#this was very fun and forced me out of my comfort zone by a HUGE margin so ty molly for the amazing bit of inspiration!

[heymacy]

for @deathclassic’s “draw this in your style” challenge! ✨

find the original here 💛

[graycomfort]

Simon Henriksson x gn reader - Leende -Part 2

Synopsis: You just started learning Swedish.

Masterlist (coming soon) Part 1 Part 2

A/N: aiaiaiiaiai Part two to my first fanfiction ever. Still cheesy :] If there are any mistakes in the Swedish parts, please tell me and I will fix them!

They/Them is used like two times, the rest of it refers to you as you. Hope you enjoy! : ]

Word Count: ~2.8 k

It's been few weeks since you started learning Swedish. Simon has been quite helpful in the journey to learn his language. Even though he made fun of you from time to time, he provided you with practice and accuracy. He did throw you into deep water many times though. While buying stuff at the store or ordering fast food, he would just stop speaking forcing you to do the talking. Even though it made you stressed, it was a good practice. And Simon would make it up to you by paying for your stuff.

In the beginning, you would check if the information given by him was correct. But he valued your trust, so he never tricked you by telling you the wrong translations. However, he would confuse you by speaking words you don't know and never translating. He was not quite ready for you to know when he was complimenting you. To you, it was hard to catch and he refused to repeat so most of the time it was hard to look up what he said. That annoyed you, but also motivated you even more. You studied even harder to get back at him someday.

It was late at night. You have gotten a worrisome message from Simon's mom, asking about Simon's whereabouts. You told her you don't know, but that you will look for him. She said she would be grateful if you did and to be careful. So as soon as you told your guardian you were leaving, you were on your way. You jumped between rooftops with a flashlight turned on on your phone. You finally reached the one that you knew Simon would be at. A huge flat one.

He sat there when he felt upset and didn't want to dwell in his bed any longer. He told you that this was where Sophie killed herself. This confused you a lot since she was very much alive. You passed her in the hallway at school at least twice a week. You knew that he knew that too, since they went to the same classes. You decided not to question it. And Simon never elaborated, not wanting to put the baggage that was his mental health on you.

The important part to you at the moment was that Simon was in a bad mood. He sat there, in the same spot as always. You made sure your footsteps were audible, so you didn't startle him. You sat down on his left. You looked down at the street before switching to Simon. He wasn't crying, just looking in front of him with an empty stare. You were not sure he even knew you were there.

He in fact didn't. He only realized you were there when he was no longer zoning out. Your efforts not to startle him going to waste. In his point of view, you appeared out of thin air. His eyes turned away as soon as he saw you. "How long have you been here?" He asked you with a hoarse voice. He was clearly not dressed well for the weather, but so weren't you. Your hoodies not thick enough to stop the cold air hitting your bodies. "Just got here. How about you? Can you even feel your fingers anymore?" You grabbed his hand, feeling how cold to the touch it was.

"I'm not sure." Only then he felt how cold his fingers were compared to yours. He didn't move his hand away. Longing for your warmth and closeness. He felt like he wanted to crawl under your warm skin. "C'mon. Gimme your second hand." And he gladly did as he was told. Maybe a bit too eagerly than he would like to. Both of his cold hands now covered by yours, like a warm blanket. Your touch comforted him like he knew it would.

"Do you want to talk about it?" You looked at him, into his eyes that avoided yours. "Not at the moment, no." "That's alright." You looked away and squeezed his hands reassuringly. You thought about what to say for a minute.

"I learned a new word." He finally looked up. Simon appreciated that you decided to get his mind off whatever was bothering him. "Åh yeah? What is it?" "Leende" [smile] You yet again turned to him and smiled. That automatically made him smile slightly as well. "Did you learn that to bother me to smile more?" You laughed but shook your head.

"I did that to tell you 'Jag tycker om ditt leende'." [I like your smile.] His mouth fell open slightly in shock. Now not only his hands felt warm, but so did his face. He was stunned. Weeks of one-sided complimenting from his side did not prepare him to hear one back. He couldn't deny it, he could get used to it. He felt greedy, he wanted more.

"Thanks... You are the only person who gets to see it so... I'm glad that at least you like the sight of it." He smirked at the end of his words and looked down. Losing eye contact, but his lips did not fall. "You don't like it?" "Yeah, it's not a pretty sight to me" He mumbled. You hummed.

"What about mine?" "What?" His eyes came back from wandering, connecting with yours again. "What about my smile? Do you like the sight of it?" You fixed your position, now sitting facing him with your whole body. "Obviously, otherwise my lips wouldn't curve up at the sight of it." "Good, good thing pretty smiles are contagious then!" You laughed. He groaned at your cheesy attempt at a flirty joke. He removed his left hand from yours and shoved your shoulder. But his smile never fell as he scoffed.

Simon tried to return his hand into yours, but before he could both of your hands retracted. Both of his hands cold again. "Nu-uh" "What do you mean 'nu-uh'?! I'm cold!!" He kept his freezing hands extended. You have put yours on the roof behind your back and leaned on them. "I don't knowww... You hit me and it hurrrt sooo muchhh!" You said in a dramatic mocking tone. Simon started deadpan at you. He wasn't sure if his next move was okay or maybe would make you uncomfortable. But he wanted it so badly, so he followed his heart and...

Next thing you knew, your back was pressed against the roof. You screamed in horror as you felt Simon's cold hands against the lower half of your back. The only other noise, apart from your screaming, was the sound of a window being closed abruptly. "SIMON!! THAT'S SO COLD!!" "I KNOW!" You started daggers at him until you noticed. Simon was cuddled into your warm body, hugging you at your waist. His hands buried under your hoodie on your back. Not only trying to warm them up but also to get back at you. His chest was moving quicker than usual due to laughing. You felt each of his laughs with his warm breath on your collarbones, as his hooded head was buried on them. His black hair tickling your under chin and neck.

Your stare softened at that sight. You no longer minded the cold fingers touching your back, his warmth and laughter being enough to make it up to you. Simon didn't mind the cold anymore himself. As his laugh died down, he just laid there. The comfort he felt in your arms was so heavenly, it couldn't get better. His thoughts did start getting to him. You are so quiet. Are you angry? Are you uncomfortable? You relaxed and placed your arms around his shoulders, completing the embrace.

He was wrong. It did get better.

All of his worries melted away at that action. It was shocking to him, how many times you had helped him get rid of any bad thoughts without even saying a word. As if you knew what he was thinking about. You were perfect to him. He was so glad you were his best friend, but he couldn't hide that he did wanned to be something more. Little did he know, you wanted the same thing. But the voices in his head told him that you would never love a pathetic man like him. You knew that was far from the truth, and you decided it was finally time he knew that too.

After a bit of silence, you spoke up. "Hey, Simon." He answered with a questioning 'hm'. "Jag gillar dig oskså" You let those four words fly out of your mouth like you have practiced many times. Simon's head flew up in shock at that sentence. He locked his eyes with yours no longer interested in your warmth. He pulled himself up on his hands and stared at you in awe. "Like... like like? You like me like that?" "Yes, Simon." "Are you serious? You're not fucking with me, right?!" He asked frantically. You chuckled at that and grabbed his face. "I mean it, Simon."

Wrong again. It got even better.

Simon tried to process what was said to him. He was overfilled with emotions. It was the first time in his life anyone ever liked him in that way. He stayed frozen as you caressed his cheek. All he did was stare into your eyes like they were the rarest gemstones in the world. He began leaning in, wanting to connect his chapped lips to yours. Yet he stopped himself abruptly.

"Can I... kiss you?" The last thing he wanted to do was to scare you away. You didn't answer using words. Your hand shifted to the back of his neck, pulling down his hood in the process. Then you pulled him down, both of your lips bearly touching. They ghosted each other, feeling each other's warm breaths. You tested his patience. He did last a bit, but he couldn't wait any longer.

His lips connected to yours in a kiss. At first, the kiss resembled a long peck on the lips. But he wanted more, going in for a second time. Simon was very much inexperienced. So as your lips opened to suck on each other's tongues, clanking of teeth was unavoidable. His left hand rested on the connection of your shoulder and your neck, and your left played with the strands at the back of his head.

His focus was entirely on you, the rest of the world didn't matter to him right now. Well, until the quietness of the night was interrupted not only by your kisses but also by a car. Just under the building on which roof you two sat on, the car has stopped and a slam of a door could be heard two times. Simon made the distance between you two and peaked down at the street. You looked at him slightly confused, as he looked uneasy. But his concerns were right. A police car was parked just below them. It was most likely due to a noise complaint as, he can't argue, you two were quite loud earlier. He turned back to you as he sat between your legs, his hands on your sides.

"Well, that's our sign to go." He got up and held his hand out for you to grab. You accepted his hand and pulled yourself up. You didn't question his uneasiness, as your job was to bring him home anyway. And you didn't want both of you to get sick. So you held his hand and launched forward to jump between rooftops as you two reached the trusted ladder. He let go of your hand and waved it towards the exit, letting you go first. As you went down, he looked the way you two came from.

Quickly after being on the ground again, you two began your walk towards Simon's house. To get there you two would have to take a train. As you entered the train station, you felt uneasy at the fact it was so empty. You did enjoy the vibe, but it still gave you that uneasy feeling in your chest. Seconds later your hand ended up in Simon's. Simon grabbed your hand, reassuring you as if he was unfazed about the atmosphere. It was partly true, he felt uneasy each time he entered the station. As if he was scared the things he saw down there would come back to haunt him. Comforting you also benefited him, being focused on your well-being got his mind off his own struggles.

It didn't take much time till the train arrived at the track. The train was less so empty. The front occupied by tired men in fancy jackets. We without needing to say a word, opted for the back of the train. Of course, it was kept less tidy than the front car. But things like the broken light and newspaper on the floor, which you didn't mind, kept the well-dressed men away from the car. Resulting in having the whole car for yourselves.

