Dongping Hu, et al. 2022. Multiple S-isotope constraints on environmental changes during the Serpukhovian mass extinction (Earth and Planetary Science Letters)

Douglas L. John & Sally E. Walker, 2016. Testing symbiotic morphology in trilobites under dysoxic and oxic conditions from Cambrian to Early Ordovician Lagerstätten (Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology)

Charles R. Marshall, 2023. Forty years later: The status of the "Big Five" mass extinctions (Cambridge Prisms: Extinction)

Anthony Runkel, et al. 2010. Tropical shoreline ice in the late Cambrian: Implications for Earth’s climate between the Cambrian Explosion and the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GSA Today)

Matthew S. Smart, et al. 2023. The expansion of land plants during the Late Devonian contributed to the marine mass extinction (Nature Communications Earth & Environment)

Yuyang Wu, et al. 2021. Six-fold increase of atmospheric pCO2 during the Permian–Triassic mass extinction (Nature Communications)

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lemonfizzyy · 2 days ago

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The reason I go with the popular head canon that Dami and Dick are extra close is not so much the fact that Damian was Dick's Robin. Yes, that was a catalyst for their meeting, but not the thing that caused their relationship to take off, y'know?

To me (or at least the way I characterize them both in my own writing) Damian and Dick are very similar both in their anger, compassion and general complicated relationship with authority. Dick needed someone to ground him, Damian needed someone to lift him up. Both of them became that for each other through a mix of circumstance, personal similarities and whatever else.

And the outcome was Damian being Dick's robin, lowercase r. Like... What Dick was to his mother, Damian is to him.

That's why they're extra close in my head-canon land.... that's his literal kid. Dick's inadvertently helped raise a lot of kids (Cass, Lian, most of all Tim) but Damian was the first one who for a good bit there, he had to be everything for. Damian had no friends, no contact with his family, no respect for anyone or anything... all except Dick who managed to earn his trust.

That said, Tim is definitely Dick's ride or die in my mind, but not in the way your child would be. They're brothers, above all. Now, if they met in different stages of their life, in a similar situation to Dick and Damian's? Maybe they'd be father and son too, honestly. Like D&D, D&T are very similar people. I've unironically have a number of AUs where Dick and Tim are the main focus and are closer than Dick and Dami. (I actually have one where Dami and Tim are closer and Dick is a footnote... I love that au....)

........Anyway, feel free to ignore this. This is all my personal view points and I'm not saying this is canon or objectively the right way to write these characters AT ALL. Dick and Tim being closer than Dick and Dami is definitely a valid take, I'd just like to explain my obsession with my personal favorite two goofy goobers :)

hey fanon warriors who say damian and dick are extra close bc damian was dick’s robin did you know dick was batman to tim robin in batman prodigal. did you know tim has been robin to three different batmen. did you know prodigal was shortly after knightfall (when jean-paul was batman) and this was all also during tim’s first year as robin, while his dad was in a coma/later in a wheelchair and needing tons of help doing stuff and his mom had just died and bruce was constantly leaving tim (a thirteen year old) to do shit on his own (robin i, robin ii, knightfall, prodigal) and i haven’t read nightwing and its been a while since i read robin 93 but from what i remember dick tried really hard to be a consistent presence in tim’s life at a time where everything was being upended for him and they should be just as close as dick and damian are. did you know that.

#Both Tim and Dami are Dick's emotional support dogs #one is silently staring at you like it wants you dead and the other is constantly barking no matter what #he'll violently crashout if you look at either of them wrong #dick grayson #damian wayne #tim drake

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xjackjackx · 1 day ago

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The new episode finally gave Chosen the characterization he needed and Dark the gremlin characterization Showdown STOLE from him. It shows why one turned good and one didn't.

Chosen was never fundamentally a bad person, he was just scared and thought he was the good guy. He was scared Alan would hurt him, he thought he was doing a good thing by destroying his PC and attacking all those icons that supported him, that worked for the man that saw them as expendable. When destroying websites, he attacked "the most dangerous cities in america" and the angry birds pigs; he was destroying what he thought was dangerous. Even at his worst, he never wanted to hurt innocents, he wanted to keep himself safe and defeat what he saw as dangerous.

And then he sees Minecraft. He finds a moment of peace and relaxation. And for the first time since birth, instead of destroying, he makes. Sure, his little house was for himself and not anyone else, but he still realised it feels good to be good, to be in your own comfort instead of attacking everything. And most importantly; when Dark destroyed his little house, when it was time for them to go, he put himself in the shoes of all those civilians he hurt, that lost their homes. And he realised that he's never actually helped anyone, just destroyed innocent lives. That's why the episode takes place after Angry Birds but before StickPage, because that's the middle point of Chosen realising if it's even worth doing all of this.

Dark, meanwhile? He doesn't care. He never sees any reason to calm down. If he's not actively doing anything, he's bored. And for a bored man with superpowers, the best way to feel excited is to use those superpowers for something. That's why he loves the Nether so much, almost like a parallel to Chosen enjoying the Overworld. It's his own home. Endless destruction, a Hell-like environment, eldritch beings that are like lambs for the slaughter; this is Dark's home, this is what he thrives for.

And that's why Dark never turned good, and why he likely won't turn good anytime soon assuming he's still even alive. And it doesn't matter if Dark is influenced by his "Dark Lord" title, if his "Destroy TCO" programming is influencing his thoughts, or if he's actually just a psychopath. He's not afraid like Chosen, he's not insecure like Purple, he's not vengeful like King, nor is he misguided like Victim or Agent. If Orange represented Alan's good side, Dark represents Alan's evil side. He's evil because he likes it. It's his own hobby, the same way Green has music and Blue has gardening. And the same way Green and Blue never stop enjoying their hobbies, Dark will never not like killing.

But the scene that caught my attention the most - the most important scene in this entire episode - is Chosen trying to stop Dark from blowing up his house, only for him to do it anyways as Chosen meekly walks away.

Because again we are shown that between what Chosen wants and what Dark wants, Dark will always choose what HE wants.

But Chosen was tired of having to satiate Dark's wants and needs when Dark never cared about what Chosen thought.

#alan becker #animator vs animation #ava the dark lord #ava the chosen one #ava analysis #character analysis #I FUCKING LOVE THIS EPISODE #I also LOVE Chosen and Dark's character dynamic and I'm so fucking tired of the fandom misrepresenting it #I love it BECAUSE Dark doesn't give a shit about the real Chosen #He has this imagined Chosen in his head that loves killing and destroying people that's like a 1-for-1 clone of Dark #And the moment Chosen shows he's not that #Dark either pressures him into keeping up the act or tries to KILL him #They were never equals #they were never really friends #And THAT'S why I love their relationship #canon prevails over fanon yet again

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nebrasska-alasska · 3 days ago

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Hiii NEBRASSKA! I'd like to ask... Did you have any thoughts of writing something more violent with Sonadow? Or are you a fan of something cute?

Hi there! Honestly, I feel like the Sonadow I write is already violent enough to the point where I'm surprised people haven't been more critical of how I characterize them LMFAO I can't help it though, having them constantly at odds with each other is what makes the payoff of reaching sweet and soft moments so good! So I guess I like a combination between violent and cute?

Honestly, this made me realize something: I'm about to go on an upload spree soon and each of the three fics I'm working on have wildly different stages of their relationship:

'Party Games and Summer Evenings' has Shadow strongly disliking Sonic and wanting to constantly fight him, 'The Whispers in our Kisses' is an established relationship, and then we all know what just happened in 'From the Shadows of the Deep' haha so we're going to see if I can keep all of these different perspectives straight!

#sharing my upload schedule later this evening #just have to write a bit more to make sure I can deliver on it

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eeveecraft · 9 hours ago

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I just got blocked without warning because a person got sick of their own sources proving them wrong that DID/OSDD/P-DID, etc are trauma-based. Like, it got sad and to the point where they admitted that they only briefly skimmed their sources before spamming me with them.

This person claimed to be "anti-sysmed," but literally was spouting sysmed rhetoric about how trauma is a requirement for DID.

So uh, newsflash: a disorder cannot be "trauma-based" if trauma is not a hard requirement to be diagnosed with the disorder. DID/OSDD/P-DID, etc are dissociative disorders, not trauma disorders. The DSM-V makes that clear:

[IMAGE TEXT:

Dissociative disorders are characterized by a disruption of and/or discontinuity in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception, body representation, motor control, and behavior. Dissociative symptoms can potentially disrupt every area of psychological functioning. This chapter includes dissociative identity disorder, dissociative amnesia, depersonalization/derealization disorder, other specified dissociative disorder, and unspecified dissociative disorder.

Dissociative symptoms are experienced as a) unbidden intrusions into awareness and behavior, with accompanying losses of continuity in subjective experience (i.e., “positive” dissociative symptoms such as fragmentation of identity, depersonalization, and derealization) and/or b) inability to access information or to control mental functions that normally are readily amenable to access or control (i.e., “negative” dissociative symptoms such as amnesia).

The dissociative disorders are frequently found in the aftermath of trauma, and many of the symptoms, including embarrassment and confusion about the symptoms or a desire to hide them, are influenced by the proximity to trauma. In DSM-5, the dissociative disorders are placed next to, but are not part of, the trauma- and stressor-related disorders, reflecting the close relationship between these diagnostic classes. Both acute stress disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder contain dissociative symptoms, such as amnesia, flashbacks, numbing, and depersonalization/derealization.

END IMAGE TEXT.] This is on page 292, by the way. Yes, these disorders are often caused by trauma, nobody is debating that, but it is not the sole cause. The sources this user shared describes the disorders as "often caused by" or "trauma-related," etc, which are not the same as stating these disorders must have trauma to be present. Anyway, it was just kind of funny just so easily debunking every single point with their own sources until they got sick of it and blocked me.

7-6-2025

#sysmed mention #sysmed tw #plurality #actuallyplural #endogenic #DSM-5 #PSA #syscourse #syscourse tw #endo safe #SYSMEDS WILL BE BLOCKED ON SIGHT

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3hks · 2 days ago

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How to Write A DESPERATE (But NOT Annoying) Character

We all love a good yearning character. It's refreshing to see a person love someone else so much that it becomes a form of desperation or obsession. However, it's no secret that these kinds of characters can easily seem irritating when overdone.

So, in this post, I'll give you some advice on how to balance out that excessive desperation while still maintaining that trademark cute, loser-like (for lack of a better term) pining! I'm actually very excited for this, so let's get to it!

1. They Acknowledge Flaws

Have you ever seen a character who's so down-bad that they REFUSE to think that their crush is anything but perfect? That's not exactly a bad thing, but the truth is, their crush is not objectively perfect.

No matter how delusional your character is, if they can comfortably and openly admit that their loved one is flawed, it shows that they truly adore them--not an idealized image of them--no matter what.

They can think that their crush is perfect, but not because they're flawless, it's instead because of those flaws.

2. Actions Beyond Words

A character screaming their crush's name ("NEZUKO-CHAN!! NEZUKO-CHAN!!") does not do anything besides letting the world know how infatuated they are. We are better than that.

Many desperately-in-love characters are characterized by their often extreme and slightly unhinged dialogue. However, words are just words. If they truly love someone, they'll do much more than simply repeat it over and over.

It's imperative to also show their love through physical, caring actions that reveal how well they treat their loved one. This could be helping them clean up, offering them snacks, or simply lending an ear.

3. In Love with the Simple Things

When your character wants their crush, what do they want with them? Does your character want to hug them? Kiss them? Hold hands? Or is it something more?

It's only human to want those things. There's nothing wrong with that, but they should also cherish the smaller things. I'm talking about making breakfast for them in the morning. Going grocery shopping with them on a Wednesday. Picking them up from work.

The small moments are what makes up everyday life, not the big ones. If your character isn't looking forward to those minute things with their partner, can you say they love them?

4. A Priority, But Not Everything

For some of y'all, I might have to hold your hand when I say this: while your character's crush should be a priority of theirs, it shouldn't be everything.

If your character also has friends and family they care about, they can't discard all of that away for a crush. So yes, it's important that your character gives their hopefully-partner-to-be their attention, but that applies to all of their loved ones too.

5. Not A Pushover

Just because your character might be unhealthily infatuated with another, they shouldn't simply follow what the other says because they're that affected.

Communication is crucial in any relationship, so if your character can't speak up when they think their crush is making a bad decision, then their relationship is likely not going to work out. It's the same as not having a voice in making group choices.

Like I said in the first point, your character can't be so blinded by love that they ignore all the flaws, red flags, and mistakes.

Final Notes

Here's the thing: a desperate character often comes off as annoying because they lack complexity and depth. Desperation and obsession can be an all-consuming feeling, but that's not the only notable trait for your character.

Highlight other qualities. Don't forget that there are still people outside of their crush. Remember that yes, they're trying to woo their love, but they're also trying to prove that they'd make a good partner and that they are still an individual character.

Don't throw their reason and logic out of the window just because they're in love.

Hope this helped!

