#we have shared interests and are fighting the same fight

[illuminatedquill]

Dichen Lachman, Gemma Scout’s actress, has done some interviews in the wake of 2x07. I’ve clipped some stuff I found interesting, along with some of my own thoughts.

Spoilers ahead, be warned:

God, she’s been trying for years. My poor girl.

It hurts to see that this recent escape attempt has finally broken Gemma’s resolve. But Dichen thinks that although Gemma is resigned to her fate, she still holds onto the slim hope that Lumon will let her go when the experiments are over (spoiler alert: that is extremely unlikely).

Anyone who’s seen Dollhouse probably got a sense of deja vu when watching this episode. I’m glad that Dichen shares that same feeling. I don’t know, I just found it amusing.

THIS!!!

“The chikhai bardo is a Buddhist belief about a transitional state between death and rebirth, which could point to reintegration for both Mark and Gemma”

Both Mark and Gemma will never be able to reclaim the life they once had. That’s the tragedy. Those versions of them are gone. Dead.

Mark is reintegrating and becoming something new with the melding of his outie and innie personalities; Gemma, splintered into multiple versions of herself that are exposed through endless petty cruelties and psychological torture that she doesn’t remember, fighting tooth and nail to return home. They are becoming something new.

And I think these two new people should have a chance to find a new path forward. Together. Despite it all, despite the horrors and obstacles and misery, their love still endures. It won’t fix anything, it won’t guarantee a happy ending but it will be a new start. They deserve that.

The severance chips are being prepped for mass consumption. Gemma being put through all these varying situations - which are probably her own personal stressors - is to refine these chips perfectly so that people would never have to suffer again. But that’s so antithetical to life. We experience the joys so richly because of our lows, our suffering. You cannot have one without the other. That isn’t life!

All that remains is Cold Harbor. Ominous name. What horrible experience remains for Gemma to suffer through?

Still convinced that Gemma definitely signed up for something regarding the infertility issues but it’s evident that she wasn’t told the full extent of what Lumon would do with her. There’s more story to be told about how they got to her, I’m sure.

THE ENDGAME: Hades and Persephone

After having a full day to process this episode I am, admittedly, filled with a weird sense of optimism. Although Gemma’s fate seems all but sealed, I think the writers are smarter than to lay all this tragedy on characters only to end it in . . . well, more tragedy. There won’t be any healing or progression for either Mark or Gemma’s characters until she is freed from Lumon’s clutches.

Mark already tried to do that and he couldn’t. The only way he could fall in love again is if he never met Gemma. Don’t forget that.

Gemma needs to be free and be reunited with Mark. It won’t fix anything, I assure you. All that grief and yearning and suffering won’t magically disappear because they are back together. There’s so many interesting dynamics to play out.

The unresolved issues they had before she was taken by Lumon.

And then there’s Mark, fully reintegrated, remembering Helly and his love for her. Gemma having to reconcile the fact that there is a part of her husband that loved someone else.

The half-remembered nightmares and waking up with aches. Endless hallways and rooms that fill you with dread. An elevator that only goes down and never back up. Both Mark and Gemma will literally leave pieces of themselves behind in Lumon that they will never get back.

I think we’ve been looking at this wrong. Mark and Gemma being so tragic and Orpheus/Eurydice coded. They’re doomed by the narrative, it seems.

But . . . it doesn’t quite fit anymore now that we know that Gemma is alive and wants to go home.

I think Mark and Gemma are more like Hades and Persephone now. The other pairing in Orpheus and Eurydice’s story. In Hadestown, Orpheus’ song reignites their love and trust in each other, allowing them to try again after their relationship had become so strained.

So who is Orpheus and Eurydice now?

Who do you think.

[xo2dee]

NOW LOADING. .

DMC MASTERLIST

USTULATION

PAIRING: Vergil x (Fem)Reader WARNINGS: MDNI/18+ ONLY. Vaginal sex, oral sex, cunnilingus, spanking, dirty talk, degradation, rough sex, breeding kink, creampie, sin devil trigger sex, monster fucking WORD COUNT: 9,569 SUMMARY: Honestly, you really should’ve expected your first time having sex with Vergil would end up like that.

A/N: look, all im saying is: would.

You thought you had gotten your fair share of relationship advice from all of your snooping women family members and friends as you had grown up, and you were completely set when it came down to the romantic aspect of your life. Though nothing could’ve really prepared you for one of the only real and serious relationships you actually ended up in. Your mother and aunts had nothing on how to date a damn half-demon.

Or how to engage in sex with a half-demon.

On your behalf you figured it was just the same as having sex with a… human (it sounded so odd when you said it aloud), your half-demon looked like a ‘regular’ man – if you could count white hair, standing at six-foot-five, carrying around katana everywhere, and a stare that could make lesser strong-willed people piss themselves… Actually, you were completely wrong to think it was the same.

A relationship with Vergil was… interesting at times, but you were no quitter. Granted the two of yours relationship was ridiculously rocky at the beginning, but it came to a heads and you were later able to learn after jumping him and making out with him you two had been evidently pining for one and another so hard it made Dante sick and he’d been doing everything in his power to get you both laid and to stop eye-fucking each other every five minutes. Dante had been the one to warn you of getting into something like that with his elder brother, Nero almost looking traumatized when you had gotten around to telling him – “Hey, me and your dad? Yeah, we’re in a relationship, but we haven’t fucked yet so don’t worry.” – and told you maybe it was difficult to be with someone like him but sending you his best wishes otherwise. But of course, you were not a quitter.

Such as when you wanted to finally have sex with him, and when you finally did.

Perhaps you should’ve thought it through more; Vergil could lift a car with one hand and fling it more than one-hundred yards if he wanted to, he could rip a demon’s head off with one hand, kick a solid hole into a concrete wall, and not to mention all other demon abilities that he possessed. Such as what they called Devil Trigger. You had seen it before: a huge, blue, hulking beast full of scales, clawed nails, a long tail with the slicing tip, wings with a width span rivaling that of some sort of fairytale dragon, horns that executed a burn of blue fire (?), and the maw of sharp teeth that you had seen a handful of times whenever out on the field. However, you didn’t give it too much thought since you figured he only transformed during a fight and was always in control of it.

That was probably another case of poor judgement on your behalf.

Vergil was dominant through and through and practiced keeping himself composed above of all else, though at times it was you that was able to break that exterior and got him to loosen up – whether it was in the bedroom or not. At first you hadn’t been confident enough to push him like that, but when you were able to observe his eyes linger on your thighs if you wore any clothing exposing them, a vein rise from his temple that one time you wore that blue dress he liked with the slit up the leg and when you moved a certain way that revealed your panties, or when you had left the top three buttons undone of your shirt and watched his Adam’s apple bob with the deep swallow he made when you bent over in front of his face, it was enough to get you to try and get his attention to let him know you wanted him sexually as well as the way you already had him.

Vergil may have acted all stoic but the times you caught him just stripping out of nowhere in front of you and stretching a leg out until he could flex a thigh was enough to let you know the feeling was probably mutual. Often times he’d purposefully brush up against your back when you were in front of him, his hands drifting across your waist and trailing down your hips as he did so before ghosting away when you tried and lean back into his touch or turn around and look at him. He wanted you just as bad as you wanted him, though you had no idea why he would hold himself back.

More than often you found yourself on top of Vergil or underneath him as you both engaged in one of your many sessions of making-out and dry-humping, the trysts getting hot and heavy to the point you’d pull at his belt or snag a hand down the front of his pants in an unsaid beg for wanting him to just get inside of you once and for all. However it never ended up the way you wanted, Vergil would let out a hiss you had never really heard or knew he could do and roll away from you, chest heaving and nearly ripping the bedsheet apart from how hard he clutched it. Back then, you hadn’t known he was trying to control himself.

From what? Well…

Maybe you should have paid more attention to when his eyes would glow a haunting cat-like blue, or when you found shreds in your shirt from when his nails grew into talons, or that one time his tongue grew and slithered past your uvula in some form metaphorical oral sex as he made it thrust in, out and all around your mouth while it felt grooved. You were ashamed to admit that it made you cum from the feeling while you thought about how good it would feel eating you out as he did it.

Still, he never pushed it any further than foreplay and you would often go to bed with soaked underwear and him with an erection. Part of you thought he just didn’t want to, and another part of you had been afraid that from the way you gyrated your hips away on his erection and felt the size of him that you’d be unable to take him. But you were not a quitter and were horny beyond belief for him to just indent you into your mattress for once and all, and given how he’d grunt, groan and hiss into your mouth and skin, you knew the feeling was mutual.

So when the time came and you finally got him to actually fuck you and not just grind up on your clothed cunt or tease you with his fingers, nothing really prepared you for what happened. Looking back on it you found it funny, but in the heat of the moment you figured just why he would pull away from your dry-fucking moments.

(You knew a Devil Trigger could be caused by a state of heightened emotions… but not like Vergil had done during the first time you two had sex.)

In had started like that again, you two were alone at the shop again – you figured Vergil only engaged in intimacy like that when he knew Dante or Trish weren’t around to hear you both – and it was late at night while you two did your usual limbo. You couldn’t quite remember when he decided to say fuck it and push his cock inside of you. Maybe it was when you told him you were so wet that you were sure you could take all of him at once as he was two fingers deep in you, or when you struck his ego by saying if he couldn’t get you to cum like that he couldn’t get you to cum while actually inside of you as you rolled your soaked shorts up against his hard, clothed cock.

If you had to guess it was a mixture, the former being almost actual truth when he slid in with little to no resistance and the latter ticking him off so bad he tore shreds into your clothes while hissing at you in your ear and threatening to fuck you until you were begging for relief. Too bad for him that had been your plan.

That’s how you found yourself clutching the pillow underneath your head for dear life as Vergil’s cock was all but hitting your cervix while his hands had a near death grip on your hips in the process.

You shouldn’t have pushed his buttons, but damn, if that was what you got in return?

You’d keep doing it.

Your legs took purchase in one curling around his waist in attempts to hold on and the other hitched up on top of his shoulder, the ankle of the leg around his waist pressing into his skin and your heel against his lower back following in it as it curved and curled each time he fucked into you. The temperature in the room was boiling, perspiration lining your bodies down from the forehead to the conjunction of where both of your bodies were currently smacking into one and another. The only sounds you were really able to make out was the smacking of his skin into yours, the headboard of your shared bed knocking into the thinned wallpaper you desperately wanted to change, and your gasped out moans all jumbled in words varying of his name and praises from the ferocity of his movements.

Vergil’s face was probably a God-given sight to see; all flushed and his eyebrows knotted together in ecstasy as he kept his jaw clenched to keep his poorly concealed grunts in his mouth, but alas he kept his lovely expression nearly face down in the pillow you were clasping onto that your head rested on as well. It didn’t help you were talking filthy in his ear either, the loud exhales growling and the grip on your hips bruising every time you moaned out his name driving him forward push and stretch your insides as much as he could.

Unclutching the fabric of the pillow you slid your hands out to dig your nails into his back, earning you a grunt and a particular hard thrust as he pulled out back far enough until his tip was resting on your opening before diving back in. It was insane on how good he felt, your toes curling as that ball of fire behind your naval burned further towards your eventual release whenever he fucked into you harder.

There had been a time you thought ‘How the fuck did someone like him have a son?’, but from the way he was fucking you then… It wasn’t hard to see how it happened.

He was feral, unrestrained and – dare you say it – desperate.

You panted out again as your body rocked underneath his in unison to his hips, mouth finding his ear again to push at his resolve more, “If I would’ve known you – mmmGod – known you’d be like this, I would’ve – fuckrightthere – would’ve begged you more.”

…Was something pinching the skin of your hips?

You didn’t get to look and check when Vergil abruptly let go of your hips and let them land on the headboard above you two, his upper body moving slightly away from yours as the new position allowed him to pick up his speed. You let your eyes finally feast in looking up at his face, an electrifying tingle finding itself into your clit whenever his expression was just like you thought it would be. He looked like he was holding some poorly concealed agitation in, though you knew it was just a mix of his arousal and concentration. You didn’t know what he was so concentrated on, but if it was keeping him to literally rearrange your entire pelvic region… you were fine with it.

Vergil’s eyes fluttered open for a moment when you squeezed around him, a quick peek of his eyes showing you the icy grey you loved to look was bordering on a vivid azure with his pupils dilating back inwards and letting his irises take over. His lips pulled down in a deeper frown when he let a grunt slip by his lips, his pace growing harder and faster as if he wasn’t already balls deep in your pussy and slamming up into your innermost reach. A keening moan of his name caused his eyebrows to furrow greater and his jaw to clench harder as you jerked from the new sound from above you.

It was a scratching noise, almost like a cat was taking it’s claws onto a scratching post but instead it was on your headboard. You paused in your nearly drunken-stupor from clawing at his back in nicks that were already healing and your loud moaning to tilt your head backwards for a look, yet one of Vergil’s hands was quick to grab ahold of your chin and angle your head back towards him.

His eyes nearly made you want to shy away from how intense they were staring down into your own, the shining azure color taking them over and all but glowing in the moonlight shining down into your room. When your eyes shut and you tightened up around his cock once more, he squeezed your cheeks together and an amused huff fell out of him, “What’s the matter? You were so adamant in getting me inside of you, and now you’re suddenly shy?” a hum left him as he slowed to a mouthwatering roll and abruptly the air felt… static-like, his oddly rough hand falling from your face for two of his fingers to press down hard onto your clit.

The jolt of pleasure was nearly mind-numbing whenever the rough exterior of his fingers began to rub your swollen clit in intervals of up and down, back and forth, and sometimes rolling the area and pinching it between his fingertips. You were starting to squirm then because holy shit, why did his fingers feel so fucking rough but so good, and the way they were massaging your clit in swipes had you rolling your eyes back and mouth gaping from how fucking good it felt. There was slight angle of pain but it was quickly overwhelmed and mixed in with the pleasure he was giving you, the knot behind your naval just building, building, and building.

“OhmyGod, Vergil pleasegofaster,” you babbled out in-between the excessive amount of moans and whines as your hands made way to scrape at his chest.

Vergil bent lower, a low groan slipping out again whenever the angle pushed his cock deeper into your warmth and you could’ve swore his own eyes spun back a fraction, until his face was close for his lips to close around one of your nipples. Him biting and sucking at your breasts was one thing, but feeling that fucking ribbed tongue swirling around the expanse of your areola and the highest point of your nipple – oh Jesus fuck why was he so good at it? You didn’t care nor give it any thought that the man was slowly changing right before your very eyes, your frontal lobe only focusing on the slope you were sliding down for your orgasm and just Vergil, Vergil, Vergil.

