#this is all excellent stuff and I wish I had more time to give for it all right now

[nomairuins]

like i wouldnt mind like. Not having new linear games post 5 its judt that sims 4 wasnt even supposed to Be The Sims 4 it was a last minute pivot and the base code is so outdated and was broken On launch so like. i just wish we could have the final actual sims game be like. one that was always intented to be a major sims release AND be intended to be so long term . yk

[defmaybe]

J’adore

5.2k words

aespa’s Yoo Jimin/Karina x Male Reader

Prequel to Not Shy

A/N: Kind of extension to Not Shy! Also, this is my last sprint before the midterms lol, I’ll be back after that and try to write something good. Kinda rough bc there’s no beta-reading lol. Thanks for reading as always!!!

—

Spring

“You? A student council member?”

“It’s just the treasurer!”

It’s the easiest position, according to your seniors, which seems to be much, much more credible sources than Kai, the friend you got caught in a debate with.

“Just the treasurer. Mate, have you seen the lads from last year? I swear that one of them almost died.”

“I have to build my portfolio, man. You even have your dance club!” You retort, trying to grasp on something.

“Well, it’s because I like to dance.” Kai says in a mocking tone. He doesn't mean to be condescending, of course. He’s your best friend, after all. “Do you like to work with Excel?”

“I mean–”

“Board games? No, too nerdy. Cheerleader? No, too demanding. And then you fucking jumped onto the student council? I swear, man, you definitely have some kind of death wish,” he says.

You sigh, surrendering to his points. Still, you're too deep in the application process to turn back now. You look back at your phone, seeing all the completed questions in the form.

“I’m not leaving you behind, still,” Kai says, patting your back. “I’ll give you caffeine when you need it.”

Do you think you’re qualified to be a student council member?

Yes.

“I’m sending it now.”

“Good luck.”

Submit

Thank you for your submission. We will announce our selection by May 1st.

—

Summer

Maybe it was how the last year’s council members turned out to be. You were the only one who applied for the treasurer's position. Hell, even the other ones aren’t any more popular either. There was no one in the head of first aid, and they had to roll out another round of applications for that.

The fresh faces of the new student council members are all standing inside this meeting room—so determined, so passionate. Their chatters fill the room up with life.

You glance around the room. You’re familiar with some of them, walk-pasts in the hallways, sitting-fars in the classes, until one woman catches your eye.

Yoo Jimin, you’ve heard that she beat the second place applicant for president by quite a margin. Her confidence is probably what makes her so alluring to the students. Also, her face, fuck, her face, she’s the fucking epitome of perfection.

Maybe it’s the way you stare at her for just a little too long; she starts to walk towards you, and that’s when you fell into her trap for the first time.

She stops just a step away, offering you a handshake—firm, assured.

“Yoo Jimin,” she declares—stern, expressionless.

“Pleasure to meet you, Jimin.” You accept her grip, lips curling inward, letting out a minuscule smile—relaxed, reserved.

“We’ll be working together for the next year. I’m looking forward to it.” She keeps it professional in the expression she makes. There’s nothing to be made of it, except for the fact that she’s very reticent with her face.

You force out another small smile. “I’m also looking forward to it, Jimin.”

—

“Areas! I need two tables and four chairs. Parcels, get your equipment ready.”

The first meeting between the freshmen and their seniors is always the hardest to perfect. There’s the idea that the first impression defines the future of the relationship between the two. So, here you are, in your faculty’s First Meet event. You’re lucky that they let you use the air conditioners on the d-day. Those fucking run-throughs got you all melted.

You have little work to do today, having managed the proposals and preparing to do the post-production stuff. So, you’re at the core team’s table, playing whatever your old laptop can handle, until—

“Are you free?”

You look up from your screen to see the angelic figure that is Yoo Jimin standing in front of you, towering you with ease with you sitting in your seat.

“Uh–,” you can only let out a hesitation.

“I guess you’re—” she bends over the desk to see the gaming screen, before letting out a small laugh. “—free?”

“Y–Yes, Jimin.” A slight view of her cleavage can be seen with her posture, and you have to do your best to find something else to look at.

“Good. Can you help us carry a few tables?”

You look at your frail arms—should’ve done some more work at the gym. “If you want me to tear my biceps.”

Jimin chuckles, before closing on your ear, left hand pressing on your right thigh, “Don’t worry that you wouldn’t be able to jerk off, treasurer. I can do it for you.”

You freeze, not believing the words coming out of her mouth. Did she just say that? Such lewd words?

Jimin, sensing your tensed up body, pulls back from you and laughs. “Oh my god, look at you. I was just fucking with you!”

“Good grief, Jimin. You could’ve killed me,” you huff.

She shoots back a beam. “Come on, let’s get to work.”

—

Fall

The clicking sound of your keyboard and the scratches of the bills you’re arranging permeates the room this evening. Jimin is sitting on the other side of the trash-ridden table—stationeries, snack wraps—eyes unfocused as she swipes one short video after another. Her thoughts seem to be elsewhere now. Dinner? Bed? Someone? You’ll never know.

“Fucking hell, this bitch again,” she mutters under her breath, which you catch. You look up from the budget plan you’re working on, meeting her eyes.

“Sorry, Tinder stuff.”

You return her a tiny smile before going back to inputting the bills. Still, you can hear Jimin’s tossing and turning in her chair as she seems to type something into her phone, before smashing her thumb on the right side of its poor screen. You can’t help but let out a chuckle, one that she catches.

“Yeah, it’s pathetic, isn’t it?” Jimin rhetorizes, placing her phone on the table. “A student president that just can’t find any partner.”

You shrug, still typing, “Well, the work is gruelling.” And she chuckles at your statement.

“Yeah, I guess so. But it’s just, how to explain?” She furrows her eyebrows, tapping her chin to seek the right word in the air, before coming to an answer. “I just can’t find the right person, you know? Half of the line is gone once I show any bit of confidence, and the other half are, well, clingy ass bitches.”

You smile back at her, trying to give her some solace in solitude. “I’m sure you’ll find the right person soon, Jimin. You like–have the whole faculty in your hands.”

She gives you a weak smile. “You always have pleasant words for everyone, treasurer.”

You smile back before returning to your accounting work, unbeknownst to the light bulb brightening up inside her head.

“So, how’s your love life?” She asks, rising from the other side. She leans forward ever so slightly, hands supporting her frame on the white table, slightly revealing the valley of her breasts.

You break yourself from the laptop, once again, meeting her cleavage in your line of sight for a split second. It’s magnetic, but you’re able to resist it, for now.

“Hmm?”

“I mean… you don’t seem to be an awful choice for women, or men, judging from… how many months?”

“Four,” and you gulp.

“Yeah, four months with you, my treasurer. But I’ve never quite caught you being involved in anything,”—she stands up straight, before slowly striding towards your seat, hips swaying at each nifty step—“romantic.”

You clench your eyes ever so tightly at her alluring motion—the swaying hips, the crossing steps—as if there’s anything to examine but her burning lust. “Well, Jimin, I don’t think the passive mid-table guys get much,” you state.

“Is that so? Because you don’t seem to belong at the mid-table.” The distance between you two is shrinking, slowly. And with a few more small steps, you find her towering over you, chest basking in front of your face.

Jimin bends down slowly, revealing just a slight sight of her gorgeous cleavage. The poor crop top is struggling to hold her supple flesh within, even with the workshop shirt helping. You shift just slightly in your seat.

Your eyes are doing their best to resist the magnetic force, but her big brown eyes aren't a sanctuary, either.

“Thanks, miss president.”

Her Dior J’adore is enrapturing you.

“You know, I notice the perfume you wear every day, even if it’s just CK One.” She forces sultry into her perceptive words, and to say, it works. She drags her right middle finger along the length of your arm, lighting a fire in its trail.

You try to keep your composure; it works, for now. She doesn’t seem to notice the sweat hanging off your forehead yet.

“Or how you dress so damn well to class, even if it’s some fuckass subject,” Jimin continues, tracing her hands up to your forearm now.

Your breath hitches, and you can just connect the dots so easily.

“W–Why me, though, Jimin?”

“Oh, clever boy, I just need the real thing, that’s all,” she coos. Her digits are playing with the line of your collarbones now. 

“See, I’m just so fucking sick of my—well, what’s the word, devices. They’re pleasurable, sure, but unlike a real person, which in this case—is you—” Her hand grabs your chin from behind, and you can’t find any resistance. Her sonic reduces into a sensual whisper into your ear. “—they lack warmth.”

“S–So, do you want to have—”

“Sex? Yes, I want you inside me, baby. I want you body clashing against mine, while you moan my name like you’re some common whore.”

It’s haywire, your mind. You are lost in her—her voice, her face, her body, everything that’s about Jimin. Is she really inviting you to have sex with her? Is this interaction even real?

“So, what do you say, wanna go somewhere after this? Somewhere—small, somewhere—private.” Her voice dives into a whisper beside your ear, and you can feel a smile forming beside it. “I’m sure you can work on your bills—anywhere.”

You stare forward, trying to look unfazed to cover your crumbling composure.

“I–I can work on the bills anywhere, Jimin.” Your voice betrays you.

She gives a quiet laugh, “Good to know, treasurer,” before lightly grabbing your chin, with her index and middle finger resting on your lips. Are they seeking silence or entry?

Slowly, they push your upper lip ever so slightly, eliciting a whimper from you. Fuck, is she trying to—

“You know what to do, baby.”

Rejection.

Hesitation.

Submission.

You open your mouth for her—now courtesy of Yoo Jimin. You take in her fingers. They’re cold from the air conditioner. Bite. Lick. Swallow. You close your eyes while doing so, absorbing her taste with your tongue. You feel you’re under her control—so submissive. It’s ecstatic.

“God, do you like being called a whore? Because you’re acting like one right now,” Jimin asks.

You profusely nod at her statement, continuing to suck on her fingers.

“Then keep doing it, whore.”

Your eyes roll into the back of your head as you can hear her giggle. And as your vision comes back to her, the free hand is rubbing against her clothed core now. Mewling sounds can be heard.

“God, keep sucking it, baby. I’ve never cummed as fast as this before.”

“Ngh.” And you keep sucking her fingers.

A sound of the door stops you in your tracks though.

“Guys, I need a few chairs–am I interrupting something?”

Ning Yizhuo, head of student welfare, barges into the room. She stares straight at you two. Good thing Jimin pulls her digits out and puts them behind her back before Yizhuo’s eyes catch sight of you glistening on her, leaving you stranded in your burning desire for your president.

Maybe it’s the way your eyes are still fluttering. Maybe it’s the way your mouth ever so slightly hangs open. Maybe it’s your quick breaths.

Yizhuo wants to know what’s up.

“We’re just–” Jimin tries to find the right word in your eyes. Her blinks are rapid. She’s concerned. She’s afraid.

“You’re–what?” Yizhuo isn’t a patient figure. She’s trying to gauge something out of Karina.

“I–I’m adjusting his posture! O–Our dear treasurer has a bad sitting posture and–”

“Cut the shit, Jimin. What the fuck did you guys do?”

“S–See, he’s sitting a lot, you know? B–Bills. Accounting. Excel stuff.” Jimin’s brows hint at the concern within her chuckle. She pushes the middle of your back to set you straight up. As you follow her move, Yizhuo clenches her eyes.

“Just get me some chairs and don’t fuck inside this room.”

—

Jimin swings her door open, and as expected, every single bit of it is immaculately kept clean. There’s not a single piece of trash on the floor of her white room; the table is meticulously arranged; the bed is folded. There’s a Meteora vinyl placed on her shelf. God, what a tasteful woman.

“Drop your bag.”

You comply as she also does so.

And she immediately pounces on your body, consuming your taste and scent at your nape. Her lips are wet, sending shocks through your pliant frame.

“Mmph, keep this perfume, baby. I just wanna have this scent of you every day.”

It’s CK One.

She plants her kisses along your neck—standing up straight—ever so determined to make you hers. Her hands lock your shifting, shaking body in place, despite being so eager to feel every inch of you—up and down.

“So—pliant, so—submissive,” she whispers.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” you deflect, trying to have a hold of the battle. There’s a glint of brattiness inside you that wants to resist her just a little, just before you give in.

“Is that so?” Jimin mewls, before pushing you onto the bed.

“I’m not letting you have me that easily, miss president,” you say with your back against her soft cushion. Jimin is straddling her lean, lengthy legs over yours. She looks so damn tall from this view—you lying beneath her.

“Sucking my fingers, then decide to be a bratty bitch right now—” She lightly taps the tip of your nose, also scrunching hers. “—I like that.”

You say nothing, giving her just a wink from below.

“Oh, baby, I’ll have you scream my name so many times.”

“Fucking make me then.”

And fires ignite in her eyes.

She dives onto your left ear—nibbling, biting, swallowing, whatever she can do with her mouth without tearing your auricle off. Her deep moans send suppressed shudders through your neurons.

Jimin spreads saliva all over your ear, no sign of relenting. Slurping sounds of her flesh ring in your head. She plants each lick with purpose, and it sends jolts and jolts through your body. Still, you’re far from falling apart—tethered on the ground.

“Tsk, i–is this the best y–you can do?”

“Oh, baby, you’re already stuttering? I can do more if you want~,” she tastefully threatens. Then, she brings her right hand into play, tilting your chin up. Your mouth is right beside her neck. The pale smoothness of her skin is presented in front of you, and you just can’t help but—

“F–Fuck!” Jimin yells, clearly enraptured with the swipes of tongue you are giving her. Still, she keeps spreading her saliva on your ear as if it’s hers (it’s hers).

“Oh, b–baby boy, maybe you can use your t–tongue on other things instead,” she whines.

“Your cunt?” You keep stretching your tongue onto her nape, getting a taste of her sweat.

She pulls back from you, robbing the sensations away from your throat. “Clever, now just lie like this. I’m riding your pretty face.”

Jimin then takes off her purple lace panties, giving you a hint of her wet cunt—unshaved—as she lifts her leg, before stuffing the garment onto your nose. Fuck, her musk is so intense; you can just die happily right here.

“You just love it, don’t you?”

You sheepishly nod, pressing her panties against your nose even tighter, eliciting laughs from her sinful mouth.

“I think that’s enough, baby. I wanna fuck your face now,” she says, before tossing away the filthy garment.

Jimin then moves forward on her knees, bringing her heat closer and closer to your face. God, the fact that she’s unshaved only brings you higher. You need to slurp her juice; you need it on your face, you–

“Ready?”

Her cunt is hovering above you now, she’s pulling her skirt up, letting you see her face for the last time before being buried under her.

You nod.

And she sinks onto your face.

The first contact is soft, so, so soft. You’re practically making out with pussy, as she shakes above you erratically. There isn’t much light, with her skirt darkening your vision of what’s around, but it’s like you’d complain. You’re eating your student president out in her room, and you’re doing it so, so well that it sends shivers through her body, again and again.

“Ngh, f–fuck!” Jimin shouts from above—the things you’d do to see her face right now, to see an effect you’re having on her.

You say nothing, just keep lapping up her folds enthusiastically. Her juice drips into your mouth—sweet.

Jimin starts to grind her hips, as the moans grow louder. She’s getting wetter, and you’re still happily drinking her sugary nectar—drunk with it.

“Ah, ah, y–you’re doing well, my treasurer.”

You give her a thumbs up. You keep licking her cunt as if your life is depending on it. She moans so loud; everyone on this floor is probably going to hear that, but you don’t care anymore. The only thing in your head right now is to please Jimin—only Yoo Jimin.

And you can feel her thighs tense, shaking with pleasure. She’s going to cum. Her moans grow more chaotic and shorter than they were.

“Fuck, fuck, I’m cumming, I’m cumming, fuck!”

She cums hard, collapsing onto the bed, cunt still on your face, ass up in the air. Her core clenches and clenches on your face, and she just forgets to breathe as her hips convulse.

“No squirt today, huh?” you joke from below.

She snaps back into the situation she’s in, sneering, “Fuck off, don’t fucking play stupid with me, wh–whore.”

You laugh, “Alright, alright, let’s get to the main course, shall we?”

“Y–Yeah.”

Jimin lifts off from you, leaving a string of her lubricant between your lips and her cunt.

“God, that’s hot,” you just can’t help but say it.

She giggles, and you can now see the sweat forming on her forehead; there’s beauty in it.

You two, in a haste, discard all of your clothes until you’re left with nothing—just bare bodies on the bed together. You’re sitting opposite of her, expecting her to say something.

She looks ethereal under the room light. The messy hair, the perfect features, the bare body, they all combine into the epitome of perfection right in front of you. Fuck, she’s gorgeous.

“Can I suck your tits?” you mutter. Fuck reticence, you need her, now.

She chuckles. “Sure, but only if I’m on top of you.”

“You just have to find a way to dominate me, don’t you?” you huff.

“Don’t say it like you don’t like it, baby.” She caresses your cheeks, and you shiver at her touch.

You lie down, as she slowly eclipses the light above both of you. Her large breasts are hanging down so close to your face. And—

“F–Fuck!”

You latch your mouth on her right breast as if it’s innate, with your hand kneading on the other. She lets out empyrean moans that only makes you want to suck on them even more. God, you can do this all day.

And not wanting to wait anymore, she impales her cunt with your cock, and you can only moan into her tits. This sensation, it’s overwhelming. Her velvety walls are hugging you so, so tightly. It’s so warm. She’s warm.

“Fuck,” she groans, eyes rolling into the back of her head. “Your cock is so well-bent, baby. It’s hitting my g-spot so good.”

“T–Thanks, J–Jimin.” Your mind is so damn clouded by the pleasure that you can say nothing but her name right now.

And a crack starts to form when she moves—up and down. Her unshaved cunt dragging along your digit, emanating pleasure all over your body from the core.

“B–Babe, c–can you stop s–sucking my tits?” she pleads.

You pull yourself out of her mounds, as she’s still riding you like there’s no tomorrow, and you let out small moans at each contact. “W–What? Ngh.”

“I wanna kiss you.”

You freeze under her. She’s still motioning herself to squeeze the cum out of you, whimpering each time your cock hits the hilt. Is it a confession? Does she love—

“B–Babe,” she brings you back to the mortal world.

“Y–Yeah, kiss me.”

She invades your mouth as if it wasn’t already hers at the second she sits on your face. Your tongues intertwine in a quest to declare their feelings of their owners.

Your hands are still squeezing her breasts. It’s addictive. You press and press into her flesh just to feel her as much as you can. This might as well be the only body you want to have just to yourself, as you dedicate yours to her. Every curve, every contour, every limb, you want her; you want her to want you; you need her. This kiss, fuck, it’s doing wonders to you.

She’d be the one to break off from the kiss to pant above you, hips still smashing into yours in a perfect rhythm.

“W–Wanna go out with me?” she asks.

She’s desperate, all the Tinder dates, all the–

“Babe, I–I fucking know that it’s desperate, yes or no. Fuck those Tinder dates, fuck those guys and girls, I–I want to go out with you, t–treasurer,” she pants.

Maybe it’s her J’adore that’s permeating all over you. Maybe it’s the way your hips are clashing into each other. Maybe, just maybe, it’s the glint in her eyes.

But if you have to recall, it’d be the confidence she’s radiating in clashing your flesh together just right now.

You nod.

Jimin smiles, pulling you into another kiss. You swear it can tear you apart if you have to let this woman go—figuratively.

She pulls off, her breaths becoming shorter and shorter again. “C–Can you cum with me, baby?”

Again, you nod, smiling. It’s inside your loins, building up, building up. Your body tenses up beneath her, same as hers. It’s there. It’s there.

“Fuck, baby, breed me. I’m yours, just breed me, just–ugh!”

And her whole body freezes, juices flowing onto your crotch. Her face is contorted by the pleasure coursing through her. Again, she forgets to breathe, back arching. You don’t slow down, though. Your orgasm is coming too.

“B–Babe–ah!”

It breaks. You busy yourself inside her to the hilt. Just like her, you forget to breathe. You shoot spurts of your seed deep into her womb, intending to breed her as her wish. Your cock shakes inside her, as she moans at each twitch.

It subsides, eventually. The shots get softer and softer to the point the cum just dribbles off the tip of you now. Fuck, your juices even leak out of her cunt onto your crotch, mixed together.

“F–Fuck,” is all she can say, before collapsing onto you, chest pressed up against yours.

“The plan’s still up?”

“Yeah.”

And she slips to the side, embracing you from behind, as you two doze off in the nocturne.

—

“Can I use your toothbrush?”

A long drag of uncertainty comes from the outside. Sun has risen hours ago, yet you two are still in the drowsy state.

“Or do I have to kiss you again for the answer, Jimin?”

“Put your morning breath away from me!”

At least she’s quick with her riposte.