Happy writing~

3hks <3

#writeblr #writing #writerscommunity #creative writing #writing inspo #writing tips #writing advice #writers on tumblr #how to write desperation #how to write a desperate character #how to write a desperate character who's not annoying #how to write a desperate character that's not annoying #how to write an obsessed character #how to write an obsessed character who's not annoying

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altadoodler-2020-2025 · 2 days ago

Note

It never occurred to me before, but now that I’ve seen your Kris art, it feels weird that I’ve never seen any other bilingual headcanons for them. It just made sense as soon as I saw it, like, yes, that is something they would just randomly ask.

They’re characterized well here, and I love the execution on the substitute teacher bit. I’m trans, and I have a Chinese surname in America, so I know what it’s like to be in that kind of situation, and it’s really nice to see them having people stick up for them.

It’s especially nice to see Berdly included as well, though that may just be my Kerdly bias coming through.

i'm not super deep into the fandom, and by that, i mean the headcannons n stuff that ppl toss around. i am, however, balls deep into the media itself and like coming up with my own headcannons

for kris, it's honeslty an offshoot of my headcannon that chara isn't from america, or any other english speaking country, and that's just cuz i think iamx "i come with knives" fits them (both kris and chara) so well, that at this point it's just in my blood. the brain worms have become septic on this hc, it fits too naturally now.

on berdly, he's just a guy, and with other thoughts i have about the game, tbh, i see berdly (well all of the characters really) as complimentary/foils to kris. berdly thinks he has to be "the best" and if he's not, no one will like him. while deltarune has a whole host of different themes going on in it, i feel like one of the main ones is "conditional vs unconditional love" and the ways different characters go about it. anyway, here's some doodles to go along with your ask (i did these a few hours ago lol, but i think they fit as an addative to this responce)

also, just to be a bit more specific on my kris headcanons incase other ppl wanna work off of them, i see them as being from slovenia, knowing slovene and english fluently, and also knowing german cuz they moved there at some point, but it's kinda broken (also, i don't speak either language and use google translate, or online dictionaries if i can find them for translation, so if i ever have them speak either language more and get anything wrong, let me know)

anyway, hyperfixation rant over, thanks for enjoying my art, i'll post more cuz i get the vibe ppl like it here lol

#al #talk #deltarune #kris dreemurr #noelle holiday #berdly #also that fuckin kick dance they do like hello???

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satyricplotter · 14 hours ago

Text

you forced me to

pairing: (yandere?) dick grayson x female reader rating: explicit word count: 9.3k warnings: explicit sexual content, non-con, (justified) paranoia, underwear theft, manipulation, somnophilia, cunnilingus, fingering, drugging, gender-specific terms of endearment (pretty girl), reader calls themselves whore at one point. please take the non con warning seriously. notes: this is a very old fic i am posting upon request, just for fun. by this point in time i think the characterization is off and if i had to rewrite i'd do it differently. reader has a pussy and calls themselves girl/woman, but there is no use of pronouns. mentions of them wearing a skirt too. please listen to the theme song while you read. (you forced me to, lizzie mcalpine).

read it on ao3.

He’s been stealing your underwear.

You sit back on your haunches, staring at the old pair of underwear in your hand—torn at the crotch, the very same reason you��d thrown them out. Or thought you’d thrown them out. You’d just found them jammed behind the lower desk drawer. It is not an unlikely place for them to be, considering it’s still inside your bedroom. You might’ve placed them on the desk while gathering clothes to shower, or perhaps you hung them on the windowsill to dry and they fell behind the desk. These are all sensible explanations.

But you cannot explain the stains, worked deep into the fabric, gone stiff and nasty grey with dust. Or the huge hole. What had started as a little tear at the upper seam of the crotch (a recurrent occurrence—you’d learnt to toss them out as soon as you couldn’t patch it up) was now a big, gaping hole; most of the crotch destroyed. Coupled together, it… it paints a picture.

You’d thought you’d thrown them out.

By the time you finish flipping your apartment on its head, you are farther even from reaching any sort of understanding. Your search does not produce any more abused underwear, but a close of inspection of your scrap bag (which is to say, clothes that need mending or will be turned into kitchen rags) reveals neither of the other two pairs you’d finally gathered the courage to bin, but hadn’t yet thrown out. (Because you still had to decide whether the blouse with the underarm gash was salvageable, and it’s still there!)

Sitting on your couch, still holding onto the torn underwear, you remain perplexed. They’re not even sexy panties. You specifically make a point not to buy anything but the most practical of underwear, because they’ll end up in the trash sooner rather than later. They’re not anything that would invite temptation at the best of times, much less the depravity implied in the deterioration of this particular pair. Fear eludes you, because it cannot make light to the depths of your bafflement. This, this situation is not something that happens to people like you.

And from Grayson of all men?

Because it must be him who’s been stealing your underwear. The stains are cum, plain and simple, so it can’t be any of the girls. Grayson is the only man that stops by, the only one that spends any time in your apartment, in your bedroom. You’ve left him there alone multiple times. For you to shower. For him to take a nap. For you to catch a long call outside. Any of those times, he might’ve been—

It could’ve been the plumber.

You fold over yourself, chest pressed to your knees. “It could’ve been the plumber,” you repeat, unsurely.

Could it really?

“Dick,” you say, next time you have time to catch up with him. You’re having a late breakfast at the diner—more of a lunch than a brunch, but you’re eating pancakes, so. “What do I do if someone’s been stealing my underwear?”

Grayson chokes on his coffee. To be fair, it’s not something one brings up out of nowhere in polite conversation. Still, you shovel a mouthful of syrupy pancake in your mouth and watch him.

“Someone’s stealing your underwear?” He coughs. The tips of his ears are pink. You wonder if it’s genuine or if he can control that sort of thing.

“I think so,” you say, pushing a bit of hash brown aside before the syrup can touch it. That’d be gross. “I’ve had a few pairs of panties go missing. I’m sure I haven’t tossed them out, but last Sunday I did a deep clean and found nothing. I can’t think of anything else that could’ve happened to them.”

“I see,” he says, just a little stiffly, but nods. It could be awkwardness, though Grayson’s never struck you as the type of man that’d be queasy about female underwear. Not that, if he were the culprit, queasy would be a word to describe his relationship to your panties. “Has there been any signs of forced entry? Anything else gone missing?”

“Nope,” you respond, popping the p loudly. You’re being extra playful, extra nonchalant—a challenge. You should dial it down. “All my valuables and documents are where I left them, and my locks haven’t been tampered with. Short of Nightwing dropping by for a visit, I doubt anyone but me’s been riffling through my drawers.”

This seems to throw Grayson for a loop, but considering what he asks next, perhaps you just phrased it wrong. “You know Nightwing?”

You roll your eyes. “Of course not. I only meant that Nightwing’s about the only person who could come into my apartment without me noticing, what with being a vigilante and all that,” you say. And then, after considering it a bit longer, you amend, “well, him and the Batman. But I seriously doubt Batman’s had a hand in my underwear drawer.”

Grayson’s disgusted face rips an honest laugh out of you. He huffs and tries not to smile as you make fun of him, and suddenly, it’s like none of this has happened. There isn’t any torn and stained piece of fabric stuffed into a bag underneath your bed, and there is no suspicion weighing heavy on your shoulders. There is only Dick Grayson, your friend, and the times he’s silly when he doesn’t mean to be.

He still walks you through the process of reporting every crime that may be involved in that situation—trespassing, theft, sexual harassment, if not assault—and tries to placate the fears you don’t let on. “It may be another woman at the Laundromat,” he suggests, “who is only envious of your good taste in, um, undergarments.”

“Oh, please,” you mock. “If it was another girl, she would’ve grabbed one of my tops, or, like, a cardigan. No self-respecting woman would go for my ugly, Fruit-of-the-loom panties.”

Grayson rolls his eyes. “They’re not ugly.”

Ah.

“Because you’re so well acquainted with how they look?” You say dryly, trying to play it off, but you watch. And he sees you watching, because Grayson’s not stupid. Far from it.

He could play flustered. He could even play unapologetic. What he does is pause delicately, and then—

“Well, at Donna’s Halloween party—”

“Ohhh, my god, shut up.” You launch forward, pressing your hands over his mouth and nearly taking the whole table with you. Grayson laughs against the skin of your palms, the sensation uncomfortable but inevitable. You’re burning in the face, and glaring daggers. “We agreed not to talk about that.”

Grayson shrugs arrogantly, and mumbles around your hands, “I wasn’t the one that pulled my skirt up in the middle of billiards because I felt hot.”

“It was hot,” you say, huffing, and retract your hands. There’s a little bit of spit in your palm, which you wipe with a semi-disgusted look. Worse yet, your hurried silencing-of-man has left you with a big glob of syrup smattered across your chest. Grabbing some napkins, you chance a dirty look at Grayson. “It’s all your fault.”

“What,” Grayson asks with a smirk, leaning his cheek on his propped up hand. “You flashing the crowd or soaking your shirt in maple syrup?”

“All of it.” You scowl at the dark stain seeping sticky and wet into the cotton of your t-shirt. Your tits are going to be unbearable in a minute. In the reflection of the glassware, you observe Grayson watching you swipe at your chest. You wonder what he would’ve done if you’d ordered the cinnamon rolls with the runny cream cheese frosting they’re so famous here for.

He’d mixed up the drinks for you at Donna’s party too.

“This is impossible,” you sigh, standing up. “I’m going to the bathroom to clean up. Don’t stick me with the bill.”

“Don't take too long, then,” he says, but if the teasing tone is any softer today than usual, you elect to ignore it.

Come Monday, you get an idea.

It’s a crazy, dangerous idea that you immediately dismiss out of hand. But it continues to nag at you all throughout the week, an itch you cannot scratch. Friday evening, you find yourself staring at your kitchen island, fingers tapping the weathered laminate. Considering.

He could kill you.

It is not unlikely, though Grayson doesn’t seem the type. But they never do, do they? That’s how they find the girls down in the dumpsters, features contorted into a furious mask of betrayal on what’s left of their faces. They never seem the type, and then they get you alone while you trust them, and you never see the light of day again.

An underwear thief might’ve been something you could’ve ignored—a vaguely uncomfortable reminder of the depravity of man and a light weight on your bank account—were it not for the pair of panties you’d found. You’re not stupid. You know what he did. He’d waited until you were out, or showering, or otherwise occupied. He had dug around your clothes bag, pressed the dirty fabric to his nose and inhaled. He’d taken his cock out of his pants, and fisted it harshly, blood booming, tugging at it quickly because you could come in any minute.

But it hadn’t been enough. His fingers had dug into the little tear—perhaps it hadn’t even been his fingers first, but his tongue—and still it hadn’t been enough. He’d torn it open so that the head of his dick would snag just so as he pretended to fuck you, and not the empty space between his hand and your panties. With every slide, his dick touching the same place that your pussy had leaked onto. That must’ve made him screw his eyes shut, his head loll back. Fucked up little indirect kiss that it was.

Then he’d come on the rag, sputtered thick, hot cum on the same fabric that’d tugged and wrapped around your pussy. It was almost good enough, almost the same.

Almost. Not just it yet.

That’s the thing about escalation—about provocation, which is what your plan would be. The statistics say most cases of this behavior, particularly when focused on a single victim (and you don’t know what to call the cum-stained panties shoved under your bed if not focused), tend to develop into more grievous offenses. Stalking. Cameras. Assault. Confronting him is risky, but leaving it up to chance is the same as leaving it up to him.

You simply do not want to leave it up to him. You do not want to be caught off guard. You want to see it coming.

Whatever it is he’ll do.

If it even is Grayson, you think. If it isn’t…

The banner on your laptop screen pops back up, grabbing your attention. LAST CHANCE! It reads, bright and yellow. BOOK YOUR TWO-DAY, ONE NIGHT TRIP TO THE LOVELY HILLS OF…

The clock ticks.

You book the trip.

YOU: hey

YOU: connie just bailed on me for our weekend getaway

YOU: wanna go hiking with me ? lol

GRAYSON: this weekend?

YOU: yeah

YOU: all paid. on connie bc shes dumb and a traitor

YOU: we’d be leaving sat 7am and returning sunday evening

GRAYSON: haha oh connie

GRAYSON: it’s an overnight trip then?

YOU: yep i rented a cabin but nw its two bedrooms

YOU: we only have to share a bathroom

YOU: is that okay?

GRAYSON: yeah. it’s cool

Grayson picks you up Saturday morning, seven o’clock on the dot. It is perhaps unwise to allow your only means of escape to be his own vehicle, but you figure they can trace it back to him if anything happens. Besides, it’s not like you own a car to drive around. You move exclusively on public transport and, like, Lyft.

He loads your gym bag (clothes + toiletries) and backpack (hiking equipment + first aid kit, because you’re nothing if not paranoid) onto the empty, kidnapping-tool-free trunk, and you set off on your way. You command the aux cord and blast an annoying kpop girl group playlist to bother him, and he sings merrily back at you because fuck you, he likes this kind of music.

