#title first (a v recent change)

[piastrinorris]

this or that, fic writer edition!

oneshots or chaptered fics? fluff, smut, or angst? outlines or winging it? title first or title last? past tense or present tense? background noise or total silence? pc, tablet, phone, or handwritten? in bed, in a seat, or at a table/desk? 2k or 10k? canon ships, rarepairs/crackships, or reader inserts?

[aaplecore]

Falling For You (Literally)

(Agatha Harkness x fem!reader)

Summary : Wanda Maximoff hires you to do a landscaping job for her, and her neighbor is absolutely not subtle.

Warnings / tags : smut (18+ !!): oral (a!receiving), pet names (hon, dear, dollface, darling), public(ish) sex / almost getting caught

Notes : first of all: this entire post is inspired almost entirely by @evgar ‘s art !! I hope this is okay that i’m posting this, and everyone should absolutely check out their art it is so amazing <33

Second : should I write a part 2 for this w/ another day on the job? idk yet :)

side note: THE TITLE IS SO CHEESY IM SORRY

Recently, Wanda Maximoff had hired you to help out with some landscaping around her house. Vision thought it was about time they had a change up in the fliers now that they weren’t trying to prevent Sparky from eating whatever they planted.

It was a pretty short job, only a few days of re-doing their front lawn to keep it pristine and perfect. It would be a super easy job. That is if they didn’t have the most distracting neighbor possible.

Constantly, you saw this gorgeous older woman passing through her kitchen, always sipping what seemed like tea from a different mug each time. And god damn, was she beautiful.

The first time you saw her, she was wearing nothing but a black, silk robe with purple flowers and long green stems. The lowest v-neckline you could imagine revealed just a little bit of her cleavage and before you knew it, you were tripping over a bag of fertilizer, landing with a face plant in the dirt. As soon as you were up, you looked back to see her briefly snickering as she turned away. You noticed that her long, wavy hair seemed to sway a bit with her hips as she walked. It was embarrassing… but it seemed like she paid a little bit more attention to you after that day.

A few days after that little incident, you were working out front, hauling around a wheel barrow of fertilizer to finish up a row of Azaelas while you sipped an iced coffee. As per usual, you were glancing over to the woman’s window every now and then, although she hadn’t shown up yet. You were silently hoping that was just because it was still pretty early.

And… you were right. Only a matter of minutes later, she was walking into the my tv hen. This time, she was in a long purple robe, with no tie in the middle… revealing her only wearing a matching set of lacey purple underwear. The bra was pretty damn close to see through, too. Your jaw literally dropped, along with almost dropping your cup of coffee.

And of course… she had to choose that exact moment to look over at you.

Immediately, you looked forward to see you were already stepping into a hole. Before you could really gauge what was happening, you were—again—falling face first into the dirt, now landing in your wheelbarrow, knocking you over with it. The coffee flies out of your hand, splashing all over Wanda’s lawn.

“Ow, fuck…”

You mutter, pulling yourself up and out of the wheelbarrow and brushing dirt out of your hair. As you’re running a hand through the tangles, you hear a voice coming from behind you. Of course, you turn around to see the woman standing there.

Her long hair falls over her face just so… and she’s still not tied her robe. She was standing over you. Half naked. Glaring.

“Are you stalking me?”

She asks bluntly, her hands on her hips. That makes you stop in your tracks. She thought you were a stalker. Shit.

“I’ll have you know, I’m a very powerful woman and you don’t want to fuck with me.”

Her glare is intense as she watches you stand up, looking you up and down—and not subtly at all.

“What? No! Why would I be stalking you?”

You try to explain quickly, reaching over to pick up your coffee cup from the ground.

“I’m doing landscaping for Wanda!”

It seems at your attempt at explaining yourself, the woman’s face softens.

“Oh… I see.”

She mumbles, now crossing her arms. You couldn’t help but glance down at the way it made her cleavage more visible.

“You were staring at me. Why?”

“You’re standing half-naked in front of the entire neighborhood.”

You explain, tilting yo head to the side. Was this behavior just normal for her?

“Yes. It’s my house. I don’t see why that’s an issue.”

The woman shrugs, looking at you like that was the most obvious thing in the world. You open your mouth to argue that it’s not exactly normal when she’s standing in front of a massive window facing her neighbor’s house but she just interrupts you.

“Well, come inside.”

She sighs, turning to head back to her house before you can even question why the hell she’s inviting you inside.

“What? Why- i’m on the job. And I don’t even know you.

You try to argue, looking between the fallen wheelbarrow and her. She turns back to you, looking at you again like you’re some kind of idiot.

“I’m Agatha Harkness. Now you know me. Plus, you spilled your coffee.”

She points out, motioning to the empty cup in your hand.

“I’m not coming out here to make you a fresh cup.”

She shrugs, cocking her head to motion for you to follow.

“Come on, hon, I don’t bite.”

Her sarcastic tones gives away the fact that she’s smiling a little… despite having called you a stalker minutes ago. For some reason though… you follow her to her house.

“Don’t mind the mess.”

She mutters, picking up a singular out of place mug from her coffee table as you enter. The vibe of the house isn’t exactly what you expected. It’s messy… but in a somehow organized way. Like everything is exactly where it’s meant to be.

“Come on, i’ll fix you a new cup. D’you take sweetener, dear?”

She asks, calling from the kitchen where she’s already disappeared.

“Uh… yeah. Sweetener would be nice.”

You mumble, following after her. Her kitchen is just as nice, with a big window facing Wanda’s house. There are very obviously curtains, but she could clearly care less.

“I- uh, I wanted to apologize. For staring earlier.”

Your tone has turned a little big softer, your nerves getting the best of you. Just watching her move around the kitchen in nothing but her bra and panties with a dressing gown is making you a stuttering mess.

“Nonsense. Don’t apologize.”

Agatha shakes her head, facing away from you, getting the coffee maker all set up casually.

“I can’t blame you, dollface.”

She smirks back at you, pressing start on the coffee maker and turning back to face you. Her arms are crossed and, again, she’s very obviously looking you up and down.

For a moment, there’s just quiet between you. You’re leaning against the island in the middle of the kitchen, while she’s leaning on the counter in front of you. It’s a struggle not to look down at her body. All the noise in the kitchen is the sound of the coffee maker slowly brewing your cup.

After a few more seconds of silence, Agatha finally speaks up.

“Why don’t you come over here, hon?”

She asks, something in her tone… sultry. Lower than it was before. Without even questioning her, you push off the counter to stand in front of her, your bodies mere inches apart.

“Why?”

You ask quietly, looking at her. Her smile is damn near predatory. It looks like she’s almost taunting you.

“I think you know why.”

She replies quietly, reaching out and pulling you in by the waist. Her hand is not even grabbing you, but somehow, her grip is firm and her hands are steady. For a moment, you wonder what they would feel like on you. Or in you. Either way.

“You’re just so… cute, hon.”

She murmurs, bringing her free hand up to cup your cheek, turning your face as if she’s examining you. For a second, you very obviously see her look down at your lips. And your faces are only centimeters apart. You swallow hard, feeling your heart pounding in your chest. And… she’s just smiling. Like nothing is wrong.

She pulls your face in just a slight bit, slowly moving… until you just give in and kiss her. With you having taken the initiative, she’s shocked for a moment. But, after a second, her grip on your hip tightens and she’s pulling you flush against her. The way she’s kissing you back is almost messy, and your body is already heating up. Quickly, her hand moves to tangle in your hair, pressing your face against hers desperately, getting somehow more pressed up against you.

Already, you’re reaching your hand down to her underwear, tracing your fingers gently along the hem of the purple lace. The little noise she makes is absolutely hypnotic and you just want to hear more of it. Slowly, you start peppering kisses down her jawline and neck, gently sucking marks into the curve connecting her shoulder to her neck.

“Wow, you’re quick, hon…”

She mumbles, smiling down at you proudly. She’s gotten exactly what she wanted. You bite the side of her neck as a response to her teasing, trailing your free hand up her side. A quiet gasp comes from her when you bite down, she’s honestly astonished that you’re willing to be so bold with her.

“You’re already gasping.”

You mutter against her neck, moving your hand up to cup her bra, causing her to let out a strained moan.

“And moaning.”

You point out, moving your lips further down, kissing down her collarbones and chest. At this point, you have to bend your knees to kiss her, needy to taste any bit of skin you can. You’re nearly kneeling in front of her already. And Agatha’s living for the sight of you under her.

“You say that like you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.”

She scoffs, her hand still tangled in your hair, humming softly when you kiss around the curve of her breast. Slowly, you’re moving further down, leaving marks as you go, only fueled by the little moans and hums coming from Agatha when you kiss a particularly sensitive spot.

Before you know it, you’re kneeling in the ground in front of her. Agatha is still leaning up against the counter, while you’re hidden behind the island underneath her. You pepper gentle kisses all around her thighs and stomach, up until you’re kissing the fabric of her underwear right over her clit. Even the slight pressure causes Agatha to moan again.

If you had the resistance, you’d tease her more but, after hearing that noise, you hook your fingers under her panties and pull them down until they drop to the ground. Now it’s just Agatha, standing in her bra and dressing robe, her pussy naked in front of your face. The smirk on her face is still proud but you can tell she’s a little bit weakened—there’s a slight furrow in her brows.

“Come on, darling, I don’t have all day.”

She murmurs, her voice strained. Of course, you don’t hesitate to finally start kissing her. Her core is already practically dripping wet. When you press your tongue up against her, licking a line up to her clit, she lets out a loud moan. Even the slightest touch has her writhing. To keep her still, you firmly plant your hands on her thighs. Again, you lick her, just to watch her head roll back, her hand in your hair tightening.

“Fuck, doll, just like that. Faster, baby.”

She commands. Again, you listen without hesitation, dipping your tongue into her folds, applying more pressure when your tongue circles her clit. Her knuckles are turning white as she holds the counter, her eyes practically rolling back into her head. And damn she’s vocal. It seems like she’s already close just from you circling her clit with your tongue.

Speeding up your pace a little, you feel her hips bucking into your mouth a little, until she suddenly stops her movements, clearly tensing up.

“Fuck… Wanda.”

She groans. When you look up—still licking her, your hands planted firmly on her thighs—you see that she’s smiling and waving, trying to look as normal as possible. But of course, you see your opportunity. You bring your tongue up to her clit and start flicking it quickly, making her moan even louder, unable to hold it back.

Meanwhile, while Wanda waves to Agatha through her kitchen window—her lower half hidden by the island—her face turns to confusion. She’s not used to seeing Agatha looking nervous. Yet now, it looks like she’s sweating. Agatha curses internally, praying for Wanda to just leave already so she can stop smiling like a lunatic.

Eventually, Wanda walks away and Agatha groans, looking down at you with a glare—although you can tell she’s not exactly angry—as her hand tightens its hold on your hair.

“Brat.”

She mutters, rolling her head back with a strained ‘fuck’ when you press up against her clit. You know just how to shut her up. And you know she’s close because her hips are bucking up into your face again.

“Just a bit faster, doll.”

Agatha moans, the sound strained between moans. You put some pressure over her slit, sucking on it to get her over the edge… until she’s practically screaming, her hips bucking into your face as her thighs shake.

Slowly, you help her ride through it, licking up the slick from between her thighs, although she’s still damp even when you come back up to stand in front of her. There’s a little sheen from her come on your lips.

“Who knew landscapers would be such a good fuck…”

Agatha mutters, grabbing her panties from the ground with a smirk.

“I do my best.”

You reply confidently, shrugging. She snorts a laugh at your response, shaking her head.

“I can tell… how about you come back tomorrow? I can brew you some tea.”

She offers, her voice still sultry as she hands you the cup of coffee you’d evidently forgotten. You almost forgot about work. Almost.

“I can’t stay for a bit?”

You ask, pouting as if it’ll be any help.

She scoffs in response, slipping back into her panties.

“I’ve got a meeting in twenty, doll. I’ve gotta get ready. This was nice, though.”

Already, her hands are on your shoulders, guiding you to the door. She’s so… casual about this.

“I’d better see you tomorrow… Now go tell Wanda you had to grab some supplies form your car.”

It’s like she’s doing a business transaction now, waving with her fingers to you as she opens the door.

“I- right. Yes.”

You stutter, realizing now that this was just casual for her… but still, she invited you back. And a win is a win.

She mouths ‘bye-bye’ at you as you walk down her front lawn, watching you from a large brick in the door. You can’t help but keep glancing back at her.

“Oh, and, hon!”

She calls out, snapping as if she just remembered something when you’re nearly halfway back to Wanda’s house.

“Wear something that’s easy to take off tomorrow, okay?”

Even just that little comment causes you to blush again. Seeing the flush in her cheeks makes her smile again, like she knows she’s got you wrapped around her finger. And that’s the last thing you see before she shuts her front door.

[tomssexdoll]

A Second Chance

PAIRINGS: Tom 2014 x Female reader

CONTENT: SMUT + FLUFF

SYPNOSIS: Tom is a gang member for your dads gang, he used to visit the house to help your dad, often running into you, the conversation only leading so far. One day, at one of your dads gang parties, Tom sees you for the first time in years, you looked so different, so beautiful and confident.

A/N: if you want to be tagged or i accidently missed your tag comment on my pinned masterlist <3 divider creds: @chaemingly

WARNINGS: dom!tom, sub!reader, p in v (missionary), eating out, LOTS of teasing

Tom was a gang member under my dads gang, the blue bloods, he had talked me a few times when he'd come over to the house to help my dad, only very few polite words. My dads gang was very high profile and the most notorious in the country, Tom and the other gang members all contributed to maintaining that title.

One day, I was at one of my dads parties, he was celebrating a recent deal that went really well and he got more money than he asked for. It was the first time tom had seen me in 4 years, I was wearing a sexy red dress with black lace and black heels. I straightened my hair and had a simple yet sexy makeup look. I was walking in the party with my friends, laughing and trying to navigate the bar.

Toms eyes widened slightly as he saw me walk in, hardly recognising the gorgeous woman I'd become. He leaned against the wall, trying to act casual but internally cursing my fathers strict no touching rule for his daughter.

I finally made my way to the bar, ordering a vodka redbull on my dads tab, allowing my friends to all order something too. He watched from afar, admiring how confident and beautiful I was. The red dress I wore clung to my curves just right, and my heels made my legs look endless. He took a swig from his whiskey, trying to maintain his composure, "damn.." he mumbled under his breath.

He took another sip of his drink, adjusting the collar of his shirt, trying to remain professional under my fathers presence but my presence made it increasingly difficult. Despite knowing he shouldn't, he walks over to the bar, positioning himself near me.

I kept talking and laughing with my friends, enjoying the unlimited amount of drinks. It wasn't until my friends went off to dance that I noticed Tom, I turned around and looked up, his tall frame towering over me. He leaned against the bar and smirked, "quite the change since the last time I saw you.." he said, "I almost wouldn't have recognised you.." his eyes scanned my figure discreetly.

"Your father would kill me if he knew I was talking to you like this.." he chuckled, his voice dropping to a low, husky tone. My face lit up and I smiled brightly, "mhm, it's been quite a while, you've grown a lot since we last saw each other," I winked "and besides, i'm a grown woman now, he can't control who I speak to, I don't need to be chaperoned everywhere I go," I rolled my eyes playfully.

His smirk widened mischievously, enjoying my confident demeanour. "True..true..But he can still shoot the messenger.." his eyes locked with mine, "I think he'd prefer you rather than some random gangbanger.." I giggled. He raised an eyebrow, "is that so? And what makes you think I'm not a gangbanger," he took a step closer, maintaining eye contact. "You don't know what I do in my free time.." he smirked dangerously.

I rolled my eyes at his attempt to scare me, "you don't scare me Tom," I giggled, shaking my head, "I obviously know you are one but..at least you have better morals than most of the guys here.." His smirk turned into a chuckle, amused by my fearlessness. "Better morals? You make it sound like I'm some saint.." he took a sip of his drink.

"Well you are compared to most people," I smirked and ordered another vodka redbull. His gaze lingered on my lips as I took a sip of my drink. He reached out and gently grabbed my chin, catching me by surprise. He tilted my head up to fully look at him, "you know..I think you're pretty bold, talking to me like this.." he whispered. The attention he gave me made my stomach flutter, I had a crush on him for years and this was the first time ever he was paying attention to me like this.

My boldness was starting to crumble, my shyness creeping in. He noticed the change in my demeanour, he liked it, finding it cute. He knew this confident, bold look was just for show, wanting to impress him. He decides to take advantage of my shyness and pulls me closer, wrapping an arm around my waist.

I felt my cheeks getting hotter and my eyes widening at his sudden move. He leaned in close, his hot breath against my ear as he whispered, "I think I like your bold side better..but this shy side is cute too.." his hand slowly slid down to give my bottom a gentle squeeze before pulling back with a smirk.

I tried to put on my bold act again but it failed miserably, causing me to stammer over my words, "Mhm? W-well she never left," he smirked, "and you're really bad at hiding it," he teased, "you're trying to act all tough, but you can't even look me in the eye without blushing.." he chuckled softly, his arm around my waist pulling me even closer.

I chuckled and smacked his arm playfully, hiding my face, "shut up.." he grabbed my hand, intertwining my fingers with his. "Or what? You going to beat me up?" his free hand traced circles on my lower back. He leaned in close, pressing a gentle kiss to my neck and whispering in my ear, "say..how about we go somewhere more private..hm?"

He guided me discreetly through the crowded party, searching for a quieter spot. Finally he found an empty bathroom, gently walking in with me and locking the door behind him. He pressed me against the bathroom counter, caging me in with his hands on either side of me.

He stared down at me, his eyes locked onto my lips as I bit my lower lip. He could feel the tension between us growing thicker. My chest was heaving slightly, he leaned in, giving me a chance to pull away. "Last change to act all tough.." he mumbled, his voice low and husky.

I grew some confidence and smashed my lips into his, desperately kissing him. He was taken aback by my sudden confidence but quickly returned a rough kiss, pressing his lips against mine firmly. His hands moved to my hips, pulling me flush against him as he deepened the kiss.