The mantra in your mind was repeated past your tongue as he bit at your tit one last time and then that sinful tongue was sliding up past your chest, over your throat, along your jaw, before his mouth found way for your ear again. His teeth felt sharper than normal as he took your earlobe between them until he decided to latch off and bless you with his voice that was slowly beginning to lose its composure.

“Are you begging now? How indecent of you, it’s almost pathetic how desperate you sound.”

…Why did his voice sound like that? It was a near sort of echo, the underlining of his usual nasally voice was there but it was twinged with something else that you couldn’t put your finger on. It felt like that static ambience still wrapped around you two, though he almost sounded… like not himself, but still was him.

Whatever it was it twisted around into your bones and muscles, turning the former into mush and the latter tensing as it vibrated your body from the top of your head sliding down your spine until your toes were curling again over the respective parts of his body. You were nearly ashamed at how much you liked it when he spoke to you like that, the fact in that matter not lost on him when you reared up back at it and clenched around his throbbing cock once more as your sense of reasoning began to slowly fall from you.

You weren’t about to let him off the hook for verbal assault, not when you could feel how hot he was growing inside of you and how his dick was beginning to swell almost as if it was growing from your actions. Not only that, you mused as you intertwined your fingers into his deliberately falling hair, the noises he was making that nearly had you cumming on the spot were enough to let you know he wasn’t as reserved as he was letting himself out to be.

You jerked his head back so that his face was level with yours and both of lips were skimming across each other, relishing in the harsh thrust from the action and when his fingers rolling your clit fell off for a brief moment as a hiss pushed past his plumped lips, “You’re one to talk since you can barely keep it together,” you arched your back to push him as deep as you could and watched his nostrils flare when your cunt seemed to swallow him whole, “I know you wanna let loose, so why don’t you?”

Vergil’s expression scrunched up in a full-blown scowl then, his hip bones slamming into yours faster and harder as you heard…a growl leave his chest, “Stop talking.”

His fingers on your clit sped up after that, the movements of the rubbing matching your poor excuse of grinding to keep up with him and the scratching noise above you picking back up again. Your thigh was burning from the stretch of your leg over his shoulder, but the blurring line between pain and pleasure was long gone since you were gradually beginning to lose all hold you had on holding back from cumming. He was getting tough in letting his cock kiss that sensitive region inside of you, pulling his cockhead all the way out of you and delivering a harsh push back to hit as far as he could. Each push and pull had you reeling, eyes rolling back and broken moans leaving you as you struggled to keep up and form a coherent sentence to drive back at him.

You weren’t finished egging him on, you wanted him to fulfill that threat (promise?) he had said before.

Your fingers were slowly losing the grip they had on his hair as your body bounced and slid up on the bed underneath his body, “I know this issss’t all you can do, I wanna feel it,” a high-pitched gasp left you when his fingers pinched your clit, “don’tdothat, I’mgonnacum – I want you to cum inside of me –”

“Don’t.”

“Vergil please, you have me already. I wanna feel you. I want it all.” Your head was getting fuzzy, the stretch in your lower abdomen pulling to its full extent as his cock grew hotter and began throbbing longer pulsing into your cunt. You wanted it so bad, you wanted him so bad and you were clawing more at his chest as that coil began to unravel.

Vergil rose up away from you onto his knees, your leg on his shoulder falling off to land uselessly onto the mattress as you watched in pleasure-filled vision his head tilt backwards and his Adam’s apple bob from the bitter swallow he took. His hand on the headboard fell to curl up underneath your lower back to push your hips upwards off the bed to dig deeper into you, his fingers moving faster as his chest started to heave. The new angle left you breathless as his thick shaft began to feel as if it was ramming its way into your intestines, another round of babbles and mewls leaving you when his hips pushed desperately into your body.

His thumb was digging itself into your lower spine as he grunted out his next words, no doubt a bruise going to be left behind, “Damn you. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

A warning was going off in the back of your mind, a strong shift in the air as Vergil’s breathing grew louder, combining with a hissing that was bordering on sounding like one of the demons you hunted had gotten into your bedroom. Maybe you should’ve paid attention to the scales beginning to form up on his arm and start to take over the left side of his face, and maybe you should’ve noticed the twinkling blue sparks beginning to fleck off and around him. But you were too focused on what he was doing to you too care, but fuck you were just right there and you were about to cum because his fingers combined with the sheer size of his cock alone were spiraling you into your personal haven and God just right there, right there, rightthererightthererightthere –

You made one last ditch effort to push at him as a long-winding moan of his name bubbled from you, your hands fisting into the sheets and nearly ripping them as Vergil was on the cusp of losing control, “I can take it, please, jus’ do what you said you were gonna do earlier.”

That got his attention, his fingers pausing their wrath on your clit as his shoulders tensed; he knew what you were talking about. “Be quiet,” his tone sounded cold, but the steady rhythm of his thrusting and his fingers rolling vigorously on you was enough to let you know you almost had him.

And he almost had you cumming all over his dick as the last of your resolve was pushed out in a hair-raising moan and some fast chattering to finally feel him once and for all, “God just fuck me, Vergil. Fuck me so hard I’m begging for relief from you from how much you fill me up ohholyfuck –”

Your sentence trailed off as a snarling groan took over the sound in the room and his pace kicked into a destructive speed, a distorted curse spitting off his tongue as something popped and a shuttering noise flew into your ears while the inside of you felt briefly stunned from the action. After that, your body was suddenly uncoiling itself in the throes of your orgasm with a gasping whine of his name.

Your cunt constricted around his cock in a poor effort to hold on, but the action had you spasming in one of the most intense orgasms you had ever experienced. The others paled in comparison from those late nights fingering yourself at the thought of him, your body feeling electrified from the intensity of it and your limbs jerking to find any part of his body to hold on to as you rushed through it. You didn’t know why your cunt and his dick felt like they were buzzing and vibrating from the release, but the heightened stimulation had you squirming throwing your head back onto the pillow with a gaping mouth and eyes spinning into your mind while the hairs on your body rose from the change in the atmosphere. You were well aware you had gushed all over his cock as your legs jerked from the pleasure, and in the back of your mind you were only vaguely aware that something about him shifted.

Something as in his entire appearance.

The static was back as it curled itself around your body and left you feeling frazzled and your limbs exhausted, and you were only densely conscious enough to realize that the skin you had curled your one leg around didn’t feel like skin any longer. Your chest was heaving as you felt a new wave of sweat line up on your forehead and down your pelvis, fingers bunching up the sheets as you tried to slow your breathing and heart rate down, and a warped, huffing mixed sound of growling rolled out above you. Your bedroom felt hotter than before and after a few moments of blinking back into clarity, you rose your head to look back at Vergil to see why he hadn’t made any noise or indication of cumming –

You froze.

Gone was the gorgeous, ivory-colored skin, icy grey eyes, and silver-white hair, instead in its place was that hulking beast you had only seen a handful of times. You traced your eyes towards where you two were still conjoined, over the glowing ‘V’ on his chest, and finally up towards his face where you were only able to make out that luminescent blue where his eyes were supposed to be. Had he –

He.. triggered instead.. of cumming? You didn’t know whether to feel proud or suffer a blow to your ego over that.

You stared at him, blinking a couple of times.

Vergil… stared back – you think anyway – and you weren’t entirely too sure if he could even blink in that form.

You swallowed after a few moments and let your already hoarse voice break the silence, “Vergil, what… Are you – I mean,” you wiggled for a brief second as his newly-formed, scaled hand came to press down onto your lower abdomen to cease any other movement from you, “Did you mean to do this or…?”

The noise he made nearly sounded like a chuff tigers made, a movement from his backside letting you see his tail whip up into the air before it slithered up around your thigh next to his jutted hip. You watched curiously as the scaled appendage curled around said part, the bladed tip of it knocking against your skin in an action that was bizarrely reminiscent of cat slowly tapping the tip of its tail onto a surface. Vergil still hadn’t spoke, which you knew he was able to in that form, and you had half a mind to just ask if he went into some type of demonic state where he was more Devil than man (more than just his appearance, mind you).

However you knew better than that, Vergil was still Vergil in that manner and his standing still action with him remaining inside of you not making a single movement was a key factor that he was being precautious. You supposed you weren’t really thinking too hard whenever you were egging him to finally give in and let loose, but you always didn’t think it would end up with just… triggering.

Nevertheless… it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, it was still Vergil; especially since you were pretty fucking sure he had grown bigger inside of you.

You got your answer when you shifted again and okay, yeah, he was just as big and hulking as his new form as he was down there, and Jesus fuck you were pretty sure he was in your stomach then. Letting out a winding exhale you gripped at his wrist onto your lower abdomen when what you guessed was his cockhead angled upwards inside of you, “Vergil, just –” the weight from his hand pressed down harder and your eyes crossed when a new shock of ecstasy fluttered inside of you. God, you felt fucking stuffed, but the new tingling in your clit was something you couldn’t ignore and since you felt not one essence of his cum inside of you… You waved your other hand in the air.

“Just – just keep going, it’s fine.” You sounded so out of breath, but it was to be expected when you had his literal fat monster cock in you. “I mean, always up for new things right?” ‘Up for new things’, this was the first time you two were having sex.

(Though you didn’t think it could’ve qualified as ‘sex’, what you two ended up doing was just straight nasty fucking after months of piled up sexual tension and frustration. Perhaps not the smartest decision to do it in his Devil Trigger, but hey, first time for everything.)

After all, if you were going to commit to liking someone with a dual form like that then you were going to have to buckle down into the possible monster fucking because if you didn’t… did you even love them?

Vergil, more or less, above you seemed at a fork in the road but when he pushed his hips forward and watched your face wince up from the expanding stretch and felt your pussy tighten at a near painful degree he knew was for you, he was pulling out. A high-pitched, indignant noise left you at his loss and the sting from which he pulled himself from so abruptly, and he was quick to snag your ankle of the leg that wasn’t currently wounded by his tail when you tried to coercer him back to you. You paid no mind that perhaps he was completely coated in your cum and that his cock was not the same one you saw earlier – sans human skin and instead something probably a little more rigid and dangerous-looking and blue – but you really didn’t mind once more since you were fighting a fire for more stimulation.

You didn’t have to wait long either for it, Vergil finally broke out of his silence as a claw-tipped finger tapped onto your ankle bone and his voice was that same distortion from before that sent vibrations throughout the bed and you.

“I’ll have another, then after that I’ll have my way with you.”

Another? “What do you mean another – ACK –” you didn’t get to finish that question when Vergil used the hold he had on you to swiftly flip your body over, a yelp falling out of your mouth when he gripped your hips and positioned you in the way he wanted you. Said position was on your hands and knees with his tail holding your thigh lifting your one leg into the air slightly as a hand came up under you to splay over your lower abdomen to keep you balanced. Your fingers gripped into your sheets hard as the other clawed hand was clutching the thigh not currently suspended into the air and you felt a humid waft of air from his maw blow over your horribly exposed pussy. Your cheeks warmed as you realized the gravity of the situation.

Was he going to –

“For now, I’ll have a taste of what your dripping with.”

You didn’t get a chance to answer to that sinful statement, as for Vergil’s serpentine tongue was already slithering out of his jaws and taking one slow lick up your soaked folds. You were ashamed when your one leg placed onto the bed already starting shaking from it the action, though you couldn’t blame yourself too much since you were still sensitive from cumming mere minutes beforehand and that Vergil’s tongue was of that same ribbed exterior that day you felt him in your mouth. It felt like… God, you didn’t even know, but God it felt good. A shaky exhale left you as the grip on your thigh left to press down onto your lower back, the weight causing you to fall onto your elbows for the position to expose yourself more to his greedy tongue.

Vergil wasn’t one the beat around the bush you learned once he really set his mind to something, and that something at that time was eating your pussy out. If you had to explain it, it was as if your brain all but fried when the grooved tip on his tongue spread and pushed through your folds until the length of the appendage was wiggling up inside of your cunt and whatthefuck –

“Vergil, holy shit, your tongue –” you whimpered out the rest of your mumble as you leant down to pressed your face into your sheets.

The only answer you got was a hot exhale combined with a rumbling growl, his hands on your respective areas sluggishly beginning to rock you back and forth on his tongue. The noise that left you was something out of a hardcore porno, your sweaty forehead digging into the mattress as you felt each grooved lining on his organ run up against your walls and urging you to swing your hips back and forth, to and from his face. You did just that, moans and whines of all caliber falling desperately as you rolled yourself in intervals to get a feel for every dip and dart of his tongue against your soft insides.

You were already well on your way to falling for another orgasm when you started to push back against his face harder, your toes curling as he hitched your leg higher and a grunt escaping when you decided to clench and unclench around his tongue as much as you could. He picked up the pace in his swirling to taste every inch of your cunt and coat your walls with as much of his saliva as he could while he licked up the expanse of you. The knot behind your naval then felt heavier, your back arching further inwards as his grunts and growls kept up with your own moans and pants.

“Fuck, just like that. Keep go-going,” you paused as your knee on the bed started to shake more with the intensity building back up inside your cunt and your clit feeling pressurized even though nothing was arousing it that time, his tongue slithering up and inside your leaking cunt enough to push you towards your release. “It feels so good please… I’m gonna cum again.”

The response you got was a louder, eager grumble from deep within his chest, the claws he sported slightly pricking your flesh as the fleeting pinch of pain only added on to you doubling down into your orgasm. His tail coiled around your thigh tighter and the slicing tip was wriggling out into the air next to your skin, his eagerness showing his in subtle actions to get you to come on his tongue that time. And fuck, if you had spilled out all in your panties whenever he swiped that slick organ around your mouth and down your throat as he rocked his boner into you nearly a week ago, you would have no problem doing it for him then.

The force in which your hips were rocking back into his face was bordering on desperate as you were nearing your peak, your cunt already beginning spasm while he continued to literally tongue-fuck you. The hot huffs from his open maw grew louder and faster against your ass, the pulsing hums he was letting roll off his slick appendage vibrating the inside of you as you desperately clawed at the sheets while your back arched dangerously. You squealed and whined whenever his tongue slipped out of you for a brief moment to run the fat of it along the entire outer parts your pussy, starting with the tip teasing your clit in fast nudges, and the brute of it flattening itself along your folds to catch the fluids so keenly dripping out of your gaping opening.