The three hour ride is spent mostly singing and talking, with a brief interlude where the sun lulls you to sleep. Grayson turns down the music, puts on the calmest indie album on your library (you probably shouldn’t let him touch your phone, but it’s not like it’s the first time), and lets you nap. You half expect to wake up with his hand on your thigh or your neckline askew, but you’re just… mellow and a little cramped.

Dick is still driving, almost to the campground. He has rolled his sleeves up, gorgeously tanned skin wrapping tight muscle. You know he’s strong, even if you don’t quite understand how strong yet. His face is calm, free of worries. Not warm. Not particularly inviting. He’s just looking ahead, driving. A normal man driving a normal car.

Why me? you want to ask. Of all people in the world—because it is suddenly, sharply clear to you that Dick Grayson, so handsome, so charming, could have any person in the world he so desired—why you? There is nothing special about you, or your relationship with Dick. Prior to this, you had never even given the man a second thought. So why?

What had you done?

“You up now?” He asks, smiling.

“Yeah,” you say, voice hoarse. Slowly, deliberately pushing that last thought out of your mind, you unfold yourself, crack your neck and roll your shoulders. “Christ, that’s stiff.”

A little smirk wounds up on his lips. “That’s what she said.”

“Ugh.” You swat at his shoulder, and he laughs. Lord, he does not make it any easier to bear.

Hiking is fun. You do not get quartered in the woods, which is always a pro.

It takes you and Dick most of the day to make it up the mountain and back. The man is as respectful as he’s ever been, which is to say sometimes he makes crude jokes and chases you with bugs, but he doesn’t touch inappropriately or stare at your tits. It’s not like you suddenly expected him to do it, but… apparently a part of you did, and now you’re left feeling slightly queasy about the fact that the only reason you’d taken him hiking was so that he’d keep thinking about how sweaty your underwear must be.

It’s not Grayson, you think on the way back down. Dick is carefully stepping over a branch ahead of you, instructing you on where to place your feet. You’re staring at the nape of his neck, where sweat beads to curl the ends of his black hair.

Dick Grayson is your friend. He’s not your stupid panty thief. He’s just your friend.

The revelation hits you with both relief and a dizzying rush of fear, because if it’s not Dick, then that means there’s a lunatic out there stealing your underwear and cumming on it and planting it on your apartment for you to find. And you don’t know him. You cannot even begin to plan for it. He may be there right now, confused because you’re not home. Or perhaps he knew. Perhaps he’s been watching you all this time, running circles around Grayson who’s got fuck all to do with this, and laughing at you while he—

Jesus. What the fuck are you gonna come back to?

Your foot catches on the edge of a rock and you slip backwards and down the trail. Your back hits the soil with a muffled thump, a cloud of dust rising around you and clogging your throat. The fall reboots your brain to factory settings, mind going utterly blank for a good moment. It’s like you cannot process both the epiphany and the stunning hit, and your brain is left skidding as it tries to make sense of what just happened. Pain wafts from somewhere in your body, but you cannot even begin to divine where. You barely even register it’s there.

Dick rushes back to you, eyes wide and face pale with worry. He carefully turns you on your side, slips your stiff arms out of the backpack’s straps. Dick knows what to do when someone’s in an accident, knows how to move you, where to check. He’s all business when he runs his hands over your thighs, down your back, over your scalp. Searching for injuries. He asks you if you’re fine, asks: where does it hurt? You cannot speak. You can only stare back at him, his beautiful face covered in dirt only interrupted by the trails of sweat at his temples. As if it’s finally decided what to focus on, your brain kicks back in.

You sob.

It’s not him, you think with an animal sort of desperation that borders on hysterics. It’s not him. What are you going to do?

Dick scoops you up into his arms, pressing his cheek to the top of your hair. Strong and warm, his arms form a cage where you are safe from any danger. There, you sob even harder.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” he soothes, smoothing a hand down your back. When he speaks, his lips touch your hair. “You’re not injured. It’s only the fright, baby. Only that.”

He’s right on all accounts, but he cannot even begin to comprehend what he’s telling you. Your mind cycles on a single thought, frightened and unseeing.

Why couldn’t it be you?

The cool-down period after those dramatics might’ve been the most embarrassing hour of your life if you weren’t so fucking drained by the end of it. Dick’s an angel throughout it all: holding you until you stop crying, saying nothing as he helps you the rest of the way down with your hand clamped on his, making light, one-sided conversation on the drive back without commenting on what happened. Meanwhile, you stew in shame to avoid falling back into panic.

Did you want it to be Dick? That option would’ve been much preferable in any situation—the devil that you know, as they say—but it could all be your own delusion prompted by feelings you weren’t even aware you held. The evidence of the underwear is undeniable: you do have a creep to deal with. But why must that creep have been Dick? What made you so sure you’d gone so far as drag him out of the city to—to what? Confront him?

What did you want from him?

You stumble into the cabin in a daze, so utterly exhausted you just want to drop on the bed and sleep this all off until the morning. As it is, you barely make it onto the couch. You must’ve been dozing off or staring into space for about fifteen minutes before Dick’s crouching in front of you and coaxing you into the bathroom. Your gym bag sits untouched on top of the toilet lid, and there’s bubbly warm water filling the tub.

You blink in astonishment. “You drew me a bath?”

“Yeah,” he says, setting a towel on the holder, and squeezing your shoulder as he steps back. His hair is wet, and the bathroom already muggy, which means he’s already showered. “The warm water will help with your muscles. You’re really gonna feel that fall tomorrow, you know. I don’t think we’ll be able to do the second part of the trail.”

“Okay.” You sit on the toilet, trying not to cry under the weight of your deceit and your disappointment. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” he reassures. “It was just a little slip. Happens to the best of us.”

“We could go swimming?” you offer pathetically. You don’t have a swimsuit, but there must be a store nearby.

Dick smiles kindly. “Sure, if you’re up to it. Listen, you have your bath. I’ll go out and get us something to eat, yeah? I think I saw a diner on the way here that might be good, and if not, I’ll bite the bullet and buy the overpriced sandwiches we saw on the front office.”

Your throat closes up. He’s leaving? When you don’t even know what your next step is yet? The conjured image of the stranger waiting in the shadows of your home lingers at the edge of your vision, waiting for Dick to disappear so he can attack. Dick nods and goes to leave, when you, acting on your mounting panic, shoot out a hand to grab his wrist.

He turns back, eyebrows raised. You look up at him, equally stunned. The tiny, logical part of you being choked to death by your animal instinct still manages to chortle a quiet What the fuck are you doing? You do not listen to the voice of reason.

“Don’t go,” you say, and even to your own ears you sound absurdly freaked out. “Stay.”

Dick’s gaze turns warm and full of terrible pity, and to your utmost mortification, you start tearing up again. He takes the hand gripping his wrist into his own, intertwining your fingers with his, and crouches in front of you. “Is this about the thief?”

You suck in a breath. How did he—

He chuckles. “I figured you wanted to get away from the city to forget about that. That’s why you invited me instead of the girls, right? So I could protect you?”

He’s wrong. He is so, so wrong. You invited him to taunt him, to confront him, because you thought the worst of him. You… are such an asshole. When this trip is over and you’re back at your empty, cold apartment, there is no chance in hell you’ll be able to call on him for help. And Dick would offer, but with what nerve could you dare ask for it? Worse yet, if the faceless man did attack you, would you not deserve it after all you’ve done?

…which does not mean you don’t want Dick to stay despite your wrongdoing. The trip isn’t done yet.

“What if,” you say, licking your lips nervously, “what if he followed us?”

Dick nods seriously, squeezes your hand. “I personally think that unlikely, given what you’ve told me about the situation. The situation is at a stage where he has not given you any proof that he means to interact with you directly, or even threaten your safety. Following you this far—particularly with me as your company—would be a move too out of place for what he’s shown of himself so far. Granted, it’s not entirely impossible, but…”

“Yeah.” You screw your eyes shut, miserable. Not like you can mention the ruined panties now. “I know.”

Dick observes you for a moment, and then sighs. “Look, I gotta get us something to eat. You’ve worked out too much today not to get some food into you. Whatever’s open now won’t remain so for long. What if we do this? Give me your phone.”

The recently broken suspicion (misplaced, you remind yourself) has not yet cleaned up any of the lingering hesitation, but you were the one that insisted on buying food on-site instead of bringing any from home, for obvious reasons, so you can’t exactly start complaining now. Vaguely puzzled, you paw at your pockets until the black square slips out, and you wordlessly hand it over to Dick. He retrieves his own from his back pocket, and quickly taps on them both.

“There,” he says, giving you back your own.

DICK GRAYSON

00:00:13.

CALL ONGOING.

It’s on speaker. When Dick speaks again, it bounces off the walls of the bathroom, a shadow voice chasing after his. “I’ll have you on while you take your bath. You don’t need to speak, just put the phone on the shelf and do what you have to. If there’s anything amiss, I’ll come running. Is that okay with you?”

You nod, speechless. Dick’s grin is bright as the morning sun when he leaves. On his recommendation, you lock the bathroom door and try not to jolt when he tests it. You hover impatiently as he grabs his stuff and locks up the cabin, giving you green light to start bathing. You still wait until you hear the sound of the car pulling out the driveway, echoing weirdly on the phone.

Peeling your clothes off your body while Grayson listens in is… weird and guilt-inducing in more ways than one, but in his absence, you find yourself so exhausted you can barely rouse some leftover shame. There’s dirt collected on your every crevice, and you’re going to have to scrub hard at your scalp to get the caked mud out. You’d been on the fence about washing your hair here, but now there’s no way to avoid it.

Sighing, you go lay your pajamas out before getting into the tub… and then curse yourself, the thief and everyone involved in this nonsense all the way to hell and back.

Dick’s voice crackles in the open line. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” you say, pressing the heel of your palm to your eyes. Unbelievable. “Just forgot to bring something.”

“You can grab anything out of my bag,” he offers. “I brought a shirt you can sleep in.”

“Thanks, Dick.” You sigh again. Whatever. You need to get on that tub before you have a breakdown or else you’ll never get clean. “I’ll see what to do.”

“No worries.”

The water’s divine when you lower yourself in. Just the right amount of hot: scalding, bordering on unbearable. You about manage to stifle a groan as you sink all the way down, muscles loosening up the longer you’re under. And you stew. You stew a while. Dick’s not very noisy as he drives, and you kinda forget that he’s there listening until you hear his muffled voice ordering who-knows-what. You take advantage of the fact he’s busy to lather yourself and scrub.

Fuck me if he’s not right, you think, looking at the side of your thigh. There will be a bruise the size of Texas on there come morning. You knead on your tired muscles, careful to keep the groaning to a minimum with the man listening in. Just because he’s not a creep doesn’t mean you’re going to turn him into one. Besides, you’re not really the whimpering type, even when it comes to sex—

—a statement which is swiftly disproven when your hand catches on a previously undiscovered, incredibly tender area of your side and you lurch forward with a sharp and throaty hiss. It’s a wet and guttural thing, ripped out from the depths of your chest, and it echoes on the enclosed space of the bathroom. Pain blooms bright behind your eyelids and for a good minute, all you can feel is the pulsating flesh at your side and the shaky breath leaving your lungs.

You hope Dick doesn’t make anything out of the panting and splashing that fills the air in the aftermath, but your hopes are quickly dashed when his voice comes in cheerily asking: “All fine at home?”

“Yep,” you bite, blinking out stars. “Just… scrubbing.”

“Ah,” Dick says delicately. “Listen, I’ll turn up the music so you can have some privacy. Do what you need to relax, I’m almost there anyway. Happy scrubbing!”

“I’m not—” you start, blood rushing to your face, but your voice is swallowed by David Bowie’s better hits.

You sit in stunned, mortified silence and not a little bit of pain, conditioner dripping down your back. What is this sudden tragicomedy? How come nothing’s going your way today?

Well, it’s not like you deserve anything going your way. You’d just about ruined your friendship with Dick on the very tenuous grounds of believing he was a creep with a penchant for your underwear out of all the women in the Gotham Metropolitan Area when, in fact, he’s so uninterested in you he believes you’re jerking off right this very moment and his first thought is… turning the music up.

You slump down the tub in despair and groan. Not like Dick fucking minds.

Yeah. You deserve everything you get.

Dinner is a relaxed affair, and it doesn’t last terribly long on account of how famished you are. The bath left you feeling loose and lax, and your threadbare pajamas, unglamorous as they may be, are just warm enough that you feel extra cozy this spring evening. Dick’s got a low fire going on the fireplace, and he’s somehow managed to acquire Chinese food, of all things, in his hunt for nourishment.

“Pretty good, though, right?” he says around a mouthful of noodles when you point out the absurdity of it.

You snort. “For a restaurant in the middle of nowhere? I’d say pretty fucking good, yeah. If you told me you had it flown in from that place on seventh and Bourne, I would honestly believe you.”