He broke the kiss only to trail his lips down my neck, sucking and biting gently. "Fuck.." he mumbled, moving his hands to the strap of my dress. He whispered against my neck, "this dress is dangerous.." tracing a finger along one strap. "One move and it could slip right off.." he smirked, knowing full well what he was doing. "Though I wouldn't mind if it did.." he whispered, moving his hand to the other strap. In one swift motion he dragged them down my shoulders, letting the whole dress fall down to my hips, exposing my barely there bra.

His eyes widened as he took in my nearly naked form, the black lacy bra doing nothing to hide my curves. He reached out and hooked his fingers in the waistband of my dress, lifting my hips with his strong arms and pulling it right off, throwing it across the room.

"Holy fuck.." he mumbled, his hands flying to my bra and practically ripping it off. He hungrily sucked and licked my tits, his hands roaming over my body. He groaned against my skin, his hands squeezing and caressing my bare breasts. He could feel himself grow hard in his pants as he continued to lavish attention on my chest.

Without warning, he got on his knees, grabbing my panties roughly and pulling them off. He spread my legs wide and shoved his face into my pussy. He used his fingers to spread my folds before running his tongue up my slit, my body slightly jolted at the action, making him smirk mischievously.

"You like that huh?" he lifted his head up, "mhmm.." I whined softly, embarrassed by how reactive I was to his actions. "Mmmh.." he chuckled softly, "well, I'm just getting started doll," and with that he buried his face into my pussy again, licking and sucking furiously.

He hooked his arms around my thighs to keep me in place as I moaned and squirmed, my hands desperately trying to find security. I held onto the edges of the countertop, moaning loudly as his tongue feverishly circled my clit.

His tongue continued to work me mercilessly, flicking my clit just the way he knew I'd like it. The sound of my moans only drove him on more, his hands gripping my thighs tighter, his fingernails digging into me, "fuck..you taste amazing baby.." he grumbled, moving his tongue to my hole and pushing it deep inside, his nose rubbing against my clit to heighten the pleasure.

The sounds of me getting wetter and wetter made him impossibly hard. He lapped at my core, wanting to make me cum so hard, like I've never before. He could feel me getting closer, my thighs trembling against his face. "Tom!" I yelped, my hands sliding down and gripping onto his hair tightly, shoving his face into my pussy more.

His face was completely buried in my folds now, his nose and mouth working in tandem to bring me to the brink. He can feel my nails digging into his scalp, pulling his hair tighter. It did hurt but it only spurred him on, he doubled his efforts, hearing me scream in pleasure as my orgasm was quickly approaching.

His intensifying movements drove me crazy, his tongue moved to my clit again and his fingers slid up, he shoved 2 fingers inside my dripping hole and fingered me roughly. "That's it baby, come for me!" he grunted, his voice muffled against my pussy. His hands gripped my hips tightly, holding me still as he brought me closer and closer to my climax.

I screamed out in intense pleasure, my orgasm crashing down. A small stream of clear liquid coming out of me. He lapped up every drop of my release, not wasting a drop. His chest heaved as he stood up, his eyes dark with desire as he shakily undid his belt, "I need to be inside you now.." he mumbled, capturing my lips in a deep kiss, letting me taste myself on his lips.

My hands moved to help him, he slid his belt off and I dragged his pants down. His thick cock pressed against his boxers desperately, a wet patch of pre cum stained on the material. His breath hitched against my lips, he pulled away to shove his boxers down, letting them pool at his feet just like his pants.

His hand wrapped around his hard length, pumping it a few times as he stared at me with heavy lidded eyes. "You're so beautiful...look at what you do to me.." he motioned to his throbbing cock, the tip leaking more precum.

He positioned himself between my spread legs, his throbbing cock pressing against my still sensitive entrance. "Should I fuck you hard, right here on this counter..?" he whispered, his lips tracing along my ear. I nodded and looked up at him, he smirked darkly and stepped closer, grabbing my thighs tightly.

He alinged himself with my entrance, slamming into me hard, filling me completely. I was taken aback, gasping and holding onto him. He chuckled, "too much for you? he pouted dramatically, sarcastically cooing.

I smirked at his teasing, "shut up and fuck me.." I spat out. He shook his head and chuckled, his hips starting to move in a fast punishing rhythm. "Fuck..your tight pussy feels so good around my cock.." he groaned, his fingers digging into my flesh.

I moaned loudly, my chest heaving and my tits bouncing wildly as his pace quickened. Each thrust brought us brought me closer to another orgasm. One hand moved up to catch one of my bouncing breasts, squeezing it roughly while the other hand held my hip steady, "you like that? want me to fuck you even faster?" he panted against my neck, his voice coarse.

"Fuck yes!" I whined, "harder!" he smirked, instantly obliging. He increased his pace once again until he was practically jackhammering into me. He wrapped his arms around my legs, pulling them up higher and onto his shoulders as he continued to pound into me mercilessly. The counter creaked beneath me, the sound mixing with my loud moans and his low grunts.

"You're so loud.." he chuckled, placing rough kisses on my neck, sucking on the skin to leave dark purple hickeys wherever he went. "You like that, hm? You like how my cock slams into you like that..how good it makes you feel..?" he whispered, nibbling softly on my earlobe, a shit eating grin plastered on his face.

I let out a loud moan as my answer, nodding my head rapidly. His face contorted in pleasure, his eyes locking onto my as he picks up the pace even more. The sound of his balls slapping against me filled the room, his voice dripping with dominance, "good girl..feel all of me.." he groaned, reaching in between my legs and rapidly rubbing my clit, wanting my orgasm to be big and powerful.

My back was pushing back against the mirror, hitting it roughly from his brutal thrusts. I felt a knot form in my stomach, a signal to my approaching orgasm. "Mmmh! 'M close...don't stop!" I yelped, rolling my eyes back from the intense pleasure.

His movements become almost relentless, hitting that sweet spot deep inside me over and over again, driving me crazy. With one last flick of my sensitive clit and hard thrust my orgasm came crashing down, I practically screamed and held onto the counter tightly, the pleasure coming in furious waves.

He groaned, rolling his eyes back as my orgasm rippled around him, he fucked me through my climax, drawing it out until I was trembling. "That's it..take my cock..ohhh fuck.." he grunted. With a final thrust he buried himself to the hilt and found his own release inside me. He let out one last low, guttural groan, his body shuddering.

After a few moments he slowly lowered my legs and gently pulled out of me, helping me down from the counter. I was absolutely spent, my chest heaving as I tried to calm down from my earthshattering orgasm. He wrapped an arm around my waist to support me, noticing how wobbly I was, "you okay baby?" he chuckled softly, kissing my forehead.

I nodded softly and buried my face into his chest, too tired to even respond. He smiled and grabbed my clothes, setting me back on the counter to help me get dressed. "Don't tell anyone this happened sweetheart, I wanna make it out alive so I can see you again," he smirked, I rolled my eyes playfully, "fine, fine."

tags: @ballhair @bills-wife-1 @bkaulitzlover

tags: @ella1289 @billsdolliest @tomscumdoll

tags: @tomsfuckdoll @tomkslut @miyukafujii

tags: @itsangelll

[rise-my-angel]

Heart of the Great Wolf

What Could Never Be

Pairing: Jon Snow x F!Baratheon!Reader

Length: 4.7k

Warnings: angst/hurt comfort, smut, p in v, discussions of virginity

Notes: A request for a what if Jon and reader had sex before the start of Heart of the Great Wolf. It did not turn out quite what y'all had in mind, but it felt appropriate to end where it did. It also works as a companion piece to the last section of Scattered Memories of the Starks. Series Masterlist Here.

He considered not doing it. Looking down at you, your wide eyes who only moments before had stopped to ask him if he was okay, and for a moment he was not sure if he wanted to say he was or wasn’t. It was a few questions holding him back, and it was those few questions which were of the most importance when it would come down to it.

Jon had been planning this all out. All day yes, but also, for a lot longer then he wanted to admit. This was the sort of interaction that had him question what he wanted for his future for years. More then he could even recall at this point in his life. It seemed normal to get here, bedding a woman. Certainly a beautiful woman whom he had been in love with for most of his life, but he still knew he was pushing boundaries here, he was approaching the limit of what was appropriate, acceptable, or even decent and not sure if he wished to take the plunge into the waters he himself had walked up to the cliff of.

You didn’t come up with this yourself, you still on the side of far too innocent even at this point in your life, what were you to say? What were you to do when the idea begun to brew in the secret quiet between you both? He had taken it as slow as he could for years getting to this point, but even now he was willing to stop right here. Slowly having taken everything off of you, and you with trembling hands having pulled only his shirt off of him, Jon now hovered above you. Your body new and bare for his eyes to feast upon, and your shy legs spread trying to give him what you assumed he wanted.

And he did, Jon did not want you nor anyone to get him wrong about that. But it was more complicated then what he wanted, or what you wanted alone. Far more complicated.

None called you it in formality, King Robert it seemed did not denote the same titles upon his brothers and nieces that other royals like the Targaryens did. But it did not change the fact that you were not just a Lady of House Baratheon. You were a Princess of House Baratheon, the royal family, rulers of the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms. Your uncle was King, your father the Kings brother, your cousins all the heirs to that crown and even you were in that line of succession. If Jon were to think deeply on it, where you were in that line.

Robert was King. Then it would pass to his eldest son Joffery, your cousin which you had never spoken highly of in your life. Then to Robert’s youngest child and second son Tommen, for all intents and purposes he seemed to be a sweet innocent boy who you were rather fond of. You spoke once that he had recently been gifted a kitten for his Nameday, which he promptly named Ser Pounce, due to his tendency to walk about the castle walls and pounce at passerbyers. Then it was a bit muddied. Both Andal law and laws of the First Men dictated that a daughter would inherit before an uncle, but the Iron Throne had it’s own laws of succession that changed that dynamic a bit.

You had explained it to him once. Why and when this had occurred the way it did. King Jaehaerys’s firstborn son and long standing heir to the Iron Throne Prince Aemon had been killed. Fighting a skirmish of Myrish pirates on Tarth when an arrow meant for the lord standing next to him struck him through the throat and he drowned in his own blood. Laws by that point dictated that because the heir to the Iron Throne had his own heir, it should rightfully pass down through that bloodline as it normally would had Aemon sat the throne anyways.

But there was an issue. King Jaehaerys did not wish for Aemons child to become his heir, because it was a granddaughter. An ancestor of yours born by a Baratheon mother, Princess Rhaenys Targaryen. So he created a precedence in which to allow an uncle to inherit before a daughter, so that Jaehaerys’s second son Baelon could become the next heir instead of the Aemon’s daughter.

Where the Iron Throne in your family should’ve passed to Roberts second child and firstborn daughter Princess Myrcella, Jaehaerys’s now created a new succession law which meant that your own father, Stannis Baratheon would be next in line. Then the Baratheon brothers youngest Renly, then Myrcella. And then, you.

Never did you speak on it, but you were sixth in line for the Iron Throne. Which in the grand manner of things, seemed very far away but if Targaryen history told Jon anything that it did not often take much to have distant relatives jump the line and find themselves in a position of great power. King Aegon V was what, Jon thought? Fourth? Fifth in line? Jon did not wish to look down at you now and think that he was putting you in that position. He did not like the idea that he was placing himself, nothing more then a bastard in a position where he was taking away from a Princess’s value.

Of course to Jon, your value was more then your virtue alone, but he was the one who was in love with you. His opinion on the matter was of limited value. You were a Princess, and marrying you off to a High Lord of great strength and power was what you were quite literally born to do, and it was of the upmost importance that your virtue was kept intact. You could not be tainted, and yet? Why was he still here? Why was Jon putting this at risk? Why was Jon not listening to the very important question rattling around in his mind?

What if he got you pregnant?

Yet you looked up at him with innocent eyes, wondering eyes that despite the worry was trusting Jon to make sure everything was going to be okay. And he wanted to promise you that, he wanted to promise you that this would not ruin things for you, for your life, for friendship and all else this was. But, Jon wasn’t sure, and he didn’t know what part of him was selfish enough to go through with this over the sensibilities his father taught him, but here he was. About to do it anyways.

Jon could not quite pinpoint what part of him was wanting this more then he wanted to be sensible. He wanted to tell himself to stop. He didn’t want to get you pregnant, he didn’t want to ruin your reputation, he didn’t want to ruin your life. Ruin the life of the child you’d have because of him. What likelihood would there be that’d he would even get the chance to see them? You’d be dragged back to Kings Landing, or even Dragonstone and his actions would be so disgraceful towards you that he’d no doubt never even see his own child.

They’d grow up a bastard without a father, just as he grew up a bastard without a mother. Lonely, and isolated, and mocked and it was no life for a child. He always told himself for years, he didn’t want to marry. He didn’t want a wife. He didn’t want children. He said it to himself over and over again for years and maybe one day he would fully believe himself. He’d close his eyes at night and no longer seen an image of you and him hidden away in a little cabin far away. Maybe go north of the Wall.

You’d get pregnant, and Jon would whisk you away there. Build you a little cabin out there, a nice hearth right in the middle to keep you warm and a big bed with many furs to keep each other warm at night as you both were free to love and breed as much as both of you could want. Jon never really looked at things in that way and thought freedom, he only ever thought it with you. But, it was a fantasy. Jon knew he’d never take you away from your life, and as much as getting you pregnant would shame his own family now, running away with you like that would shame them even worse. But perhaps only for this very moment, he could hover over you and imagine that what if before going through with it just to lie to himself that everything was going to be fine.

“Jon?”

Your gentle, sweet voice brought him back. A trembling hand lifted up lightly and grazed over the scruff of his facial hair along his jaw before trailing to his cheek. Looking back at you properly, his curls hanging over you both more like a curtain to hide both your nerves, Jon found your wide eyes. Green like emeralds bright in the shining sun looking up at him. His voice did not come out quite yet, a weight stuck in the back of his throat unable to speak, his arms now almost shaking as he held himself up over you. That and his stern silence must have made you more nervous then you already were.

Running your thumb back and forth over the skin kept him looking at you, kept him more focused on you properly instead of drifting away. Once more your voice spoke, a soothing nature fell over it like a mother draping a blanket over her slumbering child, always caring and taking care of others despite your outward nature to be rough and closed off. “Did you want to stop?”

It took Jon only a moment to think about it this time. What of his father was no longer at the forefront, and it felt like something burning hot in his blood which could no longer stop it. You were a Princess of House Baratheon, and he was nothing more then the bastard of Winterfell, but he was going to take that risk greater then he had any right too no matter what. Something obsessive took over, and realized he would not survive letting you leave this room without feeling all of what you were presenting yourself for the taking here and now.

Was it the possessiveness of a wolf doing it? Or was it something more fierce? Jon didn’t know. But his voice was gruff and husking as he spoke it anyways. “No. No, I don’t want to stop.”

He wanted to be gentle, he truly did.

A hand sliding to the back of your head, Jon grasped a thick handful of your luscious dark hair and pulled tight, yanking you upwards to his lips just as he descended upon yous with as much need. Capturing you in a harsh kiss, your hands instinctively reached up to hold onto his forearms to steady yourself. If you were trembling before, seven hells could Jon feel it now in you. The nerves rushing through you, how you both were eager to kiss him back but completely taken aback by his sudden rush of aggression.

Tilting your head to to him better, Jon begun to move more. Shifting forward, his brows furrowed as he struggled to find the right angle to both kiss and feel you against him, instead choosing to reach up blindly as he let go of your hair. Feeling where the pillows against his bed sat before knocking them all down at once, uncaring as to where they landed on his floor.

What felt like a gasp came from you, but it only had Jons blood burn a little more. Now moving you by your hair so you lay more flat against his bed, Jon could hover over you more. His body moving down until he felt you gasp once more into his kiss, the feeling of his body more prominently pressing down into yours, his hips without even much forethought pressing into yours, your bare legs shaking just the slightest, an internal fight within your mind to either close them or open more to explore the feeling his covered length pressing into you was giving.

How hard he felt so suddenly near took him off guard. He was worked up before, he was wanting, but now he felt worked up. Too much so. Jon felt as if he was going to break if he didn’t feel more of you now. Pressing you down more into his bed, Jon deepened his kiss, biting down onto your lips before sliding his tongue into your unsuspecting mouth. Tilting your head once more as he refused your ability to move away from him, your nails digging into the skin of his arms in a stinging kind of way that he wanted more of.

Jon wanted to feel those pretty nails digging into his back to the point he’d be unable to take his clothes off in front of any but you least they find out about the animal clawing at his back in the shape of a girls hand. He didn’t want to know what Robb would think, or worse what Theon would loudly speculate about and who would know within an instant. Arya would, she had caught Jon kissing you once in the stables years previous and now watched over you both like a hawk. Jon knew she wanted more to come of this, but she was still at the age he was when he thought marrying you was once possible.

She didn’t yet realize how impossible it would be and the degree which their father would never allow it. It had been decades he wished his father would ask the King to make Jon a true Stark, and just like that he’d never be the bastard of Winterfell again. Jon would never be a Stark, and would thus never marry you and he wished Arya wouldn’t still look at the both of you wrongly thinking that it would ever be so. He appreciated her support, and her discretion, but it wasn’t possible. And going through with this was just one more risk in the lines of what would never be and Jon would have to be careful going forward.

That logical part of his mind once more attempted to ask what would he and you do about your maidenhood once going through with this. But, the darker, more possessive and burning hot blood in his veins told him to forget it. You were smart, you both could figure out a work around. A story. Surely some woman would have an answer as to how to lie about such things realistically and not be caught.

Or you could take her and run.

No. The word no was emphatic going through Jons head. That was not what he was going to do. That fight within him felt like it was a losing one. He did not want to steal you like Old Nan used to tell him the wildlings did with Northern women. He was better then that, and those instincts speaking otherwise did not have to be the loudest ones. They needed to be silenced, just something feral and primal in his brain which could’ve been the wolf within him. He just needed to stay in the moment, remind himself he was no more then just a man.

A man on his bed, kissing the girl he had been in love with most of his life, his body pressed down against her naked one with her legs spread open for him as he already looked with greed as to what sat waiting between them.

You had done things together, or, Jon had led you through those new experiences with him. Both each others firsts for everything as of now, and Jon wanted this final thing to be his too, but he would ease you into it with what you both already knew what to do.