When Vergil darted back inside your drenched cunt to swipe at your innermost wall faster and harder before, you were all but done. “Vergil!” was your last keening cry as his hand on your lower abdomen pushed up further into your guts, the coil holding your second release together snapping while he continued to tongue-fuck you through the entirety of your orgasm.

That time around your eyes crossed as your vision busted into a different world of colors, your pussy canal nearly acting like a bottle of wine losing its cork as you squirted out and around his tongue. A white-hot tingle shot from your cranial nerve down into your toes had you jerking and squirming about as your cunt trembled and clenched around his tongue for retribution. You didn’t mind too much you had embarrassingly squirted into his face, the evidence of so slipping past his mouth and dribbling onto the sheets next to your quivering knee as you fought to keep balance from the mind-blowing orgasm. Vergil didn’t mind at all, the groan leaving him downright sinful as he let his tongue slip out and wipe up any excess of your cum and fluid that had passed by his mouth. You were thankful for his hands still on your body holding you up and his tail began slowly lowering your other leg back onto the bed as he finished his licking to clean you up while your body shook and you fought back through clarity of from cumming so hard.

A sigh left you when you felt him pull away from your cunt, the body part throbbing excessively and so goddamn sensitive you were sure a single touch would have you reeling back into pleasure once more. It was hot and everything smelled like him as you tried to catch your breath through heaving once more, however your knees were beginning to slide outwards as your nerves were too wired to keep yourself together. You would’ve fallen down onto the bed if he hadn’t caught you by the hips while he angled you back upwards into the way he liked. His tail unfurled from your thigh, though the accessory wriggled around underneath where your abdomen was in slow strokes afterwards as its tip grazed along past your breasts and along your naval making you shudder.

It seemed he wasn’t about to waste any more time, his cock heavy with the need to just finally cum and have you the way he wanted.

Vergil didn’t give any warning that he was ready shove his cock back in you, the only way you knew from your position was when his bulked, scaled pelvis knocked into your ass and another loud exhale of hot air blew across your back. Granted he was slow as he eased into you, but that didn’t stop you from gasping at how fucking far he was stretching your insides that time by just only a few inches of him and your body was involuntarily sliding up forward away from him. The sheer sting was the cause of that reaction, as it nearly felt like his dick was expanding your pelvic bones entirely to accommodate room for him.

“Stay,” was the only word grumbled out from him at first, a hand skimming down your spine in an unspoken word of comfort. He let you wiggle around for a few moments until a long breath left you as you loosened up, and then he was sliding himself back all the way in, relishing in the way you immediately moaned and tightened up around him at the easy entrance. “So wet, so easy; almost like you were just made for this. Are you so desperate to please me that you’ll let me use you as I want?”

His words alone had you moaning again, the mere tone of them and the hissing edge they held letting you grip up harder on him and rock back into his hips, “Don’t act so high and mighty, earlier you were fighting to not lose control and now look at you.” Yeah you said in a fight to bite back at his words, but God if you didn’t feel like telling him to outright fuck you into the mattress or just fuck yourself back onto him because his dick was sitting fat and heavy inside of you and you desperately wanted to just move to let you feel the full brute of him rearranging your guts.

You knew you shouldn’t have pushed a feral Vergil, especially since earlier you had proclaimed you wanted him to fuck you until you were begging for relief and full of his cum because…

Fuck you he did.

You heard another snarling grunt from behind you, his hands tightening on your hips as he almost lethargically pulled his shaft out until his cockhead was kissing your folds and then with one quick snap he was seated back inside of you and setting himself in a maddening, torturous pace.

You had managed a choked moan from that, your breath being knocked out of you as you bounced back and forth from his steady, deep, somewhat slow movements as your ass smacked against his hardened, jutted hip bones. The noise of both of your bodies was incredibly obscene when you combined the sound your backside harshly slapping into his pelvis, while you could hear the squish of your pussy overwhelmed with your cum and fluids every time he pulled back far enough and diving back in.

It wasn’t enough though, the deep dives were gut-wrenching and had you gasping more than moaning but you knew it was his own form of punishment against you for your bratty behavior.

From the ferocity of his thrusts jolting your body, your words began to line in tune with each time he pushed into you and pulled out, “God Vergil – you’re – driving me – insane! Oh fuck… c’mon – fuck me – harder.”

His hand came down and smacked onto your ass, something he had never done before in the months you had been together, and you yelped from the sting as you fell back down onto your elbows. He kept one hand digging into your hip but the other was pushing your back farther into an arch for his cock to hit a new angle that almost made you drool. Once he got you there it was another deliberate pull out and snapping back into you as his hand glided around the press onto your lower abdomen –

OH.

Fuck.

Was that even possible? Shit, who cares it feels so good. So good that Vergil was groaning in a hiss as you squeezed him whenever you felt him bulge through the lower part of your body. His slick, hot tongue was lapping up your spine in a tease to taste the sweat lining your back before you felt him lower down near your ear to speak again.

“Tell me again what you want.”

Bastard. Though as he said that, he was literally beginning to give you what you really wanted.

Gone was the sluggish, deep strokes, in their place a faster speed making you bounce faster as he leant back up away from you. Your eyes fluttered shut when you felt another orgasm on the brink, your brain nearly blocking out what he had whispered into your ear as you started to just focus on the pleasure you were receiving. However, your lover wasn’t so merciful to let you off the hook.

Vergil’s hand came back down to slap at your ass again as you moaned from the newfound stimulation it gave, “Answer me, brat.”

Your eyes rolled back as you tried to buck your hips to fuck back into him, your nails beginning to claw into the sheets below you, “I – Mmm, I want –”

His tail was sliding up one of your thighs again, “What want? Speak clearly.”

His cock was hard and hot in you, “Shit – Vergil, please.”

His pace picked up, the headboard of the bed knocking obscenely loud into the wall rough enough to crack it, “Begging now? You should see yourself crying out for me like some whore,” the mattress shifted and in your peripheral vision you could see one of his clawed raptor-looking feet you usually laughed at come to balance himself on it, and then his tail was sliding up around your back, “You’re maddening.” His voice was teetering onto a fine, sharp edge, the movements of his ferocious thrusting becoming jagged as his resolve seemed to turn on him and you knew then he was getting close to cumming.

However because of Vergil’s newfound realization he was heading towards his own end, he found a means to better fuck you, or to better use you for both of your enjoyment.

His tail wrapped around your abdomen.

Your first instinct was to grab ahold of the accessory with one of your hands, a gasp falling out of you from how he coiled it around tight enough to keep you where he wanted you but not enough to hurt you. Your second instinct was to arch harder and then your third was to –

You didn’t give it much thought, because Vergil had decided to go from fucking you to using his tail to pull your body back and forth onto his cock in hurried movements, and –

“OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod,” you chanted out in a mewl of a babble, both of your hands gripping to the scaled appendage wrapped around you as it kept you in the position he wanted. Your brain was surely mush then, your cunt unclenching and clenching in a hasty fashion as the new pace and angle crossed your eyes and careened you down further into cumming all over his cock again.

Your cheek found itself pushed into your bed as he pressed you down further with a rough palm, his distorted voice then sounded more choked up and losing its composure, “You like this, don’t you? Being used like this by a demon?”

All of your sense and reasoning was out of the window, another harsh moan leaving you as you listened to him speak, “Mmmm, I love it!”

Vergil’s hold on your hips grew to bruising as he started to fuck back into your bouncing body while continuing to use his tail as leverage to pull you into him, an air of desperation about him while more grunts left him, “If you love it so much, tell me what you want me to do.”

You were about to cum, his dick stretching you out so much and slamming into practically your cervix as your nerves lit up and any discomfort from the rough treatment exploded into full-blown pleasure. He continued to hit that one spot that had you keening and your teeth biting into the sheet as well, hissing as your sounds grew louder and your pussy impossibly wet and tighter. He knew you were about to cum, and with that knowledge a rough fingertip was grazing across your swollen clit in a means to get you to finally unravel and screaming to him of what you wanted.

“Say it.”

The reaction was instantaneous, your muscles bunching up, eyes watering as the pressure in your cunt grew tenfold, his rough movements, and your rapidly approaching orgasm let the words flow freely from your mouth.

“Vergil, please, I want you to cum in me! Just –” a louder whine fell out of you when he pushed you down in retaliation for more of your pleas, struggling to take his hard thrusts as you finally felt yourself let go and felt your cunt gush and squeeze one last time as you rambled the rest of your begs in a high-pitched cry.

“More.”

“I’m yours, Vergil! Fuck me full of your cum… Mmf, breed me, Vergil!"

The answering snarl was devastating, his tail heaving you upwards onto your knees for your back to press against his scalding front side as his tongue slid back out of his mouth licking up the expanse of your throat until it found itself into your mouth. You eagerly accepted the crude mean as a replacement for a kiss, your eyes rolling back into your head as you sucked around the appendage and your hips sporadically jerked into his still thrusting cock as he continued to fuck you through your orgasm. It was the same as before with your vision bursting into colors behind your eyelids and your frontal lobe feebly chasing that emotion of endorphins released into your veins as you came undone in front of him for the third time that night.

Your third release left you feeling spent and exhausted, legs quivering in their place as your moans fell into huffing noises with your body falling back onto the bed as Vergil hissed, snarled and groaned his way to finally giving you both what you asked for. The gush of air and new shadow expanding behind told you that his wings had unfurled, the last of his composure leaving him whenever he pushed back into you with a ferocious jab that cracked the wall above your bed and a long-uttering satisfied groan vibrated the entire room.

Your eyes spun back when you felt the warm spurts of his cum shoot inside of your awaiting cunt and literally stuff you full as a feeling of mild electrification prickled the hair on your body. It nearly felt as if he never was going to stop, the new heat in your pussy sliding down throughout the inside of you. You could feel the thick girth of the liquid passing through your cervix and into your womb as Vergil’s hips rocked slowly with each new spray into you until finally he came to a full stop with his cock sitting snugly inside of you to hold all of his cum in your cunt for the time being. His fingers flexed as they returned to both grasping your hips with a hissing exhale that you felt deep into your stomach, and meanwhile you tried to force your mind and body to leave that fucking high and try to at least find yourself into some clarity from probably the best fucking and orgasms you had ever felt.

It was a few moments of catching your breath and letting your heart calm down on both ends when Vergil slowly started to slide out of you, the full feeling in your lower abdomen leaving you like air slowly being let out of a balloon until his cockhead was kissing your folds. Vaguely you were aware of your cunt clenching and throbbing around nothing for the loss of him, your opening gaping as you felt the remains of what he fucked into you start to ooze out until he was pushing his dick back in with a slow roll to fuck his cum back into you. You whimpered as you clutched the sheets again, your insides entirely too sensitive and used for any other stimulation for that time while he continued until he was sure you were, indeed, fucked full.

“Easy.” Yeah okay, it was easy for him to say that since he was the one that didn’t get their pelvic region bottomed out.

Vergil granted you that break finally, his cock along with the whole of his body leaving after he was satisfied with his work. His tail unfurled from around you and the loss of what was the only thing that was holding you up on your useless legs caused you to almost fall into the mattress completely if it wasn’t for his arm wrapping up under your breasts to hold until you both fell onto the bed together.

His human arm.

That static in the air was gone, the feeling of like you were on the cusp of being shocked gone while the heat in the room began to dissipate into the normal temperature of the shop. The back of your head found a spot onto his shoulder while your legs entwined with one and another’s as you continued still to calm your heaving down while Vergil’s thumb stroked a gentle pass on your sternum. His breathing seemed to notch back down after he left his triggered form and buried his nose into your hair, but the deep inhales and exhales were signs he was too still suffering from the aftermath.

Briefly, you wondered when the last time he had sex was. Then you decided that from his feral behavior: a long time ago.

“Your pulse is still racing,” he spoke after a while of you both staring up at the dark ceiling, voice slightly croaky and out of breath.

Gee, I wonder why. You threw up a hand and let it fall onto his chest in a gentle tap, “Well I mean, I did just get the shit fucked out of me. And I think you literally might’ve shifted the bones in my pelvis and hips around.”

The back of his hand came up to wipe at the sweat on your forehead, “…I apologize if I caused you any discomfort,” he mumbled into your hair, almost so quietly that you nearly missed it.

The first thing you said was a tease, “Vergil? Apologizing? If pussy gets you like this then we should’ve done this sooner.”

He pinched your nipple.

You squealed and wiggled against him until he let up, his hand returning to sit at your sternum, “Okay, okay, I’m sorry!”

“Brat.”

You sighed as you really thought about his words; was he honestly thinking you might’ve not liked it after you begged him for it? Sure you probably would be bowlegged the next day, and yeah he literally cracked the wall and nearly broke the headboard and clawed the Hell out of it, and okay maybe you would have some little bruises on your hips where he held you, but he was being foolish to think you didn’t want it. You had wanted him physically like that for a long time aside to having him emotionally and mentally, and it was even better than you imagined for a man who looked like he’d rather eat dirt than have any physical contact with people.

It’s always the quiet ones.

You didn’t like it, you loved it.

“You didn’t hurt me, at least not in the way I might’ve wanted,” you eventually answered, feeling an amused huff blew into your hair. He didn’t answer you after that, the silence stretching between you two as you finally calmed down enough and came to your senses – your senses being bothering him as much as you could. His face was still buried into your hair whenever your usual annoying antics came back as you both basked in that post-coital bliss.

“I have a serious question.”

Vergil only grunted.

“Soo, I noticed before that when you triggered before that you couldn’t actually see your dick in that form. Does it, y’know, have its own little sheathe?” ‘Little’ was probably an understatement.

He was still for a few moments until you felt the bed shift and his body move away until you were given sight to him leaning up over you and staring down at you with the blankest face you had ever seen on the man. Vergil’s hair had fallen from its usual slicked back fashion, a feat you only got to saw when he slept for the night and when it was wet, and the silver of his eyes were barely visible through the white-grey strands but you could still feel the brute of his piercing stare.

Vergil only stared down at you.

“I’m being serious, but if you don’t wanna answer you don’t have to. Probably a sensitive topic since you can’t literally cockfight Dante in that form like you two normally do.”

You watched his eyes narrow.

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s true.”

Evidently he had enough of your little prattle, his body moving way too swiftly for someone that just had sex so roughly as he rolled himself on top and pinched both of your cheeks between his fingers.

“You have no filter, do you? You just spout whatever comes to mind that you can use to demean me in your own childish way.”

“Mmmsorry, ow!”

His hips wormed their way in-between your thighs once more, your lower abdomen curling at the feeling, “Perhaps I should find better ways to keep your mouth occupied.”

“Is that a dig at wanting a blowjob?”

