#there was so so much time to allow this to happen

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the death of independent journalism...unprecedented internet censorship...rise of misinformation as a tool of fascism...the increasing difficulty of finding and verifying what is real, what is propaganda.......these things are all related

am I crazy or does the fact that google has become unusable feel premeditated

[celestiamour]

‧₊˚✧ ❛[ we're doing better ]❜

ft. the salesman (gong ji-cheol) x f! reader — squid game

╰₊✧ your husband has finally been honest with you, but what now?┊3.0k words; prt one (here)

contains: his pov, lots of perspective and lore, love at first sight, happy ending where the reader forgives him, note that sociopathic/psychopathic behavior has no known cure & that this is unrealistic fiction, he can’t be fixed but he can be here <3

➤ author's note: the long-awaited & heavily-requested part two!! the ending is sucky because i didn’t plan to write a part two and because i personally wouldn’t have forgiven him, but lots of you guys seemed to want to. i wanted to write something exploring their relationship, so i hope this is received well & that you guys will enjoy!

“i love you too, i’ll be back in the morning” were the last words you said to him before rushing out the door and disappearing to your mother’s house. that was last night, but it was now early evening with the sun finishing its descent over the horizon and you were nowhere to be seen. he briefly wondered if you were also watching it from wherever you were like he was through the window, knowing that you adored the beautiful array of colors blending into each other and always pointed it out when you were with him. he never cared for it himself and took the sight for granted until you came along. now he’s aching for your presence asking him if he thought it was pretty when you were always the prettiest sight in his eyes with the orange light reflecting on you.

his hand was itching to call you or send a text, but he decided against it. you needed your space, especially after that fateful conversation which left him with regret weighing heavy on his chest. he wasn’t sure what the regret stemmed from, if it was regret from not trying harder to keep his secret, if it was from not being more careful to hide his tracks from seong gi-hun, if it was from attempting to build a normal life, or if it was leading the type of life had in the first place. it was a mix of everything, and he hated the feeling of it.

gong ji-cheol never regretted anything in his life. he didn’t regret spending his days getting a sadistic kick out of playing judge and jury to people he viewed as worthless trash when they lost against him, whether it was slapping people he was recruiting into games they would inevitably die in or spending his free time messing around with homeless people. he didn’t regret getting tangled up with the mysterious oh il-nam and the activities occurring on that island, starting as a guard and working his way up to a salesman. he didn’t regret firing a gun on his own father in cold blood when he unknowingly begged his own flesh and blood to spare him.

he’s a man who was steadfast and stubborn when it came to his fucked-up morals and ideals, always believing from a young age that it made him better than others. there was never a reason for him to change as he got older when he found himself working for a hidden organization that introduced him to the addicting taste of death, paid well, and protected him from the law if the unlikely situation of getting caught by authorities for his crimes ever happened. he never cared to do the right thing was doing wrong was just so much more suited to him, never minding the strict set of rules he had to adhere to as long as he was allowed to freely exercise his psychopathic tendencies without trouble following him. it made him feel like a god at times who was so high above normal people if he ignored that he was still an employee with a boss.

and now he’s sitting in the living room, disheveled and staring at the floor waiting for your return like a dog awaiting its master.

he couldn’t even be mad at you for storming out like that. he’s surprised about how mellow your reaction was to learning the truth of his occupation and how dirty the cash he used to spoil you was, how you didn’t scream loud enough for the neighbors to hear, and how you didn’t call the police— or maybe you had already called them at some point today and his friends in higher places were working to keep him safe. more than anything, he misses you, filled with a feeling of longing he doesn’t think he’s ever felt before.

at first, he was only trying to look normal. the people around him started to wonder why a man as tall and handsome as he with money that flowed in like water from an unknown source he kept secret was still single. when people wonder, they start to become nosy. he couldn’t have that if he wanted to keep up the lifestyle he had, so he started searching for someone suited to be his wife. 

to others, he seemed incredibly picky, never reaching out for a second date even once or even bothering to send a polite text saying he didn’t feel a connection. to him, he didn’t think he was picky enough. despite carefully combing through his options and sometimes even hiring private investigators to stalk them if needed, there was always something he missed which was a dealbreaker for him in a relationship: ignorance and stupidity, improper table manners when he reserved at a fine restaurant, running more than fifteen minutes late without traffic in the way, and most importantly for him, asking too many prying personal questions which weren’t relevant on the first date. yes, he understands that first dates are all about getting to know each other, no, he doesn’t find it necessary to talk about stupid things. although he would rather not say anything at all, he’s very particular about how quickly he shares information about himself with others and gets ticked off by anyone who tries too hard to learn more about it (he won’t admit it, but he also gets a bit threatened by it).

by the time the day his first date with you rolled around, he was ready for it to be his last before he lived out his life alone as originally planned. he lost his faith that he would find someone who lived up to his lofty expectations and received news that oh il-nam was dead. the next games were canceled to mourn the loss of the founder, and part of ji-cheol wondered if he should cancel the date as well to take the time to pay his respects. he didn’t think you would be the one and believed there wouldn’t be any difference whether or not he actually showed up.

yet there was something in him that refused to pick up the phone and make up an excuse. it was indescribable like a higher power making sure that he followed the path intended for him. he told himself it was nothing but not wanting to be rude when it was only half an hour before the arranged time and because he didn’t want to pay the cancellation fee, nothing more nothing less. he never cared before if he was thought of as rude to people he didn’t intend to keep in his life for long, and he had enough money to buy the entire place if he wanted to.

so what was his problem all of a sudden?

you showed up perfectly on time, a few seconds before the clock struck, looking beautiful. it’s not a word he uses often. pretty, maybe, but not beautiful, yet it was the first word that crossed his mind when you introduced yourself. he found himself enamored by your presence and everything about it from how you carried yourself to the subtle glitter eyeshadow that made your eyes sparkle to the dainty jewelry hanging around your neck, so enamored that he forgot to accept your outstretched hand and to get up to pull out your seat for you at first.

more than easy on the eyes, dressed appropriately, good table manners, well-educated, never pressing too hard on matters he clearly didn’t want to talk about, you were quickly checking off everything on his list as his partner— although what he was really looking for was to draw away suspicions and your likable personality made you perfect for the job, he could even see you as a companion. even if you were visibly nervous, he didn’t mind, your timidness was adorable actually, akin to a little bunny being fed by his hand.

when he finally got home, he realized he was still smiling when he’s usually constantly reminding himself to do so. he also realized that he lost track of time and came back a whopping two hours later than he expected.

it was history from there, gong ji-cheol, a man who saw other humans as unequal trash, had succumbed to love at first sight, which baffled him.

it made him remember a scene from his childhood, one where he asked his mother why she remained married to his deadbeat father after another night of him not showing up in favor of gambling and drinking instead of spending it with his own family. she embraced him with tears, once again reminding him of her own tale of love at first sight, and also telling him that when you’re so deep in love like she was, you’re willing to forgive them for anything.

he thought she was stupid for that. now he knows he’s truly just like his mother just like everyone said.

you were shy in the first steps of the relationship, quickly realizing that you had become a glorified sugar baby of sorts. he didn’t know how to express his affection through words nor did he have the extra time to spend with you during that time of the year, so he spoiled you with lavish gifts and wealth beyond your wildest dreams. any debts you might have were paid off, one of the nicest condos in korea was bought for you to move in together, your parent's retirement was paid off in full to allow them to stop working, and any other money-related issues were quickly covered by him. you could even quit your job if you wanted to, but you didn’t want to become too dependent on him and wouldn’t know what to do with all the extra time in your day.

it soon became clear there was a boundary not to be crossed, which was not to dig too much into his personal life. if he gave you a curt, general answer to your question, you were not to say anything more about the matter. no one you spoke to about this thought this was too strange, even when you were preparing to get married, because what was there to worry your pretty head about? you love him and he loves you, he was treating you better than a queen, and his wealth spread into your circle of people you cared about with friends getting luxury perfumes and parents getting first-class tickets to wherever they wanted. in a way, they didn’t want to ask any more questions if it meant angering him and possibly not having these things anymore.

you never liked it, but he never cared about it. they were just trivial things and he was perfectly fine with sharing what he had, or at least, that’s what he told you. it was mainly to ensure he was well-liked among them and no one would ever try to come between you.

the only people who ever did were a few snakes parading as your friends trying to steal him away from you, trying to seduce him, and getting too close for his comfort. you were too sweet to notice and always forgave it if you did, but he noticed their lingering eyes and was disgusted. it was the one time he allowed his mask to slip, calling them out for being human garbage with a polite smile on his face as they gasped in shock. if they tried to cry to you about how awful he was to them, he simply told you the truth and encouraged you to cut them off which you always did.

the garden he carefully cultivated of a normal domestic life was flourishing. you were so captivated by the colorful flowers he planted and the butterflies pollinating them that you didn’t notice how dirty his gloved hands were when ripping out anything that didn’t belong like weeds trying to sprout through the soil. he was always sure to take them off and discard them afterward, never daring to touch you with the sins of his life outside of you.

then you fell pregnant after months of trying, and while he was overjoyed at first with renovations in mind to turn one of the extra rooms into a nursery, there was an unease in him wondering if the child would turn out like him: a remorseless psychopath who would one day kill his own father as he did his. he would later by a few books about parenting, hoping that he could prevent that type of future.

time flew by and he hadn’t killed anyone in a while although he was still complicit in hundreds of deaths a year. his violent urges slowly calmed and his hand was only raised during ddakji matches, but even then, they were more gentle than before (which meant that they still stung and made their face swell up, but it was an improvement when in the past, he would sometimes hit them so hard that they could taste blood on their tongue). 

the effects of being a husband and soon-to-be father were changing who he was at his very core, but it didn’t change everything he’s already done.

he was stupid to think he could have such a picture-perfect life with the woman he loved after everything. for someone who meticulously plans out things down to each syllable of the words he spoke, he didn’t have the foggiest idea what to do once he was found out.

the law couldn’t touch him, but he didn’t care about the law, he cared about you and your unborn child. 

he ran his hand through his messy dark locks, sighing in frustration trying to think of a solution as he dug around the kitchen until he fished out an entire bottle of wine. he could manipulate himself out of this situation as he had done countless times before, he’s a snake with a forked silver tongue who could easily get his way just by flickering it, but the thought of lying to you again broke his once unfeeling heart. it would never be the same way again with your relationship tainted with distrust. the truth would have to come out eventually.

oh god, but what would he do without you? 

before he could begin to spiral for the fourth time that day about what would happen if you left him, the familiar sound of a keypad being pressed and the front door being unlocked. he froze in place, not expecting you to come back at that very moment— but he wasn’t sure what he was expecting. he wasn’t sure of anything, simply staring at you when you caught him hunched over the counter drinking straight from a bottle of wine and looking like a child whose mom just caught him sneaking a snack at two in the morning.

“oh god, i leave for a day and you’re already a wreck, what happened to the ji-cheol who’s always put together even when it’s raining?” you approached him casually, reaching up to mess around with his hair until he looked more like his usual self. there was an air of awkwardness you tried to hide and was successful for the most part, but he could read you easier than a book. you were nervous around him now, acting with slight fear and carefulness like you were inching around a predator, and even flinched when he hugged you to feel your presence and breathe in your scent. 

you hugged him back after a moment, looking up at him with your voice shaking, “if it’s really… that… then i understand it would be dangerous for you to tell me, so i won’t ask any more questions… i don’t… i don’t want to leave you and leave our child fatherless…”

if you were any other person in the world, he would have smirked at the fact that he didn’t need to bother trying to manipulate you into staying with him. he would have relished his control over you and how you came back in the end, free to continue killing and asking people to play a game with him to satisfy his sadistic desires. 

but you weren’t any other person in the world, you were his wife.

“you really forgive me? after knowing all that?”

“i guess love really does let you look past everything no matter how bad… at least you didn’t cheat on me as my friends suggested, that would be the real unforgivable offense…”

the topic of his occupation never came up again, but he made the choice to resign on account of it no longer fitting with his current lifestyle. the current frontman, who was an old friend of his, looked upon him fondly for his loyalty, thanked him for his service, and was even kind enough to use his connections to find him a new place to work. it was boring by his standards, but it paid well and wasn’t illegal, so he persevered. he now has plenty of things to tell you about his workplace, from the annoying co-worker who keeps showing him the most random unfunny things on the internet to how the coffee shop downstairs wasn’t half bad. mundane things that made you grin when he told you about his day, which was all that mattered to him.

you soon gave birth to a healthy baby girl with his eyes and your smile. the world became a lot brighter, even with all the sleepless nights of her crying and learning how to change diapers. she was a little joy born out of his love for you. 

finally, you’re both doing better, and he no longer has to hide himself away from you.

tag list!! @tric0rd / @solatiiium / @iloveragdollcats / @sugaremedy / @pear-1206 / @orangutanjazz / @boowiththegoo / @knoepfl / @miaasmf / @queenjang21 / @larissa-slays69 / @munch3025 / @qrstarz / @capital-koreasofia / @swiftieee4lifeee / @liliylikescats / @maryyyswift / @vaenys2 / @bane-y-zane / @dynaloy / @chunkzdeluluwife / @everyonelovestay / @tomhollandtoothbrush

there will not be a part three, thank you for reading!!

[inklessletter]

Of bows and ducks 🐤

Patreon | Bluesky | Instagram

(Ficlet 👇🏻👇🏻 👇🏻)

[W: 1.6k - Rated M: Chrissy's POV, angst, eating disorder, abusive household]

Chrissy Cunningham wears bright eyeshadows because it distracts people’s attention from her crooked teeth.

Chrissy Cunningham wakes up half an hour before to curl her ponytail to create the impression that she has more hair than she actually has.

Chrissy Cunningham wears oversized clothes because it creates the illusion that she’s smaller.

Chrissy Cunningham has been shaving her legs since she was eight years old.

All of Chrissy Cunningham’s underwear is cotton white, and her mother cuts all the decorative little bows off.

Chrissy Cunningham hasn’t slept more than five hours at night in years, because perfection takes time.

Chrissy Cunningham hasn’t finished any meal since she was eleven, because it makes her look exemplary to her parents’ friends when she says she’s full before finishing, even if she's still hungry.

Chrissy Cunningham’s mother taught her all of this.