Lifting his hips slightly, he did not allow you to wonder what to do. Jon let his hand leave your hair, trailing itself down your cheek, trace over the gentle skin on your neck and feel you shiver until his touch before going down your sides. He pulled away from your lips only enough to hear you let out a shuddering exhale as his hand gently moved over your breast without fully touching all of you and then to your hips. Slowly did your leg come into his touch, his hand pulling your thigh up and up for you, his voice rasping deep down at you. “Come on, darling.”

Nodding against him, he could feel your lips almost brush against his he kept so close to your kiss again as he moved you. The position now perfect to let his hand sneak between your bodies, seeking your clit right away. He had to shush you gently, his dark eyes now looking down at your nervous self as you jumped at the touch. So worked up and so sensitive, Jon did not give you the chance to even get used to that alone. Moving in gentle ways, to work you up for only a few seconds, your body tensing up in that way he loved knowing you were adjusting to the pleasure before he pressed down firmer and tighter.

One pattern, then the next, Jon knew fairly well what you liked but he still tended to experiment on you with his exploration. Too did it tease you, which he enjoyed very much. You not knowing what he was going to do next, and not having the sexual appetite and understanding quite the same as a man to even be able to guess what it was he would do next. Instead, you trusted him in a silence biting against your lip, eyes squeezed shut as if that made the overwhelming pressure in your core go away.

Not until he felt you let go, that orgasm wash over you in a sudden rush did Jon ease up. His kiss, touch, all of it. Pulling back enough, Jon looked down at you. Trying to catch your breath, only peeking down enough to see your chest heaving for air as you did so like he was not the one who caused this feeling within you before looking back up to your eyes. Moving from your clit, Jon instantly picked himself up off of you for a bit, running his hand over your hair smoothing it down at the back of your hair as he murmured your name. Once, then twice before you blinked back into the world. “Are you-”

Not allowing him to finish, you nodded. Swallowing deeply, you nodded a second time but now with words attached to hopefully fill him with a confidence that you were not just saying what he thought you wanted him to hear for the best. “I am, I promise.”

Jons eyes narrowed down at you, concern still being able to peek through the growing black in him shining that beautiful grey you always boasted about towards him. “Are you sure? We don’t have to keep going.” You only repeated that you were fine, only for Jon to call your name with a bit of a warning not to lie, and you promised again, only repeating the same few phrases over and over to alleviate that worry in the mans heart compared to the beasts want. Looking you over, he could not detect any lies, at least at the moment. He could only prey to the gods that if you were not ready or became unwilling to continue, that he would pick it up before going too far knowing that you would struggle immensely to speak up for yourself in this regard. It was all up to Jons responsibility, and he did not take that lightly.

Slowly did he begin to move. Pulling himself up to his knees, his hands went to the laces of his breeches. Watching as you pushed yourself up, hands braced against the furs on the bed behind you as you watched his eyes instead of his hands as he undid each one. Loosening the material before he could easily drag it down his legs. For a moment Jon considered making you do it, he wanted you too. He wanted you to be comfortable enough to pull it all off of him but Jon knew he might have to make a concision here, that he was asking too much of a confidence in you which did not actually exist to follow through so brazenly.

Instead, Jon moved to get off the bed. A hand rushing out to sit on your cheek, his rasp now low and gentle. “Stay right there.” Nodding obediently, Jon held a groan back at the sight. How you gave it all up over to him without question.

His feet flat on the ground, Jon only watched you with dark eyes as he pulled it off. Once he would wonder what it was you’d think of the sight of him with no clothes on as he always knew you’d be full of nerves and worries about what he’d think of you, but something in Jon was long since willing to let it go for himself. He knew what he looked like and it would not chance this very moment, so he stood before you and let your eyes ever so slowly at their own pace look.

If he were a smug man, he might have felt a smirking pride at the fact that your eyes widened just the slightest once you reached his cock, but Jon had little comparison to other men and if he was impressive to you know, he didn’t care to know if he’d stay that way. Instead he simply took it for the moment, moving back into the bed and placing you onto your back, did Jon pull your legs apart.

Your back flat, Jon knelt above you upright as he hooked your thighs over his hips keeping you spread open for him in the perfect way. Still he could see the wetness between your legs and the orgasm he had just given you hopefully helped. Your chest heaved for air, but no words could be spoken to comfort you. Jon was about to be as new to this as you were, he had not the experience to tell you how this was going to go.

He could play it out in his mind, but reality was far different then his wonders and dreams. Already it was too different to even compare, so he would have to simply take this plunge and hope you understood that this was for you and him. For the both of you.

Giving yourself fully to each other in the deepest and most intimate of ways to forever bond together the love you’ve forged together in complete secret. Whatever the consequences may be, Jon was apparently willing to risk it. Ruining you, ruining him, ruining the life of the child which may come to be the moment he does this. Connecting with the girl he has been in love with his entire life seemed to be worth it, if just in his eyes. Jon could only hope you felt the same because he moved once more.

Leaning over you better, Jon gripped his cock. Eyes squeezing shut for a moment with a rough husking breath exhaling out as he brushed the tip of his cock along your wet walls. A tiny little cry left you, need and fear as he muttered your name and shushed you.

His lips found yours, waiting until that very moment he felt you ease up. He sensed you stopped clenching so hard that he wouldn’t be able to even get inside you before he finally moved. Told every worry he had to fuck off, and pushed inside of you for the first time. Warm, and wet and tight and every pleasure he imagined it would be and better.

And the moment you called his name, did Jon snap back to the reality he could no longer deny.

He was moving in the real present, his breeches still on and nothing had yet changed from when he told you he didn’t want to stop before kissing you again. But it played out on his true bed with the real you in a way that he knew was the way his father raised him to treat women just like you.

Just as Jon's hand trailed up your thigh enough he could feel the heat between your legs, it was a blessing in disguise when you pulled from his lips almost in a jolting panic. Stammering with wide eyes when Jon sat up, you clearly started to panic. “I- I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..”

Brows furrowing, Jon gently ran hands along your hair at the back of your head cupping you gently to stay in place. “Don't be sorry, it's alright.” You shook your head trying to deny that, but Jon leaned in more gentle in his gaze and softness. “Look at me,” Finding his gaze, he could see the slight bit of nerves tinged with the fear of the unknown. “We don't have to to this. We can stop right here.”

You looked away frustrated, no doubt at yourself. “I'm sorry..” Jon went to tell you again to stop apologizing but you continued, clearly trying not to let your eyes water at how much was running through your head. “It's not you or anything..I...” Sighing out you looked back up at him, Jon letting his thumb run along your cheek. “I don't know if I'm ready..for..this part..”

He didn't say it, but in truth, Jon was relived. He couldn't do this with you, when all he was worried about was ruining everything your life could be by getting you pregnant. You and what children you had shouldn't start here, with a bastard. No matter how in love with you he was, how much he always will be.

Murmuring your name, he leaned in no run his nose along yours. “Do you want to know something?” You nodded, as your hands gently ran through his curls almost soothingly. “I don't think I'm ready either.”

It was strange to laugh at that, but you did, and so did Jon. Laughing gently into the other before he pulled you in for a much more innocent, but eager kiss. “We are a mess, aren't we?” Jon laughed a lot more freely at that, his heart growing in his chest at the giggle on your own lips before he captured the sound with a kiss. Running a hand again along your hair, you moved yours at the same time to shift the both of you.

After a little moving, Jon had you laying mostly on your side as he did facing you, his hand running now freely but without greedy intention along your bare side. Your own hands sat at his chest and collarbones, sharing just an innocent kiss for the way you both looked. Your voice was quiet, but a lot less nervous as the minutes passed between you. “You don't have to, but I was wondering..I want to wait for you..and was hoping maybe you would wait for me too?”

Jon just grinned. “I'm not here to rush you, darling. I'll always wait for you.”

You'd both have to get up eventually, but for now, Jon pulled you into his chest. Keeping your bare frame tucked into his warmth. If only for a little while, you both could spare a nap at least. Wrapped up in the others touch and safety.

As Jon kept your head tucked into his chest, he buried his face happily in your hair. Thinking to himself, that he's never wanted anything as much as he wants to just be with you.

He would take all the time in the world to wait until you both were ready, there wasn't and couldn't be a single soul in the world Jon would ever want to give himself too other then you. You were the woman he loved, you were his heart, something that made his lonely, miserable life worth it. Jon was utterly in love with you, and as long as you both had that together?

The rest would come easy, in time.

[multiwreckedmess]

February Filth Fest Day 22

Prompt: Masturbation Pairing: Gymrat!Yeosang x fem!reader WC: 1,760 Summary: Yeosang has an embarrassing problem. Have you ever heard of a core-gasm?

This is a work of fiction, it does not represent Yeosang or any Ateez member. On top of this it is an 18+ work. For my comfort and boundaries please if you are under age do not interact with this. By clicking the “Read More” you agree that you are of age to interact with my works.

TW/CW: Male masturbation, sort of subby Yeosang, lots of praise for yeosang, yeosang called handsome and big boy, reader called “hot” and has breasts. tbh not much to warn about.

 Yeosang has started wearing two pairs of pants to the gym. It’s not really a notable change to anyone, simply adding some compression leggings to a pair of sweats or loose shorts wasn’t revolutionary fashion. If anyone asked, he’d planned to joke that it was “pump cover” or something like that. As if the problem was that easily explainable.  No no, the problem had only started recently, as he worked to define his abs further. Yeosang wanted to fulfill his title of the “statue of Ateez '' to perfection. It was the addition of hanging leg lifts, pushed into the workout by his trainer, that were the culprit. Meant to better define his v-cut and improve his posture, it seemed the exercise provided other less welcome effects. In particular and perhaps most curiously, was seemingly spontaneous orgasm.  Almost always on the 2nd to last rep of the final set, as Yeosang trembled and fought against gravity, he’d feel the familiar dangerous twinge in his core. Unable to stop it, endorphins would flood him as warmth spread into his underwear. The first time it happened he jogged to the locker room to change, horrified at the thought that he’d pissed himself. It wasn’t, he hadn’t. Instead sticky white clung to him as he peeled back his clothing. Embarrassing.  And then it happened again, two days later. And it kept happening, not every time but enough. Enough that Yeosang had to wear two pairs of pants to hide the stain as it soaked through.  “I like those pants!” You remark as you pass Yeosang who is drinking feverishly from his water bottle. Track pants with snaps up the sides to the very top, mostly unfastened, allowing the fabrics to billow between his legs. “Very ‘Magic Mike’ if you wanted to just rip them off. Heeeyaw!” You mimic the motion and giggle.  Yeosang chuckles and nods, but you’re already halfway to another machine. He watches you out of the corner of his eye as you work in between sets together. Energetic yet reserved, friendly but solitary. In a way you remind him of Wooyoung. You have more of an ass though, and certainly more of a bust. He chides himself for noticing, it’s indecent of him to ogle, but it’s hard to miss how the tight spandex hugs every curve so beautifully.    “The way you’re staring at me I’m gonna think you want to fight me or fuck me,” you blurt in passing from machine to machine. Yeosang’s ears go red and he stammers.  “So sorry,” his eyes burn holes in the floor. “I was just spacing-” you’d already moved on to your set, but he keeps going, keeps apologizing and stuttering and blushing. For some reason he can’t stop himself from it, having so egregiously breached so many unspoken rules of the gym recently, he rambles on like a kid in a confession booth for the first time.  Pausing mid set, you laugh, startling him. “You’re actually really cute for a gym bro.”  This stops him, looking up at you again incredulously. “I’m not aiming for cute!”  Your eyes are kind, “oh? So you’re just naturally flusterable?” You ask as you giggle.  Yeosang’s mouth flaps open and closed, unable to form a coherent sentence.  “Okay handsome, I’m going to go finish up on the treadmill if it’s all the same to you.”  It’s your turn to stare as Yeosang finishes up his workout, rounding out with leg raises. He’s really beautiful when he does each exercise, nose crinkling with effort as his muscles shake. Closing his eyes and knitting his brow, his pouty lips begin to tremble, jaw slackening. All of his muscles seem to seize at the top of the leg lift, eyes flying open as he lets out the most pitiful whine.  Yeosang’s expression changes from pleasure to panic as you look at each other. He starts to try to scuttle away, tail between his legs as he strategically speed walks to the locker room.  The room has never felt farther than it does as Yeosang feels you breathing down his neck. The sanctuary of the men’s locker room where he can clean up the mess he’s made both literally and figuratively. Maybe even cancel his membership as he sits in a stall.  A small hand with a firm grip gets his shoulder as he reaches the door.  “Did you just cum?”  “Don’t ask that so loud,” he whimpers. “Someone could hear you.”  “Who? The teen at the front desk with his headphones in? There’s not exactly a ton of people here right now. But wait,” you shake your head, “you didn’t answer, did you cum?”  Feet stuck to the ground by a supernatural magnetic force, Yeosang nods shamefully with a high pitched whine. “It just happens sometimes, it’s not- I’m not a perv.”  “But you aren’t even hard,” you start to wonder aloud, eyes locking to the crotch of his pants. Yeosang is fully flushed, beat red from his chest to the tips of his ears.  “I know, it’s so-it looks like I-” Yeosang stutters, his cock twitching in interest so suddenly he jolts a bit more upright. It’s a small comfort that if anything you look fascinated by him instead of horrified or angry. Your hand migrates down his arm, tracing a vein from his bicep to his wrists where he fears you can feel his pulse pounding wildly.  “Show me. Can you do it again?”  Yeosang’s eyes roll back as blood flows into his rapidly engorging member. If the post workout high didn’t have him dizzy, this certainly did. The husky purr to your tone melodically curling around his ears. It’s the opposite reaction that he’d never planned for. All of the time he’d rehearsed in his head what to do if someone noticed but never had he thought about if a person wanted him to do it again. He starts to shake his head, he’d only ever done it once a workout. “You wanna see me cum?”  “I’m sorry if i’m being too forward but I’m-I’m interested,” you stammer, the weight of your question finally hitting you like a ton of bricks. “I thought you-sorry if i misread-”  It’s Yeosang’s turn to panic, eyes wide as his hands spread open palmed in front of him. “Ah! No! I’m-I’m-you’re-” he gulps, mouth dry as the desert. Brow furrowing he doesn’t even register the decision he makes. It happens so fast. He tugs you with him, back pushing through the locker room door, into a stall. “I’ve only ever done it once like that but I can-”  “I could help!” You offer as you watch him tug his first layer of pants off his body. There’s a large splotch, not obvious on the black fabric from afar but mere inches away its hard to miss the shiny dampness of the area. Instinctively you reach forward to touch him, already at half mast and growing.  Yeosang nearly yelps, “no! If you do I’ll-” the blush on his cheeks darkens, “you’re really hot.”  You smirk, “okay then handsome, I’ll watch.”  Unceremoniously, Yeosang tugs the second pair of shorts and his boxers down to his thighs, the mess of cum and sweat still coating his pubic area and cock. Purple and blue veins run prominently up his member all the way up to the flare of his red tapered tip. He pulls his tight black tanktop up enough to expose the muscles of his torso. Taut abs, defined vlines and muscles you didn't even know the name of all on full display as he drags his fingers up the underside of his shaft.  “God you’re beautiful,” you murmur, sinking to your knees in front of him.  His eyelids flutter and quads tense, the refractory period is much shorter than he thought. “Ah! Ha, you-you-too,” Yeosang gasps and giggles at the same time, leisurely pumping his cock. “Your tits are really-oh my god- from here- they’re so-” he shudders and gasps, a weak spurt of precum erupting from the tip.  You scoot closer to better admire him. His hands are just as veiny, large around his equally girthy member. “Where’d you hide all that?”  He whines a tiny high pitched sound from the back of his throat. You can see his abs tense and kick his diaphragm up as a wave of endorphins hit. Almost a direct opposite of his ripped physique, the vocalizations that escape him are small and squeaky, the product of both pain and pleasure.  “You like it when I call you handsome? When I tell you how big and thick your cock is?”  “Ghnughn- yes,” he chokes back a moan. The praise immediately goes to his head, his grip tightens and pace speeds up.  “Moan more for me, you sound so pretty.”  A guttural groan escapes from him as he shakes, followed shortly by a hiccuped inhale. “I’m close.” His cock is almost purple with engorgement, precum flowing out of the tip easily. Hips working in tandem with his fist, the sounds of his whining and mewling that flood the bathroom are unmistakable.  “Hurry, cum. Cum for me,” you urge him, scooting just a bit closer, close enough to feel the warmth of the air around him.  “Shit- wha-where-”  “On me on my face on my tits, wherever you want, big boy, coat me in it.”  The twinge of desperation in your voice sets him off. He’s beautiful when he cums, head tilting back to expose his muscular neck and sharp jaw, drawn out high pitched whimper is the cherry on top. A forceful jolt of release erupting forth from him and coating your cheek, hot and sticky. The next spurt drops from your jawline to your tits which is quickly followed by another volley aimed squarely at the center of your chest.  Yeosang’s vision swimming he could swear he still saw you slowly rubbing the liquid against yourself, lifting a finger to your mouth to clean it with your tongue. The thought makes him nearly black out, hand slamming into the wall of the stall to catch his balance.  “Which locker is yours?” Your breath is hot on his ear. He didn’t even know you’d stood up. His head swims again under the spell of your proximity.  “117.”  “Wait a sec before you come out, it’ll look less suspicious.”  He nods, and collapses back onto the toilet, he needs to collect himself anyway. The entire encounter feels like a fever dream, it’s not until your note falls out of his locker that he starts to concede maybe it wasn’t.

Sorry this is so late. Lightly based on someone at some point saying “what if Yeosang cums when he works out.” I don’t remember where i saw this but whoever you are, yeah, what if?

[tallulahneale]

Title: You play too much

Pairing: Vince staples x fem!reader

Summary: Home girl who loves to get ate but doesn’t suckie suckie and wants to prove Vince wrong.

Word count: 1k

a/n: Where are all the Vince Staples lovers at?!?!

Tagline: “I’m not selfish”

Friday night and all the guys on your roster had served their purpose. Eating you out. You enjoyed it more than any other intimate act. So with nothing to do, you hit up your homeboy Vince. You and Vince go back since kindergarten, kinda drifted apart during high school but y’all reconnected during college.

You check the time, 5:18pm. “It’s not that late and chick-fil-a has drive-in perfect!” You thought to yourself. You reach for your phone to call Vince, he’s a homebody so you know he’ll be down to kick it with you.

*Ring ring*

“Hello?” Vince answers.