You sat by the window as he sat next to you. You kept his hand in your lap and played with it. It didn't take long for Simon to put his head on your shoulder. The journey they were taking was already memorized by him. He lost all interest in whatever was behind the window, even though it's something he always watches on his way home. You took all of that interest, he watched as you played with his hand. Soft touches giving him comfort.

You dropped his hand. Letting it rest on your tight. He looked at you as you fished for your phone. "I should message your mom that we are on our way, so she doesn't worry anymore." He watched her type, he quirked his eyebrow. "She sent you to look for me?" "She told me you were missing, looking for you was my idea." You finished typing, hit send, and put your phone away. The hand that rested on your tight, once again in your hands. He felt glad you didn't come to get him because his mom told you to, but that you were worried yourself.

The ride was calm and quiet. Simon got comfortable on your shoulder. And you would have thought he fell asleep if he didn't get up from his seat as you two neared the station you're supposed to get off on. You two's hands never separated, holding each other and touching shoulders all the way to Simon's house.

Before Simon's house stood his mother, pacing on the small concrete path. She immediately saw you two as the house was now in your line of sight. You waved at her as you two went around the short white fence. Simon still felt your hand in his. You seemed to not mind being seen by his mother holding hands, so he didn't make any move to disconnect them. But he couldn't make eye contact with his mom.

"Åh, Simon, y/n. Där är du! Jag var så orolig!" [There you are! I was so worried] His mother came up to him. He was ready for the scolding that was already engraved in his mind. Yet his mother's attention switched to you. "Tack så mycket för att du tog hem honom, mitt barn." [Thank you so much for bringing him home, my child] You smiled at her in return. "Kom och sov över, jag låter dig inte åka tåg ensam så här sent på kvällen." [Come and sleep over, I won't let you ride the train this late at night]

You kept your smile on, but you were very much confused. The words spoken by her not known to you. You glanced at Simon, as a silent ask for translation. Simon felt your stare and turned his head to you. After a short silence without your reply to his mom's request it was clear to him you didn't understand. "She told you to stay over, she won't let you go alone this late."

"Åh" You exclaimed and turned back to his mother. "Okej, tack" That's all Simon's mom needed, as she imidietly lead you into the house. Simon let you enter first and his mom began a chat with him. "Du har äntligen bjudit ut dem." [You finally asked them out.] Simon's nervousness came back as quickly as it went away. "De gjorde det, inte jag" [they did, not me] He said under his nose. His mom chuckled and patted his back as they finally entered their home.

[cyberpunkaddict]

2023 Letter.

Here we are again. It’s been a year since my last letter. This is my last post for 2023. I included a bunch of unreleased VP again.

Read the letter below:

This year has been a rollercoaster in many ways. It’s really easy to focus on the negative because it seems to take up so much space. But it’s important to take some time and think about the positive in life too to get some perspective.

Life is made up of tiny moments of happiness after all. ❤️

The Cyberpunk 2077 community is very important to me. "Stuff" we may or may not agree with is bound to happen no matter where we are, IRL or online. But no matter who you are, in the end we all want the same things; feel like we belong, make connections with people, escape real life for a while, have fun and feel safe.

I'm a broken record lol, but... Without you there wouldn't even be a community whatsoever. Thank you for being part of it and making it fun! ❤️

So, back to reminiscing on 2023...

If you know me, you know I'm a stubborn perfectionist. With that comes pessimism, but I’ve grown and gained a more positive outlook on life, which is something I’m proud of. It's not often I'm proud of something, striving for perfectionism and all, so admitting this is a huge achievement for me. I know I'm always gonna be a perfectionist when it comes to my art though, but that just forces me to be a better artist, so it's not all bad... As long as I don't overdo it, which is something I'm working on. My goal for 2024 is to stop being so hard on myself and upload more to Tumblr. ❤️

I started doing OC gif giveaways this year, and I definitely wanna do more, and not just gifs but VP too. I do these because I want to spread, excuse the cringe lol, happiness and positivity. I love to give back. It gives me purpose in life.

I started modding as well, which I wanted to do for months, but I was too scared because it seemed so complicated... But I did it. I'm proud I went out of my comfort zone for once.

So, Dear Everyone ❤️, once again...

Thank you for sharing your incredible art, writing, cosplay, mods, and the list goes on. I hope 2023 treated you well, if not, let's make 2024 beyond amazing! I want you to know that you make my day better no matter what is happening in my life. The simplest joke in a tag or a simple hi in a DM make me smile and laugh. And if this is how I feel, just know you make other people you've never met before feel this way too. I think that's pretty cool.

One day I might have to leave Cyberpunk 2077 behind, because that's how life goes sometimes. And that’s sad to think about... I’m not ready to put it behind me yet. At the same time it means that this community, and my OCs and yours will always have a place in my heart.

I will never forget you.

Here's to another year filled with lots of happy moments. ❤️

Bye 2023! Hello 2024!

Vicky

To everyone who made it this far, I have a little surprise... I’d like to do VP with one of your OCs. Comment on this post and tell me what you’re proud of in 2023. In a week-ish I’ll pick a random person (from the comments). :3

❤️❤️❤️

[slightly-gay-pogohammer]

I don't know if you've ever been asked this question, but I was wondering:

Did you learn to draw somewhere, or were you self-taught? Maybe you have some tips or hints for beginners? What was your favourite thing about drawing?

Sorry if this ask is too personal, but I really like your drawing style and wanted to ask some advice :D Have a good day! 🌸

it's a mix of both, really! i grew up loving art from the very beginning, like. im talking about making teletubbies fanarts and asking my dad to make me learn to draw characters from w.i.t.c.h. and tomb raider fandsndfs, according to my parents i had a pencil in my hands before i even started talking -- and that's what led me to actually learn to draw "properly", first in a art-centered high school (that. did less than good to me tbf but it was a matter of 90% of the art-related teachers being garbage) and the comics academy in torino where i think i started to truly "understand" what i wanted from my art style

if i may give some advices other than the good ol' "keep practicing and try to at least doodle something once a day", i could go with:

don't compare yourself to other artists negatively, especially those younger than you. it's probably the hardest part, but you need to "force yourself" to be positive. if you find yourself thinking "this 14 years old draws better eyes than me", go with "i love how they draw eyes, let's see if i can learn from it"

copy copy copy copyyyyy!!!!! copy from references, copy from photos, copy from comics, copy from movies. of course don't plagiarize people and then present that stuff as your own, but try to make a pose yours and learn to take pictures of your own hands, feet, face or ask people to pose if you can't find the right position

your art will look like shit to you, a LOT of times, but know that at one point you're going to quit. if you don't like what you're drawing, either quit there or restart, don't try to "fix" it because you'll just end up noticing more and more issues with it - issues that, most of the times, aren't even issues to begin with. letting go of perfectionism is very difficult, but at some point you'll have to do that--

and about perfectionism, a VERY good exercise we did in comics school was being forced to "draw fast". this isn't me telling you you NEED to draw as quick as possible, but it's an exercise that forces you to learn quickly where certain body parts go, to prioritize specific details rather than others. we had a model, and at first we had to sit there for an hour drawing her, then the hour became 30 minutes, then 10, then 5, and at the end 1. it took us a few lessons to do that, but at the end the super sketchy 1 minute copy went from ???? to a stylized human figure!!!

learn to draw realistic anatomy, and then make it your own style.

for the love of god learn prespective it's a bore it's a chore but as soon as you learn that everything becomes SO much easier

for shading, just. put a point in the canvas where the light source is and go from there!! if the light is on the right, the shades will be on the left

if you're coloring, play with the shades' colors. a good idea is to use the opposite color you use for the lights - if the light is yellow, the shades look great in purples, for example just don't use pure black unless you wanna go for a more dark/noir aesthetic oh my god

professional comic artists retrace a lot of their backgrounds. i'm js. use this as you wish :)

learn to draw different body shapes!!!! like getting out of the anime phase of "fat people are just like thin people but with a huge belly" can be difficult, but it's very satisfying

go out of your comfort zone. if you have problems drawing horses, spend a few days learning to draw horses. take some pics and try to understand them.

body proportions are so fun once you realize how so many things are the same. generally speaking, your spread hand is as long as your face, your feet and half the size of your arm; the outer corner of your eye is at the same level of your ear, and the inner corner is perpendicular to your nose and the corner of your mouth; if you leave your arm on your side, your elbow is at the same level of your bellybutton, and your fingers reach halfway your thighs. it's so fun

and yea, i can't stress it enough. it'll take time. art is painful, art is stressful, art can be discouraging. take a step at the time, accept some failures and celebrate any good thing - even the smaller ones. you learned to draw hands today, and you should be proud. i tried to draw a cat for the first time and it looks wonky, but the cat you will draw tomorrow will look better. i believe in you

[moodymelanist]

there are two ways we can do this (i know which would be more fun)

Happy day 4 of @sjmromanceweek, everyone! Venturing a little outside my comfort zone with this one and I hope you enjoy<3

shoutout to @c-e-d-dreamer for the title and @creativepromptsforwriting for the prompt!

Summary: Eris and Azriel are traveling for work, but the hotel they’re staying in has a mixup with their rooms, and they’re forced to share a bed.

Read on AO3 here!

♡♡♡♡♡ Eris

“There’s no way that’s possible,” Eris said. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Azriel said at the same time. 

Eris and Azriel worked for the same consulting firm — Night Industries — and had been forced to travel together for the project they’d been working on for half a year. It had been bad enough dealing with Azriel’s snark mostly through a computer screen, but dealing with the other man had been a true test of Eris’ patience. He was huge, he was even ruder in person, and who the fuck needed that many muscles in the first place?

Whatever. Eris had very much been looking forward to decompressing in their very much separate hotel rooms, but through some kind of mistake, it appeared the hotel had placed them in the same room. 