So, it’s safe to say that every morning, when she wakes up from yet another short sleep, Chrissy Cunningham doesn’t know who Chrissy Cunningham is. She feels like her own skin isn’t hers, it’s just some character that her mother has carefully created, and it’s a role she can’t break free from. 

Chrissy Cunningham doesn’t exist, not really.

Her friends don’t talk about this. They occasionally whine about the food or their body size, but they always take a few minutes to look at themselves in the mirror of the school restroom to style out their hair, or to put some make up on that they have to hide from their parents. 

Chrissy hates mirrors, because she always has the supernatural feeling that her reflection is someone else’s, but it was starting to get suspicious that she didn’t even put lip gloss, so she bought one last summer at Starcourt mall. 

She liked the mall. It was one of the few places she was allowed to go with her friends without her mother’s scrutinizing eye on her at all times. She used to side eye that one lingerie shop, wondering if she would ever wear one of the lacey black panties.

Well, not actually those, but something that is not white. Hell, if she was honest to herself, she would settle for just keeping the little bows. She’d settle for her mother not manipulating her intimate clothes.

She thought of stealing a pair of hot pink panties, but she’s too much of a coward. 

There’s something Chrissy’s friend used to do every time after shopping, though, and it would later keep her awake at night out of pure guilt. They would go to the ice cream parlor. She couldn’t buy an ice cream, actually, because her mother always counted the money and made her give it all back, then asked for the receipts, and she couldn’t just see one of an ice cream because that’d mean that she won’t have dinner for the following week (unfinished meals every night are better than no meal at all).

But she would go there, anyway, and let her friends engage with the Harrington boy so they could get a discount from him, and she’d glance more than once at the display of several flavors behind the glass, fantasizing how many scoops she’d have, or which ones she would choose, and then, with no fail, the other cashier, Robin Buckley, from school band, would come to ask which one she wants to try. It makes Chrissy feel naughty, she always picks a different one, but buys nothing. 

That happens several times. She tries not to think how sad it is that this little thing is actually thrilling. Something so small that makes her feel like she still exists.

Robin’s in uniform but she manages to own it. Her shoes are scribbled all over, she wears a lot of trinkets, little chains, silver (her mother doesn’t let her wear silver, just gold), her hair is cut unevenly, and looks like she tried to make highlights at home with cleaning bleach, and her smudge eyeshadow seems to be done with her finger.

Chrissy likes that so very much. Robin shows through the uniform. She slips through the cracks, like yelling at the world that Robin exists, that Robin is.

It’s not nice to compare, but she looks at her group of friends and thinks that they all… they all kind of look the same. And they worry about the same silly stuff that seems ordinary but is out of Chrissy’s reach, like parents not going for a weekend so they can sneak their boyfriends in.

They all share that they won't see Chrissy, either. Not really.

Not ever.

Because they are all the same person.

That’s an unkind thought.

Maybe Chrissy is unkind.

Then the Starcourt mall burns down and it feels like a divine intervention for how secretly petty she is when she’s there.

It happens in July, and since Chrissy’s mother won’t let her go to any parties, she starts training near the school for when the cheerleading season begins again, and that’s when she meets Jason Carver. 

He’s on the basketball court and she’s running laps. They steal glances and that’s exciting, because the boy is beautiful. His smile looks like  the prologue of a tragedy and she falls in love with that feeling. They exchange more than glances and smiles and she wants things she never wanted before. It all fades into the blur of a far away memory right when school begins and they trade hot kisses and love bites for holding hands in the hallway. 

She feels nothing for him when Chrissy realizes Jason loves the curated version that her mother has made out of her, not actually her. He loves that she’s girly, and perfectionist with her looks, that she’s fit and petite, that unnatural lovely hair swirl, that she wears cute colors on her eyelids and that she always leaves fries for him whenever they go to a diner. 

Nothing.

And what’s about her to love, anyway? Who is Chrissy Cunningham? She’s just—

She is just gone.

Maybe she was never there to begin with, inside this tight suit of skin and heavy bones she wears everywhere.

She keeps avoiding the stranger in the mirror when she realizes she only can see what her mother sees wrong in her, or she can only hear the comments of Jason about her bony hips that one time they were at the backseat of his car. Chrissy knows how to do her makeup without using the cursed mirror, she knows how to style her hair without it, and it’s weird, that’s why she always helps the coach to store all the stuff they used, coming into the dressing room after her team, and fakes to take more time in the shower after practice, to be the last one to leave. To dress herself with the profaned underwear without looking at it, to reconstruct the image she hates so much and not having to put a smile upon her face while she fades away one day more.

That time she’s not alone when she comes in, all sweaty in her uniform.

There’s the ice cream girl, Robin. They had band practice and she was the only one who actually took it seriously about practicing with the stiff jacket of the uniform for an upcoming rally. She heard the rehearsal from the gym.

Robin hasn’t seen her yet, and Chrissy just can’t move. Robin is listening to something that she’s humming to in her walkman, that she stops with a loud click and puts away, unbuttoning her shirt.

Something is happening inside Chrissy when she sees Robin’s ducky bra.

A ducky bra.

Sky blue background and a god damned yellow ducky pattern.

Chrissy has never in her life seen something like that. That looks… Okay, that doesn’t even look the right size. Maybe it’s from past years and she still uses it. It looks comfortable, though, even if a little old.

It has the little, bright orange bow between her breasts.

She gasps audibly, and Robin spots her.

They lock gazes and Robin actually looks like a deer caught in headlights. Pink cheeks, big, blue eyes focused on her.

She’s so gorgeous without even trying. She always has been.

Chrissy is in a strange chokehold. It has to be nice to be someone, she thinks to herself, and not being afraid to exist.

They talk, but Chrissy’s not even paying attention to what she is saying. She’s only looking at Robin, and Chrissy must have said something funny because Robin laughs. She can’t look away, notice Robin’s cheeks growing darker, her hand accommodating her hair behind her own ears, the low conversation taking place in an empty space.

She does remember asking Robin if she could kiss her, though.

She does remember standing there in silence before their mouths meet halfway, experimental and new, soft and wet.

Chrissy hears herself whine in Robin’s lips, and dares to ask for more. Begs Robin to touch her and she’s feeling Robin’s cold fingers around her waist, lips locking, mouth opening, tongue curling around hers.

Robin is chatty, but Chrissy doesn’t mind. She spares a few words here and there in between kisses, and then Robin whispers to her ear, over, and over again, “I saw you. At the mall, I saw you. Every time.”

Chrissy gasps and kisses her again, grabs her hair, puts her body against her, skin touching skin, they fall to the floor and keep kissing until her lips are sore and someone opens the door of the locker room and they both hid from that uninvited person to keep kissing in silence, which was rather hard, but ultimately thrilling and funny. 

It’s hours later, under the safe covers of her bed when she realizes that for a little while she actually felt her skin as her own. And that’s new, that’s fresh. 

Thrilling. Something so small that makes her feel like she actually exists.

Maybe Chrissy wasn’t gone after all.

Maybe Chrissy Cunningham actually exists.

[shy-writer-999]

Subby Ace + aphrodisiacs: your top turned bottom!

Summary: Poor Ace has gotten into something with sex pollen in it. He's a mess and you're the only person who can help him. There's something delightful about seeing your very dominant boyfriend reduced to begging, whining, and even crying for a crumb of your pleasure. CW: straight up SMUT. very very pathetic needy filthy whiny ace. afab reader w/gendered language ('princess'); sex, edging, masturbation, blow job, hand job, dacryphilia, overstimulation, you name it. countless orgasms from ace, use of 'good boy' and 'pretty boy.' minors do not interact - nsfw content!

Ace is so dramatic and sensitive in bed. It gets worse when he goes on an outing by himself, and just so happens to get exposed to some form of sex pollen. He staggers back to the ship and comes straight to you.

He just won’t stop cumming. He can’t stop cumming.

His face is twisted up in anguish and he’s frowning, genuinely so miserable you think he’s about to cry.

“Baby, please help me, I’m going crazy.”

His erection looks bigger than usual—you didn’t think that was possible, and for a split second you’re worried that it won’t fit at all. But of course it will. It has fit countless times before.

“I need you. I’m begging you, sweetheart, please.” He frowns and does puppy dog eyes at you. Your heart melts, but you have to set him straight.

“Ace,” you tut. “You don’t ever need to beg for me.”

“Can I, though?” He smiles back, and it looks like a bit of a grimace.

“I’ll allow it. But you have to do what I say, okay?”

Ace nods. “Of course.” He’s thrilled at the idea of you being in control.

You sit down on the bed next to him and rest a hand on his thigh. He flinches.

“Fuck.” You can see his cock jump through the fabric of his underwear.

A simple hand on his skin like this is enough to make him squirm? It’s going to be a fun night. He looks pathetic and miserable right now. His brows are bent at the middle and he’s doing the cutest, saddest little pout you’ve ever seen.

“Touch me more, beautiful,” he murmurs and closes his eyes, mouth hanging open in concentration. His mind is fixated how your cool skin feels against his, how soft your hand is, how close you are to his throbbing hard on.

Your fingers wander over his skin, conjuring goosebumps and shudders, eliciting whimpering sounds from Ace’s pretty lips. The whimpers quickly turn into muted sounds of pleasure.

Precum seeps through the fabric of his underwear and you pity him, reaching your fingers upwards to pull the waistband down. When his cock springs out, sure enough, it’s bigger than usual, a fact which is both troubling and tantalizing.

The tip of his long shaft is red, inflamed, and defined. It glistens in the light from the dim lamp in the corner of his cabin, highlighting the precum that smears his head and continues to seep out—it’s a ridiculous amount of precum. You’ve never seen this much before.

You take a moment to admire him. Your eyes wander from his erection to his defined abs and dark, thin happy trail. Your eyes meet his. His pupils are huge and there’s a visible sheen of sweat on his forehead that mats down the hair around his temples.

Ace is trying not to be impatient, but it’s hard because his body is screaming for attention.

“Please, princess. Use me. Do anything you want to me.” His voice comes out as a whisper, tinted in reverence, and bathed in lust.

When you hum in reply, you stand up, slipping off your underwear and bra. He scoots back onto the pillows and his thighs widen while you get on top of him. Your lower yourself down to sit on top of his erection. You don’t fuck him yet, though. You just lay his shaft flat on your core and stay there for a second.

Some teasing couldn’t hurt. So, you slowly start to roll your hips, rubbing yourself on Ace’s wet shaft. It’s starting to get you worked up, too, and before you know it, you’re soaking wet.

Gasp after gasp tumbles out of his mouth and no less than thirty seconds later, he starts to seize up below you, cumming on his lower abdomen. His breaths are shallow and ragged, and he’s lying there panting.

“Don’t stop,” he chokes out, again begging for something he knows he’ll get if he only waits patiently. “Please don’t stop.”

“Poor thing.” You lean down and kiss him. Even the mere feeling of your lips on his makes him let out the softest groan. He feels like his whole body is on fire, but it’s in a way he’s never felt before, different from the logia fire he’s so accustomed to.

His kisses quickly turn greedy and sloppy, and every drag of your aching core over his cock makes him let out repressed puffs of air in your mouth. Soon, he’s moaning straight into your mouth.

God, he’s so worked up it’s starting to be more fun than you imagined.

Lining up his sticky wet tip with your entrance, you finally start to sink down onto his cock, going deliberately slow so he doesn’t cum again (yet). But when he bottoms out, his hips buck up inadvertently, hitting your gooey hot spot inside.

“F-fuck, fuck,” Ace groans again. “Feels, ah, feels so good.”

He’s practically keening at this point, back almost arching off the bed, fingers digging into the skin of your hips.

You start to ride him slowly. Whatever way feels best. Sometimes you pull yourself up his shaft so only the tip is inside and plunge it back in, other times you keep him inside of you and grind your hips back and forth. One moment, you brace your hands on his chest for more leverage; the next moment, you lean in and kiss his neck, leaving love bites in a trail from his neck to his shoulder. The contact draws out a body-wracking moan from the dark-haired man beneath you—the sounds he’s making are delicious.

He cums aggressively again, hips jerking upwards. Each press of his cock up hits your g-spot and when he feels your body shift in response it drives him crazier.

Ace’s fingers are pulling you downwards, pushing himself deeper inside of you.

“Need more,” he chokes out.

When your legs start to burn, he does all the work for you. Muscly, rough hands come under your thighs, moving you effortlessly up and down until you’re the one cumming, writhing in ecstasy on top of him.

But Ace still doesn’t want to stop. “Keep going, please.”

He has the habit of saying please in bed. It’s endearing. When he asks so nicely, it’s hard to say no.

So, your hips move more. And more. And more. Until they’re numb and he’s fucking you stupid.

You’ve collapsed on top of him now, mewling in his neck from each thrust. “C’mon baby, give me another.” You murmur in his ear, voice seductive and honeyed. It’s all he needs to hear before he literally cums on command.

He’s usually an animal in bed. Buy boy, whatever sex pollen or aphrodisiac he ran into today is doing a number on him. You, very obviously, have no issue with it.

Feral sounds escape his lips while Ace pumps more of his hot seed inside. It’s seeping out of you, creeping down the sides of his body, and saturating the fabric of the bedspread below him. It’s going to leave a massive, milky-white stain. And he isn’t done yet.

“Keep going,” he looks absolutely pathetic. “Please, please, I—I’m going crazy.” He can barely get the words out, so pussydrunk and out of it that he’s on the verge of drooling.

You smile and kiss him on the cheek. “Missionary. But you’re going to go nice and slow, okay?”

Ace nods vigorously in return. He repositions. One of his warm hands is on your waist now, while the other gropes upwards to massage and caress your chest.

He takes his time, just like you told him. From this angle, you can see his face more—and it’s glistening, evidently he’s been crying. He’s been crying because of how good it feels. Something about the idea is wildly erotic. He wants pleasure so badly that he’s begging and crying over it, literal tears from those pretty brown eyes.

Every orgasm feels better than the last. He shoots more seed inside of you again, quickly, almost immediately upon entering you. But there’s a rebound period before his second orgasm where you decide to be a bit cruel.

“Slower, Ace.”

He complies, hips shaking, moving centimeters at a time. There’s so much cum inside of you that it’s almost sloshing out, squelching so loud you’re thankful no one is around to hear. His eyes are glued to where the cum seeps out of you, drinking up the sight of his cock disappearing inside of you with every pass.

