#well. ​nobodys gonna have time to read the novel.
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snaoisean · 1 year ago
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ive got myself feeling insane trying to put into words all the things i feel about music
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daytaker · 9 months ago
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The Gang React to You Giving Them Chocolates on Valentine's Day
And other Valentine's Day miscellanea. I'm going with MC giving store-bought chocolates. I know in some places, it's more common to give homemade chocolates, but I for one do not have any idea how that is done and it's not something that's common where I live, so I'm going to go with what I know, which is very little. Enjoy! (Mostly below the cut.)
The length of these varies. Some are quite short. I just wanted to put out some sort of Valentine's Day themed Thing, even if I'm almost two days late.
Lucifer
"How thoughtful. I don't suppose there's anything deeper I'm meant to read into here?"
He's so smug. Unreasonably so. More than you would expect. Yeah, guys, he got chocolates from MC. But his pride doesn't allow him to flaunt the fact. He has to just hope and pray people actively ask him whether he's gotten anything or where those not-so-discreetly placed chocolates sitting on his desk happened to come from.
Lucifer is very traditional in his treatment of you. When it comes to events like this, he's almost painfully predictable. He'll certainly have roses for you, and depending on your relationship, he might reserve dinner for two at a high end restaurant. And if your relationship is at a certain level, you can expect a trail of rose petals leading to the bed. It's kind of cringeworthy but he means well.
Mammon
"O-oh... Ahem... Is it Valentine's Day? Ha! I thought I was forgettin' somethin'. Heh, uh... thanks, human."
Obviously he didn't forget; he's been stressing over this day for the past week. He needs to get you something, but it can't be anything that's too cheesy or anything that makes him look cheap, so he's probably broken the bank to get you some sort of jewelry that he'll spend the next century paying off, but it's worth it.
When he gets chocolates from you, he plays it off like it's no big deal, but actually, he's so excited to reciprocate that before he has time to think it over, he's acting like he just so happened to have this expensive piece of jewelry on his person so you might as well take it for him. He spends the rest of the day kicking himself because now how in the world are you supposed to know that this was actually a very tactful and expensive gift from the greatest demon in the Devildom?
That, and he'll probably spend the entire day glaring at his brothers and the dateables from the corner as they shower you with gifts and attention.
Leviathan
"Wh...? For me? This isn't a prank, right? Because I'm not gonna forgive you if this box is full of tide pods!"
It's not full of tide pods, so all is well. He's so embarrassed to have doubted you that he tries to just shove his gift into your hands and push you out of his room, but it won't take too much persistence to get him to back down.
His gift is some sort of merch relating to an anime, manga, or game the two of you have particularly enjoyed together. Preferably something cute and evocative of the holiday. He doesn't know. He's never done this before. Why would he? Nobody would ever think to give him anything on Valentine's Day, so why would he bother with gifts? You do remember that nobody likes him, right? He doesn't like them either, so it's fine, but---
Let's just thank him for our gift before he falls too far down the self-hate spiral.
Satan
"I had hoped I might receive something from you today."
Satan is glad to get something from you, no matter what it is, but to be honest, chocolates probably aren't the best choice for him. He'd rather have something a little more heart-felt, that seems like you picked it out with him in mind. Literally anything cat-themed, or a book of some sort (bonus if it's a romance novel).
He's probably gone and done something stupidly romantic like buy you flowers and a book of poetry with certain parts highlighted.
But don't be fooled. Satan's favorite part of Valentine's Day is talking about its gruesome history, from the martyrdom of St. Valentine to a whole host of brutal murders that have taken place on the day. Catch him trying to figure out how to shoehorn the Chicago St. Valentine's Day Massacre into a casual conversation.
Asmodeus
"Oh, for meeee? You're such a sweetheart!"
He adds it to his enormous pile of chocolates, cards, flowers, and love letters. But of course, it's special, because it's from you.
He loves it, but... he's another one who would probably prefer something a little more personalized. Being who he is, he's a very popular demon on Valentine's Day, so seeing you put in a little effort to get him something with a bit of Asmo-flair would thrill him.
Beelzebub
"Chocolates...? This is the best thing I could have asked for. They'll taste even better knowing they're from you."
Well, obviously he loves them. He probably tried to get you chocolates too, but it doesn't matter how much he loves you. Beel's gonna Beel. The box is empty. He's shocked. He was sure he left some.
Belphegor
"...Wait, it's...? ...Thanks, MC. They look really good."
Belphie stares down at the chocolates in his hands, looking tired and mellow, while he internally panics because holy shit, it's already February 14? When did that happen? He doesn't have anything for you. He hates Valentine's Day. Why does it have to exist and lay bare all his inadequacies, like being a procrastinator and forgetting to prepare for things in advance even to the slightest degree?
Diavolo
"Ah, for Valentine's Day! It's a delight to receive this in person!"
Diavolo probably gets plenty of Valentine's Day presents from admirers (and suck-ups) around the Devildom, but most of them come in the mail or are otherwise delivered in an impersonal manner. So when you approach him directly to give him some chocolates, he's reminded why you're everyone's favorite human (himself included).
Also, you'd better clear out your schedule, because Diavolo booked out all of Ristorante Six for a dinner date tonight. Yes, the entire thing. Yes, on Valentine's Day. No, he's not worried about the dozens of disappointed couples who had probably been hoping to eat there.
Barbatos
"Any gift from you is satisfactory in my eyes."
It's kind of embarrassing to give regular old chocolates to someone like Barbatos who's a complete whiz in the kitchen, especially when it comes to sweets. But you figure he'd appreciate the gesture, and you'd be right. Of course, he will turn around and present you with a variety of immaculate, handcrafted artisan chocolates, tailor made to your personal taste. But sure, those store-bought candies you got in the heart-shaped box are completely fine, so stop stressing out about it.
Solomon
"Aw, thank you, my adorable apprentice! I have some homemade chocolates for you! What? Aren't you going to try some?"
Solomon tries to kill you on Valentine's Day...with love, obviously! But seriously, aren't you going to try the chocolates? He put his whole heart into them. And the hearts of several unique Devildom species. They're not toxic, stop worrying.
Simeon
"The fact that you thought of me means more than you realize."
And he means it. The fact that you thought about him, and when thinking about him, made the active decision to buy him something for Valentine's Day makes him stupidly happy.
Simeon strikes me as a flowers kind of guy. He got you flowers. Maybe some homemade treats too, but definitely flowers.
Luke
"Thanks! I got you something too. Happy Valentine's Day!"
Luke made cookies. They're delicious. Befriending this kid is the smartest thing you ever did.
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lenafromthenordiccoven · 9 months ago
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Yes, ma'am | Bob Floyd x f!pilot!reader
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Pairing: Robert “Bob” Floyd x f!Pilot!reader
Requested? no (unless you count my own brain pestering me with this)
Rating: M – MDNI 18+
Word count: 4370
Warnings: Pilot!reader,  switch!Bob, switch!reader, light fingering, oral (f!receiving) unprotected PinV (be smart and wrap it, folks), breeding kink, Bob Floyd fucks, Navy and Air Force inaccuracies are probably gonna pop up here and there, super self-indulgent
Summary: After six years of training, you’re finally graduating from flight school as one of the first female Eurofighter Typhoon drivers in the Austrian Air Force. Your boyfriend of six and a half years, Bob, has supported you every step of the way. And now? Now it’s time to celebrate his newly graduated, freshly made Lieutenant, girlfriend.
Read on ao3
A/N: Listen, this is gonna be SUPER self-indulgent, ‘kay? Thanks to TGM, the Austrian airshow “Airpower” in 2022 and the internships I’ve done with the AAF, I’mma try to enter flight school for the Eurofighter Typhoons once I’m done with my MA. This translator wants to flyyy, baby! 😂 So, this is my brain keeping me motivated to train for the entry exam by giving me ideas of what it could be like to actually do it and graduate. Also, I’m a slut for Bob Floyd. What else is new? 😂 This is basically an extension of @attapullmans International Bob Floyd Fucks month. I wanted to have this up by the end of January but didn’t have time. (Song to listen to for this would be Tell Me The Truth by Two Feet.)
Six years. You’d been waiting for this moment for six years. Had worked hard for it. And now, as officers, family and other invitees were applauding and two of the Typhoons soared overhead, you were officially being dismissed as a Second Lieutenant for the first time. The first female Typhoon driver in the Austrian Air Force. And yet, it didn’t feel real. Not the way your classmates, other pilots with the rotary wing or other fixed-wing aircraft, clapped you on the back as they cheered. And certainly not the way your boyfriend of almost seven years, who’d been there for you every step of the way since you’d told him you wanted to try out for the Air Force when you’d first started dating, was grinning at you. No, he was positively beaming.
The fact that your parents hadn’t been able to make it to your graduation might’ve dampened your mood, if Bob wasn’t looking at you with so much love and pride, it made your own chest swell. You’d done it. Despite what everyone else and your own mind had told you from time to time, you’d made it. And, to be honest, you’d been terrified of Selection Day. Scared that even after already three years of consistently being top of the class and adamant about wanting to fly the Typhoon, your superior officers would tell you, they’d assign you to the helicopters or air transport.
Your heart was pounding in your chest, blood roaring in your ears as you pushed through the crowd and finally reached Bob. You were trembling by now, the adrenaline slowly wearing off, the world coming back into focus. And with it, the thought that you had to get Bob out of here as soon as possible. He’d chosen to wear his dress whites, while you were in your dress uniform with its grey jacket and grey pants (thank god, they’d actually let you choose whether you wanted to wear a skirt or pants and nobody had pitched a fit when you’d gone for the pants, explaining that you would “stick out like a sore thumb as is”, you didn’t want to add to that by being the only person wearing a skirt. The other female cadets in your class had all chosen the pants as well.) – and the new golden edelweiss on your collar. Fuck, if he didn’t look like he’d stepped off the pages of one of the romance novels you’d been devouring recently.
“Congratulations, darlin’. ‘m so damn proud of you,” he murmured before bending down to press his lips against yours in what had to be the most chaste kiss of the century. But you were still in sight of your superiors, so you couldn’t go too far. Especially since your relationship had already sparked enough gossip – and a three-hour briefing on what you could tell your boyfriend and what you couldn’t, not that you hadn’t figured out most of the things with you usually being on the receiving end of Bob’s professional silence. You didn’t feel like adding fuel to the fire, even though you positively ached to kiss Bob the way you really wanted to and to stick your hands in his hair and mess up that gelled back hairdo he was sporting.
You could feel your cheeks heat at the thought of how you didn’t even want him to take off his uniform. You just wanted to get him home and have him fuck you while he was still wearing his dress whites. “Thank you, baby,” you finally replied to Bob’s praise.
He raised an eyebrow and slightly cocked his head at your reaction, but you saw recognition bloom on his face when you lightly bit down on your bottom lip. He leaned in close to whisper in your ear. “Do we still have to go to any official dinners or parties, or do you think, we can jus’ sneak off?” His voice was rough, lower than it had been just a minute ago, and it sent a delicious shiver down your spine.
You briefly closed your eyes before you looked back up into those light blue eyes of his, trying to look as innocent as you could muster. “I’m afraid, there’s one more we have to go to. My new squad leader’s paying, and it would probably be good to get to know them a bit before next Monday. But I’m sure, they’ll understand if we don’t stay for too long.”
“Whatever you say, Lieutenant.” His lips stretched into a smirk, the kind of which you imagined only you saw on the regular, as another shiver raced down your spine and left goosebumps in its wake despite the June heat. Damn it. You knew, how much he liked it when you called him by his rank. But this? This was new. And you loved it. “You wanna take the lead when we get home?” He wrapped an arm around your waist and drew you in closer as you nodded.
“Hell yeah, I do.” You both chuckled at your response. Usually, you had no problem handing over control to Bob, especially in the bedroom. But sometimes, especially if things had been stressful and since you’d joined flight school, you liked to be the one to make him whimper and beg for a change. Tonight would not be any different. You grinned as your mind was already busy conjuring up ideas.
***
“Good god, I’m so sorry. I had no idea, he could talk that much,” you groaned when you finally entered your off-base apartment with Bob hot on your heels. Initially, you’d expected to only stay for maybe two hours with your new squad. But then time had stretched on and now it was almost ten pm. You were exhausted. But also restless. Besides, you actually had the weekend off, starting with Saturday tomorrow. And Bob would leave on Sunday evening, so who would fault you for not wanting to go to sleep yet?
You toed off your shoes as Bob closed and locked the door and then leaned his back against it. His eyes were closed, a sigh left his lips and for the first time since you’d picked him up from the airport, he looked tired. You inched closer to him, snuggling into his chest, despite his buttons and ribbons digging into your cheek. You could feel him relax against you, just as the tension finally left your own shoulders.
“You know,” you began to mumble into his jacket, “I’d get it if you wanted to go to sleep after today. We’ve still got tomorrow and Sunday after that.” You really would have understood if his response had been yes, wouldn’t have minded just curling into his embrace and against his warm body in bed as you both drifted off to sleep.
But to your surprise, he simply lightly pushed on your shoulders until he could get his fingers under your chin and tilt your head up to meet his gaze. “I might be tired, but that doesn’t matter. Haven’t seen you in months. Just wanna … feel you. Make you feel good.”
“You want to be a good boy for me?” you replied with your own question, your own fingers inching up his neck until you could caress his cheek. He leaned into your touch and then nodded.
“Yes, ma’am.” His eyes were glued to yours, pupils blown a little wider than they had been just minutes before. The corner of his mouth twitched upwards when he heard the sharp intake of your breath at his words.
You groaned, squeezed your eyes shut and then leaned your forehead against his chest. His words only worsened the throbbing in your core, while you fought the urge to squeeze your thighs together. “I never thought, I’d actually like it when people call me that. Makes me feel so old.” You swallowed thickly. Well, you weren’t entirely honest. You’d thought about what it would be like to hear Bob call you “Ma’am�� or by your rank. The two of you had tried it out once, where he’d called you cadet and you’d immediately shut him down. It had made you feel too small, by no fault of his really. You just hadn’t liked it. But this? Hearing him call you Lieutenant? Especially in this tone of his he sometimes got when he was particularly needy and wanted you to ride him. It ignited a whole new wave of desire in your core that quickly spread throughout your whole body.
He chuckled. You felt his chest vibrate underneath your cheek. “Now you understand what you do to me when you call me by my rank?” His hand came up to cup the back of your neck. Your eyes almost fluttered closed again just feeling his fingers brush against your skin.
“You wanted me to call you Lieutenant and Sir,” you started to defend yourself. Bob’s grip around the back of your neck tightened. Only lightly, but enough to make you take a half step back, so you could look him in the eyes properly. The light blue of his eyes was almost completely swallowed by his blown-out pupils now. His other hand took your wrist and brushed your hand against the growing tent in his pants.
You could see his nostrils flare when you flexed your hand and grabbed his dick over his pants, rolling the heel of your palm against his tip. He jerked, his hips involuntarily bucking against your hand. He barely suppressed the moan bubbling out of his throat and you bit your lip to hide the grin threatening to break out on your face. “I know, you feel weird about people callin’ you ma’am at work. But when we’re off-duty and I call you that or by your rank, I don’t want you to ever think, it’s not a sign of my utmost devotion to you. I love you, Y/N. And I wanna make you feel good. Please. Lemme make you feel good. Show you how much I worship you, ma’am.”
He kept his eyes trained on yours as you leaned up on your tiptoes to brush your lips against his ever so lightly. He groaned and chased after your lips, but you took another step back, took your hand away from his crotch in the process. “Well, then you better show me you mean it, Lieutenant. Don’t you think?” You began to slowly walk backwards into your small apartment, undoing the buttons on your uniform jacket as you watched him stalk after you.
While discarding your uniform, you were careful not to wrinkle it. You’d have to probably go to the designated dry cleaner’s anyway, but just wanted to be safe. A thought that immediately left your head when you saw Bob reach up to undo his own buttons. You surged forward, put a hand on his and then said: “Did I say, you could undress, Lieutenant?”
Bob’s gaze flicked from your face to your hand on his. You were pretty sure, he’d also eyed the semi-lacy bra peeking through your open shirt, but you couldn’t fault him. While your current underwear couldn’t possibly be classed as lingerie, you were wearing a pretty, white set that came with lace trim around the hems, was super soft and comfortable to wear – but also had your now pebbled nipples poking through the cloth. “No, ma’am. Sorry.”
“It’s alright, Lieutenant. I’ll let it slide this time. But just so we’re both clear, the uniform stays on until I say otherwise, understood?”
Bob startled, blinked once, twice, before he stuttered: “S-say again?” In another instance you would have teased him for so easily falling back into the standard ICAO phraseology, but this time, you just smiled. You shrugged off your white shirt, relishing in the way his eyes tracked every little one of your movements. He licked his lips as you pressed your body against his, nudging his cock with your thigh. One of your hands travelled up his chest, over his ribbons. Your nails lightly scratched the skin of his neck until you could tangle your fingers into his hair. And you tugged. Not hard enough to actually hurt him, but enough to elicit a broken moan.
“I said, the uniform stays on until I say otherwise.” You tugged again. “Did you understand me, Lieutenant Floyd? Or do I have to spell it out for you?” He leaned down a bit, until your faces were only inches apart.
You could see the twinkle of mischief in his eyes. He would obey for now, play along with your little game, but you would definitely be having a conversation about your apparent uniform kink later. And you knew, he would use it against you when he could.
“Loud and clear, ma’am.” He wrapped an arm around your waist to pull you a little closer, and you guessed, to keep your body pressed against his, give you a harder time to escape his grasp again.
“Good.” You pressed a small kiss to his lips, ducking away before he could deepen it. You started to back up again, into your bedroom while you opened the button and fly of your pants, pushed them down over your thighs and let them pool down at your feet. You heard him groan and felt his fingers lightly brush over your ass when you turned around to walk over to your bed. You swatted his hand away, then bent over to push down your panties.
Bob swore under his breath, and you couldn’t help the grin that lit up your face at his reaction. You’d soaked through your panties by now, knew he could see it. Was probably itching to bury his fingers and face in your pussy. But when you caught his gaze, your breath hitched in your throat and your overly confident, dominant persona faltered for a split second. Fuck. He looked like he was going to devour you the second he got his hands on you. For a moment, you wondered if you’d gone too far in teasing him this much.
“What’s your color, baby?” you asked and slowly sank down on the edge of the bed.
“Green. Still, very much green. But, damn, Y/N…” His gaze briefly landed on your pussy and the wetness you knew he could see staining your inner thighs. You swallowed, before you leaned back a bit, steadying yourself on your hands.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Get over here and show me what other talents your mouth and those thick, nimble fingers of yours possess.” He didn’t even respond verbally this time, only made a sound that reminded you of a growl. He nodded, once, just a quick, curt movement of his chin. Then he closed the distance between the two of you in two long strides.
His hands were on you before you could even tell him to touch you. One of them cradled your head and pulled you closer, so he could crash his lips against yours in what you’d call a complete 180° turn from how you’d kissed on base earlier that day. You moaned into the kiss, tangled one of your hands into his hair and easily opened up for his tongue to slip into your mouth. His other hand wandered down, quickly squeezing your right breast before it dipped down between your legs.
“Bobby,” you gasped against his lips as he swiped his fingers through your folds and pressed his index finger lightly against your clit.
“What, no more orders for me, ma’am?” He smirked against your lips as you desperately shook your head. You’d thrown your persona out the window the minute he’d fully touched you. All that mattered was feeling his body against yours now. Nothing else.
“Fuck that. Need you to take over. Fuck me, Bob. Please.” You could barely suppress the moan ripping out of you as he quickly shoved two fingers inside of you.
He groaned into another kiss; you knew he could feel you clench around his fingers. How you grew even wetter. “Oh, sweetheart. I’ll do anything you want if you ask me this nicely.”
When you opened your mouth to tell him what exactly it was you wanted, he gently withdrew his fingers from your pussy and pushed them past your lips instead. You closed your mouth around his fingers, letting your tongue swirl over the tips and let out a low moan at the taste – and the fact that he had just figured out what you wanted without you having to ask.
He slowly sank down on his knees in front of you, grabbed your thighs and placed them on either side of his head. He looked up at you, making you wonder if it was even possible for his eyes to grow even darker? Much like you, he’d foregone his usual glasses for the day and opted for contacts, making you almost miss the feeling of the frame digging into your skin. Without his gaze ever leaving your face, he turned his head and pressed a gentle kiss to the skin of your inner thigh. “This what you were gonna ask me to do, sweetheart?”