“I’m very sorry, sirs,” the man working the front desk replied. His name tag read Kallon, and he did not sound very sorry. “There’s been a mix-up with the booking, and there’s nothing I can do.”

“I will give you a hundred dollars to make this go away,” Eris offered, ignoring the dirty look Azriel threw his way. 

“I can’t accept that,” Kallon responded, bored. “But even if I could, there aren’t any other rooms available. There’s a convention going on—”

“Five hundred,” Eris interrupted, more than ready to be done with this conversation. He wasn’t above flaunting his wealth to get what he wanted, and what he really wanted was to be away from Azriel’s brooding presence. 

Kallon’s hands continued moving across the keyboard as if he hadn’t said anything at all. “Like I was saying, you’ll be staying in room 902. Breakfast starts at 8, and you have full access to all our amenities. Here are your keys.”

“Thank you, Kallon,” Azriel told him. “Have a good night.”

“You too,” Kallon chirped back with a self-satisfied smirk. 

Eris scowled at Azriel, but took the other hotel key anyway. If he couldn’t get a night’s peace, at least he could take a nice shower and relax in the hotel bed while pretending Azriel wasn’t there. 

“You know, it costs nothing to be kind,” Azriel said once they were in the elevator. Eris saw the way Azriel was smirking and braced himself for the incoming dig. “But I’m glad you think I’m worth at least five hundred dollars.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Velasquez.” Eris leaned against the elevator walls and resolutely ignored the way Azriel filled out his dark blue suit. “The only reason I offered that much is because money isn’t a concern.”

Azriel snorted. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Vanserra.”

They didn’t speak again until they reached the hotel room, and Eris sped up so he could be the one to open the door. Azriel snorted from behind him, but Eris didn’t care what that smug bastard thought about his admittedly-petty antics. As long as Eris came out on top, anything Azriel had to say about it didn’t matter. 

The room was gorgeous as usual, and Eris was pleased to see they’d been placed in one of the suites. The second he stepped into the bedroom, though, any goodwill he’d managed to build up in the last thirty seconds disappeared as he realized there was only one bed. 

Granted, it was a king sized bed, but it was only one bed. For two grown men to share. 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Eris exclaimed at the sight. He let go of his rolling suitcase and turned on his heel, fully intending on marching back down to the front desk to complain even though he knew it wouldn’t accomplish anything, but Azriel’s body stopped him from leaving the room. “Are you seeing this?”

“I see it,” Azriel replied coolly. He looked down the few inches that separated them and raised a dark eyebrow. “Are you really going to go complain about it?”

“Yes,” Eris hissed, ignoring the incredulous look on Azriel’s face. “This is absurd—”

“Yeah, but it’s damn near midnight,” Azriel cut him off without missing a beat. Eris scowled at the interruption but allowed him to keep talking anyway. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve been ready to get out of this suit for hours. We can get it fixed in the morning.” 

“But—” Eris spluttered, still riled up.

“Eris,” Azriel said seriously. Azriel so rarely said Eris’ actual name that it made it more difficult than Eris cared to admit to stay focused. “Just take a shower and get in the fucking bed. We’re grown men. We can handle sharing for one night.”

“I’m going down to complain first thing tomorrow morning,” Eris grumbled. He turned and reached for his suitcase, bringing it over to the right side of the bed. “And I’m complaining to Rhysand about this.”

“Don’t tell me you’re that mad about having someone in your bed,” Azriel responded, his tone turning slightly mocking. “I know it’s rare for you, but surely it’s happened before.”

Eris contemplated throwing one of his very expensive shoes at Azriel’s head, but he didn’t think it was worth scuffing the leather. “Of course it’s happened before. Don’t be ridiculous.”

Granted, it had been a while since Eris had let someone warm his bed, but Azriel didn’t need to know that. He decided to retreat to the bathroom before Azriel could come up with another way to insult him, detaching his briefcase from his carry on and rolling the tiny suitcase into the bathroom with him rather than waste time digging through it for his toiletries.

Once he was safely behind a locked door, Eris took his time in the bathroom just to be a dick. The shower was huge and the hot water was endless, and by the time he finally emerged in a cloud of steam, a muscle in Azriel’s jaw was working overtime. 

“Took you long enough,” Azriel muttered. He’d loosened his tie and taken off his jacket altogether, and Eris had to force himself to look away from the borderline obscene way he was leaning back in his chair. God, didn’t he realize how he looked, sitting there with his legs spread wide enough for someone to crawl in between them?

“It’s been a long day,” Eris said cheerfully, forcing himself to pay attention to the conversation instead of letting his mind wander further. “I earned it.”

Azriel’s expression suggested he exactly what he’d thought Eris earned, but he just rolled his eyes before disappearing into the bathroom. He took just as long as Eris had, if not longer, and Eris used the opportunity of the empty room to get himself situated. He hung up his clothes for tomorrow, organized his nightstand just the way he wanted it, and even went to fill up the ice bucket so his water would be cold.

When Azriel came out of the bathroom, Eris was doing his best to appear nonchalant while he relaxed against the headboard. He definitely didn’t notice the way Azriel’s thin undershirt clung to all that golden-brown skin, and he certainly didn’t take another look at the way the other man’s thighs flexed underneath his loose shorts.

“Let’s just go to bed,” Eris said shortly before Azriel could. Azriel thankfully just nodded, and after a few minutes of Azriel shifting around his side of the room, he motioned for Eris to turn off the lamp.

Eris shifted under the covers while Azriel did the same, the two of them laying in complete silence for a few minutes. Eris felt like his mind was traveling at a million miles per hour between all the things he had to get done tomorrow and the way he was sharing a bed with someone he honestly didn’t know very well outside of their limited, albeit snarky, interactions. 

“Stop moving,” Azriel growled from his side of the bed. 

Eris stopped his fidgeting, stunned into compliance for a few moments before he regained his composure. “Fuck you, I have a lot on my mind.”

“I’m trying to sleep,” Azriel snapped. “I don’t care what’s on your mind. Stop fucking moving around so much before I make you.”

“What are you going to do?” Eris snapped right back. Even though he could feel those hazel eyes on him, it was much easier to be bold with the lights off. “Cuddle me into submission?”

To Eris’ complete shock, that’s exactly what Azriel did. Eris cursed under his breath the entire time, but that didn’t stop those ridiculously muscled arms from reaching out and physically dragging him to the other side of the bed. Eris let out a completely undignified noise at being manhandled so easily, but Azriel either didn’t hear it or didn’t care.

“Was that so hard?” Azriel practically purred into Eris’ ear.

Eris could think of something that was going to be hard if Azriel kept this routine up, but he thankfully had the presence of mind not to embarrass himself further. “No.”

“That’s what I thought.” Azriel tightened his grip across Eris’ waist, his hips grinding into Eris’ ass as he tried to make himself more comfortable. At least, that was the only reasonable explanation for what Azriel was doing. “Stop thinking so loud.”

“I’m trying,” Eris ground out, “but it’s a little hard with your dick on my ass like that.”

Azriel just chuckled lowly, the sound doing way more for Eris than he cared to admit. “Sounds like you’d rather it be somewhere else.”

“I never said that—” Eris stammered out, his face burning. Azriel was ridiculous, that was absolutely not what Eris was intending, and he was just trying to rile Eris up as per usual. “What are you even—”

“You think I don’t notice the way you look at me?” Azriel interrupted Eris’ protests. “You can’t decide whether you want to hit me or fuck me. It’s adorable.”

“That’s idiotic,” Eris snapped, ignoring the low chuckle Azriel issued in response. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“I don’t?” Azriel asked. He sounded like he was enjoying this way too much. “Tell me to stop, then.”

Eris choked on his next breath as the hand Azriel had wrapped around his waist began a slow descent toward the waistband of Eris’ pajama pants. “Azriel.”

“Eris,” Azriel replied, teasing. His hand slowed as he played with the waistband of Eris’ pants, fingers dipping shallowly underneath. “If you don’t want this, tell me to stop.”

Eris did no such thing, and if anyone noticed Azriel walking funny the next morning, they were at least too polite to say anything about it. 

tag list: @perseusannabeth | @bookstantrash | @charming-butt-insane | @oversizedbats | @melphss | @sv0430 | @podemechamardek | @autumnbabylon | @live-the-fangirl-life | @julemmaes | @that-little-red-head | @jmoonjones | @sayosdreams | @thewayshedreamed | @hiimheresworld | @brieq | @houseofcalores | @swankii-art-teacher | @nerdperson524 | @snickerdoodlechittybangbang | @imsointobooks | @nesquik-arccheron | @sweet-pea1 | @champanheandluxxury | @dustjacketmusings | @mrs-shadowsinger04 | @unlikelypersonalknight1 | @goddess-aelin | @arinbelle | @talkfantasytome | @simpingfornestaarcheron | @duskandstarlight | @letstakethedawn | @vidalinav | @c-e-d-dreamer | @dealfea | @katekatpattywack | @burningsnowleopard

[donnerpartyofone]

horrorphones...

Like many of the cretinous shut-ins who follow this blog, I hate phone calls. If you call me on the phone without an approved appointment I will assume that you are experiencing a deadly emergency. You will scare the shit out of me and I may not even be relieved if there is no deadly emergency. For me to talk on the phone, I practically always have to write a little script, even if we are very close personal friends. I must have a physical list of talking points in case my mind goes totally blank from the enormous pressure and I forget my entire life. I usually have to have at least one drink for calls lasting longer than a minute or two. I would probably be most comfortable conducting all social business from behind a Late Show desk on which I could reassuringly tap my stack of helpful cue cards. I will write you very long personal letters. I will text and DM with you at all hours of the night. I just cannot talk to you on the phone. The phone fries my brain. Actually, I feel extremely nervous even after a phone call, even if everything went well, even if it was super fun. I kind of have to sleep it off.