Gravelly, obscene groans tumble out from him every second—it’s almost a constant stream.

“Wanna go faster,” he rasps, eyes snapping up to yours. You see more tears gathering on his lash line.

“Not yet, baby. Be a good boy and wait for it, okay?”

When he hears you call him that—good boy—a strangled sounding gasp erupts from his lips and his hips shudder. “Fuuuuhhhccckkk.”

Desperate, heaving breaths accompany his extreme efforts. He’s trying not to cum, trying not to buck and rut haphazardly and mindlessly into your cunt like some animal in heat.

A couple more moments of agonizing slowness pass. When you’ve decided he’s behaved, and when you’re similarly desperate enough, you give him the go ahead.

“Faster.”

His hips snap into action and he’s cumming again within a couple seconds. It’s amazing that he still has cum to give, that he’s not completely shooting blanks at this point, that he hasn’t drained his balls completely yet. But, surely, he’ll get there.

“Mmmpppphhhh,” he moans, deafeningly loud. “Ah, ah, fuck, f-feels so good, fuck.”

“Keep going, ‘m close,” you keen his name and his hips pick up the pace. Each time his cock pushes on your sweet spot it makes you see stars. You’re getting close and he’s getting overstimulated.

When you cum again the pleasure is white-hot and euphoric, buzzing every nerve in your body. Ace does the same—he’s too sensitive, can’t handle the feeling of your walls squeezing and milking him for long before he’s careening into his own wave of euphoria.

He slows down and starts to nuzzle into the crook of your neck. He’s sweaty and his body is hot. Looks like the sex pollen is making his devil fruit powers a bit harder to control.

“You want some more, handsome?” You ask, and he nods eagerly. When you move from underneath him, you ask him to lay on his back. Rifling through a bedside drawer, you bring out your vibrator. You usually keep it in his cabin because that’s where you get the most use out of it. But today, instead of using it on yourself, you’re going to try something new.

While you’re grabbing the toy, Ace reaches a hand down to start touching himself but you tell him to knock it off.

“You need to sit there and be good for me. Don’t touch yourself and don’t cum unless I say so, okay?”

When he hears your stern tone, Ace puts his hands behind his head, and peers down to see what happens next. It’s hard for him to stay still, but he tries his very best.

Situating yourself between his thick thighs, you turn the vibrator on and bring it to the head of Ace’s cock. He almost immediately starts to seize up. He’s going to cum again. But where would the fun be if you just let him?

You take the vibrator away and frown. “Do I need to tell you again? Don’t cum until I say so, sweetheart.”

He pouts and nods. You bring the vibrator back and put it on the lowest setting setting. He’s hardly holding on as is, but when you turn the vibrator’s speed up, he starts to writhe in pleasure.

“’m close,” he whines, biting his lip.

You take the vibrator off again, met with a strangled sounding cry of frustration from Ace. He takes a few minutes to cool back down until he’s ready for you to start again.

Twenty, no, thirty minutes pass like this until he’s on the verge of tears again. When you finally let him have it, he asks so nicely. It’s not like he hasn’t been asking nicely before, but this time his voice cracks and you can see the tears in his lash line.

“C-can I please, please cum?” He’s being so sweet and needy. It’s crazy to think this is the strong, courageous man who has protected you countless times. Reduced to a sniveling mess, asking for another orgasm.

You say yes. He’s being so polite, so why not?

After this orgasm, he’s almost ready to tap out. He can use his safe word, obviously but… he really doesn’t want to. It feels too good. He’ll keep going for as long as he physically can.

“You still have another couple to give me, right? Don’t you want to be good for me and keep going?” You say, looking up from between his thighs. The tip of his cock is inflamed from the relentless vibrating, and his abdomen is coated in a sheen of his own cum. He’s at the point where he doesn’t care about anything, fucked-out with his mind empty.

When he nods his head mindlessly, you take your turn. You sink down on his cock (again) and ride him for as long as it takes you to orgasm. For the record, it doesn’t take long, but Ace has lost track of time.

He’s being louder than usual. Every few seconds he lets out some form of a whine, a whimper, a “fuck,” a “please,” or a “’s too much.” His cheeks are bright red, accentuating those cute freckles, and his eyes are half-lidded. He’s so handsome it makes your stomach flip. He’s falling apart with minimal effort, and he’s all hands, too. He grabs handfuls of the plush skin of your hips and ass, kneading and getting himself more wound up.

Ace cums once while you’re working up to your own orgasm, then again when you’re cumming on his cock, and then a third time, when you pull yourself off his length and wrap a hand around his shaft. Every time he cums, you encourage and praise him. It drives him crazier.

“There’s a good boy,” you say. “Keep going for me. Don’t stop.”

You talk dirty to him while you give him one very long hand job. He eats it up, loves the idea of you speaking filth to nobody but him. Before you started seeing each other, he couldn’t imagine you had this sort of mouth on you—not in his wildest dreams. It’s his delight every time you’re in bed that you feel comfortable enough with him to talk like this.

“You’re just too sweet I can’t stop Ace,” your voice oozes in desire. “And you’re being so good for me.”

“’s good?” He slurs, holding your eye contact as much as he can manage.

“Mmmhm. Tell me what it feels like. Use your words, okay?”

His eyes flutter and his voice comes out as a whisper. “So good. F-feels so fucking good.”

You coo in his ear and bite his earlobe softly. “Don’t I always make you feel so good?” He nods in a silent reply, rocking his hips up to fuck himself with your fist.

As you milk more cum from him, he reaches a hand up—you initially think he’s going for your chest, but his hand falls on your cheek and he attempts to pull you into a kiss. He’s a bit weak in his current state, so you oblige him by leaning in.

It’s just gut-wrenchingly cute of him to be fucked dumb like this and still want to get kisses from you. He’s just thanking his lucky stars that you, of all people, is who he ended up with.

While you explore his mouth with your tongue, and cup his face with your free hand, his heart feels like it’s going to burst.

He cums again. The fact that he still has cum to give is preposterous in itself. You’ve lost track of time at this point, too.

You make him eat you out and he’s (understandingly) sloppy with it. His hot mouth feels just right on your core, and he pays just enough attention to your clit. Feeling you pull on his hair makes him feel more aroused than he thought possible.

So, he’s ready to fuck you again. He goes for another round in missionary, then puts you into a mating press. Afterwards, he gets tuckered out and you figure that he has one good one left in him, or, rather, he probably has more to give but he really should give it a rest after that. It would be way too cruel to make him keep going after this one, right? You’ll decide the answer to this question after he cums for you again.

“One more, Ace,” you pet his ruffled up hair and grace him with kisses. “You can do that for me, can’t you, pretty boy?”

He nods obediently.

“There you go,” you purr and start to trace your lips down his abdomen, licking up a small portion of the very large mess he’s made on himself.

His eyes widen as he realizes he’s about to get one of his very favorite things—a blowjob from none other than yourself.

He lifts his head up and watches in awe as you lick a long stripe up his shaft and then take him whole, hollowing your cheeks before you start to suck him off. You’re gentle at first, until he starts moaning louder, then you figure fuck it, he can cum. You let him off easy this time. He’s just been so good for you.

When you look up from your position between his legs, you make eye contact, nod, and then hum. It sends him over the edge. Ace’s fingers snake into your hair and he holds your head down as he cums down your throat.

“C-cumming, ‘m cumming, ah, fuck, fuhhhcckkk that feels good,” his groans are harsh and loud.

He’s so sweet afterwards that it’s heart melting. You know that he must be tired, but he doesn’t act the part. Not when you’ve been so good to him, when you’ve praised him, taken your time with him, coddled and kissed him. It almost makes you feel guilty how affectionate he is.

Pulling into you a long, tender kiss, he so sweetly says, “fuck, you’re perfect. I can’t believe someone like me gets to be with someone like you.”

You cup his cheeks and tell him to cut it out. Of course someone like him gets to be with someone like you. He’s perfect, after all. You cuddle him in bed for a while before he, again, very politely, asks if you’d help clean him up. He’s positively covered in cum and doesn’t want to stain anything else more than he already has. Seems like this is another pair of bedsheets that can be considered properly soiled. Not like that will stop you from doing the same thing in the future.

Now, where did he come across that sex pollen again?

this style of writing for me (when i just write straight up smut with no plot) is akin to a sort of slop. i am the lunch lady handing out scoops of questionable and most likely unsatisfying mush BUT sometimes on a good day it is delicious... i can only hope the slop today did not disappoint... >_> cant say this one is my absolute fave so apologies if it's trash T-T but i love the idea of him being so whiny like this..!!

check out my masterlist and also the best piece i've written on ace so far, if you liked this one!

dividers by @cafekitsune

taglist @eggrollforyou

[iamagodofdestruction]

"Are you my new mommy?", the child asked, hopefully.

I could only stare. This is the third time this has happened. First, a human child was left at my door with a letter, stating that I was free to do with him as I please because he was not born with magic, despite his lineage of powerful wizards, only for him to later on give me a heart attack when he killed an insane dragon with magic at the age of seven years old because "it was going to hurt you, Mommy!!!".

Then, the youngest of the seven princes and three princesses of the Fey. A prophecy warned his father, the Fey King, how the child would bring about destruction and misery to the royal family, if he ever fell for a mortal girl. Infuriated, the king ordered his personal knight to slay him and leave the body to rot. Unable to bring himself to kill an infant, the knight traveled far and wide until he heard the tale of a farmer who took in a magical child and raised him as he was her own. He then showed up at my door, pleading for me to take in the child. Moved by his tale and chivalry, I agreed to take him in and concealed his true identity from all. To everybody else, he is a Fey child whose father, prior to being slain by another, was a dear friend of mine.

And now, this.

"Yes.", I tell her, sighing. I then hold my hand out to her. The grief would hit her soon. As would the feelings of worthlessness. It is best to give a grieving being a choice, as often as possible. She took my hand with a bright smile, which made me feel oddly warm inside, and allowed me to guide her to the other 2 ridiculously powerful children that were abandoned by their so-called 'family' as well. The 'family' who always comes back when the child grows into their power.

I never turn them away. Or shame them for abandoning their children when they were vulnerable. The children would do it themselves. Quite well, if I may say so myself. Claws and weapons can hurt, but never as much as the truth.

They were going to be great. More than anyone could ever imagine. I only hope I can teach them to remember to be good as well.

You are a humble farmer when a dragon suddenly appears, he wants you to take his young dragon daughter that is unable to turn fully into a dragon and no longer wants her, before you could respond he fly’s away leaving her behind, she then looks at you and ask “Are you my new daddie/mommy?”

[captain-huggy-bear]

A Little Misunderstanding

Pairing: Quinn Hughes x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Lil' angsty at points, but ends sweet, lots of mutual pining and two idiots not realising the other is also in love with the other, meddling mothers (for the best this time)

Summary: Your parents assume that Quinn, the man you mention over the phone all the time, is in fact your boyfriend. He's very much not, but Quinn thinks its funny to pretend he is...until it gets a little too real and maybe some truths are told and feelings are aired.

Notes: Thank you to the anon who requested fake dating to lovers with Quinn, I had this idea which is a little different from the usual fake dating so I hope its okay and you still like it 😊

Tried to keep it ambiguous as to where the reader originated from so that us UK girlies can relate as well as anyone else not from Vancouver and/or Canada.

Reminder I typically use UK spellings because I'm English so...don't come at me if you wish I spelt it the US away. If I have to read US spellings all the time, you can handle the odd UK spelling

Totally happy to take requests/ideas/prompts at the moment in my ask box :)

Writing Masterlist

"When does your flight get in?" You balance your phone between your shoulder and ear, picking up a stray sock that had fallen out of your laundry basket as you attempt to tidy your apartment.

"7am your time, sweetheart, remember?" Your mother's voice rings clear down the line, familiar and warm. It's been a while since you saw either of your parents. You having moved all the way to Vancouver, more miles than you could count from your birthplace and hometown around two years ago. You were excited to have them finally able to come out and stay with you for a week, they'd never been to see you, and it had been a while since you'd been able to see your parents, not having time to fly to see them. While you were glad for the move to Vancouver, living in a completely different place away from your family wasn't always the easiest thing in the world. You so often felt like you were having to fend for yourself without much of a support network. Luckily you'd made some good friends in the time you'd been in Van.

"Quinn offered to come with me to pick you and dad up, we'll be there waiting for you so don't worry about getting an Uber." You dropped Quinn's name casually because that's what it was, he was just another part of your existence. Your friend, who admittedly you had a small crush on, but just your friend nonetheless. Just because you thought he was beautiful and wanted to kiss him didn't mean you were allowed to kiss him or that he'd even want to kiss you. He was a friend who happened to be a man and you both happened to be single. This had not changed for two years and wasn't likely to any time soon.

"Oh, Quinn'll be there?" Your mother's voice was suddenly more upbeat, excited. She'd been eager to meet Quinn for months now, you're not sure why she finally took an interest in one of your friends but you can't help but be glad. Quinn had become a massive part of your life, a support network you very much needed when you'd first come to a strange new place all by yourself. He was part of the fabric of your life now, and you knew he'd charm your parents without even thinking about it. It shouldn't matter to you that your parents like your friend, its not like Quinn was your boyfriend, but it did matter to you. You wanted them to like him as much as you did because you wanted him around for the foreseeable future.

"Yeah, I mentioned you were coming to visit the other day and his car is bigger than mine, so he offered to come along, he has to get up early most days anyway so he's not too bothered by it." It helped that Quinn had a couple of days off, but still you were thankful. He could have spent his rare enough free time doing something much more enjoyable than helping you pick your parents up from the airport.

"Your father and I look forward to meeting him, we've heard so much about him, darling!"

There's something about your mother's tone that makes you stop for a second suddenly feeling a little awkward about the whole thing. Maybe it's just how eager she is or maybe it's something else, but there's a little red flag waving in the back of your mind with some small print on that you just can't quite read yet.

"Right...um, look I'll see you tomorrow morning then? I gotta get everything ready for you guys."

"Of course, of course! We love you!"

"Love you too, mum."

"You're sure you don't mind?" You look over at Quinn from the passenger seat, the two of you look exhausted, big bags under your eyes and even bigger hoodies to hide in because a 5am wake up to get to the airport in time was just a little much for both of you. This early in the morning it's still dark and the streetlights do something to Quinn's face that makes him even more handsome than usual, even as he looks like he might fall back asleep at any minute. It doesn't help that his scruff has grown out or that his hair is in those perfect waves he always seems to get even when he's just taken his bucket off.