A hum left him and you jolted when you felt the press of his cock against your clit, a pleading gasp falling from your squished cheeks as you bucked against him, “Not exactly, I quite like it when you’re begging.”

He wasn’t… Already?! “Again?”

Vergil’s hands left your face and one was already curling around your thigh to hitch it around his hip as the other balanced onto the mattress next to you, one of his rare, devilish smirks on his face as he watched you grow flustered, “Again.”

A gasp mixed together with a moan fell out of you when he slid back inside of your still warm and wet cunt with absolutely no problems, your hands coming up to clutch at his forearms as he started off into a slow grind for the second round. Another hum rumbled deep from within his chest as he bent down and languidly kissed you when you started to sigh from the gentle movements, only breaking off the lip lock to mumble his new resolve against your mouth.

“After all, weren’t you the one that said you wanted yourself full of me until you were begging for relief?”

Honestly, you really should’ve expected your first time having sex with Vergil would end up like that.

[pige0ns]

i do think it's interesting how the primary misstep people seem to make when it comes to analyzing severance is seeing the innies and outies as entirely separate characters. when i think the coolest thing about the way the show has gone about doing its doppelganger concept is the way it so thoroughly problematizes any attempt to do that. normally when stories do a doppelganger, that character is either an unambiguously separate character who is only metaphorically the same as the protagonist, or an alter ego who represents a piece of or exaggeration of the protagonist. or a literal twin, or clone, or double. in all cases the story is usually about that which we consider falsely other to ourselves. and maybe the story plays the monstrous otherness straight, or maybe it's about the consequences of seeing parts of yourself as a monstrous other. but regardless of what exactly the story is doing the doppelganger in question is in some sense made literally other, whether physically (frankenstein's creature) or in terms of character (mr. hyde, tyler durden).

whereas in severance the only difference between the innies and outies is their memories. no one's been possessed, or lost their soul. repeatedly, elements of the innies or outies bleed through. and yes of course, philosophically, you can argue about whether--by having different memories--this does make the innies and outies as separate of people as say, clones might be. ie, people who also have different physical existences. and i don't think the show is running away from that discussion or something. clearly, given the whole conversation about "do innies and outies have separate souls" from 2x06, it's a question that's on the table.

but the point i'm trying to make is that for the purposes of metaphor, by making the innies and outies share a body and a selfhood, it immediately and viscerally becomes painfully obvious that severed characters really are otherizing themselves. they are punishing themselves, ignoring themselves, betraying themselves, fighting themselves, dehumanizing themselves, abusing themselves. they are doing that to someone who is a person, because the person is them. the false otherness isn't a surprise, it is deliciously plain, almost pathetic or mundane. and that is a different and interesting kind of horror.

[undead-moth]

As someone with PCOS it honestly doesn’t especially matter to me if PCOS is considered an intersex condition, and I don’t really think of myself as intersex generally, but the people who vehemently insist it’s not have the dumbest fucking reasons for opposing it.

“You only think PCOS counts as intersex because women with PCOS look more masculine and you think this means they can’t be women.” Okay are you aware you basically just admitted you believe intersex people can’t be women?

“Every other intersex condition is defined by genital or chromosomal differences.” Okay and? Are you seriously arguing that because the DSM defines intersex a certain way that’s, what, written in stone? Fixed in nature? Objective truth? The sex binary is a social construct. Hell, the concept of a “Condition” and what does or doesn’t qualify as one is a social construct. Medicine is and has always been biased and new conditions and new definitions for pre-existing conditions are added or removed to every new edition of the DSM.

Like I said, it doesn’t really matter, but so far I see one side pointing out, “Hey, this group of people has a ton of the same bodily traits and life experiences as intersex people. Maybe they should be considered intersex too,” and the other side saying, “No. 😡 They can’t be intersex because then I would have to challenge my perception of a constructed and fluid thing I’d prefer to continuing viewing as natural and fixed 😤”

[omgthatdress]

The Importance of Studying Queerness in Context.

When studying queer history, one always has to keep in mind two seemingly contradictory things: firstly, that queerness and queer people have always existed, but at the same time, that queerness and queer identities have not always existed the way they exist today.

Modern queer terms and identities did not exist to queer people in the past. They would not have thought of themselves as "gay" or "trans" or even "queer." While these modern terms may seem to fit certain historic individuals, these individuals would not have thought of themselves as such, and it would not be a part of their lived experience. To apply the modern identities of queerness to history is to erase the lives and experiences of queer people in history, and care must always be taken to understand queer history within the context of its time.

When looking at queer history online, there is a *lot* of misinformation and misidentification out there simply because people are eager to apply modern queerness to history, often in places where it doesn't belong.

A lot of old photos get misidentified as gay because they show two people of the same sex showing some level of physical affection towards each other. Okay, I'll admit that the open-mouth kissing photobooth pictures are probably actually gay, but an old picture of two men or two women holding hands or with their arms around each other, or even kissing on the cheek, were common shows of platonic affection.

I hate to break everyone's gay little hearts, but without explicit documentation saying so, assuming that these couples are all gay is putting modern queer identity in places where it simply didn't exist. The women in the final picture are sisters. The "not married" boys are bachelors interested in marrying women.

In the silent film Wings, the emotional climax of the film comes in the form of a kiss exchanged between the characters played by Jack Powell and David Armstrong. It often gets attributed as the first gay kiss in cinema history, even on the fucking YouTube clip I found:

Except it isn't gay. The two men spend the whole film fighting over who gets to be Clara Bow's boyfriend. When Richard Arlen's character is fatally wounded, his dear friend rushes to his side and kisses him goodbye, because in the 1920s, that was considered the ultimate show of friendship. The movie ends with Jack Powell falling in love with Clara Bow.

Similarly, a kiss shared between Lillian and Dorothy Gish in the 1921 movie Orphans of the Storm often gets attributed as being queer, but it wasn't.

They were sisters playing sisters. None of this was considered unusual.

Pooh-poohing on all of these images that so many people on the internet breathlessly and joyously laud as proud gay history isn't fun. It makes me feel like I'm fucking Ben Shapiro. But if misinformation is allowed to flourish, it allows people like Ben Shapiro to come in and make the argument that queerness is a modern invention and queer people didn't exist in the past.

Everyone loves to see queerness represented in history, but the fact is that none of the stuff in this post would have been seen as explicitly gay and thus shouldn't be called gay today. If we are to understand queer history in its fullness and richness, it is absolutely crucial that we get it right. We owe it to our queer ancestors to recognize, honor, and not embellish the actual lives they lived.

[vanlegion]

...

convincing myself that unfollowing a mutual i literally never talked to and don’t share any interests with anymore and whose posts are bothering me is okay actually and there’s not some unspoken commitment except when there is and one of my mutuals unfollows me and i’m heartbroken-

[lovelyyandereaddictionpoint]

Yandere Naga King // Part 2

Part 1

Shian is the King of the Naga, the valued birthright of his family to one day earn the tribe’s respect as they murder the reigning King if they don’t offer their service to the heir. Many other tribes and kingdoms may say this is brutal but it was his way of life. 

“My King! A warrior of the canine race was found on our borders–how would you like to proceed?”

“The same we always have. Devour them.”

“Yes, my King.”

It was how his family established a kingdom in a world where the human kingdom was in the mood to acknowledge different tribes as kingdoms. Word has it that a hero had come to the humans that would unite all the separate tribes with some peacekeeping power. Naturally, Shian thought such a thing was the stuff of dreams; instead was planning to make the journey to gauge the threat of this new being. But of course his strength brings so much attention the chatty little snakes couldn’t help sharing about the oddest thing.

“Did you? Did you hear?

“Yes! Yes, I did! So beautiful! A beautiful thing!”

“A naga youngling! A naga youngling and their human parent!” 

“What a sight! What a sight to behold.”

Granted this news was not delivered maliciously but that didn’t matter to Shian. As King of the Naga it was his duty to protect the clear separation of all humans and Nagas. History and biology spoke volumes—Nagas are the better creatures. Shian was more eager than anything to prove this, especially on the journey to observe eliminate the hero meant to unite them all. But of course, this changes when he meets you.

“Oh (Y/n)! I saved our dearest Nox from a wild boar and I saved the body for a hearty meal!!! Can’t I come inside now!”

“No!”

“Please!? Wouldn’t you like it if I didn’t break the window, this time?”

Since he’s met you everything has changed. Now that he’s discovered that his destined mate is a fiery little human he’s had no choice but to reconsider. Now he can adore your flaws as a human and admire your unique traits even more. His skepticism about other humans hasn’t completely gone away but he’s plenty more merciful now that he has you to woo. 

“HISSS State your name and business human!”

“-I-I- just wanted to deliver the fruits I always do sir!”

“Hmm my mate did mention something about their usual shipment….fine but thank your stars I’ve decided not to gorge myself on those eyes of yours.”

“Y-y-yes Sir!”

Not to mention you have an adorable little Naga son! Not that he finds Nox particularly cute on his own but it’s the words he parrots from you that make him a delight to be around. It’s a biological thing that Nagas interested in a mate aren’t fond of their children previous or otherwise. Even when they’re created together, there’s a strong chance that paternal love humans expect may never appear. But he’s found when he acts as though that’s what he’s doing you excuse more of his behavior.

“Now to strike with your tail you’ll have to shift your weight like this."

“Oh I see!”

“Yes…good job…”

“Are you looking back at the window, again?”

“Well of course I am! You said they were looking, right?!”

He does find that the more time he finds with Nox he doesn’t hate him. He’s sure if he was any other little snakeling in his kingdom he’d fully be invested but this is the snakeling in the way of attaining his mate’s complete attention. This is why it’s easier to blame him than accept you’re not very interested in giving him your attention anyway. It does annoy him that Nox isn’t unaware of this. The little narc snakeling is happy to string him along; baiting him with his praises to you to learn things from him.

“What?! I thought you weren’t watching the fight?!”

“I didn’t but the forest talks. So how do you move so fast across the forest like that?”

“Hmph that’s a secret. Family secret, actually.”

“Oh, that’s a shame…guess I ought to tell them you could never see us being a family.”

“What?! That’s not what I–”

“Guess I'll call out in one. Two. Thre–”

“Okay okay pay attention I’m only showing you once.”

“Yes!”

In the Naga King's heart of hearts he kind of really loves likes this domestic life with you two. It feels as though the whole world is right when he can spend all day following and pestering you as he learns more about you. But it won’t stay that way forever. And unfortunately, his entourage and advisors will find him. Reminding him of that pesky hero he has to eat meet. It’s simple to debate with his team about taking you with him or sending you back home to his newly constructed castle. Of course, he neglects to ask your opinion on the matter and must reap the consequences.

“My (Y/n)...why are all of my servants tied on the drying line?”

“They started moving my stuff. I thought I told you and your little buddies to stop touching my house.”

“ But how are we supposed to move you to my castle?”

“What?!”

“(Y/n)...please put down the knife!”

After talking you down committing his entire entourage to chores you wanted done he ordains that you should try accompanying him on his mission to the human kingdom. Leaving out the part about the hero he suggests that he leave some of his servants to tend to your home and babysit Nox. This is entirely so that he can convince you to come to his castle one day. Not just so he can enjoy some alone time with you. And while you’d like to refuse Nox thinks it’s awesome. When you aren’t chasing the Naga servants away they regard him with kindness and very giving. And it’s that same observation that has you kissing Nox goodbye as you depart for the human castle.

“Alright, Nox be good…try not to grow up too much while I’m gone.”

“Of course not…if you want I can send my shedded tail skin to you so you can ‘see me grow up. ”

“Nox don’t do that. That’ll be weird.”

“I thought so too but the others say it’s an endearing thing.”

It’s going to be hard, returning to civilization. Since you’ve been isekai’d you limited almost all of your interactions with other humans and now you were going to meet the protagonist. But you wouldn’t let your mind be completely occupied because you would be distracted by the obsessed Naga king.

Part 3: ....

[reignpage]

Frat Boy!Gojo

Madri Lager: drunk words

Contents: cursing, just a little conversation between them to set the mood and provide a backdrop for the next fic, not proofread

No fucking way. 

There’s just no fucking way. 

“Why the hell are you here?” You hiss. 

Gojo fucking Satoru strolled into your lecture hall, smug grin on his fuck ugly face, arms folded behind his head and swinging his legs like a maniac. From the doors at the front, he immediately spotted you all the way at the back, sat by your lonesome and you could see his shit-eating grin widen. The whites of his teeth blind you almost as much as his impossibly white hair.

Then, the freak had the audacity to climb the stairs, ignoring the whispering and the pointing, and sat next to you. Well, a seat down because you refused to move your bag, even fought with him a little when he tried to lift it. 

He shrugs, slinging an arm around the back of the chair between you, fingertips way too close to your shoulder, and black sunglasses hanging low on his nose bridge. “Was feeling bored so here I am.”

Counting to ten, you tried to put on a patient voice, like you’re berating a child, which you pretty much are, and you grit out, “Bored people take up hobbies. Bored people do things like puzzles and cooking and knitting. Bored people don’t crash lectures and bother other people.”

“I love when you lecture me on common knowledge, wifey. It really warms my heart.” To emphasise his stupid point, he presses a hand to his chest and fans his face with the other. “You’re just so smart.”

You slap his hand away when he tries to boop your nose. People are staring, turning their heads like owls as they strained to listen to your conversations. Some people are taking pictures, no doubt sending it to The Bulletin or whatever, because people have nothing better to do than gossip. You hate this attention; the pointing and whispering because of your appearance you’ve learnt to tolerate, but this? 

This is just irritating on a different level.

At least once a day, a cheerful stranger comes up to you and asks in bewilderment if you’re Gojo’s fiancee. In fact, they ask if you’re really, actually the future wife of Gojo Satoru like he’s some mythical being and you’re a frumpy little worm. Fuck them. And fuck him. 

“Go away, Gojo,” you roll your eyes, typing as much of the lecturer’s notes as you can, a little distracted by the peering eyes around you and the ones running over your clothes . 

He sighs and lifts the lace from your dress, rounding the neckline. You feel it tickle your neck, and you fight the urge to shudder. In disgust. With a forced melodramatic tone, he complains, “I’m bored. Entertain me.”

“Are you fucking twelve? Go watch a movie like a normal person.”

“Movies are boring,” he retorts as if it’s fact. 

You roll your eyes. “And what? I’m so much more interesting?” 

What a stupid question. You really shouldn’t have asked that because the serious expression on his face as he lifts one shoulder in a lazy shrug makes you blush. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. 