“That’s why you gotta run with me, Danger.” Dick winks at you, gesturing at the paper plate tittering precariously on his lap. “Who else can live it up like this with you?”

He’d been setting up your plates at the kitchen island when you’d come out the bathroom, had one look at the high and stiff chairs and noped right out of there and onto the couch. Dick had followed you with a fond shake of the head, and settled next to you. The TV above the fireplace had some movie playing you swear you’ve heard him talk about, but you haven’t been paying much attention.

Raising an eyebrow at him, you sip at your glass of sweet tea. Bit sweeter than your taste, but he’d gone to the trouble of preparing it for you so you couldn’t exactly complain. “Are you calling me Danger now? Is that supposed to be my superhero nickname?”

Dick snorts, lips tugging up in amusement. “Sure. I had another one in mind,” he says, “but I thought you might be offended if I named you Mudbiter.”

“Haha, you are soooo funny,” you say sarcastically, reaching over to rap him on the head. He dodges out of the way before your knuckles can make contact, and catches your finger in his mouth. The bite is gentle, but wet. You quickly retract your hand in disgust to wipe down while he laughs merrily at you. “You’re a gross little boy, Richard.”

“How are you going to fight crime if you recoil at a little spit, Mudbiter?” He taunts, altogether too happy to consider the ridiculous idea. “They’ll splatter way worse things on you back home.”

His innocuous comment brings you right back to the cum-crusted panties underneath your bed, and your mood sours immediately. Put upon, you begin stacking the dishes on the coffee table.

You slap his hand away when he tries to go for a last bite. “Stop calling me Mudbiter.”

“Don’t wanna,” Dick says, stealing a piece of broccoli from your plate before you can take it away. “If you can walk straight tomorrow, maybe I’ll let you graduate into Airtreader.”

You scowl at him. “You know, Nightwing would never treat me like this.”

“Ha,” Dick huffs, amusement taking a darker tone. You think he means it when he says, gaze a little unfocused, “Nightwing would tear you to pieces if he ever had the chance.”

Belatedly, you remember Dick’s probably met the guy, what with the whole Wayne ward thing. Actually, he’s probably even worked with him. You remember Nightwing became a regular hero at Blüdhaven right around the time Grayson got settled at the station. That piques your interest, but something about the way Dick’s jaw ticks puts you off asking too many questions. There may be some bad blood there you can’t get to right now.

“I thought you said I was dangerous,” you say as you return to the couch, breaking into a yawn in the middle. Dick scoots over so you can lie down, and takes down the blanket on the back of the couch to lay across your lap and his. “You don’t think I could take him?”

“Nah,” he says. The way he looks at you is slightly mocking. He really must know him. And he’s never introduced you? The bastard. “You’re a danger, but you’re not particularly dangerous.”

“A danger to who?” You ask. The elegantly raised eyebrow is an insult to your person.

As punishment, you shove your cold feet on Grayson’s lap. He takes them with a roll of the eyes, pinches the skin at your ankle in retribution. He leaves a hand wrapped around it, the warm weight of it surprisingly comforting. In less than a minute’s time, you find yourself supremely comfortable, and just about ready to snooze.

“My sanity,” he responds dryly, a moment too late.

“Cannot be that bad,” you mumble. Your lids are feeling very heavy all of a sudden.

“Mm,” Dick hums, turning to the screen. “You’d be surprised.”

You flit in and out of sleep, half there and half away. The weight of Dick’s hand on your ankle is just about the only anchor that holds you to the mortal world. Every time you feel it lift or shift, you rouse back up to follow up the conversation you’d dropped twenty minutes ago. Dick entertains your babbling, but he’s watching the screen intently. It’s been a while since you’ve lost the ability to follow the storyline. You think the spymaster may be cheating on his wife. In your half-dreams, you are both spymaster and wife, and Dick takes turns as the villain and the homewrecker. At one point, you cannot tell whether the quiet murmuring’s coming from the screen or from the man at your side.

“Oh,” someone breathes. You lazily open your eyes to find Dick gazing down at you in a daze. “You’re not wearing any underwear.”

You flush, searing under your skin. From far away, you feel a little shame curl up inside you. You’d hoped he wouldn’t notice. The reason you’d cursed out God and all his disciples back in the bathroom was because you’d forgotten to pack a second pair of panties for the night. Your half-baked plan had been to string Dick along all day with the reminder of how sweaty and nasty your underwear must be, and then plant it on the shared bathroom during the night to see if he’d take the bait. You’d been so concerned about which pair of panties to put on that you’d forgotten to bring a second pair for when you had to change out of them.

It will be fine, you’d thought. Your pajama pants were threadbare, but not to the point you could tell right away you’d gone commando. Not unless you got real close, anyway.

Huh.

Much too late, you take stock of the position you’re in. Dick still has your ankle clasped in his hand, but your leg is folded at his waist, and half his body is on top of you. His other hand is currently resting at the curve of your hip, tracing over the thin fabric where the seam of your underwear would be, if you had any on.

“Oh,” you croak, looking into Dick’s dark and hungry eyes. Huh, you repeat numbly in your head.

He wants to eat you alive.

“It is you.”

But there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re fast asleep before the revelation even sinks in.

You awaken to a room filled with dim light and the obscene sounds of being eaten out.

Coming to is a slow and disorienting transition, a process to which the obscurity of the room both contributes to and eases somewhat. Whatever it was that Grayson drugged you with has made you sluggish and it takes your mind ages to fully capture what is happening. Your body not so much. It twitches and shakes, flushes and tightens. As you ease back into thinking, you can begin to decipher some of the input it sends you: your thighs quiver with exhaustion, your skin itches underneath all the moisture, and the wound on your side throbs like a bitch.

Then there’s the pleasure.

The pleasure is involuntary but readily felt. Once you manage to recognize it for what it is, it eclipses almost every other feeling. Except terror. That one sneaks up on you, steadily building as your eyes become accustomed to the darkness and you begin to make out details in your surroundings. You are in your room at the cabin—another transgression, but at least you haven’t been taken to a hidden dungeon in New Jersey. The surface underneath you is so soft you cannot be anywhere but the bed. The room is stuffy, thick with human heat and the smell of sex which means this has been going on a while.

Laboring under great duress, with the sloppy desperation of a frenzied mind caught in an unresponsive body, you manage to lift your neck. Three facts are readily made known to you. First, you’ve been stripped completely naked. Second, both your tits and most of your torso are splattered with fresh cum. And third… your legs are spread wide open, and house between them a flushed and sweaty Dick Grayson.

Your head lolls back as he crooks a finger and rubs against a spot that makes your breath rush out of your lungs as if you’ve been punched. Fuck. His fingers are inside you. Grayson’s tongue flattens against your throbbing clit with a little moan, low in his throat, and whatever half-formed thought was on your brain promptly shatters when he starts pumping his fingers in and out. He’s good at it, of course he is. He eats you out with an ease and skill that indicates extensive practice, and with such gusto that your puzzlement only increases. You feel yourself start to coil in anticipation, core melting into liquid gold, and panic. It’s too soon, even though you know it can’t be the first time you’ve come tonight. You’re not ready. You just woke up!

Harried, you attempt to draw his attention but your limbs are weak and numb. Your fingers twitch on the sheets and, god, are they rumpled. Stained. What has he been doing with you?

Your squirming only manages to drive Dick’s fingers deeper into you, and he uses his hand to steady your hip at such an angle that you cannot help the cry that escapes your throat. Well, shit. You were trying so hard to keep quiet. In a room that’d been hosting only the squelching of his fingers inside you and the labored breathing of your two bodies, your cry fills the air. Dick tenses between your legs, and your stomach churns in apprehension. He lifts his head.

Fuuuuck, you think desperately, locking eyes with the man.

He is gorgeous. The sweating has made a mess of his hair, sticking to his temples and curling all sides. It lends a beautiful sheen to his skin in the lamplight, which is complimented by how flushed he is. The tops of his cheeks are dusted in red. His lips are slightly swollen and dark pink, and the entire lower half of his face is shiny with what you have to assume is your own cum. Worst of all: his eyes, hazy and unfocused. In those first few seconds after your eyes meet, you see the picture of a man who’s spent hours between your legs and enjoyed every second.

Then his gaze zeroes in on your conscious presence, and it sharpens like a knife. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse and hot, right against your pussy. “You’re up.”

Don’t—, you think, but it’s out of your hands. You go hard and tense, and then the dam breaks. You come against Dick’s chin, spasming around his fingers with a loud cry. He blinks down, bewildered, and you shut your eyes in mild despair as the waves of pleasure break on you. Mind blank, you hold onto whatever’s near until it’s over.

But it isn’t over.

Dick dips his head down to suck on your clit eagerly, fingers moving again in renewed vigor. Your eye twitches, your legs tremble. It’s too much stimulation altogether too soon. Pleasure becomes indistinguishable from pain. You squirm against him desperately, and the hand gripping your hip harshly pins you down against the bed. Dick is strong, much stronger than you’d first thought. It’s not even five minutes later you’re openly sobbing, mumbling whatever pleas cross your brain to get Dick to stop.

“I know, my love, I know,” he soothes you, like he’s listening, like he even cares, but he dips his tongue inside you as he does and you know he doesn’t give a fuck about anything other than tasting you. “I just need one more, okay, baby? Just let me have one more, right on me. Come right on my tongue, pretty girl.”

He’s insane. He’s fucking insane. Can’t he see the way he’s driving you mad too? What’s worse, now that you’re awake, he’s suddenly chatty. Every time he mumbles against your cunt, you feel the vibrations of his voice travel into your flesh. It’s a litany of so good for me, baby, and fuck, cry more like that, and it works, goddammit. You like hearing him praise you. He ruts against the mattress every time he speaks and his voice acquires a broken little whine that’s got you clutching the sheets just to keep yourself from grinding on his face. The shame and disgust that color your pleasure are still not enough to sour you from the feeling.

“Dick,” you gasp when it’s close. Your hands make their way into his hair and pull. Hard. He moans into you like it’s you sucking him. “Dick—!”

It’s like hearing his name makes something snap inside him. His arm slides under your hips, lifting you and bringing you even closer somehow. Your knee hooks on his shoulder, talon finding purchase on the firm plains of his back. It must hurt, the way your nails dig into his scalp, but if it does, the pain only spurs him into action. At this point, the way he’s fucking you is too fast and sloppy to be good, but you’re both riding on the same desperation and you really are so very close. It’s a twist of his tongue and a suck on your lips that does it, popping the bubble and sending you crashing down with a rush.

You do wail his name. It’ll weigh heavy on your conscience in a minute.

Dick holds you steady as you come, lapping up everything that gushes out of you. It’d be horrendously embarrassing if it weren’t so fucking hot. This whole affair is beyond saving, morally speaking.

The cool down is worse this time, but when you start crying out no’s and pushing Dick’s face away, he actually goes. It may be because this time you’re pretty serious about gouging his eyes out and he can tell by your tone. You lay there, boneless and half-delirious, as he presses his forehead to the swell of your stomach and mutters apologies against your skin. His hands rub soothing circles on your outer thigh, your side, but you’re too out of it to relay to him how much it stings.

“You did so well, my love,” he murmurs, kissing his way up your abdomen. You wonder if he doesn’t find the dried cum gross. You would. “So good and sweet on my tongue.”

His mouth stops to suck another bruise between your breasts, and your legs twitch involuntarily. You feel a smile spread across his face, and he sucks along the underside of your left tit, which must be sweaty as all hell. Not, much like your cunt, sweet whatsoever. Nothing about this makes sense to you. What is he doing? How does he find this arousing? When his teeth graze your nipple, you cry out again.

“Wait,” you beg, “please.”

Dick doesn’t listen to you. A wet mouth closes over your nipple, so hot your eyes flutter closed. His tongue is no less skilled here, and he plays with you like a doll. The hand on your side palms his way up to pinch and fondle your other tit, thumb brushing over your nipple and then pressing his blunt nail in to make you tense and hiss. Every little sound you cannot swallow seems to be music to his ears, making him babble incoherencies.

You thrash a little, upset because you told him to wait, everything is so wet, and you feel so drained—and all he can talk about is how much he likes your tits? But Dick’s hovering above you now, your hips bracketed by his knees, and when you brush against his hard cock, he lets your breast slip out of his mouth with a ragged moan and grinds. The idea of taking him inside you right now, when every nerve on your body is screaming for respite, makes you go loose as a rag doll.

He takes some pity on you, which only means he keeps playing with your tits and doesn’t breach your entrance. The head of his cock rests heavily against your clit, threat and taunt both. He’ll do it tonight. You cannot imagine any way he will not take you while he has you. That’s been painfully clear since the moment you woke up. What would be the point of this otherwise?

(What is the point of this? When he could’ve asked, and you—)

“Ah,” you croak, tearing up. You turn your head to the pillow to smother a sob. This is so stupid.