You nodded eagerly, trying to push him closer to your core with your heel, but to no avail. “Yes.” Any other time you would have been fucking mortified at how needy and breathless you sounded, and he’d barely touched you. But you’d done the same to him, it was only natural, he’d turn the tables on you as soon as he got the chance. And you’d handed him the reins freely after all.
“Yes, what?” He’d practically growled the words, raised an eyebrow at you and slowly leaned closer to let his hot breath ghost over your now practically dripping pussy.
You swallowed again, scrambling to find your voice and command your tongue to move. “Yes, Sir.” You could barely hear his mumbled “Good girl” in response; your heartbeat was so loud in your ears, you wondered how he hadn’t heard it yet. And then he dove right in. Licking, sucking, groaning into you as he got a taste of you after you’d barely been able to even talk on the phone for months. You leaned back further, your mouth fell open and you let the moans and gasps flow freely. When you bucked your hips against his face, his left hand came up to grip your right hip; his right hand landed on one of your breasts, pulling down your bra, so he could grab at the flesh and roll your nipple between his fingers.
Your arms trembled underneath your weight as your hands dug into the duvet underneath you. You didn’t even hold back the praise, told him how good he made you feel. In return, he doubled down on his efforts of eating you out like he was a man starved. It didn’t take long for you to reach the edge, but Bob made no move to slow down. Instead, the hand that had been kneading your breast wandered down until he shifted his mouth to your clit and thrust three of his fingers back inside of you, curled them up to hit the spot that sent you careening over the edge with a litany of “Oh my God”s leaving your mouth.
Your arms had now fully collapsed under you as you slowly returned to your body and your chest heaved with every breath as you were gasping for air. Bob pulled off of you and crawled over you, light concern shone in his eyes as he asked if you were okay.
You nodded after a couple seconds of blinking and trying to regain your ability of speech. “That was …”
You’d trailed off and before you could pick up your train of thought, Bob interrupted you: “So, what else did you have in mind for tonight?” His left hand was drawing abstract shapes onto the skin of your right hip and stomach while he waited for your reply.
You groaned, closed your eyes and dragged a hand over your face. “I … hadn’t decided, actually. Either, I ride your cock or you bend me over and fuck me until I can’t walk.” You peered up at him through your lashes with a sheepish grin. You couldn’t place the origin of the flush creeping up your neck and spreading over your chest. It was either desire or embarrassment. Or, more likely, a mix of both.
He chuckled and let his head drop down for a quick peck against your lips, before he shook his head at you. “Jesus, Y/N.”
“Sor–” you’d almost said before a hand over your mouth silenced you.
“Don’t apologize for that. Besides, I did say, I’d do anything for you, didn’t I?” He smiled down at you as you nodded, still somewhat bashful at your suggestion. Without another word, Bob stood up and you whined at the loss of contact as his hands trailed off of you as well. “Don’t worry, darlin’. I’ll be right back where you want me. Where’d you put the condoms?”
Oh, that’s where he was going? No, no, no. That didn’t work with the fantasy you’d sketched out in your mind all week as you’d touched yourself – at night, in the shower… You sat up and grabbed his wrist with a hand to pull him back towards you. “No condom tonight. I’m on birth control anyway for my cramps. And I …” You looked down, wanting to look at your knees, but your gaze got caught on his dick straining against his pants.
“What is it, Y/N?” He leaned back down, put a finger underneath your chin and tilted your head backwards, so you had to look at him. You bit down on your lip and closed your eyes for a second, praying that he’d understand what you were trying to say. “You want me to fill you up, sweetheart? Hm? Feel my cock inside of you, feel me come inside you?”
You nodded, breathed out another “Yes”.
Bob groaned in response. He squeezed his eyes shut, his lightly dominant persona leaving the room for a second as he looked at you again and quietly asked: “Is that why you want me to fuck you from behind?” Again, you could only nod and respond in a whisper.
He chuckled, gently cupping your cheek for a second and brought you in for a slow kiss. You practically melted into his touch and sighed against his lips when he pulled away again. “Well, lose the bra, turn around and get on your knees, sweetheart.” His voice was back to the low, darker and more dominant undertone. His gaze felt heavy on you as you scrambled to unhook the clasps of your bra behind your back and then threw the garment behind you. You’d pick it up later.
You scooted back onto the bed, before finally turning around and waiting for his next move on your hands and knees, completely bare before him now. Your heart fluttered in your chest when you heard him undo his belt and pull down the zipper of his pants. Goosebumps spread over your skin as his fingers traced your vertebrae and his lips pressed kisses against some of the healing bruises on your back. (Nobody had ever said, flying a fighter jet at hundreds of knots and with multiple Gs wouldn’t leave a mark on you.)
The buttons and ribbons on his jacket dug into your skin as he leaned over you, putting part of his body weight on you. He lightly nibbled on the junction of your neck and shoulder and you whined, pushing your ass back against his definitely rock-hard cock. He slipped into you easily, setting a pace that had you squeezing your eyes shut again as you let your head hang low and exposed your neck for his lips and tongue and teeth to mark you up as his, just as his cock marked your pussy.
He kept mumbling praises into your ear in-between groans and moans from both of you. But with how you’d worked each other up, it didn’t take long for either of you to get close to the edge again. “Fuck, darlin’. ‘m so close.”
“Please, Bobby. Come in me. Want to feel you.” You whined at a particularly rough thrust and your whole body shuddered when his fingers found their way down to your clit.
“Right there, Y/N. Just need you to come with me, ‘kay? Can you be a good girl and come with me?”
You weren’t sure if you’d replied to his words when your second orgasm of the night hit you like a freight train. The wave of pleasure pulled you under and you distantly felt Bob’s hips stutter, then still, as he reached his own climax and spilled into you with a low, guttural groan and a mumbled “Fucking hell”.
It took a while for the ringing in your ears to fade out, your breathing normalized as did Bob’s. Although he didn’t move from his spot behind you. Instead, he wrapped his arms around you and pulled your back against his chest as he tipped the both of you over onto your sides. He kissed your shoulder.
“That how you imagined it, sweetheart?”
If you’d had any strength left in your body, you would have rolled over in his arms to look him in the eyes. But as it was, you simply craned your neck a bit, humming at the kiss that landed on your cheek in response. “Better. So much better.”
“’M glad. Have to take care of my new Lieutenant, don’t I?” You heard the grin in his voice and weakly rolled your eyes at the teasing lilt.
“Of course, you do. You’re always a good boy for me and take such good care of me.”
He groaned lowly and sunk his teeth lightly into your shoulder again. “If you keep that up, you won’t have to wait long for round two.”
You chuckled, before fully relaxing in his arms with a sigh. “Good. I was planning on riding your cock while you were still in your dress whites, anyway.”
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lxdymoon0357 · 1 year ago
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The three main male characters of Novel Miss Not Sidekick and yandere who are love enemies? *I forgot their names- hehe* If it's too much, you can change the request however you want!
(god fucking job!!! My first request for my favorite manhwa!!! I love this!)
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Yandere! Male leads X Reader HCs
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Rondemio De Helone
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♕You were probably Ibelin’s friend and you both were students in the empire, you both were invited to the crown prince’s ball, but Ibelin being herself didn’t wanted to participate, but instead read a fucking book….Like who reads a book at a banquet or ball?!
♕But, due to this she caught the crown prince’s eye as he walked towards you; you immediately recognized him and bowed, because you decided to educate yourself about this place, and knew about the nobles and royals here, as your dear friend didn’t even glance his way….She was always like this towards everyone, including you, she never really showed any affection or anything a friend would, but you were used to this…….
♕But, there was a certain someone whom you both got a bit attached to, your dear friend latte, who was certainly the funniest person you ever met. You learnt that when you three were at Ibelin’s place, when the prince was there and she referred to a rabbit as a beast trying to attack you, this was the first time the prince actually acknowledged you both, which was noted considering Ibelin always caught the attention of everyone she met, making the person often forget other people standing with her.
♕He stared at you for some time and after you waving your hand in front of his face, making him come out of a trance, he immediately smiled warmly at you before apologizing to you three with a blush on his face before you three took your leave.
♕When Ibelin catches on the fact that he’s fallen out of love for her and developed an obsession of you, she’s gonna confront you about it and that’s when she starts to insult you and slapped you, before the crown prince (who was visiting you) got to the situation, he escorted her out and put her in a dungeon before torturing her over a matter of time before killing her.
♕Okay, let’s do a time skip to when he kidnaps you, because otherwise it’s just how he met you scenario……. He kidnapped you due to the friendship you formed with his sister, Lady Rosealia, she invited you to have tea with her and her brother, she left for a minute when you finished your tea for a few minutes, giving the drug in your tea the perfect amount of time to work and make your faint, then he asks his most loyal guards to take you to a room prepared just for you, where no one else is allowed.
♕After his kidnapping, he would show you so much affection, it feels like you both are married, not to worry he made the rumor that you ended up going back to your continent because you had fallen in love with someone and decided to marry them. Nobody is gonna find you….
♕ He keeps you in a soundproof room, so nobody can hear you scream or shout nor the banging on the door because your shackled to you the bed, it lets you roam around the room but not to the door and balcony which is sealed tight
♕ Rondemio bring  many gifts and writes many love letters to remind you of him, when’s not there, he’s left you so many books, mostly Latte’s many bimors and sometimes Rosealia comes to visits you because well her brother allows you, she is also partly a yandere and thinks it’s for the better of you to stay at the palace..
♕ You and Rosealia often paint pictures while looking out the balcony and talk about random things, Rosealia tells you all about things around outside and gossips with you all the time. And most of the time, Rosealia makes you listen to her ideas for bimors, she tells you all the troupe of a cheesy Dom and tsundere sub and intimidating sub and sunshine Dom and whatever stirs up in her mind
♕ You and Rosealia have matching friendship necklaces, hairbands, rings, bracelets, anklets and so much more, because well Rosealia is a clingy friend and her brother is quite happy you get along with her, you have many matching jewellery.
♕ Dating Rondemio is also partly dating Rosealia, because ain’t no way does she leaves her brother’s S/Os alone, she becomes very close friends with them, and if she doesn’t approve of them, Rondemio drops them, well, in this case if she doesn’t approve of you, you both won’t see each-other again, let me tell you, she’s an entertaining person..
♕ She tells you cheesy stories, brings you games, books, fruits, sweets, teas, cakes, snacks, and so much more, she had matching outfits with you as well, one outfit matching her aesthetic and one matching your aesthetic, it looks adorable, but sometimes it’s too much and it feels like you were kidnapped by her instead of Rondemio.
♕ Rondemio doesn’t punish you badly, maybe starving you, or leaving you in a dark locked room for days or maybe killing one of your friends, mostly that, he isn’t too much of a yandere, very devoted and care-free, nothing too extreme.
♕ Rondemio honestly kills every man who you look at or who look at you, or anyone in fact, he will kill them, he praises you so much, basically worshipping you and that stuff, but nothing too extreme, he brings you gifts, whether they be large diamonds or tiny flowers!
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Kenneth Esbande
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✠ Kenneth’s love story starts because you were a friend of Latte and you both annoyed the shit out of him and until he starts falling out of love with Ibelin.
✠ He became a close friend even though you were social distancing with each-other. You were annoying to him, but still very close to him, you would often help him train his sword-fighting when he realized his feelings for you one day, when you fell and he caught and you both fell over with him laying over you, when he didn’t feel chill upon touching you.
✠ He would be able to touch Ibelin, but that reduced slowly-slowly, when he started gaining feelings for you, he wouldn’t be able to touch her without feeling disgusted and violated and feeling as though spiders were crawling over him.
✠ Slowly he didn’t realize how strong his feelings got, until he saw you walking around with Ibelin, when she caught his eye and she excitedly waved at him only for her to be ignored because you walked over and greeted him sweetly with a pretty smile.
✠ Ibelin tried to insult you and she died….:P sad for her, but anyways she was mad because he was meant to be hers and she liked his attention and you were taking away the attention from her even though she wasn’t gonna choose him, it was very annoying….Kenneth stabbed her multiple times and she died…
✠ Kenneth visited Latte the next day for advice, because well though he was bearing her, he couldn’t deny that she didn’t give good advice, she helped him understand his feelings better but he didn’t tell her about the things he stole from your bedroom and how he stalks you or has someone do that nearly every day…
✠ Kenneth also saw you with Latte and he honestly did hunt a huuuuuge animal for you, probably the largest one and confessed then and there and you became the lady/lord/grace of the hunt.
✠ Kenneth really often puts gifts in your room as he stalks you and puts his name as “Secret Admirer” you know the usual and his gifts though they may seem nice at first glance take a dark turn in a matter of seconds, like a knife but with a handle which is filled with the blood of you latest suitor who went missing or maybe a beating box which is beating because of a literal heart…..
✠ Once Latte puts in the law of stopping all those advances to Kenneth, he will finally confess, does not matter if you’d reject him or accept him as either way you’ll be kidnapped by him the next day and kept in a room for a few weeks which is supplied with food and water every few hours or whenever you ask for it.
✠ Kenneth for somebody who pretends to hate being teased I mean, he’d never find it endearing, unless it’s you whose teasing him and annoying him, you can poke his cheeks, pinch him, pull his hair and bite his shoulders as a form of love language, he will always find it loving and endearing and what not
✠ Kenneth would love to do your hair and he WILL do it, because you’re gonna be restrained and what are you gonna do, fight back, when you don’t have hands? I mean they’re tied but you can’t feel your hands so you’re basically decapitated and can’t use your hands.
✠ Definitely makes the maid clean around and talk around with you, you enjoy it and so you end up helping them most of the times and he feel like he’s married to you as he helps you and the maids clean around the place and then he gives  higher pay to the maids for continuing this thing you help them and he gets to not only keep an eye on you but also feel like a husband to you.
✠ Kenneth despite being the youngest duke of the entire empire, is very lonely because no person actually becomes friends with him for the sake of friendship, people earn many social benefits from being close to him and so when you and Latte come into his life, you weren’t afraid to tell what you both thought and that is what drew him closer to you. He is afraid you will leave him and he will be lonely again…
✠ Kenneth very much makes sure that everything is to your liking, dresses, tea, biscuits, flowers, rain, lights, temperature of the atmosphere, the book ending, bed, blanket, the amount of rice in your plate, the crystals of salt put into the food, and what not, he’s there to fix everything in case anything wrong happens.
✠ He brings you so many gifts, it’s tiring keep a tack of them and he also goes to Latte for advice on you, does not matter what she says, he will not let you go and he will surely do not reveal how he keeps you chained up, but he will ask how he should get gifts to his lover who is upset with him
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Arwin Hebrim
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☠ Arwin Hebrim, he is such a sweet asshole, kills everyone he can but yeah, anyways he saw you with Latte, and yeah he found you interesting when you tried beating him up for annoying you cause you didn’t give a shit about being alive and you decided Arwin should be taught that the world doesn’t revolve around him (it does, it probably does….)
☠ Yeah, he ended up falling for you and became possessive and obsessive because he knew how hard the world is and so he slowly gives you gifts of appreciation but they all are for stalking and watching you throughout the day, he is just worried for his spouse that’s all, it is bad for him to not be worried for the one he loves the most?? :<
☠ Arwin actually gifted you a doll similar to Latte, but yours had cameras in it and it showed him what you were doing every day, anywhere, all the time, does not matter! He is watching you as your stalker, and when he knows you’re deep asleep, he will come, maybe put you under a spell of deep sleep for some time while he cuddles, kisses, squeezes you or strokes your hair, he does not care, I mean what are people gonna do? Arrest him? Kill him? Banish him?? He can kill, end and remake the whole universe, because of how strong he is….
☠ Arwin when he kidnapped you, to say is kind of a sweetheart, the only person he allows himself to be vulnerable to is you, he would do anything, praises you and buys you treats and this scares the shit out of you more than when he is being angry…..Because who the fuck has taken over his BODY?! THE FUCK?! It’s fine though, he gets you your favourite desserts and snacks and fried foods!!!!
☠ He also loves to leaves hickeys on your thighs while you sleep your ass off, don’t ask why….He will blame it on the bedbugs, but red-purple hickeys some in the shape of a cat’s paw are littered on your back, neck, thighs MOST IMPORTANTLY, and chest….he does it because he finds your skin to be plushy and pudgy…
☠ Oh and the moment someone takes your attention, they don’t exist anymore, depends on how much you talk about them, you talk amazingly about them, they die a horrible death, you talk how they hurt you, they die a horrible death, you talk shit about them cause they’re annoying, they die normally, you like them as a friend, they die normally, you don’t know them, they die normally, people are gonna die anyways, so don’t mention them….JUST DON’T!
☠ Oh, Arwin would buy you literally whatever you desire, the moon, another galaxy, someone’s black coloured heart, seven eyes balls, or anything you want, he is ready to get it for you!! Arwin is a very gift giving type of yandere, I mean all my yandere are, ngl…
☠ He will make you watch him practice spells and you’re the mistress/master of the Arcane tower as well, so you’re under the eye of everybody, everybody knows about you and they’ve been told not to help you….not like anybody could…
☠ Anyways, Arwin is fucking obsessed, he spent a whole week AWAKE enchanting gifts for you and is always there to make sure he’s immune to all the spells he put into your gifts, so you can’t and won’t attack him, that will hurt his heart!!  Also he makes sure you like his gifts, if you don’t, he can always replace it, give him a whole day to enchant it like crazy…
☠ If you try to fight back using magic or being physical, he finds you to be so cute like a kitten trying to fight a plushies, all you’re gonna achieve from doing that is being stuck in Arwin’s grip and lap for a few hours as he cuddles you, pulls you into make out sessions or plays around with you….It’s pretty nice, ngl…
☠ Oh, also for some reason, I think maybe he will make sure all your lipsticks or tinted lip-glosses are not gonna be transfer proof, cause so when he kisses you, it leaves marks on him, he wears them sometimes as well, only to leave multiple marks on you at every fragment of skin present on you!
☠ Arwin is also a pretty amazing husband and a sweetheart, only to you though, he would give you enchanted gifts to know you’re whereabouts every second of day, how you’re feeling through like a ring which has a matching pair he’s wearing or something or maybe something which shows how you’re health is, etc…I can’t elaborate and won’t elaborate.
☠ You're mainly under the eyes of Memoria and Arobrock, cause he's probably the only one Arwin trusts enough to not give you a migraine and also open up a bit!! He doesn't trusts Berrylreed and Straighbov.....nor anyone else, cause everyone is crazy!!!
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queerfandomtrifecta · 1 year ago
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So a lot is bothering me about the narrative structure of season two. If I didn’t have my own novel to work on and didn’t have several more edits commissioned, I’d write a fix-it fic for all of season two to fix the narrative stuff and to really delve into character arcs that felt off. Maybe I will anyway. Idk. If someone who actually has time wants to take any or all of this and write a fic, go for it. Can’t wait to read it. Anyway, this is a very rough outline that’s subject to change if I do write the fic, but from a developmental editing perspective, here’s my two cents nobody asked for on season 2:
Thematic elements: Atonement and coping with trauma, the crew leaving (especially in regards to Stede’s emotional wound where he’s worried about people being better off without him) and identity (especially in regards to Ed/Stede/Izzy). These are present in the show as-is, but they don’t play out well just yet. I’m focusing on these to make things cohesive.
Episodes 1-3: mostly perfect. Loved these and the pacing felt correct for the most part. I would keep the tone from these episodes through the season. Ricky would be introduced here. Zheng is fantastic and all of her stuff stays here.
What I’d change: Ned Low would be the primary antagonist for this season. Ricky would be set up through this season to be the primary antagonist next season. Ned Low’s record is Ed’s original suicide by proxy plan, and that needs to be introduced here. There needs to be a scene showing how Ned tortures people in these episodes. Izzy needs to bring it up as a concern to Ed. Ed doesn’t care about the crew’s safety, obviously, someone (Izzy) needs to mention Ned’s record and possible repercussions here. I’d also NOT play Lucius’s trauma reveal with Stede like a comedy beat. (Like seriously, I HATE that the show played SA as a comedy beat.) Black Pete would be shown crying of Lucius so it’s not just told randomly after the fact. Olu would be shown missing Jim.
Episode 4: The unicorn thing with Izzy was beautiful and I’d keep that. Stede and Ed going to Mary and Anne’s is fine. Buttons can APPEAR to turn into a seagull.