As you brush your teeth, naked, she saunters into the bathroom, still similarly bare from last night. Her breasts bounce ever so slightly with each step in the mirror. Despite the disheveled appearance, her natural beauty shines through the mess—a seraphic being, one might say.

“Ha, yeah, I know I’m pretty, baby,” she says. “People would kill to have a body like me.”

You finish your clean up, before saying, “You’re insufferable, you know?”

Jimin laughs, before giving you a quick peck on the cheek, emanating mellow all over your face. Fuck, you can feel the blood rushing to your erection now.

“You too, babe.” She smiles, before grabbing her mouthwash for a gargling.

Your cock, again, finds the condition to rise in front of this woman. It’s twitching, and you just have to turn back before she notices it.

Still, her sharp eyes find you, and she gives you a small slap on your bare ass, sending pleasure rushing through your body.

“Hey!” she growls with the mouthwash, before quickly disposing of it. “You’re fucking hard again?”

“I–I–I–uh–”

Jimin then presses herself up against your back, arms ever so tightly trapping you from behind in a hug. It’s warm. She’s warm.

“Let me, baby,” she whispers against your wobbling right ear. “I can’t have my co-workers’ needs go unsated.”

“F–Fucking hell.”

In one careful motion, Jimin slides her arms down to your erection, right hand grabbing the length. “Wouldn’t mind some respect from my baby boy~” Her grip and the languid, careful strokes make your legs wobble.

“Tsk, n–no fucking way, J–Jimin,” you muster any inhibition you have left to deflect.

“Well, then.” Jimin then tightens her hold on your cock, transpiring both pain and pleasure to you. “How about now?”

“Nghhhh, f–fuck,” you cry out, the contorted expression appears in the mirror.

“Just like that, baby, moan for me. Show me who owns you,” Jimin coos, loosening her hold a slight, still keeping the adagio tempo.

“Nnnh, J–Jimin.”

“Good boy, good boy,” she murmurs.

She drags her filthy hand up and down your cock so leisurely, finding the rhythm for your pliancy. She strokes and strokes to build you up to the second release with her, this time by her hand.

It feels like eternity—the way her unhurried digits find the pace that would make you want so much more, or how she whispers ‘good boy’ into your ear every time she wants a whiff of reassurance of control. It’s like she needs one, anyway, judging by how you’re moaning like a bitch right now.

“God, you’re making so much sound for me.” The way she swipes her index finger at the tip of your cock on each stroke, fuck, you can fall onto the floor right here and now. “Wanna see your face in the mirror, baby?”

You turn your head leftwards to find reflections of a contorted face and a grin side by side. Her hand is diligent as ever—building you up to your inevitable release.

“What do you say, baby? Wanna see our faces in the mirror?” she inquires again. You can feel a mischievous smile beside your ear.

“Ngnh, a–alright.”

With ease, she forces your body to turn into your image of the ball of lust—the shower of kisses on your neck; the hand sliding up and down your cock; the thigh pressing up against your ass. You shift and shift within her restraint, and that seems to only fuel her fire.

“Moan some more for me, baby. I wanna hear your voice. I want my men moaning.”

You comply, letting out a series of whimpers just for your student president. The sensation of her hand is so damn enthralling—each slide, each nick of a finger, each twist of her wrist, they are all designed to make you surrender to her.

“Good boy. Your moans are so pleasing to hear, you know that?”

“Nngh, t–thanks, Jimin.”

“Wanna up the ante, baby? I can do it faster~” As if her languid tempo isn’t already doing its job in trapping you inside her overflowing lust.

You hesitate, finding yourself wanting this act to go on to such lengths, maybe even when the sun sets again. Being under her comforting warmth is too satisfying.

“I–I don’t know, Jimin.”

“Oh, this baby can’t decide? Guess I’ll just have to–”

She suddenly lets go of your length, cutting your string of desire so easily. You whine, as Jimin lets out a laugh.

“Don’t!” you say in a rush, and letting go the hand you haven’t realized you’ve been holding—hers.

Jimin giggles. “Say please, baby.” She tightens her hug on you, squeezing the plea out.

Your eyes meet hers in the mirror.

“Please, Jimin.”

“Good boy.” And she wraps her hand around your erection again, casually stroking it.

“Ngh.”

The sound of her jerking your shaft fills the room. It’s heavenly—her voluptuous chest pressing up against your arching back with right hand busy sliding on your rod. She does it so cleanly—the technique, the pace. You swear you will cum by the second she whispers another ‘good boy’ into your welcoming ears.

As if she knows your inevitable release, she seeks a higher speed on your cock, stroking it with a swiftness that tries to draw out your moan and your cum as much as she can.

“Ngh, J–Jimin,” you whimper.

“Oh, gonna cum already, baby?” Jimin giggles at your crumble, before giving a peck on your left cheek. “Go on, cum for me. Cum, just like you did last night inside me.”

White spots start to form within your vision. Your breaths become more erratic. It’s there. It’s there.

“Jimin~”

And you explode all over her mirror, painting white streaks on it. You are left with ecstasy on your face as Jimin smiles at your release. Your body shrieks and shudders in her embrace. Your cock twitches in her hand, sending flying ropes of cum everywhere. Fuck.

“Yes, baby, just like that.” Her voice is deep—so seductive.

You continue to shake in her hold, not being able to subside from your high so quickly. Your release grows lighter and lighter in her hand, until it comes out in drops, finally letting you catch your breath.

“Good boy,” Jimin says, before forcing your body towards hers. You are spun around, and she gives you a kiss.

It’s short, but it’s powerful—no tongue fighting for dominance, no slurping sounds, just a kiss.

And she pulls back from it once she’s satisfied, judging from the smile on her face.

“Wanna do this again?” she asks.

“Definitely—well—maybe. You know Yizhuo would beat our asses if she catches us again, right?”

“Just shut up, babe. She won’t know if you’re good with secrets like me.”

You pout, bringing out a laugh from her.

Winter

“It’s going well, isn’t it?” Kai asks.

You give him a small smile. “It’s bearable, yeah.”

“Good to know, good to know.” He then takes a sip of his latte from his cup, looking outside.

“Fuck, I forgot to ask you this,” you say. “Are you seeing anyone?”

“Oh yeah! In fact, there’s a woman I've been seeing recently, Yizhuo. You probably know her, right? You guys are working together,” Kai answers.

“Oh,” you utter. “Oh.”

He chuckles, before continuing, “Yeah, I know it’s weird–”

“No, no, not at all, bro,” you deflect with a chuckle along with him. “I’m happy that you’re happy.”

Kai, still chuckling, inquires, “How about you? It’s gotta be more than ‘bearable’ for you to be all happy like this.”

You give him a smile.

[sakuravalelp]

The Dance Academy isn't a gang- DC X DP Prompt

Inspired by this prompt

Clockwork suggests to Danny, who's been the king of the infinite realms for 6 years now, that he should take sometime off in a mortal realm. He doesn't feel like going back to his own dimension (you choose the reason), so Clockwork suggest another dimension where he thinks Danny might have fun.

Danny investigates the dimension, and finds it is a dimension where some humans, who are called meta-humans, develop powers, mostly during their childhood. Danny knows how tiring and alienating it is to grow with powers that one have to hide. He wishes to give this kids a safe space to experiment with their powers, but not as a weapon, just as part of themself.

He chooses to create a dance academy, because dancing is something in which you use your body and express yourself. It would be an excellent way to encourage this kids to use their powers while enjoying themself. He decides to open the dance academy in Gotham, were it seems metas may feel more pressure to keep themself hidden. With his ability to see and feel the differences in soul it's easy to identify metas, so he starts scouting kids for the academy.

Of course convincing the kids that it's just a a dance academy that wants to create a save space for metas, instead is of a trafficking ring, is difficult. But once he gets the first couple kids in, slowly more come too.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Bruce is worried about the new possible meta gang that it's forming on Gotham, and sends Duke undercover.

It's hasn't been long since Duke joined the bats, and this is his first official undercover mission. He's excited at the start, feeling proud that he's been trusted with an independent job, but then he finds out that the "gang" it's just a dance academy. He's a little disappointed, thinking that this job is more of a probation thing than anything, since there isn't anything suspicious.

The bats tell him to stay in the dance academy, because maybe the dance thing is just a cover up and they'll reveal their real motives when he's actually accepted in the group. And Duke takes it as them wanting him to have a meta support system. See? He's learning to understand how the bats show love to each other!

Duke finds himself enjoying being in a dance group. It's a lot of fun. Danny it's fantastic, he has a lot of powers and isn't scare to show them. Which makes everyone in the group feel so much safer to use their own.

Danny encourages them to integrate their powers in their dance. It's freeing. Their powers are treated as a normal part of them, and not as this exotic ability that has to be controlled. It's such a safe space that all of them have gotten used to using their powers for day to day stuff when in the dance studio. It all feels so casual because no one bats an eye to it. There's no talk about how they should try to do things "normally," or limit their use of their power.

Danny: "Why would you? That's your normal, and this place is safe for you to just be you."

Duke realizes a bit late that the bats were actually suspicious of the group, and that his placement there wasn't really a probation. He's glad to know he was actually trusted with a job, but, he had really thought that every time they had asked about his day with the group was because they were interested in how he was doing. That they were showing love and interest in him in that evasive ways the bats did, and it kinda suck to know it wasn't the case. It also meant that he had to confront their family in their clear meta-discrimination.

"Would you have been so suspicious if it wasn't a meta group? No. Other than them all being metas there wasn't anything off. No proof of fights, no proof of robberies, no proof of trafficking, nothing.

There's no proof of anything other than a group of teens dancing, and you know that because you checked it out before sending me.

Like, I don't blame you for checking it, I'm not naive, but you were so sure it was a gang, just because they were metas. That's fucked up guys."

[tiredfox64]

Hello! I know today is Father's Day and I don't see much father's day stuff so I was wondering if you could write different scenarios for each of the Lin Kuei trio that are surprised by the reader and their kids for father's day?

Happy Father’s Day

Yip notes: No fatherless behavior here

Pairings: Lin Kuei Bros x Afab reader

Warnings‼️: FATHER INTO YOUR HANDS-

Bi-Han

Bi-Han was not big on Father’s Day. That day had been nonexistent for years and it truly ceased to exist once he let his father die. Even when he married you and you had his first child he could not care about Father’s Day. It’s just another day for him.

But he is a father now. You want to celebrate that because he was a good father to his son. He may be the grandmaster of the Lin Kuei but he still makes time to spend with him. He puts in a lot of effort to teach his son how to defend himself and encourages him to help you whenever you need it. Basically, he’s trying to teach him to be a man at five years old. It’s good to teach them responsibility early on.

There is one thing that Bi-Han wishes his son could be and that’s to be a cyromancer just like him. He hasn’t show any signs that he has this ability or any other powers. His son is an excellent fighter but he could do so much more if he had his father’s abilities. He can’t force the ability to perform cyromancy on his son, that’s obvious. He also won’t punish him for not having it.

But the universe is always surprising people. And there is a special surprise waiting for Bi-Han this Father’s Day that you have discovered.

While finishing up breakfast and giving your son his food you noticed him looking at his juice with a grumpy face. He looked at it like it insulted him. You checked to see if something was wrong with it but the only issue you could detect was that it was warm. No one likes warm grape juice. That’s when your son decided to place his hand over the top of the cup and you began to see cold mist emanating from his hands. Some of the juice began to freeze, even making a squeaking sound while forming. A couple of purple ice cubes floated to the top of the juice and your son continued eating breakfast like that was normal.

“Wha—When did you learn to do that?” You asked him. He shrugged like kids do when they can’t understand the impact that just had on a situation.

This was incredible. He’s a cyromancer just like his father! Oh you can’t wait to tell Bi-Han when he comes back. You gotta plan something to really surprise him.

══💤══╡°˖✧🦊✧˖°╞══💤══

By the end of the day all Bi-Han wanted to do was have a good meal and relax. There was something wrong with some of his clansmen, they were acting crazier than his son when he didn’t get fruit snacks. He’s happy to come back to a sane wife and a tranquil son. But that smile on your face does not yell sane. It yells ‘You have something planned and that could mean murder’. You ran up to him and hugged him so tightly that he wondered where you gained this strength. After placing a dozen kisses all over his face you ushered him to sit down and eat.

“What did you do? Have you murdered someone? Are you trying to murder me now?” He has always heard about wives killing their husbands in creative ways but never would he imagine he would be a victim.

“No! It’s just a special day.” You reassured him that you wouldn’t kill him.

Me personally-

Bi-Han still looked at you with the tiniest bit of concern, but he did notice that you made him his favorite dish. He was incredibly hungry after the day so he really wanted to eat. As he satisfied his hunger your son came in with the teacups so you could serve his father some tea. Tea that was hella hot. Like hell kind of hot. Woman! What are you doing?!

The amount of stream coming from the warm liquid as you poured it into the cup indicated how hot it was. Bi-Han stared at it wide-eyed before staring up at you. But you acted clueless and like it was a simple mistake.

“Oops, looks like it’s too hot,” You looked down at your son, “Sweetie, would you mind helping mama cool down daddy’s tea?”

Your son was shaking his head frantically with so much excitement in his eyes. You picked him up and brought him closer to the cup but not too close that he would actually touch it. He placed both of his hands out. Soon, Bi-Han started to hear the sound of ice cracking and forming in a matter of seconds. The steam from the hot tea began to dwindle until it was a faint vapor. When Bi-Han looked closer he found that there were a few pieces of ice that seemed to be made from the tea. His eyes were now wide with surprise.

A faint smile appeared on your husband’s lips as he looked at you and your son. He got up from his chair and began hugging you both. He congratulated his son for gaining his abilities and having some control over them. Better to find out this way than when he has a tantrum. Then Bi-Han looked at you. There was so much love and adoration in his dark eyes. You were the woman to give him a wonderful son who he feels pride in. A son who everyone will believe is his. He could not thank you enough for giving him such a wonderful gift that he will hold onto until his death. He will forever be grateful that you gave him the family he desired.

He could thank you on Mother’s Day though.

Kuai Liang

You always informed your twins to respect their father. Kuai Liang was a hard-working man who built his clan from the ground up just so he could protect Earthrealm and more importantly his family. Even with all that responsibility weighing down on Kuai Liang he still made an effort to be with his children. He didn’t mind having his daughter and son by his side as he trained the initiates. They did help him calm himself down when the initiates were an absolute trainwreck. If his daughter wasn’t there patting his arm and telling him that he was doing his best he would have bursted out into flames a long time ago. She’s pretty smart for a five-year-old. And his son is pretty fiery. He’s yelling at those initiates like he was a drill sergeant.

Recently, the twins have been with you more often. That’s fine, he doesn’t think they are picking favorites, but he does miss their company. But they should get more time with mama. It’s important that you both get equal time with them.

Little does your husband know that you have been planning something for him. He didn’t even know Father’s Day was approaching. It will hit him in the morning.

══💤══╡°˖✧🦊✧˖°╞══💤══

The twins came sneaking into the bedroom in the early morning. They don’t understand time, they only understand that the sun is up so it’s go time. They got onto the bed and began lightly jumping as they told their dad to wake up. Kuai Liang groaned as he slowly began to wake up to the sound of his children giggling. They shook him away and finally, he sat up.

“What is the matter?” He asked in a sleepy voice.

“We have decided that we should begin training now.” Your son spoke for himself and his sister.

Kuai Liang fully woke up at that moment. He has been waiting for the chance to teach them how to control their fire abilities. They were early bloomers so he has been dying to do this for a long time. I was you who held back on allowing them to train even though they begged. You decided to allow it for his Father’s Day gift. You were still lying down when he turned to you for approval. That’s when you gave him a thumbs up and he was out of bed. You’ve never seen him tie his hair up into a bun so quickly.

Throughout the whole day, you saw your husband and children running around the place as he helped train them. They were focusing hard on getting their abilities to work just so they could impress their father. Your daughter was the first to get the fire started, literally. Her hand would produce this thick, black smoke before catching on fire. Her fire was like ethanol fire with the bottom having a hint of blue before transitioning into orange. It stayed steady and Kuai Liang was impressed by his daughter's commitment.

His son…well he is fiery. He so badly wanted to impress his dad that he put so much energy into it that both his hands ignited. He was so excited and he placed his hands together to see how large the fire could get. He didn’t expect to make a tiny fire whirl. The fire grew skinny but longer and burned brighter as it twirled in his hands. Kuai Liang was not ready for that at all and was worried for a second before his son closed his hands. The whirl disappeared and his son turned towards him with a large smile on his face.

“Daddy, did you see that?!” He yelled with enthusiasm.

“How could I miss it?” Kuai Liang responded.

After that fire hazard of a training session, they actually trained with the other initiates. They listened well to their father’s instructions, better than the other initiates even with some being adults. They weren’t perfect but Kuai Liang was still happy to see them making an effort especially when they helped each other out. Hopefully, that sibling love stays forever.

Half of the day was done and Kuai Liang was more than happy with the results of the day. Once he got back to you it only got better. You served him his favorite dish and you all sat down to eat dinner together. He told you all about the kids’ achievements. It warmed your heart to see his constant smile as he listened to his son or daughter explain how they felt at that moment. And then your son created another fire whirl to show you at the dinner table.

“Hey! No creating fire at the dinner table! You can only do that if we are under attack.” You scolded your son.

The end of the day came and you both put the twins to bed for the night. They were incredibly drained from the day. They have small bodies you can’t blame them. You and Kuai Liang made your way back to the bedroom and started preparing for bed. Throughout the whole time you were getting ready he would occasionally add in something else that happened in the day or something that was on his mind. It didn’t matter if it was minimal or something theoretical he wanted to talk more about the day. You started to wonder if you would get any sleep that night. But he eventually shut his mouth since he needed rest for the next day.

You both lay in bed, his forehead pressed up against yours and his arms wrapped around your waist. The only sound left was light breathing. Both your eyes were closed and you both slowly slipped into slumber. He heard you say one more thing to him.

“Happy Father’s Day.” You whispered.

“Thank you.”

Tomas

Father’s Day has been special to Tomas since you first told him you were pregnant on Father’s Day. Seeing that little onesie made his heart explode and filled his mind with the many possibilities that came with being a father. Even when your son was a baby you still made sure to make Father’s Day eventful to show how well he was doing as a father. He truly was wonderful both before and after your son was born.

Now your son is five and he understands the concept of holidays which makes it easier to plan something for Tomas. You and your son are a team with the goal of making Tomas happy for the whole day. Your son was actually the one to suggest getting his father a new karambit. It sounded like a great idea but you had to make sure to get the right one for him. Not one that was cheap or the incorrect style like a folding one. You know how much he loves his usual karambit so getting one that will make him put that one down even for a second would be a challenge. But there has been no challenge that you haven’t overcome yet. You will overcome this one as well.

You suggested to your son to ask his father to take him on a hunt. Tomas always mentioned how he wanted to teach his son to hunt both as a way to defend himself and give him a chance at survival. Your son was getting interested in finding a weapon that would fit him best. A bow and arrow was what caught his eye. So you can kill two birds with one stone by allowing Tomas to teach his son to hunt and allowing your son to figure out a bow and arrow.

A plan was made. Now to wait for Father’s Day to come.

══💤══╡°˖✧🦊✧˖°╞══💤══

The moment Tomas opened his eyes to the morning light his son was standing above him and asked him to take him hunting. It confused your husband because this was out of nowhere. But children decide things at random and go with it. So is it really all that strange?

Tomas debated for a bit, unsure if it was safe to do so. But he began hunting when he was six so what difference does it make? It’s one year early. If any danger were to occur, Tomas would defend his son to the very last breath. He looked towards you for approval and you said today would be a good day to do so. It was sunny and your son was clearly excited to go outside. Your husband smiled at you before giving you a kiss and getting ready for the day.

In less than an hour they were out of the house. Tomas had his karambit and a hunting knife while your son had a bow and arrow. That gave you time to prepare everything and hopefully that karambit you told Johnny to order for you will arrive in time.

Tomas was loving the conversations he was having with his son. He would randomly tell him facts about things in the woods that he learned from books you had around. He never knew there was a difference between an oyster mushroom and a maitake mushroom until it was pointed out to him. He decided to collect some for you to use later.

A few miles in, that’s when they spotted a pheasant in the distance. It was clearly a male since it was larger and more colorful. Tomas instructed his son to duck down behind a bush and keep an eye on the bird. They couldn’t miss it since its blue head popped out amongst the green foliage. Tomas helped his son to place the arrow correctly and told him to be very careful when pulling it back. Your son was very focused and his breathing was intense as he stared down the bird. Seconds passed, possibly minutes. The only sound that was heard other than the breathing was the wind. Finally, he let the arrow go and it flew in the air. It struck the pheasant and it fell limp on the ground. At that moment Tomas could not be any prouder.

