#was debating on whether to include my own work or not ^^;;

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google’s new phones can’t stop phoning home

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

One of the most brazen lies of Big Tech is that people like commercial surveillance, a fact you can verify for yourself by simply observing how many people end up using products that spy on them. If they didn't like spying, they wouldn't opt into being spied on.

This lie has spread to the law enforcement and national security agencies, who treasure Big Tech's surveillance as an off-the-books trove of warrantless data that no court would ever permit them to gather on their own. Back in 2017, I found myself at SXSW, debating an FBI agent who was defending the Bureau's gigantic facial recognition database, which, he claimed, contained the faces of virtually every American:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/mar/11/sxsw-facial-recognition-biometrics-surveillance-panel

The agent insisted that the FBI had acquired all those faces through legitimate means, by accessing public sources of people's faces. In other words, we'd all opted in to FBI facial recognition surveillance. "Sure," I said, "to opt out, just don't have a face."

This pathology is endemic to neoliberal thinking, which insists that all our political matters can be reduced to economic ones, specifically, the kind of economic questions that can be mathematically modeled and empirically tested. It would be great if all our thorniest problems could be solved like mathematical equations.

Unfortunately, there are key elements of these systems that can't be reliably quantified and turned into mathematical operators, especially power. The fact that someone did something tells you nothing about whether they chose to do so – to understand whether someone was coerced or made a free choice, you have to consider the power relationships involved.

Conservatives hate this idea. They want to live in a neat world of "revealed preferences," where the fact that you're working in a job where you're regularly exposed to carcinogens, or that you've stayed with a spouse who beats the shit out of you, or that you're homeless, or that you're addicted to Oxy, is a matter of choice. Monopolies exist because we all love the monopolist's product best, not because they've got monopoly power. Jobs that pay starvation wages exist because people want to work full time for so little money that they need food-stamps just to survive. Intervening in any of these situations is "woke paternalism," where the government thinks it knows better than you and intervenes to take away your right to consume unsafe products, get maimed at work, or have your jaw broken by your husband.

Which is why neoliberals insist that politics should be reduced to economics, and that economics should be carried out as if power didn't exist:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/05/farrago/#jeffty-is-five

Nowhere is this stupid trick more visible than in the surveillance fight. For example, Google claims that it tracks your location because you asked it to, by using Google products that make use of your location without clicking an opt out button.

In reality, Google has the power to simply ignore your preferences about location tracking. In 2021, the Arizona Attorney General's privacy case against Google yielded a bunch of internal memos, including memos from Google's senior product manager for location services Jen Chai complaining that she had turned off location tracking in three places and was still being tracked:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#goog

Multiple googlers complained about this: they'd gone through dozens of preference screens, hunting for "don't track my location" checkboxes, and still they found that they were being tracked. These were people who worked under Chai on the location services team. If the head of that team, and her subordinates, couldn't figure out how to opt out of location tracking, what chance did you have?

Despite all this, I've found myself continuing to use stock Google Pixel phones running stock Google Android. There were three reasons for this:

First and most importantly: security. While I worry about Google tracking me, I am as worried (or more) about foreign governments, random hackers, and dedicated attackers gaining access to my phone. Google's appetite for my personal data knows no bounds, but at least the company is serious about patching defects in the Pixel line.

Second: coercion. There are a lot of apps that I need to run – to pay for parking, say, or to access my credit union or control my rooftop solar – that either won't run on jailbroken Android phones or require constant tweaking to keep running.

Finally: time. I already have the equivalent of three full time jobs and struggle every day to complete my essential tasks, including managing complex health issues and being there for my family. The time I take out of my schedule to actively manage a de-Googled Android would come at the expense of either my professional or personal life.

And despite Google's enshittificatory impulses, the Pixels are reliably high-quality, robust phones that get the hell out of the way and let me do my job. The Pixels are Google's flagship electronic products, and the company acts like it.

Until now.

A new report from Cybernews reveals just how much data the next generation Pixel 9 phones collect and transmit to Google, without any user intervention, and in defiance of the owner's express preferences to the contrary:

https://cybernews.com/security/google-pixel-9-phone-beams-data-and-awaits-commands/

The Pixel 9 phones home every 15 minutes, even when it's not in use, sharing "location, email address, phone number, network status, and other telemetry." Additionally, every 40 minutes, the new Pixels transmit "firmware version, whether connected to WiFi or using mobile data, the SIM card Carrier, and the user’s email address." Even further, even if you've never opened Google Photos, the phone contacts Google Photos’ Face Grouping API at regular intervals. Another process periodically contacts Google's Voice Search servers, even if you never use Voice Search, transmitting "the number of times the device was restarted, the time elapsed since powering on, and a list of apps installed on the device, including the sideloaded ones."

All of this is without any consent. Or rather, without any consent beyond the "revealed preference" of just buying a phone from Google ("to opt out, don't have a face").

What's more, the Cybernews report probably undercounts the amount of passive surveillance the Pixel 9 undertakes. To monitor their testbench phone, Cybernews had to root it and install Magisk, a monitoring tool. In order to do that, they had to disable the AI features that Google touts as the centerpiece of Pixel 9. AI is, of course, notoriously data-hungry and privacy invasive, and all the above represents the data collection the Pixel 9 undertakes without any of its AI nonsense.

It just gets worse. The Pixel 9 also routinely connects to a "CloudDPC" server run by Google. Normally, this is a server that an enterprise customer would connect its employees' devices to, allowing the company to push updates to employees' phones without any action on their part. But Google has designed the Pixel 9 so that privately owned phones do the same thing with Google, allowing for zero-click, no-notification software changes on devices that you own.

This is the kind of measure that works well, but fails badly. It assumes that the risk of Pixel owners failing to download a patch outweighs the risk of a Google insider pushing out a malicious update. Why would Google do that? Well, perhaps a rogue employee wants to spy on his ex-girlfriend:

https://www.wired.com/2010/09/google-spy/

Or maybe a Google executive wins an internal power struggle and decrees that Google's products should be made shittier so you need to take more steps to solve your problems, which generates more chances to serve ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Or maybe Google capitulates to an authoritarian government who orders them to install a malicious update to facilitate a campaign of oppressive spying and control:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)

Indeed, merely by installing a feature that can be abused this way, Google encourages bad actors to abuse it. It's a lot harder for a government or an asshole executive to demand a malicious downgrade of a Google product if users have to accept that downgrade before it takes effect. By removing that choice, Google has greased the skids for malicious downgrades, from both internal and external sources.

Google will insist that these anti-features – both the spying and the permissionless updating – are essential, that it's literally impossible to imagine building a phone that doesn't do these things. This is one of Big Tech's stupidest gambits. It's the same ruse that Zuck deploys when he says that it's impossible to chat with a friend or plan a potluck dinner without letting Facebook spy on you. It's Tim Cook's insistence that there's no way to have a safe, easy to use, secure computing environment without giving Apple a veto over what software you can run and who can fix your device – and that this veto must come with a 30% rake from every dollar you spend on your phone.

The thing is, we know it's possible to separate these things, because they used to be separate. Facebook used to sell itself as the privacy-forward alternative to Myspace, where they would never spy on you (not coincidentally, this is also the best period in Facebook's history, from a user perspective):

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

And we know it's possible to make a Pixel that doesn't do all this nonsense because Google makes other Pixel phones that don't do all this nonsense, like the Pixel 8 that's in my pocket as I type these words.

This doesn't stop Big Tech from gaslighting* us and insisting that demanding a Pixel that doesn't phone home four times an hour is like demanding water that isn't wet.

*pronounced "jass-lighting"

Even before I read this report, I was thinking about what I would do when I broke my current phone (I'm a klutz and I travel a lot, so my gadgets break pretty frequently). Google's latest OS updates have already crammed a bunch of AI bullshit into my Pixel 8 (and Google puts the "invoke AI bullshit" button in the spot where the "do something useful" button used to be, meaning I accidentally pull up the AI bullshit screen several times/day).

Assuming no catastrophic phone disasters, I've got a little while before my next phone, but I reckon when it's time to upgrade, I'll be switching to a phone from the @calyxinstitute@mastodon.social. Calyx is an incredible, privacy-focused nonprofit whose founder, Nicholas Merrill, was the first person to successfully resist one of the Patriot Act's "sneek-and-peek" warrants, spending 11 years defending his users' privacy from secret – and, ultimately, unconstitutional – surveillance:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/depth-judge-illstons-remarkable-order-striking-down-nsl-statute

Merrill and Calyx have tapped into various obscure corners of US wireless spectrum licenses that require major carriers to give ultra-cheap access to nonprofits, allowing them to offer unlimited, surveillance-free, Net Neutrality respecting wireless data packages:

https://memex.craphound.com/2016/09/22/i-have-found-a-secret-tunnel-that-runs-underneath-the-phone-companies-and-emerges-in-paradise/

I've been a very happy Calyx user in years gone by, but ultimately, I slipped into the default of using stock Pixel handsets with Google's Fi service.

But even as I've grown increasingly uncomfortable with the direction of Google's Android and Pixel programs, I've grown increasingly impressed with Calyx's offerings. The company has graduated from selling mobile hotspots with unlimited data SIMs to selling jailbroken, de-Googled Pixel phones that have all the hardware reliability of a Pixel, coupled with an alternative app suite and your choice of a Calyx SIM and/or a Calyx hotspot:

https://calyxinstitute.org/

Every time I see what Calyx is up to, I think, dammit, it's really time to de-Google my phone. With the Pixel 9 descending to new depths of enshittification, that decision just got a lot easier. When my current phone croaks, I'll be talking to Calyx.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/08/water-thats-not-wet/#pixelated

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[bacchicly]

A few imperfect thoughts about writing fat characters respectfully

By me :

A short (5'2"), fat (approx 300 pounds), middle aged (turning 42 thank god), married to not a fat man, mother of a pre-teen, white, CIS, Anglo, Canadian, upper-middle class woman who writes fic (including smut) about a character who is fat by TV and Hollywood standards (Penelope Garcia)

Note: fat hate or debates about whether being fat is healthy or not will not be tolerated on this post. That is not what this post is about. This is about giving some insight into what writers may want to consider when trying to respectfully include more fat characters in their work and generally moving towards writing doing less harm to fat people.

This post started with me wanting to respond to someone honnestly asking "how do I write good descriptions of fat people" because they wanted to write more fat characters and write them authentically (and I assume in a way that would be respectful to fat people) which is an awesome! ...Or maybe it started a few months ago when a writer friend asked about whether a fat character in a fic borrowing a shirt or hoody from her fit boyfriend made sense. ...Or maybe it started way back when I started writing my first fan fic featuring Penelope Garcia partly in response to being irritated about how so many writers wrote her as a young woman and were often silent on her size or spent a lot of time on her insecurities about her body... anyhoo that's where I come from... doesn't make me an expert except maybe on my own unique experience with a fat body...rather more a fellow muddler / fat character writer enthusiast.

THE BASICS

This first part is a quick list of basics you'll read in other posts about writing characters in general - but we'd better get them out of the way because they apply:

Every character is unique and they way they act and think and feel tends to be a product of some mix of what they look like, how their body works or doesn't, how their brain works and doesn't, their "personality", what they were taught, their unique experiences, and the situation/society they are currently in. There are patterns (which is why we get tropes) but the fun thing is that small things can make big differences. So to write an authentic character, it helps to have a fairly clear sense of at least some of those elements and do some imagining about how all of that would funnel into the moment your writing.

The amount to which you describe character bodies and the style which you use to describe them tends to depend on genre, what the heck is going on in your story, the pov you're writing from, the reason you're writing etc. So their are no hard or fast rules. There may be norms for certain styles of fiction, but then it's up to you to decide if it's stronger for you to lean into those norms or to write "against" them at a particular moment.

In order to be more respectful and less harmful to fat people (especially if you see value in actively challenging the anti-fat status quo), you may have to change how you describe all bodies in your work, as well the attitudes both fat people and non fat people have about bodies in general.

Now that that's out of the way... let's get specifically to my thoughts on writing fat characters. I'm going to divide this part into tips for DESCRIBING FAT BODIES, FAT BODIES IN SPACE, and THINKING AND FEELING IN A FAT BODY.

TIPS FOR DESCRIBING FAT (OR OTHER) BODIES

I would say that both consistency and diversity across the work is important, by this I mean :

Consistently describe bodies in about the same amount of detail across your work for the same type of character regardless of body type. So protagonists should get about the same depth and breath of body descriptions as each other regardless of body type. Same goes for vilalns, supporting characters etc. Sometimes people are mute about the look and shape of "strait sized" character bodies (because what's to describe - they are just "normal") but then spend a bunch of time on "other sized" bodies or vice versa (in this case, the fat body is erased usually because of some form of internalised fat hate or phobia paired with "if you can't say anything nice" don't say anything at all.) If you're doing either of these things, I'm not saying it's wrong and has to be fixed- I'm just saying it's a flag that you may want to think about why you are writing differently about different body types and what your work is saying about what bodies have value and which don't.

Diversity Bodies in the real world come in a lot of different shapes and sizes (I know I know obvious woman strikes again) but if you are writing stories with fairly large casts and everyone has the same body type - there better be a good reason for it within the narrative. Truthfully there are cases where this does make sense to some degree... if you're writing about a group where there are physical requirements and standards for the folks in that world (ballet dancers, fire fighters, cops, soldiers, fbi agents) there may or may not be less diversity in body type and more homogeneous attitudes to body norms within the group - and certainly those who are outside of the norm may be commented on or feel like they are "other". But if you are in a more free setting - if you write without a diversity of body types - especially in settings where there is diversity - that is probably a clue that you're not thinking enough about what your various characters look like and may be "normalizing" one type of body over others. Similarly, if you are writing about a real time and place where there is evidence that there were fat bodies and you have none...that's another flag to ask yourself why.

The magical tools in your toolkit for describing fat and other bodies: Body neutrality and POV

Body neutrality is about not loving bodies and not hating bodies just accepting bodies as they are....or in this case describing them as they are. No poetic language. No judgement. Just this is what this character looks like. If you're struggling to do this, I suggest doing a body map for at least two characters with different body types - possibly one that you find easy to think of positively (in this case likely someone thin or at least fit) and one that you find more difficult to describe positively (in this case someone fat).

Describe them head to toe, naked and then clothed, in detail - acurately but not poetically. Start with their feet and then work up bit by bit. Pay attention to things like hair, scars, shape of joints, acne, tightness or looseness of skin, colour of skin, nails, fat, lack of fat, muscle tone, where do they hold their stress, what's in the bowels, how well they do or don't work, do they have their appendix, what they ate last, proportions (is their torso long or short compared to their legs), lungs - how much do they hold, are they healthy? - now describe their throat, shoulders, hands, hair, then end with face.

The only rule is no positive or negative connotations to anything. it's neither good nor bad that they have stretch marks - they just do and they have faded to silver. Now that you "see them' clearly - now look at them through the eyes of someone who loves them in a familial way...what do they see most? what words do they use? now through someone who is attracted to them sexually and love them and aren't ashamed...what do they see most? what words do they use? Now through the eyes of someone who hates them or wants to change them? or a child? or a dog? Now... how does your character feel about these descriptions? Now you have a variety of words you can draw on to describe the body and you also should have a fairly good idea of what is a more skewed view of the body and a more realistic view.

Also...it can be helpful to remember there are no consistently good or bad words to describe bodies - it depends on context and who is using the words. It's a lot like how sick can be used to describe something negatively or positively depending on the agreed upon meaning of the word by a group.

DESCRIBING BODIES IN SPACE/MOTION

Ok here's the thing - for every activity you can think of - there is a fat body that does it well and a fat body that can't do it easily or at all and there are a lot of reasons for both. Often it has to do with the fact that a lot of equipment is built for people who are 250lbs or less; and anything for bigger people tends to cost a premium. Also, if it's not an easy new skill to acquire with the body you've got...it may take longer and more bravery to keep pushing through to achieve mastery. People may try to discourage you from pursuing things. Sometimes out of prejudice, sometimes out of impatience, sometimes out of caring.

So deciding what your character's body can do easily and what it can't and why is more important than me giving you a list of words for how to describe fat movements.

My suggestion is: do your research. What sorts of body types have done the activity in the real world? What are the exceptions? What changes? So for example if a fat person is climbing a mountain - do they need more help? Different equipment? A different route?

Things to consider:

- equipment / things that can have weight limits: bunk beds, roller coasters, scooters, waterslides, camping chairs, elevators, trampolines, some bikes, life jackets (finding one that fit was a nightmare), exercise balls, airline seats (learning to ask for the seatbelt extender without second thought or shame was a lifesaver)

- not all fat people have pain, those who do will move taking into account the specifics of the pain - same as a lean person

- when I was pregnant I just got more cylindrical and did not get a classic belly. I moved well and easily all the way through my pregnancy, I had none of the back pain or ankle pain some people get. I stood for a lot of my labour. I gave birth on my hands and knees. Other fat people will have had different experiences of pregnancy...but that was mine.

- clothing can have a huge impact on what bounces or jiggles and what doesn't

- most (but not all) fat people I know are particularly sensitive to appearing sweaty or smelling bad

- how winded someone gets is not directly correlated to body size, neither is heart rate or breathing style; I have theatre training and grew up swimming - I breath very slowly and very deeply normally - so when I talk a slow deep breath...it is very slow and deep indeed. I have always been fat but can swim forever - I have always gotten winded and kind of dizzy running... Other fat people may be opposite.

- people do not "see fat" consistently. People regularly underestimate how fat I am (by 100+ pounds or many clothing sizes) because I am short, well spoken, proportioned in a way that is seen as fairly typical, and very mobile and very light on my feet. Someone who weighs less than me but is slower moving, dull witted, in a sour mood, is illl, or poorly dressed may be perceived as much heavier than than someone the same weight or heavier who is behaving/clothed differently (which can change how much fat hate someone experiences) and definately heavier than they are. Height also changes how people perceive weight.

- many stores still don't carry plus sized clothing, but eventually i sort of got used to it - although some days it makes me angry and other days sad

- chairs with arms or the occasional booth can be uncomfortable or just plain impossible to sit in, it's probably partly my ADHD but I often forget this until it happens; for taller and fatter people than me this can be a much more regular occurrence.

- once (if) a character figures out how to dress/move their body in a way that feels comfortable and meets general standards (or at least theirs) of respectability - they may not think that much about their body...or at least until something external draws attention to it

- I don't like feeling like I'm squishing people, so I will make myself small and still on buses or at the theatre, I also don't like sitting on laps or being lifted or carried.