Unfortunately, not all people communicate in non-phone ways. I have one best friend (I'm an adult, I don't put the top people in a hierarchy as if they all serve exactly the same purpose and some are better than others; I have a couple of verified "best friends") who is just too much of a free spirit to be really into the internet, or to be brooding over long written documents. I gotta talk to her on the phone or she won't feel loved, she'll feel detached and isolated. I love to talk to her, but I still need to get in the like phone zone in order to not act like the total fucking outer space alien that I actually am. Being me is very taxing.

But now I have this old friend, see. An old friend and also a friend who is old. Actually I have no idea how old he is, he was old when I met him. He gave me my first post-college job (my first "real job" ever, I was and remain an unemployable mess) at his comic book store, where I stayed for many years. The whole crew there was very tight. He is a cool, smart, funny, cultured, frustrating, infuriating, offensive, secretly caring and wonderful sort of person. We went through a lot together, including several years of a random customer stalking and harassing me. We dealt with the police together. We served the dregs of society together. Sometimes we hated each other. But he is a major reason that I survived my 20s.

Several years ago he was in a freak accident where he was pinned under a heavy piece of furniture in his apartment for days. It could have killed him. He already had a well-developed case of Parkinson's, I don't know if that's related. Through a series of different events, he wound up moving into an assisted living place on the other side of the country, near one of his brothers. I'm sure he hates it. Every year on Halloween, which is a little bit before his birthday, I send him a hand-drawn card featuring classic comics characters doing all sorts of demented things, along with a little update letter. One year I got a letter back asking me to call him. OH NO, I thought. I didn't call.

Yesterday was a big, very challenging, in some ways very rewarding day. When I was finally all out of tasks I decided to turn my brain fully off and become spectacularly stoned. I was well zooted when my fucking phone rang. I quickly Googled the number, and I'm pretty sure it was the assisted living facility where my friend is. I didn't pick up. They called back once, but left no message. I felt pretty bad, though I also knew that in my current state it would have been a huge disaster if I answered. What if he died? I thought, knowing that he has a lot of siblings and I wouldn't have been that phone call, and also if it were important they would have left a message or kept trying. I forced myself not to worry about it by popping a couple of Benadryl and making it an early night.

I think I have to call back though. I might regret it if I don't. I have been thinking about this for a long time. I have all sorts of worries. What if he's incoherent now? What if we can't understand each other? What if I have nothing to say? What if he IS coherent but he wants to say terrible things about politics (a life-long constant for him, I don't know if he even cares as much about politics as he does about trolling people)? But also what if he like dies and I have to sit around thinking about how selfish I am for never calling him for all eternity? I'm sure I'm the only person making him original personalized art for his birthday every year, but does that really get me out of everything else?

So the point of this post is to somehow force myself to call him. I have way too much shit to do and I am preparing for a lot of stressful social things with strangers and I need to stop being unemployed and I am cramping up a storm. But I think I also have to make the phone call. Maybe I will do such a bad job that I never have to do it again! Pray for me, pray for the sweet saving grace of personal failure.

[charlieslowartsies]

RAHH it’s so cool to see that other people are rereading kgau too, cuz it’s done nothing but lurk in my mind ever since I first found it a few years back, AND that’s what IVE been doing too and I’m having a blast!!

Any commentary on Danny or his character? Or how you came up with him as Jeremy’s kid? Idc I just love that little dude he’s so cool

I often wonder how many times people have reread. If we go by hit count on ao3, I THINK GS or DS has been hit the most? What's funny is they're older and they've been completed for a hit minute, and they're around 10k hits. LW is ongoing, incomplete, and arguably one of my faster completed fics and it's at 10k too lol. I have Danny Fitzgerald comments I suppose! I am VERY tired so I hope these make some semblance of sense xc

Danny was created because I kind of felt Mike had grown used to his surroundings very well. I liked that about Mike! One of the blanket themes of KGA is of course, Found Family. But...I also wanted to explore a more 'holy shit! living robots' reaction. I also needed someone Mike wouldn't LET the gang bully/be cold to.

While Mike worked on ridding them of that learned fear, in the meantime he focused on hiring people that were chill and wouldn't give him more headaches.

So I needed a teenager I decided. I was very hesitant to make him at all. I'm not a huge fan of OCs when it comes to my own writing. It complicates things, and if I wanted a story of OCs I would make that. (Reading them is more fun ^^)

However, the kga series proved I could make something I liked well enough from scratch. Like I've said before, the content we had for Mike Schmidt's character was, yanno, zilch. He might as well have been an oc for a while, until more games and lore appeared over the years. (Obviously KGA does not follow the 'correct' lore. I'm 100% okay with that.)

I hemed and hawed a lot with just keeping Jeremy alive and making Ghost Strings star him, but a fic I loved reading at the time also had an amazing Jeremy and I didn't feel I could write my 'own' version and do it justice. Jeremy as well, if anything, would have a much darker history with the restaurant. Danny was essentially a blank canvas, while still having a reason for being there. He was a fraidy cat--rightly so--but he was determined and he forced himself constantly out of his comfort zone. (I'm sure GS would have been a much different story if Mangle had been active/in the restaurant.)

So, Jeremy had to go. And then I realized I wanted to work on death and loss and that kind of pain.

Danny obviously joins the restaurant for deeply painful and close to selfish reasons, but he's still someone we root for. He's just a dumb teenager looking for something of his father's, not realizing he's the reason he has so little to remember the man by.

All we are made up of is memories. Ours and others, things we take from important people in our lives.

Danny's theme/lesson in GS was 'Even bad memories have a place in a Good life' after all.

Danny's presence in the story helped me explore that mystery, and grief, and what happens when we try to heal ourselves, or when we rely on others to help us, like Bonnie helped Danny. It became a great parallel for Michael/Max Afton, since we learn in Last Shift, YEARS later in the story, this wasn't the first time Bonnie kept something safe for someone out of sheer love and devotion, like Max's beloved cassettes and music-tastes. This was despite Bonnie and the gang being so deeply hurt by Max's attack on them, but he still held on to the Good alongside the Bad.

And of course, giving Bonnet to Danny seemed...so fucken cute and fun and easy. She needed someone, he needed someone, and they just clicked.

My favorite thing about Danny is that everyone liked him so much more than I expected, even just in his first fic. I pursued Finding Freddy with the best intentions, and as hard as that fic was for me, I do not regret making it a Danny!centric fic. It also helps that when he shows up in Lies Within he's clearly done lots of growing, but he's still very mortal and he's very able to die. He still tries to help the restaurant, choosing to embrace the mantle of Day Guard that his father held in the Toys' era. That continued loyalty to Mike ends up being a pretty powerful weapon against the Virus.

Also something I need to explore more is Max is such a puffy little trash cat over Mike when Danny comes onto the scene, although he does lower his hackles within a few months, (and by the time of Lies Within) he's guarded and cautious around Danny. However once Max decides Danny belongs with them, that's it and Max considers him family as much as he's attached to Mike.

One thing I hadn't expected was liking the broship between Ness and Danny that's cropping up in LW. I absolutely want to mull that over more! Vanessa obviously has different...ties and hangups... to Bonnie models, but they really are interesting foils for each other. Esp considering Danny's choices in his older stories and her choices now, including the ones she might still have to make ;)

[tsaritza-mika]

Unpopular Opinion #3

Okay...so this might ruffle some feathers, but I still really feel it needs to be said. As always, if you don’t like what I have to say, just keep scrolling. I am a full believer in curating your own internet experience, and if you find yourself upset about a random opinion, please just leave and find something that makes you happy. You deserve it, and I promise that you will never hear me advocate otherwise.

Now then... Let’s talk a bit about our favorite mountain man. Shall we?

I see a lot of posts, especially as of late, that really go hard on the way Muriel’s route dealt with his various issues. Now, yes, Muriel is not one of my top LIs, he’s jut not the personality type that really gels with me, but I love him as much as I do all six of them for different reasons. I also acknowledge that his route isn’t perfect, but I honestly don’t think it’s nearly as bad as other people automatically jump to. Muriel has a metric fucking ton of issues, which include severe lack of self esteem, trauma that links to both those self esteem issues and his time in Vesuvia’s arena, depression, and some fun little sprinklings of Nihilism just for extra flavor. And all of that is just from a pure amateur observation. I’m not a psychologist, nor will I ever claim to be, but from the little bit that I know from former college classes and being friends with people who have experienced trauma from various forms of abuse, Muriel has all of these issues, and likely more that I’m not immediately familiar with.

A good amount of people in the fandom seem to believe that a better way for Muriel’s route to go would have had him ending up being more forceful in standing up to Lucio, really digging into him for the harm that he caused and is still causing, and more of coming out of his shell than he did. Now, while that would be a more dramatic take, you’ve gotta keep something important in mind: give or take a few years, Muriel has been dealing with most of these issues since he was at least around 6-8 years old. If we assume he’s maybe somewhere along the lines of 26-28, that’s twenty years of issues in an increasingly hostile situation. A single year alone of that much negativity is likely to leave some pretty impressive mental scars, let alone the possibility of twenty or more.

People who experience trauma will process and react to it differently, this is true, but to say that it’s OOC to have Muriel just be only a little more talkative and at ease with others outside of MC and Asra, strikes me as those who aren’t very familiar with how trauma can actually work. The entire ‘stick it to them’ fantasy seems great and totally cathartic in theory, but when victims of abuse and trauma actually have that chance, more often than not, I’ve only ever known them to prefer not wanting to be anywhere near their tormentors. Muriel actually being comfortable with himself, speaking up more, but still very much wanting his distance from everyone is a HUGE step in his healing process, and I honestly don’t think people give him enough credit for that. 

