#this is making me feel so vulnerable

[bookalicent]

yeah so this was insane

[kenjakusbraincum]

Sukuna is old. He is also weirdly cultured for the monster that he is. With so much time on his hands, he loves indulging in arts and literature, and as with everything else he tries, he's good at it. You wouldn't know this, of course, you are only his pet. The time you spend with him is limited and hardly consists of intellectual conversation. You are there to serve one purpose and you know that quite well. So when you wake up in his bed one morning, two things come as a surprise. First that you're even here. It's one of those rare occasions when Sukuna couldn't be bothered kicking or carrying you out of his chambers once your time together was up. Second, he's awake, bent over his desk and so concentrated on a little figurine in his hand that he doesn't immediately notice you've shuffled awake. Once your eyes focus, you see that he's holding a tool in his other hand. He's carving wood. You're almost hypnotized by the scene. The scene feels so private that even for a pet like you, who knows Sukuna in the most intimate way, it feels like you shouldn't be watching. But you can't look away.

"Awake?", he asks, without sparing a glance at you. You apologize for staring, and look for your clothes around the bed. You throw them on just precisely enough to cover up until you reach your chambers, just wanting to be as quick and innocuous as possible. You wait for Sukuna's approval to leave. He gives you a simple nod, once more avoiding to look at you. You leave feeling conflicted. Special, because he allowed you to stay and watch (even as little as you did), but saddened because he barely looked at you, once more solidifying in your mind that you're only interesting to him when you're naked and bent over. As long as you've been here, you could never stop wishing for his validation.

Sukuna knows when you get insecure too. He notices the way your eyes droop, the way you close in on yourself and seem absent in his presence. He justifies this excessive worry about you by telling himself he likes to be the only thing that bothers his pets. All the way until he realized he already is the only thing that can make you sad. This realization falls upon him one time he lashes out on you and sees the immediate change of heart on your face. Now, he isn't one to apologize, especially not to someone who is as low under him as his pet. But why does he feel guilty when he sees this one act of his ruin your day? When he catches a glimpse of you sitting in the garden with your head hung low, or leaving more food on your plate than you usually do. If only you knew the way you really made him feel.

He beckons you to his chambers, and you follow three steps behind him like a good pet does. You didn't expect this time to be any different than others. You've become used to serving Sukuna on days you loved him and on days you hated him. But when he tells you to close your eyes, you know something is different. You obey, of course, and listen to his footsteps as he fetches something from the room. His hand takes yours and opens it, placing a piece of wood onto your palm. You already know, but you wait for him to allow you to open your eyes. He lightly presses his thumb on your cheek under your eye, and when you look, you find a small wooden fawn, curled up and asleep in your hands.

"Master!!..", you start, but nothing else can leave your mouth. You turn the figure around in your hand, inspecting and admiring the details. He's given you gifts before, but not ones carved by his own hand. Not ones made with love.

"You don't have to squint anymore.", Sukuna says, almost jokingly. But his face is as serious as ever as he looks at you, his muse. He thinks of the first time he's exhausted you to the point of passing out right after your nightly meetings. You were relatively new and very unsure of your safety. He thinks of your small body curled up in sleep on the edge of his bed, knees pressed to your chest in a primal, subconscious attempt to protect yourself. His little pet, his fawn.

You slur on and on about how beautiful it is, how you don't know how to thank him, the usual when you receive a gift. And as usual, Sukuna shuts you up with a kiss. You welcome it and wrap your arms around his neck, giving yourself in to him and letting him take you to the bed.

And he takes things slow tonight. He's gentle and so, so giving. Every sensation is delicate, prolonged and heightened to exhaustion. You cling to him, pull him impossibly close, and come apart under the comforting weight of him. Afterwards, you hold his hand to your face and kiss it softly. His hands, so large and strong, capable of such violence, yet for you they craft gifts, cradle, caress, love... in a very subtle and distant way, of course. With these thoughts your hands slip away from his, you turn around and quickly drift off.