What I’d change: The Kraken Crew and Lucius need to stay paranoid longer. They need to tally things up and realize that Low’s record has been broken (I think Ed was too checked out from reality/high on rhino horn to even realize he’d broken it; Izzy has bigger things going on and likely also lost track) but that record being broken was NEVER shown in the original, just told after the fact. In order to NOT switch to a speculative genre randomly for a convenient metaphor, Buttons appears to turn into a seagull but he doesn’t literally. Revealed to the audience but not to Ed/Stede (more on this later). Stede doesn’t put it to a vote that Ed can come back. He’s the captain and decides that that’s how it’s gonna be. The crew is also gonna look to former first-mate Frenchie (whose trauma is in a box) for direction when Izzy is struggling. It’s Frenchie’s idea about the leg. Izzy is still struggling a little more after his new leg, and I think he should be shown happy at the end but with a bottle of something not far from him (but more in that later).
Episode 5: Ed’s influencer non-apology clearly written by Stede works. Ed and Stede need time apart. The cursed suit can stay for the levity of it. Ed and Fang can go fishing. The moonlight kiss scene works for the most part.
What I’d change: Izzy can be sassy with Lucius, and a bit of a mentor to Stede, but he’s going to be drinking in this episode. Not plastered drunk like ep 4, but it’s gonna clearly be a struggle and everyone is just Not Talking About It. Lucius might start to parallel that a bit and I’d like to see more interaction with them there. I’d also like to see the Kraken Crew (all the crew really) treating Izzy as their captain. Stede says he doesn’t feel like the captain and there should be a reason for that. If he forced them to let Ed back on the boat in ep 4, that can be addressed here. Izzy is following Stede so he can eventually persuade everyone they have to as well, though Izzy’s earned more trust than anyone at this point. I’d delve into him doing for Stede what he did for Ed pre-season one (“massaged the crew” when Ed’s moods seemed off to keep things running (I can’t remember the exact quote past that, but that’s essentially the idea). The Kraken Crew needs to be wary of Ed longer. They do not believe Buttons is a seagull. They all think Ed killed him and Stede says he didn’t see Buttons turn into a seagull, but he takes Ed’s side and doesn’t think Ed killed him. That starts a rift and an “us or Ed” thing that’ll play out later. Ed can try to interact with the crew and get the cold shoulder. He’s done nothing to restore his reputation. As far as the cursed suit goes, I would have them receive some sort of warning from Ned Low when they go to pawn the suit off on the other ship. Stede or/or Izzy would keep it quiet from the crew, who are only just now starting to follow Stede as the captain. Ricky needs to be shown here wanting to end piracy, and interacting with Zheng. After the moonlight kiss, I’d have them holding hands as they walk off. I think maybe Lucius would want to leave the ship here. The Swede and Buttons are gone already, and it makes sense for Lucius to want to leave but Black Pete to want to stay. They’ll both still be on board here though.
Episode 6: Calypso’s Birthday will be the plot for 7/8.
What I’d change: let me preface this by saying I haven’t worked Zheng’s plot fixes out fully. But. If we’re moving this to the next two episodes, something has to happen here. I’d keep the bit with the guilt room and with Ed giving away treasure to the urchins saying don’t be pirates, but have him say more in front of Stede about how piracy is bad for specific reasons that Stede just doesn’t clock as Ed wanting to stop. I think the plot will be along the lines of Stede engaging in more piracy. Ed will quietly be struggling with the fact that Stede is becoming a more and more proficient pirate in his own way, Ed himself not wanting to pirate anymore, and his tentative new relationship with the captain of a ship he is definitely not wanted on by anyone other than Stede. Zheng needs to interact with Ricky here about him wanting to end piracy. Izzy is a good first mate here but he’s still drinking. Lucius may start to parallel that here. Former first mate Frenchie picks up the slack and falls into a leadership role when Izzy is struggling too much, and this is eventually gonna cause him to have to deal with his trauma that’s bottled up, when he has to talk to Izzy about clearly not handling his own. Eventually, things will come to a head with the crew not wanting Ed on board. It becomes an “us vs him” thing with the crew threatening to leave if Es doesn’t. Stede will try to smooth things over but Ed will interrupt and say don’t bother, he’s leaving. He doesn’t know who he is but at least fisherman would be better than pirate. Episode ends with Stede heartbroken and Ed going off to fish in something that isn’t his leathers, so he wouldn’t be recognizable from a distance. Low pinpoints Stede’s ship but doesn’t see Ed on it, and plans to bait him out by boarding and torturing the crew.
Episodes 7-8: Nope. I’d keep almost none of this.
What I’d change: This part is also still rough and I need to flesh it out a bit more, BUT: Calypso’s birthday would be episode 7. The crew would wanna party but also wanna cheer up their sulking captain. They’re glad Ed is gone. Izzy is a good first mate here but still drinking. He encourages the party to Stede who agrees. They’re spending Ed’s treasure that he’s left, turning the poison into positivity by getting rid of the bad memories the Kraken Crew has of obtaining it. Stede and Izzy bond a lot here. Ned Low does interrupt the party (I think maybe he’s also “working” with Ricky but not really, he has his own agenda) planning to bait Ed back. The scene in Stede’s quarters would be Izzy and Stede, not Ed and Stede. Once again the crew are suffering for Ed’s actions, and THAT is how Ed can atone for it. He can save them, probably with the help of Zheng who he’ll have met when he goes off to be a fisherman. So there’s some camaraderie going there. Also, with help from Lucius and Black Pete, who will have to trust him in order to save the crew/themselves. Stede will be the one to kill Ned Low, and he and Ed will still impulsively sleep together as a coping mechanism at the end of episode 8. Izzy is still alive and well (though still drinking a lot; and I think this could be a key to Frenchie having to confront trauma instead of locking it in the box), and things aren’t smoothed out with Ed and Izzy yet, that’s for next season, Ed has ACTUALLY done something to earn the crew’s trust back, and it appears to be a happy enough ending for Ed and Stede. Also, IF Ed says “I love you”, Stede is GONNA say “I love you too” because WTAF was that in the show?! But I’d end the season with La Vie en Rose and fireworks, Izzy happy and celebrating with the crew, a happy moment for Ed/Stede, the antagonist defeated, and Ed actually having atoned for his previous actions.
All of this is rough, but it’s my original thoughts. If anyone wants to use the base of this to write a fix-it fic, go for it. I may do it myself if I can find the time between work writing responsibilities.
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mermaidsirennikita · 2 months ago
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frustrating levels of discourse continue happening on twt ugh https://x.com/lara_e_brown/status/1839303817256645101
Lol yeah, I've honestly just given up on reading takes like that because once you've seen one, you've seen 'em all.
It's an extremely shallow reading, using things like "pale", which you can in fact be while having a darker complexion, with both examples relating less to a physical appearance and more to his aspect in the moment (his face is "white" because he's scared; he's "pale and effeminate" because he's in a wan and weakened state). And I say "both" because you tend to come up with faaaar fewer examples of the text relating Heathcliff as pale than... not.
I also find it funny that this user uses Heathcliff marrying Isabella as an example of why he MUST be white, when Heathcliff and Isabella literally run away together because nobody wants them to be together, PARTICULARLY her brother, and this rips the Linton family asunder. Almost as if.......... it was............... breaking a taboo......................
Like, yeah! 18th century Yorkshire wouldn't have accepted that marriage. And if there's one thing we know about Heathcliff—if it's not accepted, he's not gonna do it.
One of the entire points of his character is that he lives against law and taboo and societal norms (while at the same time being deeply aware of the fact that his existence doesn't gel with them). In that thread, that user references the Byronic hero, with the name drawing from Lord Byron and his own literary fascinations. Byron was obsessed with taboo, lived to break them (most famously the taboo of sleeping with people of the same sex, and probably the taboo of incest as well... COME TO MY TED TALK TO DISCUSS HOW THAT COULD RELATE TO HEATHCLIFF, ALSO). One of the reasons why more recent scholarship (and I don't even mean super recent) surrounding Wuthering Heights has come to terms with the interpretation of Heathcliff as a man of color is that he does embody the taboo even more.
And obviously... some taboos (the incest one) exist for a reason. But the book also seems interested in questioning how much we really gain by treating someone (someone like Heathcliff) as other and wrong simply for existing. Again, we go into the cycle of abuse.
I also find it rather belittling of people to refer to general 18th and 19th century values when discussing how people "would have" seen Heathcliff, or interpreted the text. Because, for one thing—yeah! A lot of contemporary readers did not in fact Get It. Perhaps in part because they did have the biases that people like that user seem to believe would have prevented the author from exploring Heathcliff as a man of color.
... But if Emily Bronte thought exactly as the detractors of her novel (who condemned it as wicked and aberrant) did, she never would have written the book, I think. Who's to say, though? It's difficult for EITHER side to make leaps about what Emily knew or thought, because she is someone who didn't live very long, has been portrayed as an eccentric (and perhaps even maligned by Elizabeth Gaskell's portrayal of her) and definitely had something of an offbeat upbringing. We just don't have much directly from HER. So it's a bit rich to me to make assumptions about the kind of limited worldview she may have had on topics like race, when we really do not have a lot of definitive information about her worldview, but DO know that the book she wrote, which some theorize to be about a man of color, REALLY upset some conventional readers.
Like... why would you contextualize that book within a purely conventional reading when the entire reason why Wuthering Heights matters is that it defies convention?
I do shy away from using the word "canonical" to describe Heathcliff's race, because while I know what people mean when they say it (and I'm sure I've said it at some point) it's just a word choice that people like that user will latch on to. Like I've said before, there is no way to prove with 100% certainty Heathcliff's race either way. Which isn't to say that you have to do so to state that he's a man of color. It's just the kind of pedantic strategy people will use in threads like these.
And I'll notice, too, that she omits Nelly's line wherein she speculates that Heathcliff's mother could be Chinese or Indian. I mean, what's her take on that specificity combined with the lascar speculation? No mention of Liverpool relating to people... not... from America or Spain...?
I do worry sometimes that people see someone's major concentration (say, if someone has a BA in English or something, which for the record I don't) and go "Damn, that's end-all, be-all" A) it's not, there's more to research than getting a degree B) you could also use literal wikipedia footnotes to kickstart your own deeper dive into this, there are tons of people who've made careers discussing books like WH debating the issue C) having a degree of any level never kicks your bias.
To go back to my own degree... I knew old art historians who saw nothing gay at all in Michelangelo's work. You can know a lot about a lot, and it doesn't mean you have an open mind.
I think anyone can read WH, do some research about the era and Emily, and drawn their own conclusions. And you are just going to have to make your conclusions based on your own assessment. There is no smoking gun here, and there never will be because the smoking gun would be a living Emily Bronte willingly telling you what she meant.
And I didn't read Heathcliff as a person of color from the jump, for the record. I was thirteen when I read that book for the first time; I'm white; I picked that book in the context of it being a Great English Classic, and as far as I knew, those were all about white people. Because... that's what you were taught about WH at the time, at least where I was.
But when I was first introduced to that interpretation some time later, it was a literal "OH!" moment. Because like... yeah. There isn't a smoking gun for Dorian Gray's sexuality (and yes, we know a lot more about Oscar Wilde than we do about Emily Bronte; but the absence of knowledge of Emily's interests and attitudes doesn't mean we can assume she DIDN'T have an interest in writing Heathcliff as a person of color) but The Picture of Dorian Gray makes way more sense when you interpret his queerness for what it is. Wuthering Heights makes way more sense when you interpret Heathcliff's race for what it is.
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sailorblossoms-snowbaz · 9 months ago
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(some stuff about the perception of Simon and sex and horniness)
I've hinted at this (and maybe have even just said it, can't remember) in the past but now I'm just gonna say bluntly it because well, I use this blog to rant, and who gives a shit, this is long enough nobody will pay attention to it anyway. (This rant is brought to you by "anyone can do whatever they want obviously but I can't help but wonder... do people think this is actually in character? why?”)
Canonically, Simon is horny. He shows high libido. Canonically, these things are centered on Baz. "Baz is the only person I have ever wanted," he thinks in the context of thinking about having sex. "Maybe I'm some kind of Baz-sexual," he says, in the context of thinking about sexual attraction ("Maybe I'm only sexually attracted to Baz," he's saying.) And sure, libido is a separate thing from attraction, but good ol' Simon still centers both things on Baz...
I have no idea where the idea Simon would be the type to sleep around comes from, or why that idea is more often associated him than Baz (which I have wondered when considering "people think character is hot and so the people just want to see character fuck" – a tale as old as time, which is something I get, as opposed to "this is in character," which I do not). To be clear: I don't have anything against characters who enjoy a life of slutdom, I think such characters can be very fun to read, ya boy here likes erotica novels, etc. My specific issue is that I don't get where the idea Simon is the type comes from, and when picking up everything he's putting down, it kinda feels like a disservice? Like we're taking someone who challenges expectations, who moved past them because they were limiting and insufficient to help him understand himself, and... confining him to certain expectations, anyway?
This is someone who's not even comfortable wearing pajamas outside of the room he shares with Baz (very telling, that). He's not the type to even go into the bathroom to masturbate (no appeal to it if you don't know what you're into or what type of touch you even tolerate, anyway). He's not someone who will be down to get naked (while fully conscious and willing) in front of someone he doesn't, at the very least, know and trust. His one sexual experience outside of Baz is described as something he didn't actually want to do, as something he felt he had to do because “that's just what happens” when you have been dating someone for a long time.
I know "character is good at sex" is a logical continuation to "I want to see hot character fuck" but the idea that Simon would be good at sex in general, based on what he does... would he, really? I mean, it's perfectly fine if he's not. He has no reason to be! He has never done anything without any sort of guidance. Simon shares "the talk" he had didn't cover the truly important things, and we see him discovering "the point" and appeal of sex (for him) with Baz in real time (as closeness and intimacy). "He's good with his hands" – personally, I don't think knowing how to incapacitate, decapitate, or break someone's neck would translate into "knows how to touch someone in a way that's even remotely pleasurable." I would think those type of touches require a different set of skills, but that's just me. I mean, if you think about it, Baz describes Simon's hands as "being everywhere" as in, Simon wants so much he can't decide how to touch him, but also, he doesn't even know how to touch him. Simon jumps Baz like an animal in heat (literally dry humping him in the library!). Sometimes, Baz can get aroused by Simon in spite of the way Simon touches him (because is Simon). Simon is so rough he's bashing Baz's head against a bookcase at some point, probably without realizing (which makes sense for a fighter who has only ever know how to touch violently) (also, some scenes have made me wonder whether Simon, in his eagerness and without realizing, is grabbing and biting and pushing hard enough that if Baz was a regular human, he probably would just find painful).
I think it makes the most sense that Simon would struggle like this. It makes him relatable! Sex starts to be good between Simon and Baz when they start communicating. Sex is good for Simon when he's pleasing Baz, which is also about Baz and his feelings for him, specifically. I don't know how that turned into "sex is good for him when he's pleasing someone, anyone" – those are very different things! That there are areas in his life where he cared about what others thought and wanted to fulfill expectations doesn't mean that would translate into the sexual area, there are other things that would factor into it. This is someone who never once thinks about his cock unless it's close to or in contact with Baz's person. The entirety of his desire, of sex being good or enjoyable for him, of wanting to please (linked to wanting to take care of/make Baz happy) is all centered on Baz. Simon ties desire and the appeal of sex to intimacy with the person he's in love with. There's nothing fucking casual about Simon when it comes to sex and romance, even before he properly identifies those feelings and who he actually has those feelings for. ("I think I'm going to marry the first person I've ever dated" – you couldn't get any further from "casual" with that shit, even if he didn't really believe it was going to happen because he thought he would die, which is also not casual). "But Simon doesn't think––" he thinks a whole fucking lot, actually! He avoids processing, but everything is already inside of him, waiting for him to have the tools to process it and understand it. It's already on his radar. That doesn't necessarily translate into "enjoying casual sex" either.
And then there's horniness. Being horny doesn't mean one would turn to sex. Simon is insanely horny, but not in general... he's horny for Baz. And even then, horniness didn't always mean he was trying to have sex with him, or that he even knew what he wanted to do with it. By awtwb he's very much jumping Baz in a sexual way when he's horny, but Simon literally tells you "when I was horny for Baz, I used to pick fights with him." Before getting together with Baz (and even when he's with him) trying to blow off steam for Simon meant going to activities that are not at all sexual. Perhaps practicing with his sword until he gets tired. Picking fights, as mentioned. Getting moody and irritable and bitchy. As I said, he's not the type to ever even felt comfortable masturbating (being sexual) before he's thinking about how much he wants to cum on Baz. This is a "going to a late night run" type of person, a "engage in a form of combat to not feel so stressed" type of person, not a "casual sex enjoyer" or "one night stands" type of person. He's way more likely to go out to pick fights with strangers than to try to pick up a stranger for literally anything else.
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dangermousie · 5 months ago
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Because I am a glutton for punishment, I skipped from ep 4 all the way to ep 36 and the break up.
I really really REALLY love that scene so much because it is so in character and shows how much work Xiao Yao and Tushan Jing both have to do to get to lasting happiness.
I remember at the time it aired, I saw people understandably lose their marbles going "did she just dump her boyfriend for being sexually assaulted?!" and I get where they were coming from, but this isn't really how it read to me. The situation is designed to hit at her issues.
The novel makes it clearer than the drama does than the aphrodisiac is something one can fight through the effects of with strong enough determination but it's not really that. After all, whether it was unfightable or barely fightable, even by the story as presented by creepy fam, man got sexually assaulted with the assistance of his family (literally, granny, fiancee, and brother all teamed up - that was about the only bodily autonomy that hasn't been taken from him at that point!) by any definition and there is no blame to be placed on him. Of course it wasn't right to dump him for what happened to him but also of course it makes sense with all her issues.
The thing is, Xiao Yao means it when she says she doesn't hate him. It's not that she wrongly views sexual assault as cheating (well, sort of, but it ties to her other issues about which more below.) It's that her standards are so impossible (about which more later) and her desire to fight for him is nonexistent - oh she will fight in terms of healing him or protecting him or w/e, but she will not wade into emotional messes. Ultimately, regardless of how it came to be, he now has a woman pregnant with his child (it looks like) that he can't put aside and a family that is dead set against XY. That is vvvvv messy. And he can't fight against all of that by himself but she won't wade into the muck. It was huge enough she was willing to wait for him to disentangle his family mess but that was passive waiting doing nothing. Actively getting into a Jerry Springer situation? No way.
And that is where her standards come in. She wants someone impossibly perfect. I don't mean in body - Jing is cut up and sewn up more than a sample dress pattern and she finds him physically desirable as hell. She wants someone impossibly perfect in fitting to her needs and standards and tests. If you think, the bulk of their relationship in s1 is her setting a series of tests (some consciously and some not) and he has to keep passing one after the other for the relationship to continue. And this is a test he fails for her - yes it may be expecting an insanely high standard to have him overcome the powerful aphrodisiac given him by a trusted family member to boot so he didn't expect it but she wants perfect, however impossible, or nothing. If the score is not 100, she's gonna return it back to the store.
And that's the thing - Tushan Jing rebuilt himself around her - he tailored himself to her to a crazy degree. But yet it's still not enough ultimately because no actual human being can live up to her standard; sooner or later something was going to break. Nobody can be perfect all the time in everything. Everyone who wants to be in some form of relationship needs to figure out what they will tolerate and what they won't. XY is within her rights to decide she won't tolerate giving her heart to someone who is not 100% perfect to whatever she wants BUT the outcome becomes that then she cannot have a loving romantic relationship with anyone, since people are not robots.
The interesting thing is her standards for him are the highest out of anyone in her circle - Cang Xuan fed her hands to worms and Xiang Liu is a gorgeous disaster. And it's fine for her. I think because CX she slotted as family so the issue isn't what he does but what he is (brother) and with XL they aren't in any relationship where there are any expectations.
But with Jing, she admitted to herself she loves him and there is no backstop of him being blood - so she is terrified, and the more she loves him and the more she trusts him, the more terrified she is about being hurt and so the more she loves him, the higher her standards become and the more skittish she becomes.
It's a mess. It is, as I said, not sustainable in long term - we see he spends so much of the season terrified she'll ditch and she spends so much of it skittish. A relationship with such an emotional power imbalance is doomed.
The thing that I love about post breakup is that she gets a salutary shock. She clearly thought she could cut and run - she could break up with him and move on cleanly. And then she finds out she can't. She still loves him, she still misses him, she still grieves him.
And that is so necessary - her reaction to any kind of trouble is to cut and run and it's so ingrained and so a self-protective instinct that she NEEDS to have the running not work, not protect her, so as to realize not just how important Jing is to her, but that it's worth to forgive humanity, to fight for him in messy situations, to deal with complications - because that is the only way she can be happy, that escape doesn't solve things. She needs to realize that abandoning doesn't work, that he's important enough to her life to stick around and fight for him.