“Can you pick up some chick-fil-a pleaseeee? I’m peckish and bored.”

“Hello to you too nigga. Get you some manners”

You pause. You know he’s serious and you don’t like that.

“…”, ignoring what he said.

“… y/n, I know you can hear me” he continues, sounding unbothered.

“I want ice tea this time please. Ohh and the new honey pepper sandwiches! Thank youuu”

“Why you always like this bruh? FYI, you need some salad in your diet…”

“Hey! Be Nice!”

“Says the person that can’t even say hello.”

This nigga always doing the most, you thought to yourself.

“You’re coming over anyway so I’ll say hello when you get here. Killing two birds with one stone.” You replied smartly.

“Whatever cuh, I’ll be at yours around 6.”

“Okay; thank youuuu! Byeeee!”

“See you so-“

*Click*

You cleaned up around the flat and went to freshen up. Changing into your nightgown, the one that kept granny pregnant and all her bills paid! It’s extra comfy and you didn’t want to tease Vince. Recently, he’s been calling you out on a lot of your bs and you didn’t want to hear it today. Plus you knew you weren’t going out, once Vince came you’ll probably watch movies till you fall asleep.

The buzzer rings and you press the intercom, already knowing it’s Vince. You look at your outfit one more time to make sure you look presentable.

*Knock knock*

You open the door and see the bag of food on your welcome mat.

“I know damn well he didn’t just drop my food on the mat like I’m a raccoon.”

Vince jumps out the corner, startling you.

“Vince! Don’t do that! You know how I be spazzing out!” You give him a hug, “How have you been?”

Vince picks up the bags and follows you in.

“I’ve been good you know. Just getting ready for the Black in America Tour and the new season of the show, you know the usual.”

“I hear that! I’m hella excited for all of it, you really deserve all and more!”, you beam.

“I really appreciate that and you too cuh. You the homie for real.” He said giving you a hug before settling down on the couch.

“You’re welcome. You can pick what to watch, I’ve just been watching re-runs and I’m bored of them too.”

“Alright, but don’t complain when I pick one of my favourite 80s show.”

You grab a plate and a tray for the food. Just as you set it on the table, you hear your phone ringing. You check to see Peter Peter pumpkin eater calling. Vince sees it too and shakes his head. “Here we go again”, you thought to yourself.

“Why are you shaking your head like that?” You ask, knowing he’s about to say the truth that you’ve been avoiding.

Vince stares straight at you with an unimpressed expression “Why you save his name like that?” He says.

“You know why V, don’t make me say it.”

Sometimes you feel shy talking about intimate things with him, maybe because you know he’s cute but he’s your homeboy and you want to respect that boundary.

“First of all, that’s weird because the story is about a husband whose wife cheats and doesn’t know how to keep her. Secondly, I’ve seen Marcus the muncher, Louis the licker and Simon the sucker all call you before. Y/N you are creative af but you’re still wrong for all that.”

“You bet not be judging me like you don’t have a list of girl names saved worse and anyway, why you be looking at my phone. Mind your business sometimes” you say, feeling heated and a bit embarrassed.

“I know you’re still doing the “get licked and get kicked” out. Selfish ass.”

“I’m not selfish!” You exclaim.

“…”

“… I’m not! Quit tryna get me to feel guilty. You know what, I’mma prove you wrong. Tired of you being all high and mighty.”

You go to sit down on the couch right beside him, staring shyly into his eyes. He looks back at you with an intense smouldering expression. You’re not sure what he’s thinking so you ignore it. You gently run your fingertips across his bare arms, tracing his veins which draw your attention more than usual. You wink at him again before looking away. You bend over, arching your back closer to his zip, slowly pulling down, you realise that his little big friend is awake. Just as you’re about to pull it out, you look up and whisper to him…

“I told you I’m not selfish.”

You smirk and sip your ice tea.

——The End——

[ordinaryschmuck]

Creature Commandos...is NOT James Gunn's best work

"That sounds like a clickbaity title."

Oh, it's VERY clickbaity, but it's the honest feeling I get from this series. Creature Commandos, to me, feels like a show that's ALMOST good. I mean, for what it is, it's still a fun show that has Gunn's usual brand of balancing darkness with comedy, some delightfully fun and brutal action scenes, and some decent animation...for the most part. It becomes obvious how much the budget went into certain scenes compared to others with how rigged and stiff characters move from time to time. Other than that, though, I'd still say that if you're a fan of James Gunn's work, you're likely going to have a good time watching this. But if you want his BEST work, well, that's where things get a little complicated and we're GOING to have to go into spoilers to talk about it.

Keep in mind, though, this is NOT a show for kids or those with an uneasy stomach. You will watch life drain from a child's eyes in this series and it will make you feel VERY uncomfortable in all the right (and mostly wrong) ways. Consider that your warning before we get right into things.

Spoilers Ahead

Positives first, I LOVE how this series pulls no punches. Like I said, things will make you uncomfortable for the sole purpose of telling tragic tales of humanity looking down at what it perceives to be monsters. There's a scene where a man is crying his eyes out as gangsters rub his hands all over the blood of his recently murdered wife and child, and it's quite possibly the most horrific thing James Gunn has put to screen. Now, if this was back in 2015, I would absolutely have seen this as a negative. It's another example of DC going overly dark for no reason when superheroes are not overly dark characters. However, I've grown a bit since the days where everyone was making fun of Batman v. Superman for being overly edgy. Darkness was never the problem in that movie. The problem was thinking that a bright, hopeful character like Superman deserves to be adapted in a dark, almost hopeless world. A grim story is fine if it suits the character, and Creature Commandos, for all its worth, is a comic line worthy of the edge.

I've only read a handful of issues of the original Creature Commandos run, and from the good amount of stories I've read I'd say it's appropriate to give them a dark enough adaptation. It's a series of stories about these soldiers being turned into monsters, some voluntarily and others being forced this way, with their disfigurements and changes often being met with wisecracks from their rude and VASTLY annoying commanding officer (Who I am very glad is not adapted into this). These characters often feel tortured to have their lives changed so harshly, with the character Lucky being in the most turmoil. He was a military officer that blew up from a landmine and the troops came to stitch him back together in this horrific Frankenstein monster that has everything saved except vocal chords. And, when not being able to take it anymore, he attempts to commit suicide only for the doctors to stitch him back up. Again.

Creature Commandos can get a little silly at times, of course. Every comic tends to. But when adapting it, I think it's fair to still give it more of an edge than any other superhero project. James Gunn certainly tries to do that with his usual style, and, for the most part, I say he does it well. Gunn went on record stating that Creature Commandos is probably the saddest thing he's ever written and I can certainly see why in certain scenes. All of the Commandos are monsters that were made to exist in this world without any choice, were transformed that way by acts of science gone wrong, or are deemed monsters because society said so. The Weasel in particular is surprisingly tragic, showing us that he was never really a danger to anyone. It was only a misunderstanding and unfortunate circumstance that made everyone believe he's a monster, with the only exception being the naive who just didn't know better. The more I think on it, the more that I feel bad for this lanky creature who's not evil or mean or ANYTHING. He's just a wild animal that only knows how to survive or protect. It honestly changes how I look at that scraggly thing that drowned in the first few minutes of The Suicide Squad.

The rest of the Commandos also toe the line between tragic and endearing. Each episode gives us a glimpse into their past, showing how they came to be and the differences between how they were and who they are. The Bride and Doctor Phosphorus definitely have a lot in common, once being happy with the lives they had until someone vile takes that happiness away, with both going through different coping mechanisms. The Bride chose to run from the man who ruined her life, growing jaded after centuries of having this constant and persistent reminder of why she existed in the first place and doing anything but a monster's bride. As for Phosphorus, he decided to face his trauma head-on and murder the people who ruined his life and take their place in the criminal underworld to fill in the void of a lost family. Both often act jaded and show no remorse for doing some pretty bad stuff to people, but you know why quick enough and even feel bad for them when good things in their lives are only fleeting.

Though, not everyone's jaded. Both Nina and GI Robot act more positive with the hands that their given. Both very much did not ASK for the life that they have, but still try to make the best out of most situations. Nina gave humanity a shot for most of her life only to give up when it became too much for her, but still embraced being a fish person a lot easier than you expect and STILL tries to act as nice as possible despite having EVERY REASON to act like the monster her girlfriend best friend does. Yet Nina doesn't, and that's genuinely admirable. I like how she tries to treat others better than how humanity treated her, and I love a character like that.

But GI Robot? Oh, man. GI Robot is absolutely my favorite character in this. There's just something to love about a Nazi-Murdering robot who takes great pride in killing Nazi scum. And yet, that very fact is also kind of tragic too. He was built to be an effective solution for what the US soon decided to be a temporary problem. Killing Nazis is all he knew and without that purpose he was just...a machine that grew irrelevant while the world he knew lived on past him. And most of the time, when people treated him like a person, it was either because he seemed useful or they wanted something out of him. The only one who's affection seemed genuine was Nina...which makes it sad that she never got to see him again and he never really got to say goodbye--FUCK, James Gunn, you're a cold-hearted bastard!

Though, there's more than just tragedy in this. It's a James Gunn production, after all. There's going to be his usual brand of humor and, while it's more miss than hit this time around, there's still some great bits to be had all through these characters and their interactions. James Gunn is great at endearing you to characters through comedy and showing how well these ensemble casts can work off of each other. It's no different here, with Rick Flag Sr. in particular working well off of everyone as the perfect straight man. The way he tries, and often fails, to corral these misfits is often humorous.

If you can tell by now, there's a lot more praise in this than you'd might expect. And that's because I meant what I said in the intro. This is a GOOD James Gunn production with a lot of great moments that help endear me to these characters...MOMENTS. There are MOMENTS in this show that I love. But when you interweave those moments, characters, and themes into one long narrative? Well, to quote what he believes to be one of the best superhero movies...

It's a hot mess.

James Gunn is NOT good at writing a TV show. I had my doubts with Peacemaker Season One, and those doubts are only reinforced by this season of Creature Commandos. He's great at writing ONE story out in a single movie, but to write SHORTER stories to help a stretched out narrative, that's where things get a little messy. I love how each episode is sort of structured as a "Backstory of the week" format where we learn more about each Commando, but not ALWAYS does it feel like that's the important thing going on. Not all the time, mind you, but it feels like The Weasel and Doctor Phosphorus' tragic origins don't get the longevity or focus they need. Weasel's backstory plays second fiddle to the episode focusing more on the overarching PLOT instead of what's going on with him. Even though an episode where a lawyer is trying DESPERATELY to communicate with something that can't speak WOULD have been interesting. As for Doctor Phosphorus, there's not a lot of time to linger on his past and how he was happy before showing how thoroughly FUCKED his life became. We had to show what the rest of the Commandos were doing and sell this message about how being a whore is better than a killer (Which, I mean...fair?), when seeing more of Phosphorus' happy life would have further sell the tragedy of what happened to him.

Another issue is that while James Gunn is doing good in making me love these characters as INDIVIDUALS, I don't care too much about them as a team. This is actually one of his weakest ensembles because the chemistry and relationships aren't as strong. The Bride and Nina's "friendship" was nice, but we don't see how well the others do together. Phosphorus has a handful of conversations with The Bride and talks AT Weasel instead of TO him. Rarely is there a sense of commradery shared between these characters. The Guardians of the Galaxy have that "Losers" speech Star-Lord gives or planning the prison break, and The Suicide Squad have that bar party scene or the conversation on the bus. These are moments where you can see how well these characters and actors work off of each other, and the Creature Commandos don't really have a scene like that. When we got to that bit where The Bride and Phosphorus try to convince Nina to kill the princess, I couldn't really FEEL the emotions in that scene because this is really the first time these characters felt like a team and trying to have conversation together as a group. I hope that Season Two does a far better job with the NEW cast, but I'm also hopeful that James Gunn also finds a better story, because he fell short in creating something SATISFYING with all this narrative build-up. There are two cases where it's the most noticeable.

First is probably the best and worst character in this entire series: Eric Frankenstein. This is a great character, who often switches on a dime between being both hilarious and eerie. One second he's waxing poetically about how beautiful his false love is, sometimes doing sick and disturbed shit to people so he can get his way. And other times, he so firmly believes that him and Rick are best friends and simps for The Bride in such a pathetic matter that I can't help but laugh at him. His as sick as he is hilarious...but his character goes NOWHERE. This entire season builds up how he's going to meet The Bride again, and when they DO meet, she just shoots him down to an inch of his life. After all this build-up, he ends up getting his shit kicked in, which isn't all that special or satisfying to see as episode two just has a whole MONTAGE of the exact same thing happening. By the time the season ends, it's right back to square one, making me wonder if there was even a POINT to making Frankenstein play a role in the present narrative. He works perfectly to explain why The Bride turned out so fucked up, but other than that, you could almost write him out with very little changes being necessary. Honestly, it feels like it'd be smarter to save him for Season Two or to make HIM the main antagonist of the season instead of the princess.

Oh, and that's other thing: The twist with the Princess is poorly handled. I like the irony that we're supposed to ROOT for the monsters about to kill the beautiful princess, but there's no real build up or expectations that this is the natural conclusion. We're first told by a SUPERVILLAIN that Princess Ilana is evil, so the first instinct is to believe that's horseshit. I mean...it's a supervillain, obviously we're not supposed to take their word for it. And we're never given a distinction that Ilana is evil aside from this cold stare she gives Nina while murdering her. That happens in the LAST episode, with every other scene she has involves having her be the sweetest, kindest, horniest person in the show. The closest I can think of is the scene where she's begging for her life and seems too willing to give Circe anything she wants. Like, no one pure would barter with a supervillain if it meant saving their life. Still, you could argue that's James Gunn writing her to be more human because, yeah, humans aren't inherently pure. I'm not asking for much, I'm just asking for MORE scenes where it's clear she's not to be trusted instead of making her a Disney style twist villain for The Bride to shoot. Especially since it'd make the ending ACTUALLY satisfying.

Having The Bride basically explain Ilana's overly complicated plan so she can justify shooting her is...all kinds of wonky. Because we never really got to see how evil the princess is until just now, this feels like James Gunn is holding the audience by the hand and guiding them through all the vague and forgettable details we missed. A proper twist builds on the BIG moments in the story, not the little ones. Plus, it is so weird to me that The Bride executes the leader of a foreign country...and NO ONE gave a shit. The soldiers didn't fight them, the media didn't throw a fit, and the US government even REWARDS The Bride and the Commandos for this decision. And that...That just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I'm fine with characters doing dark, fucked up things and leaving it up to the audience to decide if it's the right call or not...But for the story to paint this as the right thing to do, especially with The Bride spoon-feeding us this information that she's JUSTIFIED in her actions, it's just...not a good ending. In fact, this is probably the most rushed, faulty ending that James Gunn has ever written.

Everything else that's faulty about the show is small and I don't need to dwell on. The pacing is atrocious, but I blame that more on how modern streaming has ruined television. Shows aren't allowed to take their time anymore out of fear of sudden cancellation or because studios think it's better to give audiences that quick binge. If you were to tell me that Creature Commandos was meant to have another episode, or that it was originally meant to have TEN, I'd believe it.

James Gun also WASTES some pretty good DC villains. Circe gets her ass kicked by The Weasel of all characters and Clayface is presumed dead. A show that features one of Wonder Woman's BIGGEST villains and one of Batman's popular foes ends up doing NOTHING with them all so Gunn could do a bad job at making the Princess the bigger threat. It especially hurts since the teasers and trailers put a lot of emphasis on Circe being the main villain, only to have her get written out halfway through.

Also, on Twitter, this show has a LOT of heat as someone pointed out how James Gunn is bad at writing women. I'm not going to get into that discussion because that's a whole different can of worms that I'm not able to properly discuss...but I will admit that this is his worst work with female characters. They're often sexualized or fucked up by men, with there often feeling like an imbalance with how often it happens with men. Sure, Rick Flag Sr. is treated as an absolute GILF in episode two, but there's an entire episode taking place inside a whore house and how "empowering" they are. It doesn't help either with how sexualized Nina is. She spends a good amount of the series fully naked and, yes, she doesn't have genitals...but do you REALLY think boys will care. And with how the tragedy of The Bride was that she was a creation from a pervy stalker, it doesn't feel right to have her outfit be all torn up and revealing for all the other pervs to gawk at. Again, it's a WHOLE thing that I'm not gonna get into. I'm just gonna leave it to those who are MUCH more capable than me to talk things like this.

Creature Commandos is really good...in moments. I like these characters, I like a lot of these scenes, and I overall had a great time watching. I think James Gunn did a decent job, but nothing that tops some of his best works or even compares to them. Guardians of the Galaxy is amazing, The Suicide Squad is the only GOOD DCEU movie, and I am very much looking forward to his take on Superman. But if I were to recommend Creature Commandos, I can't really do it without letting people know its his WEAKEST project. You'll have fun, just not more fun than anything else he made. Hopefully things get better by Season Two, because for now it's more of miss than a hit.

[palequeeeeen]

Are we, or are we not getting a Murder Drones Season 2?

So, the teaser for episode 8 states that the episode is the finale for the series. However, there have been quite a few different instances that would imply the existence or planned existence of a second season.

When the teaser for murder drones’ first season originally dropped, it teased ‘murder drones season one’, implying that there would be more than one season, and that this would be the first. If they had planned for there to only be one season, they would have/should have titled it something like ‘murder drones: the series’ or just ‘murder drones’ as they have done more recently.

There have also been different instances of the team behind murder drones mentioning this being the first season, not the only season. The most important instance of this is when Liam Vickers mentioned that season one was for the show to find its footing for future seasons, which is now a seemingly false statement.

At some point in the show's development, I believe around the time ep. 5 or 6 released, the language around murder drones changed, not mentioning it as being the first season anymore, and just being murder drones.

This was also around the time or just before Glitch started to take on more shows, like The Amazing Digital Circus and Lackadaisy. They started to imply that murder drones would only have one season around this time.

Now, most of my thoughts are just speculation, but I think that after the success of TADC and Glitch taking on a few other shows, they had stretched themselves too thin, and something had to give. 

I'm not saying all the other shows that Glitch is making ended Murder Drones. This could have been the plan from the start, and they were using the wrong wording early on and gave us all false hope. But, I think that there is the possibility that Glitch had to let murder drones end earlier than everyone would have liked.