"I wouldn't have offered if I did, besides the amount of time we spend together isn't it about time I met your parents? You've met mine." He smiles over at you, cheeky, the sort of Quinn most people didn't see. It's silly that it makes your cheeks feel warm, he's just your friend. You shouldn't be flustered by him.

"Your parents are at as many of your games as possible, of course I've met them."

"So are you. Sue me for wanting to meet the parents of one of my best friends."

"I'm your best friend?" You lean your head back on the headrest, tilting slightly to grin at him all silly. Quinn can see it from the corner of his eye and as much as it's ridiculous, that little grin makes you even more beautiful than normal.

"One of." He rolls his eyes at you, partly because of your silliness and partly rolling his eyes at himself. You're his friend. He shouldn't feel this way about you, men can have female friends...he just can't seem to have you as a female friend without wanting to kiss you at any given opportunity. It's becoming difficult, even more so in the early morning when the low light level puts your face in stark contrast and your hoodie, one of his, makes you look so cozy and sweet.

"That's just your way of avoiding admitting how much you love me and need me in your life."

Quinn's cheeks flush bright red, so bright that even the low light can't hide it nor hide the way he bites back a smile at you, eyes fixed on the road and the last few miles to the airport.

"...Shut up."

The silence that fills the car is comfortable, the sort that comes about from spending so much time together. You have friends that aren't Quinn, of course you do, but Quinn had been your first friend in Vancouver. He'd shown you around and made time for you in his incredibly busy schedule. You were often the first person he saw when he came off a roadie and the last person to see him before he left for one. There were nights when you stayed round Quinn's after a game or vice versa. You spent so much time together that you simply coexisted, being around Quinn was as easy as breathing. You rarely argued or disagreed and when you did it was always resolved properly. You simply worked. There wasn't ever much to think about with Quinn. You could just...shut off.

"Thank you, though...seriously." You take a moment, thinking how to word your next few thoughts, your warning as the signs for the airport come into full view, "Just, my mum seems really eager to meet you so...just brace yourself."

"Eager?"

"You know when your parents are excited to meet a new partner?" You think back to the few times you'd introduced a boyfriend to your mum, the excitement that she exuded...it was starting to concern you that she was that excited to just meet your friend. Because that's all Quinn was. Your friend. Not your boyfriend. Your friend, you remind yourself, even as he looks so good smiling over at you with his beard. He'd let it grow out just enough that he looked rugged and mature.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, she's that sort of excited which is really weird...she normally doesn't' care that much about my friends. Just, sorry, if she's really weird about it?" It's awkward enough talking about, you and Quinn have always stayed firmly platonic, you didn't talk about the fact that people assumed you were dating or even the concept of it. Talking about it felt...it felt like you were opening the curtains up, letting him see in a little too far.

"You didn't tell her we were married or something, did you?"

"Quinn! Shut up!" He laughs so loud that you can't actually be that mad at him, not when he's grinning at you like that, not when he's been so stressed as of late about the performance of his team. Even if it's at your expense.

"What? Just checking! For all I know you could have told her we got married in Vegas during one of my games or something?"

"If I'm telling my mum I'm married to you, it'll be because I'm actually married to you, you idiot." You roll your eyes at him, arms crossing over your chest as you turn to look out the window.

"Oh, so you do want to marry me?" He's joking, but he's not...he's thought about it. There's not a day that Quinn hasn't thought about what it would be like to be yours and you be his, not since he met you...and then promptly managed to land himself so far into the friendzone that he was scared to crawl his way out lest he leave you behind in the process.

"...I hate you."

"No you don't." His voice is singsong in intonation and sweet and he's right because you love him and it hurts...god, it hurts how much you love someone you can't have. Someone you see every day, someone who is so deeply ingrained in your life that removing him would be like carving a hole into your own chest.

You just sit and glare at him, even as a heavy sort of sadness hits, as he pulls up into one of the parking bays for collecting passengers.

It's okay that he's just your friend, you remind yourself as you get out of the car. It's okay because he's the best friend you could ask for, he's here at 6.45 am in the morning to collect your parents from the airport, not because he was asked or because he had to, but because he wanted to. You can live with loving him in silence, so long as you always have him around.

"I think they're over this way, probably, near gate 1?" You're just getting your bearings, trying to figure out roughly where your parents will come out at after they find their things from baggage claim when you hear it.

"My baby!" The squeal of a middle aged woman who hasn't seen her daughter in far too long pierces the air. You barely have time to brace yourself for impact before your mother is wrapping you up in a gigantic hug and pressing as many kisses to your face as possible, you know without a doubt her signature mauve lipstick is smudged all across your skin.

Your father stands behind her, rolling his eyes in amusement but the smile he gives you is no less warm, "Hey there, princess."

"Hi, mum, hi, dad," You pull yourself free from your mother just long enough to get a long awaited hug from your father, big and warm and so familiar that you almost feel like crying. How long has it been since you last hugged your dad? Half a year? Nine months? Longer? You sometimes don't realise how much you miss something until you get it back.

When you turn back around your mother is already pulling Quinn into a hug that he accepts, if a tad awkwardly, his hands patting her on the back like he's not quite sure how hugs work.

She has his face in her hands before you can intervene, overly familiar and friendly as she grins up at him like he's made her day just by existing. "You must be Quinn, Y/N's boyfriend..."

"Oh, he's n-" You're pretty sure your eyes bug out of your head, startled by the suggestion because at no point in the last few years of living in Vancouver had you ever called Quinn your boyfriend. Ever.

You're cut off by Quinn who's grinning at you wickedly over the top of your mother's head like he's just been giving the greatest Christmas present he could ever ask for and in that moment you know...you know that he is going to make your life very difficult with this tiny piece of information.

"Yeah, hi, nice to meet, the boyfriend, that's me." God, he wishes it was true. There's nothing more he wants in that moment than to be able to say to your mom that you are 100% his girlfriend, but he can't...he can, however, enjoy the roleplaying while it lasts. He can't really stop himself, not when you look so aghast at your mother calling him your boyfriend, not when he can use this to tease you for at least the next 30 years. He grew up with 2 brothers, sue him for taking advantage of the situation.

"Quinn!"

"What? Am I not allowed to call myself your boyfriend anymore?" He sidles up to you, slipping out from your mother's grip to pull you into his side. His arm rests naturally over your shoulder, yours finding his waist, and it is natural...because you've done this a million times before. The kiss he presses to your hair is new though, different and as much as your mum clearly believes the ruse, you can see your father just looks amused. Something tells you he knows this is all an act, but he finds it enjoyable to watch. Typical. No support from him when you need it most. Dads.

"Oh, she's just grouchy in the mornings, has been ever since she was a baby!" Your mother looks at the two of you with such pride that you're certain her heart actually might break when she finds out Quinn isn't actually your boyfriend. You've never seen her look so happy with your choice in a man before and you're certain she won't be able to cope when you have to inevitably tell her that it was either a) a lie or b) that Quinn just wasn't the guy for you (another lie just to make your life more complicated).

"Mum!"

"Oh don't worry, I know just how grouchy my baby can be in the mornings." This time he presses a kiss to your cheek and when he does, you hiss lowly in his ear, 'I'm going to kill you.' and Quinn can't help but laugh at you, biting his lip at how much fun he's having riling you up.

"Here let me take your bags, Mrs Y/L/N," Quinn's bending down before your mother can even begin to protest, her carry on backpack being slung over his shoulder and pulling up the handle of her suitcase to wheel it behind him.

"Oh, you don't have to, Quinn!"

"I insist." He knows he's making it harder on you, can see the look you give him because he's just going to make your mother fall in love with him. But, even as he enjoys riling you up, he was also raised right and he's not letting your mother carry her own bags.

Your mother hangs back with you while your father and Quinn start walking ahead with the suitcases. She slips her arm through yours walking with you to keep up, as she does so she does a very bad attempt at whispering. The sort of whispering that means you know Quinn can hear every word and is probably enjoying it immensely.

"He's such a gentleman..."

"Yeah, a real gentleman." You mutter sarcastically, watching the way his shoulders rise and fall in a silent laugh that he's no doubt doing his best to swallow down.

"Don't be grumpy, he's just being sweet on you. You should be glad for such a loving boyfriend..." Your mother scolds you before raising her voice back to normal, Quinn and your father slowing down slightly to help keep the four of you together, "So, Quinn, my daughter tells me you're a hockey player?"

"Yeah, you talk about me, baby?" Quinn's grin is wide, and you can't help the warmth that fills your entire face because you can't actually deny it. You talk about Quinn all the time, he's your best friend and whenever your mother phones, you inevitably talk about him. Whether it was a game of his you went to or a coffee place you'd visited together or gala he'd invited you to. Maybe, you talked about him too much? Maybe, it was obvious in the way you talked about him that you loved him? Maybe that's why your mother had made such a large assumption about your relationship status. Maybe this was your fault, why wouldn't she assume you were dating?

"She talks about you all the time. Quinn this, Quinn that...did you know that Quinn did this today and broke this record?"

"Mum..." You groan out, looking to your dad for help but all he does is shrug his shoulders at you, amusement bright in his eyes. Even if he could do something you know he wouldn't because he's clearly enjoying your torture.

Quinn can't help it, the tables seem to reverse. You're embarrassed still, but now he is too, bright red in the face, ears flushed the colour of a fire engine and a hand rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. All because you talk about him to your parents...you talk about him when he's not around...he feels like a twelve year old, giddy because his crush smiled at him for the first time.

"I play for the NHL."

"Vancouver Canucks, wasn't it?" Your mother asks as the four of you step out into the cold Canadian air, her attention making Quinn squirm and you smile, enjoying the discomfort being swapped around for a moment.

"Yeah, I'm the captain of the team." He smiles at your mother awkwardly as he opens the boot of the car and starts to pile in the suitcases, organising them in just the right way that they fit without hassle.

Your father chimes in as he lifts his own suitcase into the back, Quinn helping him shove it back further, "That's impressive, I used to play field hockey myself, never got out of the amateur league but got a few bruises in my time. You had an injury recently right?"

You still remember phoning your mum to talk about it, at first worried and then over time growing more and more frustrated with how sullen Quinn was being. He'd grown restless from not being able to play hockey and you'd been his distraction, a distraction that had grown fed up with his moping no matter how much you loved him.

"I've had a few this year, most recently my hand." He raises his braced hand, the brace a point of annoyance to him at this point in time. He was itching to be done with it, but put up with it because it meant he could still play hockey at the moment.

"Oh, you shouldn't have been carrying my bag then, Quinn!" Your mother fusses over him, flapping about as if she might have a miracle cure for his hand injury.

"Honestly, it's fine! It looks worse than it is, I promise. I wouldn't get away with it otherwise, this one would kill me." He nods his head at you as he closes the boot, opening one of the backdoors for your mother to slide inside.

"Damn right I'd kill you, I cannot take more days of you moping that you can't play hockey and that you're bored despite my amazing company."

"You know I enjoyed spending time with you, sweetheart...but..."

"But, you can't live without hockey, yeah, I know..."

He follows you round to the passenger side door, opening it for you like a gentleman and letting you slide inside. You find yourself enjoying the attention even as you catch your mother's eye in the rear view mirror, a little smirk reaching her lips as she watches Quinn buckle you in. Something he does from time to time when he's feeling particularly sweet...because he was a good friend.

"So, Quinn, how did you meet our daughter? I'm not sure she ever mentioned it?"

The entire ride home is filled with your mother peppering Quinn with questions, encouraging him to talk more and more about your 'relationship'. Everything from when you first met to the first date you went on (which Quinn told her was the first time he took you ice skating, you were under the impression that that was a friendly family skate event and most certainly not a date).

The conversation lulls while you set your parents up in your spare bedroom, helping them settle themselves and showing them around your apartment. They hadn't ever seen it in person and they spent half the time cooing over your choices, the photos of family and friends on the wall, the ones of you and Quinn, as well as your mother checking your fridge and telling you to buy more vegetables.

It's as you're sitting down to a breakfast of pre-bought croissants and pain au chocolat that your mother restarts her question. This time even more invasive than the first.

"So Quinn, when did you know?"

"Mm? Know what?" Your best friend looks at your mother with furrowed brows, taking a sip of his orange juice and almost choking on it when she proceeds to clarify her question.

"When you loved my daughter."

There's a long beat of silence where your eyes stay fixated on your plate, watching your own hands intently as you spread Nutella inside your croissant, far too focused on that to be anything casual or calm. You're certain you're going to be sick because he doesn't love you but you love him and your poor mother is so oblivious and this...this is going too far, it feels like it's gone too far.

"Expected answer or honest answer?"

"Honest answer."

"The second week I knew her." Your head snaps up with a start only to find Quinn looking directly at you, green eyes crinkling softly at the corners. "She heard that I had been hurt on the ice the night before and she stormed round my apartment with a bunch of food, medicine and a blanket. Spent the whole day looking after me and making me watch 90s movies I hadn't watched growing up. No one outside my family had ever done that for me before...it made me realise that if I wasn't already in love, I would be pretty quick." You almost believe him, the way he looks at you, the way he speaks so softly. Almost.

You look down at your plate, tears welling in your eyes because you know he doesn't mean it. He's spinning a yarn for your mother and it hurts that he would go that far when you both know this is all some ruse he's decided to pull. You swallow hard and take a bite of your croissant, refusing to look at him for the rest of breakfast.

You won't meet his eyes until he goes to leave after breakfast, your parents hanging back so you can say goodbye to your 'boyfriend'.

"Mind if I come over after dinner? We could watch a movie with your parents?"

"Quinn..." You go to challenge him on his behaviour today, but the words won't come out.

"What?"

"Nothing...uh, sure, after dinner?"

"After dinner, baby."

You want to tell him off as he says it, as he presses a kiss to your cheek so your parents can see because you aren't his baby and he's hurting you. He's hurting you without realising it because you so desperately want to be his baby. But, you don't. You just watch him walk away down the corridor of your apartment building and out of sight before getting ready to show your parents around Vancouver for the day.