He looks at you now, sleeping so close to him. Trusting him with your back, and turning your curled up form to the outside world. As if he is no longer a perceived danger. He smiles to himself in victory, and plants a chaste kiss to your shoulder to wish you one final goodnight.

[gravitysoda]

refusing an impossible wish and settling for one last game of chess.

[14dayswithyou]

💖 Day 3.5 is now available! 💖

For the last couple of months, only Server Boosters had access to the 3.5 update... Buuuuut now it's available for everyone to play in the 14DWY Discord — and soon itch.io once I'm happy with the QA and state of the game — so please don't feel pressured to join unless you want to!!

The full devlog + even more screenshots are under the cut ^^

What's been added to the 3.5 version?

📺 Streamer Mode!

I've been told that it's difficult to stream and monetise age-restricted videos on YouTube and Twitch, so I added an option to remove the sexual content and strong language used in the demo.

Now y'all can invite Ren into your bed for cuddles without putting your streamer career on the line /silly /lh

This won't affect the 18+ rating or dark themes/elements of the game, however! Although Streamer Mode will prevent you from seeing any "gruesome" CGs in the future, most of the core elements of the game will still be tied to the choices and decisions you make. So you won't miss out on the overall experience by using streamer mode!!

⚙️ Custom Pronouns!

It only took me one entire year to get around to it, but you can finally choose your own preferred pronouns (or use a set of pronouns instead)... At the cost of being able to change them mid-game ^^;

Since the original pronoun screen wouldn't update until a new scene was displayed, I temporarily disabled the feature. But once I find a workaround, I'll bring it back!

💗 Choose how others perceive you!

You can now choose how the cast and narration perceive you! Originally, the narration was kept strictly gender-neutral (outside of pronouns and genitalia picked by the player), but this will soon change in future updates.

For more clarity: you don't get to choose the words specifically, but you can choose between masculine, feminine, and androgynous terms!

📋 Separate top and bottom genitalia!

You can now choose your tatas and pps separately! >:3

Alongside that, you can also choose your preferred body type!

I removed the "both" genitalia option because a few players still assumed it was an obscure version of "intersex". That wasn't my intention and I don't want to mislead anyone, so I took it out for now ^^;

I also didn't want to include a screenshot of the new genitalia choices in action (because it's NSFW), so y'all get the same character menu screen for the nth time instead lmao

📱 Relationship Screen Overhaul!

You can now change your own status for more immersion, and long-term Server Boosters will eventually be able to submit and use their own icon within the game as well!

Stalking finding your friends has now become easier by using "Buddy Maps"; a new app that allows you to see the location of all the cast members!

I want to offer players more incentive to check the relationship screen since they tend to miss the status updates, so hopefully this might help ;v;

It also says it "updates every few hours" so folks don't go overboard and check every 5 seconds to see where Ren is gdsghf (also keep in mind that he's a hacker lol)

🖤 Additional Scenes Update!

Day 2 received a brand new CG!!!!! Originally, I planned on only adding a few CGs sporadically throughout the game, but it didn't feel right to leave Day 2 so... empty... so I added a brand new CG to (hopefully) make things feel more balanced and natural!

If you decline Teo's offer on Day 3, Leon will now call and try to convince you to reconsider. However, players are still allowed to decline, and if they do, they'll reach a dead end.

After listening to feedback on itch, I changed some of the dialogue during Days 1-3 to make it seem more consistent! They're only small changes though, so it's honestly not worth looking for sdgjssga

🎶 Updated BGM and SFX!

I wanted to try out a different style of music to see if it fits the vibe of 14DWY more! The BGM features more acoustics to suit the "beachy" theme of Corland Bay, though I made a conscious effort to include piano elements as well to stay true to the original!!

I figured it'd be better to give players a live example before I make a poll (to see if they prefer the change or not) and publish it to Itch.

Some new SFX have also been added, though it's very minimal and honestly not that noticeable.

How to download and play the update?

(warning: clicking on the following links will open Discord!!) To download the Day 3.5 update, simply join the 14DWY Discord server, verify your age, and visit the "14dwy-updates" channel!