Again, this is all speculation, could be totally false, and probably is. Don't harass any creators associated with Glitch, Glitch themselves, or any voice actors that work for them.

But, I do think that there is a small, very small, chance that we could still be getting a season two after all, especially if we end on a cliffhanger or downer ending. When Meta runner season 2 ended, i believe it was called a series finale at the time, but it got a third season two years later! It's very, very, unlikely, but we could keep our hope up for about a year or two before I say it could be gone for certain. This could also be a temporary shelving of the series while they work on the other shows, as some other people have pointed out. I could return in a few years with an anthology series or something. (I swear it's not the copium talking)

Again, don't harass Glitch or any of their associates. We definitely won't get a season two if we're asses about it. Besides, like Michael Kovach said in a recent livestream (I think?), N at the very least is probably gonna pop up again with how popular he is, so our boy won't be gone forever, and I think Uzi and V won’t be too far behind him.

[1moreff-creator]

hii!! so idk if you saw, but i recently posted a theory abt how xander and eden were survivors from a previous killing game.

you’re super cool and smart so i was wondering what you thought of it lol

(this sounds like free promo for my theory but i promise it isn’t)

(i just want opinions on it bc i can’t tell if i did a good job or not)

Hey there! Yeah, I saw it, and I think it’s a pretty good theory! I enjoyed reading it, your writing style is fun. Below are my full thoughts on it. For anyone else, please read the original first, this is going to be incomprehensible otherwise.

Also don’t worry about looking like you’re “promoting” your theory. It’s Tumblr, no one gains anything here, we all just lose. What would you even use the promotion for lol.

Also also you people have gotta stop giving me so many compliments it’s feeding my god complex /j

CW: Violence and blood, death, Danganronpa V3 Spoilers

[Background]

Admittedly, I don’t know how literally connected V3 is supposed to be to this whole situation, given the difference in the settings and the like. Especially since Teruko’s only mentioned remembering “that other killing game”, implying she doesn’t know about the 50 others despite vaguely knowing about the THH one. However, it is perfectly valid to bring up V3 as a meta point (which I think is what you’re doing?); the idea exists, so DRDTdev could have certainly taken it for DRDT. In any case, it sure is an interesting premise!

[The Survivors]

[Xander Matthews]

“[Post]: he has the personality for self-sacrifice.” True!

[For the sake of clarity, I refer to this scene as “the pre-prologue scene”, given that we see it before the Prologue title card appears]

““Them” could be the other people in the killing game. [...]

And, most of all, he says that he has to end the killing game. How the hell would he end a killing game without having been in one? (don’t answer that)”

I mean, solid reasoning! The idea that Xander was actively in a killing game while this scene happened has been thrown around, such as in my “original killing game” theory that we don’t talk about ‘cuz it was insane, because it’s a pretty reasonable conclusion to draw from the dialogue, as you said. For a while now I’ve sorta assumed that Xander was speaking of ending the killing game before it began, but there’s both semantic arguments to argue your theory and that one. The way Xander speaks in pre-prologue seems to imply the killing game is already underway, which is a point to you, but the secret David received mentions “The killing game is all your fault,” potentially implying there’s only ever been one modern killing game (“modern” as in, after THH). I think the idea of Xander actively being in a killing game in pre-prologue is stronger, though, I’m only bringing this up to account for all possibilities.

And “them” could be whoever so :p

[Xander Picture]

“When was this?

Why would he be in the same outfit, while having both eyes?

It makes sense if he was in a previous killing game, doesn't it?”

Well I mean. It could be. It could also just be from the time the cast (or most of it at least) was in the same Hope’s Peak class. Keep in mind all the outfits the characters were using at the start of the prologue are the same as the outfits they first went to Hope’s Peak with, as otherwise they’d have pointed out that their clothes changed between the moment they “lost consciousness” (the last moment of their memories, which is going to Hope’s Peak) and their appearance in the killing game place.

So, I propose that, seeing as it originated from LGI, this image could just be the first time David actually met Xander in person, or some other notable memory between the two of them. Of course, I have no evidence for this as much as there’s no great evidence for your take either. Basically I’m just saying this isn’t a very strong point in my books, but it’s not like I know any better than you what’s going on here :v

[Eden Tobisa]

“First of all, there’s the similarities between her handwriting and the handwriting of the note that Xander received. [...]

The T’s are the same, the E’s are the same, the A’s are the same. Don’t deny that it’s a strong, and the most likely, possibility.”

Uh… I don’t agree :v

I’ll give you the i’s and maybe the capital T’s, but I think the e’s and the a’s are too different for me to really consider it a possibility. It’s hard to explain this, so I’ll try to make some Paint diagrams to exaggerate the differences to get my point across.

-The T’s are pretty similar, but Eden’s have a slight curve towards the bottom, which the other note’s T’s seem to lack. In the diagram, you’ll find the recreation of Eden’s letters to the left, and the recreation of the “kill Teruko” note’s letters on the right.

-The e’s in Eden’s handwriting have a circular head, while the other note’s is almost triangular.

-Similarly, Eden’s a’s are a bit more circular than the note’s, which are sharper and triangular.

This all leads me to believe that the dev explicitly used different fonts for the two (assuming they dev used a text writing tool and didn’t draw the notes by hand, which I feel is a reasonable assumption). When coupled with the fact that Eden could potentially have been defending Teruko in pre-prologue (unless there’s more context we’re missing, Xander wanted to kill Teruko & Eden attacked Xander -> Eden didn’t want Teruko to die), I don’t think Eden wrote that note. Sorry :v

[Eden CG]

Now this is evidence of Eden being in the same killing game as Xander (of course, assuming Xander even was in a killing game in pre-prologue in the first place, which is as of yet unconfirmed). The CG itself heavily implies Xander and Eden were in the same place when the whole eye-fork situation happened, being that Eden is the person who hurt Xander before the pre-prologue scene (pre-pre-prologue?). If that happened in a killing game, then clearly, Eden was there!

“Why would the two of them have images of their past selves wearing the exact same outfits?

Oh, wait a second.

In V3, we see Rantaro’s past self. He was wearing the same outfit that he did in the killing game. And he was a member of a past game too.

And it’s not like we haven’t seen them in other outfits. Xander has been seen in another outfit in his bonus episode.”

I mean. As I mentioned, the characters probably just frequent these outfits, given they were wearing them when they first went to Hope’s Peak. The Eden thing is a bit more notable because, unlike Xander’s which could just be from any point of Hope’s Peak time, that image has to be from the pre-prologue situation. But the idea that she was wearing that because it’s just an outfit she wears often isn’t too far fetched to me. This isn’t a point against your theory, I just don’t personally find the outfits to be the most convincing point of evidence for it.

[Eden’s secret]

“Why is this secret so mundane? (At least in comparison to the others)

Wouldn’t it make more sense to say something about what she did to Xander?

Of course, that could just be because they didn’t want her to know about something she did during the missing year.

But it could also be because it happened during the last killing game.

That one’s a stretch but I just thought I’d put it out there.”

Well, you recognize it’s a stretch, and I agree. If Eden doesn’t remember the Xander thing, then the secret which would be most effective for her would be something different, and apparently she doesn’t really have many serious secrets outside of her sexuality. Keep in mind these secrets don’t necessarily have to be the worst thing the person in question did, as stated by Veronika in 2-13.

“Why specifically these two?

Dev didn’t have to post the colored picture of Xander.

It’s clearly important.

Same for Eden.”

Also not a point for Xander imo. Dev posts a lot of stuff that isn’t necessarily important, such as the Veronico Christmas comic or the “long hair style” images. That is to say, dev posting it isn’t sufficient evidence of something’s importance, you gotta find something important in the content itself to claim that.

And even if the image is important, it could be important in a different way. There is the whole “why does someone turn their back on who they’re talking to” caption or whatever, which could for example be trying to draw a connection between David and Xander in this scene and Mai and Teruko in the 1-6 dream sequence, among other interpretations.

But that’s Xander. I will agree with you that the Eden one is important because it appears in the main series and has a clear connection to the pre-prologue, though.

“Why would he say this?

Unless he knew Teruko in the past, of course.

My guess is that Teruko was named the mastermind during his game. Whether or not she actually appeared, who knows. But she was to blame (supposedly) (to his knowledge) for the killing game. And apparently, killer her would do something important.

This ties in to the note that told Xander to kill Teruko as well!”

I would actually argue that Xander in the pre-prologue doesn’t think Teruko is the mastermind, because “ending the killing game” and “killing Teruko” are two separate goals. If you assume that killing the mastermind ends the killing game (which is a fair assumption I think), and Xander believes Teruko is the mastermind, then what he says is “I have to end the killing game. And even if I can’t do that, I have to end the killing game a different way.” Doesn’t really track does it?

But “ending the killing game” and “killing Teruko” do seem to be aligned goals, at least, so it makes sense to think that Xander believed she had some sort of involvement in it, which is sufficient for your theory I think. Of course, this is very speculative, we don’t know a lot about why exactly Xander wanted to kill the girl.

Btw, what is Teruko’s deal in your theory? Is she another “sacrifice”, a recycled mastermind or traitor of some kind, or someone who was known to the participants of the previous killing game but didn’t participate until the one seen in DRDT? I feel like that ended up a bit unclear lol.

“Who do we think were the survivors of their game?

My first guess was maybe a couple of the AltDRDT characters, but I’m not sure.”

I mean yeah, there’s kinda no one else we can really point to lol. As you said, it’s a guess, so I’m not gonna bother you about the lack of evidence, but yeah. That is a lot of survivors, though, so I’m gonna guess that if this theory is right, the survivors of the old killing game are other people who are probably unknown as of yet.

Overall, a really neat read, and a fun theory! Pretty plausible, too, at least the idea of the pre-prologue killing game and Xander and Eden (and Teruko?) being in it. I disagreed on some points, but that’s only natural with highly speculative things like this. I thought the post itself was well written with a pretty unique style, easy to understand (even if I feel some points could have used a bit more elaboration, but that might just be me), so there’s that. Hope this was enough, thanks for the ask!

[starker-raving-mads]

For You: Part III

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX

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It was two months since the day Peter Parker's life changed for the second - third - fourth time.

He'd gotten more sleep over the last month than he had in the previous two months. It was partly due to sheer, never-ending exhaustion. His life since taking on the mantle as 'the new Tony Stark' - a title he balked at, mind you - had become pure chaos. At first, it was a relief. The instantaneous knowledge that money was no longer a problem. May could quit her job and devote her time to FEAST, he could complete his honors-GED (which many of the Blipped teenagers had chosen to do) and immediately hop into online college courses at Columbia with Ned and MJ.

Immediately following that relief, though, was his face splashed across every newspaper, tabloid, blog, and TikTok page in America.

He would never say it, and he couldn't prove it, but he was 99% sure it was Pepper's doing. After her initial outburst at the lawyer's offices, he'd hardly heard from her. His lawyers - god, his lawyers - had advised that he shouldn't respond to any comments on the subject of Pepper Potts being snubbed by her husband for Peter's heir status. While she had no legal leg to stand on since Tony's will was air tight and definite, that didn't stop her from digging her claws into all the ways she knew would hurt him.

Every time he saw something outrageous with his face on it on an article somewhere, he had to remind himself that she was grieving and in pain about a perceived betrayal by her husband. Her husband, who was Tony Stark, who did not belong to him.

No matter that the man had figured out time travel for him, had risked the universe, had given him billions of dollars and the most coveted job in the entire world. Tony only gave him this because there wasn't anyone else better that he trusted, but Peter knew that didn't mean he was Tony's true first choice, and he had to squash every niggling feeling and whisper of a thought that said he was. It would only make it hurt more when all he wanted was the pain to stop.

He'd finally found a moment, though, where things weren't quite as bad. He'd recently reconvened with Bucky, Steve, Sam, and Rhodey and they had a steady if not solid pact. They were all unsure of the situation, still, and Peter didn't blame them. He'd been…questioned, more politely than Pepper had done, on how he and Tony's relationship had unfolded.

When he'd explained that he was 14 when he met Mr. Stark, Steve and Bucky both winced, apologizing for the disaster that was Germany but Peter shrugged it off. He really hadn't been hurt and it was a foundational moment for his and Mr. Stark's relationship. He couldn't bring himself to regret it.

After that, they'd had a few meals together, talked more about his life - and theirs, to an extent, though he was far more privy to them than they had been of him.

"He never mentioned you," Steve said, shaking his head, baffled. He held a cool beer in his hand, leaning back from the patio table they had gathered around at the newly rebuilt SHIELD headquarters in upper state New York.

"Oh he mentioned Pete to me all right," Rhodey disagreed before reaching over and ruffling his curls lightly. Peter liked Rhodey, liked how hands-on he was, how relaxed but also somehow by the book, liked his humor. He could see how he and Tony had been such good friends. "But he'd only told me about his 'brilliant new intern'," they all chuckled. "He really kept the whole Spider-Man thing close to the chest."

"I'd asked him to," Peter admitted, peeling the wrapper off of his bottle of lemonade. "First because I was still like so young, yo know? And then later, after a few - pretty major - mistakes I made, I guess he thought I'd proved I was finally ready to be an Avenger."

"Well I never heard Tony trying to recruit anyone," Rhodey commented and they all looked at him quizzically.

Peter let out a single huffed laugh. "Yeah, uh," he tried to keep down the blush rising on his neck. "You remember the day that Mr. Stark proposed to Ms. Potts?" Rhodey and Sam both laughed long and hard.

"Even over in Wakanda we saw that," Sam chuckled. "It was the Tony Stark special - a huge thing wrapped in a tiny, chaotic package. Not unlike yourself," he raised his eyebrows at Peter, who flicked his bottle wrapper at him.

"Pepper had no idea it was coming," Rhodey agreed before taking a long drink of his own beer.

"Yeah, well I don't think Mr. Stark had really…planned it," he grimaced. At their faces, he continued. "He'd taken me up to Stark Tower and gave me this speech about having graduated to the 'big leagues' after my last big wrap up," he shrugged. "He gave me the Iron Spider suit and said I was ready to be an Avenger." He frowned, rubbing at the glue and paper residue on his bottle. "And I told him that I just wasn't ready yet. That I needed to stay in Queens for a while more, be the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Help the little guy, you know?" He raised earnest eyes up to the group and they all nodded, slowly. "So I asked him to just keep helping my identity to stay quiet," he shrugged.

"So, then what happened?" Bucky asked, long hair tilting with the rest of his head in curiosity. He didn't speak up often, but when he did, it was always because of something he really wanted to know.

"The next thing I knew I was being ushered downstairs to wait at the car for Happy," he shrugged. "I pulled out my phone and there on live broadcast Mr. Stark was proposing to Ms. Potts at a press conference." He chuckled. "It was - really, really weird."

He expected everyone else to laugh with him, but he was met with contemplative silence. He looked around at each of them before Rhodey finally met his gaze. "What?"

"I think," the older man said slowly, "that press conference was meant to be for your reveal as Spider-Man."

"No way - I mean," he shook his head as the rest of the guys started nodding their heads, agreeing thoughtfully. "He wouldn't propose to her just because - just because I said no to - "

" - to his proposal," Bucky finished.

It was another revelation that Peter could hardly bear the weight of. These things kept stacking and he wasn't sure how to balance all this knowledge he had, about the things Tony had done - and undone - for him. This one, though…this new information didn't hurt, not like the others did.

It actually made a strange amount of sense. At once, it both stung to feel like he was replaced with Ms. Potts so immediately, but also it was like the first fresh breath after being buried underground for so long to know that Peter's answer that day was so important to him that the only thing he could possibly trade it out for in equivalency was getting engaged.

Did this mean that if Peter had said yes Mr. Stark wouldn't have gotten married? It made his head spin, but it also made his heart lighter than it had been in weeks.

Light enough to finally enter the last bastion of refuge that Tony Stark ever took comfort in.

His lab.

Despite being uninhabited for who knew how long, when the familiar glass doors slid open the air wasn't musty, stale, or any such thing. It was as fresh and crisp as it ever was. Off in the corner the long L shaped couch that he and Mr. Stark had often collapsed into opposite ends of, exhausted, lay half-made with fluffy pillows. The coffee pot was empty but clean, and every other available surface covered in notes either figuratively, having been decorated with papers scribbled on with hundreds of lines of equations and code, or literally, like the side of Peter's work station, where he'd dropped to a crouch to finish writing something out when he ran out of paper, mid-idea. He knew he could've just kept writing mid-air thanks to the lab's complete holographic setup, but it wasn't the same as having something solid under your hands.

There was pain in the familiarity of the lab but there was also a feeling of home he hadn't quite gotten the first time he stepped back into his and May's apartment. Plus -

"Hello, Peter."

"Friday!" He exclaimed, smile breaking wide across his face. With a pang, he didn't realize just how much he'd missed the AI until this moment.

"Yes, Peter?" the AI asked, voice warm and if he dared to think it, amused.

"Nothing, nothing, I'm just excited to see you again," he chuckled, hand rubbing at the back of his neck. He started walking around the lab, taking it all in for the first time in what, to him, had been months. The longer he thought about that the more his brow furrowed. "Hey Friday?"

"Yes, Peter? Or would you like me to call you Boss as Tony had?"

"Oh! Um," he shook his head. "No, no Peter's fine, or whatever."

She hummed. "Would it be all right if I picked a name for you, Peter? Being able to distinguish between Boss and Others by a more specific title helps me with my internal hierarchy and understanding of individuals. If you would prefer I do not, though, merely say such."

"I mean if it helps you then, yeah, sure I guess."

"Thank you, Mini Boss," she said. He laughed again.

"You might wanna work on that," he smiled wide.

"Yes, I think it might take me some time, Father."

His eyes widened. "Father?"

"Hm, you're right," she said. "Boss was more like my Father, I suppose."

"Uh, yeah, definitely," Peter nodded. He gave her a beat to let her figure out what she wanted to call him as he walked over to his desk. He'd let her go through her process before he started asking the questions that sat burning in his mind.

"Would you be opposed to me calling you Mother, Peter?" Friday asked. He spun in his chair, smile wide again.

"If Tony was your Father, wouldn't he also be your Mother?" he asked, amused. "You know, having done 100% of your coding, and all."

"If one were to look at my original codebase as the only part of what makes me, me," she agreed. "However, would you not say that those that raise you are more worthy of such a title rather than just those that created you?"