He congratulated his son on his first hunt. Not only was it his first but it was a success. They were able to gather vegetables and meat to take home. When he looked down at his son from time to time he saw his younger self in him. A strong boy who was on his way to becoming a great hunter. He’ll be able to protect himself and hopefully protect you from any harm.

Once the sun began to set that’s when they made their way back home. Your son held onto his father’s hand the whole way even when they walked into the house. The pleasant smell of food hit Tomas’ nose and he recognized that you made his favorite dish for him. You absolute sweetheart, he’s so happy he married you.

He was ready to tell you all about the successful day they had once he sat down but when he did that’s when you placed a gift box in front of him. It didn’t look like anything extravagant but there was a soft smile on your face and an excited one on your son’s.

“Open it.” You gestured for him to do so.

Tomas was careful with taking the top off the box. The light reflected off the item and soon he realized what it was. A new karambit. It wasn’t just any ordinary karambit though. He took it and the handle felt perfect in his hands, like it was shaped for him. The blade was a nice, shiny black color with the sharp part of it being silver. Then something caught his eye. There was something carved in the blade. They were initials. They were his, yours, and your son’s initials.

Tears began to prick his eyes without him realizing it. The karambit just looked so beautiful and the day he had was so wonderful. He felt you and your son’s arms wrap around him before you gave him a kiss.

“Happy Father’s Day.” You said with love.

“Thank you…thank you both.” His voice quivered a little as he hugged you both back.

Yap notes: I would love to go to another baseball game with my dad. Or bet on horses. I love going to the racing tracks with him. Adiós!

[there-was-a-hole-here-itsgonenow]

Hello anon and @stranger-chichka! Thank you for tagging me here (and for your kind words!); this is a FANTASTIC (and not weird at all) insight and theory by anon! Thank you for bringing it into awareness!! The Wheeler jump, dummy number/‘actions,’ the jumping motif for Mike… for me, I’m getting reminded of my theory regarding Mike’s Rubik’s cube and him being the ultimate problem solver.

If you know about gridgate, anon, I write my theory as Mike possibly needing to be a part of or within this grid/web Vecna has set up to entrap everyone (I often wonder if it has to do with the void). There is a completed Rubik’s cube on Mike’s nightstand in s1 after learning Will is still alive, which we can assume Mike himself completed. The Rubik’s cube shows the grid pattern many have come to recognize. Mike would need both El and Will to do it, based on the color theory that appears in that cube (and in another grid that appear for Mike in that scene and on his fort while he’s inside it trying to communicate with El in s2).

I’ll admit I’m terrible with understanding computer science or anything to do with numbers… but I’m getting some ideas due to these amazing coding references. The parts about Mike sending codes to the wrong places (platonic ones where romantic ones should be and vice-versa) and the notion of the closed subroutine paired with my thoughts on Mike + Will and El ‘breaking’ the grid/web might hold the answer due to Mike making a ‘jump?’ I sometimes wonder if going back in time/jumping back in time (Back to the Future references among others regarding time, including clock and the many times on those clocks that weave together) might be synonymous with jumping back in time mentally, through memories. Memories are a part of time; they are an indication of time having passed and leave a “trail” of sorts to follow back. Certain jumps back in memory lead to unlocking an answer and thus solving a root issue.

This is a simplified conclusion, but it’s another interpretation to draw. There’s so much to draw from this and could mean so many things! Not to mention, two keys needed to close the gate! Chichka, you already know how much I love the “two men, two key” reference! Blue meets yellow in the west is already a code that involves two people, Mike and Will themselves. They are ultimately needed to close ALL of this, I still think!

Anon, I’ll place a link to my rubikscubegate post here for you to see if you like. I do think it could hold some possible answers for what you’ve discussed here!

Rubikscubegate - Mike’s final strategy theory

-

Also, stranger-chichka, you’re an excellent analyst; don’t sell yourself or your great mind short!

And thank you again for tagging me! Hopefully I can add more later! 💛

Hi! So, first of all, you are one of my favorite blogs and i adore your analyses on ST. So, because of that i thought i could share this thing i just found out a few days ago... sorry in advance if it gets too long.

I'm a computer science student, and a few days ago in one of my classes my professor started talking about the evolution of technology and specifically computers (i know this sounds irrelevant but).. as he was talking he mentioned one specific company that caught my attention - Sinclair Research Ltd.

Since i'm obsessed with everything Stranger Things, i decided to check on it. Apparently the were big in the scene in th 70s-80s these days they mostly do research. Since it was computer related i decided then to check for Henderson, since he is the one most related to computers.

This took me nowhere, but i was adamant to find something. Anything. So i decided to move on to the next.

I looked for anything Wheeler related in computer science. And get this;

In the 50s, David Wheeler invented a way to jump through different parts of a code to do different operations. Like, if in the middle of your code you want to sum two numbers, and that's something you'll need to do over and over, instead of writing the same code for the operation over and over (which would make the program heavier) you create a subroutine, you leave a trail to follow, say, a dummy number. The program jumps, to where you want it and then after it it goes back to where it was before, or wherever you want it to go.

Now, the interesting thing about this jump in the subroutine is its name.

This is called a 'Wheeler Jump".

Now, since the upside down is stucked in 1983 and to hide from Vecna you need a happy memory, a memory of light, which implies the past, how we are thrown off by the painting being of the party and not the swingset as many Bylers believed, the weird monologue which i find like a bad copy paste from the one in the shed and how Vecna is related to clocks, i believe Mike is gonna jump. Here could go some thought about Mike jumping from the cliff in season 1 and how Ted asked Mike in s2, if one of his friends jumped if he would jump too. I do not even know what could any of that mean but I've read theories on Labyrinth, Back to the Future, flickergate, and Mike going missing and lettergate. It could be any of those, or none of them, because a coincidence could actually happen.

My personal bet goes to:

We've seen Mike trying to send a message-a code- (his real feelings), but because of dummy actions they were sent the wrong place (his platonic feelings were sent to were the romantic ones were suppose to go and vice-versa).

Anyways, Mike jumping could possibly have a lot of meanings, so i thought to share a weird base (?) for anyone wanting to use it in any theory or something.

Hi, anon! <3

I’m not that of an analyst really, but thank you for your sweet words and I appreciate someone like the stuff I come up with at times.

The things you wrote about are SO INTERESTING, thanks for sharing it with me!!! I’m sure there MUST be connection between “Wheeler Jump” and Mike’s character, especially considering that Mike has got that poster of a man with computer in his basement. The man who happen to be Charles Babbage. The one who is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer. The one who is referred to as “father of computing.”

What made me even more excited about everything you’ve mentioned is:

- David Wheeler is credited with the invention of the subroutine, which is referred to as the CLOSED subroutine (and Mike is in the CLOSET), and gave the first explanation of how to design software libraries (I see librarygate everywhere, lmao);

- he was born in Birmingham and the Cali crew went to Bingham’s house so Suzie could help them with the number to trace the computer’s location in s4 (Mike comes up with that idea). Not to mention Suzie was the one who told Planck's Constant in s3 which was the code the commies used for the safe in which two keys were. The keys needed to stop the machine from opening the gate. To CLOSE the gate. And in the beginning of s4 Suzie also hacked into Hawkins school computer program to change Dustin’s grades (he is later shown discussing it with Mike during).

“Mike trying to send a message/a code (his real feelings), but because of dummy actions they were sent to the wrong place (his platonic feelings were sent to were the romantic ones were suppose to go and vice-versa).”

So, basically, Mike got lost in his own feelings because of his closed subroutine that theoretically should’ve made everything easier for him??? Suzie helped him with the number (the number=Mike’s feelings) and there’s one person in the show who says “I’m good with numbers.” Erica Sinclair. Erica, who drinks Minute Maid Grape Juice that is a reference to Queen’s music video on the song “I Want To Break Free.” Erica, who refers to Lucas as Jason’s boyfriend in the most careless and normal way possible. And there’s so much more. She mentions Nintendo to Jason and then the Cali crew (Mike & Will in particular) is lying to Suzie about the same goddamn Nintendo (oops, sorry, Americantendo). Erica, who’s on the poster RHE HEART with the rest of the party (x).

Also, Will’s school project was about Alan Turing - mathematician, computer scientist and codebreaker.

Unfortunately, I can’t go deeper here because I’m a total zero at IT and maths but everything you’ve mentioned is related to the code and one more code in the show is “when blue meets yellow in the west.” What also serves as a code in ST? Music. I already wrote about how the Duffers use the songs and original soundtracks to tell us more about what’s really happening in the show and to deliver the message that is somehow sensitive. Something they wants to make a huge plot twist for the GA. Mike’s orientation. He is in the CLOSET. If music is a code for us to better understand the show and the characters, it means that characters’ Spotify playlists are as much important as the show itself. @lesbianmindflayer analyses both Mike’s and Will’s playlists so I highly recommend to subscribe on her YouTube channel and follow her here. Almost every song on Mike’s playlist is about running. He’s running form his true self. Do I even have to mention “Smalltown Boy” being the first song on the playlist?

In s4 it’s said “Music reaches parts of the brain words can't.” The Duffers don’t use plain text to say “Mike Wheeler’s gay” or “Byler endgame”, but they use music for that. “Being in the Closet (at Rink-O-Mania)” is one of many examples of how they’re doing it. Not to mention other queer coding such as ONE WAY sign, closets etc.

@bylerschmyler @there-was-a-hole-here-itsgonenow your additions always make every post better so I’m really interested in your thoughts on it!

[dontlookatmytmntcollection]

SOCIAL BATTERIES

Do the boys REALLY like people that much?

Character studies.

Going from the most Extroverted to the least.

- 🟠 -

Mikey is THE definition of an extrovert

Suprise, suprise.

I keep thinking about him making fun of Casey constantly, and his fist bump with Vern, or him working the crowd on Halloween. And his eye rolls at Raph and Leo

Can be annoying af and play dumb, but half the time he knows way more than he let's on. And it's SUPER hard to get him angry.

Would be in a fraternity tbh. And like, seven sport teams.

The world is a lesser place with him cooped up away from it.

He's a HUGE teaser and talker. Loves to flirt and prank and play the vibes.

He's a NATRUAL at it

Give him ONE conversation. ONE chance, and he can get literally anyone out of their shell.

Loves having April or Casey or Vern around. Loves teasing them or harassing them tbh.

The bigger his social circle, the better his life.

Is usually a HUGE buffer between humans and his grumpy, tired brothers.

He would be the LIFE of the party. Would be an excellent host of an event, because he'd be everywhere talking to everyone. Remembering everyone by name and face, introducing people to one another, so on and so forth.

He would have multiple friend groups everywhere he goes, with all sorts of different types of people.

Out of his brothers, I see Mikey having the body count tbh

Also probably jumped into a relationship too soon and got hurt early on. He'll be way more ready for the next one.

He has SO MUCH TEXTING TO DO.

His favorite is snap chat.

The BEST out of all his brothers at reading social cues and body language. By FAR.

Can find something to talk about with ANYONE

He's been wishing to socialize his WHOLE LIFE. So he DO!

Probably the only one that can confront and process trauma in a healthy manner.

Not at all afraid of deeper, more meaningful conversations.

Often finds himself the one initiating deep conversations with people who need it the most (his brothers).

He knows there is a time and place for problem solving. And sometimes you just gotta sit with your feels.

Something his brothers STRUGGLE WITH

- 🟣 -

Donatello might not be EXTROVERTED but he is outgoing.

Second to Mikey, everyone in his family has a close relationship with Donnie.

Super caring and fun and inquisitive with everyone he meets.

He'll be down for ANYTHING. Sports, games, cooking, drives, crafts, working out, adventures or pranks or geeky movie nights.

He might not always be good at INICIATING these with strangers but he loves going along with stuff.

Loves showing people his projects and stuff and letting people use them or have them.

Will be there for his friends the instant they ask.

At a party he'd be in another room having a conversation with two or three people.

But I also see him hanging around girls a little more than guys. Finds the girlies to be easier company than guys.

He's been on discord for YEARS. He had human friends before even Mikey did.

But.

He's HYPERVIGALANT of the vibe

Extreme empath.

He does NOT like confrontation.

A HUGE people pleaser.

Feels he's stepping on eggshells around his loved ones and friends. In an effort to keep them happy.

He's a sensitive guy.

If he's told to shut up or be quiet, especially if he's excited or talking outloud- he's modified. He WILL shut up. For a while.

His brothers know this. While they get exasperated sometimes, they rarely interrupt him.

Does NOT like gossip. Don't gossip with him, he hates it

Makes him feel gross and mean.

Hates when people are upset or sad in any way.

When vibes get rough he does not cope well. Often chooses to avoid or straight up leave.

When things get heated he gets overstimulated quickly.

If he can't leave, he shuts down. He won't talk and if he does it's very quiet

Doesn't know how to help or address emotional things either. He prefers to let it go and just move on, leaving stuff unaddressed.

He's an outgoing and pleasant guy, but he definitely doesn't mix with everyone.

- 🔴 -

Meeting Raphael is a terrifying experience.

Because he talks and looks at you like he hates you already.

But he doesn't hate people.

He just sucks at them.

Raph wants a normal life just as badly as Mikey does.

Raphs love language is harassment???

He shows his love by annoying his loved ones. Or through teasing and banter. Or wrestling his bros to the ground or pull them into rough hugs.

However

When he meets new people he isn't there to make FRIENDS.

He's there to let you know that if you bullshit with his family you're gonna get whooped.

So he will posture and glare and tower and maybe even roll his neck or crack knuckles to anyone.

Literally anyone.

Remember how rude he was to April?

So when he can't do any of that- no banter, no pranks, no wrestling and no INTIMIDATING-

He is COMPLETELY at everyone's mercy

Put him in a group of girls, or take him to a party or a bar. ANYTHING out of his comfort zone.

He's very awkward.

Only because he's kinda quiet

And honestly SUPER shy.

Wants to be liked SUPER badly.

He doesn't know how to make friends. At all

Flirt with Raph. I dare you.

You'd terrify him

Is the type of guy at a party to stick to the side of someone he knows and never. Leave. It.

But he finds out he gets along with blue collar guys the most.

And Raph has this super power

He can detect if you're a good or bad character super quickly. Much quicker than everyone else in his family. Like, one conversation in.

Not that he really believes himself. He thinks everyone's out to get him. or his family

If he's not making fun of you, you know he doesn't like you.

Is the type of guy to have quality over quantity relationships.

Hates texting. Honestly hates social media and technology beyond like...insta reels or something. He doesn't like sitting on his phone or video games all the much. Half because he breaks things easily or gets easily frustrated at leaning how to work it.

Rather be doing something active or working on a car or build something or carve stuff.

Might not be as outgoing as Donnie or Mikey, but if people manage to ACTIALLY get him to do something fun, he is ALL IN and having a BLAST.

The kinda guy to crash at his friends house and just chill.

He recharges when he's in proximity of his loved ones. Not always SOCIALIZING but having his people close.

-🔵-

Our REAL introvert

He struggles to socialize even with his BROTHERS

Who are the only people in the world he allows himself to be even semi relaxed around

A conversation with anyone other than his dad and brothers is the opposite of a relaxing/easy activity.

He's honorable, polite, and formal.

But Leo is and EXTREMLY cold character.

Sometimes even a bit cruel and scary to strangers.

Has a weird habit of wrapping his arm kindly around someone he's about to hurt

Struggles to see even April as more than an 'asset' or 'person dad holds dear'

Doesn't see Vern as a friend. Doesn't see Casey as a friend.

Leo is the only turtle April doesn't have a strong connection to. Not out of lack of trying.

Tolerates social situations only if he falls into a leading (controlling) role.

Doesn't like large groups of people.

Very quiet otherwise.

Struggles to initiate activities with his brothers.

He sucks at it.

He is always receptive to when they reach out to him though

And kinda has a fear of getting turned down. Getting turned down by his brothers makes him sick to his stomach.

Not that he admits it.

He also doesn't handle rejection with any grace. Gets just a LITTLE pushy to make you either feel bad or like he's in charge

His brothers still gotta tolerate him being a little bossy and stuck up and a fun-sucker while they hang out with him. They know he can't help it.

But Leo is super relieved every single time they invite him to do something.

What would Leo be like at a party? Leo never WENT to the party. And if he DID, he'd be outside, trying to soak in the quiet. Listening to the party from out here.

or hug him, or just express somehow they still want him around or like him. Or love him. Because those moments are getting rarer and rarer the older they get.

He's completely alone other than his dad. At least he's thought so his whole life

Would be the one petting the cat. Or dog. Not the type to go LOOKING for it, but if it came to him, he would.

Yes, he texts, but never outside of absolute necessity. Or if his brothers remind him of April's birthday.

He likes to read

Even if Donnie, Mikey and Raph are together in the lair having fun, Leo is often by himself somewhere else.

He recharges alone. He does calligraphy and he sketches SOMETIMES. Little stick figures fighting with space guns or something.

But a lot of what he reads are super geeky stuff. Like star wars novels or manga.

But don't tell anyone.

Splinter is his preferred company. He adores time with his dad. He'll spar and train and talk with his dad often.

Doesn't care about having friends but he wants a girlfriend SUPER badly. More than all three of his brothers combined

Being alone with him sucks if you like to talk. He gives you a LOOK that SCREAMS shut the fuck up.

It takes EXTREMLY specific personalities to get Leo a little soft for them. A quiet person with a good sense of humor.

And the likely hood he'll ever get out to find and meet them is next to none existent.

But hey

Even after like, ALL OF THIS

It's not hard to get Leo to smile

[koifsssh]

The Greaser Au!

(oh goodie! it's here!)

bwah, where to start?

long, long, long rambles below! (Beware!)

Wally! I'll start with Wally!

As you can imagine, Wally is the little leader of the group! Promptly dubbed after his last name, "The Darlings"! (how darling they are indeed!)

Wally had grown a fascination with the trend, though he didn't quite understand the need to act so tough and mean, so he decided to make his own group! (with the help of Barnaby!)

Motorcycles, catchy tunes, being free on the road is something everyone should enjoy! So who cares if you're big or small, or if you like the color pink? Anyone can be a greaser as long as they got a jacket and a bike to go along with it!

At least, that what he believes anyway!

Speaking of a certain beagle...

Barnaby!

Barnaby of course wanted to join in on the fun, and he very publicly advertised Wally's gang at his little comedy nights! (It did catch a certain blonde's attention!)

it did garner attention, with the way the beagle so affectionately told of Wally's endearingly comedic actions from their day to day life. Barnaby also helped Wally organize the entire set up, helping him get paint and base jackets for the painter to personalize! (He also suggested Poppy's diner as a hangout spot! He had it all thought out!)

Plus, it made his best friend happy! Who could ask for more? Well... maybe Barnaby would ask for a hotdog or two.

Julie!

Julie is a seasoned hair stylist! She owns her own hair salon! She's excellent at her job, however more often than not she gets a unpleasant customer.

Stress can pile up unfortunately, and when she attended a comedy show one evening she couldn't help but be ecstatic at such an idea of being free on the road. It felt like the perfect destresser!

Talking on the phone with Frank was great and all, but nothing compares to feeling the rush of wind in her hair... So she jumped at such an opportunity! And of course, Julie doesn't go anywhere without a certain frowny bookworm!

Frank!

Frank is an entomologist! (and a part-time librarian during the summertime!) A dream job really, but every dream comes with its hurdles! Similar to Julie, Frank found themself stressed. Usually books were able to decompress them, but lately they've been growing frustrated, the one thing they hate the most is incompetent writing!

It took a lot of convincing to get Frank to even consider the idea of being a greaser, let alone get on a motorcycle... but Julie can be very insistent when she wishes to be! Not even a week passed before they begged Julie to stop her nagging, but in exchange they had to at least go with her once on a motorcycle...

how mortifying.

However! the thrill of being on the open road at a high speed was something they never knew they needed! Needless to say, after that, they were hooked!

Sally!

Sally was the last member to join! and she took her spot quite quickly!

Sally had been in Poppy's diner when she saw The Darling's walk in, she was in awe! Colorful motorcycles? Matching jackets? They all looked marvelous! The star couldn't help herself when she walked up to them, simply starstruck at such a group!

They all looked to be having such fun... she wanted to take part!

When Sally asked if there was a spot left for her, Wally softly smiled at her and stated, "Anyone and everyone can join!"

She was content that day, and from then on, it really was the best group of friends she could ever ask for!

---

whew! im done!

(this is my second time typing this... i had lost it all the first time. bwah. but it's here!!!)

im quite happy how everything turned out! I think i'll use this as a master post of sorts, just so you don't have to dig through my stuff just to find anything specific!