- I often feel much taller than I actually am - except when I am standing right beside someone taller or am trying to reach something on a high shelf. The same principle applies - I feel larger next to smaller people and smaller next to larger ones.

- clothing and what I'm carrying also changes how I move (just like my lean counterparts)

- I don't lounge, my car seat is set almost straight but I sit further back than my brother in law who has a similar height and weight - he leans the seat back but pulls closer. I don't nap. My leaner husband both lounges and naps.

- some fat folks eat, walk, and move quickly - some slowly; figuring out which your character does, when they behave "out of character", and why these are their preferences will go a long way to creating an authentic feeling fat character

- acne is a thing and learning to accept ones rolls and tummy aprons (and thus take care of them properly) is a common challenge; although many do it naturally without thinking much of it. You lift your breasts and wash underneath - you lift you belly and wash underneath.

- fat bodies have the same reactions as everyone else: they tingle, burn, get numb, get goose bumps, like to be touched in certain places and in certain ways, feel the breeze, get hot, get cold, shiver, stretch, relax, get aroused, feel release, hold tension, feel capable and strong, feel weak...no matter who you are sitting in a chair that's too small for you will put pressure on your body and feel uncomfortable or safe ..you can explore what that is like. Sometimes it is a reassuring sensation. Sometimes it is uncomfortable. This is the same for fat bodies. It just may happen more frequently and depending on your character's context and experience the emotional reaction / thoughts that are generated may be a bit different.

THINKING AND FEELING IN A FAT BODY.

I think I touched on some of this in some of the earlier sections...but here I want to talk a bit about my experience of being fat and my thoughts about it - your fat characters may or may not feel similarly...but my hope is that you at least think about options as opposed to only writing one or two types of fat character.

I mainly "feel" fat in moments when it is pointed out to me or I am limited in what I can do because of it

I quite like my body, it is my home and I feel very connected to it's features. In my experience this is unusual for many people in North American society regardless of actual body shape or weight. Sometimes I feel guilty for not hating my body the way "I am supposed to" and wonder vaguely if my body would be different if I could hate it more (although as I get older I doubt it).

I do feel some pressure to be a cheerful "good" fat person as a way to stay safe and survive.

Nothing makes people more uncomfortable than me calling myself fat without judgement or asking for accomodation matter of factly. It took me a long time to feel comfortable doing so, but I do it now all the time and it makes my life better.

I felt some pressure to be the fun friend who people feel comfortable eating whatever they wanted with and I often felt like I was depended on to order dessert so they could too. This may have been all in my mind though.

Fat bellies can be very intimate places.

Not all fat people have dieted, but many have. I was lucky enough to never be forced into a diet. I did try keto once but it was a bit intense and nuts so I stopped. I learned a bunch doing it though.

Medical people not treating you appropriately when your fat is 100% a thing.

Internalised fat hate and fat phobia is a thing for many fat people and it pops up at weird moments.

I don 't.give a damn about being in a bathing suit. As long as it fits and my boobs and butt.aren't.falling out - I am happy and feel very attractive. In fact I am probably at my most comfortable in a bathing suit or naked. My body is mine in both those instances.

To reach the "healthy weight" for my height - I would have to lose half of my body mass. That is a lot of me to loose. Embarking on something like that would be totally different than loosing 5 or 10 pounds. Trying to navigate the various medical opinions about whether being fat is bad or not is exhausting.

For me, being fat and older is easier than being fat and younger. This could easily be the opposite for someone else.

Some fat people are into sex, some are not . Some folks are into sex with fat people and some are not. Some are nice about it. Some are not. Some want nice. Some do not.

Fat people are all around you living their best life or their worst life or somewhere in between. We know we are fat. We sometimes care and sometimes don't.

Ok that's it. I don't know if it will help anyone or if it's just a collection of rambles - but at the end of the day...fat people are just people. We are not going to go away. We are all sorts. We are the heroes of our own stories. We are people who are loved, depended on, hated, ignored, and/or spotlighted.

Some fat people think about being fat all the time. Some rarely. Just please don't erase us or other us.

Just by taking the step to interrogate your own biases and any feelings / assumptions you have about fatness/thinness is a huge step and will help limit the harm you could unintentionally do to fat people...actually to all people. Like all forms of hate and intelorance - Fat hate hurts EVERYONE. I would argue it privileges a few...but even that can be excruciating for the individuals who strive to retain that priviledge. We need to dismantle it.

[enlightenedrobot]

Other Characters you can legally use for your Mickey Mouse project

Mickey Mouse is in the public domain, as is Minnie Mouse and Peg-leg Pete. There's some caveats to that, and I talk about that more in this other post, but for now, let's talk about other characters who you can also use to fill out the cast.

These characters should all be in the public domain, though some characters still have treademarks. I'll get into how to use them safely as we go. Anyways, let's start.

Other Disney Characters

Disney obvciously doesn't advertise this, but there's actually quite a few Disney originals who've actually been in the public domain for a while.

The Mad Doctor never had it's copyright renewed, and so it's very technically the first Mickey Mouse cartoon to enter the public domain. Keep in mind, the version of Pluto featured in the short isn't in the domain just yet, but the Doctor himself is free to use.

What's funny is that Disney would later use a version of Doctor for Epic Mickey. Obviously don't use that version of the character.

Aside from the Mad Doctor, we also have Oswald and Ortensia

Yeah, as it turns out, Oswald's been in the public domain for quite a while, but he's still trademarked by Disney. Easy recommendation... use the original "fat" design of the character and have him go by Lucky.

But before Oswald, we have the Alice Comedies

Everything about the Alice Comedies is Public Domain for a long time, and the Disney corporation very rarely acknowlege these characters existence. Which is a shame because These shorts were some of the first shorts Walt ever produced, and they have the unique gimmick of featuring a live action girl in an animated world.

Everybody already knows about Oswald, but nobody talks about Oswald and Mickey's older brother from these shorts, Julius the Cat

Like... yeah no, it didn't all start with a mouse. Or a rabbit. It started with a cat.

Foxy and Milton Mouse

Both Foxy (top) and Milton (bottom, pictured with his girlfriend Rita Mouse) were characters created by Warner Brothers and Van Beuren respectively to cash in on Mickey's success, and both characters are also in the public domain.

In fact, all Van Beuren cartoons are apparently in the public domain, and I encourage you to find their cartoons and use them as you please.

Fleischer Characters

Betty Boop is probably in the Public Domain, but there's a few caveats with this. From what I can tell, the name Betty Boop is trademarked, but the character herself isn't. Most of the old Betty Cartoons are free to use, but newer incarnations, including the versions used in 1985's The Romance of Betty Boop and 1989's The Betty Boop Movie Mystery are still very much under copyright.

To avoid any legal trouble, I have two big recommendations. Although everybody remembers Betty as having Black hair, in one of the few early instances of Betty being shown in color, she's actually depicted as Redhead.

This is Betty Boop in 1934's Poor Cinderella, and her hair color is pretty clearly red.

The other option is to just make her black.

Though there's been some debate as to whether Betty Boop was intentionally modeled after Esther Lee Jones or not, there's still no denying the influence of Jazz on the character. Betty Boop is a Jazz singer and is often depicted dancing to Cab Calloway. Hell, the Betty Boop musical features Jasmine Amy Rogers as the titular character.

Betty Boop aside, there's an entire world of defunct Betty Boop characters who are definately public domain, including Bimbo and Koko the Clown.

Next year, Popeye's also gonna enter the Domain. So keep an eye out for him too.

Anyways, these are my picks, but obviously this list isn't meant to be comprehensive. There's a ton of old cartoon characters out there who can be freely reinterpreted into newer works. Feel free to add your own favorite public domain cartoon to the list.

[anghraine]

sea-salted-wolverine replied to this post:

Wdym Anakin mind tricking padme isn't real? You could chalk it up to bad writing from Lucas who isn't quite sure that women are people, but its pretty clear that by ep III that her grip on reality is toast. Whether or not it is a conscious effect on Anakins part is up for debate, but it is definitely a thing that happened

Not really the main point of my post, but no, that fan theory is not "real" in the sense of being remotely canonical for the films. It's nothing more than a popular headcanon nowhere even slightly stated to be happening in the actual films as written and produced. There's no reason in Lucas's films to suppose that the Anakin/Padmé relationship was coerced through a mind trick, that Padmé specifically would be susceptible to a mind trick, that she does not genuinely love Anakin or have any insight into his character, that her grip on reality is ever "toast," or that the mind trick (previously depicted as temporary and resistible) would work that way at all. Padmé is underwritten in ROTS in the way that cool girl heroines invented by men are often underwritten as grown adult women and especially as mothers, but that is not attributable to any character in the story.

Yes, Padmé is tired in ROTS and misses a lot of what's going on psychologically with her young secret husband who is in a cloistered order of warrior monks fighting a long-term war far away from her, but she sees the threat of Palpatine and recognizes exactly what his accession as emperor means. Her mind is fine. And in Lucas's films, also, Anakin is never shown using the mind trick on anyone. It's not really his style—it's a sneaky short-term solution whereas he's smart and resourceful enough most of the time, but mainly reliant on overwhelming power and skill. His signature "trick" is the Force-choke, not the mind trick, and it's the Force-choke that he ultimately uses against her—not because he's been using his powers against her the whole time (including when he's not even there, I guess?), but as a mark of how far he has fallen by that point. That's lost if it's not a drastic change from their previous relationship. Padmé's own choices also lose all meaning if she was mind-controlled by Anakin the whole time, and her arc becomes deeply boring.

Tl;dr - it is very far from "definitely a thing that happened." It is a headcanon that doesn't reflect anything the movies are trying to do (whether they fail or succeed at doing those things!) and is, IMO, a pretty terrible headcanon as well in terms of the overall coherence of the story and characters and how their world is shown to work.

[4dbeingguide]

let’s talk about:

doubts.

thank you guys for all the love y’all gave my previous post! i have addressed this topic extensively in my previous posts but i feel like it is worth a post of its own. we all have doubts regardless of where you are in your manifestation journey. here is some advice on how to deal with them.

⚠️ disclaimer ⚠️: there is are no cure-all solutions for doubts other than the ones you discover yourself. blogs and manifestation tips can only make recommendations but you have to sit down with yourself and understand your own psyche so you can figure out what works for you. also please excuse any errors with my grammar lol

what are doubts?

“doubt: (a feeling of) not being certain about something, especially about how good or true it is.”

- cambridge dictionary

why do we experience doubts in LOA?

we’ve spent a good majority of our lives believing that the physical world/3D is independent of our minds. these beliefs tend to stick with us even when we learn that the opposite is the truth. however, it’s perfectly possible to flush them out or minimize them.

how do i deal with doubts?

depends on the doubt in question. let’s go over some the types of doubts you can get. please remember that some of your doubts might not appear over here and that’s perfectly fine. it’s still perfectly possible to defeat them. let’s get into it:

1. doubts about the legitimacy of LOA

in other words, “what if LOA isn’t real?”. there are multiple ways to deal with these doubts, it all comes down to whatever sticks with you the best.

the scientific way

if your doubts want scientific proof that the LOA is real, i have some links on this post that might help you. one of these has links that will take you to a bunch of scientific articles and books that prove the existence and legitimacy of LOA.

the spiritual way

some of us have a more spiritual outlook on life and that’s perfectly fine. many ancient spiritual practices practiced some form of LOA. a lot of research on these communities and their beliefs might help.

the anecdotal way

if your doubts want proof through experiences, reading success stories is an amazing way to start. @loasuccessarchive compiles many amazing success stories that might motivate you. but what i would recommend the most is starting a success story list of your own (and you can include stuff you haven’t seen in the 3D because you live in the 4D, i talk more about this in the post i linked above). your own experiences that you can verify are true will have a more powerful impression on you.

please remember that everybody has individual preferences even if they are not listed above!

2. doubts on whether you have your desire or not

i have addressed this in the post i linked so i’m just gonna give a quick summary. if you have it in the 4D, you have it. you are 4 dimensional and you live in the 4D, you just perceive it in 3 dimensions. don’t rely on the 3D for approval cause it’s an illusion. the 4D is real, the 3D isn’t. something can happen in the 3D but still not be true, that’s why revision exists. but if it happens in the 4D, it’s happened unless you change it.

3. doubts on whether you can manifest

this is different from number 1 in the sense that this doubt believes that everybody else (those people you see with the success stories) can manifest but you can’t. this is laughably false. if you weren’t able to manifest you wouldn’t be alive. the mind is reality and creates the illusion you perceive as the physical world, that is a constant. you are always manifesting. LOA is just you picking what to manifest (which is perfectly possible).

methods to use when dealing with doubts

1. research

- researching on why your doubts are false may greatly help you in defeating them.

2. rants & inner debates

- rants are basically just angry and aggressive talks one gives to their doubts. “STOP FUCKING CHECKING THE 3D!” can count. you don’t have to always use ranting especially when it doesn’t help but to each their own. if it works for you, have at it! just make sure to put your mental health first.

- inner debates on the other hand are calm and civilized talks with your doubts. it involves listening to your doubts (but not believing them) and debunk them in level headed manner. this may help people who want to get over their doubts through logic and reason.

3. the “i can doubt it all i want” method

- i use this all the time and think it’s very worth sharing. it involves telling yourself something to the effect of “i can doubt it all i want, (insert desire) is an objective fact”. think of your desire like a blue shirt you’re wearing for example. you can ask yourself “is the shirt really blue?” all you want but that won’t change the fact the shirt is blue.

4. the “as ______ is true, so is my desire” method

- this is pretty simple. it’s basically taking an objective fact you accept and applying that same attitude your desire. it goes something like this: “as the sky is blue right now, my SP loves me” for example.

5. reprioritization

- a lot of our doubts come from the belief that something is only valid if it happens in the 3D. those beliefs that make the 3D the top priority make you constantly rely on the 3D which can lead to checking and doubts. all you have to do is make the 4D your top priority/end goal since that’s where you live. you live in the 4D. the 3D doesn’t have shit to do with you.

conclusion

doubts are perfectly normal and there are multiple ways to get rid of them. please be patient and kind to yourself as you try to do so. wishing all of u the best 🫶

[matryosika]

Extracurricular

Pairing — Hyunjin x fem!reader Wordcount — 9,281 words Includes — College AU, strangers to something. Shy and inexperienced Hyunjin. Explicit content, smut warnings under the cut. Author's note — This was... a ride. I'm used to writing super filthy smut, but I think this one is pretty soft and wholesome. I enjoyed this idea a lot, and I enjoyed writing it too. I was between Seungmin, Mark and Hyunjin for this one, but I eventually decided to go with Hyunjin because... I don't think I've read a lot about him in this kind of dynamic haha. Also to indulge myself. I hope you guys like it; if you do, please like/reblog and leave an ask or comment! Remember that I own a ko-fi, in case you want to support my work further (link in my post pinned!) Every tip is super helpful to me.

Smut warnings: Kind of perv!Hyunjin if you squint. Hyunjin gets hard during a non-sexual context and reader catches it. Soft dirty talk, handjob, fingering, oral sex (both m. and f. receiving), deepthroating and super soft face fucking, cum eating, multiple orgasms (for both characters). Penetrative sex, unprotected sex (contraceptives are discussed), creampie.

[15:47 p.m.] You: 8, my place. 

Hyunjin tilted his head while reading your text, unsure about what he should reply. It wasn’t a question, nor a proposal; it was an order, something he had to accept rather than negotiate. 

[15:48 p.m.] Hyunjin: Yeah. 

For once, he was glad about being partnered with someone who enjoyed taking the lead. Had it been any other classmate of his, Hyunjin was sure he would’ve been forced to take the initiative. 

This time around, though, he wasn’t. But at what cost? The relief of being grouped with someone like you wasn’t as comforting as any other would think. Sure, more than one classmate would’ve done anything to be paired with you, but Hyunjin just couldn’t feel the same. 

[15:50 p.m.] You: my apartment is near Namyeong station. 

[15:50 p.m.] You: I'll text you the address later, wait. 

He spent the following hours waiting for your text, wondering how fate had played such cards on him. Was it a divine punishment? Or a devilish blessing? Hyunjin just couldn’t know.

*

He stood in front of your apartment door for minutes, debating on whether he should knock right away or wait a little bit longer. The clock on his cellphone screen Hyunjined 8:02, yet he didn’t want to look too desperate to get inside your place, even when he was.

So, Hyunjin opted to wait a few more minutes before knocking on your door. He thought about it as a way to soothe himself, though it was useless —no amount of waiting time could fight the awkwardness of getting to hang around you for a whole evening.

Despite knowing that, he tried his best. He brushed his sweaty palms against the fabric of his sweatpants, fixed his hair, cleared his throat, and rehearsed his greeting.

“Hey,” he whispered to himself. Too sharp. “Hello,” too weird. “Hi,” totally not like him.

“What’s up?,” Hyunjin finally concluded. What’s up? Casual, friendly, and not too uptight —even when that's probably one word he would use to describe himself.

With tons of hesitation, and motivated by the already wasted time, Hyunjin finally knocked on your door. He went for three knocks, one right after the other.

Surprisingly, you answered the door after the second one.

“What were you doing?”

It wasn't that Hyunjin needed to have everything under his control, but he wished to have at least some of it. From the moment you choose your own place for the project meeting, to the blunt question you welcomed him with, Hyunjin felt nothing but uncertainty.

In any other situation, or with any other person, he would've been the one leading the way. He would've been at the comfort of his place, welcoming his guest the way he wished to be welcomed. He would direct the project, choose the idea he liked best, work diligently on it and call it a day.

But he was standing right in front of your apartment door, with his cheeks flushed and a timid grimace that resembled more awkwardness than a friendly smile.

“Huh?” he mumbled, barely audible for you.

“It’s 8:20,” you stepped away from the door and encouraged the brown-haired to come in. “I was waiting for you”.

Were you? Hyunjin lost track of the time that evening. He knew he got to your apartment at around 8, but he wasn’t conscious of the whole twenty minutes he spent getting ready to knock on your door.

“Sorry,” was all he could come up with. “Hi”.

“Hi,” you said back, closing the door right behind you and guiding your shy classmate across the small living room.

He seemed nosy, you could tell; his eyes widened as he discreetly scanned the whole space. There was not much to see though —when it came to room décor, you were more of a minimalist. Still, Hyunjin was curious because it was your place, he wasn’t particularly interested in appreciating the small details but imagining how you spent your afternoons resting there.

“So,” you sat down on the couch and grabbed your laptop from the coffee table, leaving space for Hyunjin to sit next to you. He seemed hesitant at first, debating on whether he should be close to you or not for his own good, but he didn’t want to make things any more awkward than they already were. “Any ideas?”