You try to put the whole thing out of your mind throughout the day, showing your parents the sights of Vancouver, including the arena...but it's hard when they keep bringing Quinn back up and asking about your feelings. They probe you for half the day and it's emotionally exhausting balancing the truth with the half-truth, even more so knowing that they're going to be just as disappointed as you are when they realise your relationship with Quinn is just a sham, a charade, a fake.

Eventually they seem to grow bored of talking about the topic, however, and dinner goes relatively smoothly, you taking them to a nice restaurant Quinn had shown you back in your first couple of months in Vancouver. Even that feels bittersweet though, filled with memories of the two of you dining together. You can't help but feel like the whole issue needs addressing as you get them back home and pop a film on ready for Quinn's arrival.

When he arrives he continues the act as if it isn't one, greeting you at the door with a kiss to the cheek and pulling you down onto the loveseat opposite your parents, curling one arm around your shoulders and urging you to lay against him, your cheek pressed into his chest. In some ways it's familiar, not an act, because you cuddle for movies all time, completely platonically of course, but both of you are touchy feely and it's always been part of your dynamic. In others though? The way he talks to you, the pet names, kisses to your hair, that is all new, all a way to show your parents he's the 'doting boyfriend', even though he's not your boyfriend at all.

Your parents lap it up, every now and then you catch them smiling at each other and then over to the two of you and you can't help but feel heavy with it. With this feeling of unrequited affection. You love Quinn, you've known that for a while now, but it was easy to be around him because you didn't need to address it. You could love him in silence and from afar...you had never considered how hard it would become when what you wanted most was being dangled in front of you like a carrot on a string.

Quinn has a similar dilemma going on in his own head. He's always known he loved you more than a friend, even when you barely knew each other...had he been braver he would have asked for your number for a date that first day, not so that he could show you around a new city as a 'friend'. But, he'd been a coward and since then he'd continued to be. He enjoyed every ounce of affection he got from you, every hug, every cuddle, ever time you held his arm at an event, all while feeling like that had to be enough...now he's had more? He's not sure it'll ever be enough, he's greedy for you. Greedy for your affection, your attention, greedy in the way he wants to keep kissing you, keeping calling you sweet names and greedy for the way you grow bashful. Greedy for more than just being your friend...he's given himself a taste of what life could be like and now he can't forget it.

It's halfway through the movie, your legs slung over Quinn's lap and his fingers carding through the ends of your hair when your parents stand with a groan from the other couch.

"Princess?" You lift your head to look at your father, who's stretching out his back after sitting for so long.

"Yeah, dad?"

"Your mother and I are getting a little tired...we're going to go to bed, if that's alright with you two?"

"Of course, don't let us keep you up." Quinn confirms your own thoughts as well, telling your parents it's not problem at all. It's all so...so domestic.

Your dad presses a kiss to the top of your head, as does your mother, before yourself and Quinn wish them goodnight. You wait until you see the door to the spare room start to close, not waiting for it to do so fully, before turning to Quinn. You pull out of his arms, the missing warmth of you an immediate loss to him, but it has him sitting up straight and taking you seriously.

Your face is sullen, sad, eyebrows pinched, mouth turned down into a frown and he's alarmed to see that your eyes are glassy like you might cry.

"Why on earth would you let my parents think we're dating? Why would you tell my mother you're in love with me?" You're certain you're going to cry, angry, frustrated and sad all in one. Lovesick because it hurts to hear him tell your mother he was in love with you when you know he's not.

"Why not?" He frowns at you, hands reaching out but you keep just out of reach as if touching him is the last thing you want. You've never shied away from Quinn's touch and he recoils, breathing a little heavier out of anxious worry that he's upset you, that he's fucked this up. Maybe you've been uncomfortable with his touch all day? Has he been making you uncomfortable all day? Is he one of those guys?

"Because we're not dating and you're not in love with me, Quinn. My mother is certain we're going to get married and I'll stop being an old spinster! You're getting her hopes up." The unspoken words lay heavy on your tongue, 'you're getting my hopes up', you want to say.

"Who said I didn't love you? Who said I didn't want to marry you?" The look he gives you isn't the cheeky one he's had all day, it's not joking or silly, it's dead serious. He scoots closer to you, but doesn't reach out for you this time. But, Quinn can't help but want to be close to you, to be drawn into your orbit, into your gravity.

"Quinn..."

"What?"

"You're being mean..." Your voice is filled with tears, wet, pathetic sounding and you choke back a sob as a tear falls down your cheek because he's being so mean...he can't dangle that in front of you, everything you've ever wanted, not when he doesn't actually mean it.

He realises in that moment that you don't believe him. You believe he's spent the entire morning and evening telling lies, saying that he loves you when he doesn't, that you're that important to him when you aren't. You believe he's being mean because you don't believe him, that the tears are because you think he's holding this thing, this idea out in front of you, only to snatch it away.

"Look, I said a lot today...but none of it was a lie." He can't help himself this time, hand coming up to cup your cheek, thumb wiping away that pesky tear that shouldn't have been there in the first place. It's the way you lean into his touch that brings him a sense of confidence, of relief, you wouldn't do that if you didn't want him touching you.

"I know our first date wasn't a date, just a stupid family skate I was too scared to ask you out to as more than just a friend. I wish it had been a date and I wish I had been brave enough from the start to tell you I didn't just want to be your friend."

"Quinn..."

"And I was telling the truth...when your mother asked me when I fell in love with you." He tugs you closer, until your legs are back over his lap and your practically sitting on top of him, arms wrapping around your lower back and pulling you closer. The way he stares up at you is nothing short of reverent.

"Q..."

"The second week we knew each other you came to look after me when no one else did...and I knew...I knew that I was going to love you and that I was stupid for not asking you out in the first place...but I was...I was too scared to say anything. I didn't want to lose my new friend...I thought..." He hesitates, tongue coming out to nervously brush against his bottom lip, capturing your attention like a magpie with a shiny button.

"You thought?" You're whispering, quiet as if to speak any louder might scare him, might disrupt this little bubble you've found yourself in.

"I thought having a tiny bit of you...any bit, was better than having none of you at all." Quinn confesses, shifting you on his lap as your legs fall either side of his hips until you're so close your noses brush.

"Is it?"

"It was...for a bit..." It's self-deprecating, sardonic, like he finds himself ridiculous, foolish.

"And now?"

"And now I've had a taste of what it's like to love you, to be able to kiss you and hold you...call you mine...and now I'm greedy and it's not enough...Baby, it'll never be enough."

"You...you love me?" It's like even after all of this, everything he's said, every tender touch, you still don't quite believe him. It's hard to believe that everything you've ever wanted is sat in the palm of your hand just waiting for you to capture it, to take it. That your feelings, the ones you believed were unrequited for two years, were actually returned all along.

"I love you...and...um, if...if you'll have me, maybe I could be your real boyfriend this time?" His face is bright red, so warm to the touch when you're fingers reach out to trace his cheeks that you're surprised he doesn't combust.

"I'd like that...I...I love you too,"

"So...I'm your boyfriend?" He says it like he doesn't quite believe it, the beauty mark on his cheek moving as he grins up at you giddy like a little kid getting his first bag of sweets.

"You're my boyfriend." You press a kiss to that beauty mark without overthinking it...because you can now, because now it's not a lie when you tell your parents he's your boyfriend, because now you're allowed to kiss him and hold him and tell him how much you love him.

"Fuck...that sounds good."

He can't help but just stare up at you from where you're straddling his lap. The healthy glow to your skin, the soft smile directed down at him, the way you seem to curl into him like you're not close enough even now. God, you're beautiful and you're his...you're finally his and he's yours and...and he can't comprehend that the thing he wanted to happen for so long has finally happened. What had he been scared of all this time? He could have been with you for two years, instead he'd squandered it out of fear...

"Quinn?" Your voice is soft, melodic, so so sweet that almost closes his eyes at the sound.

"Yeah, baby?"

"Kiss me?" You whisper as if it's shameful to ask, as if you've asked for something more sordid than a simple kiss...your first kiss together at that.

"Anything for my girl."

He's gentle in the way he cups your neck and jaw with one large hand, thumb pressing just below your jaw bone as he pulls you in. There's nothing rushed about the way Quinn presses your lips together, the smooth glide of his bottom lip against your top. Even the way his tongue brushes against your lip until you open up for him is slow, steady, adoring. You can't help the way you sigh into him, fingers gliding through dark chocolate strands, eyes closing shut with the sense of home, sense of relief that you find in him.

The two of you lose yourselves in each other, slow kisses, wandering hands, nothing too extreme, but a new found intimacy that you're finally allowed to indulge in before you curl back up together to watch the remainder of the movie. Watch being a loose term for what you're really doing.

"Did you know?" Your father turns his eyes away from the scene outside the spare bedroom, the way you're curled up in Quinn's arms like you were always supposed to be there. Neither of you realising that the spare bedroom door had never fully closed, both your parents eavesdropping like Samwise Gamgee.

"That they weren't actually together, dear?" Your mother looks sly and devious as she looks over at her husband. The face of the woman he loves, but also fears in equal measure.

"Yes."

"Of course I knew...but I figured they could both use a shove in the right direction, I mean, look at them?" Your parents both turn to watch the two of you, the way you curl up together on the couch is the epitome of young love. There's no real watching of a movie happening, instead Quinn's fingers are rubbing circles into your shoulder, while you look up at him lovingly from where you're curled against his chest. Every now and then he dips his head down to press a kiss against your forehead, and each time you giggle, face pressing briefly into his neck. The giddy feeling of a new, fresh love, making film watching the least of your interests.

"They just needed a little push." Both your parents smile at each other even as your father playfully scolds his wife, "You're a meddlesome woman."

"And you love me for it."

"Yes, yes I do."

Perhaps it took a bit of meddling, a fake misunderstanding, but that would be their little secret...at least for now. Your mother was rather looking forward to seeing you squirm in the future as you reveal the truth, that you hadn't actually been dating Quinn as long as you said. Yes, she certainly was happy to help, but she also was still your mother and lying to your mother was certainly not the done thing. A little squirming was good for you sometimes, but first, she'd let you enjoy the fresh bloom of love...and she'd go easy on you.

[ozzgin]

Ozzgin more than ever I really need a hacker yandere out to fight injustice done against me. Because why was my bank account hacked and someone tried it ed to steal 500$ bucks from me. Luckily I was able to lock my card and my bank is sending me a new one but I'm so so anxious at this point 😭

Yandere hacker would never let some twerps swindle me for my money like this(I'm sure they're a bunch of kids since the person tried to buy cs go ). He cares deeply for my digital footprints.

Oof, sorry it happened to you, pookie. Though I doubt a yandere would help you out of the goodness of his heart... content: gender neutral reader, obsessive behavior, manipulation, stalking

Yandere!Hacker always makes sure that your digital presence remains untouched. Through some sheer luck or unknown forces, you've never had to deal with any kind of online misfortune. You'll offer your friends a sympathetic smile whenever they bemoan the persistence of some internet pervert, but you've been spared of such predatory approaches.

You'd almost be tempted to believe that these said malicious attacks are mere myths meant to scare the unseasoned traveler. You've never been hacked, never been scammed, never had your data or photos stolen from anywhere. Maybe you're just particularly careful, you tell yourself.

In reality, you've been under the watchful gaze of your online stalker. He dutifully keeps track of every move and every click you make. If someone were to save one of your photos for later purposes, for example, he'd immediately track them down and make sure they can never access a computer again.

Yandere!Hacker doesn't protect you out of pure, selfless intentions, however. When it comes to invading your privacy, he's a meticulous sleuth constantly outdoing himself. It's just, you see, no one else should have this kind of control over you. From the moment he stumbled upon your profile, he knew you'd be his. Thus, he can't allow anyone else to interfere with his grand adoration.

Your dating apps always fail to show you any matches, your flirty messages from suitors never arrive. He'll watch through the webcam he's hacked into as you sigh, disappointed, from yet another case of being ghosted. Oh, sweet, darling (Y/N), give him a little more time.

Yandere!Hacker isn't quite satisfied with watching you from afar. While it certainly is endearing to observe you in your raw, innocent obliviousness, while he frequently touches himself to the exhilaration of voyeurism, being a passive bystander can become exceptionally boring. He often wonders if your skin is as soft as it looks, or if you smell as sweet as he likes to imagine.

"This can't be..."

Tears well in your eyes as you stare, helpless, at the notification: your bank account has been drained. Someone must've emptied it, and - as a consequence - you are now utterly penniless. Just as another sob escapes your mouth, your screen lights up with a new message. An acquaintance you don't remember too well.

"Is everything alright with you, (Y/N)? I just wanted to remind you that you can always count on me for anything. I mean it."

He leans back in his chair with a grin. Now he waits. You're desperate enough that it shouldn't require much convincing for you to move in with him. Of course you can have his spare room. No, he truly doesn't need anything in return. You're his dear friend, and he's at your service.

You can always rely on him.

[More Yandere Stories]

[togglesbloggle]

We're in the early hype cycle for Civ 7, which is all well and good- Civ is Civ, it's gonna be amazing and completely destroy large chunks of global productivity for a while. They're doing an unusually good job of targeting me in particular this time- the "build something you believe in" ad copy is one of those sentiments that has root access to my brain.

But anyway, sifting through the pre-release details has me thinking again about the... I guess you'd call it a 4x game still, but the game that part of me always wishes Civ was. I think a lot of people probably have a sort of personal 'Civ Prime' in their heads, actually, the secret changes they'd make if it was 'their' game. My own Civ Prime goes like this:

Actually-existing Civ always takes the stance that cultures create persons; you build a settler, send it off to some promising river valley, and plonk down a town. The glorious leader then directs the citizens to harvest and cultivate the fertile land around them, and surpluses of food allow the population to grow.

As a corollary, the map in actually-existing Civ starts out nearly empty; aside from a few barbarian camps and city states (or in Civ 7, the 'independent settlements'), the area outside your borders is in a pristine state of nature. And that's all well and good for game purposes, but in "my" Civ I'd reverse this entirely: civilization, not as some supra-human entity that creates and defines humans, but as a narrative that structures their identities and guides their values.

Consider a hex map of the usual sort, but the yields per tile are the local surplus, that is, the amount that tax collectors can extract from the people indigenous to that location without killing them. You begin play at the dawn of agriculture, as a leader/stationary bandit with enough military support and personal legitimacy to enforce those taxes, funnel the surplus towards a centralized urban center, and direct it towards military, priest, or artisan classes. Every hex is a conquest in miniature; at least at first, the size of your territory is directly downstream of your military strength.