Shaking and too preoccupied with not making it all too obvious that you’re crying, you do not notice Dick has moved until his hand closes on your chin and turns your face towards him. He is so close you can see the sweat collecting under the line of his hair, the slight sheen of his dark eyes searching yours. It’s a heavy gaze, meaningful but undecipherable. You may have left all language behind the moment you crossed this threshold. He finds nothing inside you of what he seeks.

His hand shifts to cup your jaw, a steadying weight. A sigh escapes your lips, and you inch towards the warm touch despite the slight dampness. His other arm wraps around your waist and pulls you closer, flush against him. When his cock brushes against your leg, a leaking hardness trapped between you, his eyelids flutter closed and his fingers tighten their hold. But he doesn’t buck. The consideration is much belated and strange, but also sweet, you guess. You take the time to catch your breath.

Dick runs his fingers down your back, building a steady rhythm that has lulls you into the first moment of uncomplicated pleasure of the night. He stares at you all throughout it, though you keep your eyes affixed to the ceiling. Looking at him straight on makes a knot form on your throat. Sometimes, he skirts the edge of the tender patch on your side; each time, you tense up and sleep is chased away. You think you know why he does it. He wants you present, with him.

Maybe he shouldn’t have fucking drugged you in the first place.

Frustrated, you hide your face in the crook of his neck. You feel before you hear his breath hitching, the discrete rearranging of limbs. This must be some sort of torture for him. Does he get off on it? You don’t get why he’s holding back now. Why he didn’t hold back before all this. Why the drugging. Why the underwear. Why not ask. You wonder if he had been planning to kill you and your easily accessible pussy just distracted him.

You wonder what he will do after this. There has to be an after, even if only for him. Fear coats the back of your mouth in a thin bitter film. I want to see it coming, you tell yourself to calm down. A smidge of control over a situation that spills outside your means. I only want to know it’s happening when it does.

Grayson’s hand splays between your shoulder blades and holds there steady. His voice is rough and a little choked. “I’ll let you go,” he says, hot breath tickling your hair, “if you want.”

If you want?

“I can press charges,” you say, lifting up your head to look at him straight. It’s not a threat but a fact. “I can tell everyone you know.”

“I know. You ought to,” he agrees readily, bright-eyed, and it’s like back at the dinner, when he was walking you through filing a report against every single one of his crimes. The same man who believes in justice and comeuppance—and accepts his share of the blame without any guilt behind it. Sick son of a bitch.

You push back against him, raising yourself on your elbow. Dick glances at your tits for a second, but trains his eyes back on your face when you snap your fingers at him.

“I could ruin your life,” you say, torn between anger and incredulity. “Do you not think I can?”

“I wish you would,” he replies, wrapping a hand around your wrist. His eyes search yours, begging. What for? He lifts your wrist to his mouth, presses a sweet kiss against the pulsing blood. “I wish you’d sink your hands into my life and tear it to pieces. I don’t care what you do. But touch it. Mark it. Make it yours, make me—”

“Are you listening to yourself?” You interrupt callously. A laugh bubbles up your throat, a nasty, hysterical thing that titters between a cackle and sob. “What is wrong with you?”

Dick closes his eyes at the sound, hiding his mouth behind your palm, eyebrows drawn together. Upset? Upset at what? As if he has any right to feel anything but shame. And perhaps it is shame what he’s feeling, confronted so obviously with the realities of his betrayal, but what does it matter to you. What do you care what he’s feeling.

“Don’t,” you say, rushing forward and gripping his chin in that same hand, tight enough your nail digs into the skin. The change in position takes him by surprise, allows you to shift atop of him and steady yourself on his chest. He still grips your wrist, but his wide-eyed gaze is fixed on you. Good. “You can’t hide now, Grayson. You can never hide anymore. Everything I say, you must listen to. Everything I ask, you must answer. You owe me that much. We were friends!” You shout, a wet cry from deep in your chest. Fuck his tender little gaze, the stuttering heart underneath your hand. “If you’d asked, I would’ve said yes. I would’ve come to you willingly, so why—why?”

This threatens to be too much for him. You can see it in his face. For the first time during the night, shame peeks through, clouded by lust and a little bit of sorrow. He must know what he’s lost by pulling this ridiculous move: your loyalty, your affection. What does he think he’s gained?

Still, though he struggles, he heeds your words, and answers around your fingers. “But it wouldn’t matter,” he says. Honest. Strangled. His eyes affix to the ceiling, can’t quite look at you straight. “No matter how many times we fucked, you’d always leave. Even if I managed to coax you into a relationship, you’d never be fully there. It matters this way, doesn’t it? It will never stop mattering.”

You blink back tears. “I could’ve loved you,” you say, voice trembling. “I could’ve learned.”

Dick gives you the saddest look you’ve ever seen from him. It’s a look that speaks volumes. You remember, just barely, that night at Donna’s party, a night you’ve done your best to forget. Your lips tighten. You can’t say he isn’t right.

“We are friends,” he says. “I know you. Better than you think. I’ve watched you—and I’ve tried my ways to make a mark in your life.”

“By stealing my underwear?” It feels good, the way he flinches when you dig your nails into the plush skin of his cheeks. “By dragging me here, drugging me, fucking me while I’m asleep?”

“I never—ngh—ugh,” he squirms underneath you. He likes the pain. Unconsciously, you slide a bit downwards. “Only my fingers. My mouth.”

“Noble of you. Way to go, pervert,” you sneer, and you feel the way he twitches beneath you. Ah, you’ve slid a little too far. Dick’s eyelids flutter closed. He grips your hips, holds you down just enough so your cunt slides against his cock, not to penetrate. It’s a wet, pleasurable drag now that your nerves aren’t literally on fire. He’s been leaking precum for a while now. You allow Dick the grace of this act, if only for the pleasure of watching him get riled up and flushed again. There is no end to your wonder here: how a man so eternally composed and upright can succumb to such vileness only for the privilege of this feeling. From you.

What an idiot.

“Maybe,” Dick pants, lips pulling on an infuriating smirk, and you realize you’ve said it out loud, “but you’ll never forget me now, won’t you?”

Now you’re angry all over again. You pry his left hand from your hip with both of yours and drag it up your soiled body to your mouth. Dick watches you nuzzle against his palm, so big against your face, so warm and rough. Your lips close around the meat of his thumb, and suck, first delicately, then hard, at the tender skin, never taking your eyes off his. Dick’s cock throbs against your cunt, hips stuttering dangerously. When his pace quickens, growing sloppy, you bite down.

Hard.

“Ah, ah—” You catch Dick mid-moan. The sound draws out, long and broken, as he tenses underneath you, the one hand still holding onto your hip digging painfully at the tender spot on your leg. He sputters thick, hot ropes of cum right on his abdomen, which you watch shoot until it becomes small rivulets dribbling out. It’s… a lot. Dick makes a bit of a mess, it seems. You want—

It makes sense to you, that it is his hand and not yours. Not to Dick. He watches through half-lidded, exhausted eyes that widen as you bring your intertwined hands to smear the cum on his abs, using his fingers to spread it and then bringing it up to your mouth. You observe the thick, white liquid coating Dick’s fingers with an odd sort of wonderment—still hot from inside him. Soon to fill you up. Dick groans as you place his fingers inside your mouth, tongue swirling around first, and then sucking them clean. His dick manages a last, struggling jolt, and you release the hand with a pop and a satisfied, mocking smile.

Dick throws that arm over his face, muffling against it what you think is a string of curses. What would he do if you decided to lick the rest? As if reading your thoughts, Dick peeks from underneath his arm, not exactly despairing, but a very near yet happier thing. His eyes rake over your naked body, still sporting now-matching cum stains; tits out, thighs spread at either side of him, the head of his dick barely peeking out beneath your pussy. It’s an obscene little picture, and you play act the whore for him to stir all the quicker.

“You’ll be the death of me,” he mutters, fingers fluttering at the juncture of leg and hip, eager to touch. You let him. You allow it to happen.

I only want to see it coming, you think. Control. I only want to know it’s happening when it does.

You give him a very mean smile. "I hope I am."

#dick grayson x reader #dick grayson x you #dc imagine #satplotdb #non con cw #i don't know if this would count as yandere but read at your own risk

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thydungeongal · 16 hours ago

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I feel like a reason why some people have a hard time thinking of combat specifically as roleplaying is because on a moment to moment level theyre usually making decisions based more on "what is the tactically sound move to make on this turn" than making decisions based on "what would my character do at this time" which makes it feel detached from the "RP" sections where theyre basically just thinking the latter way

To be clear I don't think that makes it not RP, just that it seems to be the way others think. Imo if you've decided to RP a character who is good at, say, swordfighting then you have, presumably, made decisions in building that character to improve their mechanical advantage at swordfighting. So effective combat is an execution and demonstration of those character decisions, furnished with fluffy descriptions.

And thats for efficient combat, but on the flipside at most tables ime theres also a reluctance to deliberately take less efficient combat decisions that might be more in character. Its considered rude to the group to risk the failure of combat and thus potential loss of other players characters so people turn off the "in character" part of their decision making

Yeah absolutely, but my issue with that point of view is that it comes at the issue with a set definition of roleplaying and then treats a failure to adhere to that definition as a failure of roleplaying.

Like, I don't think characters making tactically informed decisions that benefit the group is necessarily a failure of roleplaying, even if according to some people the character would be richer if they acted "in character" and sometimes made tactically unsound decisions. If the game itself facilitates a group acting as a unit to make tactically sound decisions to overcome adversity, then characters not doing that is only a failure of roleplaying if it at odds with the group's own creative agenda, and at that point the issue is that the group chose the wrong game.

This I feel is at the heart of a lot of issues people have with traditional challenge focused games (still the majority on the market) and which actually leads to a lot of poor design imo: most traditional challenge focused games will seem like they facilitate failures in roleplaying because they encourage characters acting with 360° vision and having a bird's eye view of the situation, which makes it always beneficial for them to take the most tactically sound decision. But to me that is approaching those games from the wrong point of view: D&D isn't a bad game because it facilitates tactical play sometimes at the expense of characterization. Instead, coming to D&D with a focus on characterization at the expense of tactical play will lead to "bad" play.

And this applies vice versa as well: playing Apocalypse World in an old-school D&D-pilled way where characters are overtly cautious and do not start shit will lead to unsatisfactory play, because the point of AW is to start shit.

Anyway none of that is to say that I disagree with your observations here, anon. It's just to provide some food for thought that even when players are having their characters make tactically sound decisions in the heat of combat it should not necessarily be treated as a failure of roleplaying, unless it specifically contradicts a group's chosen creative agenda (and then there are games out there that better facilitate play where characters are not incentivized to always take the best option).

#thydungeongal answers

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housemdork · 1 day ago

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house md rewatch: 2x20, "euphoria part 1"

happiness as a life-threatening symptom is one of house md's smartest plot devices.

these episodes hit even harder than they did the first time i watched because now i have 8 seasons' worth of bonding with foreman, and seeing the events of "euphoria" play out has a lot more weight since they remain with him for so long. given that there are 2 parts at hand, i want to save a few details for when i finish the entire saga. i also won't be beholden to too much chronology here.

first, actually, a critique (more of a larger scale comment than something 2x20 specific). foreman's confrontation with cameron, after he nicks her with the needle, is a dialed-back way of explaining how he got here:

"if house would have pointed at you instead of me, you'd be the one in here. it's your job. you're a doctor."

translation: had house treated foreman with the same dignity he does chase and cameron, foreman wouldn't necessarily be paying this price for doing his job.

i'm actually a little unclear about the messaging here. i think it's obvious that house sends foreman to the patient's apartment, a crooked cop, as another meanspirited, racist joke. he plays up a stereotype and gets kicks out of it and foreman nearly dies as a consequence...but it house md making that last leap?

it's doubtful because if house md makes house's racism textually palpable and malicious, then it becomes a damning characteristic that can't be so easily forgiven via his misanthrope/addict identities. this is all to say that, if we're "supposed" to understand that racism fueled foreman's suffering in "euphoria," they didn't communicate that successfully - i personally doubt that was the goal in the first place.

if we watch 2x20 with the aforementioned subtext in mind, foreman's case is increasingly tragic. his lived experience and perspective is constantly devalued; any and all observations he made at the patient's apartment are disregarded just because house got fixated on an AC unit at the police precinct. guess which option was more medically relevant - the cop's marijuana greenhouse or the AC unit?

for me, the highlight of this episode (aside for omar epps' performance - top 5 in the show, easily) is the futile attempts foreman and house make to diagnose foreman because their sameness collides like 2 rocks. i think i characterized them as a rock and a hard place before; now they're acting like projectiles.

these 2 shots where they're both wielding diagnostic results is brilliant, even if foreman's opinion is less informed. the evidence for staph and for brain biopsy collide, and someone has to break the stalemate. that house hijacks foreman's consent and performs the biopsy anyway is just so fucking brilliant because it's doing 2 things:

highlight house's hypocrisy not just within the confines of 2x20, but in the show at large. who were you were more upset with - house violating foreman's consent and risking his life with dangerous brain surgery, or foreman for nicking cameron?