“Did you meet Suguru on the course or was he your piercer first?”

Still typing, you throw him a side glance, feeling suspicious of the sudden change in conversation. But it’s welcomed. “We met on the course. First year. We were in the same class. He’s a good guy.”

Gojo huffs as if he didn’t like your answer. 

The piercer’s actually a decent person; he was friendly, smart, and kind. He made long, boring classes feel shorter with his interesting insights and opinions, and he had such a great way of expressing them — he was the most eloquent male you’ve ever met. However, there was always something off about him, like an inner turmoil that neither you nor he could ever quite understand. 

It was when he absentmindedly said he was thinking of dropping out that you felt you knew him a little better. You both shared a long talk at the back of the Life Sciences building where your little stroll took you, him smoking and you listening to his mutterings. He spoke of this feeling of being out of place, which you understood better than anyone else, and how the traditional path didn’t suit him. He disappeared for a while, a couple months, and you thought your response might have spooked him. After all, no one ever really comes to you for advice. But when he reached out to offer you a free piercing as his first ever client at his newly opened studio, you realised maybe you are capable of dropping an odd pearl here and there. 

“Well, Suguru’s my bestie, so back off,” Gojo pouts.

From your peripheral, you see him eye the big lecture hall and you don’t really know what he’s thinking. It’s an odd realisation to think that Geto, the guy you’ve always kind of admired, is actually friends with this loser – the suggestion that there’s a redeeming quality to the frat guy is one that doesn’t suit you. 

Most times he’s easy to read; he wants fun and excitement and thrill. He does whatever’s convenient or interesting, a totally impulsive guy. But there are rare moments, emphasis on rare, where you think there might be something more going on in that huge head of his. Maybe there’s something deeper to him. A maturity and wisdom he’s yet to show. 

“Fuck, marry or kill,” he lifts three fingers, “Marx, Satre or Aristotle.”

Yeah, unlikely. 

“Gojo, seriously, go away,” you sigh, exasperated. Just five minutes with the guy and you’re already drained. And somehow, you’re expected to live a lifetime with the weirdo?

Satan strike you down. 

“Me personally, Satre’s cute but something about big, bushy beards really gets me going. So, it’ll have to be: kill Aristotle, no offence dude, fuck Satre, and marry Marx.”

Two girls in the row in front of you giggle. Your lips turn down in repulsion. 

“I’m not sure Marx would like either of us, Gojo,” you give him a pointed look. 

He laughs. It’s loud and sudden and he has to say sorry to the entire lecture when it echoes around the hall. Some people laugh at him, or with him, and the lecturer can only shake his head and carry on. This lecturer is strict and merciless when it comes to interruptions, but of course he doesn’t say a thing against the interloper. How could he when there’s a huge placard over the double doors of this building titled ‘From the Loving Hearts of The Gojo Charitable Foundation’?

A couple minutes pass in relative silence, just the tapping of fingers against keyboards and the droning of the professor filling the space, and you think maybe he’s fallen asleep or maybe he’s so bored that he’s actually thinking of leaving. 

Of course, neither of those things happen because the universe hates you. 

Gojo pokes your side with a pen. You writhe with a blush. 

“Oh, ticklish, are we? Very interesting.” He wiggles his brows like an idiot, and you fight the urge to land a punch there. “Our wedding night’s gonna be fun.”

“We’re not going to have one if you had it your way, remember?”

Leaning back in his seat, he taps the pen —where the hell did even get that? He wasn’t carrying a bag— against his chin, considering his words carefully. He shrugs again. “Well, seeing as everyone’s so set on it, I’ve decided to, you could say, open myself to the idea.”

You try to quell the spark of hope there, that maybe your family could be saved, that you’ll be saved. It’s not wise to let that spark fester into something more. 

Gojo’s impulsive. Fact. 

Gojo’s a thrill-seeker. Fact. 

Gojo is an unserious guy set in his bachelor ways. He cannot be relied upon. He cannot be trusted to keep his word.

All facts. 

It’s easy for him to be able to have the option to be ‘open’ to an idea, whereas it’s thrusted upon you without much say. He can wake up and make decisions solely based on his urges, but you have to be mindful of the family’s reputation, your father’s bad habits, your mother’s social conservative ways, and the fact that this is all your fault. 

“Gojo,” you turn, fixing him with a solemn expression, “don’t do that. Don’t lead me on. I may not want to marry you, but I do want to marry. I must. It’s important to me, so please don’t wave it around like it’s some pretty flag.”

There must be something in your eyes, a graveness or a sombre quality that makes his smile disappear. His brows furrow like he’s trying to understand, trying to piece things together but you’re turning away before he could see. 

Clearing his throat, he pokes you again. “Alright. How about this?”

You throw him a doubtful look, worried about what dumbassery is going to leave his mouth. 

“Go on a date with me.”

“No.”

“Hey! You said that way too quickly.”

Resuming your typing, you’re already trying to drown him out, focused on the history of pragmatic ethics instead of his humoured tone. He’s suggesting something ridiculous again. As if you’d go on a date with him. Him. The guy who’s been getting in the way, the one who’s been making your life difficult and family dinners awkward, and the one you certainly cannot trust to not set up some trap to humiliate you like in the movies. 

“I’m being serious. Let’s go on a date.” Seeing you open your mouth to argue back, he hurriedly adds, “This isn’t fair on me either, y’know? I’m supposed to marry a stranger, one who wears all black and looks like she’d haunt me — not a bad thing, I’m actually kinda into it, question mark? — but my point is, we don’t really know each other. So why don’t we go on a date? It’s a pretty brilliant idea, if I do say so myself.”

Biting the inside of your cheek, you mull it over. Sure, it makes sense, it would be good to get to know the freak you’re marrying or supposed to marry. This is how it should have been in the first place. Plus, your mother would certainly approve; she’d think this is a golden opportunity to secure him, to make him fall for you or whatever Mrs. Bennet thing she’s thinking of. 

However, as good as that idea is, you can’t just eagerly agree; there’s no guarantee this isn’t a trap. 

“You’re thinking this is a trap, aren’t you?” Your eyes meet his. He’s grinning ear to ear like he’s proud he guessed correctly. “Why don’t you plan the date, then? Set the time and place, that way there’s no way I could have rigged the environment with explosives or something.”

“No pig blood?”

Gojo smiles even brighter, and you have to squint to prevent losing your vision permanently. 

“No pig blood.”

[transmutationisms]

I love your takes, but I feel super, super lost with what you were trying to say about the natalism one. I feel like you're saying that there is no contradiction on wanting more babies, a higher population number and punishing mothers, but can you elaborate on that a bit more, because it does seems contradictory. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to understand it better.

alright there's a perennial debate (on here but also in a wider cultural sense) that goes on where people start noticing that some of the ways in which we socially and economically de/value children, parenthood, and specifically motherhood are internally contradictory. how can it be that there is immense social and economic pressure to heterosexually partner and reproduce, and yet most public and social infrastructure is also profoundly hostile to children and their guardians? why is it that this person couldn't find a doctor to perform a voluntary hysterectomy because their bodily preferences were subordinated to the medical valorisation of their fertility, and yet this other person was forcibly sterilised or coerced into using contraception because the prospect of them reproducing is framed as socially destabilising and degenerative? how are 'family values' touted by politicians who openly and explicitly also hate real existing families? do they want people to have more children or fewer? is it more counterculture and rebellious to have children or to not have children? to have sex or to not have sex? to partner off? to be polyam or monogamous?

the answer broadly speaking is that the oppositions people see here are only surface-level. the bourgeois state's interest is in biopower, and this produces competing demands: for some people to partner off and reproduce, and for others to be exterminated. the valorisation of the white middle-class nuclear family is the same as the devalorisation of its negations: racialised people, disabled people, family arrangements other than nuclear and heterosexual, etc. you can't understand the demand that people reproduce if you don't understand it is necessarily also accompanied by the demand that other people don't. these aren't actually contradictory once you understand that what the bourgeois state wants has nothing to do with your individual behaviours and everything to do with how many 'desirable' bodies it has at its disposal. that economic consideration is what creates both the natalist policy meant to encourage [some people's] reproduction, and the exterminatory policy meant to suppress and eradicate [other people's] reproduction.

usually this kind of conversation very quickly devolves into a privilege framework argument, where people are trying to find some kind of social hierarchy that is hegemonically applied top-down and that rewards, universally, certain behaviour choices over others. again, the "people who marry and reproduce are privileged and socially rewarded over me #childfree" versus "actually some people still have to fight tooth and nail to even get medical support / approval to have children, let alone actually get access to the kind of economic and social support necessary to raise them" debate. it's smoke and mirrors because there is no universal privileging of the choice to have children or not have children. what there is, is a privileging of certain people on the basis of the economic assessment of them as biological assets, and the inverse (and mutually constitutive) devaluations of everyone else. really over-discussed examples here but to give them anyway: this is why, for example, french natalist policy and the USA's constant efforts to strip back welfare-net policies in order to harm (primarily) black families are both arising from the same basic impulses of two imperialist nation-states. obviously there are different histories and contextual factors that have resulted in france and the US trying to skin the same cat in different ways. but what they share is an underlying interest in trying to shore up their population in both size and 'fitness', understood here in its full racialised and eugenic meaning.

[luveline]

could i request spencer x bombshell!reader where maybe spencer and the team meet reader’s ex boyfriend / a guy she used to be interested in and he’s sooo different from spencer so he assumes her flirting is a joke but really she never had a type until she met spencer n now she’s only into nerdy, sweater-vest wearing sweethearts <3

love ur work sm i only read spencer fics but i read all your characters bc the writing is so intoxicating !!

thank you for your request angel! <3 1k, fem

Spencer looks adorable today. You’re not sure if he knows, but that can be easily rectified. 

“Spencer Reid,” you say sternly. 

He’s immediately wide-eyed and sorry. “What?” he asks, pouting. 

“You have some explaining to do.” You glare, taking your compact from your pocket. You open it, check your appearance, fighting a huge smile as you flick the mirror on him accusingly. “So, what do you have to say for yourself?” 

“I don’t get it.” His eyes jump between the mirror and you. “Sorry?” 

“You should be sorry. Do you see how nice you look today?” He rolls his eyes. “Hey, don’t act like you don’t know what I mean.”

You and Spencer have known each other for years now, and you love him. You’d die for him easily in the field, and out of it too, but you’re not together and he’s bad at accepting compliments, so he shrugs you off like you’re only teasing him. 

“My handsome partner,” you say. Even if he isn’t your boyfriend, that’s your loophole. You and Spencer get paired for everything these days, because you’re best friends and Hotch has given up on separating you (though professionally there’s no need). “I could eat you.” 

“Still mildly threatening, then,” a voice says. 

You spin in your chair, shocked and a little horrified to find the last person you wanted to see here in Connecticut. “Cory!” you say, knowing he’ll believe you’re enthusiasm if nobody else. 

“Hi, beautiful. You weren’t gonna call me?” 

Your lips pop as you reply, “I was definitely going to, just as soon as we weren’t on the clock. How are you?” you ask, standing to receive the hug you know he’s going to give. 

Cory is… well, he’s gorgeous, though that hadn’t been why you had fun with him when you were here last. He’d seemed nice enough and plainly interested in you at the time, and you’d been sort of lonely, so really he was a necessity of the soul rather than a want. Plus, he was very rich. 

Gorgeous he may be, but Spencer Reid he is not. You don’t deny it to yourself —the genius behind you has completely changed your type, the kind of man you vy after, and if you’re honest, he’s the one for you. So hugging Cory and pretending you’re going to call him for drinks after the case is over isn’t easy. You lie rather than reject him.

“He seemed nice,” Spencer says in the awkward silence Cory leaves behind. 

“Sure!” you say, blowing out a hot breath. “Was I embarrassing myself? I didn’t expect to see him.” 

“You were the same as usual.” 

You tilt your head back as the door opens again, worried it’ll be Cory back for a last word. Emily smiles at you knowingly, a bag of takeout in hand. “God, did you see that?” she asks, eyebrows rising. “He was perfect.” 

“If you like the Greek god motif,” you joke. 

Spencer’s frowning at his files when you turn back to him. “Spence, what’s wrong?” you ask. 

“Mm? Nothing.”

“You sure?” you ask. 

He maintains that he’s okay as the rest of the team flood in for lunch. You pretend to believe him, not sure what you’ve done to upset him but willing to figure it out. You unwrap his food for him and place his plastic cutlery on a napkin as you know he prefers, sorting through the cup drinks to find his diet lemonade. “Here, handsome,” you say, touching his shoulder gently as you sit down next to him. 

He bristles. 

“Spencer?” you ask. 

He looks around the table. Hotch and Rossi are talking about something with shared smiles, while JJ and Morgan debate the case. Emily’s on her phone with a straw between her lips. They aren’t listening, and so he says, “It’s not a fitting nickname.” 

“What, handsome? That’s not a nickname, it’s a pet name, and it’s true. You’re one of the most handsome guys I’ve ever seen,” —you laugh and grab his elbow when he shakes his head— “are you kidding? Spencer, you could be a model. I’ve told you this a hundred times. You have amazing cheekbones, just dreamy, and your lips–”

“Oh, god, please don’t start,” he says, covering his face with both hands. He sounds like he’s smiling. “I shouldn’t have said anything.” 

Hotch shoots you a don’t tease look. You send him a vehement I’m not back, waiting for him to look away before you prod Spencer again. “You’re so cute, Spencer, you don’t get it.” 

“I don’t wanna be cute, cute isn’t your type–”

Your eyes flare. “What would you know about my type, Spencer? Is this– is this about Cory?” 

“Of course it is,” he says, face pink as he drops his hands. 

“Spencer, he is not my type.” 

“But you dated.”

“One date. And that was before I realised I liked dorks in sweater vests,” you say. You’re both acting like this is half a joke, a skit, in case you’re overheard, but you’re also both well aware that it’s serious and vulnerable and flustering to confess certain things right here and now. Too bad it has to be done. “I miss your glasses, babe, they really added to your charm.” 

Spencer shakes his head, picking up his styrofoam boxed lunch to ignore you. 

You sidle close to him, your pinky finger rubbing the slightest hint of his bare wrist. “Wanna get drinks with me tonight? I need a cover story in case Grecian Cory tracks me down. And, you know you get that really cute blush when you drink. What do you say?” 

“No,” he says with a smile, which means yes in this instance.

You kiss his cheek, giggling at the lipgloss left behind. “You’re my type, handsome.”