That strength is tracked as "Might" or some such civ-wide stat, initially a strict function of how much wealth (that is, grain) that you feed in to it. This represents loosely organized, loyal bravi who are in your employ; they go to hexes you designate, dominate the locals, and render a tile 'productive'. In times of crisis, you can- very temporarily- initiate a levy to make these become traditional army units (and indeed this is the only source of such units, at first). As long as these exist, they are tremendously destructive to any hex they're on, friendly or otherwise, acting as a natural disaster that damages future tile yields for several turns; if every tile around them is already so damaged, they disband automatically. And of course these 'crystalized' forms of Might reduce the 'liquid' Might you have to control tiles, so lengthy wars will also see borders destabilize because you can no longer enforce order in the outer hexes.

But of course military strength isn't the only priority; grain (and later, currency, etc.) sent to the Artisan class allows you to slowly build permanent structures, which have their own bonuses as you'd expect. It's a time-horizon question; investment in Might is a larger immediate bonus, including higher revenues, but wealth spent on infrastructure accumulates.

This is also how you seed new urban areas: Artisans can build things like fortresses, temples, etc. (depending on the initial bonuses that you want) on rural hexes that are distant from existing cities, with tribute from hexes always flowing to the nearest such seed. That wealth in turn supports the new military, industrial, and cultural classes centered on that hex. This can also happen automatically in neutral territories; wherever there are large volumes of unclaimed surplus, NPC urban centers are liable to form at random and begin acting as your opponents.

You can also invest in "Culture," which in the early days generally means a priest caste. And this is where I get a bit clever.

Culture is an umbrella for anything that counts as "an idea", everything from religious formation, to technology, to philosophical ideas and organizing ideologies. There's a base track, mostly 'pure idea' stuff like mysticism and foundational concepts like writing and lawmaking; throw in a few unique ones for your chosen Civ identity (Egyptians get something about handling river flooding, whatever). And every point invested in Might and Artisan classes also helps unlock new ideas to be researched here; once you open those up, they can be researched here with Culture points. All contain some kind of advantage; new types of army units to levvy, new structures to build, higher yields or new types of resources to extract from the map- the usual.

The trick with culture unlocks is, they're not bonuses for you only. Ideas appear in the urban hex where they're researched, but they spread to adjacent hexes at some fixed rate, hopping from tile to tile and stopped only by uninhabited regions like mountain ranges or extreme deserts that don't have a high enough population- and following trade networks from city to city especially quickly. For example, "irrigation" would be an idea that greatly increases grain surpluses in every hex near a river, both for your territory and for neutral or even enemy hexes as it spreads.

As compensation, whenever your ideas spread to a hex, you gain a slowly-decaying bonus on that space called authority, which means that you require less military force to extract its surplus, and it's easier for you to contest the tile against another sovereign. This attenuates with distance from the originating point, but if you're investing in Culture at a good clip, the hexes immediately around your urban centers will be very cheap or even free to extract wealth from. If you're really booking it, hexes will spontaneously submit to you without ever being formally dominated. This creates an "imperial core" dynamic as the game matures, with your military might being concentrated in the provinces, and allows you to extend your reach much further than you otherwise would, extract wealth accordingly, and push yourself in to a virtuous feedback loop / golden age where you snowball outwards with both territorial gains and rapid intellectual progress.

The double-secret trick here is that authority decays; spreading ideas to a tile can only secure its loyalty for so long before they become the 'new normal'. With proper tuning, every civ's "golden age" period would last for a while, but then when it inevitably reached natural barriers or other obstacles, this would reverse into a death spiral. Absent further expansion, authority would begin decaying faster than it was gained, first in the outer provinces; military expansion would give way to managing a cascade of discontent and rebellions, which would further weaken the imperial core- and so on, unto dissolution.

The triple-secret trick is this: rural hexes are just hexes, but when a fully fledged city rebels against the sovereign empire, the player can declare the rebel city to be the 'true inheritor' of their legacy, and jump ship. In other words, you can take either side in a civil war. This switch triggers the legacy empire to become a more passive computer-controlled entity, and gives the emergent civilization a slew of cheap new ideas to promote, rapidly building their own authority- which of course has particular bonuses against their former overlords. Humankind and Civ 7 both implement an "Ages" system to simulate the rise and fall of civilizations over time, but this has the virtue of being a more organic/emergent property. Instead of artificially converting every Roman city in to the HRE in one fell swoop, the HRE emerges from the rotting carcass of Rome at a single point and carves out its own sovereignty by the sword.

And now you face an interesting dilemma while you play: authoritarian social policies like suppressing foreign ideas can secure the longevity of your empire for centuries longer than it might otherwise last, but you know that sooner or later, the empire you're now controlling will be your immediate opponent during a new phase of expansion. Permissive social policies and liberal attitudes to trade and ideas will make that rebirth go further, faster, than it otherwise would. So do you defend the power you have now? Or do you make yourself vulnerable to your own future?

[twosignificantfigures]

remember coming across this tiktok screenshot on twitter and getting so annoyed that i fully channelled miranda priestly in that blue versus cerulean scene from devil wears prada (2006) because:

forcing actors/filmmakers to say 90s and 2000s romcoms instead of 60s or even earlier films has to be one of the most annoying things in general because it forgets to acknowledge the fact that romcoms from before 90s and 2000s have left an impact in how romcoms are made.

for example: the film "It Happened One Night" released in 1934 became the blueprint for most of the romcom films and romcom tropes we know and love and look for in films/books/fanfictions. one such trope from the film aka the enemies-to-lovers trope was even used in 10 Things I Hate About You

there are also so many other tropes from it happened one night that are used in other romcoms and allow me to enumerate the ones i have from memory (these are just some of the tropes and there is this article that discusses more tropes and other films that used these tropes!)

fake dating/fake married (also used in The Proposal)

character is a main journalist looking for a scoop and ends up falling in love (also used in other romcoms like 13 Going On 30 and How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days)

rich x poor/working class (also used in Pretty Woman, and Crazy Rich Asians)

2. let's take it even further because It Happened One Night was not the first art form to use the enemies-to-lovers trope. it actually goes as far as Mesopotamian mythology. and William Shakespeare definitely wasn't the first, but he also basically uses this trope in his play Much Ado About Nothing released in the 1500s. and fun fact!!! 10 Things I Hate About You is a modern retelling of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew!

my point is!!! actors and filmmakers mentioning films from the 60s or even earlier is neither pretentious nor annoying because it acknowledges how far storytelling has come. it literally tells the story of humankind and how art has always been a part of our lives and will continue to do so for many generations to come. the fact that tales and stories that hail from ancient times have survived either through writing or fragmented from word of mouth is astonishing on its own. it means that we actually do leave a mark in this world from just existing and telling stories. i hope we start to appreciate that for what it is instead of having takes like this i really do 🙏

Been said before but many people on social media are so bothered when actors or filmmakers do those letterboxd top 4 interviews and choose art house films and films over fifty years old and international films and act like they’re lying or something. like this may surprise you but I think a lot of people who go to work in the film industry actually love film as an art form so of course they’re going to choose movies that show this 😭 nothing wrong with ur favourite movie being spider-man 3 or whatever but to act like people r lying because their favourite is quote-unquote pretentious…ur just insecure babs

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

what do you think the third years would be like 10 years from now?

What comes after Ever After?

You’re looking at the new buff baker that helps man the Clover Patisserie. He’s beloved by the local housewives and school girls— His parents are getting up there in age, so Trey has taken up a bulk of the responsibilities: ordering supplies, prepping ingredients, baking, stocking, and customer service.

After hours, Trey experiments with new recipes and leftover ingredients. Sometimes he comes up with some truly awful inventions, but other times they end up working out really well. Who knew that adding oyster sauce would enhance the flavor of this bread? He calls these the “Clover Specials, Piping Hot and Fresh Off the Trey” (yes, that was a pun).

He tries to make the bakery more whimsical for the customers. Little seasonal decorations, cute little doodles on the placards that indicate what each item is, a sign that reminds folks to brush well after eating sweets, etc. (Trey claims he doesn't really care for little flourishes like this; it might just be the nostalgia of the unbirthday party days getting to him.)

If there are things that haven’t sold at the end of the day, he’ll offer them for a discount in a blind box style. You’ll never know what you’ll pull, but it’s always delicious, if not a little stale or slightly lumpy looking. Waste not, what not!

Every so often, he has nights out with his childhood friends Chenya and Riddle. Trey's responsible for bringing the snacks (he uses his friends as a test audience for his experiments), and the three spend that time drinking, sharing stories, and catching up on each others' lives.

Cater’s a social media manager and agent for various influencers. His career allows him to basically work from anywhere (which is convenient because he travels to various promotional events) and to be on his phone 24/7, monitoring stats, attending strategy meetings, and coordinating with PR teams.

Keeps up with the latest trends! He's not one of those "how do you do, fellow kids?" types though. Cater is genuinely on top of what's cool--so much so that he's sometimes contacted as a style consultant. It feels like he's got his hands in many facets of the entertainment industry.

He regularly sees a therapist (although he doesn't let any of his friends or family know) to talk through his insecurities and other darker thoughts. It's really been helping him sort out these complex emotions he's been sitting and stewing in for the longest time. He's hoping that, someday, he can reach the point where he can open up to everyone about this other side of himself.

Every now and again, the thought to text an old NRC classmate strikes him--but something keeps Cater back. Doubt, apprehension. The worst that can happen is being left on read, but to Cater the consequences feel so much worse than that. It's a huge relief to him when he gets a text out of the blue from Trey one day--an excuse to text back, to make that connection. Though it's still difficult for Cater to gather the courage to initiate another conversation, this is still a foot in the door for him, the potential start of something new.

Cater still has the Magicam accounts of his school mates. He'll sort of like... cyberstalk their pages just to keep up with their lives, to feel a sense of closeness with the people he failed to reach out to during his NRC days. When he stops to reflect on it, he really regrets his inaction--and, on some nights, he scrolls and scrolls until the dread and the loneliness lulls him into a comfortable, dreamless sleep.

It took a lot of resistance and arguing, but--much to the delight of Kifaji and his family members--Leona has (begrudgingly) taken on the role of a royal advisor to support Sunset Savanna. There were of course some growing pains, especially with Leona's callous and arrogant attitude clashing with those of the other (older, much more conservative) advisors--but for the most part, it's been a net positive.

His focus is on improving infrastructure while also conserving as much of the environment as they can. The knowledge and experience he has gained from his 4th year internship comes in handy here, and thankfully they've been able to take small but steady steps to modernize the country.

In addition to improving infrastructure, Leona has made efforts to strengthen the Sunset Savanna's soft power. He has established new schools and food banks, particularly in impoverished areas, and started magift/spelldrive teams. This has made him popular with certain groups, such as the hyena beastmen and children.

Leona loathes putting on airs, but it's a necessity when facing the public so he manages. Unfortunately, he's still in the habit of skipping meetings and ceremonies he deems unnecessary or a waste of his time, which earns him pockets of ire. He usually just shoots back with, "Yeah? So what? I'm still gettin' results, ain't I?"

Political demands? Not a problem for him. But family? That's the real pain in his tail. Cheka, now an energetic 15-year old, has not let up on bothering him one bit. Then there's also the affectionate Falena, who is trying to desperately reconnect with his estranged brother. Leona just tosses out the excuse of "being busy" to dodge the both of them.

Vil continues to be an A-list celebrity and triple threat--actor, model, and influencer. He has racked up several more leading roles since his school days, including non-traditional bad guys. Vil has been an anti-villain and sympathetic villain.

Having aged like fine wine, he was able to play the character of a father too, just like how he dreamed of as a third-year student. When Vil got the call about the role, he excitedly told his own dad about it, who was so ecstatic and joked that Vil "takes after his old man". They went out for a little father-son bonding time to celebrate, dining at a high-class establishment and having a toast to Vil's future.

It was a Big Deal when Vil was offered his first-ever hero role. Social media and news outlets were popping off about it, and Vil himself was so excited he actually squealed. To this day he still considers it a turning point in his career and one of the most fun characters he ever played. Since then, he's been getting much more diverse roles, which has really opened up the door for him to expand his skills.

Vil is also a business owner now, having several brands under him. A skincare brand, a clothing brand, a makeup brand… Despite them being celebrity owned, the products are actually high quality (Vil won’t sign his name off on subpar products) and very popular, particularly whenever his face is plastered on the marketing campaigns.

These days, he allows himself to be a little less guarded with his front-facing persona. Vil still comes off as cool and regal, but notably laughs more, smiles more, even giggles more. He has a bit of a youthful sparkle to him and talks openly about his own struggles, fears, hopes, and dreams. Fans praise him for being so much more "relatable" and honest.

Rook claims that he is a globe-trotting archeologist now, but you get the feeling that he’s not telling the full truth. What kind of archeologist carries around a belt of weirdly invasive tools on it? Are those teeny-tiny listening devices? And why is his camera (which he says is strictly for his photography hobby) loaded with shots of suspicious characters taken from a distance?

He shares all kinds of crazy stories, like about the time he swung from a vine with a family of gorillas or how he discovered a lever that revealed a roller coaster to a secret underground laboratory. “Um, are those the kinds of things an archaeologist does…?” you ask him. Rook just smiles and laughs, but doesn’t provide a clear answer.

His stealth and marksman skills have developed to a scary degree. You sometimes forget that Rook is even standing beside you, and you've witnessed him kill bugs with frightening precision with nothing more than his gloved fingers. He brushes it off as abilities he sharpened "on the job".

... In any case, whatever Rook's actual occupation is, it requires a lot of travel. He lavishes his friends with souvenirs and post cards of the loveliest sights, then babbles on and on about local attractions, culture, art, and charming hole-in-the-wall destinations. It seems like he has accumulated a lot of knowledge about Twisted Wonderland in the 10 years since you've last seen him, and he's all too eager to blab about it all.

He's become an artist, although he operates under a pen name. You'll find paintings, sculptures, or collages he has assembled in various small exhibitions, and poetry he has penned where you least expect it. Rook puts his talent out in hopes of beautifying the world.