“Ideas?”

“Mhm,” you nodded, “for the project”.

To be truthfully honest, Hyunjin had plenty of ideas for the final assignment. But as he inhaled your fragrance, he completely forgot about every single one of them.

“I-” he hesitated. Silly enough, he was at the top of his class. In the midst of things, he felt overwhelmed —what if you expected a lot from him? “I guess I haven’t thought much about it”.

“Me neither,” you sighed, throwing your head back and against a cushion. “We have a long night ahead”.

“Wha- do you think we can get it done by tonight?” Hyunjin asked you. Of course, if the both of you worked hard and without any distractions, the final project could’ve been done in under 3 hours. Yet he had hope about another project meeting, luckily at his place.

“Maybe,” you closed your eyes and exhaled deeply.  

Hyunjin nodded silently and stared at you for a while, allowing himself to do so only because you had your eyes closed. Besides that time you were late and had to sit right next to him in freshman year, this was as close as Hyunjin had ever been to you.

He didn’t want to come off as a pervert, but it was hard not to stare at you. Of course, he wasn’t going to do it shamelessly —he respected you and the last thing he wanted was for you to think about him as a creep or feel uncomfortable hanging around him, but his own instincts betrayed him.

From the curvature of your lashes to your lips, then your neck, and a little down further, Hyunjin’s eyes fixed on your cleavage. Your clothes only revealed much, but that was perfect, it had him on edge.

“What?” Your voice caught him off guard and he quickly parted his gaze away from you.

“Huh?”

“I can feel you staring at me, Hyunjin,” you scoffed, still with your eyes closed.

“I am not,” he reassured you, shifting his position on the couch.

“Alright,” you sighed. “But I wouldn’t mind if you were”.

“I am not,” Hyunjin repeated and turned to face the small balcony next to him, pretending that the view outside the apartment was a thousand times more fulfilling than the one he had sitting next to him.

“Why do you not like me?” The question came out rather harshly, but far from intimidating him, it only made Hyunjin curious.

Up until that point, he thought it was pretty obvious —he was into you. He didn’t know you that much, but he didn’t need to; his lack of knowledge never stopped him from having wet dreams about you almost every single night.

“Why do you think that?”

You let out a soft scoff, turning to the side to face him. “You didn’t look happy when the professor paired us together”.

Well, that was true, but not for the reasons you thought.

“You seem outgoing with everyone, but you always look tense when I hang around you,” you continued rambling, feeling offended at the reminiscences of every time Hyunjin acted like a jerk around you. “Am I that annoying?”.

You were the farthest thing from annoying, but he couldn’t tell you that. Hyunjin wasn’t good at flirting or being sly around you, so being bluntly honest with you wasn’t an option unless he wanted to sound intense.

“Mh,” there was not much he could say, really. He knew it wasn’t true, but he wasn’t going to try to convince you otherwise. It was best for you to think of him as someone distant and cold rather than a complete dumbass who fantasized about you almost every single day.

“See?” you barked. “You are not denying it”.

“I don't think you are annoying,” Hyunjin murmured, trying hard not to stumble upon his words. “I guess we just don't hang around that much”.

“Mh, is that so?” You tried hard to make eye contact with him, but it was useless. It seemed as if he was avoiding any kind of interaction with you, and that amused you as much as it bothered you. “I know you are lying because you can't even say such a thing while looking at me”.

“I don't think you are annoying,” Hyunjin repeated, tilting his head at you ever so slightly. He wasn't too fond of eye contact, let alone with you.

“Ah, come on,” with a soft groan, you cupped Hyunjin’s cheeks with one of your hands and forced him to look into your direction. “I don't believe you”.

His eyes widened slightly, and the skin underneath your palm started to feel warm with each second that passed.

“What?”

You were staring at him with doe eyes and, for a split second, Hyunjin felt anger at your naiveness. Were you really that oblivious to your own charms? Or did you just enjoy feeling like a predator hunting its prey? Either scenario made him feel pathetic.

If you were that naive, then that would mean that he is nothing more but a pathetic pervert that gets turned on by everything you do. But if you weren't, and instead were fully aware of the power you held over him, that would mean that you were just toying with him.

“I don't find you annoying,” Hyunjin murmured. “If I did, I wouldn't be here”.

“Well you came 20 minutes late and can't even engage in small talk,” you continued bickering, “it seems to me that you don't want to be here”.

At that point, Hyunjin understood you were just doing that to tease him —you were pushing all his buttons trying to get any kind of reaction from him. As far as he was concerned, that was much like you; according to your friends and classmates, you were a complete tease.

Hyunjin loved that about you as much as he hated it.

“I-I don’t know what you want me to say,” he stuttered. Your skin was burning against his, and he prayed for you to not notice the rising tint in his cheeks.

You smiled, still cupping both of his cheeks as if that small gesture wasn’t weird to perform on an almost stranger —still, you could tell he was nervous. “I’m just messing with you, Hwang,” you finally scoffed, letting go of the grip you had on his face.

You didn’t think he hated you, but his behavior was, in fact, odd around you. Hyunjin wasn’t the extroverted type, but you could tell there was a difference between how he engaged with everyone and you.

You weren’t the extroverted type either unless you had to  —that night, as he was quiet as usual, you had decided to try and lighten up the mood by teasing him. Perhaps it wasn’t the best way to start a conversation, but you just didn’t know any better.

“So,” you sat down properly on your space, moving away from him as he sensed the loss of your warmth, “project ideas”.

It was impressive how much power you held over Hyunjin and how indifferent he was to you —even he couldn’t begin to comprehend such a thing.

It was such a small, playful action; you had decided to make a suggestive joke, inviting him to look at you. Then, you touched him. Even if it wasn’t anything sexual, his body reacted in such a way —his skin got covered in goosebumps, his heart skipped a beat and the unpleasant pressure between his legs didn’t take long to appear.

That made him feel embarrassed.  

He wasn’t as experienced as others, nor had much going on in his sexual life, but there was something shameful in getting turned on that easily by someone he barely knew. Even worse, by someone who wasn’t doing anything to drive him to that place.

And then you changed the subject, so casually and quickly that it made him feel pathetic. You were back to thinking about project ideas and he was still frozen in its place, imagining that your touch was still there, that your gaze was still fixed in his, and that the following events weren’t as they had been.

You had moved from moment to moment so easily, yet he was still pressing the couch cushion against his lap trying for his growing bulge to go unnoticed.

“Hwang?”

“Huh?” Hyunjin blinked a few times before facing you, tilting his head ever so slightly as he tried to bring back anything from what you had said the past 2 minutes. Nothing, he was too busy thinking about how it was a mistake to wear a pair of sweatpants that evening.

You stared at him with furrowed eyebrows, “were you listening?”

He swallowed thickly and interrupted eye contact, turning to face the paper sheets scattered on the coffee table. Your eyes immediately fell down to the striped cushion which he cautiously held against his body, his hand pressing it just enough for his grip to look both rough and gentle at the same time.

“What was it?” Hyunjin shyly asked.

He expected you to start talking again like you had been doing ever since he got there, but you remained silent. Instead, you tilted your head at him, staring shamelessly at the object he seemed to be clinging to.

If there was one thing you were good at and he wasn’t, was bearing silence.

“I was- I kind of got lost in the middle,” he rambled, trying hard to hide his obvious nervousness. “You were saying something about, uh-”.

It seemed as if the only way you could make Hyunjin Hwang talk was by being quiet. The longer you stared at him, the more he talked —or tried to, better said.

“Hyunjin,” you interrupted, offering him the sweetest yet most taunting smile he had ever seen from you.

He was doomed.

By the way your eyes were lingering on the striped cushion and the corners of your lips raised in a mischievous smile, he knew you knew.

And in that split second, where your eyes met his tense body and flustered gaze, everything started to make sense.

“We don't need to have everything done by tonight,” you murmured with a flirting tone he wasn't oblivious to.

Prior to that day, Hyunjin had always stood out to you. It wasn't just his looks or physical appearance, but there was something inviting about him that, even then, you were trying to figure out.

You had a slight crush on him, but that wasn't saying much —every woman you knew had a thing for Hyunjin Hwang. He really wasn't the dating type, nor showed any interest in casual dates, yet you knew a fair amount of girls who would date him in a heartbeat.

But because of how uninterested he was about the women surrounding him, and how awkward he always seemed to get around you, you never thought of him as something more than just a pretty man.

“We should-,” he continued, avoiding your eyes who were practically begging for him to look at you, “discuss the id-”.

“Hyunjin,” you repeated, shifting your position on the couch so your body could face him. “Stop”.

His cheeks were flushed, his bottom lip was caught between his teeth and his gaze was slowly losing its spark. His eyes were no longer bright but dark —still, the characteristic softness of them never faded away.

“Are you okay?”

The question was innocent, but Hyunjin knew it hid something mischievous. Even so, he was hoping to be able to fool you.

“I think I just- need to go to the bathroom,” he murmured shyly, spreading his legs inconspicuously as he tried to fix his issue.

You glared at the striped cushion and then at him, trying to make him understand that you just couldn't be tricked.

“Is that so?” There was a teasing tone in your voice Hyunjin could pick up on well, but he chose to ignore it —instead, he was trying hard to believe his own lie.

But it was almost impossible; from the way your gaze was practically devouring him to the way your arm grazed against his ever so slightly, he just couldn't focus on anything else.

“Y-yes”.

“Right there,” you pointed at one of the doors and smiled when Hyunjin realized what he had put himself through.

In order to get to the bathroom, he would have to stand up from the couch. And by standing up, he would have to leave the striped cushion behind —otherwise it would've looked weird if he decided to walk along your living room while holding a cushion against his crotch.

“What is it?”

Hyunjin felt cornered. And humiliated.

“Think I'll just stay here,” he struggled, looking down at the object on his lap and avoiding your touch.

He was sure that if you were to cup his cheeks one more time or grab his arm in a playful manner, he would come right then in his pants. That's how much power you had over him.

“You are flushed,” just as if you had been reading his thoughts for the past fifteen minutes, you leaned forward to touch his forehead with your palm. “And you are burning, too”.

At that point, Hyunjin felt terrible. His cock twitched inside his pants as he felt your delicate touch on him again, and he was sure that his sweatpants had now a dark, wet patch on them.

All because of you.

“You were just fine when you got here though,” you were toying with him, and he could tell. “I wonder what happened”.

Hyunjin swallowed tickly once he felt your hand on his cheek and jaw, teasing the side of his neck only to return back to its original place at his forehead.

For a split second, he thought about going for it. But what exactly was he going for? His cock was hard in his pants and the whole moment just made him look pathetic. On top of that, he didn't trust you enough. Would you laugh at him and call him a pervert? Or would you like the idea that you can get him hard that easily?

“Come on,” you murmured, grabbing the cushion as soon as he let his guard down. He was too lost into his own thoughts that he only realized you had taken it away when it was already too late.

His hands flew to his crotch, but it was all useless.

The raise of one of your eyebrows let Hyunjin know he had lost a game he didn't even know he was playing in the first place. It seemed as if, from the moment he walked through your apartment door, your only mission was for him to drop that distant facade he thoroughly tried to build around you.

And oh, how you succeeded.

He stared at you for what felt like ages, his body leaning forward as he tried to hide his bulge. The worst part was that, even after being caught, his cock didn't soften, it was all quite the opposite.

“Hm,” you finally hummed, interrupting the awkward silence between the both of you. “I thought you were feeling ill”.

Truth was, he did feel ill. His head was spinning around, he felt dizzy, his heart was racing at a thousand miles per hour and his hands were sweating like never before. At some point, he felt as if he was going to faint.

But even then, when he knew you had caught him red-handed in the middle of possibly one of the most humiliating situations a man can ever be in, you just couldn't stop staring at him.

Your eyes were fixed on the silhouette of his bulge, his sweatpants only leaving much to the imagination. His hand reached out for the striped cushion yet again, establishing a physical barrier between you and what you were dying to see.

“I guess you were right,” you murmured after an awkward silence, still with your gaze placed on that specific spot. “You don't find me annoying”.

It was a subtle, amusing joke to lighten up the mood, but Hyunjin couldn't relax. All he could think of was your eyes analyzing every part of him, from his rosy cheeks to the stained gray sweatpants.

“I should probably- just, you know, I can get the project done on my own. I will just-,” he was rambling, again. It was really a pathetic move, but what else was he supposed to do? He had never felt as embarrassed.

“Do you like me?”

Hyunjin stared at you with both eyes open like plates. There was no point in asking that question, especially not after you caught him with a boner in the middle of just a college project.

“I mean, sexually,” you added.

He thought, wasn't it obvious? His cock always got rock hard whenever you were around. Whenever he jerked himself off, all he could think about was you. Even when he didn't want to, even when he tried to think about anyone but you, you were the only one he could think of as he came.

“I- you know, I'm just-”.

“It's a yes or no question, Hyunjinnie,” you taunted him.

God, how he hated that nickname. It made him feel pathetic, which was not too far from reality.

“No”.

A blatant lie. No matter how hard Hyunjin tried to pretend he didn't feel attracted towards you, his past actions could rat him out anytime. The amount of times he had jerked off to your instagram pictures, the countless occasions he got hard just from seeing you and the embarrassing moments in which your name had slipped from his lips every time he humped his pillow were enough proof that he was into you.

“No?” you asked him, incredulous.

He shook his head. “I- think we should just- focus on the assignment”.

It took Hyunjin all the courage within him to not run away from the scene, lock himself up in his apartment and drop out of college. He did want to run away from your apartment, though, but he couldn't —his whole body was frozen and he could only do as little as move his gaze over the scattered paper sheets in front of him.

“I am just trying to help you here,” you exhaled deeply, clearly upset about facing rejection from such a man.

You weren't expecting him to give in right away —you knew him fairly well, and considering how shy he was, it was pointless to hope for a little bit of initiative. Yet the thing that bothered you the most was how you could tell he wanted to, but kept on denying it and pretending he just wasn't interested.

“And I can't help you if you don't let me”.

Hyunjin fixed his eyes on the small coffee table in front of him, yet his gaze was lost. Everything felt too surreal, like a dream or something pulled out of his wildest fantasies —it was all too good to be true.

“What makes you think I need help?” he gulped while asking that question, as if the answer wasn't obvious. Still, he wanted to know if you two were at least on the same page.

“Mh,” you scoffed, changing your position to end up kneeling on the couch right next to him. “Do I really need to say it?”

Truth is, you didn't. If you did say those words, he would feel too humiliated. It was humiliating enough for him to have you knowing his filthy secret, so Hyunjin just couldn't imagine how overwhelmed he would feel if you were to say anything about the situation.

“You know, it is actually kind of funny,” you taunted. Now that he was sitting right next to you, with his cock hard and his cheeks tinted, Hyunjin’s image was everything but funny.

“I am guessing this is the reason behind you not being able to concentrate on this project,” your hand sneaking all the way to the striped cushion as you took it from his lap —this time around, he didn't stop you. “So I think it's funny”.

He couldn't wrap his head about your choice of words. Funny?

“How come?” he felt less pathetic then. Still as embarrassed, but at least the relief of knowing you didn't think of him as a pervert gave him just the tiniest bit of comfort.

“You are hard and I am wet,” you chuckled, wrapping your hands underneath his left arm. That, combined with the words coming out of your mouth, made Hyunjin’s cock twitch inside his sweatpants. “Had I not seen that, we would have spent hours working on this while being aroused”.

Now, that was too good to be true.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” your hands cupped his face with delicacy, forcing him towards you. “Given the circumstances, we can help each other out, right?”

There was something Hyunjin needed to know first, before agreeing to do whatever it was that you were suggesting. Perhaps it was his ego, or mere curiosity, but he couldn't hold the question back.

“Why were you wet?”

The short, obvious answer was because you were aroused. But you both knew he didn't want to hear that —he was more interested in knowing what caused it.

“Why do you think so?” you scoffed softly, dragging your hand along his arm until it reached his wrist. “You are here, and we are both alone so it was impossible for me not to think about stuff”.

“What kind of stuff?”

For better or for worse, Hyunjin lost his inhibitions slowly. Had you reacted differently than you did, he was sure things wouldn't have been the way they were.

“Too many questions,” you shook your head softly, guiding his wrist between your parted legs. “Why don't you tell me what made you hard?”

He repressed a moan as soon as his digits grazed against your core —even with your underwear and shorts on, he could feel how warm you were.

“You,” he simply responded, fixing his eyes on the way your hand wrapped around his wrist.

“Do I make you hard?”

Hyunjin was just applying a small amount of pressure on you, yet you felt the need to swallow thickly. Your gaze was lost in the veins of his arms and the way his hand got lost between your legs.

“Yes,” Hyunjin sighed, lifting his eyes slightly up until they met your parted lips. 

The fabric of his sweatpants outlined the shape of his bulge fine, and it was impossible not to clench at the image. There was a wet, small patch on them, and you were fighting the urges to release his cock and lick the tip of it to taste him.

“Does it happen often?” you softly cooed, tightening the grip on his wrist as his fingers started to touch you over your clothes.  

Always, Hyunjin thought, when you’re around and when you’re not. 

“I’m just curious,” you continued after a few seconds of silence, “it would be a huge compliment if it does”. 

“Would it?” he swallowed thickly, gaze fluttering between your eyes and lips. “Why?”

“You know,” you replied, followed by a sigh, “you ask a lot of questions for someone who hasn’t given a proper response to any of mine”. 

Hyunjin couldn’t argue with you on that. 

“So,” still with his hand between your parted legs, you switched your position on the couch to be closer to him. “I asked you, does it happen often?”

“Yes,” he didn’t think it through this time and gave you the shortest, most honest answer within him. If that was what you needed to answer all of his questions, then he was going to play along. “Much more than I want to admit”.

“Mh,” you sarcastically pouted, resting your hand on top of his thigh. The sudden contact made him flinch in the slightest, but you found it adorable. “Don’t be shy with me, we’re not that different”. 

If he hadn’t been biting his lower lip, he was sure a whimper would’ve escaped his lips as you squeezed his thigh, softly caressing it while you made your way to his crotch. 

Luckily for him, he was showing much more self-control than the one he thought he had.

“We’re not?”

“Well, you too have turned me on more times than I can count now,” you murmured with boldness, “Is that weird? We don’t even talk much”. 

It isn’t, Hyunjin thought to himself as a series of perverted memories flooded his mind.

Not that he would willingly share them with you. At least not right now.

“But you’re just too pretty,” a sighed escaped your lips while your hand finally wrapped around his bulge, stroking it ever so slightly on top of his clothes, “I can’t help myself”.