[adelheidvonschicksal]

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ It's Like That *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ

You decide to accept Itadori's invitation to the movies. It turns out better than expected.

Pairing: Itadori x GN!Reader

CW: Fluff, SFW, hand holding, potential friends to lovers, it's technically a date 💕

“Do you guys want to see Human Earthworm 4 with me?”

The three of you minus Itadori, who posed the question, share a lukewarm look. You’re on the edge of the shopping district, trying to decide what to do after your mission, if anything, and that’s the first idea that floats out amongst the group. 

“What’s it about?” Nobara asks.

After Itadori explains the horror romance, there’s even less enthusiasm amongst the group to watch the movie with him. Sensing this, he ups the bargain.

“I’ll pay.”

You wince when you see Fushiguro pull out his phone. “I don’t really have the energy to sit through a movie,” he excuses himself, fingers going a mile a minute to escape the situation of friendship for today. “I’m going home.”

Your broody classmate holds his ringing phone to his ear and briefly glances at Nobara.

“I’m going to hit up the shops," she responds to his silent question.

Megumi leaves the three of you behind in no time flat. Nobara only stays behind long enough to ask if you want to go shopping with her. While you normally love to go with her and are in dire need of new shoes, you notice a lonely sullen shadow building over your slit-cheeked classmate and throw up an apologetic smile to her. 

“I think I’ll go with Itadori-kun today.”

You miss the way his head perks up as you wave her off. Before you have a chance to collect your thoughts, Itadori is already on top of you, his fists drawn in front of him excitedly and chestnut irises filled with happy stars.

“You’re going to love it,” he tells you. It’s cute how he nearly shakes with excitement, you can even hear it growing in his voice and shining in his eyes. “It’s such a good series! I mean, I know it sounded weird, but it’s so much better on screen that— forget any of what I said, you gotta see for yourself!”

He wastes no time taking off in the direction of the theatre, and you jog to keep up with the speed of the Tiger of the West. It isn’t until he notices you lagging behind that he slows up to grab your hand and pull you with him.

“Come on, come on, we don’t want to miss the opening.”

“Is this one of those movies where I need to see the first three to know what’s going on?”

“Well, there’s a few returning characters, like Dr. Richter, but I can fill you in on the important stuff so don’t worry.”

When you get to the theatre, Itadori immediately jumps in the ticket line, huffing in relief when there are still seats available. You begin to pull out your wallet but pause when he hands you a pink paper ticket.

“I told you it’s on me,” he reminds you before going down the line and ordering a large popcorn, two drinks, and beating you to grab a packet of candy that you were staring at for two seconds too long. 

He hands the bag of sweets to the cashier to scan. “And this please,” he asks before handing the candy to you. 

“That’s okay,” you tell him, but he laughs it off.

“It’s fine. That’s your favorite, right?”

You shyly nod and hold onto the envelope of overpriced candy like it’s the most precious thing in the world causing the cashier to smile at you as she finishes preparing your items.

“Aren’t you two the cutest,” she comments. 

You squeak quietly at her comment, crumpling your candy in surprise. It’s not a big deal she mistook you as a couple, it’s not like Itadori was someone you didn’t like after all, and it’s not like there was any need to correct her but you didn’t know if he felt the same way about the situation. 

Curiously, you look at him, waiting for him to make the decision on the matter. Surprisingly, he blurts out a quick and happy, “Thanks!” before moving on to fill his drink.

As you watch him, you fight the urge to ask why he didn’t correct her; and when you notice that he’s way more interested in finding the right theater, you decide he must have said it because it wasn't worth a fuss.

The two of you get seats at the back of the theater, and you shift over people carefully to avoid falling into Itadori’s back as you find your seats. You can finally relax as he sets the bucket of popcorn on the armrest between you.

Soon enough, the movie begins to play.

It starts off like every normal horror movie. A mad scientist, a hapless victim, and an escape followed by a romantic subplot of the human earthworm discovering that the woman he met indeed loves him even if he is a worm. 

That’s about as much as you can keep up with. There are too many easter eggs that keep flying over your head and too many callbacks to the previous movies in the series. Itadori does his best to try to help you whenever you whisper questions at him; but eventually, you’re too distracted by the couple in front of you making out to pay attention to the movie.

It’s so obnoxiously grotesque, their arms wrapping around each other and a soft moan every so often that’s drowned out by the guttural sounds of the earthworm children. You can’t really believe they’d do that in public, and why did they have to be so close to you out of all people?

Itadori looks at you and then finally catches on to what’s making you squirm. When he does, a faint hint of red starts to coat across his nose, and he becomes equally uncomfortable. 

Deciding to make it a little better for the both of you, you nudge him then make a silly disgusted face with your tongue stuck out to mimic a gag. You’re rewarded with a snicker from him and his own silly face in turn, and it makes the awkwardness of it a little easier to take as you try to focus back on the movie.

It’s another half hour in before you wonder exactly how the hell are they still going at it. 

“Society really needs to bring shame back,” you think before a warm breath hits your ear and fans down your jaw. 

You nearly jump before the smooth sounds of Itadori’s voice greet you. 

“So, that guy—” he begins but you’re way too focused on how close he leaned into you this time, how low the timbre of his voice goes to keep from disturbing those around you. It makes your feet curl in your shoes and your breath catch in your chest when his shoulder connects with your arm.

You feel heightened to his presence and the heat of him so close. It wasn’t like this earlier, but your heart is racing and your skin tickles the more he whispers. You think he’s so close that he could almost kiss your earlobe. 

It’s a path that you didn’t know you had in your mind, and it leaves you rattled as the smallest brush of pink hair hits your skin as he straightens back up and reaches for another handful of popcorn. 

Every time he touches your arm after to get your attention or your hand scoops by his in the popcorn bucket, you start to become flustered and jittery like a child after too much sugar. 

It lasts until the movie reaches its apex.

There’s a combined scream that fills the theatre, and you tense at the splatter of blood hitting the camera, leaving the few remains of your popcorn scattered across the floor as you unwittingly knock it over and squeeze Itadori’s hand tight. 

Your fingers slot with his and your fingertips bury against his palm, and it’s the only thing keeping you from bursting into a scream. 

When the lights flash back on, you notice how pink his hand looks under your tense hold and mumble out an apology. 

“Oh, that?” he asks followed by the same charming laugh as always. “It was pretty funny. You should’ve seen your face, like a blowfish,” he comments, teasingly mocking your blow-eyed expression as everyone around you begins to exit. “I never took you for a scaredy-cat.”

“You’re one to talk. You screamed in my ear at least a dozen times,” you remind him as the two of you also make your way towards the exit doors. “Sounded like you were on fire.”

“Don’t say fire in a theatre!” he scolds with a hiss.

“You said it louder.”

“To remind you not to say it!” 

You giggle at how offended he sounds as you break out into the light of the late afternoon. You walk with Itadori back to your pickup spot on the edge of the shopping district. It’s surprisingly quiet especially considering who you’re with, and it makes you worry a bit. 

You thought Itadori would be more excited after watching the film and practically forcing you to run 500m dash to get there, but he’s barely said two words about it since leaving the theatre, briefly mentioning how he’s still glad they used a real costume for the main earthworm instead of CGI.

But since leaving, his mood seems to have dampened. You thought about bringing something up from the movie, but you couldn’t really catch more than a few bloody scenes and a little evil monologuing from Dr. Richter outside the moments when Itadori would have your attention, with his voice in your ear or his hand excitedly clasping around your wrist each time he enthusiastically info-dumped a scene to you.

“Hey, um,” he begins piquing your interest. He seems to lose his nerve when you catch his eye; his gaze flutters to his feet before nervously picking back up to glimpse at your face but only for a few seconds. “Thanks for coming with me.”

You smile. “Don’t mention it. It was…different.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees but he still seems down. 

“Itadori-kun? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah…It’s just…I could tell you didn’t really like the movie. I mean I knew from the start it wasn’t really your thing. You and Nobara usually like to shop together more than watch horror movies. But still—” he breathes in deep, a shy color blossoming across his face. “It’s been a while since it felt like I did something normal, so it was really nice having someone to come with me. I appreciate it.”

There's something about his explanation that makes your heart hurt. He hasn’t been a sorcerer that long yet; and coming from being a normal kid to the world you were born into was probably scarier than you all could understand. 

“It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it! I just couldn’t really follow the story between that annoying couple smacking the whole time, and I felt like I barely follow anything at all!” you reason with him, but he still has that kicked puppy look on his face. 

You sigh with soft empathy before offering him a reassuring smile.

“Hey, Itadori-kun, you know I think I’d like to come back and see it again with you. After we watch the first three movies of course."

He gives you a curious look, his eyebrows raised with disbelief. 

“Really?”

You give a cute and short nod. “Mhm! I can’t really give it a fair chance if I haven’t seen the ones leading up to it. Besides, I want to know why Dr. Richter was trying to kidnap the baby H.E.s in the first place? Couldn’t he make more Enhanced H.E.s from the DNA left from the original experiment victim like he did at the beginning of the movie?” 

It’s like you open the skies back over him when your words sink in, and he moves so happily, speaks so fully, and it makes you happy to see him simply be happy. 

“They explain it so good in the third movie,” he says, unable to hold in his excitement. “I know a great site, it has subtitles and everything, and a special director’s cut at the end of the second movie.”

You laugh. “Sounds good!”

“We should pick up some more snacks; the original is actually pretty long,” he warns and starts to lead you towards the convenience store. Your smile only breaks when you feel the tug on your arm and look down to notice his hand still fastened around yours. 

You freeze, feeling your face warm a bit when you realize he’s probably been holding it since before you left the theater. This makes him pause and turn towards you.

Softly, he calls your name and asks if you’re okay, making you drop your head bashfully.

“Oh, it’s nothing really but you’re still holding my hand,” you point out.

Itadori looks down between the two of you and confirms that his fingers are still locked with yours, a comfortable fit.  

“Huh, oh, I guess I am,” he states matter-of-factly before he blushes. “Oh, it’s probably all gross and oily right? Yuck.”

You shake your head. “No, it’s not actually,” you correct, making no move to force him to let go because you honestly don’t want him to stop this good feeling pouring from him into you through the simple act. 

Your soft expression makes his cheeks warm for a different reason this time. 

“Oh, well, w-we should probably hurry,” he stammers out, and your hand tightens around his hand just a little bit more as you agree and find the closest convenience store to prepare for your first movie night. 

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ

Nobara stops outside the convenience store, hand to the glass as she stalks back and forth, trying to catch glimpses down the aisle. 

She could have sworn she just saw the two of you walk in from the other side of the street, and she was going to come to say hi – partially to ask how the movie went and partially to make Itadori carry her shopping bags if the two of you were done – that was before she noticed how close the two of you looked.

Weirdly close. 

When she finally catches you in the foggy glass, hand in hand, looking at the mini gacha inside the store, she gasps and quickly shuffles her bags around in search of her phone. 

Kugisaki quickly scrolls through her contacts, impatiently tapping her foot as she waited for the line to pick up.

“Fushiguro get here quick,” she harshly whispers into the device.

There’s a lazy voice on the other end asking what she wants, and she vaguely explains the situation to be met with resistance.

“Well then have Ijichi drop you off again! What do you mean ‘No’?" she growls. "Shut up and listen to me. They just went into 7/11. Ugh. Fine, fine, I’m sending you some pictures,” she argues. 

Kugisaki quickly starts to snap some pictures through the glass and frantically sends them off before bringing the phone back to her ear.

“That’s what I’m saying so hurry up and get here! Yes, it’s like that!” 

[hairmetal666]

It's 3am. It's pouring down rain. Steve's soaked to the skin, been wandering the city for most of the night, hasn't slept in almost 24 hours, thinks maybe he's on the brink of delirium, and then a truck hits a pool of ponded water, sending a muddy wave cascading over him.

He just wants to go home but Dustin lost his dog and he can't leave a puppy out in this weather.

Steve steps off the curb, and what looks like a shallow puddle turns out to be a water-filled hole. He crashes towards the pavement, nothing he can do to stop it. As fast he's falling, he's miraculously not, arms wrapped around his waist. It takes a second for his brain to catch up, to understand that he's being held upright in an old-fashioned, romantic dip.

"Careful, sweetheart," a deep and smoke raspy voice says from above him.

it sends chills down his spine, the good kind, and warmth slips through him. His rescuer is a solid 10 knockout. Long, curly hair; eyeliner; decked out in leather and studs and chains. He smells like booze and cigarettes and weed, and it's intoxicating. Steve has to fight the instinct to nuzzle the guy's leather jacket. He's beautiful, holds Steve with the swagger only a guy with rings on every finger could pull off.

And Steve is a mud soaked mess in sweatpants and a threadbare Hawkins High tee. But the guy holding him isn't letting go. He stares down at Steve, brown eyes wide.

"Steve!" A voice calls over the patter of the rain.

"Dustin?" He says at the same time that the man holding him says, "Henderson?"

"Eddie?" Dustin asks.

"Wait, dnd Eddie?" Steve gets his feet under him, but Eddie's arms don't drop.

"You're the famous babysitter Steve I've been hearing all about?"

They gape at each other until Dustin reaches them.

"What are you still doing out here?" Dustin shouts. "We found Dart hours ago."

"Dustin!" He thinks he might cry. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"You weren't answering your walkie!"

"Fuck." Steve drops his face to his hand. The walkie. Which is on the table by the front door where he and Robin leave their keys.

Steve swallows his frustration, the misery of waterlogged shoes, having to be up to open the store in a few hours, meeting the hottest guy he's ever seen when he looks like a drowned rat.

"I promised I'd find Dart, didn't I? Now what the hell are you doing out so late?"

"Mom and I were looking for you!"

"Let's get you back to the car, man, okay?" Steve says to Dustin. He wants to end this weird, terrible, embarrassing night before it gets even more humiliating.

"I can give you a ride home," Eddie says. He's got this weird, intense look on his face, staring at Steve.

"I'm only a few blocks away. I'll be fine. C'mon, Henderson."

"Oh, I can walk him. You head home."

He nods, starts towards his apartment, but turns back just in time to see Eddie and Dustin share a look he can't parse.

---

A few days later, Dustin's following him around at work, chattering about dnd as Steve shelves books, and without taking a breath during a soliloquy about owl bears, says, "Eddie's running a one-shot for us next week. You should come! It's a great way to get into the game."

"I'm not playing dnd," Steve answers. He slides a book onto the shelf. "I've told you this."

"Yeah, but you liked Eddie, right? He'd help you out!"

Steve squints at the kid. "I didn't really meet Eddie to know. Anyway, I'm sure he doesn't want a newbie crashing."