Alternatively, you can also wait until the update is publicly released on Itch to play it as well!! (It normally gets released shortly after a round of QA testing/getting feedback from the server, though I may release it earlier if I feel like it hehe ^^)

Enjoy!!

[mroddmod]

little scrapped comic bc it felt a bit ooc to me in hindsight

[vaguely-concerned]

sometimes I think of all the on-the-surface warm, well-meaning but deeply ineffectual advice and attention john gives harrow through harrow the ninth (make some soup and get some sleep! get a hobby! don't be so hard on yourself! self care harrow! as long as I need take no actual responsibility in this relationship whatsoever I would have loved to be your dad!) set up against the stark truth that with his other hand he has been staging her attempted horrific murder again and again and again like a living nightmare on the logic that it will 'put her down or fix her'. and then I find that I wish there is a hell. a special hell where twitch streamers turned necromantic death emperors go

[johnslittlespoon]

Tough And Sweet (Like You And Me) ♡

'Gale looks unfairly handsome in the soft golden light of the late evening, but even more unfair is the fact that John can’t just bridge the gap between them and kiss his feelings away. The more time he spends around Gale, the more it feels like he’s being consumed by his overwhelming infatuation, and there’s not a single thing he can do about it that doesn’t involve the risk of scaring the man out of his life.

So he shuts the truck door behind him after promising Gale he’ll text when he’s safe inside, and he tries not to stare too forlornly as the truck putters off down the street and rounds the corner.'

[ AO3 ]

[hawnks]

I'm having this thought of Yuuta simply inserting himself into your life as Your Alpha. He doesn't ask, doesn't really even imply that he wants to be your alpha, one day he's just handing you a hoodie for your nest, he's talking to your boss about you having to take time off next month, he's making decisions about where and how you're going to spend your heat. Like you belong to him.

And, god help you, you're letting him.

[lokimobius]

"Listen. That wasn’t tactical. I lost it." LOKI S02E02 “Breaking Brad”

[fumifooms]

What if we were both magic prodigies and it otherized us in different ways and we devoted ourselves to protecting a family member who has general other goals & priorities. What if we both did self-sacrifical devotion in opposite ways.

What if we were dark mirrors of each other and where I've grown overcontrolling you've grown complacent. What if, bought as a servant into a pretty loving home, ownership and control is what love looks like to me, and to you neglected and lonely growing up, love is gratefully taking any scraps of it you’re lent.

By belonging to someone, even if she comes back injured or fails at finding Delgal, she feels like she belongs and is cherished, by owning someone he feels safe in them not leaving him.

She’s what’s tethering him do you see… And he’s the only thing giving her direction and purpose in her state. She needs a compass and he needs a support.

They’re both so out of it 😭 It’s the weirdly intense and unearned mutual trust and reliance on each other?? They’re each other’s weird little comfort codependent teddy bear. Or at least they were headed towards that before SHE DIED THEN HE DIED THEN THEY BOTH FORGOT ABOUT EACH OTHER AND NEVER MET EVER AGAIN. Though she’s also the guard attack hound keeping him safe… And vice versa he heals her and can rewrite her very being with just one wave of his hand. They’re both so so mentally and physically vulnerable both but they cling onto each other. They can’t perceive things accurately but despite it all someway somehow they stumble into something closer to resembling companionship just before they both die. Falin is just that kind and Thistle is just that lonely. Overworked. We both haven’t lived for ourselves in a very long time, haven’t we.

They both have a similar devotion to the people they love but again the difference is that Thistle starts overtsepping while Falin is self-effacing. The other difference between them is that people care about Falin <3 People have given up on Thistle long ago, and he has given people reasons to, while people refuse to give up on Falin. Yaad has a mini arc about it dw about it it’s ok he’s not all alone in the end 😭😭 He reached out for Marcille’s hand but they already all wanted to help him, they just had to be given the chance to, Yaad just had to be given the chance to, it’s okay I’m okay

Hey what if we learned to get in touch with our own identity and the world around us and living in the present again through being in the worst codependent situationship ever.