Hyunjin kicked his head back, resting it against the back of the sofa. His hand was still between your legs, and your hand was gripping the silhouette of his dick over his sweatpants.

It felt like something pulled out of his wildest fantasies, but he was overthinking it a lot. You were there, admittedly wet, and he was with you, painfully hard —it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, if you will, and he was about to waste it triumphantly.

“‘m sorry,” he squeezed his eyes shut, grimacing like you were hurting him albeit the soft grip you had on him, “I can’t”. 

You missed the warmth of his digits against you almost instantly, only to be replaced by his hand wrapping around your wrist. He fully intended to push your touch away —the faster he got your hands off of him, the faster he would forget how they felt. 

But his body betrayed him, and he could only do much as squeeze your wrist while you rubbed him off.

“Want me to stop?” You asked him, not knowing if you should continue, or just let the poor man go.

His body was stiff underneath your touch, but you could feel his cock twitching against your palm. It felt deliciously good, you could only fantasize about how much better it would feel inside of you.

“I don’t- I don’t know,” he simply responded, still with his eyes shut and his head kicked back. Hyunjin wanted to engrave the feeling of your hand wrapped around him, just as much as he wished to remember the sound of your breathing and the smell of your fragrance. “Fuck, I don’t know”.

Your eyes gleamed with the pride of coming up with a plan.

“Can I help you make up your mind?”

He blinked a couple of times, his hazy gaze barely focusing on you but your pair of hands that were dangerously close to the waist of his pants. 

“You can say no, of course,” you squeezed his thigh softly, and that drew his attention back to your face, the corners of your lips rising into a flirty smile, “but I wouldn't do that if I were you”.

All he offers you in return is a sweet, desperate nod. A short one, at that —he basically tilted his head at his crotch as a way of saying go ahead, but that was all you needed to move on.

You went from sitting right by him, to kneel in the space he had created between his legs.

His eyes were following every move of yours, and refused to abandon your image at any moment —painfully enough, Hyunjin looked so fucking good from this angle of view.

The tip of your digits grazed against the elastic of his sweatpants, lowering them along with his underwear just as little as your plan required. And as soon as your hand wrapped around his erection, Hyunjin swore he was going to die. Or come. Which to Hyunjin’s concern, was exactly the same. 

“W-wait, just, shit,” he didn’t wrap his hand around your wrist this time, but the conflict in his voice made you stop right on your tracks even before you got to do anything. “Wait, I’m not- I’m not that experienced, you know?”

“So?” You queried without bothering to hide the fact that the sudden confession perked you up a little.

“I just don’t want to embarrass myself,” Hyunjin exhaled, “which I probably already did, and I'm doing”. 

So it really wasn't that he didn't like you enough, or that he didn't want this just as much as you did.

“What’s the worst thing that can happen, anyway?” your hands were still gripping the base of his cock, teasing it against your lips as you spoke. 

“That I might come too fast,” he stuttered, eyebrows furrowed with concern. “You're not even doing anything and I can feel my cock throbbing like crazy”.

The filthy choice of words made your heart skip a beat —that, paired with the raspiness and deepness of his tone, only had you wishing he wouldn't shut up at all.

“So?” You repeated again, grinning with mischief. “I don’t mind if you come quick, as long as you can get hard for me again”.

Hyunjin let out a mixture between a moan and a grunt at your words, feeling visibly affected by them.

“If you keep saying stuff like that, I will come,” he inhaled sharply and swallowed thickly at the sight of your smile. 

“Just tell me where”. 

The small confidence Hyunjin built for himself after voicing out his concerns slowly faded away as soon as your tongue grazed against the tip of his cock —for a moment, he really thought he could hold up pretty well. But the sight of you as you made eye contact with him, while your tongue dragged along the side of his dick, was enough proof that he just couldn't stand a chance against his libido.

“Fuck,” he sighed, catching his lower lip between his teeth ever so slightly, “’m sorry”. 

At that, you cocked an eyebrow. “Sorry about what?” 

The kitten licks you were giving the tip of his cock didn't make things any easier for Hyunjin —the idea of putting together a whole sentence seemed impossible, and he knew if he were to talk in the middle of it he would just look pathetic.

“I don't mean to be this loud,” his hands were something between gripping the edge of the couch, and resting over his spread thighs; he was too focused on repressing the string of curses and moans that threatened to escape his lips. 

“But I want to hear you, Hyunjin,” you purred, stroking his dick against one of your cheeks.

The sight was to die for, quite literally —your lips were glistening with spit, just like your chin and now your cheek. Both of your hands were wrapped around his dick, and you just looked too cute despite the lewd setting you were in.

“I love it when you curse,” you encouraged him, leaving wet kisses along his shaft. “You sound so good, you know?”

The compliments were definitely getting to Hyunjin's head, and you could tell because little by little, he started to leave the awkwardness aside and get really immersed in the moment.

He seemed too afraid of screwing things up, for some reason. You, on the other hand, didn't think he could screw anything up at all —Hyunjin had always turned you by doing the bare minimum, and you wondered if he was well aware of that.

You knew he wasn't, otherwise he would've carried himself with a little more ego and pride than he did. 

"But you're a good boy, aren't you?" you continued, gently spitting on his cock to use it as lube. As you jerked him off, Hyunjin's hips instinctively bucked your palm. “You don’t curse, you don’t break rules, you don’t ever get loose…” 

“I’m not that- good,” Hyunjin hissed, biting down his lower lip. “I just- fuck".

He kicked his head back when he felt a delicious squeeze of your hands around his balls, interrupting whatever it was that he meant to say.

“Do you like it when I touch you like this?” You asked, based on his reaction. 

Again, you squeezed his balls ever so slightly while the tip of your tongue swirls around the head of his cock. 

“I fucking love it”.

God, he sounded so good. So good when he cursed, when he moaned and when your name fell from his lips. Sensuality looked good on him, despite him not knowing jack shit about it. 

"I swear I've never wanted to taste someone so bad in my entire life," you giggled, letting out a hiss when you felt his hard dick throbbing between your hands, "want you to come in my mouth, I’ll swallow it".

You weren't his first —despite his awkwardness and lack of girlfriend history whatsoever, Hyunjin had a couple of experiences he could trail back to. 

But none of them came close to whatever it was that he was feeling right now.

“I’m close,” he warned you, his hands alternating between grabbing your head and your cheeks, “fuck- I’m so fucking close”.

Eagerly, you continued bopping your head up and down his length, jerking off with your hands the part that just couldn't fit in your mouth. Between your strokes and the way you squeezed and caressed his balls, you had Hyunjin coming in no time.

“Shit-” he whimpered, forcing your head down onto his cock until your nose hit his pubic bone. 

You weren't expecting him to make you deepthroat his cock, but you tried to take it like a champ nonetheless. All for him and his pleasure.

And honestly, he didn't mean to do that exactly. It was an instinct, something done in the heat of the moment, but he just couldn't deny the fact that he enjoyed maybe a bit too much the sound and feeling of you gagging around his dick.

You had never seen someone looking this hot while coming —his cheeks were flushed, his eyebrows furrowed, his teeth were chewing at his bottom lip and his whole body was shaking and grinding ever so slightly against your mouth, hips raised against the couch while he chased his high.

It was a long high —he came so much down your throat, it eventually spilled out from the corners of your lips onto the length and base of his cock. 

Messy, but neither of you could begin to care.

“God,” Hyunjin exhaled, his whole body relaxing onto the couch after all the tension he had been carrying ever since got to your apartment. 

He let go of your face and you continued jerking him off with his own cum for a couple of seconds as your movements died down. 

“Did you- did you swallow it?”

Rather than giving him a response, you just stuck out your tongue —empty, clean, with just a small amount of him still in you. He tasted just like you imagined, and that did nothing more than to turn you on. 

“I told you,” you smiled, “I wanted to taste you”.

Hyunjin looked at you for a couple of seconds, blinking perplexed. His heart was still going at a thousand miles per hour, his head was spinning around your apartment and his cock was still as rock hard, despite having come just minutes ago.

And, impulsively, he leaned down to kiss you.

You were still on your knees between his legs, but he cupped your cheeks and practically forced you onto his lips. It was sloppy, and fast, but at the same time it was far from unpleasant. The feeling of his tongue against yours, tasting himself off of you, was enough to elicit a moan from the two of you. 

From one moment to another you were no longer kneeling between his legs, but laying down on the couch with your back against a soft cushion. Hyunjin was between kneeling and sitting right on top of you, with his hands on either side of your body.

“I want to taste you too,” he panted in between kisses, leaving a wet trail of them from your lips to your jaw, “want to make you feel real good, just like you did to me”. 

You were dying to fuck him, but you weren't going to reject it. More than one night you snuck your hand between your panties wishing it was Hyunjin's face and tongue, so you trembled in excitement at knowing that one of your fantasies was about to become true.

Or a couple of them.

“Please,” yours and Hyunjin’s hands lost no time in struggling you out of your bottoms, leaving them out of your rear of view. 

Embarrassingly for you, but luckily to Hyunjin, the fabric and color of your underwear did absolutely nothing to hide your wetness —stripping you out of it was a delight to him, who could catch a glimpse of your arousal sticking to your panties.

Carefully, he positioned himself somewhat flat against the couch with his face between your legs. Your back was slightly straight against the couch's arm rest, and your knees softly bent with your feet against the faux leather of it, so he hooked one of his hands under your thigh while the other caressed the side of your body.

“You’re so pretty,” Hyunjin whispered under his breath leaving a couple of shy kisses along your inner thighs. The slight contact of his breathing against your hot cunt made your back arched. “Pretty face, pretty pussy”. 

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

His half-lidded eyes looked up to you, “I've always thought you were the prettiest”.

He started off really slow, getting to know your body. You were desperate for more, for something messy and rough, but you allowed him to take his time. Even more so because it seemed though as if he was gaining confidence as he explored you, and you loved to see it.

“So good,” he groaned against your slit, “could eat you out for hours”. 

You wouldn't mind. He just looked too good buried in the heat between your legs, and his wet tongue felt heavenly against your clit and folds. 

After some time, his fingers came into the mix as well. Two digits stretching your cunt open, cautiously, while he kept on licking and sucking your clit.

“Right there Hyunjin,” you arched your back, gasping when his digits brushed against that spot. “Fuck, you just- shit, right there feels so fucking good”.

Seeing you like that, gasping and writhing underneath him, contributed a little to his ego. 

“Is it good?”

“Fucking perfect,” you cursed, rolling your hips against him, “can’t wait to feel your cock”.

Hyunjin knew that things were eventually leading up to sex, but it didn't feel real until you named it. Until you told him you wanted to feel him inside you, until you implied that it was only a matter of minutes before he got to enact his fantasies with you.

His hips grinded against the couch, too, as he ate you out. 

Needy to feel your warmth, desperate to give you all of his cum again.

“I want you to come first like this,” Hyunjin murmured, with his fingers buried in your pussy and his nose brushing ever so slightly against your swollen clit, “with my mouth and fingers. Then, I will make you come with my cock”.

You moaned at his words.

“It’s a promise?” 

“It’s a promise”. 

You kicked your head back against the couch’s arm rest, and arched your back when you felt the tension threatening to unravel down your lower abdomen.

His tongue was moving deliciously where you needed it, and his fingers never lost its pace and rhythm inside you.

“Hyunjin,” you chanted, latching your fingers onto his dark hair, “don’t stop”. 

Not that he was planning to.

“Are you going to come?” 

“Yes,” you nod frantically, moving your hips as much as his grip allowed you to. “So close Hyunjin, I’m so close”. 

Heavenly. 

His name falling from your lips felt right, just like it did your mouth around his cock and his tongue flat against your clit. You felt right, much more better than whatever he had been imagining the past years while masturbating on his own.

“Like that,” Hyunjin hissed, watching in awe the way your pussy and ass clenched at your orgasm. But as much as he wanted to enjoy the view, he also wanted to feel you getting wetter and wetter as you came, so he quickly returned to latch his mouth on your pussy and his eyes on you. 

“Shit!” your hips were bucking against his face frantically, almost aggressively. But he didn't stop, and elongated your high as much as he possibly could, “Can’t stop- fuck, can’t stop coming”. 

It felt like a never ending orgasm, one prompted by Hyunjin's lustful gaze —the more eye contact you made, the more aroused you felt.

“More, more Hyunjin,” you sounded desperate, and that made his dickthrob against the couch. He wanted to make you come again, and again, and until you no could no longer take it.

But he would be lying if he said he wasn't impatient for fucking you. 

“I’ll give you more,” he murmured, withdrawing from your body when you finally came down from your high. “But just- want to give it to you with my cock”. 

Whenever you thought about sex with Hyunjin, you always pictured yourself being on top. Maybe it was because of his shyness, or because you felt like you needed to take the initiative, but you almost always came at the thought of you bouncing up and down his dick.

Much to your surprise, he didn't lose time before positioning his body between your spread legs, not before removing his shirt and doing the same with yours as well.

He was going to fuck you in missionary, you figured. And you almost came at the realization of it.

Most men these days all they want is to get their dicks wet with minimal to no effort —Hyunjin was trying hard to please you, and that was alone much more satisfactory than any other experienced you had so far.

“I want to see your face when I'm fucking you," it was almost like he read your thoughts. Not that you had any complains, but quick fucks never cared for the intimacy sex entailed.

Hyunjin was different.

“Definitely not my best look,” you swallowed, thinking about your ruined make up and post-orgasm fucked out face. 

“I could come just by looking at you,” he confessed, eyes falling to your spread legs. “I swear”. 

You wrapped your arms around his neck, and pumped his dick a few times before realizing that he was missing something.

“You uh-” he felt embarrassed, but he honestly didn’t think he would get to fuck you, out of all the people. He came to your apartment to work on a school project, not to get laid. “I don’t have a condom”. 

“Want to do it raw?”

He gulped.

Of course he wanted to. Using a condom was never part of his fantasies —shit, almost all his fantasies ended up with him filling you up, despite how risky that was. 

“I honestly want to, but I’d understand if you-”.

“Are you-”

“I’m on the pill,” you reassured him, “and I’m clean. I want you to fuck me raw if that’s what you want too”. 

“I do,” Hyunjin sighed, licking his lips at the thought of getting to really feel you. “Fuck, I do”. 

And despite the logical, rational part of him that insisted it probably wasn't the brightest idea ever, Hyunjin guided the tip of his cock against your clit. The sudden stimulation made your body jolt, but he didn't stay there for too long. 

His cock slid easily right inside, and the way your walls clenched around him as they got used to his size almost makes Hyunjin come.

“Finally,” you exhaled, closing your eyes while he bottomed out slowly.

Hyunjin groaned quietly, softly pressing your hips against his. 

“You’re so tight,” he gritted his teeth, “squeezing me just right”.

He hovered you, leaning down to kiss you yet again. He wasn't moving, just fully enjoying the way you felt wrapped around him.

He didn't know if he was going to have another chance to experience this, so he intended to memorize everything —from the way your tongue tasted, to the way your pussy clenched on him.

Only this time, the kiss wasn't as sloppy; it was intense, deep and it left you breathless. He kissed you ardently, brushing his tongue against yours, biting down your lower lip and pulling it ever so slightly.

“I’m going to-” he sighed in between kisses, “are you- alright?”

“Yes,” you wrapped your arms around his neck, and your legs around his hips, “fuck me already, Hyunjin”.

Slowly but surely, he started acquiring a pace of his own. And fuck, it felt delicious.

His pubic bone slammed against your clit, providing some stimulation; his cock reached the deepest spots inside you, and his mouth worked wonders on your neck and chest. 

It was unfair how perfect he was —so good at everything.

“Harder,” your hands reached out to cup his face, pressing your forehead against his. “Fuck me harder, please”.

He understood what you wanted.

Hyunjin didn't necessarily fucked you faster after you plea, no. He smacked his hips against yours roughly, going impossibly deeper into you. His pace was slow, but each thrust made you moan and gasp every time.

“There you go,” he murmured in a quiet, drowned groan.

You hid your face on the crook of his neck, sucking on his flesh meaning to leave red and purple blossoms all over it. For some reason, the idea of seeing him the next day at college campus and peeking to see the marks you left on him kind of excited you.

It was also going to remind you that this was real, and that it happened.

“Right there, Hyunjin,” you enjoyed the feeling of him ruthlessly pounding into you. He was sweet, gentle, and caring, but his movements weren't. He appeared to be someone innocent, but he wasn’t —at least not when he was fucking you good like he this.

“Feeling good?”

“Perfect,” you replied, “you’re so- hard inside me, you feel perfect”. 

The harshness of his thrusts suddenly died down as he regained his pace; they become hotter, more sensual. 

His eyes went from looking at you, to closing shut at times. He licked his lower lip constantly, alternating between chewing on it softly, too. 

When Hyunjin wasn't too focused on his overwhelming pleasure, he was focused on your body.

How it reacted, how sensitive it was, what things you liked. He kissed your chest and sucked on your hardened nipples, and he soon understood you loved it —at least judged by the way you clenched around his dick. 

He also realized he liked the feeling of your fingers latched onto his hair —he enjoyed when you pulled it a bit too roughly, and he didn't mind the pain of it.

“Can you come with me?” Hyunjin asked in between grunts. “I’m close- but I want you to come with me, come at the same time”. 

“I’m close too,” you sneaked a hand between your bodies, rubbing your clit lazily. “Want to come with you, and feel you coming inside me”. 

It suddenly became much more intimate than you initially intended to —his eyes were glued to yours, saying way more than his words could ever do. You could see the lust, affection, and even perversion in his gaze; the longing of always staring from afar, but now getting to have you underneath him with your legs spread and your pussy around him.

It didn't take you any long to reach that sweet release you both had been chasing ever since he stepped a foot into your apartment.

“I’m coming,” you gasped, digging your nails onto the flesh of his shoulders and back, “come”. 

Hyunjin pressed his forehead against yours, and when he felt your walls clenching, he immediately released too. 

He didn’t want to think about his cum filling you up, nor the image of his arousal oozing out of your pretty pusy. He didn’t want to think too much about what you just let him do, and he didn’t want to think about the risk of it although it kind of turned him on.

A loud moan escaped his lips when he thrusted his cock harder into you, reaching yet another deep spot inside your walls. With each slam of his hips, he shot his orgasm painting you white from the inside. 

A warm, eerie feeling you hadn't experience before, because you just refused to fuck anyone raw.

But Hyunjin isn't just anyone.

“God,” he gulped loudly, panting and out of breath. 

You could feel his cum dripping out of you, despite his dick still filling you up, and you just couldn't believe how much he came twice in a row.