Muriel has been exploited and manipulated, verbally and likely physically abused, and all of that we could apply to JUST the time he was known in Vesuvia under the mantle of ‘The Scourge of The South’. We see in the Travel at Night tale that he already dealt with excess stress and fear from traveling through a war-zone at a very young age, where he says he even distinctly remembers hearing Lucio enjoying himself as he killed others. He’s already terrified by roughly age 12 when Lucio picks him out of the other street kids. He’s very aware that Lucio would enjoy hunting and killing him, and for a child to be aware of this, that alone is gonna fuck him up somethin’ fierce for a long time. Hell, when Lucio points him out from the other kids, he’s so afraid of him and what he knows Lucio is capable of, that his arms and legs go numb, and he can’t move. And later when he’s talking to Asra, if chosen, the response he gives Asra when asked about what he would do with magic is to make himself invisible, the very thing he’d wanted since the start of that tale. He wanted to be left alone, not deal with those kids who wanted to hurt others and steal, or be noticed by Lucio.

Muriel even straight up tells MC and Julian when they visit him in the forest during Julian’s route that he asked to have the gift of being forgotten. If he was forgotten as soon as he left someone’s sight, he wouldn’t be exploited anymore, and he wouldn’t be forced to take lives in exchange for keeping his most precious person safe anymore. To Muriel, deeply set in his traumatized and self loathing state, it was the perfect solution. Being forgotten meant that he wouldn’t take up space, that no one would force him to hurt or scare others just to exist, and that Asra, the only person who had ever told him he was worth it and more, wouldn’t be taken from him. 

You don’t just magically get better when your tormentor is gone or gets what they deserve, and confronting your abuser is not always going to be the right answer that puts you on the road to healing those mental scars. Muriel is far from cured of his issues by the end of his route. If anything, the end of his route is just the start of his even longer road to recovery and being able to fully enjoy and embrace life without fear that he’s taking up space and isn’t wanted. He’s just gotten better about it all. People who experience trauma can take years to even begin to feel comfortable in their own skin, but Muriel learning that he has value, that others value him and want him around without asking for anything in return, and to learn that others will sacrifice for you because they want your happiness instead of some leverage on something you can do for them; there is just so much beauty in the subtlety of that, and I honestly don’t think it gets the attention it rightfully deserves.

[aerialworms-art]

October wrap-up

So! October is at an end! And I have not finished Spocktober/Trektober. Let's see how I did!

My goals for the month were:

To have fun :3

To get used to finishing drawings

To get used to posting them, too!

To have fun :3

To improve my sketching and lineart skills

To end up with a bunch of finished drawings (of Spock!!!) :3

To let go of a bit of my perfectionism

TO HAVE FUN :3

So how do I think I did?

Having fun:

I had a lot of fun with it this year! In previous years, I've pretty much immediately devolved into an anxious mess because there were too many options and I bit off more than I could chew. This time around, thanks to my guidelines (only inking, not spending too much time on each day, sketching and thumbnailing in advance), it was a lot easier to let loose and have fun thinking up ideas and enjoying the process. Plus, I let my friends know I was doing it this time around and got encouragement and support, which was lovely.

Getting used to finishing drawings:

I did better at this than I thought I would! There are several drawings I've finished this month that I would have given up on if not for this goal. Do I think they were all my best work? No. Did I learn from the process? Yes! And some of the ones that have gotten the most notes were ones I thought no-one would like and struggled to finish. So! I also figured out new ways of motivating myself to finish things, which is also very helpful.

Getting used to posting things:

Also went better than I thought! Although I didn't manage to maintain a cushion of queued posts like I wanted to, the response I've gotten from actually posting my art has been amazing! I've gained several new followers (hello!!) and gotten so many nice comments, and went from being afraid of posting anything to tentatively looking forward to people's reactions, which is a huge improvement for me. Getting that accountability of posting publicly also helped keep me going when I felt like giving up - seeing my friends laugh when I showed them my silly comics or getting nice comments really made me feel like sharing my art is worthwhile. So thank you to everyone who reblogged my art, commented, liked, etc. I'm glad you did!

Improving sketching and lineart:

I definitely think I improved my art skills. Getting into the habit of thumbnailing really helped take the pressure off the sketching phase, and trying so many different ideas pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to try drawing things I wasn't so confident on - look how many hands I drew!!!! As for the lineart, I think I've gained a bit more experience in using pens, although I did buy a whole new set of them halfway through the month which put me on a new learning curve. Lineart's never been a huge favourite of mine, and I do miss using my tablet to do lineless art, but the nature of the challenge did help me to loosen up and experiment to keep my mind engaged the whole time.

To end up with a bunch of finished drawings of Spock:

Check! I have 14 finished drawings, with another four sketched and needing inking, plus a whole load of thumbnails to work from in future. I may go back and add colour to some of the days for funsies, but there's several that I can just put on my wall as-is and be proud :)

To let go of a bit of my perfectionism:

I definitely did! Like I said, there's a few of the ones I've posted that I'm not too proud of and know I could do better on, but I've spent all month purposely smacking my hand away from perfectionism, and I know I've tried my best given my limitations. I'm still proud of myself for getting this far, and for posting when I was anxious, and for improving my skills, and now I get to stick up my art on my wall and be proud of it! I'm not magically cured by any means, but I do have a bit more evidence that perfection is not a good goal to pursue, so I'm going to keep this experience in mind for the future.

So what now?

I do have thumbnails for almost all of the rest of the prompts. I am doing NaNoWriMo this month, and I have a digital piece that I want to finish for the 5th (holy shit. three years.) So I think I'll take a little pause on these prompts, but I don't want to stop. I'll keep coming back to them, and keep posting them, until I run out of prompts or motivation, whichever comes first. I've really enjoyed seeing people's reactions to my Star Trek art, especially the comics! I also have a backlog of SPN fanart I want to post, so I'll probably queue some of that to come out soon.

TL;DR: Watch this space!

And if you've been following along/commenting on/reblogging my art this month (or anytime), thank you so much! It's folks like you that make sharing art worthwhile!

[unfilteredrealities]

I’m alive update

Life is bleh , ups and downs as usual.

My psoriasis is currently fucking me up and the lovely (not lovely) R.A and the PsA as well. WHYYYY THE FUCK is only my ring finger from my right hand fucked with psoriasis and my pointing, middle and ring toe as well but the rest of the toes and fingers are fine????

Not speaking of the normal patches I have on my legs currently those are normal by now bcs I get them since I am 2yo so nothing new.

Oh and the psoriasis thought it’s fun to flare up on my forehead as well and my left eyelid and left under eye??? wtf bro 😭

I had to go some days ago to the work health department for my annual check if I am fit to work and the lady gave me the ok but I had to tell her about my diagnoses since last year and ugh she was asking me if I’m seeing a dermatologist for my psoriasis and my psoriatic arthritis and I was like lady I have this shit since I am 2 , let me live don’t give me advice, I don’t need any rn I am in active audhd burnout so shh just give me that damn paper and let me go 😭

In other news I’m apparently very competent at my job , that much that I got chosen along the teamleaders to do this one training and I’m scared and hope I won’t fuck up bcs my imposter syndrome is like u bet ur smart press x for doubt 🧐

Anyway so work goes well I suppose, so far no complaints by the higher ups

Besides of all that my depression is strong and I actively feel suicidal again but I’m pushing through out of spite and yeah the naive hope that it will get better or I will have again better days with less flare ups and chronic issues going on

I’m actively ignoring certain things rn (cleaning my depression room) and it is stressing me out but I’m ignoring it bcs it’s so much work and I am ashamed to ask for help or admit I need help :)) it feels like barb wire around my throat

My tooth hurts bcs I have bruxism and I grind my teeth and I had a very subconsciously exhausting week in my sleep that I ground my teeth so hard it made my jaw tense up badly and almost lock up :))

Sigh, I miss my cat so much 😭 I am still mourning him 💔 😞 fuck severe renal insufficiency and not showing symptoms until it’s too late

Positive things are that my bf has a Nintendo Switch lite and Animal Crossing new horizons and we are both playing and visiting our islands and he keeps me cute notes each time he visited my island and me too on his , that I am almost 4 years handling this job and I didn’t have a proper mental breakdown yet or a meltdown, i was social lately and went to the baptism of a former classmate/ a friend of mines child and i met other former classmates there and we talked , I got out of my comfort zone and some days later visited former classmate at her home and it was wild but it was good.

Oh I forgot to mention about how big my urge to sh is again and I fucking hate it , plus I randomly found the kinder suprise egg where my blades are inside :)) my mom thought she hid them well, well hiding them in the closet where the board games are , wasn’t too smart.

Anyway I’m still going strong on like 4 years of no sh

Another dopamine moment was me getting myself as a Christmas present the Apple Watch SE 2024!!! I found it reduced at 200 euros when normally it’s like almost 300 euros

It’s so fancy and I’m glad I can Monitore my health better now bcs my old watch the Xiaomi Mi Band 7 kinda sucked at the end and stopped working properly so it was time to move on. At this point I’m getting slowly corrupted by Apple tbh 🤣 First it was the 2nd hand iPad and the Apple pen , then the iPhone and now the Apple Watch gg

These days I am hitting my word limit faster than normal and it sucks especially if u work in customer support for a bank and u have around 60 calls a day and you have to force yourself to speak even if you start to stutter and to speak monotone and all that

I’m sorry for this huge ramble update

Hope you guys enjoy me yapping and being raw about how life is raw dogging me 😭

If you read till here I guess rate my yapping or leave me a life update from your life ❤️

Thanks for reading through this!

[bubmyg]

I’ve been into BTS since 2014 and yes most (the bulk I would say) have never seen them or treated them as actual human beings. And you’re right on about the fact that they treat them as dolls playing pretend to make them into whatever they want. They’re not people in their eyes, just objects. It’s very much giving - I like you, I’ve given you my money, I did things for you therefore you must do everything I say and be just like me otherwise die. That is so mind boggling to me. It reminds me of men who become friends with girls and do all these things for them because they like them and then the girl tells them they don’t like them and so they become pissed off because they were “friend zoned” and now they hurt the girls or name call because they didn’t get what they want. Pretty gross to me. When someone disappoints me I don’t sit there and be little them because they don’t align with my views. I simply walk away because I’m not going to force someone to be how I am or believe what I believe just like I wouldn’t want someone to do that to me. That type of behavior pushes people away not makes them come to their side which then becomes worse in the long run. Sounds to me like people need to learn to walk away from the group if it’s that bad and start being fans of people who believe in what they believe.