validates foreman's assault on cameron within the context of 2x20. house has elevated the stakes, and in an episode that so consistently exemplifies their similarities.

even the size of the needles in either assault speaks to the weight and intent behind both actions. house is having a mad scientist moment; foreman is trying to live.

i also love how "euphoria" finally draws real attention to foreman's specialty in neurology. his (perfectly understandable) fear of not just dying gruesomely like the cop, but having his mental & emotional faculties stripped from him along the way. foreman, in a much more dramatic context, mirrors house's own, generalized fear of losing his intellect. as the episode moves along, house sees more and more of himself in foreman, and i think this informs that experience.

maybe this captured me so much because i have temporal lobe epilepsy (drop a like if you do, too! lol), but the specificity of house poking around in foreman's temporal lobe really got to me. the temporal lobe, among a lot of things, involves memory retention, along with auditory and linguistic retention.

foreman has remained the most mysterious of the fellows; we've hardly gotten a single lick of backstory apart from the infamous "carjacking" incident that is bandied around like a joke, more than anything. that foreman becomes exposed/undone under this kind of duress is just beyond tragic.

more subtly, though, is the increasing inability for foreman to communicate not just due to physical impairments, but emotionally, too.

the communication barriers are visually represented by the glass foreman is confined within, as well as the cleanroom entryway that becomes such an obstacle in the episode's tensest moments. the communication gap is so drastic that house stops treating foreman like "any other patient" and goes to speak with him directly: "if i'm gonna be arguing with foreman, i may as well do it directly." (more on this).

in 2x20's climax, foreman cannot hear nor process the team calling the cop's time of death. it's as if all his own senses have shut down out of fear. nothing but fear has subsumed his brain - what a great to-be-continued shot that makes!

i want to make a quick note (even though it's Massively important to 2x20) about cameron's choice to go back to the apartment - it's one of the show's most successful ends/means/intent depictions yet. we can't truly condone foreman's choice to expose her (or, if you can, please explain because i would love to hear another perspective), but think we can sympathize both with the decision and cameron's subsequent reaction.

does saving foreman justify the threat? does cameron risking herself to save herself (and foreman) bad? the ends are enough to sweep this collective ethical qualm into one fingers-crossed, hoping for the best reaction from audiences, but house struggles so much with this.

"you wanted to be here. he just gave you the excuse. what does that guy have to do to make you hate him?"

i personally think that cameron's non-answer is because she knows he can't explain this to house, this conflicting dichotomy between self interest and kindness. he always needs to pinpoint a singular answer, and thus far, "euphoria" hasn't offered one.

my second to last point does, actually, feature wilson; he has a typical "i, too, am in this episode" moment, but it's a very revelatory moment that's only possible with wilson around. house delays invasive treatment and opts to using the cop as a ticking clock to establish a timeline for foreman's symptoms. echoing foreman's earlier frustrations with house playing it safe, wilson observes that, "you're being cautious. you're being common." it's not just another case to house.

this is the strongest indictment against house's misanthropy to date because it's so frank and obvious. unfortunately for house, his brilliant retort is squashed by a moment of audience/wilson solidarity - despite house's cruelty in wishing he had wilson's job, wilson smiles like this:

we know, along with wilson, for certain this time, that house loves.

(allow me an aside rq - 2x20 is SOOO pregaming 4x16. being cautious/unable to treat it like a usual case/avoiding risks/prolonging treatment at the contradictory expense of the patient you're trying to save/etc. wilson is quick to point out the cracks in house's armor, but we know damn well who will absolutely malfunction under similar circumstances in about 2 seasons).

finally, just to round-off, 2x20 really drives home one of house md's eternal questions: what can pain do to a person, and what can it make them do? the question resurfaces throughout the series in episodes like 1x11, 5x23, 6x01, 7x22, and so many others. that foreman experiences (in just part 1 so far) physical and emotional pain speaks to this. it makes people break, falter, freeze, lash out, and everything in between. house md makes a LOT of gambles when it comes to audience sympathy, and they knock it out of the park almost every time.

PS: i'll be revisiting the reference to lazarus in the episode intro in my part 2 recap!

#i was sincerely reluctant to watch this one #i haven't sought it out since my first watch because it's so emotionally brutal #omar epps is just something else #sorry if this one is a little brief #i feel like i could be more thorough but i want to make sure my part 2 recap is cohesive #house md #malpractice md #greg house #james wilson #eric foreman #allison cameron #robert chase #house md rewatch #rewatch 1 #season 2

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alligatorcarapace · 2 days ago

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What’s your general opinion on 03 Raph and Leo’s dynamic

Oh easy; they're amazing

I love 2003's dynamic for Leo and Raph becuase they sure they fit the Lancer Archetype, they are so much more than just yin and yang. They're clearly best friends who constantly rely on each other.

Outside of the City at War arc and that one throw away line about Leo and Raph arguing they just click together so much. It honestly shows how the writers were still trying to get their standing with the show's writing to think these two would ever have the redvblue rivalry that other versions of them have. Of course they still manage to lightly include it in Tales of Leo where the rivarly is shown to be a one-sided thing of immaturity and Leo's not really into it.

Heck even in those early seasons they understand each other such as in Lone Raph and Cub where when Raph is seething and stressed due to Splinter not being there, Leo tells him to go to the surface and blow off some steam. Adding that he might find something.

Rather than admonishing him, instead Leo knows Raph needs a place to put his energy while also giving Raph something more lighter alongside of this.

Really the only time we see Leo doing anything but this positive style approach when it comes to Raph's emotions is during time like the search for Splinter where he reminded Raph to keep a lid on it becuase well, brutalizing a carjacker is not helping the mission. And when Leo's in mission mode that's what he's focused on. It's part of what makes him a good leader and brother is helping direct his brother's energy towards more productive pursuits rather than lashing out at less than ideal targets.

This favor is later returned in that previously mentioned Tales of Leo.

While sure Raph starts out with his external tough guy persona, taunting Leo as if he hopes it will wake him up so they can fight, but by the end of the tale Raph is so overwhelmed by emotions he has a hard time articulating his thoughts and even understanding his emotions. Which says a lot seeing as Raph seems to be the one who understands emotions the most(of course self-awareness does not automatically mean anything besides getting fed up that you can't rationalize you're way out of feeling things. You still have to feel, even if you understand what your emotions are trying to signal).

They're not opposing forces, they're complementary instead

Shout out to the moment in the forest's of D'Hoonnib, when Leo's having his space forest breakdown it's Raph who's the proactive one, already reassuring Leo that things will work out, with Mikey soon following suit. I am not illustating a point here, I just really like that moment. Though looking at the Mirage comics does make me sad it was not kept as a Donny moment, but I suppose that doesn't fit the characterization of 03 Donny. Despite going Through The Horrors, somehow my man does not have chronic anxiety like Leo(Interestingly instead Donny get's more reckless and impulsive as the series goes on, such as him jumping in with April to save her uncle even though SAINW was just last season. But my Donny and Leo become more like season 1 Raph while Raph becomes more like season 1 Leo is a theory for another day as I am not fully confident in it)

I think the best demonstration of their dynamic is these previously mentioned season 1 stuff but also their season 4 stuff. It kinda shows how the other interacts with them at their angriest(No I am not touching City at War again, that's not them at peak rage, that's them being stubbornly moral, which is different. Unlike the writers, I am not about to tell you what is the correct choice for the troly problem. The only thing I will note is after this they never have any similar style argument about this until Dna is Thicker than water and even then they don't really fight the same way. Instead it's just a light acknowledgement of their different views. Of course FF is where the Flanderization for Raph and Mikey begins due to the corporates mandated tone shift, so I am hesitant to fully look into that for this post).

The common theme is having patience and empathy towards the other in the anger and rage. Sure they may show it differently with Leo having a cool but long rage while Raph's a hot but fast rage that will have repeat explosions during stress rather than one very tense and intense build up, but they both have that similar passion with in them.

Giving each other room for their anger, letting them feel it without shame. Helping direct their energy towards a new outlet.

Look at how Raph did exactly that for Leo by letting him 1v1 rat king. And I've already talked about Leo doing the same for Raph in season 1.

So of course after the big explosion that leads to Leo being sent to ninja therapy, who's the first Leo goes looking for? Raph.

Instantly they both give each other reports on how the other's doing, both physically and emotionally. From there working together to find a new shelter and bring everyone back. When this happens Raph's tough guy person kicks in for everyone else. But he didn't have it up with Leo. There's a trust of emotional vulnerably there that's rarely seen else where in the series.

As I keep saying, they're best friends. Sure there's a little friendly rivarly here and there, but for the most part it's Raph poking fun[read: masking his worry] at Leo's perfectionism.

They both have this deep need to worry and protect the other and it shows through out the show. Like all the brothers they have this inherit trust, with that being part of why the Shredder was able to just brutalize Leo for a whole night on the rooftops, an in turn why Leo felt it would be Raph who was taking care of the rest of his family when he could not find them.

Of course this protects also extends emotionally, with Raph's rage at Leo's treatment from the Ninja Tribunal being at full front. Because he knows Leo would just take. That turtle seemingly only rises to Raph's taunts, not people who he see's as being more experienced and powerful. In turn Leo tries to protect Raph from himself, helping pull him back before he hurts Mikey in Meet Case Jones, knowing that Raph will hate himself for it, that and he was protecting Mikey but that's not who this post was about.(I can't think of any time per say Leo protects Raph socially, becuase Leo keeps reading as having introverted autistic swag. Man is not interested in hanging out with anyone but his brothers, even April he's a bit hesitant for. Unless it's someone he knows well, or it's related directly to battle, plans or action, he tends to hang out in the back of things. Raph meanwhile is super socially graceful and doesn't end up in situations where he needs such protecting.)

So over am in love with this dynamic. They are each other's pillars, they are brothers through and through. Pushing and pulling, always having a level of unbreakable confidence in the other while still being aware of their weaknesses and thus trying to step up and cover for them.

Truely the most turtles ever.

#I just love them so much!!!!!#I didn't even get into their silent communication cause all four brothers have moments of that #Leonardo Splinterson #Raphael Splinterson #tmnt #tmnt 2k3 #tmnt 2003 #teenage mutant ninja turtles #character meta #meta post #my post #text post #ask response #my asks #rootpost #long text post #my text post #nightwatcherraph

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supremefloof · 19 hours ago

Text

episode 14 thoughts

disco ball guy my beloved... spoilers

PACK IT UP GHOSTBLADE WE KNOW ITS YOU

guys. uh

anyways

seeing Zac and Rock interact was super funny. it's so weird to see the guy we know as Rock talking to someone who regards themselves as an equal.

this episode in general was really funny to me. I've heard a lot of criticisms of this ep already but I enjoyed it! bubbly little puddle of happiness in my brain.

I think tbhx just really resonates with me for some reason idk this show has brainrotted me beyond belief.

they say "his (dj shindig) era's over". what was that era? makes me think something happened that turned FOMO off from him. We also learn he's the fastest ever hero to become X, even now in presumably year 39/40.

made me think - the other major hero that has been described as quickly rising and affiliated with FOMO besides X is Ahu. something about FOMO's structure promotes really fast growth unheard of before.

Rock's words about how an agency should control or treat their heroes - heroes not being allowed to run rampant, handpicking heroes, etc. "like you said, when something doesn't serve you, leave it in the past." uhhhhhhhhhh hmmmmmm I WONDER what that could be about... HMMMM.... also, this pretty much confirms that MG handpicks heroes that are psychologically vulnerable.

So it's going to be interesting to see how this control is exerted on Ghostblade and Dragon Boy. In general, all MG heroes seem designed to be living weapons.

oh my god??????????? he can do that????? how the fuck was he using this power as a hero?? what ethical application is there for this shit???????

this guy won a hero tournament in record time. meaning he beat everybody else including the previous X at some point. I would love to see that fight but unfortunately he is a side character 😞

nuonuo the icon that you are

love how Shindig sounds like. actually distressed here LMAO

the way the only part he gets mad about is his disco ball head being referred to wrong 😭😭

Is the glimmer lab the same as the Aether lab?? is this a mistranslation??

Rock is a control freak. he seems chill but he is not chill. neat bit of characterization at the meeting. everybody calling their heroes on the phone lolll

man those guys are weirdly reasonable for a bunch of CEOs. guy suggests calling their heroes and they all actually do it

It seems like Loli's approach of using a mech suit is able to somewhat circumvent the limitations of Trust Value. of course however this could also be due to the suit being made of alien shit. which I will get to.

disco ball guy stole the show for me this episode. he's erratic, and very dangerous. gets ticked off by the smallest things, but also quick to act real pathetic. He seems reasonable sometimes but he is not. I can see situations where he is much scarier.