“Was it good?” your voice sounded exactly the same, hoarse and strained. You could barely breathe, but you didn’t care  —he collapsed on top of you carefully, without wanting to hurt you, and you both tried to stabilize your breathing together.

“Better than my imagination, that’s for sure”. 

You kissed his cheek and enjoyed the intimacy, wondering if the shy, awkward Hyunjin was going to make an appearance any time soon. In very little time you got to see a whole new side of him, just as shy but a lot less shallow than what you “knew” about him prior to that day, and you were still not ready to find out how things were going to be after this.

“I should probably- get something to clean you up,” you only realized how messy a creampie is when Hyunjin pulled out, making his cum to drip out of you and onto the couch. 

But you came up with a better plan.

“What if we take a shower?”

He looked at you, but soon diverted his gaze to the pile of unfinished work you had. 

“Come on, don’t get shy on me,” you pouted, sitting carefully on the couch right next to him. “I’m not getting shy it’s just-”, he makes a long pause and smiles to himself. A very faint, almost imperceptible grimace, but you caught on it, “I don’t think I can be naked around you without ending up fucking you again”. 

“Sounds like a win to me”.

“I expected much more from the two of you,” Mr. Jung handed you the final essay you allegedly worked so hard on. Judged by the stern tone of his voice, and the deep exhalation your project partner let out, you can only assume it was a bad grade. “Not the greatest work you’ve had delivered”. 

Your gaze fell down in embarrassment, and Hyunjin cleared his throat, “we’re sorry. With the end of the semester we kind of- got distracted”. 

And if by distracted you mean fucking like animals at every chance you were alone, whether in a private or a public setting, then yes.You got so fucking distracted.

[dilf-rot]

Avoidant Attachment

based on Anon request :  could you do a fic of meeting Logan and wade in the void and joining the team? Logan and you are into each other but are kinda awkward hide behind being mean to each other wades so over it later on smuttt <3333

Word Count: 5841 

Tags: Wolverine x Reader, Worst!Wolverine x Reader, Logan howlett x Reader, Fem!Reader (kinda?), Wade is here too, Meeting in the Void, Deadpool 3, Deadpool and Wolverine, Laura is Also here, 5 people in a one bedroom apartment is a great idea, Althea is here briefly, dogpool mention, slower burn but like not really, mutual pining, Wade and Laura as wingmen, insults as flirting, eventual smut, One bed trope included, P in V, Riding

AN: This one took a lot longer than I was expecting, probably since I haven’t written Wade before and I didn’t want it to suck, and also because I was quite busy irl. Regardless, thank you for the request and your patience, Hope you don’t mind my interpretation of the prompt<3

If you enjoy my work consider sending me a tip at https://ko-fi.com/rotwrites (Not required by any means, writing requests are still free!)

MDNI 18+

—------------------

The Void. Boring as Hell, and yet somehow worse than hell. At least Hell would grant you company, shitty company, but better than the dust and trash here. You don’t even remember why you got put here. Probably some bullshit you weren’t even responsible for. You had a pretty lame set up, just a hole in the ground really. And you’d find garbage to shift through, look for food. You had managed to do pretty well on your own for a decent amount of time. Other than being lonely, and the occasional breakdown, things weren’t so bad.

The air was stale and unremarkable, as was the sky, no sign of oncoming doom or any excitement for the day. Or so you thought. 

Over the horizon of dusty dirt and forgotten garbage, appeared two silhouettes. 

As they approached, inching closer and closer you debated on whether you should interact or just ignore, they didn’t seem like they had been here long. 

You watched closely waiting for your moment to make a move. Listening to them as they approached.

Deadpool. Common, usually annoying. 

But the one with him. That’s a rather rare sight. You had never seen one of him before.

They seemed like they were on a mission, maybe trying to escape from here. If you could escape, maybe you could return to something approaching a normal life again. 

You decide to take the chance.

“Hello,” You pop out from your little shelter. Both men jolt into action, blades and guns drawn. The man in yellow, the interesting rare man, had blades coming out of his hands. “Oh no, not a threat.” 

They regard each other and then put the weapons away.

“Knew I smelt something,” his voice was rough and it added to his appeal for sure. 

“And you didn’t want to say anything? Some blood hound you are!” Deadpool spoke, punching the gruff one in the shoulder.

“Sorry, I know you’re a Deadpool. But you are?” You point to him. 

“Logan,” “Wolverine,” they speak out in tandem. 

“Right, so… what’re you doing this far out?” 

“Not telling you random dirt dweller,” Deadpool looked back towards Logan, and seemed to be weighing his options.

“Ok well, if you decide to be friendly I could offer my help.”

“You don’t look like you’d be of much help,” Logan retorted as he looked you over. You were obviously smaller and not as strong as either of them, but you had some tricks up your sleeve.

“Ouch, I would be offended if you didn’t have hair like kitty ears.” You pointed up at Logan’s hair and he seemed surprised by your response. “I’ve been in the void longer than you, I’m sure I know some things that would be useful to you,”

“Listen, Kid-”

“Yeah, me and Kitty Cat here are trying to get back at that bald freak show of a woman and escape this hell. So unless you know how to do that, I’d stay out of it, dust bunny.” 

You laugh and look at the state of them, confused but still combative, barely holding it together and hardly friends. “That’s a good one. Good luck with Cassandra then, Ketchup and Mustard.”

Deadpool gasps and Logan seems to have the inklings of a smile on his face but it quickly fades when you turn to look at him. You sit down on a nearby piece of rubble and watch as they take a few steps away and start to argue about what the plan is. You smile and wave when they look back at you.

“Ok, so what do you know?” Deadpool asks, rushing back up to you. And so you do your best to fill him in on as much as you know about the void itself and Cassandra. All of which seems to not be that useful to him as he just sort of brushes it off and continues, “Well as much as I’d love to have you on the team sunshine, seems like Wolvie over there isn’t too keen on it.” He points over to Logan, who turns away and kicks some dust and debris around. “But, between you and me, he’s just bad with girls. Especially pretty ones with quick mouths.” 

You blush a bit but return a quick retort, “That’s fine, not like I have anything to escape back to anyway. Good luck, random Deadpool.”

“It’s Wade.” 

“Right,” You wave as he runs back to Logan. You imagined it wouldn’t be that long before you see them again, mostly because you had planned on following them, or at least trailing them for long enough to find a new place to stay. 

—-----------

You meet them again at the safe house with Laura, she drove them here and plopped them down without a word. She had been very welcoming when you had wandered this way in search of food, and let you join them for a quick meal. You had told her that you saw Wolverine, and her interest had been piqued. She explained to you everything that had happened before she was sent here, and the two of you bonded over not having something to return too. Although now, with this Wolverine sitting in the same space, it seemed like her chances were looking up.

You figured you’d let them be once they woke up, and wait it out. By the time everyone had finished their speeches, you just stood behind them and waved. You didn’t have much to say, everyone else had much more valid reasoning for wanting to escape than you. You could hardly remember life before the void, if you even had one. Luckily, nobody ever bothered to press you about it, probably assuming you had forgotten for a valid reason. So when Deadpool- Wade, asked you for your input, you sort of just shrugged. Listening to them all plotting was entertaining at least, you were sure you would be of much use, maybe an extra distraction, at the very least you could cover them enough to get the job done. 

You noticed Logan slip out with a bottle of liquor in his hands. You gave Laura a nod before following him outside.

He had started a fire, and was sitting watching the flames.

“So how’d someone like you end up with someone like that?” You gesture back up to the house, as you stand against a tree, watching the fire flicker in front of him.

“It’s complicated.” He says taking a swig from the bottle.

“It always is.” Silence runs through the trees, nothing but crackling fire and the dead stale air of the void. “At least he seems fun.”

“Hah,” He breathes out.

“If that’s what you’re into.”

“No.” His gruff demeanor drops for a second, the bottle halting as he brings it down from his lips.

“No?”

He looks you over, before turning away.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it. I’ll say a prayer for your liver,” You reference the bottle in your hand. He nods, and you walk back up to the house, passing Laura on your way in. She’d probably have better luck cracking him than you.

You wondered if you would ever have a chance to mean something to him, to be more than some small tag along he sniffed out in the dirt. If he would ever find you to be a friend, an ally, someone to talk to, depend on. But you hardly just met, and hardly discussed anything other than half baked insults and nihilistic opinions of the void and your futures.  

—----------------

Wade and Logan had somehow convinced the TVA after everything with Cassandra to allow you and Laura to stay in this universe, and you weren’t sure how or why they wanted you to come along. Laura made sense, he felt responsible for her, and to make up for losing her Logan, to make up for missed moments. 

You? You hardly had a clue why they wanted you here. Or why they offered to let you stay with them until you found something else. You were surprised that Althea would agree to having 5 people sleeping in a tiny apartment. You appreciated the shelter, you were just very very confused by the entire situation. 

“Hello my little floor sleeper, how were your dreams? You were moaning about something…” He slides up next to you in the kitchen as you're pouring a cup of coffee.

“Hi, Wade.” You sip from the mug, not answering his nonsense.

“So,” he jumps up to sit on the counter in front of you, “You gonna spill? Tell me all about your honey badger dream fling? I was surprised you didn’t just wake up and mount him right there on the floor.”

“Shut up, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, the three of us sleep in the same tiny space, I hear everything.” 

“I’m gonna steal the couch space from you if you don’t drop it.”

Laura had been given a space in Althea’s room since the boys figured she deserved it, and You, Logan, and Wade were stuck in the living room. Rotating between the couch and cheap air mattresses, usually you just stayed on the floor and let Logan and Wade fight over the couch space. Compared to sleeping on grass and dirt in the void, an air mattress was a definite improvement. As long as Mary Puppins didn’t lick you to death in your sleep, it wasn’t a bad deal. 

“Come on, just admit you like Loggie Bear and I’ll get you some alone time with or without the couch.” 

“Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Currently, no.”

You sigh, and walk towards the bathroom to change, locking the door behind you as Wade continues to ramble and try to get you to slip and say something about Logan. But you won’t, even if he is right.

There were many nights where you thought about climbing into bed next to him and pressing your face against his chest, breathing in his scent, being held close to him by those utterly ridiculous arms, having him place warm chaste kisses against the top of your head. But you wouldn’t.  

You hardly knew him, and what you knew about him led you to believe that he was not the kind of man to be interested in someone like you. Although he had become more pleasant after having been invited into Wade’s life. Some days he still was that gruff sort of emotionally unavailable man you met in the void, but other days he’s sweet and gentle and kind, usually whenever Laura’s around. It’s as if he’s been given a reason to live again and he’s navigating how to be a person again. 

After you get dressed, you grab your bag and head out, avoiding Wade and his nonsense. You told Laura you’d meet her after her class and go to a cafe she’s been wanting to try. It’s just down the street from the apartment, but the walk is nice and gives you time to get your thoughts back in order. Trying to keep Wade’s pestering from seeping in and getting you to slip up.

When you get to the cafe, Laura is waiting for you outside. You go in and are met with soft florals, sleek wood finish, and the overwhelming smell of coffee. It is so cozy and bright, a welcome break from the dim and crowded apartment. Laura orders something you didn’t know was a thing, and you opt for a simple latte. She finds this funny and smiles at you, “Don’t you want something sweet?”

“No, I’m alright.” You lean against the wall as you wait for your order.

“What’s with you and Logan’s hatred for sugar?” She asks as she slides over to stand next to you.

“I don’t hate sugar, I’m just not in the mood for it.” You shrug and stare at the counter.

“At least you get milk with your coffee, better than black like Logan drinks.” She laughs again and grabs your order when it’s called. The two of you find a nice table by the window and enjoy watching the people passing by. When a particularly handsome man passes by, Laura perks up and asks, “How about that one?”

“He’s alright, not really my type though,” You shrug your shoulders and take another sip from your cup.

“You’re right, I already know your type.” The grin on your face reminds you of how Wade greets you in the mornings.

“Oh yeah? What's that?” You look at her quizzically. 

“Starts with an L and ends with an ogan”

You groan, “Don’t I get enough of that from Wade?”

“I think everyone can see it but you, even Al.” She looks up at you from her drink, in a way you both know she’s right.

“Wow,” is all you can muster in response. 

“I don’t know why you won’t do something about it, and look if you’re worried about me, don’t be. I give you full permission to pursue my not Dad kinda Dad.” 

You quickly try to change the subject, and once your coffee's finished and you’ve loitered around, you walk back in a knowing silence. 

You do have some sort of crush on Logan, but you feel like it would be too ideal to expect him to share those feelings. Especially when you aren’t one hundred percent sure what those feelings even are. He is exceptionally good looking, and well built. If it weren’t for his confrontational attitude and lack of expression, you’d be so certain in your attraction. But there is something blocking you from fully admitting it to yourself.

Maybe it is simply your lack of self, having to build back an identity from nothing, that keeps you from knowing if He is it for you. Even though sometimes he is all you can think about. When you catch him playing dad with Laura. When you catch him helping Althea, a gentle smile plastered on his face as he speaks soft and gentlemanly. When he falls asleep on the couch with Mary Puppins in his arms. The images of the side he works so hard to hide, the soft domesticity he allows himself so rarely. That is what really sticks in your brain.

Along with the less than innocent images you have carved into your brain. Like that time he forgot you were home and came out from the bathroom only wrapped in a towel. The water clinging to his muscles and dripping from his hair. Or when he had his sleeves rolled up while walking around the apartment, the skin shiny from sweat, and all you could think about was what it would feel like to be held in place by them.

When you remember yourself, both you and Laura have made it back to the apartment. 

—-------

You were surprised that for once, everyone was home for dinner, and it wasn’t even a special occasion. Wade decided that it would be easiest to order some pizzas to avoid having to cook. You didn’t complain, even if you would have preferred a home cooked meal, pizza was fine. Of course he had gone to pick it up and left you with Logan, Laura, and Althea. She, reasonably so, had her spot already picked out in the armchair by the window. Logan and Laura were sitting on opposite sides of the couch, watching something on tv. All the while you sat on the floor, legs folded over each other, leaning back on your hands. 

“Why don’t you come sit on the couch?” Laura had asked, and you knew she already knew the answer, which was that you didn’t want to be so close to Logan that you would be touching. You had been cultivating a very specific environment with him, one where if you could just avoid any close contact with him, you could pretend like your heart didn't ache at the thought of him.

“I’m good here,” You didn’t bother looking away from the tv, which you weren’t even watching. 

“Come on,” Laura patted the cushion next to her. 

“Maybe I don’t want to sit next to the cat,” You looked over your shoulder at them. Logan was leaning back into the cushions behind him.

“I don’t want to sit next to you either,” His tone was only slightly malicious.

“Good.”

“Just sit on the couch,” Laura insisted. 

“No. He reeks, I think the animal dna gave him the scent too,” You waved your hand in front of your nose.

“But I don’t smell,” Laura sniffed her shirt.

“You reek too, ya know?” Logan pointed to Mary Puppins in the corner, “Probably cause you’re always sleeping next to that.” 

“Thanks. She’s actually a better roommate than you.” 

“You all stink,” Althea commented from her spot. 

As you stood up to walk towards the kitchen the door swung open. “PIZZA TIME!” Wade shouted, carrying the stack of boxes into the apartment. 

You ate mostly in silence, as Wade rambled on about something or someone that you had no interest in. Lately he was obsessed with those trashy reality tv shows were people all live in one house and things go wrong one way or another. You felt like you were already living in that, no need to watch strangers go through it too. It’s not that you felt like you were walking on eggshells, or that you weren’t welcome. More so that you were waiting for this whole thing to blow up in your face. 

—---------

It was late in the morning when you managed to roll out of your bed. Logan and Wade had already been awake and were trying their hardest to be quiet. Rather, Logan was quiet, and Wade was not. You didn’t hear what they were talking about, only that Logan mumbled something under his breath and Wade turned to see you sitting up on the floor.

“Good morning sleeping beauty! Pancakes or waffles?” He turned to you and you saw he was wearing one of those tacky ‘kiss the chef’ aprons.

You rubbed the sleep from your eyes and stood up to stretch, “Whichever you’re less likely to burn.” 

Wade feigned offense, as you walked into the bathroom to brush your teeth and hair. “How do you manage to sleep so soundly down there?” Wade called from the kitchen as you walked back into the living room.

“I don’t.” You pulled out a chair and sat at the dining table, still groggy. “Which is why I need to get a job, and my own place.” 

“You’re leaving me?” Wade gasped, and crossed his hands over his heart. “How could you? What about the kids?” He started making a big fuss about it as if you hadn’t told him before that this had been your plan. “I can’t believe you would leave me alone with honey badger and the little ones! I can’t raise them alone.”

“Everyone that lives here is an adult, Wade.”

“Let her be,” Laura said as she slid into the kitchen and sat next to you. She smiled at you and nodded. 

Wade and Logan joined you at the table, sliding the plates of pancakes to you and her. They weren’t burnt, which was progress. 

—--------

You had spent the day job hunting, and apartment hunting, which was not as important since you kinda needed the money first. The cafe you had been to with Laura was hiring, though not having much of a resume due to the whole void and lack of a world thing, probably meant your chances of getting hired were slim. You submitted an application anyway, and to a few other shops and things in the area. Hopefully something would stick.

There really weren't many options in the area for apartments either, but when you ran into the building manager they had mentioned that one of the other units on your floor might be opening up soon. It wasn’t ideal to be in the same building as Wade and the others, but it was your only lead at the moment. 

When Wade got home, he had a sort of look in his eyes, which you had learned meant something was up. And when Laura came home with the same sort of look, you were even more suspicious. 

“What are you two doing?” You asked, approaching them in the kitchen.

“Well I thought I could do something nice for you,” Wade had his hands behind his back, holding something hidden from you. “And Logan,” he whispered but you still caught it.

“What?” Logan appeared from the bathroom, and leaned against the wall.

Wade handed you a piece of paper, “Tada!” You looked over the paper, it was a reservation confirmation for a hotel. “A magical getaway for you and the kitty cat to work out your differences at an all inclusive resort!”

“This is a Best Western.” The dates on the sheet were for tomorrow, Friday, until Sunday morning. 

“Did I stutter?” Wade stood with his hands on his hips.

“Who said I wanted to do this?” Logan asked, coming up behind you to look at the paper. He was so close you could almost feel his warmth against you. 

“Come on, you complain about the air mattress all the time,” Laura started, “This is your chance for a real bed.”

“Ok? So why do I have to go with her,” He was looming behind you, and the deep vibrations of his voice made your cheeks redden.

“It was cheaper to have two guests than one.” 

“Fine,” He walked away. You were also surprised that he would so quickly agree to something like this. As it was so obviously a set up. A plot against you.