Falin and Thistle sitting in a tree, sucking on flowers together because they’re h-u-n-g-r-y 💕💕💕

I bet he’s only ever thought of flowers as useless ornaments. Weak weeds. But she shows him they’re tasty and useful and good and pretty in their own right too and deserve existing without proving their worth and waaa <33 Thistles…... Did you know thistles taste sweet if you remove the thorns and eat them?

"Even as a chimera, her kind nature remains" you can’t suppress her in the way that matters. You can’t soothe him in the way that matters. It’s doomed. You’re doomed. It’s all doomed. Save me.

[arthursfuckinghat]

"I was gonna say you're like a son to me.. but you're more than that."

"It ain't that complicated!"

How quickly that shoulder pat of comfort turned into a condescending one.

[casualavocados]

You've never done that when I got close to you before. Why? None of your business. Tell me, or you can't leave.

KISEKI: DEAR TO ME Ep. 10

[autisticandroids]

CASTIEL: Stop. What's the point if you don't mean it? You fear me - not love, not respect, just fear.

[youtube with closed captions]

a godstiel pity party. i'd like to thank an anon i got way back in february of 2021.

[quirinah]

please stay by me!

[flowercrowngods]

felt like letting mike and steve work through some shit again

cw: descriptions and imagery of them being lost and self-sacrificing, left alone with trauma they have no means to work through, could read as suicidal tendencies or intrusive thoughts

🤍 also on ao3

“What do you want?” Mike asks when Steve sits down beside him, gravel crunching, their feet dangling over the dark and endless abyss that is the quarry at night.

Steve doesn’t answer right away, doesn’t really know what to say now that he’s here, now that he found him. He looks so small, now more than ever, and it reminds Steve so painfully that he’s still just a child. He was always just a child, and children shouldn’t—

It feels like they got their rights at a childhood revoked years ago, and then they were just… supposed to be okay with it. It was expected, it was implied when nobody came to talk to them after.

When all they got was one NDA after another. When none of the professionally trained adults took one look at the children that they were, and asked, Are you okay? What do you need to be okay? I will talk to you once a week and make sure you learn how to be okay again.

Steve feels like a big brother to most of the kids now, sure, but he’s not their shrink, and he sucks when it comes to actually talking about shit. He can be there to drive them anywhere, can provide an evening of distractions and as much of a sanctuary as a house as haunted as his can be.

With everything else, though, he’s helplessly lost. So he says nothing, weighs his words to make sure they come out right — especially for Mike, who’s always just waiting for him to say something wrong and throw it back in his face with the sunny disposition of a feral, rabid cat.

“Hey,” Mike says then, irritated again; but his voice is hoarse, too. Tired. No heat behind it after that stupid fight with Dustin and Lucas earlier tonight that made him snap and leave Steve’s house in a frenzy. “I said, What do you want?”

Steve shrugs, looking ahead into the darkness that feels endless and alluring and deeply terrifying.

I miss my friend! My best friend, Mike!

“Making sure you’re okay.”

You’ve changed, you know that? You’re not the guy who would jump off a cliff for me anymore, I don’t think I even know you anymore!

Dustin’s voice echoes in Steve’s mind as it undoubtedly does in Mike’s, too, and he can only imagine how much that hurts, especially if he’s shivering like that even though the night is warm for early September.

“I’m okay,” Mike says, sounding endlessly annoyed about the fact. Steve almost huffs out a humourless laugh. Yeah, right.

“Sure you are,” Steve says, keeping his tone carefully neutral.

He shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over Mike’s shoulders without a comment, half-expecting him to just throw it into the darkness below. But Mike doesn’t move, is eerily still beside him, pretending not to notice that Steve’s watching him.

“But you know it’s, like,” he starts again and trails off, looking for the right words because this is unfamiliar terrain and the ground beneath his feet is quite literally nonexistent. “It’s fine if you’re not, right? It’s actually really fucking normal to be more than a little fucked up after everything, all that crazy shit. Or just… in general.”