These psycho “fans” are pushing people away from the agenda because of their behavior instead of trying to educate and unite to bring peace. Even they are the reason I’m losing hope not because of some music group of men who should have never been seen as idols but like the rest of us just as humans. Or maybe I’ve just lost hope (no pun intended) in everything.

If being into BTS is making people feel some type of way then it’s time to walk away. Being into K-Pop is not a need, it’s a want. We won’t die without it.

this isn’t necessarily the point i was trying to make but i think i kind of agree with this and i kind of don’t.

this talking point generally is used to absolve them of any accountability, which i think is a very important part of treating them as humans. the answer to someone w a huge platform doing wrong should not be that everyone who disagrees just leave. like the “unstan” argument is more often than not weaponized so that certain factions of the fandom feel better in their complicity. i am always going to be of the opinion that they should speak out and use their platforms positively always for anything. in no way do i ever want to imply that they shouldn’t do the right thing

on the same token, i think that a lot of activism in fandom spaces has teetered into unhelpful and diluted territory for months. activism as a whole is constant work. it should not be fun or comfortable. others who are privileged enough to be ignorant to what’s going on should not be gifted with comfort. however, at some point, i think u simply have to accept that maybe they’re not going to do as you want, specifically not to the degree that ur organized, deeply educated circles are hoping for. and if that bothers u to this degree for this long, ur energy is probably best spent elsewhere

[panchams]

long time, no see

happy 2024! the website layout on here has changed so dramatically that i can barely recognize it. i hate to admit that it took me a couple of minutes to find my followers...

anyways, hey! it's been a while. i jumped ship off of here... god... who knows how long that was? i genuinely feel like it was a permanent move circa 2015. but that's not what im here to talk about.

after the loss of twitter circles, i've struggled finding a place to put my thoughts. don't worry, this blog definitely won't be it but i thought it would be fun to put a little reflection on here as my final post (probably forever?) on this funny blogging website that i decided to use back in 2009 (I'm pretty sure my archives go that far back.... which is certainly something i cherish to see how much I've changed)

so many of you either have known me as eddie, edward, mukuro, bajime, hajime..... lord knows this list goes on. im eddie! or if you want to use my online user, i go by haunter now. a lot has changed since i stopped using this platform regularly! i think i hard quit tumblr maybe around 2016? you can see on my profile that i came back and reblogged some things, but i think it was around the time of my twitter bot's birth (@nintendoqt) when i really stopped using it permanently.

i'm writing this as a reflection of where i've been and where i came from when i first started using this funny website. im officially a couple of months away from graduating college with a bachelors in computer science! that means I'll be a real deal certified software engineer this coming may.

but don't you worry! i got some real time experience as a software engineer last year, right before my senior year began. i worked as a software engineer for the military/government! yeah, that's right... tumblr user Panchams was a military scientist (intern, but it counts). crazy right? and in just a couple of months i'll be hitting the biggest milestone of my life so far which is college graduation.

back when i began this blog, it was towards the end of 2009 and my myspace girlfriend at the time karina recommended i join because the community from our beloved myspace was jumping ship. i jumped in and well, the rest is history.

2009 eddie was a fidgity, undiagnosed autistic relentless kid. it's kind of crazy looking back on that era because i'm so proud of kid me going out of my way to socialize by going to conventions at every possible event he could go to. i would even wear cosplay and force myself out of my comfort zone to talk and take pictures with complete strangers.

to summarize my academic journey to save some space here, i really sucked at math. my math classes were so horrible, i actually got placed senior year in high school in the lowest math possible for seniors (something like college math help course or something, while the other kids were doing calc 1 or 2). but look at me now, baby! i went from pre-algebra all the way to calculus 2 in college, as well as discrete mathematics (possibly the hardest math class anyone outside of a math degree could ever take). i passed them all! it wasn't easy. i failed calculus 1 on my first try. my community college professor even told our entire class in a very vague way that we should commit suicide via bullet if we didn't pass it cuz we would never pass if we couldn't pass his class lol.

caught myself yapping there for a second. anyways, i really just wanted to say that i was a fidgety autistic child with such huge dreams and wonders. you can see throughout my entire blog's lifecycle that i've felt a special connection to characters like pokemon's red, sasuke from naruto, mukuro from katekyo, cloud from final fantasy 7 et etc.... you get it!

i think my life could've easily been one of complacency and laziness. after all, i am the only one in my immediate family to have attended college or even be in STEM whatsoever. my father was a horse trainer and my mom did random odd jobs/cleaning jobs as a kid. i could've easily been stuck forever in poverty and never aspired to do anything with my life. outlets like tumblr, gaia, twitter, youtube, the list goes on but these shaped me in ways that i am beyond thankful for.

as well as pokemon and the other games i mentioned, they gave me a lifeline. those characters i hooked onto as a kid which basically shaped how my personality is... i genuinely wouldn't have it any other way.

what is blud yapping about!!!! i end this weird ramble yapping session to update where my life is and where im headed. I've mentioned graduation (LETS FUCKING GOOO!) but i am beyond excited to be a big boy software engineer (no intern in the title!)

i'm pining for the bay area after graduation. i know, i sound like a lunatic going straight to san francisco as a new grad but.... you only live once! how cliche right, a new software dev moving to san francisco... the story writes itself.

don't worry, i have backup plans! if i can't make enough I'll be sure to live amongst the cows in arkansas (maybe oregon?! who knows.) big things are coming into my life, an entire chapter of my life finishing (the college years? academy saga?) and i'm just happy that i kept pushing. i'm glad i kept trucking on and will have some form of a tangible life that i will create with my own two hands.

happy new years! i don't think anyone will read this but... thank you! thanks tumblr for everything. maybe one day I'll go through and read my #priv or whatever i used to signify as my private posts here eventually. that day won't be today, but maybe when im in my SF apartment?!

have a great year, a great life, and so on. i don't think I'll ever update this blog again. thanks for everything and much love from me!

linktr.ee/haunterz

[fabbyf1]

🎀 ☯️

🎀give yourself a compliment about your own writing

oh, bestie. you would do this to me on main.

I am proud of how far I've come with writing my filthy ass porn.

When I first started writing smut, I was so awkward about it and hated every word, but I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and now??? I'm slutting around town havin' a blasttttt baaabbbbbyy!

I really enjoy how I've been able to explore different tones and kinks without losing my values. (i.e. I will always bring consent into the fic, and there will always be Feelings™ involved, even in pwp. I'm a huge slut for feelings™)

So basically, all of this is to say that I enjoy my filth and do a good job at it. Someone's gotta be gettin' us all there, ya know? Times are rough.

☯️how do you think engaging with each other through tumblr, twitter, comments, kudos, creates healthy fandom experiences? How do you deal with that if you're not a social person/experience social anxiety?

It definitely builds community! I love getting to know my followers and readers. I can't begin to explain how happy it makes me when people tell me how much they enjoyed my fic, especially when they give examples of the part(s) they loved the most. It helps me when I'm writing my next fic to know what parts people enjoyed from the last one!

It's also so fun to have people to talk about common interests with. I've been an F1 fan for soooooo long, but until Netflix came around, there weren't many other US fans. (And definitely not in my small circle of people.) Internet Strangers are the only people I could ever talk about F1 with, which is So Important.

As for how to deal with it if you have social anxiety...

I'm not gonna lie. I get very overwhelmed with social interactions on this site. I'm an introvert irl and can easily get introverted on the internet as well, especially when holding too many conversations at once.

Whenever that happens, I force myself to log off and ignore my inbox/chats for a while. (Or whine about it to the besties who are exempt from "socially draining" me.)

To all my lovely followers, please never take it personally if I take a long time to respond! I'm jussa lil rat with social anxiety! I'm also on Pacific Time in the US, and most of my m00ts are not. 🥹 I promise I don't want you to STOP messaging me!!!! Just bear with my rat behavior.

Thanks for coming to my trauma dump. I'll be in Google Docs crying about cock warming if anybody needs me.

[quickdeaths]

[ cherry ] what is one thing you love about yourself? [ amber ] which is your favorite season? why? [ cerulean ] what is your favorite ( type of ) character to write? [ mauve ] give one random headcanon about your muse / one of your muses. (Here I'll distract you some more from IC writing today)

[ cherry ] what is one thing you love about yourself?

I already answered this but I forced you to answer this question, so it's only fair that I answer it with another, different answer here as well. It feels a little weird since I'm basically talking about myself in this hobby as well, but I think I'm pretty creative. I've always loved making up stories and characters and writing, and I get so much joy out of making things. I'm not good with my hands, I'm not crafty, and I can't make visual art or music or anything, but I just really love creating things and for better or worse, I love putting my stamp on something.

Like, as an example, I've been running this D&D campaign for about a year and a half now, and it's a published adventure, so you buy the book, and you're supposed to be able to run it with very little prep work, just like, read the book and do what it says... BUT instead of that, I got a full text file, went through it for months, added a bunch of new stuff, changed a bunch of stuff I hated, made new monsters and items, found new maps to use, made a bunch of custom things that I knew my friends would like, etc. Even in that scenario where it was the most "you don't have to do any extra work, you can just run it out of the book," I was so excited and inspired to add my own stuff, and I'm really proud of how it all turned out, I genuinely think I made a lot of improvements, and found a lot of places where I could make the game more interesting and more fun for myself and my friends.

I don't always have the energy, motivation, or focus required to act on it, that's a whole separate issue, but the fact that I have that drive to create things, and that I'm able to have so much fun and get so much fulfillment and joy out of that, is something that I'm really happy about and proud of myself for.