“Perfect! Now go get packing!” Wade slapped you on the shoulder, and smiled. You knew this was all his idea. 

—-------

You were expecting this to be a set up, but when you opened the door and saw only one bed you knew it to be true. Logan walks in while you hold the door and he drops down onto the edge of the bed. You sigh as you drag your bag in and make a mental note to get back at Wade later. You turn the TV on to try to dispel the oppressive silence in the room, but all that's on the hotel cable is questionably written Hallmark movies. Logan shifts on the bed, and you hear it creak under his weight. You wonder what he would feel like on top of you, if he would crush you entirely.

 You sit in the chair that's against the wall, peering out through the cracks in the curtains to stare out at the parking lot, the sun is low against the horizon, and it’s surprisingly quiet. You can hear the fabric of the cheap hotel sheets rustling under Logan, along with the sound of his breathing, as he leans back into the bed, and you wonder how long you’ll be able to survive in a small room alone with him.

Despite having slept in the same room for the past few months, this is an entirely different situation. There’s no Wade, or Laura, or Mary puppins, or Althea. It is just you and him, in a hotel room, with one bed. Which was certainly a set up from Wade, in his quests to get you to admit your feelings for Logan. 

“Are you hungry?” You try to break the silence in the most mundane way possible, at least to save yourself from the discomfort.

“I could eat,”

“We could get room service?”

“Fine by me.” You toss him the menu and once you both decide on what to get you call it in. It was going to take a while, so you decided to take advantage of the luxury of a hotel shower. Telling Logan you wouldn’t be too long and to let you know if the food came before you were done. 

The shower is nice, clean white tiles, and a rather standard sort of set up. It is nice to have some time to yourself, despite Logan being in the other room, you try to allow yourself this time to relax. Letting the hot water soak into your skin and soothe your aches and pains. The sound of the water blocking out any thoughts or concerns about the current situation, letting you forget, at least momentarily, that you would be having to sort out the sleeping arrangements. The hotel soap is tropical, but gentle, not too overwhelmingly sweet or fruity. As you lather up you can barely hear the sounds of the tv in the other room. It is so still and unremarkable. It feels normal, but somehow you wonder if you can ever shake the loneliness of time in the void, if you can allow yourself to have a normal life again. As if you can build back something you don’t even remember. As if you deserve this space that has miraculously been carved out for you, for some reason unbeknownst to you. 

Your thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a knock on the door, and the noise of Logan’s steps going to retrieve the room service. You quickly rinse and towel off, wrapping up your hair and sliding into the hotel bathrobe. 

“Food’s here,” Logan calls from behind the bathroom door. You wait until you hear him sit back down on the bed before opening the door and returning to your spot in the chair. 

The two of you eat in silence, and you can’t help but notice his eyes on you. You wonder if it is just in your head, or if he is actually trying to steal glances at you from across the way. You tried to ignore him, to stare fully at the trash tv movie, or at the weird art on the walls. Anything but him. If you could just pretend like he wasn’t there, you could make it for the next two nights. 

Although being this close to him in a small hotel room was not the ideal scenario to make forgetting about him easy. His breathing was audible. His presence was palpable. Even the vague scent of whiskey, cigars, and sweat was radiating from his position on the bed. Every little detail filled your mind with a fog, and all that was running through your brain was him. Over and over. Logan was everywhere. 

“You want to sleep soon?” His voice cut through the haze and you practically snapped your neck to look over at him.

“Hm? Oh… uh yeah probably.” You couldn’t help but look directly into his eyes, and you felt like you should disappear so that he couldn’t make you feel so foolish. So utterly trapped by the idea of him. “I can Just take the cushions from the chair and sleep on the floor,”

“That defeats the whole point of Wade’s gift.”

“So?” You started pulling the cushions of the chair and throwing them on the floor.

“You can sleep up here in the bed,” His voice was commanding. It was no longer a polite suggestion. “I don’t bite.”

“Right but-” As you go to protest, he interrupts.

“We can face opposite ways.” 

And so that is how you ended up in your pajama shorts and a ratty tee shirt, in bed with Logan. Who, true to his word, had his back facing you, and you had your back facing him. You could hear your heart beating, and no matter what you told yourself you could not get it to slow down. His presence, only inches away, was consuming you. Your mind is unable to stop racing with images of him holding you down, touching you, eating you alive. Making you squirm beneath him. You squirmed and thrashed trying to get comfortable enough to fall asleep, but even with your eyes screwed shut you couldn’t.

“Stop moving,” Logan’s voice was low and rumbly. He turned towards you, and laid his arm over your middle, pulling your back against him. “Go to sleep,” He murmured, his lips against the back of your head. 

He was warm and solid behind you, his body pressed to yours gently. His grasp on you wasn’t tight, but the sheer weight of him kept you firmly in place. As you tried to quell your heart and steady your breathing, you finally managed to drift asleep. And stay asleep, the entire night. 

—-----

The hotel was so quiet and peaceful, and clean, compared to the apartment. You managed to sleep soundly, and stay asleep until late in the morning. You had nearly forgotten about the situation, until you were met with Logan’s arm still snuggly wrapped around you as you opened your eyes.

His lips were pressed to the back of your head, his muscular frame firmly pressed against your back. His grip had tightened in the night, and he had pulled you even closer to himself. As you tried to remove yourself from him, he grumbled against you, “Stay.”

“Logan-” You tried to protest, to escape from the growing embarrassment and heat building up in your body.

“Just a bit longer.” He groaned, and pressed himself further into you. Your breath caught in your throat as you felt the growing bulge against your lower back. 

“Logan, please. Let me get up.” You pushed against his arm, and tried to pull yourself away but you were no match for him. 

“Why?” His voice was losing the grogginess of sleep, he was almost fully awake now. 

“Because-” You tried again to free yourself.

“Don’t you like me?” He sounded cocky, the question perhaps meaning to be playful but it stopped you dead in your tracks.

“I-” You stiffen, unable to react accordingly. 

“Then, stay.” Taken aback by his words and sudden clingy behavior, you realized that maybe Laura had been right, and everyone, including Logan, could see it. The way you had begun to feel about him, the almost immediate crush you developed as soon as you spotted him in the void, the way you felt thankful to have the chance at life again, simply because you wanted the chance to spend it with him.

You lay stuck in his arms for an unknown amount of time, the silence makes you a little uneasy, but his warmth and tenderness keeps you from leaping away. You didn’t imagine him to be someone so gentle, although you had glimpsed some of his more domestic behaviors when he thought it was just Him and Laura at home, and he would fuss over her like how you would want a good father to do. You felt safe and held by him, the frantic thoughts and anxieties being melted away into the warmth of him and his body against yours. 

As you nearly drift asleep again, he speaks, “Turn around.” And so you do, clumsily, but when you see his face those frantic thoughts and the racing of your heart begins again.  

“So pretty like this,” He murmurs, his face and voice soft. And before you can respond he closes the gap between you, his hand lacing in your hair and pulling you into him as he presses his lips against your gentle and steady. The brief taste of him makes you crave more.

As he pulls away to search your face for any signs of discomfort, you pull him back to you, your hands reaching up to his face to crash your lips into his. You whimper against him as his hands run down your spine and land on your hips, pulling you as close to him as he can. You can feel your arousal pooling between your thighs as he darts his tongue in to meet yours, twisting and tangling yourself with him as much as you can. The months of unspoken tension pouring out of you and dissipating as you desperately try to push yourself against him. You bring your hand down to paw at his bulge, darting your fingers across the fabric of his pajama pants. 

He smiles against you as he catches your hand with his and bring it under the waistband. You gasp when you realize he had not been wearing anything underneath his pants. Your fingers wrapping around him, the warmth and size of him in your hand making your head spin. 

His hands find their way to the edge of your shorts, pulling them and your panties down your legs as he breaks the kiss only for a moment to find his breath. His fingers trace up and down your thighs, pressing gentle circles into the skin before he pushes his hand between them, his palm pressing into you. The brief friction against your clit drawing a short moan from you. His hand rubs against you, the pressure making you grind down to meet him, craving more.

You whine as he pulls his hand away, only for him to grab your hips and pull you on top of him. His back against the bed as he brings you to straddle him. You kick your shorts and panties away, as he pulls his pants down further. His erection springing up against you. You can barely focus long enough to glimpse the size of him, too overcome with greed and arousal. 

You sink yourself onto his cock as his hands guide your hips. You moan at the stretch of it. He lets you catch your breath as you take him down to the hilt. His hands never leave you as he kisses and nips along your neck and shoulders, your head pressed against his shoulder as he begins to rock into you, whispering praises and filth against your skin. 

You grind your hips against his, the head of his cock dragging along that magic spot inside of you that causes the pleasure to build and the knot in your stomach to tighten. He growls in your ear as you tighten and pulse around him. You can feel the pressure building, making your head spin. He slips his fingers into your mouth and you greedily accept them, sucking and licking and kissing along them. He removes them and a trail of your saliva beads down them. He brings them between you to rub circles on your clit. The sensation dizzying, as he draws you closer and closer to the edge. Your moans are frantic as you practically pant against him, begging him not to stop, that you’re so close, so so close. 

With one steady thrust he snaps the last thread and you come undone around him. The feeling of you cumming around him bringing him to his limit, if he wasn’t so enraptured by you he might have been embarrassed with how quickly you’ve made him cum. His warmth fills you as you come down from your high, hazy and drooling. You smile as he presses you against him. You don’t mind staying like this, you whine when he tries to move.

“Alright, princess. I’ll stay.” He smiles, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

[22foramen]

_____________ ׂׂૢ་༘࿐

┊ ⋆ ┊ . ┊ ┊

┊ ┊⋆ ┊ . Personal

┊ ┊ ⋆˚  Astro Observations #1

✧. ┊      

⋆ ★

DISCLAIMER! This post is based mainly on my natal chart, personal experience and opinions, so take what resonates and leave what doesn't. I also included acquaintances' charts and their perspectives and confirmed my observations with the help of astrology databanks (celebrities' birth charts). If one (or more) of the observations in this post happen to be similar to other creators, please inform me, so I can tag their page. I am open to questions, opinions and debates. I do not own any of the photos on this post, they are just for ✨aesthetic reasons✨. Thank you for reading my post and I hope it will help you heal & find yourself💞.

#1

+18? TW!

Everyone can have an addiction, it is not limited only to the 12th house Lilith placement. But we can conclude that Lilith in the 12th house person is more inclined to get addicted to escapism than being dependent on the subject of addiction.

Let's say both the 12th and 8th house Lilith can deal with 🌽addiction. 8th house Lilith has a wound surrounding power and control, so they will search for a coping mechanism that will prove to themselves their own power and autonomy. For the 12th house Lilith, this is about a fear of perceiving the reality they are in (dissociation). Their wound encircles the toxic environment they live in, so they indulge in the most satisfactory and 'safest' type of escapism according to their circumstances.

#2

Lilith in the 12th house combined with noticeable 6th house placements can indicate prominent awareness towards their addictions or their ways to escape reality. That type of person who smokes but is fully aware of the consequences it has on their body. It makes sense because the 6th house is work, self-improvement and health-oriented (perhaps with health difficulties), therefore Lilith in the 12th house here can be a bit of a challenge in this lifetime, so they might be more motivated to heal. I think we can consider this dynamic not only for the 12th-6th houses but for all opposing houses.

#3

Having the Moon and Neptune in the same house might indicate an "illusion of comfort" in childhood, especially if the moon is badly aspected. It can be pinpointed to a confusing relationship with a parent; being gaslighted maybe. The house can represent in which area the confusion is/was. If this happens in the 10th house, there also might be a 'single mom' dynamic here, whether both parents were there or not.

#4

Taurus Rising with Scorpio Venus looks best when confident. Their eyes are very fierce when focused on their goal or task. Big cat energy🐅. They are like wild cats waiting for the right time to attack their prey 😩. 10/10 Certified mommy vibes. Period 💅

#5

Both the 22° Saturn and 22° Sun indicate a restricting father/paternal figure.

For the 22° Sun, the impact is 'more personal' and it affects their confidence and identity. These people's personalities might have been repressed in their childhood. In terms of how they have been repressed, we should check the Saturn placement and/or the Saturn Persona Chart.

For the 22° Saturn, the experience is more 'detached' in comparison with the Sun person. The individual might have a more grounded sense of self than the Sun person, but the Saturn Return period is going to be crucial. This can also imply a change in careers or finally healing something in regard to their career because Saturn rules Capricorn rules Medium-Coeli.

[absolutebl]

These Weeks in BL - This Is Very Late, Or Right on Time depending on where you sit on the temporal debate team

Sorry I got distracted by work. In my defense: I was paid.

Organized, in each category, with ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

March 2024 Wk 1 & 2

Ongoing Series - Thai

Cherry Magic (Sat YouTube grey) ep 12 fin - Unfortunately, there was singing. But what can we do?

A soft charming warm hug of a show about crushes and mind reading and self worth, with no-fuss execution from a consummate team and an OG lead pair proving why they remain eternal and deserve to grow up. Look, here’s the thing, Cherry Magic is a great Thai BL in its own right not comparing it to any other iteration. But even when I do compare (and I've seen all the Cherries and read the manga) it still stands. This is a great show, a solid adaptation, and a pleasing take on the original yaoi. I personally like it better than the Japanese live action, but I think that’s because I just really like Thai BL and I LOVE TayNew. I doubted them for this and I shouldn’t have. They did a great job, as did the sides. I will say all the kissing was both present and better than any other iteration. As it should be. Definitely one for the rewatch rotation. 9/10 

Deep Night (Thurs iQiyi) ep 1 of 8 (10?) - Damn it, I love it. And I don't want to. It’s more classic BL than I thought it would be, and far less Only Friends or Playboyy. (Thank fuck.) We got a big cast and a lot of tropes going down out the gate, including SMITTEN popular hot guy versus nerd with secret identity. (Incidentally, Khem did drop into rude / informal when arguing with his Aunt and defending his ma. Bratty boy.) The leads have good chemistry (First always does), and everyone is very pretty. The main boy reminds me of J-Min's role (and look) in Love Class 2. I am entertained. (And faintly wonder why this isn't a MosBank vehicle.)

To Be Continued (Thai C3 Thailand grey) eps 1-3 of 8- High school sweethearts who had a bad break up reunite a decade later when both of them have full time jobs (celebrity & doctor). Dr Ji is a familiar face (hi Dream it's been a LONG time) and everyone is way too old for high school, but I guess I prefer this to child actors?

I'm enjoying it, actually, the cast may be older but they're solid as a result and the chemistry is on point for a pulp. Whether our celebrity is on the DL or cheating or something else remains to be seen but he sure is smitten. The way he LOOKS at Ji = hawt.

Frankly? Celebrity/doctor is a good pairing and this is a solid Thai BL. I hope we have a nice angsty reason for the break-up and we're not in another Promise situation. I like the sides too. Carry on, little show, I'm disposed to be pleased with you.

City of Stars (Fri iQIYI) eps 5-6 of 12 - I am enjoying it, actually. It’s incredibly silly. But I don’t really mind. STOP SINGING. 

1000 Years Old eps 3-4 of 12 - I love that these kids basically adopted a vampire pet. And one of them accidentally got a vampire boyfriend. This suddenly turned from a PNR into a family drama about domestic gays opening a food stall and I'm not mad about it. Nothing makes sense and I don't care because... rainbow umbrella!

A Secretly Love (Thai WeTV grey) eps 1 of 10 - I don’t love it. I make no bones about the fact that a pining uke rarely works for me, especially if he’s younger (cute supportive besties not withstanding), the power dynamic isn’t good. I always like Kimmon, he’s a stiff actor but v pretty. (I shallow af.) Still it’s time he started acting his age… literally. Having to watch ads again as well… for this? Ooof. I'm not sure I'm strong enough.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Perfect Propose (Japan Fri Gaga) ep 6 fin - It was very cute. I liked that there was uke instigated kisses. However I have some reservations on this one, much as I enjoyed it.

Adapted from Mayo Tsurakame’s manga, production team included Tadaaki Horai (My Love Mix-Up!) and Takeshi Miyamoto (Old Fashion Cupcake). Essentially Perfect Propose was about finding hope in a person when all other hope is gone. This show focuses on apathy, and perforce is somewhat apathetic and un-engaging especially as the pacing was off (and with only 6 episodes? now) However, this is countered by great visuals, good archetypes, and a clean story of childhood sweethearts reuniting after loosing their way in life. I landed on 8/10 mostly for a demanding younger seme and some great kisses. 

Unknown (Taiwan Tues Youku YouTube) eps 2-3 of 11 - Oh it’s great. I love it. I’m still worried by how gritty and "Taiwanese short-esk" it feels, but wow does this hit all my favorite taboo tropes and buttons. I also adore the little found fam, they the cutest gay older bros ever. The younger one who wants so bad to grow up and take care of the older one and pushes himself because into self sacrifice that’s the only model of love he has. ARGH. BOYS. Why so much pain, just smooch already! Sheesh. It's on YouTube for some of us, here's the schedule.

AntiReset (Taiwan Fri Viki/Gaga) eps 6-7 of 10 - They remain questionably cute, and that is probably going to be my ultimate review of this show. Awe cameo! (Hi babies, hope the ghosts are leaving you alone.) The irony does not escape me that the person in the relationship with the most emotional acumen is, in fact, the robot and not the human. I'm sure that's meant to be deep.

Love is Better the Second Time Around AKA Koi wo Suru nara Nidome ga Joto (Japan Gaga) ep 1 of 6 - A tortured second chance romance featuring a reported and a successful celebrity(?) academic. The kid actors look nothing like their adult counterparts, but they do look much younger. So, okay. Ah the utter embarrassment of first love. Oh I like it a lot, so very messy Japanese emo. Sigh. Here we go again.

Although I Love You and You AKA Sukiyanen Kedo Do Yaro ka (Japan Thurs Gaga) eps 8-9 of 10 - They are a cute couple. They both trying so hard and so confused and awkward and polite in trying to understand each other but TERRIBLE at communication. 

My Strawberry Film (Japan Thurs Gaga) eps 3-4 of 8 - I don’t know how I feel about this. But I do know it’s not my thing because it’s not BL. I’ll finish it because it’s short but… meh. 

It's done, ready to binge, but I have no time

What Did You Eat Yesterday Season 2 AKA Kinou Nani Tabeta? Season 2 (Japan Gaga) 10 eps - will binge when I have any spare time. 2024 is crazy busy for me so far.

The Servant and the Young Master (Vietnam YouTube) - I will try when I have a window of time.