I'll leave Poppy's & Howdy's explanations here! (Just know those designs are old! All the designs in this post are the ones i will be using!)

Poppy's Diner!

additionally! I will give you everyone's closeups!

[thenamesblurrito]

so. Transformers ONE was a good movie

i HIGHLY recommend going in blind, i do think it's incredibly effective with as few spoilers as possible beforehand! seeing it on the big screen is really really nice too, i encourage you to watch it in theaters without reading up on it first if you can!

long full-spoiler review and dissection of elements below (i reached the text block limit a couple times oops):

general stuff:

gorgeous. just genuinely visually gorgeous. so many details, colors, textures, everything was so beautiful. the stylization itself may not be my favorite but it was executed so well that i ended up loving it. their optics! their colors! their movement! the way the visuals serve the lore and the story is extremely well done too, i felt like everything i was seeing was deliberate, relevant, and a treat for the audience instead of just "ooo visual noise look at how powerful our cgi rendering is" (which is how i felt about the "live action" Lion King prequel(????) ad they showed before). all the little cameos and repaints and everything in the background? mwah. GORGEOUS MUSIC TOO AAAA THE WAY THAT TFP'S MOTIF IS IN THERE AAAA

the visual effects and action, the way they USED their roboticness/transformation sequences/vehicle modes in fighting and moving and emoting, it was VERY GOOD. Orion grabs a Death Tracker and RIPS THEM INTO PIECES BY TRANSFORMING AROUND THEM AND FORCING THEIR FRAME TO SHATTER. insanity

this is ABSOLUTELY the origin story movie the fandom has wanted. even if it wasn't your preferred origin story, this movie SHONE with love and respect for the franchise and drew on so many influences to craft a powerful version of the beginning we all wanted to see

in some ways i wish we had more, i think it would've been extremely effective to see things expanded upon, especially D-16's emotional descent and maybe some more Quints. actually looking at the content and pacing of the movie though, and the audience it's aimed at, i don't think there's anything they should've cut in favor of other stuff. i understand why it wasn't dwelt on more, but hooooo i would've liked to see Dee breaking apart a little more thru the middle of the film. apparently the novelization has more scenes of this and i would love to read it

i had so much fun watching this movie. it was a rollercoaster. it was a TREAT. i was sitting there enjoying every second both times i saw it because it was a good film that rewarded me greatly for being a Transformers fan, giving me so many easter eggs and injokes, while also being perfectly understandable and fun for a complete newbie. excellently balanced appeal to old and new fans alike

there was no wink to the audience about how stupid and childish a movie about robots is, there was no lampshading of how silly sci fi is, there was no betrayal of the emotional tone of the film. so many stories now kneecap themselves by mocking their very concept, and the audience watching them, in a very cinema sins-style irony poisoned way. this movie never does that. its humor is fitting, its drama is real, its emotion is all SINCERE and i love how i was never mocked by any part of the movie for engaging with it sincerely

this movie loved being a Transformers movie

anyways. specific stuff:

love how Wheeljack managed to explode everything despite not even being a scientist. he's just THAT good

THE INJOKES AND REFERENCES. "you don't have the touch OR the power." calling them Gobots. the corny More Than Meets The Eye bits. "don't be a glitch" is a headcanon swear i've been using for years now and they canonized it!! "High Guard, eject". "paging doctor Ratchet." the new take on "all are one". the really interesting way that the term Transformers is an actual significant in-universe name, and how Orion and Dee ARE NOT Transformers at first!

the sheer number of cameos is ASTOUNDING. what an excellent mix of masc/fem designs too, they really made it normal on this Cybertron which i appreciate! apparently Blurr exists here, his name was on the leaderboard!!!!!! good job Chromia i am so proud of you for winning. and the shots of the bots getting cogs at the end was aaAAA!!! <<33 my HEART! Jazz's little smile looking at his new doorwings!!

I GOT ALL MY SILLY OLD DEMIGOD FAVES I GOT THE THIRTEEN EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM AAAAAA ALPHA TRION MY GRANDPA god i'm so sorry you're dead but i can't believe you showed up on the big screen <<333 you and your rockin rhino unicorn lion alt mode. and your superpowers. god you're so cool. "old timer" NUH UH HE'S STILL BETTER THAN YOU!!!!! using Zeta for the thirteenth was an interesting choice! i did think he was Overlord for a hot second. it's the lips. Solus wasn't fridged by virtue of everyone else died too yippee!! ALSO MEGATRONUS THE COOLEST ONE WOOOO HES NOT JUST A FIERY EVIL GUY!!!!

the way Dee himself was, in a way, the Fallen of this continuity.... 😭

the way Sentinel was handcrafting his downfall with each touch of the blowtorch. carving the sigil of the Decepticons into the one who will kill him. dooming Cybertron in a moment of petty mockery. AND HE DOESN'T EVEN DRAW IT WELL IT'S LIKE A MESSY CRAYON DRAWING CMON

planetformer Primus in a blockbuster movie? CANONICAL EXPLICITLY STATED PLANETARY ROBO MPREG BIRTH IN THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES???? THEY USE THE WORD BIRTH. BORN. we are never escaping the reproductive insanity in this franchise

Shockwave you whiny tantrum throwing wuss. let Elita beat him up more. it's good for him. also love how that could be construed as a ref to her G1 resistance force

CASUAL MIND READER SOUNDWAVE???????

Elita was perfect, no notes. i would not like her if i met her but i respect her so much. she really is better in every way and down to business. Best First indeed

so much cool implications and fascinating timeline confusion. 50 cycles since the Primes were slaughtered? the way Sentinel leveraged their reputation to make himself beloved, casting himself as their peer? the way he didn't choose to villainize them, the way he apparently openly admitted to the loss of the Matrix and how it impacted the planet? when did cog theft start, and how old is Orion since in the novelization it states his entire generation is cogless? who remembers the og Primes? who is in the know about it all?? hoooghhghhh fascinating.

the implication that the High Guard worked with the og Primes?? the possibility STARSCREAM was a loyal guard for Cybertron's DEMIGODS????

okay i was not expecting a backstory for STARSCREAM'S VOICE in this movie but holy. god. the shippers will be going insane over this one. hoogh holy fit. what is wrong with you. the utter contradiction of being both an instigator and a coward when he gets in over his head and immediately backpedals

also obviously this is the I Love Divorce movie and megop shippers will be having a field day but i DEEPLY appreciate just how solid a friendship Dee and Orion have and how badly they fall apart, even thru a strictly platonic lens. i also appreciate how there was no forced comphet attraction/romance!! i was dreading the possibility of it, i mean Oplita was RIGHT THERE but they didn't force it at all thank youuuuuu. i would rather have this dynamic with its zero intended romance than awkward, OOC attraction shoehorned in to detract from the plot

Bee was actually good! like yeah he's def the kid appeal character and i prefer it when he's in a younger gen and not OP's peer, but he was wayyyyy less annoying than i was expecting! i think he fit the movie and did his job in it well, and i absolutely laughed at him multiple times. "i get to work for the GOVERNMENT! :DDDD" bee. please. the fact that he's been going insane and desperate after isolation for so long really helps make his character work instead of being just irritating

Airachnid you are so cool. you are TOO COOL. PLEASE TONE DOWN YOUR COOLNESS. i adore how she is not good at facial expressions thank you evil autism moments. love how her signature move is stabbystabbystabbystabbystabbystabby

Sentinel. god. Sentinel. SENTINEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i need to draw him getting ripped in half. it's like they distilled the worst parts of every single iteration and combined them into a SuperBad version. horrifically realistic kind of guy. i love to hate him. real Metro Man from Megamind energy. and megachurch pastor energy. the IRONY that Orion and Dee were probably actually helping him, that he was probably being genuine in the medbay when he said he loved what they did by racing, that he may have been honest when he said he was gonna have them fixed up in his own facilities and had them tour the mines! because them racing increased energon production by 150% and Sentinel needed that!!! he needed that for the Quintessons!!! i think he was being genuine when he first met Dee and Orion and then Darkwing ruined everything!!!

Darkwing is the curly straw of this continuity

the Quintessons were hoooooooooooooooo. whoooooooooogh. hoohhhhhhhhhhhh. the biomechanical. the shapes. the textures. eugh. icky. creepy. excellent. the way their ships looked like the Nemesis. the way they're STILL a looming threat. i wanted to see more of them but i get why the movie wasn't about them. i hope we see more in the future

the way Orion is the kind of guy who, in an attempt to be selfless, keeps making selfish or thoughtless decisions was SO INTERESTING. it set up the dynamic of his and Dee's friendship very well, with Orion always wanting the best for his buddy but ultimately overwriting or ignoring what Dee says!! the way Dee clings to the social contract of protocol for safety because that's all he knows and his ANGER when it's broken, even when it's Orion breaking it, because that's not SAFE it's an UNKNOWN it has CONSEQUENCES WHEN YOU DEVIATE. and then it's revealed that the social norms have been a lie the whole time and Sentinel has "broken protocol" more than ever and Dee has no safety left because it was always broken. Orion wanted to be more, he could feel there was more. Dee just wanted security

Dee spent so much of the movie complaining and arguing and it was very funny and good characterization but it was also a hint at how much bitterness was under there the whole time. so much of his complaints were threats of violence. he always had Orion's back and then when he learns the truth he abruptly. stops. do you notice he doesn't really have Orion's back after this? he's no longer by his side? he's there, but he's not... there. he was the first to shoot an enemy and took joy in it. all of his emotions were so justified and then what he does with them is what makes it a tragedy. he didn't have to do this. augh

i really, really like the fact that they managed to pull off the ending without it fully turning into a "boohoo if we do anything violent we're as bad as the bad guys waaaa". the specific phrasing of "rebuilding cannot start with an execution" went HARD. and it's demonstrated in their actions too like, Dee was out for REVENGE and it was PERSONAL, Orion was fighting for JUSTICE and it was UNIVERSAL. Sentinel was beaten, everyone knew the truth. it was over. but Dee in his (very justified!) anger and broken trust was too overcome to back down. they were given the power to change their worlds, but Dee was thinking only of his world. Orion was thinking of everyone

ironic that as soon as Orion starts thinking of other people and considering what they need instead of forging ahead, Dee decides to center his own feelings and actions to the point of murder. even after Sentinel was dead, he just kept shooting, he did NOT AT ALL care that some of those shots were clearly hurting innocent civilians/going wide and shooting out into the city/damaging actual important infrastructure and not just Sentinel statues. i believe it's Bee who said "he's gonna kill everyone" and he proves it by attacking Elita and saying "I won't stop until every last one of his followers is dead". THE FACT THAT HE FELL SO FAR AS TO SEE ELITA, HIS PEER AND FELLOW FREEDOM FIGHTER WHO WAS THERE WORKING AGAINST SENTINEL WITH HIM FROM THE START OF THIS QUEST, AS ONE OF SENTINEL'S FOLLOWERS.... by the end of it, Dee really was nothing but blind anger

and the way kneeling was a common thread!!!!! aaaaaaa. Sentinel betrayed the world by kneeling to the enemy. Dee won respect by refusing to kneel. Orion gained followers by willingly kneeling to his peers. hooghh

Orion jumping and stumbling and falling this whole movie because he just THROWS himself into things because he BELIEVES in things, he's the one to take leaps of faith, to take that step out into the unknown! and Dee refusing to save him as one final nail in the coffin, so clearly feeling like Orion jumping in front of the blast was yet ANOTHER way Orion is forcing his hand, corralling him into doing something he thinks is best but did not consult him on, finally FINALLY saying NO and leaning in to the tragedy!! and in the exact same way Sentinel handcrafted his enemy in Dee, Dee has now handcrafted his enemy in Orion!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA and now that Orion took that last leap of faith and fell, now is when he RISES. ONE SHALL FALL AND ONE SHALL RISE. god. it reminds me of Spiderverse, the way they use falling and rising

the way the tragedy is worse for how well everyone was working together.... for one shining moment, the miners and the High Guard, the rescue mission, it was going so well. they were doing it. they were winning. it didn't have to turn to slaughter. if there was to be an execution it should've been by trial, by the voice of the people, not Dee deciding for Cybertron as Sentinel decided what truth was. augh.

in an abruptly different note, the way they have characters move and fly is so cool. i love the jetpacks. i love how flight is not "flyer" exclusive. it's fascinating and i think really fitting for the general city of Iacon itself. all those towers going up and down

THE TRAINS!! THE MOVING ROADS!! HOW COOL IS THAT!! LOOK AT THAT WORLDBUILDING IM OBSESSED WITH THIS CYBERTRON HOOGH. this movie was VERY good at building a rich, functional world of detail and making it very alien in a way i want to chew on forever. the moving mountains and greebled energon mines. the living planet. the deer!!! ooghghh. PRIMUS LOOKS LIKE A STAR

i do like this Primus actually, yeah it was a deus ex machina but that's the POINT. Optimus himself is an act of god and his presence heralds miracles. Dee couldn't bring justice to Cybertron because justice is restoration. justice is healing what was hurt and doing right by the wronged. yes that often means consequences upon the perpetrator but that's NOT what Dee was doing, he wasn't even THINKING of anyone else!! would killing Sentinel get ppl out of the mines? would it restore their cogs? would it bring equality to a clearly oppressive society? like he LIVED this (cogless bots with limited options, the talk of tiers as if they are social castes you can be demoted from, lower city levels where ppl can be banished, etc) but it was Orion who ultimately addressed this. i'm sorry if it feels like insult to injury to rub his Primacy in your face, Megatron, but stealing a cog just like Sentinel and declaring the age of Primes over, when it was the age of Primes ending that made you cogless and oppressed in the first place, is only an extension of your trauma, anger, and violence, and is not solving the problem!

a cog stolen from him at birth! and then he steals it from Sentinel in symbolic revenge, stolen again, but even that wasn't Sentinel's, it was stolen too! the way he discards the cog from Onyx, willingly gifted to him, to continue the trend of desecrating the dead! man. MAN. the name he took, the cog he took, the symbol he took, all from his hero, the one he looked up to, the coolest Prime, and THEN DECLARED THE AGE OF PRIMES OVER

the gilded pompous showmanship of it all was so gross, the way Sentinel's face was everywhere, the way he had instant access to everyone in Iacon via announcements that took over the media. but this was clearly derived from the previous Primes!! we see their statues, we see their stately tower, and unless Sentinel had all that built in "mourning" (which is totally plausible imho) he was really just setting himself up as an inheritor of that hyperwealthy standard! we don't know anything about the rule of the og Primes beyond that they're favorably remembered and loved (possibly because of propaganda but i think it was also genuine) and that they may have been losing the Quint war (considering that info was from jerkwad supreme i find it suspect) but just by comparison to Sentinel i think they HAD to be better rulers. there weren't cogless bots forced to mine for 20 shifts in a row back then!!! Sentinel is stealing their aesthetic as if that gets him the same power and acclaim. he's trying to steal their legitimacy. he paints himself across the face of Iacon to hide the fact the planet itself went into a coma because of him. he has ALWAYS been rejected. i call him a megachurch pastor but really symbolically i could say he's a fallen angel, and his visual design really fits too

i'm coming back to the deus ex machina thing bc i know it may be considered weak in a plot construction sense but i want to engage with it as literal. like, there is a literal in-universe god in the machine. they know it. they worship it, at least a little bit. i would consider this story to be analogous to Prince of Egypt, in that the deific is a real and tangible character with impact on the plot, and not a meta excuse to save the day. Orion made his choice, and as a result Primus made HIS choice. it's not necessarily a happy ending but if even Megatron acknowledges that GOD mandated this guy to be a Prime and the planet itself responds by COMING BACK TO LIFE.... i keep thinking of it like a cityspeaker, how they're the ones who commune with Titans to know their needs and tell them what needs to be done. is a Prime just the cityspeaker of Cybertron, able to help it remain healthy and functional?

the divine right to rule is REAL on Cybertron. you can like it or not but you have to contend with that when discussing fair leadership, political accountability, and representation of the masses re: Cybertronian government and Primacy

god i'm still so obsessed with the Thirteen i need to see them better i need to look at them. i love them. insane. i really need to invest in a chewtoy

also i know it may be a throwaway line but i'm very curious why Primus had to transform and sacrifice himself to save the universe. Unicron, maybe???

also how did Alpha Trion narrate the archival stuff telling the fake story of how the Primes died and the Matrix was lost. did Sentinel get a deepfake of his voice?? is that part of how he made the transition to power?? AUGH THE DISRESPECT KEEPS COMPOUNDING

Alpha Trion. my blorbo. my old man. holding you so tight. like an ancient rescue dog. im gonna groom you and give you treats and buy the biggest plushest dog bed from costco for you

anyways

good movie, guys

[vellichor-of-the-solivagant]

How to Plant Snapdragons | 9

Task Force 141, Keegan, & Konig x Female Criminal!Reader

Previous Chapter / Masterlist

CONTENT WARNING: Strong Violence NOTE: WAZZUP BITCHES, IM BACK I am very sorry for not updating for 4-5(?) months. I didn't mean to go on a hiatus without any announcements. Things had been quite busy for me lately and I focused on some things (FUCK COLLEGE BUT I PASSED ALL MY CLASSES ANYWAY), and also the reason why I suddenly "went dark" is because of the fucking MW3 Campaign. Yeah, shit destroyed me. WORD COUNT: 2.7k

You had been to Mexico once. You went to good places it held, but you also walked on the mud it hid in the dark. After all, there could never be a perfect country. Even if someone said that their glorious purpose was for the better good of their nation—most of the time, they were merely heroes in their own stories and villains in the others’. Well, Mexico had good food. You could give them that, at least. But this place, Las Almas, would it have good stuff as well?

You shook off your vest and Ghost’s jacket as the pilot alerted you of the time of the touchdown and slipped into your jacket, fitted to your frame. As much as you wanted to keep wearing the lieutenant’s clothes, you couldn’t risk getting harmed because of loose clothing and failing this stupid mission.

You turned to Ghost as you folded his jacket neatly. “Can I keep this?” you asked and smiled.

He stared at you for a good second, pools of honey you couldn’t read before he looked away. “Suit yourself.”

Your grin widened, and you stashed the jacket into your bag. You hummed as you put on your vest, tightening it to your liking. You patted your pockets, checking each of them, until you felt Ghost’s mask in one, fingers lingering on the soft fabric, and sighed. You put your hands down on your lap and leaned against the cold steel, waiting for the upcoming descent, which didn’t take long.

The plane opened up, and a busy facility greeted your sight. Vehicles drove in and out of the area, and soldiers went back and forth from one place to another. But even when they were bustling, you could feel their gazes land on you—suspicious and judging, whispering among themselves, voices drowned out by the loud exhausts of the transports.

It was something you wished you could get used to. At the same time, you didn’t want to, when eyes held more than they seemed.

You followed Soap and Ghost down the plane, walking towards a couple of men who stepped forward. One of them had his hands clasped behind him, while the other simply stood by his side. Both were, well, good-looking and buffed (which was normal for military men), but eh, not really your type.

They would make pretty models though.

Also, good human shields, if ever.

Johnny, being the everlasting sunshine he was, greeted them first, extending a hand to the man named Alejandro, and engaged in a conversation with him as though they had been long good friends. Then, the sergeants forced the poor lieutenant to join in, who sounded ready to strangle the scot.

Then, your eyes found the gaze of the man next to the Mexican captain on the monitor on your ankle. A frown spread on his face and worsened the moment he saw the smirk that crept up your lips, his eyes darting between you and the half of the 141.

The look of a man confused never failed to be an entertainment. And what was more the obvious expression that said, what the fuck is a criminal doing here? Or something in Spanish.

“And who is she?” Alejandro questioned, finally turning his eyes on you—or rather, down to your ankle, as if the monitor would be the one to answer him.

“She’s sent by General Shepherd,” Ghost immediately replied, batting an eye at you. “She may be a criminal, but she proved excellent in various ways that could be useful to us.”

Alejandro, albeit hesitantly, nodded and extended a hand to you. “Nice to meet you, miss.”

You took his hand, giving it a quick shake. “I’m at your service, sir. And worry not about me going against orders, I pretty much like my head attached to my neck.”

He put a forced smile on his face, one you’d seen way too many times on people. “We’ll see about that.” He motioned at the man beside him. “This is Sergeant Major Rodolfo Parra, my second-in-command.”

The said man, Rodolfo, extended his hand first to Soap, who the fellow Sergeant enthusiastically shook. Then, he batted an eye at Ghost, seemingly hesitant to approach him, but still decided to. Ghost, however, merely stared at his hand, and Rodolfo backed away, clearing his throat.

Soap stepped forward. “Ah, the Lt’s not much of a talker.”