And of course Jing needs to realize that kindness is great and retiring is great and all that but bad people will NOT leave you alone, will not leave those you love alone, so you need to fight.
It's an interesting and telling gender reversal.
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doomsdaydicecascader · 9 months ago
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my problem with postcanon jade was that it said she was a cis girl before fusing with bec. i took it as the same "true in a transmisogynist way" troll as transmasc roxy
like, truly, i miss transfeminine roxy every day, and my house is fairly glass when it comes to things here considering i'm writing The Butch Lesbian Jane Comic, but like. the way homestuck fans exert ownership over the text of homestuck is fundamentally what the homestuck epilogues and post-canon are about. act 7 is about the dead calliope saying "fuck canon" and making her own, and she does not know how to care for the characters in question. i genuinely believe reconciling these facts, that what homestuck wants to be and what fans want homestuck to be are tangibly, ideologically opposed, is what post-canon is about
"fans read this character as X identity" is fine and good but that's paratext at best, and making demands of a text that has no obligation to respect them at worst. the epilogues are cashing in that desire to not respect them. homestuck has always been shaking off its readers who exert too much ownership, feel too comfortable with it. this goes way back as far as act 5 act 2 - the author commentary describes switching between walkaround sprites and hussnasty mode in such close proximity as a means of saying "if you always get what you expect, you will become complacent and that's no way for a reader to be", the "come in, go away" routine of homestuck is so repetitive now that i'm surprised basically nobody's caught on - homestuck is always doing insane flips to try and shake people off of it.
and now homestuck is doing that with your headcanons. like, this is a thing i see genuinely, all the fucking time in fandom over the past 15 years or so, people hype themselves up on paratexts and pretend the paratext is the source. the worst i ever saw of it was people having full blown self-harm threatening panic attacks because klance was not endgame in voltron legendary defenders. genuinely, i remember this so well - i think there were still two more seasons of the show after that event too, but i didn't watch it.
i only looked on from afar because what i saw of season 1 wasn't especially novel. castiel was never gay, no matter how many times he was caught leaking omegamusk in walmart or whatever, i'm stealing valor with this joke i was never a superwholock omegaverse girlie. there's so many fandoms i'm not a part of, it's unreal.
anyway, my point is people get really invested in their reads on characters and pretend it's real for the same reason a normie's sports team is gonna go the distance this season. and when they don't, they riot. this is literally just sports fandom 101. we may as well be talking about fucking inflategate here. i also don't go to sports. it's basically just homestuck for me these days.
i imagine this is what it's like to run my little pony before bronies came along: the show was negligible in relevance beyond its capacity to show off the new toys to play with. but the difference is that my little pony is about the toys, it's about encouraging that kind of play, it's fundamentally a set of toys they made a show about, as opposed to homestuck, which was always niche art for webcomics weirdos that caught on, quite literally, with the brony audience. i remember the first time i ever saw dave strider was on fucking ponychan, chronologically it would have been mid-act 5 act 2. it was an image of dave ransacking the lohac stock exchange, which is an a5a2 thing, it was before season 2 started, etc etc.
this is one hell of a tangent to say as far as the text of mspaintadventures is concerned, problem sleuth characters have gender signifiers that are more similar in nature to drag and performance of gender roles than any actual sexual dimorphism. homestuck characters are built atop the gender expression of problem sleuth. jade was a 13/16-year old girl, and that's the only information there was. over time, this changed.
this was an explicit change, too - it's in the change to act 6, passing through the fourth wall, that these characters, who fundamentally are game pieces, that homestuck starts to contend with the fact that people are emotionally invested in them as people. people don't like dave or vriska in the same way that people care about problem sleuth or nervous broad, and this comes out in the text. we get a lot of the best stuff in homestuck out of that change, too, like. the retcon only works because of that emotional investment, and i go so hard for the retcon. the retcon is the coolest thing ever.
and with that change, now, in 2024, she is explicitly a 39 (? i think she's 39.) year old woman with a penis. she didn't go from "cis woman" to "trans woman", she went from game piece to human person. there is no "cis jade" to be overwritten. you're assuming a "cis is default" worldview of a team of transgender and/or nonbinary people and thats just like. its not ideal, really
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talesfromthesnogbox · 6 months ago
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I Want Your Video
Summary: Henry is roped into getting off on camera, the Hysterical Literature AU nobody asked for.
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: 8,815
AO3 Link
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“Pez…”
“Hazza! Come on, you’d be doing me a huge favour.”
Henry rolled his eyes. He loved his best friend Percy, he really did, but he had a knack for getting Henry to do things he would normally never do. And this… this, was something he’d never thought about doing, ever.
“Pez, I’ve got an actual following now. Don’t you think this is a little…”
“No! This is perfect for you. And with your next book coming soon too, trust me Henry, this will be great, you’ll be great."
See, Henry was a writer, just… not a very successful one. Until recently. His debut novel How to Steal a Heart didn’t do as well as he’d hoped when he upended his life and moved from London to Brooklyn. Broke from trying to market his book, and determined to not accept defeat, he took a job with his publisher, where he’d then become friends with one of the lawyers on staff, one Alex Claremont-Diaz. Unfortunately for Henry, Alex was so so much like Gabriel, the love interest to James in Henry’s novel. It was like he’d shook the book and watched Alex step out as he got to know the other man, and in his opinion, his perfect man.
How to Steal a Heart wasn’t the Pride & Prejudice Henry had hoped to one day write, but it was his first novel, and absolutely his baby. Three years sitting on the shelves with hardly any sales had Henry close to throwing in the towel. Alex encouraged him to keep writing, even if only for himself, but it was hard for him to find motivation to continue. It was only weeks later that Alex would send him the TikTok that would change his life. The book blew up, Henry started getting recognized on the street, the interviews poured in, and suddenly, he was signing for books two and three with his publisher.
And Pez, his best friend, wanted him to do porn.
“I know what’s going through your head, young man. The video isn’t porn, it’s an artistic statement on human sexuality.”
“Pez. You want me to sit on camera and read a book while someone tugs me off, it’s porn.” Henry played with his signet ring, refusing to meet Pez’s eyes.
“No one will be touching you, dear. It’s all remote control based, and very safe and respectful. I would keep my spot on the team but you know I’ve got to go back to London to see my dear Granny. Please Hazza?”
Henry rolled his eyes. “How many people are in the room with me? And do I have to get Shaan to sign off on anything?”
Pez’s excitable gasp put a smile on Henry’s face. “Oh my god you’re a lifesaver! I’ll send the documents over for him to glance at. The shoot is on Saturday morning, wear what you like, you’re still gonna be clothed above the waist. Just one person of your choosing in the room to start and stop the camera, or none if you like! I’ll drop off the goods at your office on Friday before I leave.”
By the time Friday rolled around, Henry had almost forgotten what he’d agreed to. Almost. Pez flew through his office like a tornado, giving him advice on what to wear, how to style his hair, and finally, dropping off what he came for.
“Brand spanking new, and yours to keep after the shoot, you’re welcome. I’ve got one like that too and… you are very welcome.” Henry grimaced. “I’m sure you two will have a lot of fun.”
“Everything I’ve learned about your sex life has been against my will.” Henry inspected the box Pez gave him. The packaging was nice, sturdy, expensive feeling. 
“Well I happen to know you’re more of a size queen than I am, so lube up friend, there’s some in the box.”
His face scrunched in disgust as he reminded himself to never tell Pez anything ever again. 
“Right, thanks for that then I suppose. Anything else I should know about—”
A knock and a mass of dark, curly hair interrupted his train of thought. Alex.
“Shit sorry, didn’t know you had company.” 
Henry scrambled to hide the box Pez had dropped off, eyebrows shooting into his hairline as Pez shot him a look. “Not to worry dear, Auntie Pezza has a flight to catch. See you later boys, oh and Henry, tell me how it goes?”
Henry nodded at his friend, waving him off. “Safe travels, all the rest. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Alex turned to Henry, a question gleaming in his eyes. “Hot date later?”
His eyebrows shot up into his hairline as Henry puffed out a breath. “No, no not quite.”
“Excellent. So you’ll be around tomorrow afternoon then?” Alex looked almost hopeful.
Henry winced. “Also not quite, no. Tomorrow night maybe?” He knew he’d probably be keyed up and feeling slightly self conscious after the shoot, drinks with his other best friend slash office crush would definitely keep his mind occupied.
Alex shrugged. “Sure, I can make that work. Want to try that new place in Greenwich?” He flashed his million dollar smile at Henry, the one that never failed to make him melt.
He’s straight, he’s straight, he’s straight!
“Sounds lovely. I’ll swing by yours around 7 and we can come up together?” 
“Sure thing, sweetheart.” Alex gestured to the mound of papers on Henry’s desk, covering the unopened toy box. “So whatcha hiding in there?”
Henry’s breath hitched. “Oh—um well you see…” He stroked his chin, a faraway look taking over his features. “Well you know Pez fairly well I guess. He’s talked me into… helping out one of his friends while he’s gone with an… art… thing…”
Alex’s dark brow furrowed, he nodded along knowing he probably wouldn’t get anything more from the blond man. “Right. And I’m assuming the art… thing is tomorrow afternoon?”
He nodded, clicking his tongue. “Shouldn’t take long—well… ah—I um—” Henry stumbled on his words. “Yeah. I’ve gotta be ready for two.”
“Cool. Do I get to know what it is?”
Henry’s internal monologue had just become various screams. “Ah, um maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime once it’s done and I’ve consumed a lot of alcohol.”
Alex smirked. “Is that a challenge?”
He let out an incredulous laugh. “Git!”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, I want those dirty details, Fox.”
Henry blushed. “You have no idea what you’re asking for Alex.”
---
The time had come for Henry to be on camera, and in all fairness to Pez, everyone so far had been really lovely. Sophie, the eager intern, had him checked in with paperwork and release forms signed, and Theo, the director of the project, walked him through the afternoon’s timeline.
“So we’ll start with a short interview, just to get a sense of who you are, a bit of your background and what you do, then we’ll take a short break to get you prepped, and from there it’s go time. I’m assuming Pez dropped off the vibrator?” Henry nodded, taking in the information in stride as he remembered what he was there to actually do. “Great. I’ll be in the other room controlling the remote for you, so you don’t have to do anything but look pretty and read. Any questions?”
“Yeah, where… um—” Henry had taken some time earlier to stretch himself out a bit in preparation, but the toy was still firmly nestled in its box. Luckily the project was fairly portable, and the small crew had invaded his new apartment.
“Where can you get yourself ready?” His place was bigger than his last shoebox, but still small enough to feel self conscious about inserting the plug knowing there were people in the room over. It had been years since he’d had roommates, and he wasn’t used to having to monitor his noise levels. “We’re setting up in the office so it’s up to you, whether you’d prefer your bedroom or bathroom, we’ll keep crew away from there.” Henry nodded in acknowledgement. “I know this is intimidating, but say the word and we stop, you know that, right?”
He let out a sigh of relief, a smile crossing his face. “Thank you. I’m okay, just a little nervous is all. I’m not unaccustomed to strangers watching me finish,” he shot Theo a look, hoping he understood he was talking about random hookups, “but I’ve never done anything on camera before.”
“Totally fine, don’t even think of it that way, you’re just reading a book!” 
He smiled and followed him into the office for the interview portion of the video.
Once he was mic’d up and properly lit, Theo started with the questions.
“Why don’t you introduce yourself a bit, tell us who you are and what you’ll be reading today.”
A warm smile crossed Henry’s face. “Hi, I’m Henry Fox, and I’m a writer. Originally hailing from London, I moved to New York with my best friend Pez to be closer to my publisher. My book How to Steal a Heart recently became popular on BookTok, and has been in the top five on the New York Times bestsellers list for twenty weeks in a row. It follows a young prince named James who goes undercover as a commoner weeks before his wedding to Lady Elizabeth. James meets Gabriel, a Spanish traveller, who’s been sent to England to steal a precious jewel from the royal family, but instead steals James’ heart.” He looks down at his desk, stroking the spine of the book. “I poured my heart and soul into this book, and it’s incredibly touching to hear how much everyone else has loved it too. But I won’t be reading this today.”
Henry picked up the other book on his desk, a well loved copy of a Regency era romance, two handsome men on the cover. “The Servant and the Gentleman by Annabelle Greene. These have kind of become my guilty pleasure read when I’m not in the headspace for something like Pride & Prejudice. There’s something romantic and sexy about the Regency era, when a simple brush of fingers can cause an audience to gasp. Of course this one is a lot, erm, smuttier than Austen’s work, but it’s a work I’ve returned to a few times.” He looks up at Theo, who’s leaning against the doorframe with a smile.
“Great! You’re a natural on camera, Henry.” Theo leads the excess crew out of the room in preparation for the next stage. He hands him a bath robe and walks him to his bedroom. “We’re going to fix up the desk a little bit, throw a sheet over it so your lower half is covered. We tested the remote already, so you just need to worry about you, okay?”
Henry nodded in understanding, taking the box from Sophie the intern, and closing his door. The nerves had begun to settle in as he unboxed the black, silicone plug. It felt nice, soft and lightweight, the small light indicating it was already on but the motor not started. He gave it a wash, letting it air dry on a clean towel as he stepped out of his trousers and briefs. His heart pounded as he poured a bit of lube on his fingers and got to work opening himself up.
A short few minutes later, he was able to slip the the toy in. Henry groaned, his cock finally warming up to the idea of what he was about to do. Taking a deep breath, he donned the robe Theo had given him, and walked out into the office.
Henry knew realistically this wasn’t the first video the crew had done. Pez mentioned they were filming twelve over the course of a few weeks, and his had been near the end, but he was fairly surprised by the professionalism of it all. He settled into his chair, a towel already laid down, and sheet covering his legs from the room, and dropped the robe. His breath hitched as the plug nudged his prostate; they hadn’t even started filming and he already knew he was fucked. 
“Alright. If we’re ready to go, I’ll just give you a bit of a run down. We’ll hit record on the camera and get out of your way, I’ve got headphones so I can monitor what you’re saying. You’ll start by introducing yourself and the book you’re reading, once you’ve finished, state your name once more and the title of the book. We’ll wait outside until you’re ready for us to come back in. I’ll control the remote from this side of the door. If ever it gets too intense or you don’t want to continue, please just yell for one of the crew and we stop. You understand so far?”
Henry nodded.
“Verbal consent please hon, things can get pretty intense and I want to make sure you’re okay.”
Henry smiled. “Yes, thank you Theo, I understand.”
He gave a quick nod and continued. “Don’t worry about holding back, noises, faces, words are all good, but please don’t feel the need to put on a show. I want you to be authentic in yourself, show us what your pleasure looks like. It’s a beautiful thing, it’s poetic, it’s art. Last thing, don’t worry about how long or short you last here. We’ve had a few people last a couple paragraphs, and one last a couple chapters. Take what you need.”
“Got it. I—I think I’m ready.”
Theo smiled. “Good, we’re ready on our end as well. I’ll hit record, and as soon as I’m out the door, you can start.”
Henry nodded one last time, wriggling in his chair and turning to the chapter. Theo gave him a thumbs up, and closed the door, leaving him alone. He took a deep breath, and stared down the barrel of the lens. “Hi, I’m Henry Fox, and today I’ll be reading The Servant and The Gentleman by Annabelle Greene.”
He cleared his throat, eyes scanning the page before he started. “Chapter ten. One bed. A very large bed, a mahogany four-poster that took up most of the sloping attic room, but still a bed in the singular rather than plural. Josiah sat awkwardly on one corner of it, the feathers in the mattress astonishingly soft.” 
Henry’s fingers twitched in anticipation, his pulse quickening; the wait for the vibrations to start was almost agonizing, and his cock thickened as the wait for pleasure stretched on. He could begin to understand why this was so erotic. He was alone so the pleasure felt like it was all his, but in reality, someone on the other side of that door held the key to his undoing.
He continued the chapter, getting accustomed to the way his voice sounded in the room alone, when he jolted as a low thrumming vibration started. “He’d noticed, then. He’d seen what Josiah had secretly h-hoped he would. Josiah took a step towards Hartley, seized with a sudden, overwhelming desire to k-kiss him.” Henry stumbled over the words, taking deep breaths as he tried to read in earnest. He shifted in his seat, hoping to take some pressure away, but the new angle had the bulbous head of the plug settle right up against his prostate. Almost like clockwork, the vibrations levelled up.
His words became breathy, and he gulped in air, trying to hold back the whines he desperately wanted to let go, but he kept reading. “He held his breath as Mr. Balfour moved closer. Close enough to press against him, chest to chest, thigh to thigh. Hartley sighed, a deep shiver running through him as he looked into the man’s warm brown eyes—Oh!” Henry dropped the book from his left hand, his palm coming flat to the table as he tilted his head down and closed his eyes in pleasure. He bit his lip, and scrunched his nose, resisting the urge to roll his hips. His cock was now fully interested in what was happening, he was half hard, and so badly wanted to wrap his hand around his length. But with a low chuckle, he returned both hands to the book and continued reading. 
“He couldn’t even think of him as Mr. Balfour anymore.” Henry composed himself, getting accustomed to the new speed of the toy. “Not in this naked, vulnerable light. Master, servant, Mr. Hartley, Mr. Balfour; no rank, no polite form of address, quite held up to scrutiny. Not here. Not now.” He gasped, gripping the book with white knuckled fingers, and let the air out with a hum through closed lips. “Fuckin’ hell that’s… wow.” With a shake of his head, he read on.
“The man in front of him was Josiah. As for himself, he was no one, no one at all. Just a terrified creature in desperate need of relief, of fulfilment that only Josiah could provide.” His voice was shaky, and his knee bounced under the table. “Hartley stared, briefly shocked at the idea of it, before Josiah’s lips met his, and thoughts were suddenly, deliciously drowned in f—uuuuck.” Henry threw his head back, chest heaving as he finally gave into his instincts and let his hips roll. With every rock of his hips, the plug pushed against his prostate, sending jolts of pleasure through his body. His cock leaked a steady stream of precum, and his fingers itched to grasp himself, spread his wetness down his length, pump into his fist, with a name on his lips. And suddenly he remembered where he was again. “Deliciously drowned in feeling.”
“There was no room anymore. No door, no walls, no confinement whatsoever. With J-Josiah’s kiss came infinite sp—infinite space; a liberation so complete that H-Hartley couldn’t help but sigh with relief.” His fingers shook as he traced the words, and suddenly, that telltale tingle at the base of his spine started. “O—oh f—fuck.” He moaned in earnest, the dam breaking now as he writhed in his seat. “He—unnhh!” Henry slammed his palm down against the desk again, shoulders hunching forwards as his hand curled. He was close, but it wasn’t enough. If he could only get a hand around himself… 
Henry panted lowly, not sure if it was deemed appropriate to ask to go up in speed, but as if his mind had been read, the vibrations kicked it up a notch. The book was long forgotten, his eyes were closed, and he was sure his face was a picture of pleasure. A second jolt of pleasure railed through him as the piece of the toy wedged against his perineum sparked to life. His cock leaked steadily now, he shook as he reached back to grip the edge of the chair, a strangled cry leaving his throat. His other hand slammed against the table, losing his page in the book entirely. His hips rocked against the chair and he whimpered. “Ffffuck, f—fuck, A—Ale…. christ.” He choked in a breath, back going taut as his hips stuttered, and with a shout, he came. 
His ass clenched around the plug as he painted the towel draped across his lap. The shocks kept coming, he felt like it would never end, like he never wanted it to end, it was fucking good. An airy giggle left his lips as his head lolled back, the aftershocks of his orgasm wracking through him, milking the plug he had absolutely no control over. Henry kind of felt invincible, like he could do it again, and again, and again, until his body could give nothing else. He’d never came so hard, not even with the best fuck he’d had, and in that moment he knew, he’d put on a damn good show.
The camera crew must have heard him coming down, because the vibrations stopped shortly after he’d caught his breath. Henry chuckled and shook his head, breathing in once, twice, then looking right down the barrel of the lens again and saying, “My name is Henry Fox, and I’ve just read The Servant and The Gentleman by Annabelle Greene.”
He blinked once, twice, giving Theo enough room to cut the end of his shot, then he moved to clean himself up. Wiping himself down brought the sudden realization that this was going to be online… and then it dawned on him… what if Alex saw this? 
---
Henry wrung his hands together as he met up with Alex for their dinner in Greenwich. He was still keyed up despite the satiated feeling that took over his body as soon as Theo and his crew left that afternoon; it was a different type of intensity, the anticipation of knowing Alex could find out at any point what he was doing that afternoon. And of course, the anxiety of knowing he’d pretty well shouted Alex’s name as he came.