He immediately thought to May and how, if he'd been younger when he came to her, he'd be calling her by that name.

"That's true enough, sure."

"And outside of Boss," she went on, "you are the individual most involved in my growth. So it stands to reason that if Boss is Father, then Peter is Mother."

"I - " he really didn't know what to say to that. It had never occurred to him that outside of Mr. Stark he was the one who interacted with Friday the most.

"If you would prefer I find a name not so closely connotated with females," she continued, "I can endeavor to do so."

"No, no, it's fine, Friday," he replied, quiet and in his head again. "You can - can call me Mother if you want." A not-so-small part of him felt absolutely, transparently happy that Friday considered him her parent. More than Mr. Stark leaving him the company, more than having all this financial security and ability to mess around with Tony Stark's labs, more than all of that - this meant something profound to him.

"I also thought," she said and that amusement was hinted at in her lilting Irish, "that it would be a nice subversive reference to the spacecraft from Alien."

He laughed out loud at that. "I love that movie, that's perfect."

He could feel her smile, then. "I know you do, Mother."

He slumped onto the stool at his table in the lab and finally asked his question. "Friday, can you tell me - why isn't the lab more different?"

"Different how?"

"Well it's just," he struggled to articulate the sentence, the feeling he was pulling at. "I was - gone - for five years. But it almost looks like this place never really changed?"

"I see," she said. "Boss spent a lot of time here after the Blip first happened, once he was home from Titan. He slept primarily on the couch in the corner and had me refill his coffee orders more than anything else. However, he never touched your things, Mother."

Peter frowned. "Why?"

"I could not say," she replied, tone ponderous. "Based on his patterns of movement, he seemed to specifically avoid your work areas. Though he did take a jacket you had left at her table to the couch. From my archival footage, he seemed to sleep with it, perhaps for warmth?"

It occurred to the teen, then, that Friday probably had thousands and thousands of hours of Tony on video and he could pull it to watch them at any time. The feeling of want was a fever in his blood and he asked, "Can you show me?"

"Of course, Mother."

Faint blue light lit up the couch and Peter walked over to it, seeing that more than merely just show him the video, she played it out in holographic projection. His breath hitched as Tony walked into view, Peter's hoodie in clutched in his hands. Staring down at it, he slumped onto the couch and brought the fabric to his face. Less breathing it in and more suffocating himself with it.

"I'm sorry," he heard muffled through Friday's speakers. "I'm so sorry, Pete."

Tony then curled up onto the couch on his side, face pressed to the hoodie, back toward the room. The projection cut off.

Peter didn't realize that he was crying until Friday asked, "Mother, are you okay?"

"I - " he tried to say, throat clogged with tears. "No," he admitted, jacket-covered wrist swiping away at his tears. He sniffled and sat where Tony had, finding his hoodie wedged between the cushions and the back of the couch. He pulled it out and, like Tony, smashed it to his face, breathing in the faintly lingering spicy scent of Tony Stark.

"I'm sorry, Mother," Friday said, speakers low, tone regretful. "I did not mean to cause you pain."

"You didn't, sweetheart," he shook his head, voice still clogged with tears. "I'm just sad."

"Why?" she asked, her natural curiosity shining through. Much like a child, she did not always know when it wasn't the right time to ask questions. But Peter had always liked indulging her and feeding her curiosity. The first few lab sessions they played 20 Questions back and forth until Tony would tell them both to shut up, though the amusement when he said it always shone through.

"I'm sad because Tony's dea - " he cleared his throat. "Because Tony - "

"It is okay, Mother," Friday cut him off. "I understand."

At that, he let himself fall back into the couch like Tony had. Above him, Friday dimmed the lights and stayed quiet, letting him cry out his grief in silence.

[justforbooks]

Visions of America: 25 films to help understand the US today

From The Apprentice to 13th, our critic selects titles that shed light on the US under Trump. Alex Gibney, whose new documentary examines how ‘dark money’ became part of the American system, introduces the list

This is a dire moment in the US. It’s a moment where there’s an opportunity for people with a lot of money to rip apart all of the guidelines enacted by the Roosevelt administration, way back in the day, to guard against the brutality of unfettered capitalism. Capitalists like to have all the power that they want, whenever they want it. They’re not much interested in democracy either, it turns out. Nor, apparently, the rule of law. The government is not the solution – it’s the problem. And now a vengeful president who just wanted a get-out-of-jail-free card is going to punish his enemies and show us all how to destroy the American administrative state by using the big stick of Elon Musk’s chequebook.

It reminds me of that moment in Once Upon a Time in the West, when Henry Fonda sits behind the rail tycoon’s desk and says: “It’s almost like holding a gun, only much more powerful.” The US has always been about money. That’s been our blessing and our curse. It’s the land of great opportunity, but that obsession with money over everything else has now taken us to a very bad place. We’ve reached the dark side of the American dream.

As a film-maker at this moment, I feel defeated in one sense: you always look in the rear-view mirror and wish your films had had a more lasting impact. Yet the fight for liberty and democracy is a never-ending one, so I’m still very much engaged. I’m reminded of what Salman Rushdie said at the Pen America World Voices festival in 2022: “A poem cannot stop a bullet. A novel can’t defuse a bomb. But we are not helpless. We can sing the truth and name the liars.”

Art can always have an impact, but it isn’t Pavlovian. It isn’t a vending machine. A film won’t make someone go out tomorrow and pass a law. What you hope for is that it will be a kind of a slow-motion timebomb in the psyche of the audience, where they begin to reckon with essential human values. When I made The Crime of the Century, my documentary about the opioid crisis, I wasn’t thinking to instigate a particular kind of change. That wasn’t the purpose of the film. I was concerned that people tended to look at the crisis as something that just “happened”, like a hurricane. I wanted to emphasise that it was an intentional crime, in which people were literally killing people for money. It wasn’t something to be endured, but to be reckoned with. I wanted the film to help reorient the vision of the viewers.

I’ve got a diptych of films coming out next month called The Dark Money Game, all about the power of dark money and how that’s become part of the American system. It’s about how white-collar crime is now almost legal: so long as rich people are stealing, it’s OK. And I’ve also been working for two years on a film about Elon Musk, to get at some deeper understanding of not only who this man is and why he’s doing what he’s doing, but also why we’re letting him. A lot of my films are crime films, in a way. It was Chekhov who said that if there’s a gun on the mantel in the first act, it had better go off in the third act. So very often I’m faced with the spectacle of a gun going off. My job is to look back to find the guns on the mantels.

I’m naturally drawn to the film-makers who explore the dark side: the Scorseses of this world. And at a time such as this, you want to engage the darkness of the moment – but you also want films that reaffirm your sense of humanity. It’s not an American film, but I was deeply inspired recently by Walter Salles’s I’m Still Here, about surviving a military dictatorship: it was so finely observed and so deeply human. There’s always a way out. This is a pendulum and it swings back and forth. But, you know, if we don’t wake up, then it’s going to be a very long, dark period. Alex Gibney

American Factory

(Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, 2019)

Best for: a look at what the American workforce faces in a globalised economy.

An Oscar winner for best documentary feature and the first film acquired by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground production company, this perceptive, humane film examines the initial promise of a modified, modernised American dream, as an abandoned General Motors plant in Ohio is reopened by a Chinese company, only for the new owners’ labour practices and values to clash sourly with those of their working-class American employees. Shot between 2015 and 2017, it captures a country’s growing insularity at the outset of the Trump era.

The Apprentice

(Ali Abbasi, 2024)

Best for: a primer on how the Trump mythos began.

Few were especially looking forward to a Donald Trump biopic from Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi when it premiered at Cannes last year: don’t we see enough of him as it is? But this period-perfect, video-grainy portrayal of his rise to celebrity in the 1980s is caustically gripping and insightful, as Sebastian Stan’s dead-on performance captures the chronic insecurity behind his bluster, while Jeremy Strong’s venal lawyer Roy Cohn models the behaviour of a toxic sociopath. A stark, shattering scene of Trump raping his former wife Ivana, meanwhile, was a gutsy inclusion.

Bisbee ’17

(Robert Greene, 2018)

Best for: understanding how the US confronts its history, or doesn’t.

In 1917, in the small Arizona mining town of Bisbee, more than 1,200 immigrant mine workers were kidnapped and illegally deported to the New Mexico desert 200 miles away. Robert Greene’s highly original hybrid documentary studies how the Bisbee of the 21st century processes this shameful history, as local people mark the centenary of the event by staging a grand-scale re-enactment that raises debate and dissent in the general community. It’s a wise, eerie reflection on how Americans can compartmentalise or rationalise the past – but also acts as a mirror for anti-immigrant sentiment in the present day. History is never fully over.

Bowling for Columbine

(Michael Moore, 2002)

Best for: fuelling rage against US gun laws.

The obnoxiously hectoring documentary style of Michael Moore might now seem of a previous era, but in the 22 years since this ferocious polemic won an Oscar, the frank absurdity of the US gun crisis hasn’t been more vigorously addressed on screen. By now, mass school shootings such as the Columbine massacre are distressingly commonplace stateside; Moore’s restless, roving examination of its causes and effects still hits hard, and bitterly underlines just how little has been done to prevent such occurrences in the intervening decades.

The Brutalist

(Brady Corbet, 2024)

Best for: a timeless dissection of the soured American dream.

Brady Corbet’s Oscar-winning, three-and-a-half-hour-plus epic might be set between the 1940s and the 1980s, but it has plenty to say to the 2020s, as it unfolds the plight of a Hungarian immigrant architect whose personal fortunes and creative ideals are gradually stymied by the Faustian allure of American capitalism. As a miserable east coast mogul seeking to own not just art but the artist, by dint of sheer wealth, Guy Pearce unnervingly encapsulates the ruinous entitlement of the 1%.

The Crime of the Century

(Alex Gibney, 2021)

Best for: a journalistic exploration of the continuing US opioid crisis.

Weighing in at nearly four hours overall, Gibney’s two-part documentary is as comprehensive a film as has been made on the opioid epidemic plaguing the US today, beginning with a look at how the Sackler family got OxyContin approved by the Food and Drug Administration, before getting into the mass marketing of fentanyl – taking on all manner of corporate corruption and human devastation along the way. If you can handle more rage against big pharma after watching it, pair it with Laura Poitras’s more emotive, award-winning All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.

Don’t Look Up

(Adam McKay, 2021)

Best for: summing up the divided US stance on the climate crisis.

Adam McKay’s brash, broad social satire split critical opinion a few years ago, but there’s resonance in even the silliest aspects of its farce, as it captures the grating, oppressive cacophony of a population at war with itself, even in the face of universally impending disaster. The environmental crisis isn’t directly addressed, but the metaphor couldn’t be clearer: a planet-destroying comet is headed towards Earth, but scientists can’t make Americans take heed over a din of debate, denial and political spin.

Election

(Alexander Payne, 1999)

Best for: American electoral politics brought down to brass tacks.

Any number of films have been made about the complex vagaries of American electoral campaigns, but have they ever been summarised as simply and cruelly as they are in Alexander Payne’s lethally dark high school comedy? The stakes might be comparatively low in this anatomy of a midwestern student body vote, but try telling that to Reese Witherspoon’s indelible overachiever Tracy Flick – an analogue for every ambitious, capable woman ever deemed too unlikable to succeed by dominant male mediocrity.

A Face in the Crowd

(Elia Kazan, 1957)

Best for: a prescient vision of the US media landscape at its most cynical.

Not a great success upon its release in 1957, Elia Kazan’s nearly 70-year-old media satire has enjoyed quite a revival in recent years – even being adapted into a stage musical at the Young Vic last year. That’s because, its mid-century milieu notwithstanding, it speaks directly to the modern era of faux-populist celebrity construction and public manipulation. Its protagonist, Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, a drifting Arkansas hayseed discovered by a New York radio producer and turned into a merchant of increasingly hypocritical homespun wisdom, is an idiot savant monster whose popular touch calls Joe Rogan to mind.

The Florida Project

(Sean Baker, 2017)

Best for: a slice of life on the poverty line.

Several years before he stormed the Oscars with his sex worker story Anora, Sean Baker received less than his due for one of the definitive modern portraits of poor white America, turning an attentive and compassionate gaze to a demographic often dismissed with cruel stereotypes. Playing out largely through the eyes of Moonee, the six-year-old daughter of an unemployed stripper barely surviving day to day in an Orlando fleapit motel, it avoids condescension as it shows us the wonder that the young girl routinely finds in squalor.

Hale County This Morning, This Evening

(RaMell Ross, 2018)

Best for: an immersive, unsensationalised view of everyday life in the south.

Before switching to fiction with his recent, radical adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross made his name with this exquisite, Oscar-nominated mosaic of daily routines and rhythms among the predominantly Black residents of Hale County, Alabama. Interspersing carefully observed vignettes with more lateral poetic meditations, it was described by Ross as an “epic banal” work, aiming to “bring elation to the experience of blackness”. The film’s calm lyricism and granular detail stand out against other, more vocally political modern docs on that experience.

Here

(Robert Zemeckis, 2024)

Best for: a telling boomer viewpoint on the US past and present, for better or worse.

Robert Zemeckis’s kitschy, AI-assisted graphic novel adaptation about centuries of American life playing out on one patch of land bombed in cinemas, and not undeservedly so – but I’m not sure I’ve seen a film recently that captures the stiflingly conservative family values of the modern US with more inadvertent accuracy, or the political overreach of white liberal worldview. (Its passages on Indigenous trauma and the Black Lives Matter movement are a veritable time capsule of cringe.)

I Am Not Your Negro

(Raoul Peck, 2016)

Best for: bringing a fresh context to the history of US racism.

This Bafta-winning documentary from Haitian film-maker Raoul Peck is based on Remember This House, an unfinished manuscript by trailblazing Black writer and activist James Baldwin, and brings vital visual information to his literary examination of racism in the US. Told via Peck’s own experiences and through reflections on the work and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, among others, it’s a fascinating history lesson bristling with modern relevance.

In Jackson Heights

(Frederick Wiseman, 2015)

Best for: a celebration of American diversity.

Veteran documentarian Frederick Wiseman is the foremost US chronicler of the country’s institutions and communities, whether in his midwest portrait Monrovia, Indiana or his exhaustive administrative study City Hall. But his most vital recent work is this vast cinematic patchwork of life in the teemingly diverse New York City neighbourhood of Jackson Heights, as its gaze takes in everything from a Muslim school to an LGBTQ support meeting to a Jewish community centre – adding up to a compelling study of how the US, at its best, can evolve to meet the needs of a changing population.

Joker

(Todd Phillips, 2019)

Best for: a popular touchstone of current American masculinity.

When Todd Phillips’s unexpectedly artsy, ambitious superhero spinoff movie premiered at Venice, scooping up the Golden Lion, the heated critical debates began: had he made the ultimate “incel” manifesto, or a snarling critique thereof? Six years and one flop sequel later and there’s still no consensus, not least because some audiences adopted Joaquin Phoenix’s downtrodden, mentally ill, ultimately murderous Arthur Fleck as an anti-woke icon and others recoiled from his toxic villainy. Phoenix’s Oscar-winning performance makes him disturbingly sympathetic in either light.

RoboCop

(Paul Verhoeven, 1987)

Best for: a not-so-futuristic projection of where the American police state is heading.

Forget the various meat-headed sequels and increasingly kid-targeted cartoon violence. Verhoeven’s original action blockbuster was an ice-cold, viciously satirical vision of American capitalism and militarisation heading towards an unholy worst-case scenario: a privatised corporate police force staffed by ruthless droids, with predictably dire consequences for humanity. Nearly 40 years later, it’s ageing horribly well: under Trump, its dystopian world-building seems only slightly far-fetched.

Shy Boys IRL

(Sara Gardephe, 2011)

Best for: a snapshot of the origins of incel culture.

Gardephe’s viral short is scrappily shot and only half an hour long, but remains a definitive visual text in our understanding of what, in 2011, had not yet been popularly named “incel culture” – an online community of young men, frustrated by their failure to meet and date women, whose involuntary celibacy seeds an increasingly toxic view. Gardephe’s film, which has recently enjoyed a resurgence on TikTok, treated incels as a subculture then, but today looks prescient in identifying a far broader social phenomenon.

Sound of Freedom

(Alejandro Monteverde, 2023)

Best for: an insight into rightwing blockbuster heroism.

On the face of it, Alejandro Monteverde’s sentimental search-and-rescue thriller is straightforwardly gung-ho stuff, following an intrepid homeland security agent (played by The Passion of the Christ star Jim Caviezel) as he sets out to crack a child sex-trafficking ring in Colombia. But as produced and marketed by conservative faith-based entertainment company Angel Studios, the film became laden, intentionally or otherwise, with intricately coded QAnon conspiracy theories, and was championed by the right as a rejoinder to the supposedly reprobate output of leftist mainstream Hollywood. Sure enough, it was a sleeper hit, and there’s a lot to be learned from watching it.

Stillwater

(Tom McCarthy, 2021)

Best for: a canny distillation of the culture gap between the US and Europe.

Plainly inspired by the Amanda Knox case, Tom McCarthy’s quietly potent culture-clash thriller was unfairly written off by many critics, but there’s some acute wisdom in its portrayal of a gun-loving, blue-collar Oklahoma dad navigating the intricacies of the French legal system – and eventually taking his own roughneck revenge – to save his imprisoned daughter. It’s a criminal melodrama with blunt contrivances softened and complicated by Matt Damon’s knotty, humane portrayal of a character who would be easier to demonise.

Strong Island

(Yance Ford, 2017)

Best for: a searingly personal account of the struggles of social integration.

In 1992, Yance Ford’s brother William, a young, unarmed Black man, was shot dead by a white 19-year-old who claimed self-defence and was subsequently acquitted by an all-white jury. That might have been more than 30 years ago, but Ford’s pained, unflinching documentary points to enduring unequal treatment in its first-hand portrait of a Black family who anticipated a better life on moving to the suburbs of Long Island, only to find, ultimately, they were unwelcome outsiders. Ford, a trans film-maker, has a sharply intersectional understanding of minority identity; his film is both an elegy and a plea for change.

Support the Girls

(Andrew Bujalski, 2018)

Best for: A snapshot of labour politics with a side of lively feminism.