Rodolfo nodded. “I understand.” He turned your way and reached out his hand, which you lightly shook, quickly withdrawing right after. He moved back to Alejandro’s side, who nodded his head towards a direction.

“Follow me, we’ll talk along the way.” Alejandro turned and began to walk, passing by and nodding at soldiers who saluted at him. By the end of the way—or seemingly at both an entrance and exit, several jeeps were parked, and a few soldiers stood by the vehicles. With a wave of hand from Alejandro, the men slipped inside the vehicles, and Rodolfo was the first to get in the first jeep on the line.

“I’d like to sit beside the window—” you attempted to request, but Ghost was quick to shut you off.

“No,” he said as Soap rounded the car, stepping in by the other side.

“But—”

“No.”

“C’mon, lassie, don’t you want to sit between us?” Soap questioned, a smile played on his lips.

You slipped inside with a grumble, inching close to the sergeant, before elbowing him. He grunted, but you knew it wouldn’t do much damage to him with all his muscles. At the same time, doors shut as both Alejandro and Simon got inside.

“Tengo miedo de los fantasmas,” Rodolfo mumbled, slightly turning his head to face his colonel.

(I’m afraid of ghosts.)

Your eyes whipped forward, brows slightly raising at his words, which you perfectly understood. You glanced at Ghost, but he merely stared ahead. At the back of your mind, you wanted to snitch on the new guy just so some drama could happen between them, but at the same time, drama could lead to suspicion between these men.

This was why knowing some languages if you travel abroad was great. But it should be fine to keep quiet for now. What the sergeant said wasn’t suspicious, but if they did anything that could bring harm to Ghost and Soap, then . . . 

On the other hand, Alejandro chuckled at the comment of his sergeant and looked back at the three of you. “You know Spanish?”

The Lieutenant remained silent, and you did the same, turning your head to the side to look out of the window, whilst Soap shook his head, and answered, “No.”

Alejandro drew a smirk on his face and turned his attention back ahead. “Oh, you will.”

Rodolfo started the car and drove out of the base.

“See,” you pointed at the window, begrudgingly looking at Simon, who stared indifferently at you. “This is why I want to be next to the window.”

The car passed by two-story buildings, seemingly houses or apartments, painted in pastel colors. People were walking and talking on the street, some vendors and their stands offering their goods, and some other vehicles were parked on the way. It wasn’t much, not even beautiful, but still you’d like to see everything you could see.

“Have you taken a liking to Las Almas?” Alejandro questioned, glancing back at you.

You put your hand down and turned your head on his way. “To be frank, it’s not a liking, sir, rather, it’s curiosity. I’m not from here or anything similar to this place, so I’d like to see how things work here.”

His head inclined a bit to the side, appearing to be thinking of his words. “You’ll be . . . disappointed.”

You smiled. “I’ll be the one to judge that.” Just as you finished your sentence, a truck with men riding on the back, guns in hand passed by. You couldn’t help but whistle at their ridiculous sight, and put your hand on top of Soap’s before he could grab his gun.

He frowned at you. “What are ya—”

“Calm down, sir,” you cut him off, pulling your hand away. “Seeing as no one on the street is reacting about it, pretty sure that’s normal here.”

“You’re right,” Alejandro spoke in a serious voice, once again looking back at you. “Guns are in the jurisdiction of the police.”

“Looks like Las Almas has a huge problem,” you commented and crossed your arms. “Much more than what I’ve heard.”

Alejandro shifted his eyes to you. “You seem to know something about Las Almas.”

With his words, Soap and Ghost also settled their eyes on you, as if they were ready to do everything to get answers out of your mouth. “I’ve been to Mexico, and during my stay, I heard of things about Las Almas. Not exactly the good ones as you probably expected, but I didn’t know things around here would be this bad.”

“When did you come to Mexico?”

“Over a couple of years ago, sir.”

“I see.” He turned back ahead. “Well, things weren’t that bad back then.”

“I suppose those who tried to uphold the laws and resist corruption met their end as the time passed?”

“You’re right.”

You hummed. “Well, without powerful backing to protect them, I doubt they’ll last much in a society like this.”

“And ya also seemed to know things about politics and stuff,” Soap claimed, slightly shifting on his seat.

You met his blue eyes with a grin. “I had met quite a few politicians in my life. Assassinated an Austrian before, and the one who hired me snitched on me. That’s why I ended up on Shepherd’s shackles.”

His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How much of that is true?”

You laughed loudly, although you already knew what would be his reaction. “Take a guess,” you told him challengingly.

“The last sentence,” Ghost joined in, his voice monotone.

You snorted. “Except that.” Then, you gasped, throwing yourself to the window at Soap’s side, making him curse out something you couldn’t fucking understand in whatever Scottish was that. “Look, look, Lt!” You motioned your hand on Ghost to look at the ridiculous sight of someone in a skull balaclava giving balloons to kids.

“What the hell?” Soap’s bright eyes also followed the scene.

You whipped around and smiled at Ghost, who simply stared at you. “If you ever want to quit the military, you can retire with me and live together.”

“How about living in Las Almas since Ghost might fit well in here?” Rodolfo suggested in a soft voice. Alejandro hit him on the side, whispering something, and from the corner of your eyes, you saw Ghost slowly turning to look at him through the rear mirror.

You tilted your head. “But Las Almas has a serious problem when it comes to crimes, so I don’t think it is very much suitable to live in unless you want to be a crime lord or still in the military. And I’m the type of person who likes traveling around. If I were to settle for sometime somewhere else, it would be where I would have already spent some time on, like London, Berlin, or California and—”

“It’s just a joke, please. Don’t take it too seriously,” Rodolfo mumbled, sounding like he wanted to bury himself on the ground at the moment and never appear again.

On the way to the destination, Alejandro had talked more about the way of Las Almas, and finally, what you and the 141 came here for, El Sin Nombre, the leader of the Mexican Cartel who was protecting Hassan. Quite a reputation that person had as Alejandro said they had eyes and ears everywhere.

Having eyes and ears everywhere was also something the one who raised you did. Even if your father was in prison at the moment, you knew he was still pulling strings. A mastermind out of everyone’s league, until he decided to invest in you. Guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, now that you were technically imprisoned as well.

You pulled out your balaclava and huffed, putting it on swiftly. You jumped out of the jeep right after Simon and you heard Alejandro spit out his commands in a low, serious voice. You rounded up with the soldiers before a gate and under the Colonel’s command, the group barged in. You frowned as you had seen no man in sight, seemingly the civilians had run away—or were mostly likely driven out by the Cartel.

Alejandro waved his hand to follow him up another gate, which this time, Ghost opened, and gunshots echoed in the air.

“Showtime,” you said under your breath, aiming your assault rifle and blasting a hole through a man’s head, vibrant red painting the dull walls around. You rounded a corner, cautiously looking out for an enemy. You spotted a couple of them, but before you could take them down, they had already fallen on the ground. Your head whipped at Soap and Ghost’s direction. “Showoffs,” you grumbled.

“Said the one who wanted to take two men down at the same time,” Soap remarked, giving you a look, and you heard Ghost huff.

You clicked your tongue and swiftly entered a house, but quickly moved back out as you saw not a soul in sight. Your frown worsened at the unusual lack of men to hold the group back. In these cases, either it would be a trap or they had escaped already.

You glanced over your shoulders. 141, some of Alejandro’s men and the Colonel himself were on sight. The walls obscured your view of the place, there were so many corners where men could be hiding themselves or something else, and such things as Cartels wouldn’t hesitate to destroy a run-down hide-out like this for their good.

Soap shot a man from the roof and Alejandro positioned himself in front of a door, motioning at us. “Secure the house, and we go for Hassan.”

Several voices echoed from inside the place, cursing and hushing one another.

“Take the door,” Alejandro commanded. Soap stepped forward, but you grabbed him, making him look at you.

Before he could utter a word, you kicked the door open, slid on the floor towards a corner, and struck a man awaiting in the hallway. You got up immediately, raised a hand so they wouldn’t follow you, and picked up a baby’s bottle on the ground, throwing it to a room through a slightly opened door. Shots were fired blindly right after and you countered it with a couple of bullets, and it stopped. You pushed the blasted door open and found a man lying on the floor, and the baby’s bottle rolling towards your foot.

“Room clear,” you announced, staring down at the bottle for a second, before moving to the next room. They followed you in and you braced yourself for another onslaught, but this time, Soap was the one who barged in, quickly shooting down the men inside without batting an eye.

“Room clear,” he said and put his hand on your shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

You looked up at him and raised a brow that he wouldn’t see.

Ghost sauntered in the room. “No sign of Hassan.”

Alejandro sighed. “They already moved him.”

You turned your attention to him. “They move fast, hm?”

He looked at you, letting Ghost and Soap rummage the desk across the room instead. “They do. Much more than I expected.”

“So they already know that we’re coming here,” you remarked.

“Highly possible. The Cartel has eyes everywhere.”

You narrowed your eyes and echoed, “Everywhere?”

He nodded to affirm it. “Everywhere.”

“You mean even among your men?”

He paused, staring at you for a good second. “No, I trust my men.”

“A weed is a weed, sir, no matter how good it looks in your garden,” you said in a monotonous voice, picking up a pencil from the ground. “Sooner or later, they’ll bring harm to your plants. And even the plants you put in your garden can bring harm to you if you don’t know what they are.”

Ghost and Soap shot an eye on you, before exchanging looks with each other.

He eyed you cautiously and his serious voice lowered. “What are you implying?”

You remained silent and so did he, until Rodolfo’s voice echoed in your headsets. “The army is rolling in!”

Next Chapter / Archive of Our Own

Taglist: @yyiikes, @the-faceless-bride @sarahedwards16, @kenma-izhu, @kkaaaagt, @cassiecasluciluce, @unicorngirly1, @thriving-n-jiving, @squidalapobre, @tallicaside

[nightsetter]

Aubrey Plaza movie & show reviews

i know i'm not the only one obsessed with aubrey rn so i thought i'd rank some of her stuff that i've seen and indicate whether her character is gay or not to help people decide what to watch. i'll keep adding to it and hope others will add their recommendations too!!

starting with the most recent:

1. Agatha All Along (2024 series) - Gay - 10/10 obviously it's why we're all here haha.

2. Megalopolis (2024 film) - Not gay - worst movie i've ever seen in my life lmao. however you get the incomparable experience of watching a bitchy blonde aubrey plaza sit on a dude's face so. also all her outfits are incredible??? 0/10 don't bother watching, aubrey is only in a few scenes so just skip around to find those.

3. My Old Ass (2024 film) - Gay - 10/10 watch this asap! i laughed i cried, like in the best way. aubrey is only in a couple scenes, a longer one kinda towards the beginning and then a short one at the end, she also does voiceovers throughout. her character is bisexual and the focus is a mlw relationship. she's fantastic in it and the whole movie is excellent, loved maisy stella too and their chemistry together.

4. Operation Fortune (2023 film) - Not gay - action movies aren't usually my thing but aubrey plays the role of a sexy hacker spy like she was born for it and i loved every second haha. i wish the script had lived up to her potential but it was still a fun watch. 8/10 for that one gold dress ALONE

5. Emily the Criminal (2022 film) - Not gay - 10000/10 HIGHLY RECOMMEND my personal favorite so far!!! Aubrey co-produced and she plays the main character. when i tell you this woman had me ACTINGG UPPPPPP in this sweet mother of all that is holy- she looks so good in every scene and it's genuinely great start to finish. boyfriend aubrey plaza save me 🙏

6. Spin Me Round (2022 film) - Gay - ok so this movie is batshit but there's a truly incredible makeout scene with alison brie's character... aubrey is only there for like 1/3 of the movie but she steals every scene and looks soooo good in it, amazing costume design. i'll give it a 6/10 for that and her chemistry with alison.

7. Best Sellers (2021 film) - Not gay - i loved this one!! aubrey's talent and range blew me away, and it's a heartfelt story. she stars as a publishing company heiress who develops a father-daughter bond with an old cranky author. definitely up there with emily the criminal & black bear as some of her best work. 9/10

8. The White Lotus (2021-ongoing series) - Not gay - aubrey stars in season 2, which you can jump right into if you want because each season is a stand-alone story. i enjoyed s1 as a satire about different types of social privilege, s2 was way less interesting and i found myself just waiting for the next time aubrey was on screen lol. but she's amazing in a dramatic role and wears so many bikinis lord forgive meee- 7/10 overall.

9. Happiest Season (2020 film) - Gay - everyone has seen this, but aubrey plaza and kristen stewart in the same movie is WAY too powerful i think i blacked out at one point. alison brie is great too. 8/10 minus a couple because of the stupid ending and idk its a lil cheesy haha.

10. Black Bear (2020 film) - Not gay - another one that she co-produced and starred in. ill be honest it was too straight for me to really enjoy lmao. its a meta dive into the indie film industry that went over my head at times but it's thought-provoking and clearly very personal to aubrey's life and career, especially how she works so closely with her husband. she is insanely insanely hot in it and really showcases her talent so ill give it a 7/10.

11. Child's Play (2019 film) - Not gay - tbh i thought this movie was hilarious loll. aubrey stars as the mom, i wish there'd been more of a focus on her, it's more from the son's perspective but she's awesome in it and it's cool to see her in a different type of role. 6/10 it was good as far as slasher comedies go.

12. An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn (2018 film) - Not gay - i dont even know what to say about this one dlkjfdl. 1/10 aubrey is the only good part.

13. The Little Hours (2017 film) - Gay - bro this one is a RIDE... aubrey plaza as a crazy heretical nun is one of the funniest things i've everrrr seen. she co-produced and stars in it again with alison brie. hilarious movie for its target audience (me), aubrey kisses 2 women and there's one scene in particular that uhh 🥵 well. no sorry i mustn't say. 10/10 movie (in my very subjective opinion loll). tw for sexual assault.

14. Ingrid Goes West (2017 film) - Not gay - she co-produced and stars in this opposite elizabeth olsen. aubrey is always at home playing freakish characters and the movie is pretty entertaining. i was disappointed by the glaring lack of gay subtext haha but ill give it a 7/10. tw for attempted suicide.

15. Legion (2017-2019 series) - only a couple episodes into this but i'm absolutely loving it so far, aubrey is soo hottt when she's in her element omfg. her character is queer and she appears in 22/27 episodes according to wiki. i'll update with a final rating.

16. Addicted to Fresno (2015 film) - Gay - aubrey plays the love interest to natasha lyonne's character in this. she's only in a handful of scenes and their chemistry wasnt great imo. it has a happy ending though and it's a fun like black comedy rom com, there's one cute kiss at the end. plus sweaty gym clothes 😶 i'll give it a 5/10.

17. The To Do List (2013 film) - Not gay - i probably would have liked this more when i was in high school haha but it's still pretty funny. she plays the nerdy main character experimenting with guys for the first time, so. a lot of what would you would expect with that 😭 god is real that's all i can tell you, 7/10

18. Parks and Recreation (2009-2015 series) - Not gay - this is the one she's famous for of course but for anyone who hasn't seen it, she gets a decent amount of screen time in an ensemble cast playing an adorably chaotic intern. 8/10 recommend if you're looking for a half hour sitcom, it's a great time :)

19. Criminal Minds (2005-ongoing series) - Gay - i only watched 4 episodes so can't speak on the quality of the show as a whole but i loved her soo much in it. she plays a femme fatale hitwoman which is the perfect aubrey role lmao. there are mentions of her relationships with women, but the focus is on her interest in a guy. She stars in 11x11, 12x22, and 15x6. also makes a brief appearance at the end of 12x21. 8/10 no complaints, totally worth watching for her.

i hope this is helpful to someone and please add more reviews if you'd like!

[looking4layla]

Amazing experience

Budo Masuta x fem!chubby!reader

Not proof read so if you see errors use ur brain

You made it to the martial arts club, You’re not sure who you’re looking for but from the flier it was someone named Budo. You take a deep breath and fix my skirt as you open the door to 5 people training.

“Welcome to the Martial Arts Club! What brings you here?” A man, around 5’8 with black hair approaches you. “Uhm hi. Imr looking for someone named…” you look at paper double checking the name on the flier. “Budo Masuta?” You hear a chuckled come from the black haired guy in front of you. “Well, that would be me. And you are?” He looks at you waiting for your response. “Y/n” you respond nearvously. “It's nice to meet you, y/n. And I assume you wish to join the Martial Arts Club?” He asks you with a standard enthusiastic tone he always has.

“Y-yeah” you stutter in response. “Excellent! I always welcome more members to our club. Do you have any experience in martial arts, or would you be a complete beginner?” You pause for a moment before answering “no…im a beginner”. “Don't worry, we'll start you off slowly. That should give you a good foundation to work with, and then you can always advance as you improve your skills!” He smile at you. It makes you feel warm inside, how a complete stranger is being nicer to you than anyone in the whole school has. You begin your classes with Budo until the bell rings for class.

You walk to your class when you see and you and Budo are both in class 3-2. As you sit down in class, you see that Budo is already seated next to you. He glances in your direction and smiles, then turns back to the front of the class.

“The first 6 digits of pie are 3.14159” you say answering the question. “Correct y/n” the teacher congratulates you. “It seems you know a lot about pie don’t you, fatty” Musume comments from the back of the class, giggling as some of the people in the class also laugh a little.

Budo glances over at you and notices you’re much less confident than you were before. He shoots a dangerous glare at Musume. She immediately shuts up and faces forward, visibly shaken.

Class bell rings again and everyone leaves to lunch. You pack up your stuff but Musume had stayed. You notice the rest of her friends walking into the classroom. *what the hell are they gonna do now?* you think to yourself.

Just as you ask that, you turn around and is faced with a little pig that got thrown at your face. You don’t even worry about yourself you worry if the little pig is alright as it squeals and runs away. “OMG Y/n! It’s your twin ahahaha” Hanna yells and they all laugh and walk away. You burst out into tears and run to the zen garden.

Once you arrive at the garden to calm down you take a seat at one of the benches. You hear footsteps come up behind you, and you can sense someone approaching you from behind as your breathing slows down. *Oh no, it’s probably them again. Please stop, don’t come any closer* you think, you brace for an impact but you feel a soft hand on my arm.

Budo is standing behind you. He looks worried when he sees your wet cheeks and red eyes from crying. You feel his hand squeeze gently. “Hey...are you alright?” He asks you with a worried expression on his face. It was embarrassing for you, for him to see you like this. You didn’t know how to respond, so you turn away and curl into a ball and continue sobbing.

He kneels down and rests on the ground beside you. He pulls you close to him and gently pats your back as he tries to comfort you. “Shhh, everything will be okay. I know it's tough right now, but just try to hold on and let your emotions flow naturally. I promise it gets better” . Those comforting words proved to you that he wasn’t here to judge you.

“Why do I have to look like this?” You ask softly, trying to hide your body. “Why do so many people find time out of their day to tell me what’s wrong with me?” You sigh out of exhaustion. Budo gives you a reassuring gaze as he continues to hug you.

“I don't think there's anything wrong with how you look. Yes, you may have a few extra pounds on you, but that just makes you more beautiful in my eyes. There's nothing wrong with having a little bit of extra curve, it just shows that you have a healthy amount of energy and nutrients. Musume and her friends are just jealous of your natural beauty.” He comforts you rubbings circles into your shoulder.

The bell rings to go back to class as I stand up and just him as tight as I can. Thinking about how no one had ever said that to me before. “Thank you” I say feeling more tears fall. Budo smiles warmly, angles your face to face his and gently wipes away your tears with his thumbs. “It's no problem at all, really. Just try to keep your eyes dry. I'd hate for your pretty face to be stained with tears” he giggles as he smiles at you.

This was the moment you realized you were in love with him. The man that actually care about you unlike anyone else. We both walk back to class together and I sit down, instinctively putting my bag on my lap hiding my stomach. Budo noticed this subtle act and notes it.

As the day comes to a close and you make your way to the gate, you hear footsteps approach you and you sense someone approaching you. “Hey y/n, I just wanted to ask you about one of the math problems from class today. I didn’t really understand it” Budo speaks to you, obviously trying to make an excuse to walk you home, but you don’t mind. He walks beside you discussing the problem bruh you reach your home.

You feel his hand fall to the small of your back as you two walk together, this brings butterflies to your stomach. Budo glances down as you walk up your driveway. The sight of you fills him with so much emotion. The way your soft cheeks glisten in the sunlight, the gentle sway of your hips as you walk, the way your cute little Akademi uniform clings your tummy, everything is just perfect. He waves goodbye to you as he walks to his own home.

That night you thought of making Budo a fresh batch of cookies as a gratitude gift. The next day, you walk into school and spot Budo walking in with the rest of the martial arts club. “Hey Budo!” I say waking over to him.