[ amber ] which is your favorite season? why?

Winter for sure. I like rain and snow, I like cold temperatures a lot better than hot ones, I like being warmed up by hot chocolate or tea or coffee, I like wearing layers. Obviously holidays can be busy and crazy, but aside from that, it feels like such a calm season for me, sit by a window and play a game or read a book, maybe have a fire going if it's cold. Even the holidays I like, when they're less manic and more just small-scale and focused on family and friends.

I also like that there's not always a huge expectation of going out all the time. I don't mind going out places, but I'm an introvert and I prefer staying in more often than not. Winter is a season that has fewer things like "let's go to the beach," or "let's go to the park," or whatever. When I lived abroad, we had such long winters, first snowfall was usually in October and the snow kept up through March, and I know a lot of people were gloomy and weighed down by it, but I miss those long winters just sitting in my house and talking on Skype (shows how long ago this was) with friends, or spending a week at a friend's place just cooking together and watching anime and playing Persona 5 for eight hours a day and huddling under a kotatsu.

[ cerulean ] what is your favorite ( type of ) character to write?

Shinobu Yaguchi next question.

Hahaha I feel like I've answered this question a few times across various memes and it's always interesting to come at it from a different angle. Maybe to try and sum it up though... I like characters that have been thrown outside of their comfort zone, and have to navigate that uncomfortable feeling and decide for themselves what they want. I also like characters who have something to say about identity and that have some conflict between various selves. I also also like characters that have some prickliness and aren't immediately easy to get close to, but who have a lot of hidden warmth and loyalty for people who DO get beyond that outer shell.

At the risk of overcomplicating things, I just like writing characters that just have a lot of weird facets and considerations. With someone like Shinobu, for example, I try not to make it too self-indulgent or too navel-gazey, but a lot of times she is involved in a scene it's like, what she's saying, her mental response to her own words and actions, her response to THAT response, her thoughts about perception and how things might be taken, her willingness to play a role but also the small places to rebel against that role or carve out some tiny piece for herself. There's a lot going on. I wouldn't want to be like "I try to write characters like real people" because I'm still playing with silly anime toys, and psychological hyperrealism isn't my ultimate goal, but I like to have a good amount of depth and weight to a character and their worldview and their story, because it gives me so many threads to tug on while writing.

[ mauve ] give one random headcanon about your muse / one of your muses.

Random headcanon 1: Shinobu, Yi-Chun, and Kiyomi are the only main anime-type characters that can legally drive. Yi-Chun got her Taiwanese driver's license at 18, and didn't have to take a test to obtain a Japanese license, due to an agreement between Taiwan and Japan (just as well - the Japanese driving test is HARD). She rents a car. Shinobu got a moped license at age 16 to run errands for their father, at his insistence, and got a driver's license at 18 for the same reason, and also to go to their competitions. She doesn't have a car/moped of her own, but she is street-legal. Kiyomi has a moped license, but not a driver's license, and her moped was a "please don't be mad" peace offering gift from her parents after they told her they were moving abroad and she needed to move across the country for her final year of high school.

Izumi is too young to drive anything other than a moped and isn't so interested, Rio has NO intention of ever learning to drive (and is also too young for a car), Tsubasa prefers skating and also has vision issues, Kousuke never learned, and Anzu hasn't ever had a reason to learn. Maki has almost certainly driven but she definitely doesn't have a license. If you see Maki on a bike or in a car, she is either immediately pre- or immediately post-murder.

Random headcanon 2: Rapid fire, everyone's favorite school subjects. Rio: Science Izumi: Music (or Math if that's not an acceptable pick) Tsubasa: PE, if they have to choose. Shinobu: Language/Literature Anzu: Drama (or History if that's not an acceptable pick) Yi-Chun: PE Kousuke: History Kiyomi: Language/Literature Maki: She's not picky. Science maybe, or PE. Whatever.

[togglessymposium]

So I'm also a huge FF7 fan, though my interest in the Tifa/Aeris debate is purely academic on account of the Reasons. That being said, I think the game was actually making a much more interesting artistic choice than one might naively assume.

Basically, Aeris and Tifa have the aesthetics of the tradwife and action girl respectively, but the personalities and backstories of those categories are inverted in a way that is easy to miss. It is Tifa, not Aeris, who is the literal girl-next-door childhood friend; it's Tifa who takes care of Marlene personally, while Aeris tends to rely on her mom for that; it's Tifa who acts as caregiver to Cloud when he's disabled, at multiple points in the narrative, and who defers to Cloud's decisions pretty consistently. Meanwhile, Aeris is frequently seen to have independent ideas that drive the plot, and execute them either without consulting Cloud or over his objections; she's street-smart, often quick-witted and fast-thinking, with a cutting sense of humor; she's overtly sexual, using a date with Cloud as payment for services rendered, and pushing him out past his comfort zone towards nontraditional sexuality. Tifa treasures the (archetypically trad!) fantasy of being rescued by her hero, and Cloud's promise to fulfill that fantasy drives the narrative in a profound way; when Aeris finds herself in need of heroic assistance, her first instinct is to bargain for it and maintain her own agency.

At the same time, the laws of fate kind of conspire to thwart both women and push them towards the 'types'. Aeris is genetically supposed to be this wise nurturing healer-priestess/shrine maiden figure, and a person who fundamentally sees herself as a kind of street rat is constantly facing situations where the only way she can get what she wants is to increasingly conform to that pressure; when we're first introduced to her, she's literally fleeing kidnappers who are trying to force her in to this role. And Tifa, the girl next door that wanted so badly to be saved by her hero, is defined by violent catastrophe and a conspicuous failure to be protected; she becomes a powerful warrior in her own right because that's the only way left for her to stay near the people she cares about, and to keep taking care of them.

Both of these stories are, kind of, about the injustices of fate, which is a secondary but persistent theme of the game as a whole- thus all the motifs about trains and such. And like, the writing here can be really muddled sometimes, I won't pretend it's flawless. But reading these women through that lens does make the experience of the game a lot more fun for me, I think, and it's very affecting to think about their respective tragedies, and the ways that they struggle and eke out small victories for themselves within the courses to which their lives have been set. And naturally Cloud himself exemplifies the same confusion and same injustice, in even more extreme ways.

I finally got to the part of the FF7 remake with Aerith, who was never my favorite. I've been trying to figure out what about her puts me off, and I'm coming up blank, but it's probably something also that put me off her when I was thirteen.

I was going to hypothesize that it was a weird sort of tradwife energy I get from her — that is, she's a character designed to appeal to men who want that — but then I went looking for some discourse (always a mistake) and people are saying that Tifa is the tradwife?

Do I not know what this word means? Am I forgetting major parts of FF7?

My understanding was that "tradwife" meant "traditional wife" and was like ... happy domesticity and staying home with the children to cook and clean while your spouse goes off to work, traditional gender role stuff, conservative clothes, stuff like that. Aeris wears a pink dress and sells flowers, while Tifa fulfills the classic male fantasy of "childhood friend who joined an ecoterrorist cell", which was what always appealed to me about her.

I think it's fine to want a domestic role, and I was a stay-at-home dad doing the childcare, cooking, etc. for many years, which is different in that it's non-traditional and no one was making me wear an ankle-length dress. That archetype of woman, to the extent it even existed twenty-five years ago, has never appealed to me though. It was my understanding that to the extent Aeris was supposed to be appealing, it was in that direction, particularly because her role in the party as a healer.

I think my mistake was following links that led to Twitter, which is easily the worst of the hellsites, but now I'm just confused about how people are using words and/or interpreting characters.

(I don't think she's in the part of the remake I'm playing, but my favorite of the girls at thirteen was Yuffie, because the only thing that beats ecoterrorism is an obnoxious ninja/thief. Sadly, I think I'll probably just find her annoying this go around, if or when she shows up.)

[leviiattacks]

Seven minutes in Heaven with Physics Major Levi

author note :: i lost the ask but anon i do not know what this is. reading it sounded better in my head but physics major levi with reader who likes him is that a good description???? HM ANYWAY enjoy it’s not too great i’ve been revising nonstop for exams but i might as well have finished this off for the anon who requested it :-)

word count :: 2.5k probably... hm who knows maybe 3k

when you and levi become friends it’s definitely unexpected to say the least. everyone is naturally very confused by the peculiar pairing. levi doesn’t really... go out of his way to befriend anyone really??? so for him to approach you in the middle of the library and start talking about how he noticed you shared a class together was out of the ordinary

the flow of the conversation is a little awkward at first, you’re revising for a final exam and don’t really appreciate the disruption but you’re not confident enough to tell him to leave.

at one point an awkward silence drifts between the two of you until he points out you’ve completely RUINED your notes and have been looking over the wrong lectures for the up and coming physics exam

later on into the night levi’s stood sighing next to you. he tells you to take your pick from the pot noodle section — “hey, i know we literally just met but i’m telling you a chicken pot noodle is gonna make you feel better.”

you’re so distraught that he has to pick it up for you and pay

and that is how you and levi become friends !!!

if it’s of any relevance yes you passed the final (all because of levi giving you his organised binder full of notes and telling you to make use of it)

you know it just sorta happens but through all of the all nighters you’ve pulled with levi by your side you become used to his presence nearby. in fact most of the the time it’s difficult to even find you anywhere without him. you’re both practically joined at the hip

levi’s pretty protective of you, hates the whole party scene but is willing to tag along if you’re going. at first you think it’s because he feels more comfortable stepping out of his comfort zone if you’re there with him but his intentions become more evident later on

any time someone makes you uncomfortable he’s by your side, if you happen to get into any sort of trouble he’s the person people call to help you because who else knows you the way levi does?

currently you and levi are at another party, you tend to keep to yourself and only ever talk to your close friends. it’s also not like you to partake in games, you’re far too nervous to play anything like seven minutes in heaven but for some reason you find yourself wanting to take part JUST this once

maybe it’s the fear of never making fun memories to tell your future children about

then again why on earth would you be telling your children about your experience kissing a random man in a closet??

either way, participating shouldn’t hurt!!! you’ve got to loosen up a little!!!

levi’s a little surprised you agree to play nevertheless he still sits next to you, the both of you have your legs crossed on the floor, your knees are touching and you aren’t sure if he feels the same warm sensation that you feel. it bubbles in the pit of your stomach – you feel oddly content

“levi!! anyone you want the bottle to land on ???” hange a mutual friend of yours leans in handing him the glass bottle

levi gives the bottle a disgusted look before his gaze flicks over to you.