There may be no brand more absurdly and quintessentially American than the lurid, unabashedly chauvinist “breastaurant” Hooters, and it gets a wicked send-up in this breezy but bittersweet workplace comedy, starring a wonderful Regina Hall as the world-weary manager of one such institution. Following her across her last two days of employment, and glancing upon the various crises of its female staff members, it’s a casually piquant skewering of unjust labour practices in a still-patriarchal society, and a warm valentine to the women who endure them.

13th

(Ava DuVernay, 2016)

Best for: a thorough breakdown of the US prison-industrial complex.

The title refers to the 13th amendment to the US constitution, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude – except as punishment for convicted criminals. In her first documentary, Ava DuVernay uses this caveat as the basis for a compelling argument that slavery continues to this day in the US prison system, further challenging the corporations that profit from it. With interview subjects ranging from activist Angela Davis to politician Newt Gingrich, it’s the most expansive and searching work of DuVernay’s career.

Time

(Garrett Bradley, 2020)

Best for: an unromantic, long-view take on fighting the power.

If 13th offers an essayistic takedown of the prison-industrial complex, Garrett Bradley’s heart-wrenching documentary takes a more personal view of the subject, portraying Black abolitionist Fox Rich, AKA Sibil Fox Richardson, and her 20-year campaign for the release of her husband, Robert, sentenced to 60 years in prison for his role in an armed bank robbery. It’s a powerful study of systemic dysfunction and the lives caught up in it, but also a hard, realistic view of the exhausting grind of long-term activism.

Us

(Jordan Peele, 2019)

Best for: an allegory for the class divide in the Black US.

Jordan Peele’s 2017 smash, Get Out, immediately established him as a leading Hollywood merchant of political commentary as entertainment, as it probed the threat posed to the Black population even by supposed white liberals. But this even better follow-up film got into thornier, more nuanced territory with its ingenious examination of American privilege, classism and gentrification, alongside its ramifications as visited upon a bourgeois Black family terrorised by their “tethered” underclass doppelgangers. It’s witty, frightening and rings violently true.

White Noise

(Daniel Lombroso, 2020)

Best for: explaining the rise of the far right.

It’s cold comfort that the three principal subjects of Daniel Lombroso’s upsetting documentary on the surge of the “alt-right” movement in the US – Richard Spencer, Mike Cernovich and Lauren Southern – are no longer as prominent in the news as they were when the film was made five years ago: they’ve simply been surpassed by other toxic celebrities as white supremacy has expanded from the fringes to the mainstream. Produced by news publisher the Atlantic, the film works as an excavation of the movement’s roots, and is suitably pessimistic about where it’s heading.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[casuallyobssessed]

Book Club - John Wick x Fem!Reader ❥ 2.6k Words

A/N: Been having visions about this so I had to write it. My first John Wick/Keanuverse fic and the longest one shot i've written to date, hope you enjoy it! No beta, if you see any problems lmk!

Warnings: P in V Sex, Reader Insert with no use of Y/N, Explicit Smut, Slight dom/sub undertones, Hair Pulling, Spanking, Cunnilingus, Choking

He was sweet, almost sickeningly so sometimes. Taking his time, being overly tender, and checking in on you every few minutes. You wanted more. You wanted hard, fast, rough... and John Wick was no stranger to rough. Even though he was in retirement, you knew that part of him had to still be there underneath his now soft exterior. At least you hoped. After years of hard, fast, and rough, John decided to settle down with you. He wanted that soft, slow, and gentle life with you, no matter what it took. At one point, that's what you had wanted, too.

One day, something changed, shifted within you. You loved John. Of course you did. He was everything you had ever dreamed of in a man. You both craved the simpler things in life. There were even a few hobbies you shared, one of which was reading. Each week, you'd both pick a book for the other to read. After the week was up, you'd have a date night in the living room, reviewing that week's books over dinner. Unfortunately, this is where the problem first arose.

A friend strongly recommended a book that had recently grown in popularity. 'The Modern Husband.' From the summary, it seemed like a cheesy romance novel. Being the trusting person that you were, you took their recommendation and purchased the book. You hoped it was something he'd get a good laugh from. But when it arrived, you forgot to actually read it. The book stayed in its box until the day you gave it to John. Later, before your weekly scheduled date night, John approached you. He had the book in his hand and a concerned look on his face.

"Did you give me the right book?"

"Yeah. Why do you ask?"

"I'm not," He cleared his throat before continuing, "comfortable reading any more of this."

"Is it that bad?" You laughed, thinking the book had to be too corny for his liking.

"You should take this back."

John handed the book over to you. His expression was unreadable at this point, adding to your confusion. You took the book and thumbed through a few of the beginning pages. It wasn't that bad in your opinion, maybe a little boring.  A few more page turns and you got into the next chapter. Oh. 'How To Train Your Wife In Five Easy Steps!' And then the next. 'Discipline Techniques For Today's Couples!' No wonder he didn't want to read it. You stored the book in your nightstand alongside all the other forgotten novels you'd never read.

In the nightstand is where 'The Modern Husband' would lay in wait until one bored, lonely, late night. You had exhausted all your usual reads, so you reached for the drawer of undesirables. Picking it up, you let your curiosity get the better of you. Before, you had only skimmed over a few pages, judging the work only by chapter titles. Settling back comfortably in the pillows on your bed, you began reading the book.

Deep within its pages, 'The Modern Husband' held a treasure trove of kinky, rough ideas that set your brain on fire. There was a familiar ache in your lower stomach, something in this book flipped a switch and you wanted to experiment. Later that night when John came home, he caught you still in bed with the book laid out open beside you, touching yourself to its contents.

A heated conversation ensued upon his discovery of you. You explained to him that the book wasn't all that bad. There were some concepts it highlighted that really interested you. Going back through the pages, you gave him examples of some of the more aberrant activities you wanted to try. He listened intently as you spoke, and it seemed that he was really giving it some thought. Ultimately, he expressed his displeasure at the thought of treating you any way but lovingly.

"John, please?" You stood in front of him, trying your best to convince him to try something, anything from the book.

"I don't want to hurt you," John shook his head.

"Even if I'm asking you nicely?"

"Even if you ask nicely, no."

"Oh, come on!" I huffed at him, "You're not bored of the same stuff we always do?"

John was quiet, taken aback by your statement. He looked... hurt. That definitely was not what you wanted. You begged him to try something new with you. Of course the sex with him was great, it always was. You were simply suggesting something to spice things up a bit. Something not so vanilla.

To John, it was like you were asking the impossible of him. Your John was kind, respectful, and considerate. The John you wanted him to be, well, that was completely opposite of who he was now. Throughout your entire relationship, John has always been your safe space. Maybe that's why you trusted him to do this for you.

"I just..." Sighing, you took a step towards him, "I just want you to be a little rough with me sometimes. That's all I'm asking."

He looked down at you contemplatively with a suspicious twinkle in his eye. Suddenly, John had his large hand wrapped around your throat, pushing you back against the wall. The impact knocked the breath out of you. You tried taking a deep breath, but it was proving rather difficult. It wasn't enough force to truly hurt you, just enough to make you feel his control. The slight restriction of your breathing only fueled your arousal. You felt more alive than you had in weeks.

John's eyes darkened like a man possessed.

"Is this what you wanted?" John growled, tightening his grip on your throat.

You grinned. This was exactly what you wanted. Your persistence was paying off. Finally. His fingers danced at the hem of your nightgown, rubbing circles on the sensitive skin of your inner thigh. You cursed yourself for not having on any underwear. The inside of your thighs were already slick. He slowly slid his hand up and underneath the fabric. Instinctively, you let your legs fall open for him.

"Already so wet for me, hm?" John whispered gruffly in your ear, sending chills down your spine. His fingers found their way between your wet folds, brushing over your sensitive clit. You gasped as he teased you before pulling away from you completely. He stepped backwards, leaving you breathless. Sitting down on the bed, he began undoing his tie and unbuttoning his shirt enough to be comfortable. When you came back to your senses, you wandered over to him, wanting more of whatever he was willing to give you. Before you could get any closer, he reached out a hand and placed it on your hip, effectively stopping you.

"Uh-uh. Strip." He commanded, patting your hip and leaning backwards to rest his on his arms.

He watched your slow, deliberate movements as you began to undress. Your hands trembled slightly as you slid the straps of your negligee off your shoulders. Carefully, you pulled the material down to reveal your breasts before letting it drop in a puddle at your feet. Being naked in front of John was nothing new to you, but this time it felt different. The way his eyes prowled your form made you feel exposed down to your bones. His gaze burned into you, intense and predatory.

Once you finished your short lived strip show, John sat back up and pulled you on to his lap, allowing you to straddle him.  You draped your arms over his shoulders, lips hovering an inch away from his. He was still in his clothes. The bulge growing in his pants rubbed abrasively against your wet pussy, soaking the fabric.

John was the one to close the distance between you by hungrily pressing his lips to yours. This kiss felt different, too. The way he bit your bottom lip, let his tongue explore your mouth... He was taking complete control of you. While he devoured you, you pressed your body into his, leisurely grinding down on his bulge. He was the first to pull away and you let out a rather embarrassing whine at the loss of his mouth. Swiftly, he stood up, holding you up long enough for him to turn around and toss you back onto the bed.

"Stay put," He mumbled. You obeyed, opting to close your eyes and take a deep breath to gather your thoughts. You could hear the sound of him unbuckling his belt, the metallic clinks echoed through the room. The anticipation of what would be to come was lighting your senses up like a Christmas tree. When he finished removing his belt, he crawled back into the bed with you. He was still mostly dressed, with his pants pulled down just enough to reveal his thick cock.

Once he was over you, he leaned down, and his hand gripped your wrists tightly, pinning them above your head. This was a man you didn't recognize. The wild look in his eyes made you shiver. He was now between your legs, cock between your folds, rubbing against your clit. He left sloppy kisses along your neck, biting your skin as he traveled down your chest. His free hand held your breast, roughly squeezing it and pulling on your nipple. Licking a trail up your chest, he traced his tongue along your collarbone, and made his way up to your ear.

"Beg me for it," John ordered, his voice cold.

"Please," You whimpered, "please."

"What do you want?"

"Please fuck me, Sir."

You don't know why you called him that. You vaguely remembered reading a chapter in the book about calling your husband 'Sir' in the bedroom. Clearly, it had the desired effect because he growled in your ear before releasing the hold he had on your hands. His own hands grabbed your waist and quickly flipped you over onto your stomach. Moving his grip down a bit, he pulled your hips up and back towards him.

His fingers were on your cunt again, rubbing back and forth against your clit, the action both brutal and tender. Eventually, his digits found their way back to your hole. He slipped one finger in, then two, gently massaging in and out of you. Slowly, he added a third finger and the stretch felt almost too much for you. You groaned and leaned forward, wanting to pull away from the intrusion. John tsk'd at you before tugging you backwards, fully onto all three fingers.

Satisfied with how he had prepared you, he pulled his fingers out of you, and began situating himself behind you. The head of his cock lined up perfectly with your cunt, and slowly pushed into your tight, wet heat. You couldn't help the moan that ripped from your throat as he slid himself inside. Unlike when you normally had sex, John did not wait for you to get used to him stretching you out. This time, he instantly started fucking into you. He was taking what he wanted from you while you cried out in pleasure.

"You like it, don't you? Being treated like this?"

You nodded emphatically into the mattress. It was all you could manage to do in the fucked out state you were in. Though, it seemed like that response wasn't good enough for your lover. His thrusts became achingly slow. He grabbed your hair, yanking your head back sharply.

"Speak."

"Yes."

"Yes what?" Without warning, his other hand came down hard on your ass before you could respond.

"Yes, sir!" You cried out in surprise, voice breaking slightly. You were enjoying where this was going. You asked for a little spice and John was giving you way more than you bargained for.

"Good girl," He caressed the spot where he hit you, as if he was rubbing the pain away. The praise made you feel dizzy. He grabbed your hip, gently squeezing it before he started moving inside you again.

This time, John's thrusts were more erratic. Using your hair as leverage, he was pumping in and out of you at a bruising pace. The way his cock was throbbing inside of you, he had to be getting close. The grip he had on your hip tightened, sure to leave bruises the next day. Your walls tightened around him and before you knew it, he was spilling into you with a bestial groan.

With that, John pulled out of you completely, leaving you full of his cum but aching for your own release. Was he seriously going to leave you like this without getting you off? Yes, you wanted rough, but you didn't want negligent. You pushed yourself up onto your elbows, turning back to look at him with a mix of longing and confusion.

"What are you doing?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he grabbed your hips, flipped you onto your back, and pulled you to the edge of the bed. He started to explore you. From teasing your nipples with light pinches to taking one of them into his mouth and rolling the sensitive bud between his teeth. You watched through lidded eyes as he made his way down your body. His little kisses down your belly lit embers within your core. Intensely holding your gaze, he positioned himself on his knees between your thighs.

He tucked one of his arms up under your leg to hold your thigh still and pulled both of your legs over his shoulders. You could feel his hot breath ghosting against your wet heat. He pressed a sweet kiss against your pussy before his tongue darted out to taste you. Each stroke against you was calculated. He started by skillfully cleaning up the mess he left behind to then gently slipping two fingers inside your used hole. The sensation was leaving you a mewling, squirming mess. You writhed beneath him as his tongue worked in rhythmic patterns against your clit. You were so focused on the pleasure, you didn't even mind the way his beard rubbed harshly against your skin.

"Don't stop," You moaned and tangled your fingers in his dark hair. Your wish was his command; he kept his digits pumping in and out of you steadily, his tongue working overtime to please you. Your legs shook uncontrollably against him. Your chest heaved with each strained breath you took. There was an urgency in the whines that fell from your mouth, there was no denying you were getting close.

"Cum for me, Darling."

It was a command, but the edge had left his voice. His words rumbled against your swollen cunt. Fuck. It was just enough to push you hard over the edge. You unraveled under his tongue. White hot lightning shockwaves shot through you, back arching, body convulsing as your thighs tightened around John's head. Your vision blacked out momentarily as you rode out the waves of pleasure coursing through you.

With a final lick against your soaked folds, he rose up from his position on the floor and kissed his way up to your lips. As he kissed you, soft and slow, you could feel your wetness on his beard and taste the saltiness of yourself on his lips. He collapsed beside you, reaching out to hold your hand.  You were both heavy breathing messes. This was the John that you recognized. He had managed to include a bit of almost everything you asked of him, and then some. How you got so lucky, you didn't know.

[cafeinthemoon]

King - Chapter V

Chapter 5

Title The Particle of the Sun

Fandom Shuumatsu no Valkyrie / Record of Ragnarok

Previous chapters

1 . 2 . 3 . 4

Symbols ⭕ . ➕ . 🖤

Warnings: A not so subtle (and very problematic) threat from Poseidon involving pregnancy

Tagging @cloveradora @the-dumber-scaramouche @mikkies @sl33py-zer0 @nooneknows8976 (If you want to be tagged in any of my stories, just leave a comment on this chapter or send an ask or a message)

N. A.: Finally a new chapter!! Yay! I wanted this chapter to be as long as the previous ones, but I thought I've already reunited enough information in these less than 3k words (hope you don't mind). About the story of the Particle: a curious fact about Poseidon that I discovered recently was that he was deity responsible for the Delphic Oracle alongside Gaia before Apollo was even born. I couldn't find many details about this, but my headcanon is that Poseidon still has the gift of clairvoyance, or extended vision, as said by himself here, and this will show in crucial moments of this story. I also found a way to explain the existence of days and nights under the sea and I'm very proud of my work in this :)

When you opened your eyes, you noticed a slight change in the shade of the curtains: the abyssal black was replaced by a softer form of blue, the same blue of the sea’s surface on a sunny day. There was absolute silence in the canopy’s interior, which only changed when you decided to sit on the bed.

It was strange that you were left to sleep there: you thought you would be sent back to the lodge after the wedding’s consummation, but you were kept in your husband’s chambers for that entire night. You were debating the reason for this when you noticed a tall shadow approaching the canopy’s entry, and a hand showed up between the fabric to open it.

When the curtains were separated, the morning light shone into the space, exposing the messed sheets and the tiny human cradled among them to the eyes of the Lord of the Seas, who kept observing you with a mixture of curiosity and disapproval, as if finding hard to believe that you needed such a long period of sleep.

Well, you had no idea of how long you’ve been there, but you found that absurd.

Does this man know nothing about the human nature? If he wanted me to wake up earlier, he could’ve just called me.

It was when you noticed he was dressed in a formal, bluish attire... and realized it was the first time you saw him properly dressed. That made you look at yourself and pull the sheets up to cover your torso.

Poseidon frowned at this attitude.

– Why are you doing this? There is no need for you to cover up now. I have already seen everything I had to see.

Your reply came in an impulse.

– I’m cold.

He stared at you for a moment, then pointed at the empty space beside him.

– Here.

You tried to leave the bed using the sheets to cover yourself but, once you were under his reach, he pulled them away, throwing them back on the bed and closing the curtains. You crossed your arms before your chest: staying undressed and disheveled in front of a god under the daylight and when he himself was wearing full clothes provoked a new, incomparable embarrassment in you.

– Come with me – he spoke it like an order and, before you could do anything, he took you in his arms.

Unlike you told him, you weren’t really cold, but the absence of the sheets caused you shivers that only ceased when you were on his lap, and for a moment you allowed yourself to relax, leaning your head on his chest. It was curious that, despite the sensation of complete unfamiliarity that surrounded every aspect of your relationship with that man, you were still able to find good things in them, such as this sort of safeness in his grip and the pleasure you experienced in his touch. If this was thanks to some spell or if you were just susceptible, you were yet to find out.

That time, you were carried to a dressing area: your husband stopped with you in the middle of a room with an infinity of clothes, shoes and other female accessories, ready to be worn; on a corner, there was a screen with hand painted illustrations of coral reefs and other marine concepts, similar to the one you had on your lodge and, beside it, an open door that led to a bathroom.

Poseidon put you down and turned to a rack at his left, taking a dress with him and giving it to you.

– Put it on and go wash your face – he instructed – I will be waiting here.

What you heard instead of this was Do not let me waiting.