Began Beginning (Myanmar YouTube) - A Burmese BL? @heretherebedork vouched for it, so I will watch eventually.

It's airing but...

Dead Friend Forever (Thai iQIYI) - finished it's run and I won't be watching it. It's horror with BL elements and the ending, well, let's just say that's a "no thank you" from me.

Ossans Love Season 2 (Japan Gaga) - 5 years later, will anything have changed? This is Japan so… no. I'm not watching this. I dislike this franchise.

Time the series (Tue Gaga/YT) 10 eps - dropped it at ep 4.

Takumi-kun (2023) movie version AKA Takumi-kun Series 6: Nagai Nagai Monogatari no Hajimari no Asa released on FOD 3/5/2024. The original project was a 6 ep series. Having seen all the previous iterations and read the (terrible) yaoi I admit to being intrigued. If anyone finds eng subbed please let me know with a link in comments or in a DM? For those intersted in this show, probably the world's first true BL franchise I chat all about it here.

Gossip

James Supamongkon has withdrawn from the series Love Upon A Time and the NetJames pair is no more. Net Siraphop will continue with the historical BL project alongside a new partner. Can I interest you in Tod Techit... almost as pretty, legs for days...

The Complete Chronology of the Assault Case Against GMMTV Actor Win Pawin

I'm merely directing your attention to these articles, I do not wish for discussion of this content on this blog. Please don't ask for further info, I don't know the answer, follow the link that's why it's there.

Next Week Looks Like This:

Still Coming

3/21 Two Worlds (Thai IQIYI) 10 eps - announced here. One of those "he's dead Jim so time travel" thingames staring MaxNat. I'm over them but Asia flipping loves this trope and I do adore MaxNat. Phupha (Gun) and Khram (Nat) love each other but Phupha is murdered. Then Khram is pulled to a parallel world where, 12 years ago, Khram and Tai (Max) were in love. However, Khram was killed by Thai’s dad. Now Tai finds alter-Khram apparently alive. But then there is ALSO an alter-Phupha (played by Gun Thanawat who is Khom the repressed butler bodyguard from Unforgotten Night).

Upcoming BLs for 2024 are listed here. This list is not kept updated, so please leave a comment if you know something new or RP with additions.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

How flipping adorable is this vampire with his big gay umbrella? SUCH A DORK and we got more vampire dorks coming.

Thailand has found its vampire line and it's awkward and geeky and quite cheerful. 'Bout what we expected, to be fair. It's a good look for them.

And vampires.

In other news...

That's your random moment of thirst, Lim Jimin shirtless AKA my Just B bias (I mean, I could talk about how good his extensions are and how I love a husky voice in Kpop but really, just LOOK at him). I'm very very very shallow, remember? Full vid is here.

Why am I mentioning Lim Jimin (aside from the obvious)? If Just B doesn't break soon, I could some of them transitioning to BL. Jimin in particular would be a win for us, obvs.

Also, can we talk about Bain (my bias wrecker) KILLING it on Build Up? I had no idea he was that good. Anygay, this has been your Kpop end note.

Seriously tho, is ANYONE else watching Build-Up?

(Last week - well, 2 weeks ago)

Streaming services are listed how I'm (usually watching) which is with a USA based IP

The tag bragade: @doorajar

If ya wanna be tagged each week leave a comment and I will. Easy peesy.

[kayas-kosmos]

Because of what's happening on Twitter...

I've made a little diagram to demonstrate why billionaires and the ultra-wealthy are bad for society.

(Text in Image)

"If we view society as a body, every sector is like a different organ within the body that serves a function and works in harmony with other organs to maintain balance. Every part of the body is important for the whole thing to function."

"The ultra-wealthy want you to believe they are the beating heart and thinking mind of the society – they are the innovators who create our jobs and their brilliance drives society forward. They deserve to be at the top of society because they have earned that. Without them, the body won’t function because they are the most important part."

"In reality, they are more like a malignant tumour, sucking all of the blood (resources) away from everything else (people and the planet) to fuel its own infinite growth, depriving the rest of the body and slowly killing it. Workers create all of the innovation and keep things running, the ultra-wealthy take all the credit."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a public domain image so feel free to pinch it for whatever.

Elon Musk has put the careers of thousands of small business owners who depend on Twitter (myself included) in jeopardy by completely running it into the ground. Before this, Mark Zuckerberg had already been doing the same when he started pursuing Metaverse, making Instagram and Facebook much more unusable for artists. Do I really need to go into other examples of CEOs and very normalised practise of wage theft?

Meanwhile, the UK currently has the richest Prime Minister in its history. What is this man doing with this wealth? Continuing the Tory legacy of austerity in order to line his pockets and the pockets of his crony friends. This has resulted in a devastating cost of living crisis that continues to ravage the country as people's energy bills skyrocket out of control.

My diagram is pretty basic and lacks nuance, there's definitely more I could elaborate on with this comparison but I really don't have time. I just want people to get the basic point of how billionaires view themselves vs what function they actually serve. I'm also not here to debate whether some organs are more important than others since I'm not a doctor, that's not really the point here. And no, I don't care if people think I'm being harsh by comparing billionaires to a tumour. If they don't want to be compared to one they should stop acting like one. Jeff Bezos could end world hunger right now and chooses not to.

Also, I know a lot of people are going to come at me with the argument that billionaires give away massive amounts of money. First off, people like Jeff Bezos only give large sums of money to charity a.) for the sake of improving their public image and b.) because giving to charity allows them to write it off in their taxes. Also, charities in of themselves have a lot of problems, but that's a blog post for another day. Mutual Aid is a better way to help people directly. Really, the ultra wealthy need to be taxed, of course they do everything within their power to avoid taxes.

Also:

"Earning a lot of money" and "holding onto a lot of money" are two different things. You cannot be a multi-millionaire unless you hold onto that money. If you give away massive chunks of it to enrich society, you cease to be a billionaire.

Oh and this is worth a watch, too.

Furthermore:

Also before the inevitable great man comments:

Being a billionaire is a moral failing. Nobody needs that much money.

[Slight edit here - I made the assertion that a billionaire could not spend all of their money in their lifetime, but as someone in the comments pointed out it's very easy for them to completely waste billions in no time. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have shown that].

Anyway, if you would like to see more anti-Capitalist art from me, I am currently working on a webcomic called "Flowerpunk" - a story about a group of anarchists who are trying to save the city of Wyrdon from a supernatural plague known as "the rot." The comic heavily discusses disaster Capitalism and how the rich will use mass death and destruction as an opportunity to further line their pockets.

I also like to do little anti-Capitalist doodles relating to this project, which I plan to make into posters at some point.

Please consider donating a Ko-Fi also if you would like to help support this project. I am really struggling at the moment because I've basically lost a massive chunk of my client base due to this Twitter implosion and also because of the AI BS that has made it impossible for me to get any reach nowadays. The last year or so has been an absolute nightmare for my career because of all of this.

Thank you all for your continued support! Hopefully I can re-establish my audience here on Tumblr and wherever else I decide to go.

[tadpoles-and-daydreams]

A witchcraft basics doc; update, resource call, interest check, and a possible second doc

Bet most of you didn't even know I was working on this >:D

Yes this is a huge post. It's a lot of things.

So, one of my first posts ever on this blog was me mentioning that a friend of mine had NO clue what they were signing up for when asking for the basics of witchcraft. The google doc I wrote took on a life of its own, and the post did as well when people started asking for it. I still plan to tag said people when I post it, assuming they haven't deactivated. The thing is, this doc had become a proper project, and it took a long time for me to have the motivation to work on it again. Now, though, it seems to me like a damn good way to reconnect to my craft after a rut! (which, by the way, is why I've been offline.)

So, my first post back is for a couple of reasons. For one, if you have any resources you'd think would be useful for beginner witches, feel free to shoot me an ask, DM, or comment/reblog on this post! I'll have a list of things I'm putting in the doc (taking recommendations there as well) at the bottom of this post.

The other thing is that I might end up making a second doc, one that's a little less "101" in vibe. It would have a MAJOR MAJOR UPG warning on it, first off, and I'm not sure whether or not I would be marking any UPG either since this would essentially be a second Grimoire/Book of Shadows for me that would be public to others for the sake of sharing information! I can't say I'd call it "advanced witchcraft" by any means, I'm not very fancy lol, but I don't want the basics doc to get too overwhelming. I do, however, want to scream about random witchcraft topics that interest me. So this is also a bit of an interest check for that, as well as the basics doc.

FINAL NOTE: I fully plan on posting this basics doc before it's done. Some sections will be unwritten or unfinished, because if I wait until I find it "finished" I'll never post it. It's going to be added onto whenever I can, but I feel as though getting it out is the best course of action.

A list of stuff in the doc that I'd take resources on (AKA everything planned in it) with * by anything that will be left unwritten/unfinished on purpose until I know more. I will take resources and recommendations on EVERYTHING though. This is in no particular order:

grounding and centering

VOCAB (intention, intuition, UPG/SPG/VPG, appropriation. probably others I'm forgetting.

candle, plant, crystals and safety* (as well as any other tools one might need safety tips for. This is left completely unwritten as I use very few tools of this type.)

deity work* (the whole debate surrounding when to start, as well as information about it. Will include smth about house rules/boundaries. My work is very casual, I'd love to see different POV's of this! This is by nature left unfinished because deity work is so unique to the witch.)

grimoire/book of shadows

tools of the craft* (common tools and how to use them consumerism in witchcraft, etc.)

cleansing

appropriation* (I don't know near enough about this, I just check what's in my own practice. I would like this to include a list of commonly appropriated closed practices, a definition of appropriation and why it shouldn't be done, open pantheons, and common open practices.)

spellwork*

meditation

where someone could go from here* (including sigils, tarot, crystals bc my friend likes rocks lol, maybe astrology but oh god I have nothing about that it makes my brain hurt just looking at an astrology chart /pos. I will probably make a list of stuff that I could add in this section.)

casual/daily/quick/low energy practices and witchcraft

paganism and witchcraft; overlap, what they are individually, why one might be for you rather than the other, etc.*

there'd be a credit section for anyone who wants to be credited for links/resources at the end! If you send me resources plz specify if you want to be included in that or not.

Things I might include in the second doc if I make it:

the craft and mental health and my experiences with it

things commonly touched on in the community (your deities don't hate you, cycles of inactivity and burnout, other things I'm forgetting rn)

deity-specific things, more specific topics of the craft, etc. yet another reminder that this would all include UPG, possibly unmarked, because it would basically be primarily used to give me motivation to research more.

[devisopod]

Book of Bill Ramblings

If you don't want spoilers, I'd suggest you stop reading before the cut. This'll contain quotes from the book! I've avoided content and conversation about this thing like the plague, so I'm going in blind. This is gonna be a wall of text if you're on mobile. Have fun, if you're into that.

I'm gonna solve the ciphers by myself, so they won't be included here, it's more fun that way! This is all just my "analysis" or whatever you wanna call it.

|| PREFACE

I am an adult. I'm not here to argue or debate with anyone about the content of this book! I'm simply sharing my personal breakdown, so these opinions and statements are in no way meant to be taken as "the right way" to look at it. They're how I alone choose to view the text! I'm open to discuss it, if you want, like sane and civilized people. Heated arguments or grumblings fueled by the discontent that someone doesn't buy into the way YOU'RE perceiving a work of fiction is unwelcome.

Now.

Before I even had the book in my hand, I knew how I wanted to approach this. I had to keep in mind this is all meant to be written by the worst character in the series (from a narrative standpoint), and he isn't supposed to be pitied. So seriously obvious, I know, but it's THE most important factor to circle back to given ANY tidbit of information.

Since this is his point-of-view, which is such a skewed perspective to begin with, it's ultimately bound to be manic (and god was it). He's everything we already know him to be: out of his mind, a compulsive liar, a pro at manipulation, and literally so self-important. That's what makes it difficult to trust whether or not things that happened (or didn't happen) will be altered by his unstable state of mind.

I think I'd even go as far as to say that he's delusional in a lot of ways. No matter how smart he thinks he is, or objectively is, he's a highly flawed individual that is constantly sabotaging himself. And what's more, he doesn't CARE. Bill, while driven in his own right, is highly apathetic unless events or actions directly impact him significantly and negatively.

INITIAL AND UNCATEGORIZED THOUGHTS:

- Holy shit, it's like Bill prides himself on being some sort of "all-knowing" being, but he's really just a fat gossip.

- Bill says it and stresses it multiple times in this book that not only is reality not under your control, but you don't understand it. Only he understands it, and you're just too dumb. Nothing is real. But the universe is a hologram, and everything is also a multiverse. Dennis and Kyle hold our existence in a binder.

- As suggested, he is quite literally feeding you lies, and he's having fun doing it.

- So, Bill's kind of dead, but not really. He's existing in a "half life" state. "Descending through circles, battling demons, reliving [his] whole life... somewhere far away... where the music is always out of tune. Where everyone smiles but no one is happy". Sounds like a mall lmao.

Okay, we'll get into it. My back hurts.

1 || "SIXER, IT WOULD EAT YOU ALIVE."

Let me just start this by saying that Bill sees Ford as a possession. He spent a lot of time grooming him, so he feels HEAVILY entitled to Ford in an "I made you" sort of way. Which is just about as messed up as you'd expect it to be! Bill EXPECTS Ford to be okay with this and even functions under the assumption that Ford wants to belong to him, which is very likely a stem from how open to the relationship Ford was at the beginning. He's constant in sharing that he's grateful for Bill's influence and that it's made his life so much better.

That aside, Bill is repeatedly suggesting to the reader that people that hate him actually love him a lot. And it's so likely that some twisted line of love and being used was blurred between these two. I've said it before and I'll say it again: sharing a mind and a body with a seemingly god-like being is going to fuck you and your perspective UP, I don't care who you are.

After all, "the more people love you, the more brainwashed sheep you can bend to your whims! So CONQUERING HEARTS is one of the most important things you can do!"

While, Ford is an immensely strong-willed individual, he's so very weak to Bill's manipulation because Bill knows EXACTLY what he wants to hear. He's been learning and planning for this kind of thing for a very, very long time and using countless others to do so. So, his false loyalty and promises, though really suspicious to anyone else, appeal to Ford's ego and subconcious because they're specifically catered to him.

And this is where Bill thrives. He is extremely efficient at finding the selfishness within others and exploiting it because he is selfish. He doesn't care what happens as long as he reaches his goal. Any pain along the way isn't gonna be his, so why not just relax and enjoy it? And he's found his match: a "brilliant, morally ambiguous, and romantically challenged" individual. To him, Ford fits the bill (no pun intended), and no dumb Shaman is gonna scare him off this one. It's all a trick to keep him away from advancing his portal plans, right?

He emphasizes his excitement at the prospect of Ford's potential as a pawn by saying, "This is what a partner looks like. The ego of a king. The insecurity of a circus freak. And totally isolated from anyone who might steer him clear of my plans."

He's impressionable and gullible enough to follow him blindly in the name of discovery and arguably as a result of his alienation in the odd town that is Gravity Falls.

And that's where I think Bill's influence should be addressed. Bill's been whispering in Ford's ear, making his life easier, and "fixing" his problems by offering solutions that HE would use. That's the scary part, I think. Bill uses so many different types of flattery, even gives Ford a lot of confidence that he needs, which really feeds into Ford's trust.

2 || GUYS WITH BIG BRAINS GET ON MY NERVES

After seeing Stan on TV, selling the "Grifter", Ford starts to seem like he's having second thoughts about maybe calling Stan up. Bill is, naturally, quick to shoot this down by convincing him it's a waste of time.

With both Stan and Fiddleford, we see Bill kind of steering Ford away. It's clear Ford wants to be around both of them, but as Bill has already suggested, he wants to keep this one isolated. Ford's attention should ONLY be on him and the work that needs to be done. He's not gonna make the same mistakes he made with his previous puppets.

It's unclear whether Bill complicates things on purpose or not, but he certainly isn't interested in making them better.

As far as the relationship between Ford and Fiddleford is concerned (whether you view it as brotherly, romantic, or platonic), I think it had a lot of potential to bring Ford away from Bill, but Ford is just not equipped to be a solid and reliable partner at this stage of his life. He's too focused, too full of himself, and really desperate to fill the hole Stan left. Or maybe not desperate enough.

I've made this point before and I'll make it again: the vast majority, if not all of, the heavy lifting in the dynamic between Ford and Fiddleford IS DONE BY FIDDLEFORD. He is a very caring and loyal person, very much to a fault in this situation.

The Christmas gifts he makes Ford are very personal. Ford means a lot to Fiddleford, so much so that he doesn't see his family often and chooses to help with the research. Whether or not Fiddleford and Emma-May were already having issues can't be judged based on the information given, but it's possible that it plays a part in his absence. It seems like the most likely possibility to me, though. Fiddleford doesn't seem the type to just forget about something like that, especially exhibiting such a friendly and kind demeanor, so I'm willing to bet they were already having problems.

Ford, as I see it, very rarely goes out of his way to do things for Fiddleford, though. However, I will give him props for being good enough to cheer Fiddleford up after he returns from his family.

What I will say, is that Ford relies on Fiddleford a great deal, and I'm not entirely sure how healthy that is. Fiddleford is Ford's ONLY real friend, and definitely the only one not feeding him questionable advice.

Therapy.

3 || CUCKOO CLOCK

Therapy, right? Yeah.

Anyway, Bill REALLY gets after Ford when the whole portal thing goes south. And that's sure to be a hell of a time. Ford is put through immense pain physically and mentally during it all, and wow does it actually sound horrifying. Even during this aggressive and desperate scramble to get Ford to do his bidding, Bill is beating Ford down and trying his best to use his hardships against him while also trying to convince Ford that he needs Bill. He's got nobody else.

He tries everything: sabotage, threats, you name it. Even though Ford doesn't realize his wrongs entirely here, he still knows he has to do something to rectify all that he's done. And boy, does he wanna kill that triangle.

He even loses his mind just a little bit more about this time, grasping at straws and realizing how bad he fucked up.

But now, we skip ahead. Things are better. All that's passed.

The ending of this book was about as satisfying as I imagined it would be. The Pines family. Simple and clean. A thoughtful message from Ford, and some inserts from Mabel, Dipper, and Stan. Stan's message is probably my favorite, and rightfully so.

These four are what it's all about to me. Each sibling has the other, and they're all happy. Bill can't touch them anymore, no matter how much this book of his tries. They're smarter than he is, and it's because they don't intend to be divided by him ever again.