Idia has succeeded his father as the Director of S.T.Y.X. There’s a lot riding on his shoulders, but the pressure surprisingly never really gets to him. He’s cooler, more methodical now—almost as though he were a machine himself, set so clearly on his task that he won’t budge until it is completed first. (He worries that he has become just like his downer dad 💀)

Sometimes he spirals and his nerves get the best of him. In those cases, he has to resort to the text to speech device he invented back at NRC to get through his meetings. The staff at S.T.Y.X. get used to it and are largely alright with it.

He has the habit of snacking on the job. There's chip crumbs and gummy worms scattered on his desk, which is already messy enough with important documents. (He complains that this should all be digitalized anyway!) Idia keeps even more snacks in his pockets, munching on them whenever he’s annoyed or needs to give himself something to do.

The dark circles under his eyes get way worse. With work eating up so much of his day, Idia has less free time to games and other hobbies. That just means he ends up staying up super late into the night to catch up on his dailies and to grind out events, read manga, watch anime, etc. (“Sleep is for the weak!” he insists.) It’s a miracle he can still get up in the mornings to clock in for his next shift!

Shockingly, Idia takes breaks to go outside and touch grass soak up some (artificial) sunshine. He has learned from past experience that being locked up indoors all the time isn't exactly healthy. That, and his Chief of Cybersecurity (Ortho) pesters him to put himself out there more! Sometimes Idia even awkwardly tries to converse with his coworkers around the water cooler, though that's never quite as relaxing as him just chilling by himself in some quiet corner of the Island of Woe.

Make way for the reigning king of Briar Valley! Maleficia has finally retired, passing on her title to her grandson Malleus. There was a coronation ceremony (now recognized as the holiday or Ascension in Briar Valley), which you were of course invited to as a guest. You had a seat up front and were one of the first to congratulate him right after he was officially crowned.

As a relatively young king, Malleus isn’t the perfect ruler right away. Learning about ruling is nothing close to actually ruling. He stumbles and has to adjust to the role and, most of all, he has to balance the conservative values of his country and his people with the ever-changing lands beyond his home. Not an easy task, especially when he has only just gotten used to the concept of change himself—but with the support of his like-minded retainers, Malleus knows he isn’t alone in his endeavors for a brighter tomorrow.

His power also poses another challenge. Malleus is so used to solving his issues by casting a spell or terrifying his opposition into backing down. He’s no longer in a position to do such things or to let his emotions run wild, lest he risk tearing apart his own court and driving a wedge between the valley and other countries. A leash on his temper, a regal demeanor—this is how a mature adult presents himself. The anger only truly comes out when his people are in danger or he is deeply insulted.

His top priority once he is in power is restoring the bonds that were put in jeopardy on account of his… “oopsie” in his third year at NRC. There’s still lingering distrust between him and other nations due to that incident, so Malleus makes it clear that he’s apologetic and willing to come to the table for discussion, should other countries wish. His schedule is jam-packed with meetings with foreign dignitaries.

Massive and sweeping reform is not happening—not anytime soon. No opening of the borders, no sudden introduction of new technology. There would be massive outcry and resistance from the public + senators, not to mention that Malleus himself isn’t entirely comfortable yet with the concept. However, he has put together incremental proposals and tries convince others of the benefits, implanting the seeds in the minds of the people. He’s also supportive of initiatives which promote learning and cultural exchange, such as the import of reading materials from overseas (Sebek’s idea) and has even appointed Silver as Briar Valley’s very first human ambassador.

Lilia has comfortably retired to the Land of Crimson Long. He lives in a little hut far removed from civilization, but he ventures out into the town to pick up the essentials and to play board games with the local retirees. For the most part, it’s just Lilia and the wilderness! ... Which has led to rumors of a monster haunting the forest. This, Lilia entertains in by dropping down from the trees and frightening any hooligans who come close to his territory.

Though his magical abilities have been in decline, he does his best to stay active and in shape! Lilia once snuck into a nearby military camp, disguising himself as one of the new recruits, and partook in their training with them! He even stopped to lend extra help to the recruits who seemed to be struggling the most--though he still came first place in all of their exercises and holds the record time for climbing to the top of a pole to retrieve the arrow there.

He delights in partaking in the local customs and cuisine. Lilia loves to travel to shrines and admire the temples built to honor ancestors. He lights up some incense and joins others in prayer, knowing that he, too, will one day be among the dead. Best to pay respects now! Lilia has also taken to several cups of tea (as recommended by his doctor) with his meals, and has rice porridge with sunnyside egg eyes and bacon smiles whenever he needs something comforting.

Lilia of course keeps in touch with his loved ones! He's still gaming with his online companion Gloomurai and texts his Diasomnia boys all the time. Lilia also sends cards for special occasions, putting much love and care into his notes and the pictures + souvenirs he attaches to them.

His whole face lights up when his friends are able to make the time to pay him a visit. Lilia makes a big show of it, insisting to arrange a big feast or to play a tune for them—oh, and how about a fireworks show?! But his guests just tell him to sit down and take it easy while they take care of everything for him. It’s his turn to be doted on!

[dwaekkicidal]

cw» fem!reader, kitty hybrid reader x puppy hybrid!channie, mentions of p in v, manhandling, there’s a few more but nothing too crazy/out of the blue

cw» not really proofread, but this is for that one anon who asked for kitty reader a few months ago <3 sorry it took so long

DO NOT republish or translate+post my work!

pup!channie who was very against his owner adopting another hybrid, let a lone a cat of all species. but it's not like he has much of a say in it- it's supposed to be his new "friend" so he's not alone while his owner is at work all day!

pup!channie who scares you shitless before you two even meet. your new owner warned you and told you all kinds of scary things about the dog you'll be living with from now on

but queue faces of surprise, from all 3 of you, when chan's face burns red and his tail starts wagging aggressively the second he sees you

pup!channie who gets addicted to your scent from day 1. he just loooves the way you smell. that and your endearingly cute demeanor only leads to him quickly growing a little crush on you~

pup!channie who surprises you and your owner when he opens his space to you right off the bat- with little to no aggressiveness coming from the boy.

pup!channie who welcomes you with open arms, even going far enough to allow you to lay (and sleep with him) in his bed. your owner was scared at first but quickly grew to trust chan enough that he didn't bother getting you your own bed- simply allowing you to sleep with chan

pup!channie who stares daggers into every person, human or hybrid, who even glances your way. your pretty head is never worried about anything enough to notice the stares, but chan has eyes of a hawk when it comes to you.

pup!channie who scents you unbeknownst to you. sneakily scenting you and your clothes to the point where it's just a natural smell to you- you don't question where it comes from anymore now that you're conditioned to live in the smell- but the smell follows you everywhere enough to scare other hybrids away

pup!channie who is SO easily jealous and refuses to let anybody near you. your owner has to muzzle HIM when you go to the doctor because the mere thought of strangers being so close to you, maybe even touching you makes him seethe.

^ and this is even worse when your owner brings their friends around. the onslaught of questions like "ohh how did you get that mutt to tolerate your new, pretty kitty" was already enough to piss him off, but when the friends try to touch you, he sees red. he actually loses all sense of rationality and will bite the person if they don't back away within his first growl.

and all of this is innocent at first! until its not.

it loses all innocence when mating season comes around, and you both discover your owner wasn't responsible enough to account for the clash of hormones. they thought about the possibility of you getting pregnant and put you on birth control "just in case", but they didn't take into account that the hormones would still be there in full force.

and that leads to what happened at the beginning of the week. your owner is out on a business trip that just so happens to be 2 weeks long, and channie has begun to feel the first signs of his heat. but it wasn't until he came home from a short grocery outing, and smelt your scent for the first time in hours, that he realized his heat was hitting him.

it wasn't until he was standing the doorway of your shared room, groceries long forgotten on the kitchen floor, that he felt the heat start coursing through his veins.

it wasn't until he had your face shoved into the sheet, balls deep in your cunt, that the emotions started to hit him.

"C-Channie! Slow down, p-please-" He shushes you and thrusts harder, his balls slapping against your clit each time he bottoms out. "Pretty kitty- MY pretty kitty."

"Chan~" Your whines only made him growl and push into you harder. He was using both hands to hold you down, one in your hair and the other on your shoulder, but he trailed the lower of the two down to your ass after some time.

His hand comes down on your ass suddenly, making you yelp out of surprise. The yelp turns into a moan when his hand wraps around the base of your tail and tugs.

"A-Ah!?" He doesn't release it. Instead, he tightens his hold on your tail and continues to lightly tug on it as leverage to pull you back onto his cock. Your hand that's not tangled in the sheets goes behind to push his hand away and Chan growls again, releasing your hair to dig his hands into your wrist and hold it above your head in order to get you to stop resisting him.

"You're gonna take it, right baby? Gonna let me fuck you full of my pups?" You attempt to push yourself up with your free hand, only to fall back down when his canines dig into the side of your neck. "Answer my fucking question before I lose my patience, kitty."

"Yes! I'll take it all. Anything for you, Channie…” You could feel the smirk break out against your neck, and it seems like your promise was enough to scratch an itch in his stupid dog brain.

now, days into his heat, you feel your own heat starting up- no doubt thanks to the restless hound that was adamant about rearranging your insides and trying to get you pregnant.

the two of you had barely left the room by the mid point of the next week. your owner had to call in a friend to bring you guys food every night- at first they weren't really aware of what was going on thanks to the vague texts chan sent (in the middle of you riding him, might i add), but boy could his friend smell the sex from the front door.

and channie had absolutely no plan to stop fucking you, even as your owner's friend poked their head in to check on you two for your owner. he simply gave them the nastiest side eye and tightened his grip around your neck, seemingly fucking into you even harder as he held eye contact and growled at the person to leave.

and then once they did leave, he continued fucking you as if the world was ending and the two of your would never see each other again.

“Attagirl, baby. Take this knot and Channie’ll breed your pains away.”

Taglist (red=can’t be tagged):

@valkyriexo @lunearta @jabmastersupriseee @rylea08

@yaorzu-blog @amararosesblog @jiminssluttyminx @clemissleepy

@miss-daisy04 @kittyxnoa @dwaekkiiracha @honeyybbuubblleess

@mariteez @fun-fanfics @honeyybbuubblleess @kittycatkrissa

@nicora04 @chuuyaobsessed @moonlightndaydreams @velvetmoonlght

@aeri-skzver

[simonsrileyhusband]

haii!! its me again!! <3

so i have an idea that has been taking over my mind

what would you think about poly ghostprice with m!reader? like ghost sharing his precious bf with his captain and they go ham on him like imagine the spitroasts..

nghh i cantt these men make me horny!!! 💔💔😔

🎀 anon! <3

nsfw (headcannons bcs i didnt knew what to write)

simon is so much rough than price, that doesnt mean he doesnt take care of you, that just means that he likes to fuck a lot and he likes it fast... and nasty.

price likes to take care of you, kiss and squeeze here and there, he likes to make sure you feel good. he also lets you take control from time to time, letting you ride him however you want, letting you sit on his face as long as you want.

on the other hand simon hates to give control, he gives orders and even when he allows ypu to be on top, he decides the speed, and if you cant keep up he will make it up trusting up to you.

simon only obeys when price gives an order, which doesnt happen usually bcs he likes to let him believe he is in control.

simon loves praise and degradation, both give and recieve. price gives both and deep inside, even if he says otherwise, he loves praises.

simon loves doggy style and mating press, price loves missionary and cowperson (??? idk i wanted to make it neutral, dont me mean to me)

when they are away on deployment they leave you a set of rules that you must follow. no touching yourself unless they allow you to, and they almost never let you. and if they do give you permission, you can only cum once and you must send them a video or audio.

price is less harsh if you disobey, he mainly says he is dissapointed. but simon gets excited when it comes to punishments, both giving and reciving.

also, when they come back from deployment you should be prepared for not being able to walk properly for at least 5 days. because when they come back they are needy.

[phopollo]

what are the backstories for the fuel trucks like in the cartooniverse? (im especially curious about hydras)

Oh i looooove talking about everyone backstories-- sorry this took so long to reapond to, I wanted to find a post for context, but I can't find it, so!

Context 1 (pardon old art and designs);

Context 2;

While most of the main cast were extremely young, there was something akin to a recession, as well as a HUUUUGE shift in power and whatnot, and not every station recovered from it

So!! With that-- backstories!

(Bit of a long one, sorry akdbsj)

Porter

Porter was factory built (the only one of our main freight gang who was) and sent to work at Station 24 (where our story is set) immediately, under the impression he would be the only fuel truck there. Upon arrival, he was surprised to find Lumber there, just not working on account of being too young and small, along with Rusty and Dinah. (Not like, super young though, Dinah was applying for clearance to race at the time & all 3 of them were cleared to start working within 2 years) All of whom IMMEDIATELY decided that this is their big brother now, he didnt have a choice in the matter. But, Momma saw the way he responded to and interacted with the kids, and thought he was really immature, so she made him wait a few months to start working. In that time, he ended up maturing quite a bit just trying to keep the others out of trouble, allowing him to finally begin working

Hydra

Hydra was built and raised by an electric engine who, like Hydra, is extremely concerned about the environment. But with hydrogen being such a new fuel source and being so unstable, he spent a lot of his childhood in and out of the repair shed-- more time in when he was younger. When he was about 15 or so, his dad & him went for a long term visit to station 24 on account of having better repair trucks with better information on hydrogen as a fuel source, where they then proceeded to find a new main repair truck for Hysda. Eventually, it just seemed more reasonable for Hydra to stay at Station 24 closer to hus doctor rather than having to travel back and forth. He was only cleared to start consistently working about 2 years before the start of the story. Even though he's in much more stable condition now, it still seems most reasonable to keep him near his doctor. Bonus Babydra & hydrogen father doodles I've made in the past;

Lumber

All things considered, Lumber had a relatively normal childhood. He was fortunate enough that he didn't really know there were problems with his station in the aftermath of the pretty much recession until shortly before he started hearing whispers that his starion was being shut down, which happened when he was roughly 12-13. When it happened, Lumber's family were all sent to different stations, landing Lumber at Station 24, where Momma took him in and where he's been since. (He keeps in contact with his family though, dw)

Slick

Slick was built into a family of livestock trucks who didn't work on the rails, but helped provide more agricultural goods to train society. Initially, Slick was not built to carry oil, she was built with the intention to be a milk tanker and work more directly with her family and continue in the business. But to make a long story short, there had been several incidents involving factories mass producing oil tankers made with extremely poor quality parts, causing a lot of breakdowns and scrappings, causing oil tankers to eaen a bad rep, and making more reputable factories not want the association. As a result, there was a bit of a (good quality) oil tanker shortage, leading to something almost akin to a draft going out to draft tankers who hadn't started working yet to become oil tankers-- and this included Slick, who at the time her family received it, technically wasn't even finished being built. Due to the shortage, Slick began working on the rails extremely early-- 2 years earlier than usual youngest rolling stock can start working early. When more and more stations started feeling the delayed affects of the recession and shutting down, the little business Slick's family ran did too, as many of the stations they received business from shut down. So similarly to Lumber, Slick ended up getting transferred to station 24 at 14-15, while the rest of her family got split up to find work at other stations. (She has no idea where they ended up and has no kept in contact.) Shes been here since. Bonus again, but this time the doodles of Slick's family, who are absolutely meant to feel reminiscent of the other freight + Rusty;

HOO

Sorry if that all got a little disjointed, the adhd was acting up BAD trying to write this all

[thekaratcake-blog]

Not even remotely, you used continuum to meane "coninuing"

That guy literally is an expert in the field and you're dumb as bricks if you think otherwise

Walmart is literally telling you you're wrong

The tarrifs aren't just on china, they're on, y'know, almost everywhere

Fun thing is we can just wait and see! A fuck ton of companies quite early on fired a ton of people even in preparation for the tarrifs, now that they're hitting, shit's gonna hit the fan even harder, I'll enjoy sitting back and watching, seeing what the actual math says will happen play out

Also yes rising prices are actively a problem, why the hell would wages change to match? He's literally increasing your tax rates and doing nothing to help the wages of anyone but the top 5%

It's funny you defend him when y'know

He's not helping you lol, he's helping his billionaire buddies

How delusional to people have to be that the guy who shafted the workers who built his towers and used the extra money to plate his toilet in gold, gives even the slightest shit about the middle class, he's literally actively shat on you guys before

Now of course he's putting people you didn't elect directly in governement who have no government experience

Including letting an unelected manchild oligarch name an official government agency "DOGE" after a meme based cryptocurrency

And you don't see why you're the laughing stock of the world?