You were twelve, he wants to say. You were twelve and you jumped off from here. You were twelve and you were going to die. And not because of those monsters, not yet. Just because… you were twelve.

Mike doesn’t say anything, but the gravel crunches once more as he reaches for a handful of stones to throw them into the darkness one by one, the void beneath them so enormous that they don’t even hear the noise of impact.

You jumped.

The longer Mike remains silent, the more Steve wants to scream, wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, wants to make him see and understand that Steve knows about the scars a decision like that leaves, especially when you live to deal with the consequences.

He gets seizures to deal with the consequences. His ear is fucky, his eye is twitchy, his head is aching constantly, he gets migraines that knock him out for a day or two, all because he wanted to protect his friends. All because he did protect his friends. It worked. They’re safe.

But they’re also unaware of… of everything. Of the horrible stillness as clarity dawns and all signs point to the one way that always seems to work. The one easy way out, and still the hardest of them all when the plan goes wrong and he makes it out alive. When It’s gotta be me is the only thing to say, but later turns into an angry It never should have been me because the world looks different when it’s smeared with your blood.

And it’s always the lost boys who make decisions like that. Steve wonders, some nights in cold sweat, what happens if he makes these decisions without immediate danger. What happens if he just… decides to jump. Decides to run. To give the world more of his blood. Without saving anyone.

It’s not like he wants to — but he’s terrified that it’s just who he is. Who he’s turned into, terrified that his friends will forever expect him to.

And he’s even more terrified knowing that Mike jumped before he learned about monsters. Before he learned about fighting and surviving.

You were a kid, he wants to say again, but his throat is closing up on him.

“I don’t think that’s okay actually,” Mike says after a while, tearing Steve away from his fears. They’re still both looking ahead rather than at each other, but it’s fine. They’re still here. “Like, people say it is, but it feels so empty when they do, you know? Like, sure, yeah, I’m not fucking okay, but what the hell do we do about that now? Oh, right, I know! Let’s throw it in my face that I’m not good enough for you anymore now that there’s no monsters to kill anymore. Now that I’m just Mike, who’s not even enough to be that anymore, sure. Right. Yeah. Let’s pretend it’s all fine, Steve, let’s pretend it’s okay to hurt all the fucking time!”

Mike is shaking now, violent tremors running through his body, and Steve’s first instinct is to reach out and pull him close, to keep him from that edge and take him to his car; turn on the heating and talk there. But Mike seems to need the darkness, seems to need to be faced with endless depth to give voice to his thoughts.

“What Dustin said was messed up. He shouldn’t have said that.”

Mike shrugs, throwing more pebbles into the darkness, though his motions have lost their vigour. “He’s right, though.”

Steve sighs, though not unkindly. “No, he’s not. Hey, listen to me.” He waits until Mike turns to meet his eyes, and he leans forward. “It’s not okay. It’s not right what he said. You don’t deserve to have that shit thrown in your face just because Dustin is a tactless little douche bag.”

Taking a bullet for someone is not the baseline for friendship, he wants to say, and it occurs to him once again how fucked up their perception and idea of friendship must be, now that they’ve all bonded over the most horrific shit and actual grief they never learned how to work through.

It’s not even Dustin’s fault, not really. They’re all just collateral damage to something Bigger, and all they have is each other, leaving them in a vicious cycle that is so, so fucked up.

“Why’d you jump?” he asks eventually, quiet in case the darkness tries to listen in. “Back then, why did you jump?” And do you wish El had let you? Do you sometimes wish that? When your room is quiet and it’s only you living with all those silent, terrible decisions?

Mike shrugs again, but there’s not much fight left in him, Steve can see that, can feel it in the air between them.

“Will was gone,” he says like it explains everything— and it sort of does. Steve has seen the way these boys look at each other when the other’s not looking, he has seen the hurt and the anger and the gentleness stored there, the words unspoken and the fear that, despite interdimensional monsters, kinda goes unmatched.