You did as he said, entering behind the screen to put the dress despite what he said when you cover yourself up with the sheets, then cleaned your face and fixed your hair. When you went back to him, he held your shoulders and made you turn around; you didn’t need to ask what he was doing, for soon you noticed his fingers brushing your hair. After this, he took a shawl and wrapped it around you, then took your hair out of it. You didn’t think he believed when you said you were cold, but the message behind the gesture was clear: as much as he expected you to take his words seriously, he was able to do the same for his wives, so that you had all the reasons to pay attention to the things you said to him.

Poseidon brought his hands to your shoulders again, making you turn back to him.

– Still cold?

You made a negative sign with your head.

– No, my Lord.

– Good.

You thought he was going to take you out of that room, and maybe that was his intention, but he gave up on it when he touched your ears, making you flinch.

– They are a bit swollen. What happened?

– It’s probably because I slept upon them, my Lord...

You were going to say that they would stop aching soon, but he went to a vanity and brought a tiny pot of salve with him before you could open your mouth. Stopping in front of you, he took a bit of the product and spread it between his fingers, passing them on your ears, massaging around the earrings.

– It will soothe the ache – your husband went to put the salve back on its previous place.

You nodded.

– Thank you, Poseidon-sama.

His response was a sigh.

– You are so delicate it is impressive that nothing more than this happened.

That time, the impatience you felt bubbling inside you was too much, and you couldn’t keep your mouth shut.

– My fragility seems to be an issue for you, my Lord. I’d like to understand the reason I was brought here, if possible.

For a moment, you congratulated yourself for finally speaking out, but as soon as Poseidon laid his eyes on you, you sensed your courage diminishing in an impressive speed: you looked away, your fingers griping on the shawl’s fabric with nervousness; you felt his hand surrounding your jawline, his thumb caressing the corner of your mouth.

– It is just something I had to do, dragonet. For my own sake. It is nothing you should be concerned about.

***

You had your breakfast with your husband on a small table placed at the chambers’ balcony, as large as a common, human house, with a privileged view of the white beaches through which you’ve passed to enter the castle and the furious waters that surrounded them, now showing deep, mutable shades of green under the light.

It was something that has been intriguing you since you arrived, but you haven’t had the chance to bring it out in your conversations with Alyssa: when Poseidon brought you to the balcony – in his arms – and you were exposed to that light, the intensity and the warmth of it on your skin were enough to make you think that, if you didn’t know you were under the sea, you could be easily convinced that it was the true sun.

You were sitting on a white chair while your husband took the place before you, having a beautiful breakfast prepared for two, with fruits, tea and bread, everything with excellent aspect just like the food that was offered to you at the lodge. You weren’t sure if you should start eating now or wait for him to do it, but Poseidon didn’t seem inclined in this sense. At the same time, your hesitation was noticed and questioned by him.

– I’m not hungry, my Lord.

– At least take some tea – he replied – It will help you to stay warm.

You obeyed, filling a tiny cup with the liquid in silence. A conversation then took place.

– Are you still cold?

– No, my Lord.

– You don’t seem tired now. Did you sleep well?

– Yes, my Lord. Thank you for asking.

He nodded in approval, then suddenly changed the subject.

– You seem curious about the illumination system of this kingdom. Do you think it resembles the sunlight?

Your eyes widened at this.

Such sharp eyes, those ones.

– Yes, Poseidon-sama. It’s something I’ve been observing since I arrived.

– It is because you are indeed seeing the sunlight – he continued, answering the mystery – This is a story I do not mind telling you. Long time ago, I was the responsible for the Delphic Oracle before Apollo. All my houses were placed upon the waters by that time, but I was planning to bring all of them into one, on the seabed. I offered my connection with the Oracle to him and demanded a particle of the Sun in return, just enough to make life possible for non sea creatures in the depths of the ocean. Apollo accepted the deal and ordered the Particle to behave as if it was still in the skies, and this kingdom have been experiencing days and nights since then.

Poseidon told that story while observing the surroundings, as if talking to himself; he spoke as if all of that happened yesterday, and you were hearing in stunned silence. As someone who wasn’t raised to praise the gods, you knew nothing beyond their names, and cared little about them and their acts; that was entirely new for you. But if there was something you were quick to realize when you met them, specially the one who married you, was that they never did anything without a reason, or without expecting something in return, so that the story of the Oracle made total sense to you. You weren’t sure why Poseidon was telling you something that probably happened in a time when none of your ancestors existed, but it was intriguing that a proud being like him would give up on such an important treasure as an Oracle in favor of another deity, no matter what he would receive in exchange for it.

Since he didn’t oppose to it, you questioned him about it.

– Forgive my ignorance in these subjects, my Lord, but is hard to believe that such exchange really happened.

Contrary to what you expected, your doubts didn’t provoke the slightest sign of irritation in your husband: instead, he held a smirk on his lips, observing you with a sort of pity for the said ignorance.

– You really know nothing about gods, don’t you, dragonet? – and, without waiting for a response, – When I passed the Oracle’s management to Apollo, I was not sacrificing a belonging. Instead, I was delegating a responsibility to a younger god, in a way that his work would increase and mine would diminish. I no longer own the Oracle, but I still have the ability of extending my vision; besides, Proteus, who is a prophet himself, still works for me. On the other hand, Apollo has gained experience over the ages, and with experience came power. The Particle of the Sun that he gave to me will be forever a sign of his gratitude, since I was the one who made him the offer.

Gratitude? Was he trying to teach you a lesson about this? But why?

You chose your words carefully.

– I understand you have a reason to tell me all of this, my Lord. But I fail at perceiving it.

Poseidon opened a genuine smile of contentment, and that was the most unsettling moment you had with him since the wedding: though you were now dressed, you were still feeling exposed, too close to him to try and escape, whether with your words or your feet. You observed his expression and realized it was the first time you were seeing the natural light touching your husband’s figure, a vision that enchanted and scared you at the same time: the rosy shade on his cheeks and lips, the golden shine of his hair, the blue of his eyes glowing between those long, white lashes, all of this on an impossibly proud, young face, that has been like this since the oldest past and would stay the same in the furthest of futures. To you, it was inconceivable that someone could be so beautiful yet so menacing.

But not only this was possible through his looks, but also through his words, given what he said to you next.

– Good girl, always saying the right things. But I would like to know if you are just as grateful. So, tell me: have you already thought of how you are going to thank me for granting you my favor last night?

Since you took too long to understand what he was talking about, Poseidon didn’t mind explaining.

– I did you the favor of not making you bear a child right in your first night as my wife, though I still think it is a strange thing to ask, not to say foolish. This is what I want to know: what will you do for me in return?

You swallowed. In fact, your husband’s agreement with such an uncommon request came too quickly even for you, who didn’t know him so well. Of course such generosity wouldn’t come for free.

You opened your mouth in an impulse, but held your tongue just in time, granting yourself a moment to think of a wise answer.

– I... What do you need me to do, my Lord?

Poseidon still had the same content smile on his lips, to which you felt some relief.

He’s still having fun with this. And, as long as he stays like this, I’ll be safe.

– That you are very clever, I already know, and your talent with words might keep me entertained for quite some time. It would be a waste if you would just stay with the common duties of a secondary wife, so I have a task for you: since you will not use your time to bear and raise any child until the next year, you will have entire days to go to my children’s training area and observe each of them. You will figure out each one’s most efficient technique and find weaknesses in them. Once you do it, you will develop a solution for that. Given you are a smart girl, I believe it is something up to you.

You had your hands on your lap, holding each other with all the strength they had to avoid trembling, but you had no guarantee that the same nervousness didn’t raise to your face. Yes, you wouldn’t become a mother, but that didn’t mean you wouldn’t have any contact with your husband’s children – that was the trap he has been preparing for you. And, by asking him what he needed you to do for him instead of thinking of something to offer, you easily fell into it.

I tried to examine the territory before making my offer, just like my father told me. But I should have known that what usually works with humans would be just useless while negotiating with a god. How stupid of me.

– What you will do to accomplish this is also up to you – he continued – Though I must warn you about the deadline: you will be given one year for this, nothing more. The counting will start tomorrow, by the morning, and will end in the next year, by a morning as well. By the end of this period, you will have to show me the results of your work. I will evaluate it and, if it is satisfying, your current condition, that is, of not bearing any children, will remain. However, if you show to be unable to fulfill this task…

Your heart ached, as if held tight by cold fingers, fearing what would follow those words. The table’s size was such that it allowed you to reach each other by touch, and that was precisely what your husband did: he stretched his arm over it to touch your face, making you startle despite the warmth of his skin. He brushed your hair behind your ear and you breathed deep, not daring move away.

– I still have to think of how things will be for you, dragonet – his voice was now a whisper; you looked at him and noticed an increase in his cheeks’ blush – But I cannot help thinking that you would look pretty with a rounded, swollen belly under your dress.

There was no need for explanations this time.

This offer, that sounded more like a threat, was absurd – not to say terrifying. But it was not the end for you: it was the beginning of a year full of work and discoveries, just like the ones that preceded it. And if you’ve already gone so far – entering that domain and staying alive, making a human friend where you thought you’d never see another human beyond yourself and managing to have your offer accepted by the Tyrant of the Seas – thinking of giving up didn’t make sense now.

I’m already in the bottom of the sea… What should I fear now?

You did your best to stand Poseidon’s gaze. He still had his hand close to you: you put your own upon it and turned your lips to his palm, giving it a soft, docile kiss.

– I will not disappoint you, Poseidon-sama.

And I will not disappoint myself either.

Chapter 6

[marley-manson]

getting to know mutuals!

tagged by @nimuetheseawitch, thank you!

what's the origin of your blog title?

Lyric from the song that my URL is also obliquely from, which had the right vibes for a blog about an obsession

otp(s) + shipname(s):

I'm not sure I understand the phrasing of this, why are otps and shipnames separate? But here's a list of some of my current favourite ships, like if I've sought out fic or thought about them much in the last few months:

hawktrap, hawnk, beejhawk, griffguts, Xena/Gabrielle, Dan/Herbert, Fraser/Ray V, Shauna/Melissa, wangxian, xuexiao, xiyao, and Cassie/Aftran because I did read a couple fics and chatted about them recently lol.

favourite colour:

Green!

song stuck in your head:

Drive by Melissa Ferrick lol, idk why, I just woke up with it in my head today

weirdest habit/trait:

Weirdness is in the eye of the beholder, I really don't know what's most weird about me lol. Probably the fact that I write and read fanfic honestly.

hobbies:

Writing, vidding, thinking too much about movies and tv, embroidery

if you work, what's your profession?

Taping, aka interior finishing, a stage of construction

if you could have any job you wish, what would it be?

Cashier but I make $50 an hour

something you're good at:

Analyzing gay subtext.

something you hate:

Mentally throwing a dart at a big list: sanding (as part of my job.) I used to not mind it, but ever since my sinuses started acting up the dust has become a trigger. I wear a mask ofc but even breathing in the little bit left in the air during breaks will fuck me up for a day or two.

something you collect:

Nothing really, I pretty much only buy useful things.

something you forget:

I feel like I generally have a pretty good memory, but forgetting past conversations probably bugs me the most. Like, did I mention this to you or someone else? Have I told this story before? Have I asked you this before? Was there something you mentioned last time we talked that I was going to follow up on and forgot? I try to be an active listener as much as I can but it's inevitable that some things fall through the cracks I guess.

what's your love language:

I'm not a fan of treating it as a psychologically valid sorting hat thing lol, but out of the options my fave is quality time. I like to go out and do things with people, it's a big reason idt I could be in a long distance relationship.

favourite movie/show:

Velvet Goldmine

favourite food:

Turkey dinner. Turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, various sides, etc. But only home cooked.

favourite animal:

Idk, maybe snakes.

what were you like as a child:

Stubborn, argumentative, confident, physical. I played with the boys at recess a lot for the first few years of elementary school, followed a kid I had a crush on around in kindergarten lol, got into arguments about things like girl colours vs boy colours eg, etc. I was awesome as a kid.

favourite subject at school:

English.

least favourite subject:

If we're talking grade school, high school biology. I thought I'd love it but then found myself preferring chemistry and physics, idk. If we're talking uni, fucking Latin and French, both of which I tried for the language requirement and failed >:(

what's your best character trait?

Honestly I like most things about myself, I feel like I have a healthy ego and that's a good character trait itself. But as for something I've had feedback on: according to multiple friends I'm chill and non-judgemental in a way that lets people relax and feel comfortable around me.

what's your worst character trait?

I'm too passive, and therefore bad at pursuing positive life changes and staying in touch with people.

if you could change any detail of your life right now, what would it be?

Living in Vancouver instead of here.

if you could travel in time, who would you like to meet?

No idea, this isn't something I've ever thought about or have any interest in lol, I'm not a history person or someone who wants to talk to famous people.

tagging: @beansterpie @majorbaby @bisexualdawnsummers @hetakiba @ducksoup1933 @pigtailedgirl @professormcguire @caddyxjellyby @shiveringsoldier @captainofthedefiant @the-cinnamontography-is-amazing @windmillcrusader @quordleona03 @coffee-rack @redcheekdays

and anyone else who wants to do it pls do and say I tagged you!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

On Tuesday, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Acting Chair Andrea Lucas announced a set of policy changes inspired by President Donald Trump’s recent anti-trans executive orders, including the derecognition of nonbinary people, the removal of pronoun options from digital workplace tools, and the elimination of materials promoting what she called “gender ideology.” Most alarming, however, was Lucas’ stated top priority: “defend the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work,” a signal that she intends to push for a federally backed bathroom ban in private workplaces.

The press release clarifies that Lucas cannot unilaterally rescind prior EEOC guidance from the Biden administration that affirmed protections for transgender people under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. These protections stem from the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which determined that discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is unlawful in the workplace. However, many conservative policymakers and activists have pushed to exclude gender identity from these protections, ignoring established legal precedent. Despite these legal constraints, the release states Lucas’ intent to push for the revocation of these protections and to establish transgender bathroom bans in workplaces. Lucas echoed these arguments in Tuesday’s announcement, stating, “It is neither harassment nor discrimination for a business to draw distinctions between the sexes in providing single-sex bathrooms or other similar facilities which implicate these significant privacy and safety interests. And the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County does not demand otherwise: the Court explicitly stated that it did ‘not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind.’”

Lucas has been a staunch Trump ally since his first term, having been appointed to the EEOC in 2020. Throughout her tenure, she has consistently opposed measures she labels as “DEI,” particularly those supporting transgender women’s inclusion in women’s spaces. Initially, her focus was on what she framed as threats to “religious liberty,” advocating for individuals with “religious objections” to COVID-19 prevention measures during the height of the pandemic. However, by late 2022, she had shifted her attention toward anti-trans politics, aligning with conservative judges to oppose transgender people’s right to use restrooms that match their gender identity.

[...] These rollbacks on transgender rights mark only the beginning of the Trump administration’s broader assault on transgender individuals. Less than two weeks into his second term, Trump issued an executive order targeting gender-affirming care for minors, attempting to strip transgender youth of access to life-saving medical treatment. He also reinstated a ban on transgender service members, branding their “lifestyle” as incompatible with military service and claiming they lack “honor, truthfulness, and discipline.” The fight over transgender rights is far from over. Trump’s executive orders will face immediate legal challenges, and activists across the country are already mobilizing in response. 

The EEOC pushing for a ban on trans people using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity in private business is an utter insult to common sense.

[crowiin]

Previous anon here! I would love to read how you did it. Im suprised you managed to did it in Google Docs. I thought you used a program similar to InDesign or programs that are more suitable for graphic design ANYWAY i am also curious how many chapters you used. Was it seven? Did you stop there because the length was convinient or because a story arc ended there? I am not really good at identifying where an arc begins and stops. okay bcgjkkcj THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME

YAYYY I LOVE TALKING ABOUT ARTS AND CRAFTS!!

gonna put this in main tags as well this time so:

this is my bookbind of trod pt 1 :] by @bamsara which u can and SHOULD read here

ok so this first bit is how I made the pdf and then the next bit is how I turned it into signatures for binding. Then the last bit is splitting up chapters and stuff. If anyone has any advice or tips on what I could do differently (for free or v cheap haha) please let me know!! This is so fun I love learning and discussing and making things

first thing I did was grab a real book so I could take a look at where they put the title page, where they left the pages blank, etc

I then formatted the title and contents and stuff in docs by messing with font and position on the page (etc) until it was to my liking! THEN I realised I wanted an image on the very first page so I went back and put that in. I got to design it it was sooo fun

OH. I ALSO STUCK A SHAMURA QUOTE WHERE THE DEDICATION WOULD BE. HEHE

thennn I went and changed all the heading, title and normal text options for the doc so that they looked nice! I used times new roman size 16 :) but that might be a bit big for most people. I like bigger text

^^ that step was important so that when I started copy-pasting in the text it would all come out the right size automatically. also so that my chapter titles and notes pages looked consistent

next I downloaded trod from ao3 as a html file! I found it works better than pdf bc there aren’t any page breaks

I just copied and pasted trod in one chapter at a time and added in the notes and summary for every chapter where I wanted it and that worked pretty well for me

THEN SPELLCHECK. I didn’t want to do it automatically (docs had some horrible opinions sometimes. Also kept trying to erase bits of the writing style that made perfect sense and sound beautiful???) so I had to confirm every change which took a while but I think was worth it

lastly I added page numbers. They did not want to cooperate with me and I still do not understand the tiny fuckers, but I managed to get them in the middle of the page for book 2 so it looks less weird (hurrah). There’s a button for it

then I saved it as a pdf!

OK NEXT THING : SIGNATURES

this post is my bestest friend (link is to a tumblr post that was really helpful)

and this webpage is how I got a pdf of the signatures (it’s the same one linked in the post)

CHAPTERS:

yeah I split it into chunks of 7 chapters! Book 1 ends on the argument in the field bc a) it was getting wayyy too long and b) I want to lend it to my friends and that’s a delightful emotional cliffhanger. Book 2 (which is actually finished. I’ll try and post photos later today or something) ends after hekets release from purgatory which is I thiiiink another 7 chapters? Book 3 is gonna be a bit longer bc I want to do it up to the most recent chapter, which I was gonna leave out bc of length but then it came out and I went insane haha

OH in book 2 I did drop caps and title decoration which I designed in procreate and then imported into docs and moved around as imported photos. I’ll put a bunch of pictures at the end too

THANK U FOR ASKING!!! If there’s anything else u want to know then let me know!! :]