Before he could say good morning back I speak “thank you for protecting me yesterday. I-I brought you some fresh baked cookies. You don’t have to eat them if you don’t want but I just wanted to do something ni-“ your rambling is interrupted by Budo putting his hand on your shoulder. “Thank you for the cookies, but you don't have to buy me anything. I'm just doing my part as the Martial Arts Club leader. And I was only being a gentleman by accompanying you home; it's something that I'd do for anyone” Budo states as he continues to walk into the school.

“id do that for anyone”, those words ran in your head all day. Was what he said and did back in the garden, just because he felt bad for me? Did he not actually like me the same way I liked him? Was all of his actions just him being friendly? There was so thoughts in my mind.

Today, you decide to keep your distance from Budo so that you can clear your head and make some sense of your feelings. Budo noticed that you were avoiding him,but he didn't make an effort of contacting you. He just thought that you didn’t want to talk to him because of this morning. As you sit alone, you're filled with mixed emotions, excitement, frustration, uncertainty.

Your school day concludes and you walk to the gate like you always do. Still compressing the thoughts, but then you hear footsteps behind you. You can tell it’s Budo, because… well who else would it be. But his footsteps sound fast.

You turn around to feel his lips crash into yours with a passionate kiss. It sends a jolt of butterflies through your body as you melt into Budo's embrace. His hands caress the side of your face as he kisses you. It's like all your negative feelings are being erased, leaving only pure, blissful happiness.

You break the kiss as you look at him, this kiss lingers on your lips, almost tasting the sweetness from where his lips touched yours. “I've wanted to do that for so long... You're so beautiful.” He states, tilting his head a bit smiling at you.

Why now? Why all of a sudden? He was so distant a couple hours ago, why does he think this is the right time? You look away from is gaze with a concerned look. You can’t understand why all of a sudden he’s showing you affections after being distant all day.

He noticed this body language and takes a step back. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, I should have asked before I did something like tha-”

“nonono! You didn’t! I- I just didn’t think you liked me the way I liked you” you meekly say adverting his gaze. He smiles and exhales as he moves closer, “Oh, honey... I've always thought you were so cute. You don't think I kept following you around because I hate you, do you? I thought you would have put two and two together by now, but I'm guessing you didn't pick up on those hints” he awkwardly smiles.

You make eye contact again but slowly look someplace else. “I just didn’t think someone like you could like someone…like me. The whole reason why I join your club is because Musume and her friends told me to lose some weight” Budo's expression widened hearing your wirds.

*flashback to before you met Budo*

“Ahaha y/n! Don’t you think you should lost some weight you fat pig” Hanna Daidaiyama comments walking by you. “Don’t you think you need to re-dye your roots bitch?!” You angrily snap back at her. She frantically looks around as she walks towards you and pushes you to the ground. “Yeah, but unlike you, I know how to fight” she says as she walks away.

You stand up and amidst yourself off, walking to the stairs of the first floor you see a post o Brie wall “Martial Arts Club! Come show off your self defense skills and learn new ones!” Those seems like exactly what you need. You rip the poster off the wall and go straight to the class

*back to present time*

Budo pulls you into a hug. “Don't let anyone tell you any different: you are beautiful. Those bullies were just jealous of your beauty, and they took it out on you just because they had some personal problems to deal with. I know you've gone through a lot, but I swear to you that everything is going to change. From here on out, none of that bullshit is going to happen again.”

You feel tears fill your eyes to this. You finally found someone who loves you for you, who doenst want to change you. “T-thank you Budo” you sob out.

He smiles as he wipes away your tears with his thumb “Oh, my sweet little angel~” He kisses you on the forehead and wipes a few more tears before gently placing his hand on your cheek. “I'm so happy that you're mine now” he tells you warmly as the smile grows wider and brighter than ever as he stares into your eyes.

You both walk home together and this time, when you get to your doorstep, you invite him into you house. Since your parents are out on a business trip it was just you and your dog “do you want to come inside?” You asks gesturing at the door. Budo face lights up as he nods ands walks inside. He follows you inside the hallway. He pets your dog softly, then smiles warmly as he turns to look at the inside of the house.

You both get to your room as you walk to the closet to change. YIY close the door and walk out in a hoodie and some shorts. Budo couldn’t stop staring at you as you sit on the bed. “Do you wanna watch a movie?” You ask him with a light blush on your cheeks, he smiles and agrees.

Budo curls around you tightly as he rests his head against your chest. Your soft, warm body is incredibly comforting, and he feels completely at peace. He wraps his arms carefully around you, and pulls you into a tight hug. He kisses your forehead.

“I guess listening to Musume actually did do something good for once hmm~” you exhale softly as you adjust your position to be more comfortable. Budo laughs at your comment and gently strokes your hair as he rests his head on your chest. “I guess that’s one thing to thank her for. I couldn’t be happier than I am right now”

You shifted your weight so your on my side, letting out a soft groan to the movement. Budo picked up on the slight noise and it sends shivers down his spine. He begins to caress your body more intimately, stroking your hair and running his hands along your side. His touch feels heavenly, and you could almost feel the heat coming from his palms.

You turn again to face him and lean in to a kiss. Budo wraps his arms around your waist, returning the kiss. Holding you tightly against him as he kisses back with all the passion in world. He then movers you up onto his lap in a quick movement.

You are surprised at his strength as no one else was able to move you like that before. His lips are warm and tender, and they feel like heaven as they make contact with your own. You feel your body heat up with excitement, and your mind becomes clouded with pure ecstasy.

Your hips begin to unconsciously start rocking on his groin, making his breath hitch. His hands start to roam your body going from your thick thighs and ending on your lump ass.

As you continue to ride him he throws his head back “Mmm~” he melts a deep moan escape his lips as his hands grip your ass tighter, urging you on.

He begins to take off your shirt when you put your hand over his go stop him “Budo are you sure about this?” You ask letting my insecurities get the better of you. “I-I just don’t want you to be… disappointed” I look down in shame. His hands go to my chip and it leads me to connect with his lips once more. “I love you and your body, there’s nothing about you that will disappoint me” I gives you a smile.

Grabs your wrist firmly, pulling your hand away from his “You are beautiful the way you are and II’ve every inch of you. You're perfect exactly as you are.” He reassures you as he continues to undress you.

His hands start to move your pants down to expose your stomach. He pecks kisses all over your body. Once your bottom parts are exposed, he kisses you deeper, his hand gently caressing your bare thigh, moving closer to your already wet pussy “You are so beautiful” his eyes hold yours as his hand moves further up your thigh, making you shiver from anticipation and desire.

He inserts two digits inside of you. “Oh my, looks like you wanted this as much as I did~” he says getting more hard by the minute as he pumps two digits in and out of you. You take his pants off as you start pumping his already hard cock in your chubby palm. “Ahh~ damn you good” his laugh turned into a moan as he continued to pump into you, now adding a third digit and hitting deeper.

Budo groans loudly "Fuck~, I can't take this much longer~" he breathes heavily as his hips buck into your hand. He feels his orgasm coming over him as he lets out a loud moan as he comes onto your hand. his whole body shivers as his breath hitches.

His eyes widen when you don’t stop pumping and you lower your plump ass onto his cock and begin moving. “W-wait wait wait! Ah~ fuck~” he moans out loud joy expecting you to overstimulate him.

As you continue to bounce, he in clasps your bra letting your heavy breasts fall and bounce freely he reaches up to cup your breasts and his mouth goes to your right nipple "You are so fucking beautiful right now," he muffles into your breast, his hands falling to your stomach massaging it slowly.

You couldn’t believe the amount of praise you were getting from this man in the moment. it was too much for you to handle. “ahh~ fuck Budo!” You yell out as you come to my climax and squirt over his cock.

He watches in amazement, watching the liquid seep out, feeling your tightness release around him “Oh my~” He whispers as he feels the warmth of your climax cover his cock, it's something he's never experienced before with another person.

His words snap you back to reality as you see the mess you made around you. “B-Budo I’m.. Fuck I-” before u ou could spew out your apology, he kisses you softly, “Don't worry about it honey~” he soothes, pressing his lips to the curve of your neck as both of your breathing patterns even out. “It was incredible”

You lean on his chests as you two both fall into a soothing sleep. Feeling each others chests rise and fall.

[thesimscurator]

Dream Town Makeover: Mini-Save File and Challenge

The Story:

With the loss of all its industries, Evergreen Harbor became a severely depressed area. The government took notice and has begun a project of green urban renewal here: they have passed some new green policies and are working on more, and they’re flooding the area with improvement grants, creating jobs in city planning, green technologies, commissioned public art, and more. You are an aspiring interior designer who is thrilled by the prospect of redesigning and revitalizing Evergreen Harbor's many dilapidated houses, old train- and shipyards, defunct factories, and small, cramped apartments. Your brain is filled with visions of light, airy, modern, open-plan spaces, reclaimed shipping container tiny homes, old train cars turned into cafes, junkyard salvage repurposed to furnish chic industrial apartments. Time to roll up your sleeves, build a client roster, level up your handiness skill, vote for improvements to the local apartment buildings, and otherwise get busy!

The Backstory:

I’ve always thought that Eco Lifestyle and Dream Home Decorator make an excellent pack pairing: Eco Lifestyle lets you change the open parts of Evergreen Harbor through gameplay, and Dream Home Decorator lets you change lots through gameplay, so together you get the whole shebang! But there’s a pretty major problem with trying to do this in the default save: namely, interior decorator gigs generate at random using all the occupied and community lots in all the worlds. So the more packs you own, the more worlds and lots you have, the less likely you are to be randomly assigned gigs in Evergreen Harbor. This mini save file aims to enable you to play out this excellent pack pairing by having absolutely nothing and no one in any other world except Evergreen Harbor, so that 100% of your randomly generated gigs will be in this world. And while I was at it, I also went around and ensured that all the lots would start out rundown, outdated, dysfunctional, and otherwise gross. It’s just more fun to make over stuff that’s lousy to begin with.

Save file specs:

The only world with anyone or anything in it is Evergreen Harbor, to keep your interior decorator gig options focused on revitalizing this area. Neighborhood stories is completely disabled for everyone, even unplayed households, to prevent randos from moving into other worlds and muddying your gig list. Aging also begins disabled, though you may turn this back on if you wish—that’s just down to personal preference.

E.H. is fully populated, except for one living space per neighborhood in which your interior designer sim will live (you have to be a resident of a neighborhood in order to vote for improvements, so you'll need to move around a bit). Patina Wainscot is your default interior designer, but you should feel free to just move her in with one of her many relatives and replace her with your own sim if that’s how you’d rather do the challenge. Each of the other households has sims whose careers and preferences have been deliberately set to make sense and give you plenty of renovation guidance--they rarely have dislikes, for example, so you have positive guidance on what to build. Be sure to read their family bios and ask about their careers, as this will give you some good directions, too! If you don't have certain packs, some sims' careers may not show (conservationists from Island Living, political activists from City Living, etc.), but this shouldn't impact the game too much.

Community lots all start out set to generic, so you’ll need to manually set the lot type to whatever you envision the space becoming at the start of your game. I have done this so that you can set your own aspirations for these spaces based on the packs you actually own—if I had pre-set the train car to “Cafe,” for example, and you didn’t own Get Together, that lot would simply disappear. This save file is a canvas for YOUR vision of Evergreen Harbor. I make some suggestions via the lot descriptions and the ambitions of the people in the town, but ultimately, the direction this takes is completely up to you.

Dream Town Makeover Challenge Rules:

One sim, one vote! Even if you have the influence to spam an N.A.P., you must use it to convince other sims to vote for your preferred measure instead of piling votes on it yourself. You may also not cheat N.A.P.s away--use the repeal process! You’ll need to do quite a bit of this, as all neighborhoods begin maxed out on N.A.P.s. This ensures that you get to do the gameplay associated with improving each neighborhood, rather than it just happening in the background without you. So here’s the gameplay:

Your N.A.P. goal is to repeal two N.A.P.s of your choice in each neighborhood, and replace them with Modern Development and Green Initiatives to revitalize the town.

Once you have passed both initiatives in a neighborhood, you will need to move to the next one in order to vote there and start the process over again. This means that the challenge will take a minimum of 12 in-game weeks (or three sim years) to complete—4 weeks per neighborhood.

You are a green interior decorator! That means your handiness goal is to apply eco upgrades to all new appliances you install as part of a renovation. Work on that handiness skill and stock up on upgrade parts before you head out to a gig!

Your lot goal is to remove negative lot traits from the spaces you renovate and add positive ones. Depending on the packs you own, you may or may not even have all of these lot traits, so you may simply ignore anything you don’t own. But do what you can with the packs you have. Here’s the guide:

Currently, all groundwater in Evergreen Harbor is contaminated, so all lots have the "Grody" challenge. This can only be removed when a neighborhood passes "Green Initiatives," which uses phytoremediation to clean the aquifers. After you pass this N.A.P., remove “Grody” from all lots in that neighborhood, and replace it with “Natural Well.”

Most places are also "Filthy," and may potentially be infested with “Mold.” You may remove either or both of these lot challenges if you have completely renovated a lot--one room doesn't count!

You may not take renovation gigs in any of the apartments before Modern Development gets passed in that apartment’s neighborhood—nor may you make any structural changes to your own apartment (this includes changing wallpaper and flooring). In this story, Modern Development = landlord’s permission to make structural changes to the space. Once this N.A.P. is in place and you have used its newly expanded windows to good effect with your renovation, you may add the “Natural Light” trait to the renovated apartments.

Traditional-style houses and apartments all have “Maintenance Issues.” You may remove this challenge if you have replaced AND applied eco upgrades to all appliances on the lot.

If you have both Seasons and For Rent, you can play out replacing outdated heating and cooling systems with geothermal. Just remove all the cast iron radiators and box air conditioners from a lot and add a thermostat. Once you have done that, you may add the “Geothermal” lot trait!

None of Port Promise is grid connected, so all lots there are “Off-the-Grid.” You may connect them to the grid only after Modern Development is passed in Port Promise, rezoning the area for homes and businesses.

The whole city is overrun with raccoons, in the form of "Cat Hangout" being on every lot (I have gone through and manually changed all stray cats in this save file into raccoons). Lock your door if you don't want them in your house! There are two conditions required to remove them: 1) Some N.A.P. that cleans up the trash in the public areas of the neighborhood is passed (either Green Initiatives or Modern Development will do this), and 2) You have completely renovated the lot to remove all stray garbage from the lot itself. Once the trash is gone, the trash pandas go, too!*

This one isn’t a part of the challenge, but just so you know what’s up: "Reduce and Recycle" is a permanent lot challenge everywhere except the Pinecrest Apartments, which have a trash chute. No getting rid of this one—that's just the way city garbage collection works!

You win the challenge when you have completely made over every single lot in Evergreen Harbor, changed the lot traits via the rules above, and passed Green Initiatives and Modern Development in every neighborhood.** Good luck!

*Pro Tip: for some truly adorable chaos, pass the “We Wear Bags” N.A.P. before you remove the raccoons. With this N.A.P. active, all the raccoons will show up in little hats, and it is delightfully ridiculous!

**Note: You are, obviously, totally welcome to play other sims in this save file at any time before, after, or during working on this challenge. They each have their own ambitions, as stated in their family bios, and (with a few exceptions, mostly elders) begin at low levels of their careers and skills, so you can have fun playing out their dreams as stretch goals or side quests.

Save file requirements:

This mini save file is not limited in terms of packs I used while creating it. However, since the whole point is basically for you to personally redo everything, there aren’t many packs you actually need in order to play this challenge. All that will happen if you don’t have some of the packs I used during setup is that items in the original, ugly versions of lots may be replaced or missing. But you’re about to replace them with your own designs anyway, so this is no big deal!

You also may not be able to play with certain features, but they are also basically non-essential (if you don’t have Cats & Dogs, for example, the city will not be overrun with raccoons, so you won’t play that particular aspect of the challenge). And while the sims of Evergreen Harbor often do have careers drawn from other packs (Knox Greenburg is an activist with “Speak for the Trees,” which came with City Living, for example), I have taken care to only use CAS content from the required packs, so no one should appear naked or bald for you, even if you don’t have any of the optional packs. So, with all of that preamble, here are the . . .

Required packs:

Eco Lifestyle – This whole save file is just Evergreen Harbor, so if you don’t have Eco Lifestyle, you won’t even be able to see it.

Dream Home Decorator – The entire gameplay concept and challenge at the foundation of this save file is the interior design career, so you really do need this pack to play it.

That’s it! Everything else is gravy. But the gravy is pretty good! Here are some highlights from recommended-but-completely-optional packs:

If you have Island Living, the save file starts with the electrical global policies in place, so there will be lots of power outages in Evergreen Harbor. I deleted the sim I used to enact them, so if you want to remove them as a stretch goal, I suggest playing with Summer Wainscot (or your own Conservationist). Work your way high enough in the career to become an Environmental Manager, and then you can repeal some of the global policies that haven’t worked—or put new ones in place. The organic food one would go especially well once you’ve established Bobby Wainscot’s urban food forest.

If you have For Rent, lots of houses will have “Maintenance Troubles,” “Mold,” and/or the many additional utilities appliances that came with that pack, making playing in those houses more eventful and chaotic. Plus, you can split the two families in the side-by-side houses in Grims Quarry into two separate households, turn the old storage lockers on the docks into micro apartments, and otherwise have fun with the features of this pack.

If you have Get to Work, Spa Day, Cats & Dogs, Dine Out, and/or High School Years, you can actually own/open the kinds of businesses some of the sims in this save file dream of starting with their small business grants, which is fun gameplay. Plus Cats & Dogs gets you the raccoons.

If you have City Living, you can play through the process of raising money and doing charity organizing work with Speak for the Trees as Knox Greenburg, which I’ve always felt was especially appropriate gameplay for him and really lets the whole “Eco Master” thing become active.

If you have Discover University, Claire Waxton will start out with a Biology degree and bunch of student loan debt, which acts as an extra challenge if you decide to play out her ambition of running a successful home candlemaking business.

If you have Seasons, all the kids in town (plus Jeb Harris) will be in Scouts, and you’ll see that holidays are a bit modified: the people of E.H. reject the consumerism of Winterfest and Love Day, so those holidays are gone, along with all traditions about adding decorations. But they love New Year’s resolutions, and celebrate New Year’s Eve with a Polar Bear Plunge in the quarry. And they love the spirit of gratitude that comes with Harvestfest, which they’ve leaned into even more by remembering the seven principles with a Kinara. Plus, they really value community, so they throw a Neighborhood Block Party on the first day of summer every year.

If you have Get Together, there will be a few clubs for the people in town, most of which are divided out by age category and two of which are just there as a little nod to the text for the “Back to the Old Days” N.A.P.

No mods are required for this save file!

Credits:

I used Srsly’s Blank Save as the base for this save file. A huge thank you to Srsly for keeping a totally unpopulated, completely bulldozed save file available to the public! It makes the work on contained mini save files like this SO much shorter.

All the sims in this save file are by Maxis, though one, Claire Waxton, is a recreation of an EA trailer sim the team never officially released. The recreation was done by SimpleSquare. I also ran out of sims from Eco Lifestyle and Dream Home Decorator before I ran out of space in the town, so I wound up doing a pack-limited makeover of the Parenthood trailer family to round out the community. They are still by Maxis, just with looks by me to remove the Parenthood content.

The original creators of all the starting lots are listed on the Evergreen Harbor map at the top of this post. Most of these lots were edited by me to a greater or lesser extent, but the overwhelming majority of the credit goes to the original creators' incredible creativity. Thanks to all the featured creators!

How to Download:

Step 1: Backup your existing saves. To do this, go into MyDocuments/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4 and right-click on the folder titled “saves.” Select “copy,” then paste the folder to any other location on your computer. I usually just copy it to the desktop so I don’t lose it, but you may have an alternative hard drive or other location where you like to back up your saves.

Step 2: Download and unzip the Dream Town Makeover save file, but DO NOT PUT IT IN YOUR MODS FOLDER! Put it in the saves folder instead (MyDocuments/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4/saves). If the number of the save file matches the number for a save you already have in game, change it to any number you do not already have a copy of, but keep the same number of digits. To get more specific: by default the Dream Town Makeover file name is “Slot_12162024.save” and if you happen to have another save file with that exact same file name (unlikely), the game will overwrite one with the other. If that’s true for you, you can change the file name to “Slot_12162025.save” or “Slot_22162024.save” or anything else that replaces a digit with a different digit, but you cannot change it to “Slot_1.save” because the game needs a total of eight digits in the file name to run the save properly.

Step 3: Open your game, click the save file titled “Dream Town Makeover,” and start playing!