Now, as your president wastes his time with useless policies that are just going to get blocked for being blatantly unconstitutional, everyone else will return back to their lives with their "tyrannical" governments, with freedom of expression, protection of their rights, free healthcare, livable wages, welfare for those who are struggling or disabled that they can actually survive on, and systems that don't allow billionaires to simply buy their way to the top

I'm suffering so much under my "tyrannical" government that doesn't give billionaires more rights than the working man, and literally let money run the country instead of democracy and best interests

How the hell is lobbying and the electoral college still a thing lol, you literally let countries pay to influence you and your politics, to charge you thousands of times the cost of manufacturing as you have absolute shit monopoly protection and you're sitting here whining about how terrible our governments are?

Dumbass, lol

Dumbass Orange shit stain couldn’t even tell you what the Soviet Union was.

[ghouljams]

I miss the sandwich recipes everyone dropped because of the mafia sub au 😭

Me too... I love thinking about food, probably my second favorite thing to eating food. Anyway here's some sandwich mafia au shenanigans because the idea that these men can terrorize a city and it is AT BEST a minor inconvenience tickles me.

You're walking to your car from the tube station when a car comes shrieking around a corner, gunfire barely audible over the heavy thump thump thump of helicopter blades. People jump back from the street and hunker behind parked cars, and you freeze. The men firing from the windows of the black sedan are foreign to you, but the pretty boy hanging from the helicopter is startlingly familiar even in the blurred motion of his flight.

You watch one of your favorite shop's staff shooting bullets in a spray as he hangs upside down from a rope that's trailing haphazardly off the copter. He yells something and barely manages to avoid being slammed into a nearby awning as the copter attempts to weave between the narrow streets.

He waves at you, flashing white teeth, before shouldering his rifle and continuing to fire at the car the nearly flips taking a sharp turn into an alley.

You're so shocked you don't even notice the stinging burn of your grazed arm until a concerned citizen places a tissue on the bleed. You're quick to thank them, and assure them you'll get to a hospital before making your way to your car.

One of the tires is blown out and you spend thirty minutes switching between a youtube video and your owner's manual trying to change it. The only consolation you can find in all of this is that at least you aren't hanging out of a moving airborne vehicle.

It's the first time you've ever heard Simon laugh when you recount the previous day's events to him. It's enough to make you giggle a little too.

"Fuckin' muppets," He smiles behind the mask, wiping tears from his eyes, "scran on the 'ouse for your trouble, eh?"

"Is, uh, is your guy ok?" You ask, unsure how much you're allowed to pry, or even why you care.

Simon's humor doesn't fade, "Happens to 'im oll the time."

God. You're really glad you're not that guy.

[djarindroid]

Surviving

Pairing: Thanos (Choi Su-Bong) x Reader

Summary: After getting you through the third game will Thanos stay true to his word and help you get out alive?

Warnings: Brief mentions of death, Alternative Universe (deviates from the show story line), Thanos still ooc in places (sorry I can't help but write him as a bit of a softy).

Word Count: 1,881

Comments: Thank you to everyone that read part one! This one isn't as long as is more of a build up to part 3 💕 Apologies to any Nam-Gyu lovers, I had to give him a bit of shit in this

<- Part one

The walk back to the dormitory was as quiet as ever, though Thanos didn’t leave your side the entire time. He kept his hand firmly clasped around yours, willing you forward. His grip was so tight, as if letting go might send you spiraling.  

As you filtered back into the dormitory the absence of the fallen players became painfully apparent. Only 100 of you remained, making the once cramped room feel eerily spacious.

‘Min-Su!’ Thanos called out, tugging you along with him. He pulled the reluctant boy into a big hug.  ‘I’m so happy to see you again, bro,’ he said. His enthusiasm felt wildly out of place but what else would you expect from him? 

You watched the odd exchange. Min-Su clearly didn’t want to talk to Thanos. As you watched him awkwardly try to pull away a flicker of doubt crept into your mind - had you made a mistake trusting Thanos so easily? 

Before you could dwell on it Thanos gripped Min-Su’s shoulders, his tone turning serious. ‘We’re voting to leave this time bro. No more games, you got it?’ Shock took over Min-Su’s face, his gaze briefly flickered to you before managing a nod.

‘What happened to staying until we hit 1 billion?’ a voice interjected. Player 124, Nam-Gyu slid up to the group, and patted Thanos on the shoulder.

Thanos, clearly irritated, released Min-Su, allowing the boy to scurry away, as his attention turned to Nam-Gyu. His eyes looked pointedly from the hand on his shoulder to Nam Gyu’s face. ‘Things changed,’ he offered simply.

Nam-Gyu looked momentarily confused before his gaze shifted to you, his eyes widened with apparent understanding. ‘Aaah, I see how it is bro,’ he said whilst making an exaggerated gesture toward you. Your stomach sank at the implication.

Thanos stepped fully in front of you, blocking you from view. ‘What do you see, huh?’

Nam-Gyu shrugged, unfazed. ‘You’re playing the hero, getting yourself a lil something to keep you warm at night right?’ He raised his eyebrows suggestively. ‘I don’t blame you bro, maybe you could share though?’

In the blink of an eye Thanos had grabbed Nam-Gyu by the front of his shirt and yanked him close. ‘You don’t know a thing about me and you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ his voice was low and sounded dangerous.

Nam-Gyu grabbed at Thanos’ hand trying to pry himself free, ‘okay man, I’m sorry! I’m sorry okay?’ He desperately tried to apologise. ‘Just thought something was going on.’

‘Why don’t you go follow someone else about?’ Thanos said with finality, releasing Nam-Gyu and shoving him away in the process. ‘Idiot,’ he muttered before finally turning back to you. 

You stood in shock, your face probably mirroring Min-Su’s had earlier. Had that just happened? How had Thanos changed so much in such a short time? Not only was he helping you but he was standing up for you now too.

His expression softened as he met your eyes. ‘Don’t listen to that idiot,’ he gestured over his shoulder. You nodded, the words of thanks on the tip of your tongue. But before you could speak, the pink guards entered and announced the next vote.

The vote was once again being conducted in reverse order, starting with player 456 who stayed steady with his vote to leave. The tally flickered unevenly, between staying and leaving, the gap changing with every decision.

The uncertainty gnawed at your insides. You twisted the hem of your tracksuit as you tried to calm yourself. Thanos noticed, his hand reaching out just enough to brush against your own. ‘Relax,’ he murmured, his voice soft enough that no one else could hear. ‘It’s gonna be okay.’

You glanced up at him, his calm expression steadying you, if only for a moment. Though as the vote went on the anxiety continued to claw at your chest. 

When your number was called, you moved forward quickly. You wanted to get this done. You didn’t waste any time pressing the red X, adding another vote to leave. You looked up and watched the number change to 24. Leave was still behind, but only barely.

As you joined the others stood on the giant red X the next number was called. ‘Player 230.’ Thanos’ number. You hadn’t realised he would be following you up there.

He waltzed through the centre of the room, giving you a quick wink as he passed. Your heart raced as he approached the pedestal. Had he been serious? Or was Nam-Gyu right, was Thanos just playing the hero in an attempt to win you over? 

You felt as though your life was in the balance as he approached the machine. Your heart pounded loudly in your ears as you watched with a bated breath.

He didn’t hesitate, as soon as he was in arms length he slammed his hand down on the red X. Relief took over you as you watched the leave total climb to 25. A ripple of murmurs spread through the room. O’s looking disgruntled to lose, what they thought, was an easy vote, whilst the X’s buzzed with cautious excitement.

Thanos proudly ripped off his O badge and turned to look at you as he firmly pressed the red X into place. He was smiling as he sauntered over to you. ‘Told you I’d get you outta here,’ he said, slinging his arm around your shoulders as he led you further into the leave group.

That’s how you stayed for the remainder of the vote, nestled into Thanos’ side. Each time someone voted to leave he squeezed your arm, his smile growing wider with every additional tally. 

The remaining votes thankfully went quickly, and soon enough, there were only 3 people left. To go home, 2 out of the final 3 had to vote leave.

The atmosphere in the room was suffocating. The tension seemed charged, making it hard to breathe. Every shift and murmur felt amplified, like the walls were pressing in. 

‘Player 007,’ the next player was called forward.

All eyes were on him as he walked to the front. The faint squeak of his shoes seemed to echo around you.  

As he neared the pedestal you heard an elderly woman reassuring other players - ‘don’t worry. My Yong-Sik will definitely press X this time.’  

Perfectly on cue, player 007 slammed the X button down, with his new badge in hand he turned and shouted ‘LET’S GO HOME!’ 

Everyone around you cheered. The joy around you was infectious, but amidst the celebration a small voice in the back of your mind reminded you that it wasn’t over yet. 

Thanos must have noticed the flicker of worry on your face because his arm tightened around you. ‘She voted leave last time,’ he said quietly, drawing your attention to the lady who was about to vote. ‘This could be it señorita.’

Silence once again settled across the room as player 006 stood in front of the pedestal. Her hand hovered indecisively between the two buttons as she stared up at the screen. Each second dragged on as she held the fate of everyone’s lives in her hand.

The anticipation was unbearable. You could hear your own heartbeat thundering in your chest. The only thing keeping you steady was Thanos’ unwavering grip around you.

Finally, her hand went down.

The red X lit up.

For a moment the room was silent, as everyone processed what had just happened. Then chaos erupted around you, as cheers of joy rang out . It was over. You were going home!

Thanos pulled you into a tight hug that lifted you off the ground. He jumped around, shouting with unrestrained joy. You got swept up into the moment, throwing your arms around him and laughing along. The fear that had been looming over you completely melted away in that moment. 

‘I told you!’ He shouted. ‘I told you I’d get you outta here!’ Tears stung the corner of your eyes, he was right. If he hadn’t changed his vote you could’ve been left in a tie and who knows what would've happened then.

‘Thank you,’ you cried into his neck as he continued to hug you. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ 

‘Hey!’ He pulled back with his signature smirk plastered on his face. ‘I thought I told you pretty girls shouldn’t cry.’ He wiped your tears away as you laughed.

‘These are good tears this time, thank you!’ You pulled him back into another hug, letting the relief of surviving take over you. He seemed momentarily surprised that you’d initiated a hug but quickly recuperated and hugged you back just as tightly.

Suddenly the voice of the soldier rang out, ‘the majority has voted to terminate the games. We find it a pity to say goodbye so soon. The money accumulated will be distributed among you evenly. The preparations for your departure will now commence.'

Thanos had let go of you during the announcement. Instead, he stood rooted in place, staring up at the screen where the prize money was displayed. You followed his gaze, taking in the amount, it was more than enough to settle your debt.

You turned your attention back to Thanos. His expression was unreadable, his jaw was tense and his hand reached for his necklace. He gripped the cross tightly, his knuckles whitening.

You reached out and gently touched his arm. ‘Are you okay?’ You asked softly.

‘Huh?’ he blinked and slowly turned his head to you, his eyes remained fixed on the screen until the last moment. ‘Oh yeah! Of course I am, princess!’ The forced lightness in his tone was given away by the tension in his shoulders. 

You studied him for a moment. ‘Are you sure?’ you asked, leaning closer.

His eyes flicked between your own, you could see the internal struggle, as if he was battling whether to let you in or not. But before he could say anything the guard began to explain the instructions for you all to leave. You barely registered their words, keeping your eyes and thoughts on the man beside you.

He’d been such a high energy mere moments ago, but now that freedom was within reach, something seemed…off. As if the thought of leaving unsettled him more than staying ever had. You wished you could help him, like he had helped you. You watched as his eyes flickered between the guards and the money on the screen. 

Suddenly, a faint hissing sound filled the air. You glanced upward in confusion. The guards continued to talk as if nothing were happening, their muffled voices blending with the sound, but you noticed a strange, sweet scent filling the room.

Around you other players began to sway on their feet, some stumbling before collapsing to the ground. Panic began to rise in your chest as your vision blurred. You reached out to Thanos as the world tilted.

His eyes met yours, wide and dark, and for a fleeting moment his lips parted as if he wanted to say something. But the strange gas was taking hold. Your knees buckled and your grip on him loosened. The last thing you saw before darkness consumed you was Thanos’ face, as he too fell to the ground by your side. 

-> Part Three (Coming Soon)

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