“Henry… hey, are you… are you there man?”
Henry blinked at Alex, shaking his head slightly pulling himself out of his thoughts. “Yes, yes sorry. You were saying?”
Alex stopped, pulling Henry to the edge of the sidewalk when he’d earned a grumble under their breath from a passing pedestrian. “Are you okay? You seem off. Did something happen?”
“What? No, I’m fine! I’m fine.”
Alex cocked his head to the side and raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that? You’ve been quiet since you came to get me.”
A smile graced Henry’s face finally, hopefully levelling out some of Alex’s concern. “Yes, I’m sure, I’m fine. I think this afternoon was just a little more… intense than I was anticipating.”
“Oh yeah!” Alex lit up once more, guiding Henry back onto the sidewalk towards their destination. “How’d your art thing go?”
Henry held back the urge to laugh. What did he even say to that? It was incredible? The best orgasm he’d ever had? Oh, I came so hard my brain leaked out my ears, and you can watch it all in dazzling 4K, coming soon to a youtube channel near you. Don’t get freaked out if you maybe hear your name towards the end, I definitely wasn’t thinking of you railing me into next week.
“It was good, the people were nice.”
Alex shot him a look. “That’s it? You ever gonna tell me what it was about? Oh! Or will I maybe see it down the line?” A high pitched giggle left Henry’s mouth. “What’s that supposed to mean? My god, did you like pose nude or something?”
Henry tilted his head side to side, face scrunched. “Or something.” 
“What!” Alex grabbed Henry’s forearm, shooting heat through him and making him blush. That beautiful smile graced his features, deviant and excitable, making him feel oddly supported. “Oh my god Henry, did you do a boudoir shoot? This whole time I thought you were a prude, have you been holding out on me?”
Henry scoffed. “You’ve read my book, you know I’m not a prude.”
“I thought we were friends, would you just tell me already? It’s killing me here man!” 
“Maybe in time. And with a lot of alcohol, remember? Just… drop it for tonight, please?”
Alex rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’ll drop it. But when you do finally tell me what it was, I wanna see it!”
Henry’s heart skipped a beat. “Absolutely not.”
---
irl chaos demon
[10:15 p.m.] Dude, have you seen this?
Alex swiped away Nora’s text, knowing it was probably some TikTok trend, and he was not willing to start on that rabbit hole tonight.
 irl chaos demon
[10:18 p.m.] I just finished watching it and… I think you’ll want to see this 👀
He eyed the message carefully before finally clicking on the notification and seeing the youtube link she’d sent him. Intimate Words: Session Ten: Henry.
Oh?
The thumbnail was vague. Alex recognized the background to be Henry’s apartment office space, with the wall of books behind him. He was seated at his desk, a book open in front of him, as he smiled softly into the camera. His hair wasn’t messy, but it wasn’t slicked back into his usual perfect coif. Alex imagined this softer, more undone version of Henry was one reserved for the comforts of his own home when he shared it with someone more… well intimately. He clicked through to the video, a short logo stinger introducing it, and oh! This must have been the art thing he was doing those few weeks ago!
Alex paused the video, considering the idea of texting Henry to let him know he would be watching… but then remembered how skittish he’d been about it. He’d gotten the impression that Henry didn’t want Alex watching this. The description was about as vague as the thumbnail, it read ‘Author Henry Fox reads from The Servant and The Gentleman by Annabelle Greene. Directed by Theo Lawson’ 
It seemed straightforward enough, just Henry reading a book… so then why was he so embarrassed about it?
Alex did the only thing he could think to do at that moment. He called June.
“Hey Lil Bit, what’s up?”
“Did Nora show you a video of Henry?”
June scoffed. “Yeah, she did. I didn’t watch it all the way through cause he’s like my less annoying non-biological brother and that would be weird, but…”
“Why didn’t you finish the video? She said I’ll want to see it, but it didn’t sound like Henry wanted me to see it.” 
June went silent. 
“Bug, what’s up with this fucking video?”
“Alejandro!” Nora joined the call, sitting beside June. “To what do we owe the pleasure, we just got into bed.”
“Gross. Nora what’s with the link?”
“Ooooooh! Did you watch it? Hot, right?”
It was Alex’s turn to be silent.
“Oooohhhkay, I’m going to guess from your lack of response you either didn’t watch it, or are currently questioning your sexuality.”
“Nora, why the fuck would this video make me question my sexuality?”
Nora chuckled. “So you really didn’t watch it, huh. Have you actually not heard about this project?”
“Clearly I haven’t.” Alex went right to Google. The Intimate Words project. He clicked on the first link to the official site and read through the description, eyes going wide. “Nora… did Henry… sorry explain this to me like I’m five. What am I looking at?”
“Henry read a book on camera while getting some good vibrations, pun intended, as an artistic statement in favour of normalizing what pleasure looks like on different people.”
Alex took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. Soooo, should I watch it?”
“I dunno Alex, should you?”
“I mean do I want to watch it?”
Her voice went softer. “I can’t answer that Alejandro, do you want to watch it?”
Alex dropped his hand, looking at the video thumbnail again. Henry’s soft smile stared back, warm and inviting, and for a moment, a flutter erupted in his chest. He was straight. He was straight? At least he was pretty sure he was straight… Was he? 
His head spun as he thought back to every interaction he’d had with Henry since meeting him. They riffed off each other perfectly, best buds, a good pal, but… but Alex was disappointed whenever Henry would cancel plans, and everything felt better, brighter, when Henry was around. 
A few minutes of comfortable silence had passed. “Nora? I’m gonna go.”
“You okay Lil Bit?” This time it was June that chimed in.
“Yeah, I’m good, well, we’ll see how I’m feeling in a bit I guess.”
“Call me when you’re done!” Nora shouted over the phone.
“Ew, that’s my brother, asshole.”
Alex hung up before their fighting turned into something he wouldn’t be able to un-hear, and clicked on the video. His heart was thrumming in his chest as Henry’s smooth voice rang through his bedroom, and he began reading.
It was only a minute or so into the video, but nothing out of the ordinary had happened. It was just Henry, he was just reading, and maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. He was twitchier than usual, but Alex figured it had to do with the nature of the video he was performing in. Henry didn’t seem like the type of person to do anything like this. Admittedly, Alex didn’t know really much about Henry’s dating life, he tended to keep pretty quiet about it at work or otherwise, but apparently he was more adventurous than Alex thought him to be. 
But then came the stuttering. 
And Alex’s body finally caught up with what his brain knew he was watching.
From the first breathy gasp Henry let out, Alex knew the answer to the question he’d had in his mind since the phone call with Nora. It was a clear and resounding no. 
He watched as Henry bit his full bottom lip, a stream of little noises spilling from between his teeth. Alex could see the way his fingers trembled against the desk, like Henry was unable to control the way they spasmed as he let what clearly was a magnificent feeling wash over him. He wasn’t entirely sure just what was being used on Henry, but his mind ran rampant with ideas, and it took less than a minute for his own cock to stir in his joggers. 
Alright, guess we’re doing this.
Henry’s voice shook deliciously as he continued to read, and for a moment, Alex thought about having him read aloud while Henry rode his cock. He groaned at the idea, which apparently Henry from the video could tell. “Fuckin’ hell that’s… wow.”
The surprise from his lips was almost endearing, no, adorable, but only for another minute because shortly after Henry let out a downright filthy string of expletives. 
“Fuck baby.” Alex groaned, watching Henry grind away on his desk chair. He wanted to mark up that perfect neck, suck bruises wherever he could, nip away at those sinful collarbones… he wanted to be the one making Henry feel like that.
Henry’s composure was waining, and so was Alex’s as his fingers twitched, itching to get a hand on himself. He could see the moment Henry gave up on the task at hand and focused purely on his pleasure, chasing what he needed, and good god, it was the hottest fucking thing Alex had seen in his thirty years of life. Better than anything he’d read, anything he’d seen, porn or otherwise, this video would ruin anyone else for him. Henry would ruin anyone else for him. His eyes were glued to the screen, he didn’t even want to blink in case he missed anything, and… was that his name?
Alex scrubbed backwards, hitting play and listening carefully and… “Ffffuck, f—fuck, A—Ale…. christ.”
He paused the video, the pleasure on Henry’s face frozen in time, the pleasure he’d gotten seconds after saying his name. Alex.
Alex opened his messages and texted Nora back.
TO: irl chaos demon
[10:58 p.m.] We’re talking about this tomorrow.
Tomorrow. Not tonight, tomorrow. Tonight Alex was preoccupied. 
The sexuality crisis could wait. The imagery of Henry getting off with his name on his lips was past the point of sending Alex into a spiral, and right to him being horny about it. He pulled his half hard cock out of his joggers, not even bothering with pushing them down knowing this would be quick. A few tugs with his hand had him throbbing and leaking over his knuckles. He closed his eyes, the memory of Henry’s breathy whimpers racing through his mind. A bite of his lip and a throaty groan of his own, and quickly, Alex was spilling over his fingers, making a mess of his hand and the waistband of his joggers.
He only allowed himself a moment of contemplation before he was wiping his hand off on his bottoms, they’d have to be washed anyways, and going to brush his teeth.
As he stared at his reflection, hair tousled, cheeks flushed, Alex did what he did in every crisis. He made a list.
That video of Henry turned him on.
Nora thought he’d want to see the video, and he did.
If he was being honest, that wasn’t the first time he’d had some kind of… feeling like that for a man.
On some level, he knew that he had to be somewhat into Henry 
That video of Henry really fucking turned him on.
With a sigh, Alex contemplated what this meant for him. There was no problem with him accepting the fact that he was low-key into guys. If anything, it opened up the dating pool for him… but he had a feeling he didn’t really want the dating pool to be opened past… well… Henry. He’d never really given a thought to his sexuality. Yeah, he liked women, he was confident in that for sure, but he’d never really thought about dating men until Henry.
By this point it was nearly midnight, and Alex’s head was spinning. He texted the group chat with Nora and June suggesting brunch in the morning and crawled into bed, hoping some clarity would come with sleep. That night he dreamt of Henry.
---
Brunch the next morning was… eventful to say the least. There was a lot of teasing on Nora’s part, and Alex spent the whole meal red (and not from the effects of bottomless mimosas). After much contemplation, and a chat with both Nora and June, Alex came to the conclusion that he was bisexual.
The more he said it, the more he felt like it really fit, and by the end of the weekend, Alex was feeling more confident about himself than he had felt in a while.
Monday morning at the office felt a little bit brighter, there was a spring in his step and for once he actually felt relaxed after a weekend off. That is until he opened his calendar and remembered that he agreed to lunch with Henry today.
“Alex, good morning.”
Speak of the devil.
“H-hey man, how was your weekend?” Alex picked up his coffee, blowing away the steam before taking a sip.
“It was nice, got a lot of writing done actually. I have another meeting this morning about my latest draft, but it’s all been pretty ‘good vibes’ so far with this book.”
Alex choked on his coffee, his nose burning from the hot liquid suddenly entering his airway.
“Oh god, are you alright?”
Alex nodded frantically, reaching for some tissues to wipe down the mess. “Fine, fine sorry, went down the wrong pipe there.”
Henry chuckled. “Just learning to swallow?” 
“Something like that.”
Henry’s eyebrows rose, oh god, Alex thought, am I actually successfully flirting with Henry?
“So lunch. Spencer and Zarah can’t make it today, I think it’s just gonna be us two. I was hoping to maybe check out that new Thai place?”
Alex blinked slowly. Lunch alone with Henry sounded dangerous, but it would be suspicious if he also randomly bailed. “Yeah, sounds great. I’ll meet you at the elevator at 1?”
Henry smiled warmly and nodded. “See you then!” He looked back and waved once he’d walked away, and Instantly Alex knew he was screwed.
The morning stretched on as Alex waited for the clock to strike 1. Henry looked so good today in a soft sweater, the collar of his shirt peeking through, and his hair just a little bit undone. His heart fluttered anxiously as he watched the clock, not even knowing what the hell he even did that morning, and then finally, it was time. Alex grabbed his wallet and phone, forcing himself to walk, not run, to the elevators where Henry was waiting. Unfortunately for him, the sight of Henry made him lose every coherent thought he’d had until that point.
They rode the elevator down in complete silence, Alex worrying the entire time about what they’d talk about once they were seated. Henry luckily filled the silence with updates on his meeting, prattling on about the book and the notes he was getting from his editor. 
The restaurant was a short walk away, and by the time they were seated, Henry had already recounted all the important bits of his meeting. They read through the menus, Henry glancing up to Alex every once in a while, and glancing back down with a blush when Alex caught his eye. Neither conversed with each other, even after the waiter took their orders and filled their water glasses. 
Alex could feel the tension between them. He was making it weird, but all he could see right now was Henry seated across from him, writhing in pleasure instead of the put together slightly stuffy persona he kept up during working hours. From spending the weekend fantasizing about him, to sitting across from him at lunch was a very strange dichotomy, and suddenly Alex was having a hard time separating the two Henry’s in his mind. Was it getting hot in here? 
“Alright, what’s bothering you? I’ve literally never seen you this quiet.”
Alex’s eyes went wide, his mouth gaped like a fish… he had absolutely no idea what to say. Does he just come clean? Tell Henry everything that had transpired over the weekend? Or does he lie and say he’s fine, just under the weather? Henry could usually read him like an open book, no matter what he says, he’d know Alex was lying. So all that he could come up with was, “I’m bisexual.”
Henry raised his eyebrows. He could tell that wasn’t what Alex had intended to say based on the slight wince that followed his short and succinct coming out. 
“Sorry… that—I-I didn’t—”
“Alex.” Henry reached across the table and laid his hand on top of Alex’s lightly. Alex’s brain promptly shuts down. “Thank you for telling me.”
He nods, eyes focused on their hands. “Yeah, ‘course, you’re my best friend, Hen.”
Henry smiled bashfully and pulled his hand away, taking a sip of water. “I’m not the first person you told, am I?”
Alex laughed, feeling a lot more himself now that Henry was guiding their conversation. “No, Nora and June kinda walked me through a sexuality crisis over the weekend.” Shit!
Intrigued, Henry raised his eyebrow. “Oh?”
Again, Alex started feeling hot under the collar, his smile dropped.
“Someone catch your interest?”
“Ah… um…” Alex winced. “Something like that.”
Henry nodded, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “Do I know him?”
Alex froze. He felt himself coming to a crossroad; he could laugh off the whole thing and say it was some actor in some new movie, typical bullshit, or he could come clean. Coming clean would obviously be the harder road… but would it? It would mean he wouldn’t have to dance around Henry like he had all day, maybe he could stop picturing his face masked in pleasure whenever he threw his head back in a laugh, and maybe, just maybe, it could mean Henry felt that way about him too.
Decision made, Alex begun to nod. “Yeah, actually, you do.” He played with the beads of his bracelet, a nervous habit he’d picked up, and braced himself. “Henry, I-I saw your video.”
Video… my vid—oh dear lord. Henry felt a hundred different emotions wash through him, confusion, fear, and embarrassment being the main features. “Oh god.”
“I—I think it was—”
Henry put a hand up, effectively stopping Alex from saying anything further. “I’m sorry I just… I’d really like for you to not finish that sentence.” He remembered the end of that video A—Ale…. christ… and let out a deep sigh. “Oh god.”
“Hen—”
“I… sorry I’ve got a meeting to get to.”
---
“Fuck, Pez. Fuck.”
“Hazza, I’m failing to see how this is a bad thing.”
Henry let his head fall to his desk with a thunk. “I said his fucking name Percy.”
Pez laughed on the other end of the phone. “Oh I know darling, I was a little offended it wasn’t my name on your lips, but this was a long time coming to be honest.”
“Pez.” Henry pleaded. “Please.”
“Alright, alright, I’ll behave. But I stand by what I said, I’m failing to see how this is bad for you. The man basically said you were his bisexual awakening, why are you on the phone with me instead of getting railed by—”
“Because! I don’t think I’m strong enough to only be with him casually. With him, it has to be all or nothing.”
He can hear Pez snort on, the tinny effect of his phone speaker doing nothing to hide the snark. “Okay, so go all in then.”
“But what if—”
“Babes, all I’m hearing are excuses. Why don’t you just talk to him? He’s obviously into you in some way, or he wouldn’t have even said anything about the video.”
“But I don’t know if he even had positive thoughts about the video, I left before he could say anything about it. What if he’s totally disgusted?”
“You’re not considering the facts though love, he said someone caught his interest, and—shush! Let me finish! Someone caught his interest and then he mentioned seeing you in that video. Sorry Hen but it sounds like you’re incorrect here.”
Unfortunately it did sound like Pez had a point. There was nothing really left to say, Henry had to admit defeat.
“Hazza, just talk to him. Please. I can feel your gay panic all the way in bloody London. I think you’ll be surprised by what he has to say.” 
“Fine, fine. I’ll text him. To meet up and talk tonight. Or something.”
“Yes! That’s the spirit! Let me know how it goes mate.”
Henry watched the call disappear from his screen to find he’d already received a text from Alex. 
Alex
[2:15 p.m.] Hey man, I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable  earlier, it really wasn’t my intention, I hope you know that.
He worried the skin of his lip, crafting a response that would have him on edge all day.
TO: Alex
[3:05 p.m.] Hi Alex, I understand that wasn’t your intention,  you didn’t make me uncomfortable, I was just startled.
[3:06 p.m.] Can we talk later today? I’d like the opportunity  to maybe clear the air a little bit between us.
Alex
[3:07 p.m.] Oh thank god you’re alive
[3:07 p.m.] Yeah, wanna come to mine after work? 
TO: Alex
[3:08 p.m.] Yes I’ll swing by yours after I let David out for a walk.
---
He was stalling. Henry knew he was stalling, and he didn’t care, he did not want to face this head on, but he knew he had to.
After a moment outside, Henry knew he had to face Alex, and knocked on his door. As if he were standing right behind it, Alex appeared moments later.
“Alex.”
“Hi.”
They stood there looking at each other for a moment before Henry gestured at the door. “Do you mind if I—?”
Alex spurred to life. “Right, yeah, come in.” He stepped aside and let Henry in, leading him towards the living room. “Can I get you anything? A beer, glass of wine, hell I can whip up a margarita.”
Henry smiled. “I think perhaps we should have this conversation sober?”
“Yeah, good idea actually.” Alex moved to sit next to Henry on the couch, leaving more space between them than they usually kept. “If you don’t mind, can I start?” Henry motioned for Alex to go ahead. “I want to apologize. Before you shot the video it didn’t sound like you really wanted anyone to know what it was. I didn’t seek it out, I promise. Nora sent it to me, I think she knew I was bi before I did, but I really shouldn’t have opened it. I thought about ignoring it, but I didn’t, I violated your trust and your wishes, and I’m really, truly sorry for that.”
“Alex, it’s okay—” 
“But it’s not Hen. You told me not to watch it and I did anyway.”
Henry chuckled to himself. “I don’t recall telling you not to watch it, I think a part of me hoped you would before I… well we’ll get to that, but I didn’t explicitly say do not seek this out. People I know were bound to see it at some point or another, I’m not mad you saw it Alex.”
“You’re not?”
“Gods no. I’m more than a little embarrassed to tell you the truth. It was quite empowering, I don’t think I’ve ever felt that hot in my life, but…” Henry’s heart slammed in his chest, it was now or never. “Alex, I said, fuck I practically moaned your name.”
“A-are you embarrassed that you did it, or that it was—”
“Don’t even think about saying it, you know I’d never be embarrassed of how I feel about you.”
Alex’s breath hitched. “And how do you feel about me Henry?”
Henry’s fierce expression turned a little sad, and Alex braced himself for rejection. “You have to understand Alex, I don’t—I don’t do casual, and you just came out.”
Alex frowned. “Okay, when did I say I wanted casual?”
“Well I just thought—” 
“You thought wrong then. Yes, I’m attracted to you. Like mega, big time, holy shit attracted to you. But I also like you Henry. And yeah, I’m new to this whole bisexuality thing, your fucking performance sent me down a rabbit hole I’m honestly surprised I’d never been down before, but I’d also like to take you on dates, and hold your hand, and kiss you just because I want to.”
“You’re attracted to me?” A rosy blush graced his high cheekbones.
“Obviously. Have you not seen yourself? And in that video? Jesus Christ I thought I was going to combust.”
Henry shrugged. “I honestly haven’t watched the video. I’ve never felt so… free, or sexy, like I felt so good after filming that, but I’m worried I just look silly.”
Alex scooted closer on the couch, letting his fingers rest lightly on Henry’s to test the water. When Henry didn’t pull away, Alex moved to cover his whole hand, lacing their fingers together. 