Download the Dream Town Makeover save file

P. S.: I wanted to make Evergreen Harbor feel like a really established community, so households are quite interlinked (except for the Tinkers, who are brand-new to town), and there is A LOT of tea in this save file. Have fun discovering it all!

Support me on Ko-fi!

[bengiyo]

Ben! For the ask game, whaddya think about Kakeru from I Cannot Reach You?

Wow, you would ask me about one of the best characters from last year.

How I feel about this character

He's really a great character. One of the things that worked well for me with this show was how well both protagonists handled being the focus. Kakeru is one of my favorite teens in a long time because he wasn't stupid about his own best friend. He recognized what was up with Yamato very early, and did the earnest work to reconcile what Yamato liking him meant, and whether he could reciprocate. He was not a passive character in his own story, and I love that so much. Yamato wasn't going to do much with his feelings, but he was giving his friend a hard time. Kakeru is so excellent because he's so present that it forces Yamato to actually be with him.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Just Yamato! They did not go through all that effort to figure out their friendship and eventual romance for me to stray from the path! The best thing about Kakeru is how seriously he took Yamato's feelings, and also how he didn't let Yamato get away with being selfish about them.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

We spent less time on his other friendships than we did with Yamato, but I actually liked his dynamic with Fujino. It felt like he could trust Fujino, and Fujino was always trying to keep Kakeru involved in their group stuff.

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don't know that I have anything unsaid about this character, but I think the biggest thing I was to reiterate is that the best thing about him, and why he's a favorite, is that he responded with active behaviors to Yamato's feelings. He considered them. He planned things for them. He started to care more about himself and his future because it might involve someone else more seriously. He was even allowed to express some desire. He's not just a maiden type of character. Their dynamic genuinely felt like two male friends going through a big change together.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I wish we had seen Kakeru initiate affection after they got together. This final kiss was really solid because Kakeru is clearly responding to it, but damn do I like when the one who fell last falls harder. I would love to see a pining gay boy deal with their crush being more into them after the fact. That would be nice.

For the Character Breakdown Ask Game

[tswwwit]

Lol omg at your last ask because imagine dippers under some truth spell and ends up spilling a bunch of secrets that Bill already knew and had stashed to use for later

This is no longer 'last ask' relevant because I had this partially written in my drafts for like a million years - but a Truth spell on Dipper would be very interesting!

So I took this prompt and didn't really answer it except in some ways.

Here's a thing!

“You never bring me any souvenirs.” Bill complains. In an all-too-whiny tone, and an all-too-close lean into Dipper's personal space.

Plus, it's a blatant lie. One Dipper shouldn't respond to. 

He does anyway. “I literally brought you harpy feathers last week.” 

“Doesn’t count! That was for a ritual you wanted to pull off!” Bill sounds miffed, though he also plants a palm on Dipper’s head and starts ruffling hair. “Now where's the emerald from last March? Or like, the headdress from that cult with all the rabbit bones? The good stuff."

Dipper grunts. He focuses on navigating back out of the cave, turning the clay tablet over in his hands.

Figures Bill would remember all the times he did get something. His memory is excellent. And he’s greedy, because a new toy every time is a big ask. 

What does Bill expect, anyway. Not every situation Dipper gets into has something to bring back. What could he even offer? An ear taken off every monster he has to fight?

Wait, no. Bill would love that.

Dipper makes a face. “You've just proved that it's not ‘never’. With examples." 

"Sure, but when’s the last time it was cool?” 

Dipper sighs. No point in arguing. Bill could go on forever about how 'unfair' it is that he doesn't get trophies from every trip, or trinkets from conquered lands, or, again, ears from every enemy. When he’s decided to complain, no reasonable argument will shake him out of it.

“Too bad, then. You’re only getting some gifts.” Dipper shakes his head rapidly to dislodge Bill’s hand from his hair. "It’s hardly the worst thing that’s ever happened to you."

“Hey! I could argue that it’s related! In fact -”

Dipper tunes out the rest of Bill’s ramble, rolling his eyes. Listening with half an ear to Bill's ongoing tirade about being a poorly kept man, and unappreciated in his time. 

Despite how much he already has, Bill always wants more. Somehow he sniffed out Dipper’s latest excursion, showing up right at the end and looking for ‘loot’.

Which Dipper, by all rights, should prevent. 

 Anything magical falling into Bill's hands can cause chaos, no matter how innocuous it seems. The flower incident alone is reason not to hand Bill anything, ever, and the fact that Dipper still does sometimes should be appreciated, damn it.

Bill's complaining on and on, but whatever. Eventually he'll get bored.

 In the meantime, Dipper turns the clay tablet around again with a frown. He found something interesting, at least.

Whatever this is, it’s definitely not a language he recognizes. The script is strange, scrawled in different directions. For all he knows he’s holding it upside down. He hopes Bill doesn’t notice until he’s figured out - 

"Whatcha got there?" Just as expected - and right on time. 

Dipper feels the tablet yanked out of his grasp, unfazed. He doesn't break his stride.

"I found it in the lair, after... you know." Charred bones, explosions - Dipper wishes he could use, like water, or something, but mastery over even one element is powerful as is. "Anyway, that monster was collecting a lot of weird magic stuff, and this was the only interesting thing it had." He shrugs. Then, because Bill will like it, adds, "So... to the victor go the spoils?"

“Now that’s the spirit!” Bill gives him a grin, holding the tablet up to squint at it. Thankfully not turning it around. One point for Dipper, on not looking incompetent.

Still, if anyone can read it…

“What language is this?” Dipper not-so-subtly leans over, trying to peek around Bill’s arm.

"Old Draconic," Bill says, without missing a beat. Humming to himself as he apparently reads the text. Perking up a bit, smile widening. "Oh, hey! Iambic pentameter."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing, sapling. I just wish when people did the whole 'ancient poetry curse' thing, they'd get a little more creative. You never see hexameter! Or tetrameter! Not even a tasteful use of spondee.” Bill sticks his tongue out.  "Come to think of it - I don’t think anyone’s done a prose epic that made the reader wanna tear their eyes out since Joyce."

Sometimes with Bill, you have to read between the lines. The long, irrelevant babbling lines.

"Just tell me if I need to get Ford or not." Dipper says, flat. He rubs at the bridge of his nose. 

Among all the other stuff, Bill said ‘curse’. Never, ever a good sign.

Though the monster he just took down wasn’t a dragon, and that wasn’t really a ‘horde’ so much as something resembling the contents of the Mystery Shack, there’s absolutely no good thing about a curse. If Dipper somehow triggered it - 

Great. As if hanging around Bill alone didn’t invite enough bad fortune, he’s picking up parts of his own stupid curiosity.

"Nah, don’t bother with the loser uncle!" Bill waves his concern away, amused. “This is just purple prose! Buncha  ‘oooh, bad things’ll happen if you mess with my stuff.’ Totally boilerplate spellcraft with some flowery wording.” 

With a shrug, Bill dismisses the whole thing. Which includes chucking the tablet over his shoulder, but Dipper manages to snag it before it falls and shatters into a million pieces.

“Typical dragon horde enchantment. All bluster, no burning.” Bill keeps walking without a care in the world. “They’re full of hot air!”

“So I’m not cursed,” Dipper prompts, catching up to him. “Aside from you, I mean.”

“Flatterer,” Bill says, slightly warmer. He continues, shrugging. “No reason you would be! No dragons in the area, and the warning sign there’s too old. By my guess, the original horde was raided centuries ago! Just another piece of random crap that got dragged into that junkyard." And he ruffles Dipper’s hair again, in the second-most annoying way. "You’re stuck with me, though.”

Dipper ducks and twists, thus freeing himself from the minor torment. “I think I can live with that.”

One would think that chatting with a demon - one as cryptic and ominous and aggravating as Bill - would only cause irritation, at best. 

It still does, of course. But when it comes to Dipper, Bill… sometimes lays things out straight. On occasion. Especially when he’s instructing, doubly when it comes to magic. Like he’s trying to pour all the facts he can into Dipper’s brain, overfilling the cup.

If his goal is to overload this one mortal mind, though, he'll have to work a lot harder. 

Dipper gets out his notebook, while Bill looks away, and pretends he didn’t see it. Yet another poorly-veiled lesson, with Bill obviously trying to plant seeds re: actually casting curses. Tough luck managing that. His subtle lean towards chaos might escape the unwary, but to Dipper? Bill’s way too transparent.

The fact is, that Dipper absorbs things fast. Even Bill will admit it, sometimes without being prompted. 

That Includes stuff Bill doesn't even know he's teaching.

Bill’s also rambling on about historical curses, and how often these things backfire, or misfire. It’d almost sound like a series of unconnected, gossipy anecdotes, if it weren’t for the extra technical details. 

And Dipper’s not falling for it. As far as he's concerned, his first curse was his last one.

But then…

Even if he’s not going to use the knowledge, there's no reason not to learn it. Knowledge about making curses can also be used to break them, after all. Taking all the facts Bill smacked a ‘For Evil Purposes Only’ sticker on and using them to shatter an evil plan would be very satisfying.

They’re nearly out of the cave at this point, so Dipper figures it’s fine to let his guard down a bit. The monster's dead, all the traps were cleared out on the way in - everything should be fine.

He clicks his pen a couple times, and asks Bill to repeat that last thing, about the life drain. It gets a snort of amusement, but Bill’s more than happy to elaborate at length. Dipper struggles to keep up with Bill’s rapid-fire speech; he's trying to make this intentionally difficult, damn it.

Bill leads on with careless gestures and an uninterrupted stride. Getting ahead of Dipper by several meters, but Dipper’s got to note down what he says before he has to do something awful, like ask Bill to repeat himself.

Dipper is, in fact, so busy trying to write in shorthand, and walk, and not hit a stalactite with his face, all at the same time, that he sort of loses track of where he is.

And okay, maybe he trips over a rock slightly, and nearly faceplants, bonking against the sudden curve of a wall with a swear.

Dipper takes a step back, rubbing at his forehead. Annoying, but, whatever. There were a few traps around, but he pretty much cleared out the cave on the way in, so it’s probably - oh, hell.

Not fine, he dropped the stupid tablet.

Great. The only really interesting object, shattered into half a dozen pieces. So much from saving it from Bill; Dipper himself fumbled the bag.

He backs up to evaluate the damage -

The stone sinks under his foot, and something goes ‘click’.

With a start, Dipper raises a shield without thinking, arm jerking up as he wills his magic into the gesture. It's solid enough for something done on reflex, but an impact hits hard on his side, with sudden, stinging pain. 

And a pretty hard impact, at that. He didn’t get it solid enough, damn it, wasn’t expecting something physical -  

Dipper wheezes out a breath, slumping to the ground and clutching his stomach. 

Alright. So. He got most of the traps. 

He sits down, and lets his head thump back against the stone, teeth bared in a grimace. Stupid. Should have been paying attention. 

The commotion makes Bill turn his head, blinking at Dipper sitting on the ground. 

Then -  because he’s an asshole - he starts laughing. 

“I know I’m fascinating, sapling, but really?” He tuts, setting fists on his hips. “Not sure if I should be flattered that you’re obsessed with me, or disappointed that you’re dumb enough to walk right into a wall.”

Dipper sucks in a breath, gingerly touching his side. Doesn’t seem like - he glances down. Sure, it stings, and his shirt’s torn, a long, shallow cut on his stomach, just near the old scar. But that’s about it. Over to his side, an arrow rolls against the ground, stone head clicking against the ground.

Over by the cave mouth, Bill’s cackling. God, he’s a jerk sometimes. 

But he must not have seen the trap set off, too wrapped up in his own stupid bullshit, or he’d be less of one. Dipper knows that for a fact. Though he’d really, really prefer he’d never had that experience. 

“C’mon, kid. If you’re not even more brain damaged from your bump, let’s ditch this joint.” Bill jerks his head over his shoulder. 

Dipper hugs himself around the torso, grimacing. Not bothering to respond. His heart is still pounding, or he’d have a retort ready. Adrenaline’s helped him out in a lot of situations, but not with talking. He’ll get up when he’s ready.

“What, you smash your skull open or something?” Bill raises one arch eyebrow. 

Though Dipper knows why Bill’s like this, it’s still deeply annoying. He shakes his head in lieu of a reply. In a second, he’ll be calm enough to tell Bill exactly what he thinks of his incredibly poor bedside - and cave-side - manner. 

“Figures. Can’t leave you alone for five minutes without your guts spilling everywhere.” Bill clicks his tongue, folding his arms and stepping forward. “What’s the damage?”

“It hurts.” Dipper says, through gritted teeth. Then pauses. Wait, he meant to say - He shakes his head rapidly, only for more words to force themselves out, unbidden. “I got cut again.”

Again, not what he intended. Dipper lowers his chin, teeth clenched. What the hell, he shouldn’t have said that. Bill’s mocking aside, maybe he did hit his head a little too hard. Once Bill gets the mockery out of his system, he’s going to be a total pest about it, too.

With a huff, Dipper slumps. Settling in for a sulk, waiting for the next jab - But there’s no insult forthcoming. Or argument. 

In fact, Bill’s gone totally silent. Which is super weird. 

Dipper looks up at the cave entrance, expecting a comment or a question, or at least a huge grin. He tenses up, hunching over.

And meets a frozen, unsmiling face. 

Bill dropped his arms, they hang limp by his sides. His expression’s gone blank.

The next moment, he’s right in front of Dipper, kneeling and tugging at his arms with alarming urgency. 

“Alright, lemme see.” Bill’s face is very close. Though he’s trying to pull his arms away, Dipper resists out of sheer surprise. Bill growls, eye darting around until it lands on the arrow. “Oh for - Really can’t leave you alone for five minutes. Move.” 

Another pull, less hard this time. Like he’s trying to ease Dipper’s arms away.

“Wh- Hey!” Dipper plants a foot against Bill’s chest, but that hardly stops anything. He raises his arms. Holding them up, in fact, like he’s at gunpoint. Where’d this come from. “Don’t get upset, I’m fine.”

“Ha! Good one, sapling. Who’s upset, exactly?” Bill says, teeth bared, and in a deeply upset way. He tugs Dipper’s shirt, up, fingers tracing the cut before pressing into his stomach. “I’m just wondering if I need a replacement mortal this soon into your miserable existence. No big deal!”

Okay, this is too much. 

Dipper struggles up, despite Bill trying to shove him down again. Bracing himself on the cave wall, and glaring. “Calm down already.”

“I’m perfectly calm.” Bill says, through gritted teeth. At best he looks miffed, but he’s at least stopped trying to make Dipper lie down in the recovery position or whatever. With a glare, he tugs up Dipper’s shirt, prodding at the shallow cut. “What the hell, kid. I thought you said it hurt!”

“Ow.” Dipper’s stomach jumps at another poke. He smacks Bill’s hand away. “It does, alright? Quit poking.”

Bill doesn’t seem impressed. His fingers trail over the larger, older scar on Dipper’s left side, then glares at Dipper’s stomach like it’s insulted him. A beat, then - “You don’t usually complain.”

“I-” Okay, true. Dipper glares anyway. “Shut up.” 

He doesn’t complain because it’s the only option. For all that Bill whines and teases and taunts Dipper, all the time, about being some ‘fragile mortal meatsack’, already rotting before his eyes, he really doesn’t like it when it’s brought forcefully to his attention. 

God, he shouldn't have said anything. Ninety-five percent of the time, there isn’t any harm to mention. But when Dipper does ends up showing he is kind of… mortal, and it’s small, he just. Doesn’t bring it up. For all that they bicker all the time, he doesn’t like to make Bill upset.

Bill grunts, mouth turned down at the corners. He stands up quickly, folding his arms. His lip curls up in a sneer. “If you wanted attention, kid, there are way better ways to-”

Oh, fuck that. Dipper flips him off, and starts storming off. 

God, this is stupid. Whenever Dipper ever breaks a bone or something, he gets teased about being so weak and vulnerable. Which he is, but neither of them like the reminder. 

These days, it also comes with some weirdly maybe-sincere ‘kiss it better’ thing that Dipper then has to disinfect. A lot of hovering, and rambling commentary. Sometimes creative descriptions of how much worse it could have been, and Dipper never needed those, at any time. Bill gets oddly fixated on such random little moments, and it’s just -

Dipper doesn’t like it, is all. Bill gets the way he gets, it’s a lot, and it’s easier just to avoid it. If he were a different guy - a human guy, or even mostly-human monster- Dipper might try to talk to him about it.

But Bill’s a demon. Not normal, barely sane even on his best days, and worse, he’s Bill, so. That conversation would go precisely nowhere.

Behind him, he hears said demon approaching, fast. Stupid jerk. He should be as tall as his real form. That’d be fair. More accurate, too, and then Dipper could properly stomp off without Bill catching up so easily.

Already the bastard is by Dipper’s side. A tall, irritating presence. Hovering close without grabbing on, which adds to said irritation. 

Dipper leans away, but Bill catches him around the waist and drags him in.

“Don’t get so grumpy, sapling, you’re fine! A little nick in the outer layer rarely killed anyone since they invented antibiotics.” Though he pinches Dipper’s cheek, he yanks his head away with a grunt. Bill sighs. “Everything’s a-okay here! Looks like I don't have to find a replacement just yet.”

Bill’s an idiot. Dipper scoffs, though an unpleasant feeling crawls in his gut. “Oh yeah? Who would you replace me with?”

“Eh, not like I got anyone specific in mind.” Bill waves that off, nonchalant. “But I have options! Lots of options.” He bumps a hip against Dipper. “Keep that in mind before you go charging off into obvious traps.”

This goddamn liar. Dipper  elbows him in the side, because the asshole deserves it. 

Not that Dipper’s worried, or anything. From what little he’s heard of Bill’s exes in the demonic rumor mill - Bill’s been, as they say, less than successful. Already Dipper’s outstripped his longest by years.. Bill can lie day in and day out about his options, put on a brave face - but they both know he’s not going to find this again. Not easily. 

“Good luck finding another husband, asshole.” Dipper says with appropriate derision. It’s annoying that Bill even brought it up. There’s a good riposte in there, somewhere - but while his brain is coming up with an insult, his mouth runs on automatic. “But I was really worried that you would last week. I couldn’t stop thinking about it all day until you sent a dick pic. It was weirdly comforting.”

Bill turns toward him with genuine surprise. He even blinks a few times, no retort emerging, and Dipper looks back at him with equal surprise. 

Until his mind catches up with what he just said. 

Dipper digs his heels in the ground, slamming to a halt. Clapping both hands to his mouth, eyes wide.

Beside him Bill nearly trips at the sudden stop, flailing for balance with a swear.

Shit, shit shit. Dipper really didn’t mean to say that. He knows Bill’s not looking around, that he’s not interested. Cynically, that he couldn’t manage it if he was. Last week was just a one-off anxiety, like all the others Dipper’s brain comes up with when it gets too much free time. Totally irrational, and really hard to stop fixating on.

Bill keeps staring. Not angry, just confused, for long enough that Dipper wants to shrink into the ground and melt into nothingness. 

Then he asks, “What the hell, Pine Tree?” 

“I don’t know! I don’t know why I thought that. I don’t know why I said that.” Dipper cringes into himself, grimacing and ducking his head. He runs a hand over his slightly sweaty face. “I didn't even want you to know I got hurt.” 

At that, Bill snorts. “Oh, please. I’d have seen that first time I got your shirt off. You can’t keep secrets from me!” 

Dipper folds his arms, internally seething - and his stupid mouth moves to say,  “I’ve done it before.” 

This time, the silence is tense.

Dipper wipes his sweating forehead again, not daring to meet Bill’s eye. God he shouldn't have -

Before he can think, he blurts out, “I think something’s wrong.” 

“Probably!” Bill agrees, with a smile just a little too sharp. He takes Dipper’s face in both hands, eye narrowed. “Hold still a sec.”

As Bill’s eye flickers blue, and the magic between them surges -  Dipper squirms a bit, but. Well. If anything’s wrong with him - magically, anyway - Bill’s the best one to diagnose it..

Bill tilts his head to one side, then the other. After a moment, his mouth twists up into something unpleasant, eye glowing slightly brighter for an instant.

Then he sighs, and lets Dipper go. His expression is neutral, except for the slightest downturn of his mouth. His lips part like he’s about to speak, then twist up into a grimace.

Uh oh.

Whatever Bill saw, he didn’t like it.

“What?” Dipper pats his head, then his chest. If there was something weird, magically about him, he - wouldn’t be able to tell, actually. He’s too close to get a good look. Oh god, what if he did hit his head too hard, and something in his brain is bleeding, or worse. “Wait. Am I dying?”

“Worse! You’re telling the truth.” Bill claps his hands together. Though he’s smiling again, it’s brittle and annoyed. “Don’t suppose you know any curse breakers that aren’t your great-uncle?”