When he's cowering because Loli is slapping the shit out of him, he's actually also thinking and analyzing his situation. He was a top hero once and it's not unbelievable. Neat detail that although he's less relevant now he still does have a lot of Trust. As soon as he figures out a way to use his powers in this situation he goes instantly back to being super murder-y while Loli has her guard down.

yeah everybody who was once X needs therapy.

yess king outfit change slay

he looks like he belongs in a different anime LMAO

GHOSTBLADE WOOO! he's ranked #5 already by now and is MG's top hero. now, we know Dragon Boy becomes #3 so let's see how that pans out.

yeah ghostblade is going to be one of my favorites and he's done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

he's sent to deal with Shindig. and Ghostblade from what we know is really good at KILLING. so. presumably he's supposed to kill him. but Shindig is alive, so he either escaped or Ghostblade did not kill him.

there's hints that Ghostblade is not the obedient weapon that Rock wants all his heroes to be, so... hm

WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE ALIENS.

this is a genuine criticism of tbhx. from floof. le gasp. WHY ALIENS??? this feels like a cop out to fit the "power nullifying" trope.

X IS THE LAST LINE OF DEFENSE FOR WHEN TRUST FAILS, because he doesn't run on Trust or Fear. calling that shit rn

they have probably shown up in the opening though - probably those weird illuminati dudes. probably somehow associated with X because there's that billboard in the opening where he's next to the triforce.

also the triangle being a logo of the HAC.

spotlight org dude!!

aw man shindig might be dead... hopefully not? but more importantly, a "Spotlight" is an item! maybe one that gets rid of fear/ boosts trust.

i watched the CN version and the VA sounds SO FAMILIAR. I can't place from where, like maybe lu guang from link click? but it's not the same VA. the english VA sounds familiar too.

#tbhx #to be hero x #tu bian yingxiong x #凸变英雄x #tbhx spoilers #post #tbhx loli #tbhx luo li #tbhx ghostblade #mo sha #tbhx nuonuo #tbhx dj shindig #HEAR ME OUTTTT

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conron · 1 day ago

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knight! wolf x princess! reader

description: wolf is a boy who walks away from his village for something more. he finds a knight program, nice! too bad the princess is a stuck up bitch….

tags: knight wolf!, princess reader!, first meetings, language barrier but not that important, jake and jimmy also here, i just added them bc i like characterizing them as friends, wont get another chapter unless people like it and i give in, sorry about all the aus 😭😭😭, it’s fun okay…, fantasy inaccuracy, i do not care guys…., not beta read can you tell (obviously.)

…

It’s a wonder he became a knight at all.

He didn’t really have a true calling in life. Wolf liked fighting and that’s about it. Sometimes he smoked a pipe with his fellow knights in training.

He thinks it’s kinda funny how life plays out how it does. The streets gave him fuck shit, no point in staying there. He was born there though, fighting and falling on the cobblestone roads made sense. He was used to being dirty, bloody, and his bones aching.

It came as no surprise to him that he found a pull to that paper on the side of the wall. Of a bakery he didn’t mind going to, it was a place that trained men to fight with swords and shields. Of soldiers who could be promoted to knights.

It wasn’t the fact of being a knight that caught his eye, he didn’t really give a shit how much money he could make. This is the usual reason that most people did join the program after all. Being able to knight for someone gave you extra money and if you were good enough to knight for royalty was even better.

Sure, he could care but why would he? He just needed that little inkling of adrenaline to get his heart pumping. He ran out of people to hit that gave him a rush within his small town so he decided to pack his shit and leave.

(Not like he had much to his name anyway besides dead parents and a shack he slept in.)

He gave the rest of his money to some old people who ran the bakery he frequented and said one more fuck you to the boys who used to pick fights with him.

paying a very very special visit to a certain boy with darker magenta hair that curled around his face. fuckin’ soft bitch. thinking he can get away with talking big.

he hated people who talked big but couldn’t stand to him. him of all people, who was also skin and bones but at least he didn’t act like that. crying and sniveling not to be hit.

god.

There, 15 year old Wolf Keum left and traveled without a care.

He killed for survival as he traveled and stole when it was appropriate. He didn’t need a lot to survive truth be told. Just his fists, the clothes on his back, and a knife for when he was desperate.

When he finally reached the town that held the program, he stepped on smooth stone carved into roads. The surrounding was filled with white buildings and he stuck out like a sore thumb. His bored face looked around as he stared at palaces with as much interest as you would look at drying paint.

Right now, he was in the middle of the downtown area. obviously where the peasants lived but leagues more liveable than the village he came from. carriages coming in and out and street vendors calling out prices.

it’s loud and fucking degrees hotter than his hometown. he was used to wearing jackets and the desolate quiet of the forest. not whatever this is.

so wolf stood in the street of this fancy looking place where he didn’t belong. chaotic and bustling around him and the air stinging his dirty and bloody skin. he had haphazardly cleaned and bandaged his wounds. the white strips hanging off his skin as he squinted his eyes. bore his potato sack shirt, black pants, and shitty shoes that lady at the bakery threw at him before saying not to die on her.

ah shit.

where was he supposed to go?

“Are you lost?”

He turns his head from the disgustingly decorated establishment to a girl on his right. A hood on her head as she wore a simple dress. The bottom of it dirtied and her face looked up at him. A scowl appeared on his face as he sized her up.

Her face seemed soft, not like the faces of girls back in the shithole he called a hometown. Faces that have seen hunger, hardship, and starvation. No, this girl seemed to be fed well but her eyes darted around as if she was being followed.

Hm.

he actually can’t understand what she’s saying. the people in his village spoke with a lot more aggressive words in a language that was comforting to him.

He reached in his pocket and pulled out the beat up and faded paper advertising the service. Knights in training and soldiers if you weren’t good enough. It wasn’t advertised like that but it’s what he got when he made that lady in the bakery to translate it for him.

“Ah! Oh well it’s over there!”

A short manicured nail points in the direction of another fucking palace.

My god.

She can hear the exasperated sigh that leaves his lips as he scratches his head. The sun is really bright, and it’s making him sweat. God, fuck his messed up eyes. He can’t even see that far ahead and he can’t understand anything she’s even saying. this new land annoying and foreign to his ears.

Then he hears a laugh.

It’s annoying and loud and comes from the girl standing to his side. different than how people sounded in his village.

“I’ll show you the way.”

He moves out of the way where she tries to grabs his hand. He doesn’t understand why someone with such clean hands would try to grab his. Plus, he’s not interested in some stuck up city girl.

He thinks he’d get in trouble for looking so disgusted at the girl but she laughs again. A noise that’s starting to grate on his ears. a hand pointing to him then pointing to her, beckoning him along like a dog. gesturing to the paper in his hand.

oh.

Whatever.

So he follows and watches as she guides him to somewhere with big gates. Before he can turn to nod at her, his version of a thanks i guess, she’s gone. it’s still hot and he turns to go in the gates before he’s questioned by some snobby looking straight nosed bastard.

Where is he heading?

he doesn’t bother with trying his luck at knowing if the man can speak this language, only holding up the paper.

He is immediately dragged by the arm and shoved into an arena with a dozen or so other men.

This is when he’s immediately started training for this stupid ass kingdom in a place he gives no fucks about. he can’t even understand the people who are speaking around him. But he’s allowed to spar and he’s itching to wipe that stupid smirk off the lanky bastard in front of him.

So months go by, then a few years and suddenly he’s 18. he learns the language over time, a boy named jake helping him read the newspaper. because hell, he won’t survive here if he doesn’t learn.

another boy named jimmy wont stop making fun of how his rough voice lets words leave his lips all jagged and ugly. its then he cusses in his own language and stares at him with wide eyes. it makes the peach haired boy roll his eyes before correcting his accent.

he learns the language with an obvious accent, unlike the others who came from different languages. softer than his. more masking of the accent. he doesn’t care enough to change every inch of himself.

he also learns his name, which is the only name he was ever called, is actually an animal. an animal that is named a completely different word in his language. so his name is apparently really fucking weird and makes guys poke fun at him.

he tests out how strong his knuckles are when he beats them up the first week he’s there.

He’s not clean cut like Jake and he doesn’t mouth off after every five seconds like Jimmy. he didn’t care much for anything at all to be honest. indifferent and bored half the time.

No, the only thing he ever gotten in trouble was for fighting and getting in scraps. He liked baring his teeth and beating his fists without shields or swords. Nothing to hold him back from whaling on the piece of shit in front of him.

Armor was a hassle and gloves removed the satisfaction of the burn on his knuckles. Swords were annoying and shields made him think.

He enjoyed using his head but most times, he liked just pummeling the person in font of him with no regard for anything else.

It came time for his ceremony since he was one of the few to be chosen to be knights from his sector. Along with Jake, Jimmy, and some other people he didn’t bother remembering.

The royal palace was extravagant, beautiful, and stuffy. He couldn’t care less about the things he saw or the glamorous colors that graced his eyes. But he walked with his back straight and holding the handle of his sword.

He wore some stuffy suit that was required before going into the palace. shackled with jewels and gems. shoulder pads making him feel ridiculous but he’s glad everyone else looks stupid too. must be what royalty is stroking their dicks about in fashion. not like he’d know. he wore training clothes the program provided him with for the last three years.

Jake and Jimmy both laugh when they made him slick his hair back. It made him itch to slam his elbow into each of their mouths respectively and he thinks he should go to heaven because he didnt. the gel they put in his hair didn’t help though when he just shook it out like a wet dog.

When him and 6 of the men he’s trained alongside with for the past few years kneel next to an aisle, he hears footsteps. They all bow their heads as they were trained to do.

And out walks the royal family.

A pretentious looking king, a haughty queen, and three daughters that are probably arrogant to a fault. He wrinkles his nose, smelling the privilege from years away.

Good god.

Maybe it would’ve been better for him to just stick to being a foot soldier.

Too late now he guesses.

There’s an announcer from his sector, his leader that is stronger than any of them so he was granted the title. he’d know. he once mouthed off after feeling like shit to the man named donald. the guy sucker punched him in the throat before he even finished the sentence.

“Here we have contenders that would be good for your daughters to pick, Sir.”

Donald’s voice is smooth and persuading and kinda makes Wolf wanna move and walk out of the palace. a finger behind his back that means something disrespectful in this land. he didn’t know he was knighting for these girls.

but he signed his life away with a bloody thumb print because god knows he never went to school. never had that privilege. so whatever.

said three girls walk around the men kneeled at their very will. Wolf keeps his head down and watches as shoes that cost more than his entire life worth walk around him. Clicking softly.

“What’s your name?”

A head of orange next to him opens his eyes and looks to Wolf. He gives an indifferent stare back. Jake looks almost as miserable as he does, bastard can’t hide it either.

“Jake Ji, dear princess.”

The woman squeals and giggles. Another thing that makes Wolf roll his eyes. Jake had a pretty soft looking face, eyes that stared at those stupid newspaper clipping stories like his life depended on it. If only these girls know how much the idiot sobs over said stupid characters in the newspaper.

There are two distinct voices that are cooing at the attractive men and giggling at their responses that most crafted during lunch. betting on which ones will make the girls swoon more. wolf was not present for this, more occupied sharpening his sword in the barracks. while jimmy lied in his bed and grumbled about the noise and jake rambling about the new issue.

The girls don’t seem to have an interest in him. gravitating towards his more slick looking comrades. ones who cared to shine their swords and ones who maybe didn’t have blood on the cuffs of their suits.

Thank god. Keep him off the royal leash.

he decides he’d be fine with being a foot soldier. just need to get out of this hell made of gold and quartz. he hasn’t even had to say anything this entire time.

“Hey you.”

it’s a new voice standing in front of him. must be the third one. not like he cares, he’s close to falling asleep. she must be talking to jimmy or jake.

He keeps his head down before Jake nudges his elbow. he feels a wave of irritation at the prospect of being touched when everything is so overstimulating but Jake’s voice is soft under the noise of the other men sugaring up the princesses.

“She’s talking to you, Wolf.”

“Wolf?”

twitch to his eyebrow at the emphasized sound of his name.

he has no idea how the girl heard jake but she does under the noise. the third princess who hadn’t said anything in the past 10 minutes suddenly bursts out in the most annoying and maddening laugh he’d ever heard in his fucking life.

“Wolf? That’s your NAME?”

There’s a figure crouched in front of him and he bites his cheek. he catches a glimpse of manicured nails and glittery fabric as he carefully keeps his head bowed. so she doesn’t see the way he’s biting his lip.

he can hear the way other chatter has stopped at her laugh. overpowering with a high pitch. eyes on him and the princess. eyes from jimmy and jake on both sides of him, seemingly trying to stare some more brain cells into wolf.

too bad for them. he has enough and he still grunts out a singular response. rough and no sweetness coating his voice.

“Yes.”

He feels scrutinizing eyes on him at the sound of no smooth delivery or a nice title following the word. a thick accent on the word as he almost spits it out. A mean scowl starts tugging at his lips but he tries desperately to smooth it down before he’s killed execution style.

“Raise your head, Wolf.”