Steve is pretty sure Eddie doesn't like him, based on their short introduction, so he's not interested in forcing himself into the guy's dnd club. The night they met was humiliating enough, Steve in all his dorky glory.

"No, he totally wouldn't care. C'mon, Steve!"

"No can do." He ruffles Dustin's hair as he walks away.

He thinks that'll be the end of it, but every few days, for weeks Dustin and all the rest of the kids stop at the store to beg him to join their dnd club.

---

Steve is working the register and he hears the shuffling clank of a customer, looks up and finds Eddie. He's staring at Steve with that same look from the night they met, intense and piercing, cutting straight through the heart of him. He feels himself start to blush.

The first thing out of Eddie's mouth is, "Wait, this is your store?"

"Yeah?" Steve asks. "Is that--is that weird?"

"No! Not at all. It's a good store. Cute." His nose wrinkles when he says it and Steve's blush grows hotter. He knew Eddie thought he was a dork.

"Cute. Yeah. Right. Can I help you with something?"

Eddie rocks back on his heels, hands going to the pockets of his leather jacket, sending his chains jingling. "Oh, so, actually I wanted to see if you were busy?"

"Yeah, man. I'm busy." He laughs, doesn't intend to be mean about it, but he and Robin only opened the store six months ago and both take night classes at the local community college. Plus, everything he does with the kids.

Eddie's face flushes bright. "Oh, sure, of course. Yeah, I--I'll see you around."

The door thunks to a close behind him, and a voice immediately pops up to ask, "What the hell was that?"

He turns to find Max Mayfield hands on hips, glaring up at him, Robin close behind.

"Shouldn't you be in school?"

Max rolls her eyes and strides up to the counter. "Why were you an asshole to Eddie?"

"He started it!"

"I highly doubt that."

"Okay, Ms. Know-it-all, why don't you tell me what happened?"

"I know for a fact that Eddie came in today to ask you out. So, tell me, Steve Harrington, why he rushed out of here looking like a kicked puppy?"

"What?" He yelps. "Eddie doesn't even like me!"

She glares. "Doesn't like you? He's been pathetic about you since you met."

He gapes at Robin. "Don't look at me," she shrugs. "But that guy was definitely here to ask you out."

"Fix it." Max commands as she stomps out the door. "He bar tends at that metal place on 68th."

---

It's just after 9pm and he's at the metal bar on 68th, decidedly out of place in the yellow t-shirt and jeans he wore to his business accounting class.

It's fairly busy for a weeknight, but Eddie's not hard to find. He's obviously in his element, bobbing his head to a song Steve's never heard as he mixes a drink.

With a hard swallow and a healthy dose of humility, he walks up to the bar.

"Be right--" Eddie starts, balking when he notices Steve.

"Can we talk?" he shouts over the music.

Eddie's eyes widen a little, but he nods, slips out from behind the bar to guide him to an employee exit.

"What's up, Steve?" Eddie asks. His hands are in his pockets, shoulders bowed in.

"I wanted to apologize."

"What for?"

"Earlier, I--when you said the store was cute I thought you were making fun of me."

"But--why?"

"I thought you didn't like me." Steve cringes at the admission.

"What?" He laughs.

"I don't know. We met in the middle of the night and I was covered in mud looking for a dog that wasn't lost anymore."

"Steve. Holy shit." Eddie shakes his head. "You looked gorgeous that night. The way your clothes were sticking--you know what? Never mind. Did you think I wanted you to come to dnd because I hated you?"

"You wanted me to come?"

"Dustin didn't..."

"No! And he's been asking me to play dnd weekly for the past five years."

"Jesus Christ," Eddie slumps agains the brick wall at his back. "No wonder you turned me down today."

"To be fair," Steve slumps next to him. "If I had realized you were asking me out, I wouldn't have turned you down."

"No?" Eddie asks. His brown eyes gleam.

"Definitely not. I've had a crush on you since that night. Sort of devastating since I thought you didn't like me." Steve runs his hand through his hair, watches Eddie track the movement.

"The store is cute, Steve. I--uh--I've been a few times. Back before I knew you were the owner! I just kept seeing a hot employee with great hair and a perfect ass, and the vaguely mean lesbian barista gives me free drinks."

"That's Robin," Steve says. He's smiling so hard.

"I know that now," Eddie smiles back. "Sorry for being an idiot."

"Me too." Steve nods. "Do you--could I still come to dnd? Or take you out sometime?"

"Why not both?" Dimples pop on Eddie's cheeks, and Steve's heart flips.

"I like both." They're still against the wall, but drifting into each other's space.

"So Dustin said."

It surprises a laugh out of Steve. "I'm gonna kill him."

"Too bad. He's a nice kid."

"Eh, we've got six more to choose from."

"I have a few more hours here, but there's a diner down the street that does some of the most mediocre pancakes I've ever tasted. Meet me there? Around 2?"

"A thousand lost puppies wouldn't make me miss it."

The next time Steve is out at 3am he's pressed against a building, Eddie kissing him so thoroughly he knows he's never recovering from this one.

[rollingeevee]

How would it play out if two or more beasts wanted to mark the reader as their own? Would they fight? Or would they be content to share?

(Preferable with silent salt in it but not that’s ok)

I feel it would depend on the Beasts. With certain Beasts (like Mystic Flour and Silent Salt), they would probably be able to work out a way to share, such as rotating who the darling stays with and arranging visits. For the others though, they’ll probably fight it out and the winner will then keep the darling on a tight leash to prevent thievery by their challenger. On that note, Mystic Flour and Silent Salt would only be willing to work with each other, as neither trust the other three Beasts to fully respect all rules that a share pact might set in place, which would inevitably lead to a fight and possibly the death of their darling.

When two or more Beasts realize they’re after the same cookie, it’s typically a race on who gets to them first. Each and every Beast will use each and every tactic they have in their arsenal to ensure they get to place their claim first and take the desired cookie for themselves.

Shadow Milk will use illusions and trickery and the help of Candy Apple and Black Sapphire (and Truthless Recluse if he has him at that time) to get to you first.

Mystic Flour will coat the paths the other Beasts might take in her flour fogs, making it harder for them to navigate, while possibly also using them to guide you to her.

Burning Spice has the entire Spice Swarm on the hunt for you, and they will be handsomely rewarded if they can get you to him before the other Beasts get to you.

I can’t say much about Eternal Sugar and Silent Salt atm since we know little of their abilities, but neither will give up without a fight.

If two or more Beasts who desire you reach you at the same time, a battle will typically ensue. If it’s just the Beasts present who show interest, they will ensure you cannot leave until the victor has claimed you. However! If multiple Beasts have shown interest but not all are present… the stakes are higher. As said previously, each Beast will use just about any tactic they can to get their hands on you before the other Beasts. Should… say three Beasts show an interest but only two are present, the third could take you while the other two are occupied duking it out. This puts each of them on high alert so their prize cannot be snatched right out from under their nose.

Not only that, but considering it’s Beast against Beast, nothing is held back. The ground shakes and the sky quakes endlessly until there is a clear victor. And once that victor has claimed their prize, they guard it heavily. No Beast is above entering another’s domain in order to try for a rematch if they’re dead set on the cookie they lost out on. Any darling in this situation has marginally less freedom than a darling the Beast didn’t have to fight for. They are with you at all times to make sure you stay theirs because their fellow Beasts are the only few they see as potential threats. Hell, the Beasts ease up eventually after stealing you back from an Ancient. But with another Beast? You will never have any leeway, because every shadow, every snapping twig, every distant growl could be the challenger Beast, looking to steal what they lost.

[togglesbloggle]

For the Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme, Lamarckism!

(This is an excellent ask.)

Lamarck got done a bit dirty by the textbooks, as one so often is. He's billed as the guy who articulated an evolutionary theory of inherited characteristics, inevitably set up as an opponent made of straw for Darwin to knock down. The example I recall my own teachers using in grade school was the idea that a giraffe would strain to reach the highest branches of a tree, and as a result, its offspring would be born with slightly longer necks. Ha-ha-ha, isn't-that-silly, isn't natural selection so much more sensible?

But the thing is, this wasn't his idea, not even close. People have been running with ideas like that since antiquity at least. What Lamarck did was to systematize that claim, in the context of a wider and much more interesting theory.

Lamarck was born in to an era where natural philosophy was slowly giving way to Baconian science in the modern sense- that strange, eighteenth century, the one caught in an uneasy tension between Newton the alchemist and Darwin the naturalist. This is the century of Ben Franklin and his key and his kite, and the awed discovery that this "electricity" business was somehow involved in living organisms- the discovery that paved the way for Shelley's Frankenstein. This was the era when alchemy was fighting its last desperate battles with chemistry, when the division between 'organic' and 'inorganic' chemistry was fundamental- the first synthesis of organic molecules in the laboratory wouldn't occur until 1828, the year before Lamarck's death. We do not have atoms, not yet. Mendel and genetics are still more than a century away; we won't even have cells for another half-century or more.

Lamarck stepped in to that strange moment. I don't think he was a bold revolutionary, really, or had much interest in being one. He was profoundly interested in the structure and relationships between species, and when we're not using him as a punching bag in grade schools, some people manage to remember that he was a banging good taxonomist, and made real progress in the classification of invertebrates. He started life believing in the total immutability of species, but later was convinced that evolution really was occurring- not because somebody taught him in the classroom, or because it was the accepted wisdom of the time, but through deep, continued exposure to nature itself. He was convinced by the evidence of his senses.

(Mostly snails.)

His problem was complexity. When he'd been working as a botanist, he had this neat little idea to order organisms by complexity, starting with the grubbiest, saddest little seaweed or fern, up through lovely flowering plants. This was not an evolutionary theory, just an organizing structure; essentially, just a sort of museum display. But when he was asked to do the same thing with invertebrates, he realized rather quickly that this task had problems. A linear sorting from simple to complex seemed embarrassingly artificial, because it elided too many different kinds of complexity, and ignored obvious similarities and shared characteristics.

When he went back to the drawing board, he found better organizing schema; you'd recognize them today. There were hierarchies, nested identities. Simple forms with only basic, shared anatomical patterns, each functioning as a sort of superset implying more complex groups within it, defined additively by the addition of new organs or structures in the body. He'd made a taxonomic tree.

Even more shockingly, he realized something deep and true in what he was looking at: this wasn't just an abstract mapping of invertebrates to a conceptual diagram of their structures. This was a map in time. Complexities in invertebrates- in all organisms!- must have been accumulating in simpler forms, such that the most complicated organisms were also the youngest.

This is the essential revolution of Lamarckian evolution, not the inherited characteristics thing. His theory, in its full accounting, is actually quite elaborate. Summarized slightly less badly than it is in your grade school classroom (though still pretty badly, I'm by no means an expert on this stuff), it looks something like this:

As we all know, animals and plants are sometimes generated ex nihilo in different places, like maggots spontaneously appearing in middens. However, the spontaneous generation of life is much weaker than we have supposed; it can only result in the most basic, simple organisms (e.g. polyps). All the dizzying complexity we see in the world around us must have happened iteratively, in a sequence over time that operated on inheritance between one organism and its descendants.

As we all know, living things are dynamic in relation to inorganic matter, and this vital power includes an occasional tendency to gain in complexity. However, this tendency is not a spiritual or supernatural effect; it's a function of natural, material processes working over time. Probably this has something to do with fluids such as 'heat' and 'electricity' which are known to concentrate in living tissues. When features appear spontaneously in an organism, that should be understood as an intrinsic propensity of the organism itself, rather than being caused by the environment or by a divine entity. There is a specific, definite, and historically contingent pattern in which new features can appear in existing organisms.

As we all know, using different tissue groups more causes them to be expressed more in your descendants, and disuse weakens them in the same way. However, this is not a major feature in the development of new organic complexity, since it could only move 'laterally' on the complexity ladder and will never create new organs or tissue groups. At most, you might see lineages move from ape-like to human-like or vice versa, or between different types of birds or something; it's an adaptive tendency that helps organisms thrive in different environments. In species will less sophisticated neural systems, this will be even less flexible, because they can't supplement it with willpower the way that complex vertebrates can.

Lamarck isn't messing around here; this is a real, genuinely interesting model of the world. And what I think I'm prepared to argue here is that Lamarck's biggest errors aren't his. He has his own blind spots and mistakes, certainly. The focus on complexity is... fraught, at a minimum. But again and again, what really bites him in the ass is just his failure to break with his inherited assumptions enough. The parts of this that are actually Lamarckian, that is, are the ideas of Lamarck, are very clearly groping towards a recognizable kind of proto-evolutionary theory.

What makes Lamarck a punching bag in grade-school classes today is the same thing that made it interesting; it's that it was the best and most scientific explanation of biological complexity available at the time. It was the theory to beat, the one that had edged out all the other competitors and emerged as the most useful framework of the era. And precisely none of that complexity makes it in to our textbooks; they use "Lamarckianism" to refer to arguments made by freaking Aristotle, and which Lamarck himself accepted but de-emphasized as subordinate processes. What's even worse, Darwin didn't reject this mechanism either. Darwin was totally on board with the idea as a possible adaptive tendency; he just didn't particularly need it for his theory.

Lamarck had nothing. Not genetics, not chromosomes, not cells, not atomic theory. Geology was a hot new thing! Heat was a liquid! What Lamarck had was snails. And on the basis of snails, Lamarck deduced a profound theory of complexity emerging over time, of the biosphere as a(n al)chemical process rather than a divine pageant, of gradual adaptation punctuated by rapid innovation. That's incredible.

There's a lot of falsehood in the Lamarckian theory of evolution, and it never managed to entirely throw off the sloppy magical thinking of what came before. But his achievement was to approach biology and taxonomy with a profound scientific curiosity, and to improve and clarify our thinking about those subjects so dramatically that a theory of biology could finally, triumphantly, be proven wrong. Lamarck is falsifiable. That is a victory of the highest order.

[nobody-nexus]

Episode 4 Talk: Ragatha

LOOK I know this is the Gangle episode (And yes I WILL give my own thoughts and feelings on her later because there's SO much to unpack with Gangle) but I wanna share my thoughts on Ragatha and what it shows about her character since the next episode is all about her.