“Not really,” Dipper admits. Bill's words catch up to him, and he bites his lip. Then, because the situation deserves it, “Fuck.”

Protection curse. The tablet.

Damn it.

A part of a horde, from a long time ago. Messed with. It should have been something less awful. Like warts, or sprouting plants from his skin, or a big fireball. Pretty much anything else would be less awful.

Truth curses are rare, they’re difficult as hell - but judging by the words spilling out of Dipper, he’s caught a pretty strong variant.

Of all the curses that could hit him. Why this one.

Hell, maybe it’s intended to be the worst curse possible for the ‘thief’. That would explain how targeted this feels. 

And knowing Dipper’s luck, that part was explained on, like, the back of the tablet.

“Welp! Good thing I’m not short on contacts, kid.” Bill grapes his shoulder, shaking him a bit, before he trails an arm over Dipper’s shoulders. “Who wants some fumbling idiot uncle to fix this kinda spell, anyway?”

Dipper would! If it was feasible. He makes a brief attempt at shrugging Bill’s arm up before letting his shoulders slump.

The idea of Ford hearing about this is….

Dipper sucks in a breath through his teeth.

Ford really would have a way around this. He'd certainly have the best intentions, Dipper’s certain. He'd...

Also not have the best sense of boundaries.

Though he'd be doing it for the right reasons, he'd ask the wrong questions. Out of concern, and arguably valid worry; he's never fully believed that Bill can't influence him. Despite how many times Dipper’s tried to explain it to him, Ford just can’t wrap his mind around certain truths.

With this curse, though. Between poor social sense, the Pines curiosity, and what Dipper might blurt out, while compelled to answer - 

On this, Dipper agrees with Bill. They’ll have to find something else to break this.

In the meantime, he’ll manage, like he has all the other times his life has sucked. Hardly the worst case scenario. If Bill had been cursed - someone who lies like he breathes -  Who knows? Give it a few days, and he might just explode from all the backed up bullshit.

“Wait.” A horrible thought strikes. Dipper reels on his husband, eyes wide. “Are you okay?”

“What, me? I’m a perfectly moral human man,” Bill says, resting a hand on his chest, lifting his chin with pride. “A boring sentient mammal who’s never found curses entertaining.” 

Yep, Bill’s fine. As always, it’s Dipper who gets the short end of the stick. 

He breathes in slowly, and lets it out. 

Yeah. Still sucks. He’ll deal. Cursed, but not dead. In danger, but not the worst - and his husband’s being annoying, which means he’s perfectly fine. There’s a solution too - it’s just going to be a huge, annoying process getting to it. 

“So,” Bill says, slowly. Drawing the word out in a long string, while he finger-walks his arm up around Dipper’s shoulder.

Uh oh.

Speaking of annoying…

“Watch it,” Dipper hunches his shoulders, not daring to look his idiot husband in the eye. “You’re this close to sleeping on the couch for a month.” Not a big enough threat, Bill’s still thinking- “Or for a year.”

“Oh, sure,” Bill says, in a distracted tone. His fingers pause on their walk, one ‘leg’ poised on Dipper’s clavicle. They hold the position for a long moment, tapping out a little marching step - and seconds later, his palm slaps down on Dipper’s shoulder. “So, Pine Tree! How do you feel about this ‘Bill Cipher’ guy?”

Though Dipper resists, and he really tries to, the words slip out past his teeth, his lips form the sounds -

“I love you.” God. Damnit. He clenches his fists, as Bill’s sheer smugness radiates from him like heat. “And I’m thinking about shoving you off a cliff right now.”

When Bill paused, Dipper thought he might have fended this off. Wishful thinking, really, Bill’s almost impossible to stop. Dipper used what leverage he had, but all he’s managed to avoid are the worst, most invasive questions.

When it comes to Bill, that’s pretty close to a win.

Not that it’s going to feel like one.

Bill has, in fact, been encouraged. Now that he’s heard something he likes, he leans in like a weird creep. Dipper can practically hear the leer in his voice. “And on a scale of one to ten, how handsome am I?

“Ten point five,” Dipper needs to loosen his jaw or he might break a filling. Being pumped for information is bad enough without pumping up Bill’s already ridiculous ego. “You bastard.” 

Bill’s chest puffs out, there’s a strut in his stride. The grin is so wide now Dipper’s pretty sure it should hurt- and if he dares to pucker up, he’s not getting lips on his awful face.  “And am I the most clever and sexually amazing guy in the universe or what?

This time, Dipper snorts. 

“Definitely not.” He ignores the sharp, indignant sound next to him, tilting his head in thought. “For one, there’s succubi and incubi, so. Sexually, you’re not even on top amongst demons.” He glances over at the offended ‘o’ of Bill’s mouth. “And I know you’re not the most clever, because I win our debates nearly half the time. Maybe you’re up there, but not the most. And that’s just the surface level stuff.”

Dipper doesn’t have a complete cosmological view of the multiverse, but he has learned a lot. Mostly stuff he picked up from his husband, and demonic gossip. It’s absolutely enough to go on a long, long ramble about how Bill most likely doesn’t rank number one in anything. If Dipper avoids the topics where he actually is.

He’s barely fifteen seconds in before Bill starts scowling, with a grumpy hunch to his shoulders - But screw him. 

Dipper starts smiling, just a bit. Then, to be a dick, he adds, 

“The ten and a half is just me, anyway. To the average human, you’re maybe an eight..” Dipper continues, over another spluttered protest. Again, true; not everyone likes the slightly inhuman maniac cyclops look. “Six with your personality.” 

Bill groans. “Ugh, you pedant.” He squeezes Dipper’s shoulder, jostling him slightly. “C’mon, you know what I meant! What’s the real - “

“Don’t ask questions if you can’t handle the answers,” Dipper warns, jabbing Bill in the chest. So far it hasn’t been too much, but it could be. Time to draw a line. “I will suck so much fun out of this for you.” 

Bill Cipher, unintentional teacher once more. Now Dipper knows the curse isn’t about perfect truth. When he can deliberately misinterpret a question’s intent, and can go on tangents  - that means he has loopholes. There might even be more, if he tries.

And if they can’t get this settled soon, he’ll need every one of those he can find.

“Clever brat.” Bill’s frowning, but he can’t disguise the amusement in his voice. His eyebrows wiggle, his arm hauling him close -  "Go ahead, then. Anything else you wanna share?"

"I know two and half ways to kill you, Bill Cipher." Dipper gets right up in his face. He won’t let Bill push this any further. "Don't tempt me to use them."

Being face to face like this, Dipper watches Bill’s eye go wide - ha, didn’t expect that, did he. With that threat, he’ll - 

Start cackling. And weirdly, turn a little pink. Dipper feels all the momentum he had whoosh out of him like sad balloon animal. 

“Boy, you are a saucy one!” Bill whistles, low. He places his hands demurely on his cheeks, fluttering his eye at Dipper with amusement. “Oh, yeah. Talk deadly to me.”

By this time, Dipper figures he should be used to stumbling into demonic flirtation. Only it turns out it’s basically fractal in nature, and he keeps running into new and newer edge cases.

“Fun as this is - we gotta get you cleared up, and no time like the present!” Bill’s calmed down enough to scoop an arm around his waist, leading Dipper onward. “Can’t have you babbling everything to everyone, y’know?”

“What, you don’t want me telling you everything?” Total bullshit. Dipper elbows him in the side. “I thought you wanted to get in my head.”

“Hey! I didn’t ask for our game to be set on ‘beginner’ mode. That’s boring.” Bill flicks his fingers - but he’s got his ‘evading questions’ look on. “You’re lucky I’m so- oof.”

Another elbow, harder this time. Bill grunts, but capitulates. Rubbing at his eye briefly, he sighs.

“So! How many of my secrets would you say you know, Pine Tree?” Bill tightens his grip on Dipper’s waist, tugging him closer. “And I’m talking about the ones that I wouldn’t enjoy getting out in the world.”

“More than I can count.” Dipper says without thinking. Then, with thinking -  “Oh.”

Dipper hadn’t considered how much Bill’s taught him, before this exact moment. How much he’s learned. Even unintentionally. Especially unintentionally. 

Crap, even his threat before was kind of - 

Shit. There’s definitely, absolutely, no way can they go to Ford about this. Total recipe for disaster.

“See? We both got liabilities in play here.” Bill moves easily as Dipper picks up the pace. If anything he’s amused, and not feeling nearly as urgent. Another reason he’s an idiot. “All we gotta do is get you patched up quick, and no more loose lips sinking ships! Easy-peasy.”

“It better be,” Dipper mutters. Nothing ever goes right for him. And by extension, them.

“Trust me, kid! I got this handled!” Bill snaps his fingers - and smacks Dipper’s butt with a wink. “I know some guys!”

[frostfire-17]

What is cuneiform?

@ipsomaniac asked if I could explain the cuneiform system, and so I am going to give it a shot. Here goes! (Update: it got long! But there's pictures!)

Part I: What does it look like? How do we work with it?

This is the cuneiform script:

This is a first-millennium BC text of Sargon II, in Akkadian (specifically Neo-Assyrian). My user icon is a much older Sumerian text. In a second we'll see some Hittite. Just like the Latin script is used for English, French, Turkish, and many other languages today, the cuneiform script was used for lots of languages in the ancient world. It changed a bit over three thousand years of constant use, but it remains pretty recognizable because of the wedges. "Cuneiform" is just Latin for "wedge-shaped," because scholars love giving things banal names and then translating them into Latin or Greek so no one can tell.

This is a Hittite tablet:

This particular tablet is part of the royal funerary ritual (which has many many MANY tablets, many of which are way more broken than this one, and/or missing entirely). It's been pieced together from lots of fragments, all excavated separately. (You can see their excavation numbers written on the fragments, e.g. 39/c.) It's written on clay, like most of their texts were. This is a pretty good amount of preservation for a tablet this size - many are more fragmentary. I wish the picture were better, but tablets are not catalogued by how good the pictures are and it would have taken a million years to find a really hi-res one suitable for our purposes.

You can see that each symbol is made up of a bunch of wedges. These were pressed into the clay with a stylus while it was still wet. If you look closely, you can also spot spaces between words (more obvious at the end of a paragraph).

Here's a little slice of our tablet:

And here's a drawing of that same little slice. This is how scholars usually interact with texts on a day-to-day basis, because taking readable photos of tablets is difficult and going to see the tablets is more difficult. Drawings are made by experts in the presence of the tablets and published so that everyone can look at them.

Here the scholar who did this drawing (published in Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazköi vol. 39, text no. 4) was working with only some of the fragments, and so has written in the transliteration of the left half, which they weren't copying. So you can see how each cuneiform sign corresponds to a written syllable, sometimes in lowercase, sometimes in all caps, and sometimes in superscript.

What does all this mean? How does it work? Okay. Cuneiform is a really difficult and frustrating writing system to read, for a few reasons. 1) It grew organically from a time before writing existed, so people were just kind of slowly figuring out how to use pictures to represent words; 2) it lasted for thousands of years, so there were all sorts of innovations tacked on without necessarily jettisoning any of the old stuff; and 3) it was borrowed through quite a few languages, almost none of which were related to one another, so it had to twist around and adapt to totally different sounds and word structures. So it's weird! And hard to learn, especially for us, because we are not native speakers of any of the languages that used it, and also we're not a single person existing in a snapshot of time, where cuneiform had a specific form and iteration - we're looking at its whole span of three thousand years.

THAT SAID. I can explain some stuff about it and how it worked! Here goes!

Part 2: How does it work as a writing system?

We start with a picture. Let's use a star. Like this: 𒀭

Or this:

(this is a student text copying the star sign over and over - ignore the leftmost column. I got it from this excellent thread here)

This is the cuneiform sign for the sky, or for a god. In Sumerian, the language that first used cuneiform, the word for "sky" is AN. The word for "god" is DINGIR. So this sign could be pronounced either AN, and mean sky, or DINGIR, and mean god. This sort of usage is called "logographic" - a sign equals a word. It started as just a picture of a star, and came to mean a couple of things associated with the stars.

Eventually, there reaches a point where it doesn't just only mean the word "sky," it also means the syllable "an." That is, you could use it to represent a part of a word, or a grammatical element, that was pronounced "an." (E.g., ma-ah-ha-an: mahhan, which is a Hittite word that means "when," and which is written with four signs, including our an.) This is called the rebus principle: like a rebus puzzle, a picture of an eye can also mean "I" because they sound the same. This usage supplements the logograms rather than replacing them: you could still use "an" to mean "sky." You know which usage is in play based on context. (Or at this stage, maybe you don't. Sumerian is real hard and we don't understand it perfectly.)

You can also use signs a third way, which is designed to make reading easier: as what's called a "determinative." A determinative tells you what type of thing a word is. So if you use the star symbol as a determinative, it comes before a word and indicates that upcoming is a god's name. It's not pronounced when it's used like that. Other determinatives include: male and female markers, plural markers, markers to indicate what something is made of, what kind of animal it is, etc.

So any sign you see could potentially be a word (logogram), a sound (syllable), or a soundless classifier (determinative). In practice, only some signs take on all three of these functions.

When we transcribe signs now, we write them in Latin script based on which function they're serving. That's why, in the above Hittite texts, some of the signs were written in all-caps (for logograms), some of them in lowercase (for syllables), and some of them in superscript (for determinatives).

So then Akkadian borrows the system. They like to spell words out a lot more than the Sumerians do, so more and more signs are used primarily for their syllables, rather than their meaning. The signs also take on more syllabic meanings, because Akkadian has different words behind the logograms, and also has different sounds than Sumerian. A lot of signs end up doing double, triple or even-more-ple duty (e.g. the sign for "ag" can also be read "ak" or "aq" in an Akkadian text). Once again, you know how to read a sign from context, and in Akkadian you usually actually do know, because Akkadian is a Semitic language rather than an isolate like Sumerian, so we understand it way, way better.

Akkadian keeps using the symbols as logograms, though, too. Sometimes they'll spell out a word, but sometimes they'll just use the logographic symbol for it - like how sometimes we write out "two," and sometimes just write "2". Sometimes there are full Sumerian words or combinations of words that have become logograms: that is, they're not loanwords. They're not pronounced in Sumerian. They're written as a symbol (like 2), and the Akkadian word would be pronounced underneath (like "two.") The Akkadians also keep using determinatives.

At this point, most signs at least have a logographic value and a few syllabic values. Also (to make it extra difficult) plenty of syllables have a couple of different signs that could be used to represent them. In total there's a bit over a thousand cuneiform signs, incidentally, but usually only a few hundred were in use at any given time and place.

Then Hittite borrows it! They actually overall reduce the number of signs used, and the number of signs doing double duty, so it's generally simpler to read. Hittite's sound system is totally different from Akkadian's, though - which is totally different from Sumerian's - so they do some weird stuff with which signs represent which sounds. (The result of this is that our understanding of Hittite phonetics is somewhat imperfect.) They do use a ton of logograms whenever they're talking about physical objects, especially ritual offerings. Ritual texts are A PAIN IN THE ASS to read because they're full up with obscure logograms, and so you pore over a signlist trying to work out what the bonkers twelve-wedge sign you've never seen before is, and then when you finally find it you're like, "oh ANOTHER kind of bread. cool cool."

Part 3: Let's Read Hittite! (This is probably excessive.)

So finally, let's read some together! This is two lines from the Ten-Year Annals of Mursili II, an account of the first ten years of that king's reign. It's mostly conquering, but this bit is calmer.

(ANNOYINGLY, Tumblr will not do superscript, or I cannot make it anyway, so I will put determinatives in parentheses.)

nam-ma (URU)Ha-at-tu-ši ú-wa-nu-un nu (URU)Ha-at-tu-ši

gi-im-ma-an-da-ri-nu-un nu-za EZEN4.HI.A ŠA MU.6.KAM i-ya-nu-un

That's the text rendered sign-by-sign. Everything that is separated by a dash, a period, a space, or a parenthesis is a separate sign. Words are separated with spaces. Here's a more normalized rendition of the words (still with the logograms, though).

namma (URU)Hattusi uwanun nu (URU)Hattusi gimmandarinun nu=za EZEN4.HI.A ŠA MU.6.KAM iyanun

"Then I went to Hattusa, and I spent the winter in Hattusa and performed the festivals of the sixth year."

The ú in uwanun in the first line is written with an accent because there are several signs that can mean "u" and this is the second one. Similar for EZEN4: there's more than one sign for EZEN, and this is the fourth. Scholars always write logograms and determinatives in Sumerian, because that's where the meanings were fixed. URU, used before Hattusa, is both the determinative for "city" and the Sumerian word meaning the same. ŠA in the last line is italicized and capitalized because it's a logogram that comes from Akkadian: "ša" means "of" in Akkadian, and the Hittites used Akkadian words as logograms just like the Akkadians used Sumerian words.

Anyway, that's how cuneiform works! If you made it this far you're a hero! <3

[barelylivingscholar]

“Dr.Ratio with a student who has an attitude…”

Babes this is 900+ words... I've put out another one, AGAIN.

- So, you are a member of the Intelligentsia guild, studying under Dr. Ratio’s class. At first you were like, “I think he’ll embody the “🤓” emoji while at the same time insulting the fuck out of me until I get it right 🙄. You were not wrong… Dude basically walked up to class one day and decided that everyone was “uneducated” without even taking a single look at you guys… Yeah… And that was the day you decided, y’know what, this old man will not be the cause of my 13th reason… Not me… I paid for this and I’m getting out of here with my diploma, bitch 💅. - Days with the old man is literal hell. Like, he will NOT give you guys a break… I can imagine all the work you guys do with this old man and leaving you guys to figure it out so you guys get “educated” like be serious right now he is not PLAYING at all. Literally the worst but, he does make sense… Sometimes. Me thinks he is not bad, but just a really, really, strict teacher… Terror professor vibes… That’s what I’m getting. I mean, bro would insult you “lowkey” and would not gaf about your comebacks… At all… So, it’s lowkey pointless to argue back because dude will literally just say one word… And that’s it…   - The number of students dropping his class is INSANE. If you look to your side, you would only see either one or two people in the class meaning, the class is looking almost empty… If not for the toughest students like you guys… Congrats on not dropping out and still continuing to go through the old man’s class like… This is kind of a test for mentality and how long you guys would hold out… Me thinks, that you are definitely going to develop anger issues with this man… And some other mental illnesses you might catch during his lectures…

- If you manage to be one of the excelling students in his class that’s when he would start talking to you and you’re like… No way this old man suddenly decided he wanted to chat with me right now… Me thinks you’re going to be acting up the whole time… The conversations would start with stuff about the class and will end with how the lectures went for you. Oh boy… The way you DID NOT hold back on the feedback…You literally went off with your unresolved anger issues on him and the other mental illnesses you caught while under his guidance and bro just said “interesting.” All that for one word… Smh… - The next meeting went surprisingly… Smooth? Like the man suddenly decided he would be less insulting and more on… Lecturing…? What did this old man EAT??? You basically just sat there and side eyed him the whole time. Did the old man got possessed? That is what you were thinking halfway through the lecture until he called you out to answer his question so you had to snap out of it for a while sis… But alright, you’ll take it rather than the usual poorly disguised “constructive criticisms” you’d get every single damn time. You are very fortunate that you even got a score rather than the others that get 0’s or even negatives… Not saying you that smart but, you were just really good at what you’re doing me thinks… - There are only a few people that would catch the old man’s eye… So, consider yourself lucky to be “breathing” in the same air as him as he himself would say… Yeah, I think the urge of punching the old man and dropping out is at an all time high now… Or, if you’re too down bad for this man I think you would rather smooch him instead…? But idk man he’s kind of… Though I think you need to get therapy if you like getting berated or nagged by this old man all the time… He gives me Asian parents vibes… - Anyhow, time skip to the second semester and the class is FULL, yet again… You lowkey wished that it would be half empty again so fewer annoying people to deal with and fewer of the old man’s copies… I kid you not there are probably clones of him in the class… You can handle the old man but if my classmates were carbon copies of the old man, I would start throwing hands ngl… During the duration of the semester, you have seen… Students getting kicked out LITERALLY by the old man himself like, he just YEETED out a kid that wanted to bribe him for a slot in his class yikes… Or that one time some dude was caught slacking so he did the L thing to measure air idk??? And threw the guy like he was catapulted in angry birds... So many things happening in his class that you find yourself enjoying it now kind of??? Minus the usual hell that you would do every day though, that’s still insane and is not for the faint of heart… - So, TL;DR only sign up if you’re ready for to catch mental illnesses in his class… Tbh me thinks you get more negatives than benefits but it’s all good??? Somehow??? You get to flex that you graduated in HIS class??? And like now you’re desensitized, although you caught some mental illnesses on the side... But still, congrats?!?!