“Trust me, there’s no way you could look silly doing what you did. You looked so hot baby.”
A pleasant shiver rolls down Henry’s spine at the pet name, and a smile settles deeper into his features.
“For the record, I have feelings for you too, I have for a while, but you’ve just always been… straight.”
Alex looked down at their joined hands, a chuckle rumbling through his chest. “Well lucky for you I’m not straight then, right?”
“Hm, yeah.” Henry moved even closer to Alex, pressing their legs up against each other. “I have to ask, have you ever been with a man, in any way?”
Alex winced. “No… but also yes.”
“Oh?”
“A friend of mine, Liam, from high school. We used to, I dunno, get off together. We never actually like… touched each other, or kissed or anything, but there was nothing straight about it. And like… he came out to me as gay after college.”
Henry nods, a smile on his face. “Ah, I understand. And… you’d want to do things like kiss me, and touch me?”
With raised eyebrows, Alex gives Henry a once-over. “I said I wanted to, didn’t I baby? Maybe not… all at once, but I’d really like to kiss you if that’s okay.”
With a bashful smile, Henry nodded. “More than okay, love.” He leaned in, bumping his nose against Alex’s gently, before connecting their lips in a chaste kiss. “How’s that?” He whispered, lips brushing against Alex’s with every syllable.
“Fucking come here.”
Henry let out a squeak as Alex hoisted him into his lap, legs falling on either side of his hips, and hands going to his shoulders. They stared intently into each other’s eyes, reading their expressions for any signs it was going too far, before meeting in the middle in a heated kiss. Alex’s hands went immediately to Henry’s waist, running his fingers across the small of his back. Henry felt more confident to let his own hands wander into the hair he so desperately wanted to feel. It was soft and thick, and everything he’d dreamed of, and with a light tug, he was able to extract a deep groan from Alex’s throat.
Henry pulled away, gazing once again into Alex’s eyes with the silent question of everything okay? His question was answered moments later when Alex hooked his hands under Henry’s ass and dragged him closer. He was breathless; they were chest to chest, and he could feel the effects of their actions from the man beneath him as their dicks slotted together along with the rest of themselves. They rushed forward again, practically drunk on each other with this newfound friction between them, lips meeting in the middle in a frantic kiss. Alex’s tongue met Henry’s and suddenly a new layer of arousal joined the party. 
Alex pulled his lips away from Henry’s, peppering pecks across his cheek and down the column of his neck. He nipped a patch of skin at the juncture of Henry’s neck and shoulder, causing a yelp from the man above him, before soothing it with the heat of his tongue. As he worshiped the soft skin of Henry’s neck with his lips, teeth, tongue, Alex’s clever hands held a commanding grip on Henry’s ass, guiding him in a rough grind. 
A whimper from Henry made Alex perk up, and he met Henry’s eyes once again.
“Oh my god, is this okay?”
“Christ, is this okay, please don’t fucking stop.”
So much for taking it slow.
With a chuckle, Alex dutifully went back to work sucking love bites on Henry’s neck. Henry’s hips moved on their own, a string of soft groans and whimpers falling from his lips as he ground down on Alex’s erection. The friction between them was heavenly, and Alex was questioning why he hadn’t tried this sooner. 
“Fuck sweetheart, that’s good.” Henry’s following groan was stifled by his teeth worrying his bottom lip, and suddenly, it was too much, and not enough for Alex. 
His grip on Henry’s ass tightened, and he used all his strength to stand up from their spot on the couch, Henry in his arms. His legs wound around Alex’s torso to keep himself from falling; he instantly felt lightheaded from the force of his blood rushing from his head to his dick. He knew Alex was strong, and worked out to keep his body in immaculate shape, but nothing could have prepared him for what it would be like to be manhandled by him. 
“Sorry, just… too much, I was like seconds away from cumming. Is this still okay?” 
Henry looked down pointedly at his own hard-on standing proudly between them before bashfully looking up at Alex.
“I guess it is, huh.”
Giggles left their throats, the two men finally having a moment to breathe after being so caught up in the moment. They giggled at the absurdity of it all, the fact that they’d danced around each other for so long, the fact that all of this came about because of some dumb (hot) video that Pez just needed him to be in. 
“Where do we go from here?”
Henry looked around Alex’s apartment. “Well where would you like to go from here? I mean we could continue on the couch, or maybe the countertop, or if you’re feeling naughty you could take me to bed.” 
Alex chuckled again, resting his head on Henry’s shoulder. “I mean us, where do we go from here?”
A smile graced his lips as Henry responded. “We’ll continue on, our standing Monday lunch dates, occasional Friday movie nights, and everything else in between, but we add the kissing, and the affection, and we just… don’t hold back what we’re feeling from each other. And we go from there. Let you get accustomed to being with a man, let our feelings develop. I’d like for you to be my boyfriend someday when you’re ready, I’d like to share my feelings with you, and ask that you communicate yours back. Sorry, that was terribly unsexy.”
“On the contrary sweetheart, open and honest communication with a side of promise for the future? Almost as sexy as contract law, talk dirty to me.” 
“Oh you cretin.” Henry swatted Alex’s chest, then leaned in for a chaste kiss. “We don’t have to go any further than you’re comfortable with tonight, but I really would like to continue what we were doing, love. Take me to bed?”
Alex’s smile was nowhere near shy. “Yeah baby, let’s go to bed.” 
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your writing is phenomenal. i write a little bit, but i think one of the biggest struggles i have is with pacing and structuring for anything longer than a couple thousand words. gonna hit you with a ton of questions, no pressure to answer all of them: how do you structure your longer-form writing? what considerations do you keep in mind as you do? are you more of a pantser or do you start with a solid outline and story beats first? what is your 'process' - and how do you approach editing as well?
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Okay, I’m ready! Took me a bit.
Thank you, first of all! This is humbling, since in industry terms I’m a debut author. (Or not even. My book isn’t even out yet. It takes ages to make a graphic novel if you have to hold down a day job at true same time. Fingers crossed 2026?) And, since structure has been the hardest thing for me to learn, it’s rewarding to know that it’s paying off!
I’m in the middle of a few planning-stage projects right now, so I’ve been asking these questions myself. Because each story is different (in length, in genre, in terms of what I want it to achieve, and also, because I’m a cartoonist as well as a writer, also in format!) I have to reinvent at least part of the wheel with each project. I’ve learned some constants, though. I’ll try to outline some of them, and rather than just tell you what I do I’ll try to explain what purpose it serves when I do it.
I do think starting small and working up is the right way of learning, because that’s what worked for me, a chronic not-finisher. I sat down and said “okay, what is the shortest thing I can make that I am guaranteed to finish?” and once I had finished that, said “okay, what’s the next longest thing?” and worked my way up. It’s easier to structure a zine than a graphic novel, it’s easier to structure a short story than something with multiple chapters, etc etc… but this isn’t because a longer story has more structure in it so much as that each structural element has to work harder.
HOWEVER, I don’t look at structure until I know what I’m building my structure on. This was the missing piece in my structure learning! So, the things I have in mind when I’m starting a new project are:
What is my genre?
What are my themes?
What is my tone?
Genre is where I get the payoff that I’m working towards. Why do people pick up this kind of story? What’s the most basic appeal of it? I try to keep this as simple as I can, eg:
In romance, the couple have to get together by the end.
In sci-fi, a new discovery poses a new question, which is then resolved
In mystery, the detective has to figure out who committed the crime so that they don’t do it again.
In erotica, the protagonist is liberated from a social norm by a new sexual encounter
In horror, an outside force threatens irrevocable change to everyone who encounters it.
This narrative payoff is (in my opinion) the bumpers on the bowling lane of fiction. If you read a romance where they never got together, an erotica where nobody fucked, a detective story where justice wasn’t done, a horror story where it was no biggie and everyone just walked it off… you’d feel ripped off, right? You’ll see that I’m not saying “in horror there is always a jumpscare” or “in a mystery there is always a red herring,” because I never actually notice if those were missing. Many stories are worse because the author has said to themself “a story like this always has this element.” RIP to all those minor characters who die in fantasy novels during the fight scene at the end of the second act just because Boromir did.
Sticking the landing on that genre promise is what makes a story “feel” complete, and the success of the buildup to that promise is what makes a story feel satisfying in that worth-a-reread way. The overall genre payoff helps me keep my eye on the prize as I’m writing. If I get writer’s block, 99% of the time it’s because I’ve written something that conflicts with it. That’s helpful to keep in mind for editing (awkward scenes/characters/sentences etc are usually also conflicting with the payoff, or at least not helping me get there) and is also helpful to know when I’m doing back of mind narrative debugging while zoning out over the dishes. If I have a character and I want them to end up at that final point in a way that feels natural, what do I have to do to them to make it happen? If they feel stagnant, what beliefs do they have to have at the start that will jar against that end point?
(I believe the Literary phrase for the narrative payoff is the climax, or the catharsis. Catharsis is usually the concept used for horror or for tragedies. But I’m a cartoonist, so it’s easier for me to think of everything as setup for the final payoff of the punchline.)
Also—and this is more my individual philosophy rather than actual advice, but: delivering the payoff matters because it develops my readers’ trust. I’m not owed anyone’s time or attention. In a big world full of competing demands, it’s important to me that my readers know that I appreciate them choosing my work over putting the recycling bin out. And the great thing about reader trust is: it stacks. Trust means a reader is willing to go a bit further out of their comfort zone with me. When someone says “I don’t usually read stories like this, but I gave this a shot because you wrote it,” that’s what I’m talking about. I’m a trans writer who tells silly jokes and tackles weird topics, so I really do appreciate the readers who invest time and attention in me. They’re my 30 sickos, you know, from the tweet?
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Anyway. If genre tells me where I’m landing the plane, theme tells me what the jet fuel is. The reason a particular concept is making me insane, aka, my motivation to tell the story at all, is my theme. It’s the question I’m trying to answer. It doesn’t have to be pithy or well articulated—I just have to know the general gist of it. It might just be “it pisses me off when authors do X, so I am going to prove it’s not actually hard to write Y.” What matters is that it’s something I won’t become bored of. My graphic novel, which has been the longest and most involved project of my life, hasn’t bored me once. That’s pretty spectacular seeing as I have ADHD out my ears! I’ve been frustrated, tired, had bad wrists and general creative ennui at points, but “can you have a happy ending if your family doesn’t accept you?” Is a question that hasn’t run out of juice, even though I’ve been answering it for six years now. The theme is often the most powerful if it’s something you don’t know the answer to. When we were talking about whether or not to tackle the marriage equality debate in Australia in my book, my agent told me “you’ll know it’s a good story if writing about it feels like pressing on a bruise.” I think this is what keeps your themes honest. It stops them being preachy and stops them from becoming The Moral Of The Story.
Terry Pratchett said that the first draft is him telling the story to himself, and the subsequent drafts are him figuring out how to tell it to other people. That’s been very helpful to me. Each successive edit will make the themes clearer until I can say “oh, so this is what the story is about.” What I said before about longer stories doing more with each structural element is because of this. Longer stories tend to accrue more themes, usually one per subplot and/or per character relationship. Shorter stories usually address just one. Themes are handy to think about here because if a story looks like it might get too bloated (“no way I can explore this AND this AND this and still stay under 20k words”) you can cut em out and address them somewhere else.
The themes in your fiction are the bit that makes it uniquely yours, like fingerprints in a clay pot. They stop the structure feeling formulaic and make it feel personal. A thousand authors could (and do) write the same premise over and over again, but in their hands each story means something different. If you’ve ever read a story that rings hollow even though it hits all the same notes as other stories you like, I’d say that it’s by an author who hasn’t figured out what interests them in the story they’re telling. Like… there’s a reason Twilight was successful and its many copycats were not. It’s because Meyer had this theme of insane repressed Mormon horniness running through her work, and everyone else just said “ah, so readers like boys who are barely restraining their murder instinct.” No! The murder instinct was juicy because it was thematically complex.
Genre and theme give me an idea of what the tone is, aka what mood I am building. I guess if genre is my destination and theme is my fuel, then tone is my plane. It’s about how the journey feels. Taking a first class flight from A to B is different from taking the same trip in a crop duster. The people on each plane will observe different things throughout the journey. The same events could happen on both flights, but a reader will feel way more anxious about the crop duster encountering turbulence.
Outside my increasingly elaborate metaphor, this is questions like… Is this setting fun and friendly? Are the characters mistrustful of each other? Is the world fundamentally evil? Can anyone die? Am I using colloquial language? Are swears allowed? How hard should the protagonist’s failures hit them, and how sharp should the consequences for their actions be? Is it realistic, or a bit surreal? Is my narrator (or narrative perspective if I’m in second or third person) sincere? Cynical? Trustworthy? Biased? Can they crack jokes?
Once I have an idea of these things, structure usually slots in pretty easily. As I’m in the thinking stage, if I have an idea for a scene (or a joke, more often than not) that I want to include, I’ll put it in a dot point list. Later on, I will look at these dot points and the structure and say “what goes where?” or “what needs to happen before this thing I want to include to make it make sense?”
Short things I use a three act structure, aka Beginning Middle End, where “middle” is whatever events need to happen to shift my character from their opening position to their concluding one. For longer things, I just whack on a seven act structure for whatever genre I’m working in. I often come back to Jami Gold’s romance structure because I write romances a lot, but also because it’s the only structure I’ve ever really seen that maps internal character arcs along with external events—one of the things I found absolutely the hardest to get my head around when I was structuring my graphic novel. If it’s a genre I know less about, I’ll find a structure that specifies examples for the pinch points, because those are ones I usually have trouble brainstorming. The mystery outline I used for my Disco Elysium fanfiction gave me the suggestions that a suspect should escape, which got me out of a huge block.
So: before I write, I’ve thought very hard about genre and tone and theme, and how my characters need to get from their starting positions to one where if bondage doesn’t happen the story will feel narratively incomplete. I’ve pondered my place in the world, I have developed beef with a handful of authors who I’ve decided have Done It Wrong, and I have image searched “mystery structure seven act”. I have probably gone on four or five research sprees where I learn a bunch about medieval demonology and insect genitalia and radio antennae or whatever.
(I should say a lot of that is just what do for fun anyway. I do think writers tend to forget that we do this because it’s fun. If you’re not having fun doing this stuff, then your reader is probably not having fun either. It’s important to figure out what is fun to you and to find a way to make your process mostly the fun stuff.)
Materially, what I have is a maybe a couple of test scenes I’ve written while working out character dynamics and refining my idea of tone, and a list of dot points that reads like:
Wrap up the subplot with that other guy
Heart to heart
Protagonist gets a boner
Exposition about early printing press
Fight scene (to show they care about each other)
Phone call from side character 12
MIDPOINT: Guy goes missing (or is killed with weapon from earlier? Suspected killed, but actually just escaped?)
JOKE
Bring back printing press thing
Bondage obviously
Catch the bad guy
Resolution (come back to this).
The trap for structure for me for YEARS has been assuming that I should be able to sit down and write out the perfect plan. “I’ll be able to write well so long as I know exactly what I’m doing every step of the way.” But… most of the fun of writing for me is figuring out how to address those missing plot elements as I go. I don’t think I’ve ever said this, but I never intended for my Disco Elysium fanfic to end with an explosion. I figured it out once I wrote the interview scene with Felicity, and then I said “okay, so that’s the resolution. Now, what do I need to do to blow this building up?“
The groundwork I’ve laid is helpful because I know what I can’t compromise on. As I’m heading towards my payoff and hitting these beats along the way, I have the wriggle room for flashes of discovery where I go “wait, fuck, you know what’d be cool as?”
Editing is where I get to make sure that everything lines up without contradictions. I’m very irresponsible; I don’t have the patience to wait until the story is finished before I start editing it, so I often go back and make tweaks on a sentence level. This is often how I get myself out of writer’s block. “What did I say back here, and why does it make me feel like I can’t get to the next point on my structure?”
I also tend to write on my phone in notes app documents or in Scrivener, so I can actually make use of the dead times in my day. I pick up my phone all the time to keep my hands busy, but I rarely sit down at a computer without something more important coming up. Only once the document gets long enough to be unwieldy, or once it’s actually finished, will I sit down with the text on a bigger screen. This really helps me stop myself getting overwhelmed by the idea of The Blank Page, too. I can’t see how much I’ve written or look at much text at a time when I’m writing on my phone.
Other favourite structural things, which I add on in successive edits:
Bookending! For when you have a scene displaying the relationship between your protagonist and a secondary character at the start, then bring ‘em back together at the end to show how things have changed. My graphic novel has something like two… wait no now I’m counting it’s more like four bookend scenes, whoops. I guess I really like these! They’re good for when someone reads your draft and says “I don’t know why this character showed up, they didn’t seem that important.” If the character really IS important, they need to come back. This is handy for me specifically because I love big world with lots of secondary characters.
Callbacks: jokes strike again! But you can use this to achieve other moods. In my Silent Hill fic the words “Empty, bleeding, and different in every way” get used first to describe the town, and then again at the end to describe the protagonist. It’s unsettling both times, but the second time I feel as though it is a little bit reassuring, too. Maybe sometimes it’s good to be reinvented.
Foreshadowing: Lay the breadcrumbs! Make that one character stare at the table in the scene where everyone is speculating on the identity of the traitor, draw our attention to the ceramic statue on the mantelpiece. I love to use the rule of three for this, often describing the significant thing last—or to describe two significant things and diffuse any audience suspicion with a joke as the third thing 😈🙏
Well, this has been a very long post! I wonder what my rules for writing are. UM. I know I have them. I’m nothing if not wildly opinionated!
1. Don’t hang out with writers who think that they’re better than their readers. Storytelling is about sharing humanity, not transcending it. Writing is not a divine gift. There is no muse! Not only hang out with people who do not write, but hang out with people who do not read. It keeps you humble.
2. Don’t break format just for the helluvit, but—if you have an idea about how to pull something off and say, scandalised, “oh my god, but is that allowed?” you have to do it.
3. If you’re having fun, your reader is having fun. If you’re bored, your reader is EXTRA bored. So… don’t write the boring bits. If you don’t know what to say in the scene where the character gets the bus between two locations, just cut it and start the next scene with “When she got off the bus.” Christopher Paolini is an example of someone who has never learned this. On one hand he has a lot more money than I do, but on the other hand, I’ve had a lot more gay sex.
4. Hot take: bad books are just as educational as good ones. I love a formulaic or poorly told story because they give me a chance to engage my structure brain. I like to figure out what went wrong and how. It’s never cinema sins bullshit like “WOW! GAPING PLOT HOLE!!!” but more like “weird, the tone of the climax is jarring compared to the rest of the story” or “well that’s the obligatory breakup at the end of the second act, but why did it happen?” I’ve also learned a whole lot about how to write sex scenes by reading ones that made me say “well, certainly not like that.”
5. Learn to recognise ways you make your own writing noncommittal. “He felt,” “she realised,” “they discovered,” “she thought.” Almost, very, really, nearly. These are all things I do way too much. Don’t say he felt it was, say it was.
☀️🌱☀️
Lastly: If you’re hitting a brick wall, if you’re blocked, if writing isn’t fun… stop.
Read something outside your genre. Dig up weeds in the garden. Watch a friend play a game that is too scary for you. Put a weird doll in the corner of your bathroom, go look through second hand shops for cheap treasures, get an outlandish food on your grocery run. Have a nice chat with a guy who is eighty something, make faces at a baby when mum isn’t looking. Learn to tie a useful knot. Badly paint some furniture. Sit out under the stars with a cuppa, listen to the night sounds, enjoy the feeling of being small. What I’m saying is, you should actively distract yourself with the interesting parts of Being Alive. Whatever feels like a waste of time is worth your time. Internet does NOT count! Do not watch a video, do not read a post! Do things that engage your senses. Do things where you use your hands. Make yourself laugh! Be clumsy, be silly, be messy on purpose. Writing is never more important than being alive, and your brain is never more important than your body. You need to fall in love with being alive. You need to be in the world. One day the gears will click into place and you’ll need to start writing again, furiously, like there’s a fire lit inside of you—but you can’t rush it. You need to take the time to be an animal, and animals play.
Here is a photo of Flea, who is a sixteen year old cat. She has no teeth. Here she is having a great time rolling around in the sun.
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Sometimes my zine friends and I joke about things that are zines. Can my tomato plants be a zine? Poets joke about what is a poem. Is my cat rolling on the lawn a poem? Well, in that line of thinking… being an animal isn’t not a kind of writing. You’re making a mark on the world either way.
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wind-it-up-p21 · 4 months ago
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PSA this is going to be very long and I would post it on my own blog but I am not ready to talk about this without being anonymous yet since a few of you know who I am in “real life.”