“i’m only here because of y/n, i ‘m not playing.”

that doesn’t satisfy hange and they begin to groan complaining that he can’t stay unless he spins the bottle

“look you don’t have to do anything in the closet, okay??” hange’s begging him at this point, he’s still holding up pretty well and for some reason you’re disappointed. it’s almost like you hoped he’d spin the bottle just so it would land on you

levi takes notice of your frown and guesses you want him to be included, he isn’t one for games like these but if it’ll make you happy so be it. there’s still the chance it’ll land on you and his thought process falters for a second.

he thinks he really wouldn’t mind if the bottle landed on you and so he ends up nodding and agreeing to play.

anyway it’s not as if he isn’t guilty of imagining the two of you being a little more than friends

ok wait!!!! it’s completely innocent HE SWEARS!!!!

he’s never told you about it but sometimes he thinks if he was a little more straightforward that day at the library and asked for your number MAYBE just MAYBE his intentions would be clearer and he wouldn’t be stuck in the friend zone for this long

he should’ve used a stupid physics pick up line he knows you love those

something like – “i’m attracted to you more than an electron’s attracted to a proton.”

or maybe — “i’d fall for you even in the absence of gravity”

ok... maybe you wouldn’t have got that one considering you were revising the wrong content and probably forgot about that topic

he can’t imagine himself saying those things but if it would make you finally see him as a potential love interest and not a best friend he wouldn’t mind having to force it out

but still it’s not really a secret that levi has a soft spot for you, literally everyone can see it. when has he ever gone out of his way to save a seat for anyone? when has he ever willingly gone to a party? WHEN has levi actually let someone lay their head on his shoulder??

he only ever let’s you do that stuff

let’s actually discuss the head on his shoulder thing!!!

whenever finals approach you’re always sucked in by huge amounts of work and barely get to sleep, levi’s always hovering over your shoulder reminding you to catch a few hours but of course you don’t listen. you think you’ll be just fine if you rely on an energy drink and two hours of sleep to get by

but levi knows you better than you know yourself. it’s hour seven into the day and you’re already dozing off in your seat. slowly but gradually your head tilts forward. levi’s sitting across you contemplating whether or not he should prop your head back up like a nice friend would or if he should wait for you to smack your forehead right into the solid oak table.

he ends up making his decision last minute, your head flies towards the table and if it were anyone else he’d just let them jolt awake from the harsh impact but it’s you and his body won’t let him ignore you.

on reflex his hand flies out and in the matter of a split second he’s holding your head back. he’s surprised you haven’t woken up and he’s even more surprised he bothered to help you

before that happens levi knows he likes you, he knows he enjoys your company, he’s aware you make him happy but he thinks he’s willing to just be friends with you because clearly you don’t want to pursue anything.

you haven’t even flirted with him before aside from the witty “you remind me of an exothermic reaction” joke that you made one time

oh and there’s also the additional fact that you had a boyfriend up until quite recently so he’s sure you don’t see him romantically

honestly he’s fine with not dating you but something about seeing you overwork yourself like that has him simmering in anger. if he were your boyfriend he would have forced you into bed whether you liked it or not

if he were your boyfriend he’d never break up with you because he “found someone better.” he can’t even manage to imagine anyone better than you.

levi shuffles into the seat next to yours and places your head onto his shoulder. a few students shoot him questioning looks but the deadly glare he sends back is enough to deter them from coming any closer

it’s a little funny actually, by the time you wake up you’re rubbing at your eyes, you don’t even notice how close levi is to you until his hot breath fans across your neck. it seems like he’s dozed off whilst trying to make notes on fluid dynamics

wait

levi. right. next. to. your. neck.

should you move????

no, he might wake up he barely sleeps and you don’t want to mess up his schedule even more

that day you choose to drift off back to sleep as if you never woke up to his breath against your neck.

“OHHHH LEVI LANDED ON Y/N????”

your head shoots up NOW you’ve completely been dragged away from your thoughts.

“lucky for you both. guess you won’t have to do anything and stand there for seven minutes. told ya levi there was nothing to worry about B-)”

hange without warning pulls you both up by your arms, you’ve yet to see levi’s reaction, you’re too stunned to have noticed his slack jaw or wide eyes

“HAVE FUN!”

and with that said and done you and levi are shoved into the cleaning closet

“well, i’m glad it landed on you. i won’t have to do anything.” levi seems happy as can be, you don’t really know why but it stings a little

he doesn’t even seem to stop for a second to wonder if you’d maybe want to do anything

are you just not his type ????

hange once told you levi liked organised people and well,, you’re anything but organised. you’d probably pass out from the work load of your physics lectures if not for levi always helping you out

scowling to yourself you try to ignore just how awkward the situation is until levi plops down on the floor in front of you

“you okay?” he asks looking genuinely concerned

“i- yeah i’m good.”

your eyes dart away trying to look at anything but him. you can’t deny he looks good today, you actually helped him slick his hair back - the entire time he complained about the hair gel feeling weird but he looks great and now you can’t even stare at him for more than a second

“i’m guessing you’d have preferred if the bottle landed on someone else.”

leaning forward without even noticing it you aggressively deny what he says. “NO!!! i like being stuck here with you.”

levi looks stunned by your outburst but nods “oh, did you feel pressured to join the game? we can leave if you want—”

“no, no i– you aren’t– oh god i mean, look. i can explain– do i need to explain???”

completely choking up in front of him and sputtering before slamming your lips shut and saying absolutely nothing is probably one of the most awkward things you’ve done in your ENTIRE existence

levi reaches out for your knee, something that’s usually seen as him being friendly only feels intimate tonight. his thumb strokes comforting circles into your skin. the situation doesn’t make it any better, essentially you’re meant to be making out with him right now

“is something bothering you?”

there it is again. that look. he only seems more concerned than before and you hate yourself for not even thinking about your friendship before you open your mouth.

“do you not want to kiss me because we’re best friends or is it something else?”

there it is. you’ve said it.

you see levi’s face contort from a mix of confusion to what looks like disgust then shock. screwing your eyes shut you know you’ve ruined everything now. he’s never going to speak to you, never going to approach you again. you’re mentally preparing for him to ditch you at this party right here right now

but then you notice his hand still steadily placed on your knee, he’s now stopped with the circles, his grip is bruising

“do you want me to kiss you?”

his question isn’t really expected, it helps you find the courage to look your best friend in the eye.

it’s pretty dark but you can still make out the familiar shadows of his face. the butterflies rush up from your stomach all the way to your throat.

mild regret fills you, usually his curtains obscure his piercing gaze but the way you’ve styled his hair gives him a better view of you, there’s nowhere for you to hide

not even stopping to think about the possibility of him teasing you right now, all you care about is telling him the truth. you’ve come all the way here you may as well finish off what you’ve started

“would you be mad if i said i’d like it if you did?”

levi doesn’t need any more confirmation than that, he swoops in yanking you by your waist. his knees are still pressed against the floor and so you find yourself leaning down into his mouth and craning your neck downwards

his chest is completely pressed against yours. the drumming of your heart is so loud you feel self conscious but levi’s soft lips moving against yours distract you from that

not even ten seconds in and you feel out of breathe but not in an overwhelming way. levi’s pace isn’t at all what you imagined it to be like. he’s soft and slow yet calloused and rough around the edges, some how he still manages to make the kiss sweet

his left hand leisurely travels to the small of your back, the other hand now caresses your cheek. his fingertips are anything but soft but the way he handles you is tender and endearingly delicate.

you smile into the kiss and almost instantly levi’s lips tug upwards too. his take on seven minutes in heaven is quite easily the most romantic thing you’ve been subjected to. instead of a passionate make out you’ve been given a honeyed introduction to a new side of him

the kiss ends much quicker than you anticipate, you open your mouth to whine and convince levi that the two of you should still have a solid minute left before hange returns but he presses his index finger against your lips

“later. i promise.” his voice is heavy and if his blushed cheeks are anything to go by he’s thoroughly enjoyed your session together

at his reassurance you comply and take the time to have a better look at him

his lips are wet – some of your lip gloss has clearly stuck to him. his hair isn’t as well styled as it was before, seeing him like this makes you feel a surge of confidence. you know you did that to him.

so... what is someone to do with a sudden boost in confidence?

hit your new possible love interest with a pick up line :-) !!!

“heyyy so i know the spring constant of my mattress, would you be interested in taking some data with me?”

slapping your shoulder lightly he’s yet to gain his composure back, levi’s genuinely out of breathe now trying to steady himself and your comment doesn’t do him any favours that’s for sure

“my god you have no sham–”

without warning the door to your left swings open you and levi flinch trying to scramble away from eachother only to fail, hange marches in before stopping dead in their tracks.

all they see is levi knelt in front of you, hair disheveled huffing like his life depends on it

then their focus shifts to you, you’re sure some of your makeup has smudged and the entire scenario looks suspicious

levi seems as if he’s about to warn hange to not tell anyone and keep this a secret for now but they sprint away before any of you have the opportunity to ask for some privacy

not even ten seconds later a collision can be heard alongside a series of thuds and then hange’s yelling towards the end of the hallway “GUYS??? THEY ACTUALLY DID IT???”

for some reason the cheers coming from the living room warm your heart

you guess your friends figured out the direction of your relationship long before you and levi did :-)