And because on his knees isn’t a good place to attack someone, he does. he can see a young and feminine face looking down at him. the girl seems the youngest from her sisters. he honestly didn’t know much about them, he didn’t stare at the newspaper like jake did.

her eyes bright and smiling at him. as if there’s a joke he doesn’t understand and her crown sits a bit too forward atop her head. bending her knees under her dress, she reaches his level.

Being crouched isn’t a very good look on a princess, her face very close to his as his fellow knights in training stare in shock. Terrified that Wolf might swing at royalty. knowing the boy is a firecracker who has no qualms to fight almost anyone.

the royalty in question staring with shocked and disgusted faces. there’s a reason the other two stood tall over the men. a reason why they kept a distance.

The woman who’s in front of him smiles a big grin before taking a strand of his hair in her finger. jake’s eyes close in peaceful ignorance, deciding to not worry about the man next to him. waves of anger pulsating off of him.

the girl looks at the wavy purple hair through the sunlight in the window. examining something before standing and pointing at him, childish and happy.

“I want this one!”

her finger pointed from above him and her voice rings out, loud and happy. much to the jawed drops of his associates and the disapproval of her family. pointing at him like he’s a literal dog and he feels his eye twitch.

Aw hell.

Her father and mother are saying no to her decision but the princess number three is set on her decision. Smiling down at him but not demeaning. Not smug and not vain.

He can’t see the way Jimmy has a shit eating smirk and Jake is staring at him as if he’s gonna kill the youngest princess of the royal family.

Well he’s not that stupid is he?

so much to dismay of her family, she is set on her decision. and the soon to be knights leave the estate. before they immediately hound wolf, laughing that he got chosen soon so early. usually it took a little more visits but she chose him very easily.

he can’t help but glare at everyone until they all but jimmy still backtalks him. almost crying from laughing about how wolf looked as if he was gonna pounce on that girl.

well, fuck his life.

#fanfic #fanfiction #charlotteqfton #ao3 fanfic #ao3 writer #wolf keum #wolf keum x reader #geum seongje #x reader #fem reader #weak hero class two #weak hero fanfic #weak hero x reader #jake ji #jimmy bae #geum seongje x reader #geum seong je x reader

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majimaisms · 10 hours ago

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sometimes i wonder if theres a meta(i guess.?) aspect to how kiryu and majima never quite “work”, (i am NOT saying ‘theyre queerbaiting!’ or ‘it was actually supposed to be like this but my uncle works at rgg and told me they changed it!’ LOL) i am a big kiryu fan and honestly half the shit he does feels like its supposed to lean into this like. Male Stoicism because hes the macho man protagonist, except for substories, where he is more vulnerable and open with people (including…goromi…but not majima…ill let that simmer) at times kiryu can feel like a disney animal sidekick where his role in the story is reflecting what energy other people are bringing to the interaction rather than what he “is” if that makes sense (while i relate as Captain Autism i severely doubt that was rgg’s intention with this characterization. lol)

i’m saying “meta” here because between eng and jpn dialogue sometimes the eng version really does feel like “sorry majima san if this looks gay/not hypermasculine to the viewers” LMAO

youre completely right in saying majima cares abt him more than he does majima. which is truly tragic. but i find it interesting that in ishin and kenzan, two spinoffs that carry zero of the baggage of the games, they’re WAY closer and have way less ambiguity as to how they feel about each other . Like truly if you want this fanon dynamic to kazumaji that everyone thinks exists. (Which is fine i love playing dolls im just saying the main games arent ideal for this.) Just play Ishin

okay, gonna try to address all of these points, and it'll be pretty long so im putting it under a cut

hi!! first of all dont worry about the paragraph vomit lol i like getting long asks <3

so, i'm still a little unclear on what the "meta aspect" youre suggesting for kiryu and majima not working is...? but i will say that kiryu does not i think lean into the stoic male archetype, but he is *seen* that way by everyone around him. there was an rggo story that touched on this. people see him and think he must be the tough, gruff, never-shows-his-emotions hypermasculine hero, and they're intimidated by him or perceive him as an instant Threat to their own masculinity. but he's not, not in the way other characters of that archetype are, he's literally just. kind of autistic. but actually quite emotional and passionate and empathetic. i dont think this is a coincidence, he is characterized this way consistently throughout the series. it's not that the writers were *trying* to write that kind of character but ended up with something else. in fact rggs' writing team regularly astonishes me with the amount of thought and detail put into characterization. they are really, really good at writing characters that feel real, fleshed out, and true to life.

the thing here to note, i think, is that for characters to feel "true to life" to an audience, they have to share some cultural context with the writers. kiryu, majima, and in fact all rgg characters, are people whose motivations, expressions, "vibes" will not be immediately obvious to a western audience. for japanese fans of the series, a lot of things simply "click" into place, intuitively, through subtleties that western fans will not and cannot recognize. another thing to note is that rgg emulates a very specific genre of japanese cinema called "ninkyo". so a lot of character archetypes are borrowed from or subvert that genre. @0nsyu-archive would have much better insights on this, so i'll tag him just in case he wants to add something

another thing is age. kiryu and majima were born in the 60s. their patriarchs, the men they idolize, were born in 1945 and 1948 (!!!) respectively. kiryu spent 10 years of his life in prison and never fully recovered from that setback. their social environment, cultural environment, *values* and *awareness* in general is very different to a lot of their audience's. they are very old school. but they are also products of a changing world. the fact that kiryu criticizes "financial power and a loving family" being "common sense" makes so much sense to me. it's only jarring if you read kiryu as being intentionally portrayed as earnestly hypermasculine. but as i pointed out, the writers are very deliberate about how they write characters, and kiryu always has been quite sentimental and unconcerned with his masculinity. he's not trying to prove anything to anyone, including himself. he's concerned with different things. "being a man" is about *doing the right thing*, not performing masculinity. and this also comes down to different cultural values. it's about protecting women, about not being greedy or opportunistic or underhanded... the "masculine ideal" for a yakuza is not the same as the western masculine ideal.

kiryu is an outcast. all yakuza are outcasts. this is the core of this lifestyle. they are social rejects who have nothing but their honor. the protagonists and main characters are who view the yakuza as a family for people who have no other choice, who have been rejected by and have rejected in return, mainstream society. this is the vision for the tojo clan (and the yakuza) that the "old guard" are trying to protect, in a world that is increasingly more concerned with money instead of what's right or wrong. kiryu, and all the main characters, think being yakuza, being an outcast, is cool. it is by its very nature a rejection of "common sense" and what society Wants them to do. so what he's saying here – of course kiryu understands this. he has nothing to his name. he has no family, no money, no assets. he's an orphan who dropped out of school, he has no prospects. having a "loving family" was never an option for him growing up, and he doesnt seem interested in having a romantic relationship or marrying a woman. he understands that having "financial power" requires education or having inherited money, or bootlicking rich assholes his whole life. if youre going to be bootlicking your entire life, isn't it better to do that for someone you *choose*, someone YOU think is worthy of it? someone you admire? this is the core of what being yakuza is about, this is the appeal. kiryu does not blindly follow social conventions, it's quite the opposite – hes consciously rejecting them, and has been his whole life. even his ideal family is an unconventional one, and this is pointed out in the game itself in that fortune teller substory; he's a single father of 9 and has never been married.

im not sure i ever got the impression while playing these games that i was being "apologized to" for kiryu acting gay or less than perfectly hypermasculine. it is played as funny, for sure, but i dont think rggs has ever felt the need to compensate for kiryu's masculinity. again, i think this is partly because the "masculine ideal" of the yakuza and the western fanbase are completely different.

i definitely agree that kiryu kind of just goes with the flow of what everyone else is bringing to the interaction rather than what he "is", but i think the meta aspect there comes from the fact that he is a playable character and the protagonist, in a way thats more about leaving kiryu as a blank page for players to project onto. i think its generally true for kiryu as a character however that he just sort of takes what life gives him. i cant attest to this personally just because i am not very familiar with japanese media, but a friend once pointed out this is very common in japanese media as opposed to american media where the main characters are always going out of their way to get what they want, to work for something they're trying to achieve, and they're very driven. majima is like this. but if you look at characters like kiryu, saejima, daigo, i do think it's true that there is a sort of "acceptance" of their position and doing their best to *honor* that instead of like, working to change their fate with their own hands. things sort of just... happen to kiryu. he doesn't *make* things happen.

if you look at rggs' writing and the themes and values it deals with, i think it's very clear they are not trying to prop kiryu up as someone to emulate or look up to, btw. he is a tragedy, just a compelling one. but the way kiryu is presented is not because it is *endorsed* by the writers. this is why infinite wealth is what it is. they've started making their stance on these things more obvious in ichiban's saga instead of sticking to ninkyo conventions, at least as far as i can tell.

as for the points about kiryu and majima specifically, i actually don't know if majima cares about kiryu than kiryu cares about him. i don't really know how to quantify "care" here, or to compare it. majima is more affected by kiryu leaving than kiryu is by leaving kamurocho (and majima), is that because majima cares more about kiryu, or is it because he's more neurotic and has less things going on in his life? i think it's more accurate to say that kiryu and majima care about each other in *different* ways. but this asymmetry does not necessarily have to be the "amount" of care, if that makes sense.

ive played ishin btw and i love their dynamic in it, and id actually heard similar things about it so i kinda went into it thinking "okay, maybe this is the game that will sell me on kazumaji" LMAO. and i will say that they definitely make sense to me as friends in that game, in a way they dont in the main series, but i still couldn't "see" it as a ship. but that's just me lmao

AS FOR GOROMI. god i hope i can keep this one short ive already talked so much. but its one of my favorite things to talk about.

i dont know if you've met guys irl who have trouble speaking to women, but god knows i have. in my experience its usually because they get nervous because they aren't confident in their *ability* to communicate with women (and kiryu is already naturally awkward and bad at communication) and their whole lives they've seen men and women as different species because theyve lived in a culture that treated them as such, and not been exposed to social circles where they aren't seen that way. again, it's very "old school"

and this is way more common in cultures where people are more sexually repressed/frustrated and where there's less gender equality. because it becomes a huge deal, and this, like, elephant in the room. people are taught as children that relationships between men and women are always sexual, and this colors their experience interacting with the opposite sex for the rest of their lives. often times this is accompanied by insane amounts of misogyny. for someone who is already uncomfortable with sex and sexuality, for someone like kiryu, this raises the stakes very high.

but those men don't have a problem talking to me, and they openly admit to this. i think they are more comfortable talking to openly queer/gnc people because it feels like there is less at stake. like, you're already more of a freak than they ever could be so you can't judge them, or sometimes, you're as much of a freak as they are (sometimes because theyre queer and don't know it themselves, sometimes its autism and the ostracization that comes from that, sometimes both or other factors that contribute to them feeling like they cannot perform the social role theyve been assigned correctly, ie not performing masculinity correctly when it comes to sexuality) so they feel safe. the stakes are lower. i think for kiryu to feel this way he might also need to perceive majima as nonthreatening, as in, believe there can't actually be anything sexual between them. because if he didn't believe that, he would still feel nervous. this is only one possible explanation but it's one that makes sense to me, especially with how he says "why are you so offended? you're not even a girl" admitting he doesn't actually see goromi as a woman. and that's *why* he feels comfortable talking to her. if he saw her as a woman (aka potential sexual partner) he wouldn't have felt comfortable. maybe, though, goromi severs that tie between "woman=potential sexual partner" for kiryu. because he knows majima, and doesn't see him as either. i dont know, there's different possible readings here

anyway, i dont think kiryu is constructing intricate rituals – i dont think kiryu is constructing *anything*. i think its majima who does that. and those rggo stories do not necessarily imply kiryu is going there *for* goromi, it's just his preferred hostess club and majima is taking advantage of that. that being said, i don't think kiryu would be unhappy about this at all. i think, regardless of the reason, having the opportunity to talk to a woman he doesn't feel uncomfortable around is enjoyable and precious for him

honestly, thinking about it, i think its just the case that he's bad at talking to people in general. like its not even just with women. it's just that with men, he doesn't have to talk. he can let his fists do the talking. i think majima being an excellent conversationalist is part of it too, he can carry the conversation but he's also blunt enough that he'll just scold kiryu for not keeping up. majima is very real around him as goromi, so its easy to match that energy, i think. too bad majima has problems that make him incapable of doing this under any other circumstances <333

sorry if i misinterpreted any of your points, i think i kinda just took the opportunity to talk about some things i like to talk about JDKSHDKKF. feel free to explain further if it feels like i didnt address something!!

#thank you for the ask!#SORRY THIS GOT SO LONG #hope its insightful in some way at least #i think kiryu is socially progressive in some ways and not others btw and thats. yknow. most people #but the reasons and attitudes and worldviews we associate with certain progressive stances #that we've identified as a pattern. things that we assume go hand in hand #do not necessarily follow that pattern in other cultures #is basically my point #kiryu is socially progressive in a lot of ways because he is an outcast in a way that doesn't quite have an equivalent in western culture #and because hes empathetic and compassionate #these things make up the core of his character. to me #asks #kiryu #kiwami #my analysis #i suppose

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