As someone who grew up in a sport very similar to dance and had what seems to be a very similar experience to Dyllan here’s what I have to say (disclaimer my experience obviously was not exactly the same but I will explain how they overlap).
I was a part of a team that was and is still known to be one of the top teams in the country. If you wanted to make a name for yourself in this world my team was one of the places you would go to do that. Girls travel from all over the country to compete with them.
On my said team I was one of the “favorites” though I never thought of myself as one until I got older and I realized it again when I walked away and looked back on my experience and it became more obvious to me.
To start, my coach made it very clear to the rest of our team that me and 3 other girls were “the hardest workers” and that we had special relationships with her. Just to name a few things she did to validate this with me: She told me consistently that she loved me and that I was special, I was one of four students invited to her wedding, and she would put me and the other 3 favorites in groupchats or have meetings with us to basically tell us we needed to lead the team to victory and it fell on us to be the examples for the team. I could go on and on but you probably get the point.
I was apart of this team for the same amount of time that Dyllan spent with Molly. My last year on the team I was in high school and wanted to enjoy my social life as well as competition life. I was dedicated to the team, but I also wanted to maybe you know go to a school football game or two. The minute that my team wasn’t tunnel vision in my eyes my coach started to put such intense amounts of pressure on me, take away “privileges” I had, and threatened what I now realize was my status on the team in order to get me to forget my social life and eat/sleep/breathe our sport and team. She had done this before, but it was now on another level. My mental health was at an all time low and nobody but my parents knew. People would say that because I was one of the team stars there was no way I could possibly feel like a victim in this situation. I felt trapped and didn’t know what to do because this team was my everything and everyone knew how big of a role it played in my life, but I needed to get out.
It has now been many, many years since all of this went down. I have taken time to process what I went through and I still am impacted by the trauma of it all. When I finally decided to walk away after that last year, a ton of my teammates ended up following me. It was an exodus like the one p21 had. Meanwhile, one of the other favorites now works for the organization, but clearly suffers from anger issues and anxiety now. At least one of the other favorites has openly regretted not leaving at the right time.
All in all, everyone is gonna have different experiences on a team like mine or project 21s. However, if it’s a toxic environment for so many people it’s toxic for everyone. Some people may just not realize it. They have drank the kool aid and they’re knee deep in it. We can’t control who stays and who goes, so what we can do is support the girls who are there while continuing to validate the emotions of those who left. If Dyllan and so many other girls were so clearly negatively impacted by Molly and P21 there’s obviously some truth to it. With that being said it doesn’t mean we can’t root for the success of girls like Gracyn and Regan. They’re children, and they’re individuals. They are not the reason so many people have struggled at P21. I have a lot more on my mind regarding our support to them and P21 but I’ll spare you all of it considering this is already a 400 page novel.
This was so interesting to read and I really agree with everything you said! It really puts into perspective how someone might seem really successful at their dance studio or any sport but actually be really struggling mentally
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robsterskellington · 8 days ago
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I wrote more of the "What if Wei Wuxian remembered everything that was going to happen and changes as much of the outcomes as possible". If anyone as any name suggestions for this messy, self indulgent fic, I'd love to hear them!
Part one:
Part two:
Part three:
Ultimately, Wei Wuxian decided not to create the Yin Tiger Tally. It was too dangerous, and he couldn't risk the dangers caused by it. Besides, he wasn't alone, so he didn't need to depend too heavily on his powers this time. He didn't go off and do his own thing anymore, he paid attention to the plans made by each Clan Leader and followed any orders needed. He'd occasionally put his own input in through Jiang Cheng, but that was it. There was one exception; Wei Wuxian knew what happened in the future, and knew of one thing he definitely wanted to prevent, so he went to the camps where Clan Leaders Nie and Jin were, and thanked all the Gods in the Heavens that he made it in time.
This was when Meng Yao proved that he was willing to do anything in his power to prove himself to his father, and become Jin Guangyao. Wei Wuxian managed to tip off the soldiers that stole Meng Yao's ideas that the man was *pissed*, and got them to flee. Meng Yao had grabbed a Wen Clan sword, but upon seeing that there was nobody around, flinched when he heard footsteps behind him, "I've heard about you from Lan Zhan. You saved his brother. It's Meng Yao, right?"
"Aha. Yes, that's me." Wei Wuxian watched him try to discard the sword discreetly, before facing the Demonic Cultivator, "Wei Wuxian, I presume? Might I ask why you've cornered me? I always assumed that flirting with *women* was your preference."
That made Wei Wuxian laugh, and Meng Yao was stunned by how young the man before him sounded. Obviously he'd heard the unsavoury rumours, but he never imagined that the Founder of Diabolism was barely of age. Wei Wuxian wiped his eyes, "Ah, sorry. Yes, I do like women, however I won't lie that the person I have my heart set on is a man. You're feeling the same way, right?"
"...how did you know that?" Meng Yao hid his feelings well, or so he thought. But it's true that while protecting Lan Xichen, he found his heart swaying. However, his feelings had to be pushed aside if he wanted his father's approval, to prove himself worthy of the Jin Clan.
"I can't say. But you're not as talented as a liar as you think." Wei Wuxian looked at him, "...don't chase after something just because you think you want it. Sometimes you need to follow your heart, as cliché as that sounds. Where would your heart lead you to?"
*To Lan Xichen*, is what Meng Yao thought of immediately. He couldn't deny wanting to spend more time with him. Rescuing him had been the best decision he'd ever made, especially when he knew that Lan Xichen cared about him too. This was stupid! "Why should I listen to you, someone I've heard has the habit of flirting with anyone with a pretty face? I'm hardly going to take your advice. Besides..." he snarled quietly, his calm facade dropping, "I've had nothing all my life, I've only been regarded as... as the son of a prostitute..."
"You were always gonna be doomed to that narrative, considering who your father is. I don't know about your mother, all I know is that regardless of her profession, she'd have only wanted you to be happy, no?" That made Meng Yao freeze, his perspective slightly altered- out of the two of them, Meng Yao's mother was pure compared to Jin Guangshan, who would sleep with any woman he took a liking to, regardless of what his wife felt about it. Yes, his mother was a prostitute, but she admitted that she made her choice, as did all the women he grew up with. Obviously it wasn't always as simple as just a choice, prostitution was what some of the women did just to survive.
"...bold, insinuating that Jin Guangshan is no more than a prostitute, Wei Wuxian." He hid a smile when Wei Wuxian showed zero remorse for his words. Meng Yao looked away and sighed, "I don't want to just be a nobody."
"You aren't." Wei Wuxian and Meng Yao froze when that booming voice interrupted them. Nie Mingjue came up, a snarl on his face, "I found out that Clan Leader Jin still didn't accept you, and that your plans were stolen. You were about to take revenge, weren't you?"
"I was. I'm sorry." He meant it, this time. His blood had cooled, and his mind was clear. Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue never had to be there for him, but they were. They were the ones who made him happy, and ignored his heritage. It was embarrassing that it took a man who's cultivation path was dark as night to show him the light. "...forgive me, da-ge. But I can't go through with seeking my father's acknowledgement."
"Good. You're better than that coward, anyway." Nie Mingjue had found himself surprisingly relieved that Meng Yao changed his mind. Jin Guangshan barely cared about his legitimate son, never mind the countless offspring he'd created through paying women off, or simply raping them if they refused. He was an utter scumbag. Nie Mingjue had listened the entire time, having followed Meng Yao's footsteps- he hummed, "...you should talked to Lan Xichen. I think he'd be good for you."
"You think so, too?" It was one thing having an outsiders perspective, but now someone he *trusted* was saying the same thing. All his hard work would be going down the drain if he did this, but... he'd be a Hell of a lot happier. "...where is he?"
"I'll take you to him. Wei Wuxian, thanks for the assistance. You should probably meet up with Second Brother Lan, he's just come back from his own battle." Nie Mingjue simply walked away with Meng Yao after that, and Wei Wuxian took the opportunity to see his future husband.
****
Things mostly stayed the same with the Sunshot Campaign, just with Wei Wuxian's powers being more controlled and with Meng Yao having spoken to Nie Mingjue about his infiltration plan first. While Meng Yao waited for his opportunity to strike, Jiang Cheng lead the attack from behind the main pagoda, while Wei Wuxian summoned the dead to attack from the front. He held a calm in his heart from simply allowing himself to be happy- he had his siblings, he had the Wens who'd changed sides and became friends, and he also had Lan Wangji. They weren't as close as he'd like, but knew that he just had to be patient.
"Wei Ying!!"
He was interrupted from his thoughts by Lan Wangji sprinting to him across the battlefield- he immediately commanded any zombie to stay away from him and moved his flute away from his mouth, worried, "Lan Zhan? What's wrong, did something happen?!"
But Lan Wangji just looked worried for *him*. That was when Wei Wuxian remembered this scene: he'd been angry that Lan Wangji stopped him, not understanding that the man was just scared of him losing control. Sure enough, "You're using too much resentful energy. I don't want you to lose control."
"I can keep control, I promise. I just need to hold this up until Meng Yao and Clan Leader Nie can finish the job from the inside." Wei Wuxian's words didn't seem to ease Lan Wangji's mind, so he smiled softly, "...you've always made me happy, and kept me calm. If you're that scared, then... stay with me?"
"Will that help you?" He ignored the racing of his heart at Wei Wuxian's words, just focusing on the man's health. Wei Wuxian nodded, and Lan Wangji simply stood beside him, "Once the signals are shot, you can stop. And I'll help you lay the zombies to rest. Does that work for you?"
"That's perfect, Lan Zhan." He resumed his flute playing, his eyes glowing red, but his control had improved tenfold. If he had to be honest, Lan Wangji really did calm him down whenever he was upset or stressed. Even back at the Cloud Recesses, for whatever reason, Wei Wuxian was always drawn to him- wanting him to smile and banter with him, encouraging him to try spicy foods, but he also couldn't deny enjoying being chased whenever he broke a rule and Lan Wangji had to catch him. It was obvious looking back that Wei Wuxian had always been in love, but he somehow hadn't realised it.
Lan Wangji watched Wei Wuxian as his body radiated black energy, his eyes glowing the same crimson that his spiritual energy once had, but that it was still *him*, despite everything. He felt terrible for doubting him, but knew that even Wei Wuxian had his own doubts about his control. They'd spent time together whenever possible, though Lan Qiren wasn't happy about it- Lan Xichen on the other hand, had been absolutely delighted that Lan Wangji was allowing himself to try. He'd always been confused as to why it was Wei Wuxian he'd fallen in love with, but maybe the answer just simple: he liked who he liked with no reason. Obviously he saw Wei Wuxian's flaws, but also saw the person as a whole, and didn't bother to deny his heart anymore.
Their thoughts were interrupted by the sound of four explosions: each firework shot into the air baring the insignia of the four Clans. Wei Wuxian stopped playing and looked up with a grin, "We won... Lan Zhan, we won!!"
"We did... it's finally over..." they looked at each other, and neither of them could stop their smiles. Wei Wuxian was always more affectionate, and couldn't help giving Lan Wangji a hug. He'd never gotten to celebrate in the moment last time, but now he did. Lan Wangji had frozen, though only for a moment, before holding Wei Wuxian close, hugging him tightly. They held each other for a while, before realising that they *really* needed to get rid of the zombies.
Flute and zither played together, their performers in sync with one another, the zombies on the battlefield slowly turning to dust, their bodies and souls returning to the earth. Once it was just the two of them, Wei Wuxian smiled at Lan Wangji, "It'll take time for everything to settle, but once it does, I'll come back to Guzu with you. That is, if your uncle is okay with that?"
"Mn. He's still not pleased with this path, but I don't want you to feel like you're not welcomed." He hesitated, "You mentioned wanting to use your dark arts for good. My uncle is an intelligent man, so perhaps he can help you to find a way to do that."
"I can only hope. I didn't choose this power, but I'll make it my own." He put his flute away and they both headed to the main part of Nightless City together. Wei Wuxian looked down suddenly, "...have you... told anyone about my 'situation'?"
"No. It's nobody's business but yours and Clan Leader Jiang's." Lan Wangji didn't even want to think what people would say to Wei Wuxian if they found out he didn't have a Golden Core and no spiritual energy. But it did lead to another question: "Why are you still carrying Suibian?"
"A sword is still good for self defence and protection, even if I can't use it normally. Besides, I'm still a cultivator, it's disrespectful for me to not carry my sword." All of that was true, but then Wei Wuxian's voice grew soft, "Besides, this is the last thing I have of Uncle Jiang. I want to keep Suibian with me."
Those words made Lan Wangji's hand reach for Bichen, saddened. Thinking about it, while Lan Wangji lost both of his parents, Wei Wuxian lost all *four* of his. "...I'm sorry, Wei Ying."
"Don't be. None of it was your fault. You suffered just as much." The Cloud Recesses had been burned, and multiple members of the Lan Clan slaughtered. The Jiang Clan suffered a lot more, but there was no use in pointing that out. It wasn't a competition, there were no winners.
They got to the main pagoda, where Nie Mingjue had Wen Ruohan's head mounted on a stick, everyone cheering as the Wen Clan flags were burned. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji found Jiang Cheng and Lan Xichen, who was helping Meng Yao out of the Wen Clan robes. Their plan went off perfectly, though a lot of lives were still lost. Jiang Cheng grinned upon seeing Wei Wuxian and ran over, "We fucking did it!! You did amazing with those zombies."
Wei Wuxian hugged him tightly and laughed, "I had some help. Lan Zhan helped me to keep control." Lan Wangji's ears went red at that, but Wei Wuxian just sighed, "It's gonna take weeks to clean everything up."
"Don't worry, we'll get you to Guzu as soon as possible." His expression turned serious, "*Are* you okay?"
"I am. But I definitely need a break from using this power for now, though I'll doubt I'll get it for a while." They looked towards Jin Guangshan, who was staring at the wall murals with disdain, "He still harbours a hatred for the Wen remnants, despite all of them being indoctrinated into the other Clans. I might be able to get him to calm down if I use the dead Wens to destroy the murals and anything to do with their history."
"Mn. That should satisfy the Jin Clan." Lan Wangji hoped so, at least. He knew that the Jin Clan might try and dominate like the Wens had attempted to, but none of them would let them. Jin Guangshan shouldn't be able to do what Wen Ruohan nearly did. But that was for then. Now? They needed to rebuild their homes and recover after the war.
****
By the time Wei Wuxian was able to travel to Guzu, a social event stopped him from doing so, as he had to help represent the Yunmeng Jiang Clan. The Lanling Jin Clan were hosting a Flower Festival to celebrate the end of the Sunshot Campaign, and the beginning of a fresh start. Obviously Jiang Cheng wanted Wei Wuxian by his side for that, even if he wasn't the same. He went to see if his older brother was ready, and froze slightly.
Wei Wuxian was wearing the purple robes of the Jiang Clan, and his hair tied back up. Suibian hung by his side, while his flute- Chenqing he learned the name was- was nowhere to be seen on his person, it was on the side table nearby. It was obvious that Wei Wuxian was trying to go back to how he was, but... with how thin he'd gotten, and his paler skin, he just didn't look like himself. Wei Wuxian himself knew this, and was staring at his reflection with disgust.
"Wei Wuxian. Don't be someone you're not." Jiang Cheng's words were blunt, but they were exactly what was needed; they didn't want him to wear the Demonic Cultivator robes, because he *wanted* to represent their Clan properly. Besides, purple always suited him, just as much as black and red. He hummed, before grinning and pulling the ribbon out of Wei Wuxian's hair, letting it flow freely, though then used the ribbon to tie some of it back, away from his face. After that, he took Chenqing and had Wei Wuxian add it to his belt.
Wei Wuxian looked at himself in the mirror again, and found himself with a soft smile. It was a bizarre blend of both of his lifestyles, and... he *loved* it. He'd go back to his black and red robes when he got the chance, especially after he remembered that Yu Ziyuan had them made for him when he became Head Disciple- he'd been stunned when Jiang Fengmian told him. He turned to Jiang Cheng and nodded, "This is me. And I'm ready when you are."
"Are you sure you want to carry Suibian? If someone finds out about-"
"If they do, then they do. I'm still a cultivator, just not a traditional one. I won't do anything stupid, so I'll have no reason to unsheathe it." He grinned, "I won't embarrass you, I promise."
"...you're not an embarrassment." Jiang Cheng looked down- aside from Jiang Yanli, Wei Wuxian was the only family he had left, and Wei Wuxian showed his trust in Jiang Cheng over and over and over again. It was about time he actually *talked* with him. "Wei Wuxian, I... I'm sorry. I've always been jealous, because you're... well, you're better than me at everything. You're the most skilled in the Six Arts in Yunmeng, and obviously dad... loved you with all his heart. I can never surpass you."
"Jiang Cheng. Don't try to surpass me, just try and improve yourself." Wei Wuxian looked at him with a serious expression, "Don't try and be better than me, just better yourself. You're not meant to be stuck in my shadow, and there's no need for comparisons. I have talent, but that's because just like you, I trained a lot. Some of it is natural, but so are your skills- you always know where to go, no matter where we are, for example. You never get lost."
That was true. Jiang Cheng just always had an inkling on where to go when needed. He was the one to find all targets in the games, knew where was best to go on Night Hunts, and when they got separated after the Xuanwu of Slaughter's rampage, he knew exactly where to go to get back to Yunmeng, even though he'd never gone down certain routes before. Because of this, he was a natural leader when it came to showing others where to go, or simply leading people with direction. He was always going to be jealous, but then had to remember that *he* was the one who rebuilt the Jiang Clan in Wei Wuxian's absence.
He sighed and shook his head, "It's hard to not be envious. Especially when I've always looked up to you, Wei Wuxian." Jiang Cheng truly did- at first, he was angry about this orphan boy that he suddenly had to share everything with, except his puppies who were sent away. But when he later understood that he and his family were all Wei Wuxian had, he took the brother role incredibly seriously, just as Jiang Yanli took being an older sister again seriously. "You mean a lot to me, and I always wanted to be like you. But I'm always second best in comparison to you."
"Like I said, we need to stop with the comparisons. You are you, just as I am me. I'm sorry that I ever made you feel like this, I swear that you and Shijie are the last people I'd ever wanna hurt." Wei Wuxian hugged Jiang Clan tightly, "...I love you both, with everything I am. And if I can go back to normal, as much as I possibly can, I want to be able to keep my promise- you're the Clan Leader, and I'll be your subordinate. Just like our fathers."
Jiang Cheng held onto him, closing his eyes. Demonic Cultivation had definitely changed Wei Wuxian, but not in a way anyone had expected; he was more mature and serious, just wanting to make sure that he didn't mess up. It was obvious that he was wary of his own power, despite his perfect control over it. They just hugged for a while longer, before Jiang Cheng murmured, "I love you, too. I'm grateful that I have you... and I'll try and stop feeling like this."
"You can always talk to me if I'm making you feel like this, or talk to Shijie, she'll know what to say more than I will." He chuckled, knowing that unless it was teasing or flirtatious, he was actually pretty terrible with his words. "You're not alone, Jiang Cheng. I'm going to see about going to Guzu once this festival is finished, but you already know you're welcome there. Old Man Lan seemed to approve of you, it was just me he didn't like, for reasons that are now painfully obvious."
Jiang Cheng hesitated before tilting his head, "Why didn't you ever tell us that the reason you harassed Lan Wangji so much was because you liked him?"
"...I honestly don't know. I know you'd have all accepted me. Hell, I think Madam Yu would've been happy with me doing something other than causing chaos." They both laughed at that, before Wei Wuxian smiled weakly, "I don't think I understood at the time how I felt. And Lan Zhan isn't the best at expressing his emotions, he's stated that time and time again. Now, I... I know how I feel, and I don't wanna fuck this up. I've never felt like *this*, and..."
"Just try and tell him at some point. I think he needs to know." Jiang Cheng sat down at the table nearby and looked up at him, "You didn't see him when you went missing. He tried so hard to maintain that demeanour of his, but failed. Lan Wangji was extremely worried about you, and he still is. When he found out that you were gone, he spent days awake looking for you."
"Lan Zhan *did* find me. I just couldn't tell him where I was in case he looked for me." Wei Wuxian recounted how Lan Wangji found his soul using Inquiry, but because he had been stuck in the Burial Mounds, he was afraid that Lan Wangji would put himself in danger trying to save him. Wei Wuxian smiled weakly, "I owe him. And I... I won't lie, I want to have a future with him, Jiang Cheng. But because I've always been joking and stupid, I'm terrified that he'll think I'm being insincere."