I think Ragatha was honestly a highlight of her character just not in the typical sense. The reason is because the way she showed flaws in her character was unique and not how most flaws are shown. The stupid sauce making her honest is very interesting to me, but I also think a lot of people won't fully understand what this means

So- let's start with this over analysis on this character and why she's still honestly my favorite in the series

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

First of all, there's no doubt that the stadium teaser is the Ragatha episode. She is literally teaching Gangle how to throw a ball. It's something she knows about well, and it'll make sense for that to be where we see her the most. Of COURSE she's gonna love a teamwork-based game, but similar to this episode, it's probably gonna boomerang back into something horrible

But then there's after Gangle's mask is broken. After checking if Gangle's okay (sort of, she didn't exactly try) she instantly attacks Jax and they start to fight

Considering a line later in the episode that she said that I'll talk about later on in this essay, I think this does make sense for her character. She seems to have a short tempter with specifically Jax, so she's more likely to turn on him. I think this is due to how he behaves in general, so them always being at each other's throats is probably a very common thing

Them arguing as well gives off (personally) sibling or roommate energy, which I kinda appreciate

After a bit though, we get to the REAL meat of the analysis (pun intended tee hee) which is... the stupid sauce

First of all: I do kinda feel bad for Ragatha. She honestly would've been a fine employee (maybe overworked like Jax?), but the stupid sauce getting into her eye was 100% accidental. Meaning from here on out, we know Ragatha is not completely in character, and against her will at that point

But also the creepy scene out of nowhere makes me think that maybe this stupid sauce isn't the best thing to have....

(although on a funny unrelated note, her reaction makes me think she's a bit of a monster fucker. Hehe, Ragatha x Gangle go brrr)

After a bit of funnier shenanigans, and the Gummigoo thing, we get to the first bits of these impulsive honest thoughts

I think that how these "honest thoughts" work is that they're not like her ACTUAL thoughts, but instead it's what she's thinking at that exact moment. She's going off on exactly what she's thinking and just speaking without foresight. This is the first line that I think implies this, especially with the "I wish someone flirted with me" line

She's not exactly jealous. She's just- saying what comes to her mind. And at this moment, its mild annoyance turning into being upset that she doesn't get that same treatment. Like the "Why isn't that me, why not I get that treatment?" impulsive thought

After some more funny, and a very creepy scene that I swear to GOD is a Get Out reference, we get to another part that for me proves that "Impulsive Honesty" idea for Ragatha. She's TRYING to work, but just- kinda can't cause she's all slouchy and all that, to which Zooble gets annoyed

And then Ragatha calls her a "grouch"

She only says this because Zooble's complaining that she's not doing anything. And Ragatha, having impulsive honesty, just complains back only to say something that makes herself laugh

It's just what she's thinking at the moment

And then here's the part where I think a lot of people aren't going to get this right: The Ragatha and Gangle conversation

This scene is VERY important to me. Specifically, with what it shares about Ragatha. First of all, we get LORE-??? She HAD HORSES AT SOME POINT???

And then we get two lines that I can say as someone who has actually recently been so sick while on their period that I had zero filter in the slightest are 100% impulsive honesty

First, we have the "I'm more responsible than you" line. First of all, she's not. She REALLY fucking isn't. She's all bark and no bite she does NOT have the mature attitude it takes to being a manager despite being older. In fact, it's funny she says this because of the fact that she's the ONLY character working under Gangle that's older

She's been in the circus for a while, and that means she also didn't mature from her mindset from whenever she joined in, which I do think it'd be rather young considering Kinger's age

So this "I'm responsible because I'm older" mindset is certainly on the table for why she said this. Probably because she was taught this mindset when growing up

She would NEVER think this is sober I believe though. Again. IMPULSIVE HONESTY. What was on her mind AT THAT EXACT MOMENT

(Also side note: Gangle still clearly cares about Ragatha in this scene, and I think she knows she'd be a bad manager due to her own struggles and flaws)

Of course after the HONESTLY AMAZING RAGGEDY ANDY REFERENCE we get the scene I feel that's gonna make people misunderstand her the most... THIS SCENE.

This whole scene is so interesting about how Ragatha's impulsive honesty works. Because let's be honest... We've ALL had these thoughts. Like em or not, we all have thoughts like this where you find people you care about annoying or undesirable. You never WANT to have them or say them aloud, but you have those thoughts

The difference? Ragatha has no filter. She doesn't know HOW to shut up at this point and time, so she says something she didn't MEAN to say out loud. And the line she says AFTER confirms this:

SHE DOESN'T REALIZE WHAT SHE SAID WAS EVEN MEAN

Yes, it was mean, I can't deny that- but what I'm saying is that there's a lot of thoughts that go through your head every moment of every day, and not every thought you have is desirable

That's the case here. Ragatha, with no filter, WILL say mean things that she'll NEVER say sober. But I find that her even having these thoughts is a bit of foreshadowing for the future. Perhaps she'll either be more likely to hide how she feels more or be more accepting of them after her episode. Guess we'll have to wait and see for that

EDIT: THANK YOU TO @kingzombear for their post because THIS IS ALSO VERY IMPORTANT TO ADD- the way Ragatha words what she says is something to also take into consideration. While Jax straight up says he likes her better when sad, Ragatha's mention of the happy mask makes this important as well

Notice: It's "Happy Mask" and NOT "Comedy Mask". Both the concept art Goose has posted on Twitter AND how even Gangle doesn't call this mask Zooble gave her a comedy mask, but instead it's referred to AS a happy mask

Now knowing what this mask is specifically called, we now know that even though what Ragatha said SPECIFICALLY was hurtful, that was NOT the intention. Sure, words will still hurt that's a given- but let's think about it more like this:

Ragatha doesn't like Gangle's masking. She likes her when she's being her authentic self and even while basically drunk, she can tell this is NOT Gangle. But also it shows her own flaws because Ragatha is also being a hypocrite

She herself masks her true thoughts and feelings for some people (as will be discussed in a moment), but that also means she can tell when a smile is fake. Because she has a faker smile overall. This mixed with impulsive blunt honesty leads to a line that I think even Gangle didn't understand considering her reaction was to begin to spiral into a mental breakdown

The power of wording can make any context for a scene THAT MUCH DIFFERENT so again thanks for @kingzombear for pointing this out cause this is ALSO really good to understand Ragatha as a character even more- especially her flaws

But of course, that's not the last thing, because I just mentioned the hiding true thoughts and feelings:

The last scene that's important gives us full context of what it's like to BE a people pleaser. When Jax and Ragatha interact while she's on the floor. Although more impulsive honesty, in this case it's her realizing her tendencies. Her people pleaser ways

This is her just sort of- realizing she had a weird mindset but doesn't have the right word for it- which I find neat. Not as groundbreaking in my opinion since I always felt she sorta hated Jax with how explosive she usually is with him and all, but her admitting it, even in such a state, is kinda refreshing to hear

Anyway that's my essay over. I hope this can give some new thoughts on Ragatha as a character! She's my favorite for a reason, and I want people to see how fleshed out she really is!

See you another time. Probably with some art too ^^

[notafunkiller]

Bucky Barnes is the best super soldier

How it was subtly emphasized in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier:

He always holds back

With the Flag Smashers and even with John Walker. We could see the difference in the last 3 episodes. Sebastian Stan did an incredible job making it clear in a subtle way.

I want to mention that famous "Stay there" scene, and how it was visible Bucky was not punching as hard as he can in the fight with John.)

This is the thing about Bucky, he isn't after the kill, he just does his part. He doesn't try to show off his skills or that he is a good guy. He doesn't try to play the victim role, either. In the scene where Zemo fake-activates the Winter Soldier in Madripoor, he just makes a point. He's obviously not even trying hard.

If he wanted those in the club dead, they would be. But his self control was wow. Sebastian acted so well, his exes said everything.

*And to be honest, even when he was TWS, he could have killed everyone, but he didn't. He could have killed all of the Avengers in Civil War is they were his mission, but they weren't. This is how Natasha survived when she met him, too. It depended on what kind of mission he had (if he wasn't allowed to be seen, then the witnesses would die too, but otherwise? He didn't bother).

2. His skills

People tend to forget how smart and good at making strategies Bucky is. He's been fighting (even though he hates fighting and never wanted to be in the army) for years before he was even captured by Hydra. And this is the reason why government still want him, after all. They can use his strategies as a leader (*cough* Thunderbolts *cough*).

In the last episodes of TFATWS, we could see how he outsmarted everyone. Karli was so terrified of him.

3. Karli Morgenthau

And talking about Karli, the phone call was interesting:

She asked him if he's not tired of fighting for the wrong side, and then told him she's fighting for something bigger than herself.

"And with all the bodies you've collected, have you ever been able to say the same?"

The first thing I wanna point out is how everyone talks about the deaths Bucky caused when he was controlled by Hydra, but everyone ignores the fact that all the Avengers killed far more, but since we consider them the good side, we just don't care.

Clint, Tony, Steve, Wanda etc. They all cause(d) far more deaths than "two dozen" (known assassinations - to quote Natasha), and neither was controlled. The double standards are something else, especially for Clint. (One of the reasons why Tony was on the other side in CW was because of his guilt, after all.)

The second point is how Bucky's answer says a lot more than we might realize at first:

"You don't think I ever fought for something bigger than myself? That's all I ever tried to do, and I failed twice."

Even as TWS, Bucky had to be convinced he is on the right side, that what they do is to save the world, to give "the world the freedom it deserves".

Even brainwashed and put to sleep all the time, he had to be lied to. Bucky as TWS was a victim too. He is not a victim only because he didn't have memories or control, but also because they lied to him and used him as a toy. That milk scene is so loud. (And I am gonna talk about it in a different post). He had no rights, no choices. He was used to being tortured.

[And I wish they explored it more. We deserved and deserve a WS film - maybe with him in Romania getting back his memories, writing in his journal etc.]

"You think your cause justifies all this death, but in the end, the nightmares won't go away. You're gonna remember all the ones you killed. Trust me. Don't do this. Don't go down this path."

Despite being on opposite sides, Bucky still said this to Karli, trying to help her, to make her see the big picture, sharing how he felt and feels.

He is on "the right side". He is a hero, and Bucky being thanked by that man for saving everyone's life was touching.

4. Baron Zemo

You can see how smart, strong, and rational Bucky is when he decides to break Zemo out of jail (his plan was amazing too), risking so much (his relationship with Wakanda people and his own freedom) to get his help for the mess. He puts the cause above his own (huge) trauma. And this makes that moment in Madripoor even more disgusting (he is treated as an object, as a toy):

Zemo: Tell us what you know about the super-soldier serum. And I give you him, along with the code words to control him, of course. He will do anything you want.

The way he keeps his composure, reacts and manages the situation... absolutely incredible!

This conversation also says a lot:

Zemo: The desire to become a superhuman cannot be separated from supremacist ideals. Anyone with that serum is inherently on that path.

Bucky: Maybe you're wrong, Zemo. The serum never corrupted Steve.

Zemo: Touché. But there has never been another Steve Rogers, has there?

Bucky positions himself below Steve, who's considered a good hero, a good person... like no other. But Steve never had to go through what Bucky did: from being kidnapped like that, to being tested on, to falling off the train, to being tortured, and used, and brainwashed for decades, and put to sleep when he was not needed and having n "keepers".

Also, interesting how all Steve wanted was to fight (for a good cause, but still)... and fighting still means violence, meanwhile Bucky never wanted to fight, not even before becoming TWS, in the army (and yet he is still great at fighting. And he is deadly, even when he holds back.). All he wanted was peace.

Despite not getting the "perfect serum", despite being brainwashed, put to sleep, and forced to fight for decades, he is still himself. He never gave in to the dark side for real. He fought in his own way. The first thing he did when he woke up was to choke the Hydra guy with a whole new arm!

Bucky is so underrated: from his intelligence and fighting skills, to how human he is. Being flawed, keeping his sassiness and charm from the 40s, but getting more mature and carrying his past on his shoulders... he's so relatable and real. And every day, he shows Zemo he is wrong.

The show he makes in his final scene with Zemo is absolutely fantastic. He doesn't just prove the point he isn't defined by the serum and Hydra (AND not even by Steve, thanks to Sam. His speech made him realize the important thing about himself: that he decides who he is, not others - even those who know him before becoming TWS- "And this might be a surprise, but it doesn't matter what Steve thought. You gotta stop looking to other people to tell you who you are." parallel to "Steve believed in you. He trusted you. He gave you that shield for a reason. That shield, that is… that is everything he stood for. That is his legacy. He gave you that shield, and you threw it away like it was nothing. [...] So maybe he was wrong about you. And if he was wrong about you, then he was wrong about me."), but also that he is superior.

When Zemo tells him that he decided to let him alive (probably so he can kill Karli) and basically calls him a killing machine: "programmed to kill", Bucky plays the role, lets Zemo talk him into killing Karli, and then Bucky watches him waiting for his own death.

[Also, Bucky's line: Imagine my relief is hilarious.]

The acting was incredible: the shock on Zemo's face and the amusement and somehow relief on Bucky's after he pulls the trigger and lets the bullets fall... He proved him he's THE standard of the super soldier. Because despite everything he went through, he is the best.

Zemo telling him to cross his name off felt like a fresh start (+ telling Nakajima the truth).

5. John Walker

John, on the other hand, is lucky Bucky is an understanding person. He gets what is like... the pressure, the environment, the loss, and even tries to help.

Bucky: Don't go down that road. Believe me, it doesn't end well.

John: I'm not like you!

Of course he is not like Bucky, because Bucky has control. He is not killing to get revenge in a cynical way.

"That serum doesn't exactly have a great track record."

John kept judging Bucky every time they spoke, somehow placing himself above this "broken" man.

"This is all really easy for you, isn't it? All that serum runnin' through your veins. Barnes, your partner needs backup in there. Do you really want his blood on your hands?"

This is so wrong on every single level, especially because Bucky didn't choose to take the serum, and he always had his friends' back. He's loyal and ready to sacrifice himself.

The "funny" part about this is John ending up taking the last super soldier serum vial. All the judgement, the disgust, the patronizing tone, just to do that. Plus, of course, to kill someone with the shield.

(John proves Zemo's point about super soldiers, and Bucky does the opposite.)

And what is it easy for Bucky anyway?

He's under government conditions (so CACW coded), he has a vibranium arm that I bet the government would try to take after he dies (HOPEFULLY WHEN HE'S 200 YEARS OLD IN HIS BED, as Sebastian wants too) if he isn't in Wakanda, he is haunted by nightmares (which also can mean he is still Hydra's TWS in another universe as we found out from Strange), and he has to learn how to live for real. He's smart, charismatic, has values and principles, and he's incredible.

We need to see his version of TWS going after everyone Hydra helped. TWS is him, a part of him, and doing that on his terms, having control over it would help him heal.