Because they have each other. They only have each other. And if someone’s suddenly different than what they thought they knew, if someone’s suddenly different, then… Everything might just fall apart.

And Steve wants to grab him again; wants to pull him close and say, I’m the same. We have the same scars. We have the same!

Slowly, carefully, he does lean over now, weaving an arm around Mike’s shoulders and pulling him into his side.

“I get that.”

Mike swallows heavily and exhales shakily. “I don’t think you do.”

“No. I think I really, really do. But it’s okay, Mike. You won’t be alone with this, okay. I’m on your side, you little shit.”

A pause, a beat, a moment’s respite. Then, “Why?”

“Because,” his heart is racing, his mouth trembling around forming the words for the first time, but he knows it’s the right thing to do. Knows it’s important.

Knows it might just save a life.

“Because I fell harder for Eddie Munson than I ever thought possible, and once i found out what was happening, I kind of wanted to jump off a cliff, too. But I didn’t, because I had someone with the same fears as me, and instead of stupid shit we just… Cried together sometimes. Screamed into our pillows. Laughed with and at each other, calling ourselves hopeless, and— I don’t know. It’s really fucking scary, and that doesn’t go away just because you have someone to talk to. But it‘s… better. It’s so much better.”

He huffs, swallowing around the lump in his throat, smiling into the darkness.

“So I’ve got you, okay? Whatever it is, whatever makes you feel like it’s not fucking okay, I’ve got you. You come to me, yeah? Lucas does, Dustin does, even Max does. This is your official, standing invitation and whatever, okay, dickhead?”

Mike shoves at him lightly, still not parting from the rather awkward side-hug they’ve got going on, and Steve is glad for it.

“Okay, okay, geez,” the little shithead says, rolling his eyes which Steve can see even in the dark, and it feels like the edge has moved away from them, like they have solid ground beneath their feet again.

Steve doesn’t say anything more after that, just waiting for Mike to stir to lead him back to the car, load in his bike and take him wherever he feels like spending the night.

But Mike doesn’t move for another long while, and it makes Steve feel like something big has just happened between them. Like they finally have found the common ground that Steve’s been suspecting they had for months now, even years.

Eventually, as they make their way to the car and Mike goes to grab his bike, he speaks up again, but more subdued now.

“Hey, Steve?”

“Hmm?”

“Does… Does Eddie know?”

“About what?” My tendencies to take a leap off the edge?

“You. Being…”

“Oh!” A smile as he unlocks his car and opens the back door to squeeze Mike’s old bike in there with minimal smears of dirt. “I’d hope so, we’ve been dating for months.”

“You’re dating?! You? Eddie’s dating you?”

“Yeah, listen, do you want me to just leave you here or would you rather be thrown out in the middle of nowhere?”

Mike grumbles something unintelligible as he climbs into the front seat, waiting for Steve to start the engine before he speaks up again.

“It’s just, you’re so… How did you even do that?”

Steve laughs at that, disbelieving and all, because, “Trust me, I have no idea. Must have been the ol’ Harrington charm and all that.”

Mike rolls his eyes and crosses his arms in front of his chest, sinking lower in the seats to pout. “You’re so lame.”

“Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over how much I have a boyfriend and you don’t.”

If his heart skips a beat because it still feels like a forbidden truth saying the word out loud despite the playful banter, then he’s ignoring that in favour of revving the engine.

“Asshole.”

“Dickhead.”

“Grow up,” Mike says, but Steve can see the smile he’s not even trying to hide, and he mirrors it with his own as he turns on the radio catching the final tunes of Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark.

They’re not okay, none of them. But the car is warm, the cliff’s edge is behind them, and they’re not listening to the same ten songs anymore.

They’re getting better, step by tiny step.

[ghurab-alzilal]

Damian, covered with a blanket, with a water bottle on his head and a thermometer in the mouth : I've caught this stupid disease because of you, damn witch girl.

Raven, without looking up from her book : For the last time Damian, feelings are not an illness.

Previous... I think so 😅