"I think he'll know. But I think you should definitely take your time with him, and just let yourself be happy." Jiang Cheng weakly smiled at him, "I'd rather you be happy, than be my subordinate. You'll have the opportunity to talk to him anyway, the Twin Jades are at the festival as well."
"Then I'd definitely better be on my best behavior. Don't wanna be kicked out of Guzu before I even set foot there!"
*****
The Flower Festival was truly beautiful, everyone celebrating and having a good time, enjoying the beauty that Lanling had to offer. Lan Wangji was speaking with his brother, Meng Yao- who was now wearing the white robes of the Guzu Lan Clan- and Nie Mingjue, when they saw Jiang Cheng approaching, Wei Wuxian at his side, a big smile on his face upon meeting Lan Wangji's gaze. Lan Wangji's ears tinted red upon seeing how happy Wei Wuxian looked; he'd kept some of his new path by having Chenqing by his side, and his hair loose, but otherwise he looked just like he'd used to. The blend of past and present really suited him, though the black and red robes he used to wear suited him more than the purple, in his eyes.
Lan Xichen smiled warmly and bowed, "Young Master Wei, I have to thank you." Wei Wuxian looked stunned, but then Lan Xichen continued, "I... was never going to be brave enough to admit my feelings. And now, I have the man I love beside me, though..."
Wei Wuxian tilted his head and Meng Yao smirked, "Now that I'm no longer interested in being in the Jin Clan, suddenly my father has a *lot* of interest in me. But I'm done with that mess." He looked at Lan Xichen, who nodded and Meng Yao spoke softly, "This is a formal invitation to the Jiang Clan- would you both attend our wedding?"
Jiang Cheng's jaw dropped and Wei Wuxian beamed, "Count me in! I'd love to celebrate with you. Congratulations, both of you."
Lan Wangji smiled at seeing his older brother find his life partner- most men from Guzu tended to only fall in love once, which could end happily, or in tragedy. He looked towards Wei Wuxian, who smiled at him, before Jiang Cheng had to drag him off for duties. Wei Wuxian knew he needed to talk to Lan Wangji; even if he couldn't change much else, he knew that he at least wanted to have the same ending he'd gotten in his second life.
They approached the main palace and were immediately met by Jin Zixuan, who hesitated before asking, "How is Maiden Jiang?"
Before, Wei Wuxian had punched him for daring to ask after the 'soup incident', however knowing what he did now, he wasn't about to ruin anything. He still wanted Jin Ling to come into the world, after all. So, he kept his mouth shut and trusted Jiang Cheng to take the lead.
"She's fine, and she'll be happy to know you asked." That was an obvious lie- after what happened, Jiang Yanli had appeared to have given up on Jin Zixuan. Wei Wuxian just nodded as his own response, but Jin Zixuan clearly didn't believe them.
He sighed, "...I really fucked up, didn't I? Wei Wuxian, I thought a lot about what you said, and I'm ashamed to admit that I think you're right. I was childish, and..."
"There's no need for that." Wei Wuxian faced him properly and sighed, "You've... got a lot of making up to do, just make sure it's not just to soothe your guilty conscience. It's gotta be for my Shijie as well." He wished that telling people he knew everything that would happen in the future didn't make him sound like a lunatic- if he could tell Jin Zixuan to simply trust the process and that he'd discover that Jiang Yanli was the perfect wife for him, that they'd have a son who follows his footsteps, he would do. "If it helps, well... she enjoys cooking, and trying new foods. Her favourite food is pork rib and lotus root soup, so maybe you could try making that for her, sometime."
Jin Zixuan slowly started to light up, especially when Jiang Cheng hummed, "She loves flowers, too. But not like, presented as a bunch, or thrown. She loves to see them growing, so maybe if you grow something in a pot, and show her, that would definitely impress her."
The brothers knew what they were doing, they knew Jiang Yanli better than anyone, and knew how to make others happy. Then again, they had to be careful with their gift suggestions, remembering what happened when they pretended Jiang Fengmian gave Yu Ziyuan a bunch of gifts to cheer her up after they had another argument. The less said about that incident, the better.
"Thank you. Both of you." Jin Zixuan bowed to them, and sighed, "I'll make it up to her. Even if she decides that... we're never going to be together, I can at least attempt to make up for all these wrongs."
They bowed back, but both of them looked at each other: *If he upset or hurt her again, they'd kick his ass*.
Wei Wuxian felt eyes on them and turned to see Lan Wangji, clearly wanting to talk to him, but being unsure how to approach. He excused himself, and went to Lan Wangji with a grin, "Lan Zhan. I'm not that unapproachable, am I?"
"Of course not, Wei Ying. How are you feeling?" He looked concerned- things had been moving extremely quickly, so nobody was able to get a lot of rest. To Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian looked exhausted, his eyes being what betrayed him. Truthfully, Wei Wuxian had been working overtime, because he knew what would happen if he didn't. The Wen remnants were all safe, and he wanted it to stay that way- the carvings on the walls, every major monument, Wei Wuxian had Wen Clan zombies destroy, and he was thankful that people like Jiang Ning and Jiang Qing didn't hold it against him. Lan Wangji saw his expression then asked softly, "Please will you return to Guzu with me tonight?"
"Yeah. That was the plan, anyway." Wei Wuxian chuckled at Lan Wangji's stunned expression, then sighed, "I'm *tired*, Lan Zhan. I wanna relax, and I wanna try cultivation again. Real cultivation. Plus..." he looked at Lan Wangji properly, "...I miss you. I miss Guzu, and I miss Lan Yuan. That little boy made me really happy when the Wens took care of me in Yiling. I just want to be with you all. So if you'll have me, *yes*, I'll come back to Guzu with you."
"...I miss you too, Wei Ying." Now it was Wei Wuxian's turn to be stunned, seeing as Lan Wangji never did or said much to reveal his true feelings before. Maybe being more honest with him had started to help Lan Wangji grow more confident, after all? Lan Wangji looked at him and nodded, "Thank you. We'll take you back once the festivities are over. Especially since Lan Yuan has been asking for you."
"He has?!" Lan Wangji couldn't help but smile faintly when he saw how overjoyed Wei Wuxian looked. That smile was what sent his heart racing, and he knew he had to protect it. He knew that the resentful energy had changed Wei Wuxian, but it was moments like this that reminded Lan Wangji that in his soul, it was the same Wei Wuxian who teased him, cared about him, and fought alongside him.
The Flower Festival continued, with people viewing aforementioned flowers, drinking and dancing, though the Clan Leaders mostly stayed inside and discussed what came next. Jiang Cheng had told Lan Xichen about Wei Wuxian's wish to travel to Guzu, which Lan Xichen considered welcome news- he knew his brother was smitten with Wei Wuxian, and it appeared that the feelings were mutual. If they could spend time together and allow their relationship to blossom, he'd be happy.
When the night came and the party died down,Wei Wuxian met up with Lan Wangji, Lan Xichen and Meng Yao- then he realised that to get back to Guzu safely, they'd have to ride their swords. Which he couldn't do anymore. He thanked the Heavens when Lan Wangji hummed, "You've... had a lot to drink. You can ride on Bichen with me. Stand in front, and I'll hold onto you."
"Ah, smart idea, Wangji." Lan Xichen cleared his throat, "I know you can hold your liqueur, Young Master Wei, but it's better to be safe than sorry."
"I won't argue, Zewu-jun. Thanks, Lan Zhan." He looked at Lan Wangji, thanking him over and over with his eyes. Lan Wangji gave him another rare smile, and held onto Wei Wuxian as they flew back home.
Wei Wuxian relaxed, for once. He never gave this a chance last time. Now he would. After all, Lan Wangji had proven time and time again that all he's ever done is care. Past, present or future, Lan Wangji's sincerity was always the same.
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uskglass-mirror-house · 2 months ago
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Thoughts about chapter 21: the cards of Marseilles
I have been reading bits and pieces from the book as part of the 20th anniversary read-along. I wanted to join in once it reached chapter 29 (where I left the book on my third re-read), but then I remembered how cool chapter 21 was and went through it and ho boiiii I have so many thoughts. I am definitely going to make a massive breakdown of the fortune-telling and why it is so genius, but now I'm just sharing random thoughts I had while reading. Enjoy (and mind the spoilers)!
The start of the chapter reminded me of my old theory about the author of the book. The first time I read jsamn I had this theory that the author of the book was either a magician or a fairy and when Jonathan Strange met that one fairy in the brugh I became convinced that it was her. I had this impression because of the footnotes and some descriptions, including the one of the ale-house at the start of this chapter. Why? Well, the footnotes can be divided into two categories: the academic ones, which cite specific in-universe texts (or real ones from our world); and the folklore ones, which usually inform us of some magical event, fairy culture, stories from in-universe folklore, and so on. Now, I always assumed that while many scholars would know the former, the latter was mostly the domain of fairy/ magicians that had first knowledge coming from the Otherlands. But the curious thing is that some descriptions within the story are narrated in the same way as the folklore notes, giving me the impression that these places exist at a junction between reality and the Otherlands and also that the knowledge about some specific events was obtained through magical means. Page 197 is a perfect example of this kind of narration.
I love how this is basically a date between Childermass and Vinculus. This is the first convo between the Book and its reader and it went exactly as well as you could imagine.
THE ACTUAL FORTUNE READING IS SO GOOD AND MULTILAYERED AND AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Childermass copied the card for a sailor and then told him his fortune: "that he would be drowned dead before the year was out." And now I am here wondering... was that a sailor on the Penlaw, the ship that transported Stephen Black and his mother??? That ship also ended up in a shipwreck according to the Gentleman...
I like thinking that the Raven King was watching this whole thing go down in some magical manner. Looking over Childermass' shoulder and being like "bro, you're cooking right now, not gonna lie". Or going "How dramatic." in the most deadpan voice ever when Vinculus changes the cards to look like him.... aaaaa I love Uskglass so much.
It would also be cool if Uskglass followed the events through Childermass' card (since we know that L'Empereur did not go back to look like a regular card but stayed that way). I like to think that this is how Childermass was enchanted when he saved Norrell's life later on. The card acted as a path for Uskglass' magic.
In a similar way, I like thinking that Uskglass was watching over in other scenes like the Genlteman was doing while pestering Strange. It would make it so funny if he were present while Lascelles berates him, or whenever Norrell does. Like imagine:
Norrell: "He abandoned us! He was evil!!"
Uskglass (invisible): "u sure 'bout that? lol"
Norrell: "I foolishly tried to summon him when I was younger..."
Uskglass: "You surely did buddy. Can't say I was impressed, though."
Norrell: "...but it never worked and I think that was fortunate!"
Uskglass: "This is why nobody likes you, Gilbert."
ok, these are all the things that came to mind. For the breakdown of the tarot reading, I'm going to make a separate post one of these days. Definitely going to re-read the whole novel now, my fixation has returned!!!!
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beardedmrbean · 11 months ago
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Ravioli/raviolo anon here. It occurred to me that I never followed up on my story of how I escaped my roommate's various attempts on my life and I managed to dodge them all like some drunken Mr. Bean. (Is that what I said? I hardly remember, lol. For the record, I don't really drink so much anymore. After I walked home from a birthday celebration a few years back (it wasn't a rager or anything, the bar was just across the road and my birthday is in February so we didn't want to go far) and coldcocked my dome running at top speed into a fence (I was trying to make it into the exit gate before it closed, didn't realize there was a post that came out horizontally across because I don't see very well on account of the fact that I wear colored lenses), I cracked my skull and you can still see where I hit the fence (on my head, I mean, it was a wrought iron fence so I assume I didn't damage it but I never checked), so that's when I realized it was time to slow down).
So it WAS a true story, (I don't really watch television or read much though so if it does resemble a piece of media, I wouldn't know it, lol). Anyway, since I tend to ramble, I will make an effort to keep this in the realm of "less than a novel" but I can't exactly make any promises. I don't know how to add a "read more" or anything fancy like that so in the interest of shortening it I won't be offended if you screenshot only the important parts or even just don't answer it, lol.
There's a little bit of backstory about how I ended up living with the roommate and why he wanted to kill me, long story short he was in the hole about $1600 with me because he bought a motorcycle from me but was "still making payments" on it. He suggested I come room with him in this cheap apartment while we both drove for UPS for peak season. He got fired day two on the job, and so after that he planned to rob me as soon as I finished the season. (In addition to never paying for the bike). I'm a simple guy, though, so I really only had my truck (worthless) and a mattress, and I was just working for the love of the sport so I sent all my checks to my mother and had her send me back a hundred a week. So he can't rob me, so he decides at this point he's mad enough to kill me, and thinks himself pretty clever and that he can do it without getting caught.
About a week into this nonsense, he tells me he's got a job interview in NYC or something, he's gonna be gone tonight, whatever. I'm like, fine, no big deal, hope you get the job, buddy, I'm pretty terrible at this whole UPS thing so I'll be back at midnight or something when I'm done my route. I get home, and I'm about to go to bed, and that's when I decided at about 1AM I sincerely want a grilled cheese sandwich. So I got up, drove across town, and went over to a buddy's house for grilled cheese at 1AM. Come to find out we had a gas leak all night and my roommate is just VERY SHOCKED that we BOTH happened to be out, what are the odds. I'm all "hey, man, God is good, I'll drink to that, get me another beer".
Not long after that, I finish my route at who friggin' knows how late, I'm the last guy in the lot, even the security guards have gone home, and my truck (which cannot be locked, I don't have a key for the door so I leave it unlocked) is, what the heck, locked. I have no way of calling my roommate (same reason why I drove across town to find my buddy instead of just calling and asking: I didn't have a phone at the time), and it's looking like I might just freeze to death out here because it's -3F and it's after midnight in New England, so there's nobody out and about. Well, nobody, except this old Russian guy who sees me standing next to my truck, asks if I need help, and when I tell him I'm locked out, he tells me he's been in prison a few times for carjacking and will get me into my truck in no time. Which he does. So I bring him home with me and we have a beer (he had a few more than me, I had to work in the morning. You know how it is.) (And for the record I have never driven under the influence. I didn't go to college, my CDL is all I have. I don't dick around with that.)
So at this point, my roommate is pretty pissed. I'm either too hammered or too tired to notice. UPS is really kicking my ass. It's finally Christmas time, time to celebrate the end of peak season with a trip to the bar, oorah. He gives me a bottle of Poland Springs and says to drink the whole thing, it's water and we're gonna be drinking hard tonight, gotta hydrate or die-drate, bitch. I knock it back and wouldn't you know it, that son of a bitch didn't give me water, this is straight Everclear. I get to the bar and I'm already sick, I go straight to the toilet and barf all over the place. Somewhere along the line I went up to the bar and started dozing off, at which point they kicked me out, so roommate says "don't worry, I'm gonna take him home". Not sure what the plan from there was, tbqh. I DO know that I realized about halfway out of the city that we weren't headed back to our apartment, and that we were headed towards either Connecticut or NYC, and I told him I wanted to go back home because I did NOT want to go to NYC because if we were going to NYC, that meant we were probably going to watch Eric Andre with his boring cousin in Queens and I was really not in the mood. I'm pretty sure he planned on dumping me somewhere on the highway where I'd freeze to death, and I was slipping back and forth out of consciousness, but I was SO consumed by how badly I did NOT want to go to Queens and watch Eric Andre, I called the cops and told them I was being kidnapped to watch Eric Andre. They were more concerned about the kidnapping part for some reason, (criminal restraint, I think is actually what they called it), caught up to roommate and I halfway out of Clifton Park (we'd apparently been doing 110MPH on the freeway and he was swerving all over the place) and he got arrested.
The next morning the cops told me I should press charges, but that meant staying in the state (because I'd have to be there when it went to trial) and I had other plans. So, I let karma do its work on the roommate (no idea where he is now or what's become of him, but I do know he lost his license and later blew every cent he had on some raffle scam for a Toyota out in California), packed up my stuff, and moseyed on.
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I'm marathoning The Twilight Zone with a friend online today (watching the same eps on the same service) this was wilder than any episode I've seen ever.
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monpalace · 1 year ago
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Okok, so my brain is not working with writing rn BUT i will finish that “reader and time pinning” thing that i was doing I PROMISE
BUT for now imma just share some thoughts of Time because he is THE LOVE OF MY LIFE AND I NEED TO RANT ABOUT HIM
*ahem*
Ive said before (on my blog) that Time uses really old and kinda cringey petnames because 1, he genuinely loves them and 2, because he LOVES making the boys squirm in second hand embarrassment. SO, have a few more of those nicknames :D -> snookums, sugarplum, baby cakes, muffin, foxy, and toots
Young time (like teenage/young adult) was an absolute bastard BUT when he falls in love with someone, he is an absolute sweet heart! Think the ‘i hate everyone but you’ trope :3
Young! Time did not know romance AT ALL! That boy was raised by a tree and a bunch if spirit kids, he has know idea what a ‘date’ is. This leads to him just acting the same around his crush but being a little nicer to them
Is then very confused as to why they dont know that he likes them. “It was so obvious? I gave you a piece of my apple pie! I was so clear with my signs 🙄🙄”
He THEN reads all the romance novels he can get his hands on (legally and illegally) just so he can impress them! Completely misunderstood everything and now he just has to straight up tell them, cause how their hair is on fire…somehow
(Modern) Time is totally the type of guy that ‘doesn’t like drama shows’ but if his lover was watching one, he’d stand behind the couch and watch. But when his lover offers to move so he can sit hes like ‘no, im not even watching it. I was just bored’ and the proceeds to watch the next 3 episodes while standing.
(Modern) Time has a leather jacket that he LOVES!! Like he will cut someone for that thing, do not fuck with it. No one is aloud to wear it expect him….And his crush/lover but SHUSH!
Time enjoys polishing his armour/sword while you read a book out aloud. You both find it rather relaxing. Until something dramatic/a polt twists happens, all if the sudden the armour/sword is dropped to the side as Time is BAFFLED by this. “They killed Aaron?! Wh-what? Why!? He was the best choice for Max!” (Hes so invested, his duties are now discarded until you two finish this chapter)
I wanna do more but this is kinda chunky :3
I love dis man so much 🫶🫶
THE WAY I PHYSICALLY AND VERBALLY CRINGED AT FOXY??? bro's the type to say "hey foxy mama" when you walk into a room unironically, he literally has no shame whatsoever whenever someone points out how dated that sounds to
time would fit the secret admirer trope so well though? but he wouldn't even be secret about it?? the lon lon sisters def gave him the advice to "just be himself" and that gave him the idea to take stuff from his woodland-spirit background
"link, why is my house filled with flowers from floor to ceiling."
"that's not a declaration of adoration here? huh."
AND HIM TAKING THE ROMANCE BOOKS? personally, i feel like he's the type to sneak into the library when (supposedly) nobodies looking and just taking whatever he can carry before sneaking back out-- but in actuality it's just that nobody cares
someone asked zelda if he was allowed to take the books because they've been coming back in a damaged state (it's not bad, but while he's workshopping how he's gonna bring words to reality, he messes up a little) and she just says its fine so long as he isn't committing crimes with them (which he has done. several times. no one knows)
ofc there are questions as to WHY he's taking the romance books specifically, but the guards and librarians just chalk it up to him entering his weird boy phase ™️ and not because he has an interest in somebody because him?? having a love interest before half the other people in the castle??? Nah.
you catch modern! time watching a (raunchy) reality show once (like love island, or jersey shore-- maybe even teen mom) and he swears up, down, to the golden three, and to the sand goddess that he just kept it on for noise and that he's paying all his attention to his work even though you caught him ON VIDEO having the most expressive reactions to certain moments
BUT THE LEATHER JACKET ONE?? someone walks up to you while you're wearing it (your relationship with time isn't common knowledge yet) and they make a joke about him burying them alive if they mess it up-- no less just because you're wearing it.
time pops up out of literal thin air making excuses that you were cold (you were not), he was hot and didn't feel like carrying it (his goosebumps say otherwise), he thought there was a tear and he wanted to try and fix it (.. yeah, okay.), he only gave it to you because you said it would go with your outfit (that is not the only reason he'd give it to you), and everything else just to try to hide the fact that he's soft
(also, bonus points if you made it??? now not even the goddesses could touch it. he's about three seconds away from giving into the inner ferality of his childhood self and biting someone if they even look at it)
but tell me why i just imagine time getting ready to like, get in a fight or something, you read something so earth-shatteringly shocking in the book, and he's immediately like "the battle can wait. [opponent] was gonna lose anyways. we have to figure out what the devil is about to happen"
i'm literally scooping ur brain from ur skull, putting it on a table, and i'm gonna examine it for the rest of ur ideas mwah
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