[creacherkeeper]

happy pride everyone

for some reason i was sitting outside this morning and enjoying some shockingly not boiling hot weather and reflecting on a post i had made like ... 12 years ago on here that "blew up" (like 60k notes on early days tumblr) and thinking like. wow i sure do know a lot more about myself now that makes all that make sense but

the post was someone saying like. hey how can you call yourself an atheist and support gay people because gay people go against the concept of evolution. and my reply was like. actually there are gay members of like every social species weve studied it in and i had a bunch of facts laid out about all the different very gay animals of this world (like giraffes having very largely m/m sex)

but now, like 12 years later, i am thinking about human evolution and queer identity and thought it would be fun to talk about. i am by far not an expert and so if there are experts who want to correct me or talk more in depth about this Please jump in but

... why did humans evolve to be queer anyway?

very short answer: because its helpful to raising kids

longer answer: though its debated whether humans are a prosocial or eusocial species, it is agreed upon that early humans cooperatively raised young, including those that they did not personally sire or give birth to, and that we lived in multi-generation communities where younger members would help raise older members offspring, and vice versa

(note: im using the terms amab and afab for human populations potentially pre concepts of gender but work with me here, i dont want to keep repeating genitalia or genomes when those arent always a helpful 1 to 1 either. sex is a spectrum gender is made up etc support intersex rights)

we know that due to fraternal birth order effect (npr link), youre 33% more likely to be gay with each older amab sibling that you have (not 33% total, but 33% more, so like 2% to 2.6 to 3.5 etc). this is true of both amab and afab people with older amab siblings. we also know that a birthing parent having more of a specific antibody makes their children more likely to be gay (and that antibody is not exclusive to but is highly tied to giving birth to amab children)

in addition, evolutionarily speaking, its just as advantageous for your siblings children to do well than it is for yours to. its incredibly rare you would happen to have a very helpful mutation that your siblings dont have. which means that your siblings kids would be about 25% amab grandparent, 25% afab grandparent, and 50% a parent who is unrelated to you. this is exactly the same for your own children

okay, so what does that mean?

to put it simply, it means that having older siblings, specifically older siblings who are more easily able to sire more children, makes you more likely to end up in a same-sex couple, which means you are two adults with no children who are now around to help raise children you are equally invested in the success of than if they were your own

the more older youth or adults you have around to help who are not also using up a bunch of resources by being pregnant and having non-helping-age children, the better off that community's children will be. more people to hunt and gather and create resources like tools, which means everyone prospers, especially the kids

or, to frame it from the opposite view: having gay siblings means your children are more likely to survive and thrive

(kind of funny how conservatives are like gay people shouldnt be around children when the entire point of our evolutionary development was that we were great to have around if you had kids but like. alas)

so, thats the very basic core of it. but you can apply this concept to a lot of queer identities. aroace? working adult around to help who is not bringing in an unrelated partner or having kids. trans? you now either have an m/f couple who can fill two different social niches without having kids, or you have a gay couple who is able to do more varied physical tasks whether or not they do have kids. bi people may have kids or may not, or their children may be more spread out if they have partners of different sexes over time

not to mention you kind of have some built in, ready to go parents in the case that another community member dies, and there are now orphans that need raising. its a lot harder for someone whos already a parent to take on more children, as opposed to an adult couple who doesnt have any

so yeah :) were queer because we were helpful to have in communities and allowed everyone, but especially youth, to prosper and thrive

tl;dr: queer people were an evolutionary advantage to have in an early community because we were helping-age members who were able to cooperatively raise young and take on orphans without using up resources on birthing and raising our own young

yay science :o) happy pride everyone!!!

[zcinderone]

An ironically conspicuous yet never exploited(except by me as far as I can see) dot that connects everything which could be the ultimate layer of secret to unravel the true identity of Arei's murderer...

It's Levi and this is where the final piece of puzzle comes to make sense of itself: the Monotv recruiting Teruko do CAULKING scene!!!

This is such a detailed and prominant plot that so far made 0 sense as to its connection to the case. Monotv must have enlisted a helper to clean up the mess left in the gym. Since he can't even do caulking, it is 100% valid for the narrative that there are something in this mess he can't handle. This helper would have abundance of time to figure out the mechanism and took the tape. (whereas both Ace and Eden only had cursory glances at the scene also in a rather shocking and intense scenario to figure out how Nico's mystrious setup worked)

(Monotv specifically mentioning he needs help to do certain chores)

Apart from the 4 involved in Ace's case, the only one awake/available late at night was Levi(and we never know for what purpose the story writer specifically left only him awake and readily came out to check the commotion either). This connects everything.

Think about it rationally. It makes absolutely no sense for those involved in the previous case to make an imitation of their own. On paper, only 4 people knew what happened, and Nico ran off leaving the only necessary tool(tape) to replicate this. Should any of the 3 try to imitate a crime only they knew and able to replicate, they are basically yelling they're the only targets from the get-go (and isn't this what's happening right now?)which is beyond absurd. However, if a third party does exist, it changes everything, they would have everything to gain from pulling an imitation since the premise would exclude their possibility permanently.

Based on the aforementioned points, I will make a tentative prediction about one event we are likely gonna see in ep 15（or 16 depending on pacing）: A scrum debate will happen soon, concerning whether or not Ace&Eden really is the only option scope for imitation crime, for they will most certainly discuss the very reason why they imitate and promptly realized the absurdity thereof. The narrative would seem really off if they don't dabble on why, accepting imitation for the sake of imitation. Some will take the stance that such attempt would be illogical for a rational conspirator in the first place, others will insist on the lack of direct evidence of a third party.

(I just realized the dev could've intentionally let Ace kick the tape out of sight because they have much greater incentive to do so but it's very close to premiere so I won't elaborate since either way my theory itself is the same)I am basing this theory on the assumption that the tape went missing under the dialogue box cg is dev's mistake, because the tape on the ground scene always includes Ace on the ground and the moment he stood it changed which feels too abrupt and dev might just forgot to add that, and there is not a single scene that showed the tape missing without such blockade.

More importantly, there were some clues to back my assumption in the "i'm not fxxing dead!" scene. The tape is placed rather near in front of Ace, a little to our right. Yet, when he stood up he knocked Eden out to our left. It would seem shaky if we take this alone by face value as it could just be a dramatic effect, but what happened afterward is the camera itself clearly turned left to film Eden gradually standing, and turned right to focus on Ace and then turned further right to focus on Teruko, which clearly suggested the actual positioning is: Eden Ace (tape?) Teruko (tape ?) . Problem is, the tape still exitsted right before, and went missing right after Ace stood up under the Teruko "yeah i figured" dialogue box, few secs before Eden stood up, therefore her positioning would exclude her possibility of getting it. And Ace couldn't get it either since four eyes were, and the camera was mostly on him, even depicting him reaching his wound with two hands.

I think If the dev did had such meticulous intent for this hidden scene to be the key to locking the culprit, they would most likely be equally meticulous about either the tape's positioning or Ace's act to make unequivocal sense that one of them would have a clear window to obtain it, which in turn suggests they probably never had such intention to begin with.

Also, we got to consider factoring in complementary details like the starched clothes ball(Levi was the only one who mentioned being in the laundry room some time at night in ep10),Eden mentioning "someone's been following her" (I'm 100% sure this is what the dev planted to make sense of why a 3rd party could overhear Eden&Arturo&Arei event), Arei's missing glove(both Eden and Ace wears glove, Levi doesn't), enough strength to throw the rope near the ceiling(they emphasized early in one scene how high the ceiling is and eden is the smallest girl) Whit trying to make an argument about another motive Levi could have for killing Arei yet got cut off, and trying to redirect the crew's attention back to Levi's secret itself for some reason and got cut off again in ep13 11:22 12:44 (this i think is super super important and it seems only I was mentioning this). These solid details are all adding to the likelihood of Levi, and I really can't find as many other details to back Eden or Ace.

I also had a secondary theory back when ep13 dropped might worth mentioning: could the fish simply be symbolic? Sleep with the fish(godfather thingy)? Levi's background story suggests he is very likely involved in mafia conficts. J even asked him if he was "in" the mafia to which he prompt answered No. But very interestingly the dev specifically gives him a pondering "..." scene immediately after his respond to show he seemed to be thinking about the definition of his involement, then J pushed him to elaborate and he digressed.(starting from ep13 1:28) And Levi did have Italian surname.

I don't have that much confidence in this intepretation alone to begin with as I thought it is a bit old school. But since my major theory makes sense, this one doesn't seem so far-fetched anymore.

[lovelyyandereaddictionpoint]

How would the twisted boys of your choosing react to a weapon mc whose dad is stein from soul eater? Talk about a ruff family reunion.

Stein’s Weapon Reader | Yandere Twisted Wonderland

Not only is being a weapon making you different enough but your dad somehow sciencing his way to Twisted Wonderland makes this even worse. Your relationship before disappearing from the world you two hailed wasn’t necessarily bad but having a father who too often stuttered on the line of madness made things tense. Madness aside he unmeaningly shadows your accomplishments whether by his own expertise or his constructive criticism instead of mild praise. If only to make things worse he’s unexpectedly overprotective of you when he accurately dictates when you are in over your head. 

When he arrives he no doubt comes out swinging with his soul wavelengths leaving immediate staff and students paralyzed. Leaving you to push past your friends as you transform to go stop his mad-induced frenzy. 

“Dad, chill out!”

“Widget!? Are you okay?”

“I will be when you stop trying to kill my friends!” 

He’s less than fond to know you’re in a world with magic but his own desire to dissect it and learn about it will ease him…for now. He’s irritable as he observes the obsessive exceeding interest the boys at Night Raven have in you. Angrily twisting his screw as he debates how badly to mess up their soul wavelengths.

“I’m not fond of you hanging around my kid…but I’m curious how you plan to go against that.”

Leona Kingscholar

“You’re right. It doesn’t matter really. I’ll make them mine anyway.”

He’s working overtime 

Attempting to bother your father while also avoiding his attempts to dissect him

Not only as a lion beast man 

but as a lazy pursuer that doesn’t seem capable of even beating you as a weapon

Stein is bothered by him

He claims that’s the only reason he doesn’t like them 

But with him, it's hard to say

They both tend to underestimate one another 

Where Stein doesn’t fully register the height of his obsession

And Leona trying to threaten him without getting experimented on

It's messy 

And it will continue to be as Leona spies the underlying attempt to send you both home

“I’m not letting them leave but if you do we won’t have a problem.”

Idia Shroud

“Heheh from one genius to another I’m not letting them go so easily.”

Both take each other on in a fueled mad-scientist feud

Its the best and worse time for them

With them spending plenty of their smarts dissecting and studying one another

It acts as a distraction until Idia runs off to your side

Who is following up on some experiments you agreed to 

Which include gaming for hours, binge-watching anime, and maybe kissing

Which has Stein working to create little gadgets to sabotage or at least surveil his experiments

Stein gets more invested in thwarting him because he understands his interest in you better

But Idia’s not giving up 

Not in this game 

You were his prize and Stein, while fun, was just a minor antagonist in his romance with you

“This is great! I’ll get the love interest and defeat the villain! This would make a wild otome!”

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Wait what was that that Beforus Eridan being Kankri’s culler? What? How? Does that mean that candy red includes aquatic mutations?

Okay, so, this is PURE speculative headcanon and I debated over whether or not I should even say it, but it's pretty fucking hilarious so I figured I'd mention it with the heavy caveat that I made it all up & not to take it seriously, it's just a headcanon I believe because it's a really funny idea to me, and i do not at all consider this "canon" the way some of my other theories are. i hope you also find it funny

So the big difference between Feferi and Meenah's troll society is what "culling" entails; where on Alternia, culling means killing off the weak, orphaned, disabled, and/or lower classes, on Beforus, it means taking care of them. So the characters on Alternia that would've been slated for culling would, on Beforus, actually have lived very cushy lives where a highblood provides for them. It's still another way of enforcing the class divide, so it's still shitty, but I guess it's better than people being killed all the time.

Karkat is one of the most cullable trolls on Alternia for being a mutant not on the hemospectrum, and the only reason he has a symbol and lusus at all is because the Signless's followers prepared them for him. This is why Kankri doesn't seem to have a symbol or lusus, because a situation similar to the Signless never happened on Beforus, and instead, Kankri (and presumably Karkat as well) would've been culled, AKA taken care of by a highblood.

Another part of Kankri's characterization is that he fucking loves sea dwellers - he's actually pretty polite to Meenah, even trying to ingratiate himself to her via nautical references, and desperately, desperately wants to be pale with Cronus. This leads me to infer that Kankri was specifically culled by a sea dweller, and the law of conservation of detail (not a real thing, it's a trope name) leads me to further infer that Kankri was culled by one of our KNOWN sea dwellers, either Feferi or Eridan. And since Feferi was busy managing Meenah, it seems like the task would've fallen onto Eridan.

Now, I have a whole set of headcanons for what Beforus!Eridan was like, but as I tend not to speculate too much on AUs divested too far from canon, I'm only going to note the pertinent details:

Beforus!Eridan was very well-regarded by the population and had the same kind of standing as a major celebrity,

Many hundreds of sweeps ago, Karlkat Marx Karkat Vantas used to be Eridan's freeloader. Their relationship was extremely difficult to classify, and nobody really understood it (many assumed Eridan was culling him, but Eridan vehemently denied this, insisting Karkat just lived on his sofa rent-free and all expenses paid, like this was a normal thing for them to be doing),

Karkat was generally an absolute disaster in the romance department, having a long string of relationships up and down the hemocaste with his trademark Blurry Quadrant Bullshit, always sadly slinking back to Eridan's sofa at the end of his wild, vascillatory flings,

Karkat would write a massive scathing critique of Beforan society, its consumer capitalism, its casteism and classism, its power structure, etc. etc., which Eridan distributed posthumously, because unfortunately Karkat had the lifespan of a lime & passed away long before Eridan was even at the halfway point of his own lifespan,

Eridan was never the same, and while his public persona remained widely beloved, he became an interpersonal disaster in his private life, and Feferi handed him Kankri as a wiggler to cull in the hopes that it would get him out of his funk,

This Did Not Work At All and in fact fucked up a perfectly good wiggler

I mean, honestly, I don't think there exists such a thing as a "bad class," but I do think Princes should not be raising kids.

So Eridan, who, even in the best case scenario, has disastrous social skills and a fucked up sponge, had literally 0 idea what to do with this kid, and pretty much just threw money at it. It was pretty inevitable for Kankri to remind Eridan of Karkat, so most of what few conversations they'd actually have revolved around Karkat, especially Karkat's extremely fucked up romantic affairs, the recounting of which slowly shrivelled the Seer of Blood up like a raisin and made him decide that romance was really, truly not worth it.

At the same time, Kankri craved an emotional bond with his fucked-up adoptive dad, and the spark would sometimes come into Eridan's eyes whenever Kankri started talking about hemocaste equality. The guy who used to live on his couch would say things like that...

But this would also mean that Eridan was alive at the same time as his descendent, Cronus, so I'm pleased to inform you all that he managed to neglect TWO children, both his biokid and his adopted one. Hooray! As Eridan was universally beloved, Cronus always had a lot to live up to, and very little opportunity to be his own person, divorced of his status as a sea dweller or his ancestor's shadow. Hooray!

But the way it comes full circle is this: Canon!Eridan actually outright admits that his typing quirk is fake, calling it "weird" and dropping it when he's trying to be emotionally sincere. Thus, to me, it stands to reason that it's something he would stop using after he has his character development, and he stops caring about how a "sea dweller" is "supposed to" act. We see it happen with the other trolls, losing/changing their quirks to reflect big life events - Aradia dropping her 0s because she's not doomed anymore, Sollux losing his 2's when he loses his li2p. I've been struggling for a while with what Eridan would replace his quirk with after he drops his ww/vvs because it'd be kind of lame if he just had, like, basically nothing.

Also, I lowkey don't really vibe with Karkat ever using the sym69ls in text - he already resented his ancestor, and he'd especially hate the idea of using them after meeting Kankri. Hell, he's pretty reluctant to even type in his blood color even after everybody knows what it is. But then I realized - Eridan is already the guy on the team who dresses up in the colors of his dating partners. What if he replaced his ww/vv quirk with the sym69ls to show his support for Karkat?

Like yeah Karkat would hate it but it would also be literally so funny, and I think Karkat would be secretly comforted by the way Eridan would stubbornly insist that he's doing it FOR KARKAT, and not for the Signless or whatever, he's literally called Signless, that was like his whole thing idiot, this is Kar's symbol, shut the fuck up.

And also, genuinely, one of the things I'm most sad about missing out on was a conversation between Kankri and post-character-development!Eridan, because... can you fucking imagine? Here's Kankri, who actually loves sea dwellers and the caste system, who wants to be pale with Cronus so so so badly, yet is celibate by choice because he's a slut shamer (and in this headcanon, because he heard too many terrible stories about his ancestor's hellish dating life), who uses "social justice" as a cudgel and couches outright contempt for his friends in "polite" mealymouth language about equality...

... And then Eridan "these are my emotional support slurs" Ampora rocks up to the chat.

Even without the culler stuff, it'd be fucking hilarious, right? Eridan's insane and makes a lot of wild assumptions, but he's usually kind of right (he assumes Kanaya doesn't want to c3< him and Vriska because she's in <3 with Vriska, and he's at least right about the latter; he assumes Rose is highborn nobility, and, like, she IS a rich girl). Despite posturing about supporting the caste system, he doesn't actually give a shit about it, and arguing with him is basically a huge waste of time because he doesn't listen to people.

What I'm saying is, Kankri would be like "excellent, another sea dweller to befriend" + "finally, emotional validation from my distant father" & Eridan would immediately call Kankri a slur, ignore his arguments and rebut with something crazy like how "royal-v" is actually a more offensive term than "wader" because the former assumes sea dwellers have such delicate feelings that they can't stand not to have their globes kissed every five seconds, call Kankri a wader, ask Kankri why Kankri is hitting on him (Kankri isn't), proclaim that he and Karkat make out despite being moirails, and then start insisting that Kankri has to stop using his quirk because it's a quirk for Karkat and Karkat doesn't even like Kankri so Kankri doesn't get to use it anymore.

I think Kankri would start crying. Especially because a crowd has gathered and Kankri accidentally calls Eridan "dad" and Eridan is like i Don't know what that is.

Anyway the point that im making is the sym69ls were originally Beforus!Eridan's quirk because that was how he and Karkat used to curl up on the sofa together. 69. All cozy like. And that's where Kankri got them from and he decided to match his whistles to the motif. And after bullying Kankri into not using them anymore and taking them on himself, they go back to being Eridan's quirk. In a beautiful and stupid time loop of karma, the likes of which Homestuck is so fond of. Amen