#what does this categorise as

[iruludavare]

{ ooc. I’ll write up a proper hc on this post in a sec, but I’ve always loved the idea that, in order to form closer bonds with the elite four, Serena took to taking part in things that they either did as a job away from pokemon training, or just loved

Because she firmly believes that any league Needs to be close and to trust one another, so if a threat pops up, they don’t have that roadblock to overcome

But it means like... poetry and knight-related stuff for Wikstrom?? Cooking with Siebold?? Diving into Sinnohan mythology with Drasna?? And idk for Malva-- maybe just finding a middle ground for them and working from that??

I love it }

[covertblizzard]

Okay, I understand Superman’s point, and the main issue he seems to have is with worship rather than with the actions that Kyle has been taking. But it is also explicitly stated (multiple times in fact) that Kyle doesn’t actually have to APPEAR to the people to carry out his actions, it is entirely possible that he fertilises the lands, stop fightings, remove viruses, etc. without ever even appearing. Sure, some of the actions might end up being attributed to faith in a higher being, whichever they are inclined to, but not to him. So hypothetically, would he have an issue with Kyle carrying out more or less whatever he is doing, but just entirely without appearing to anyone ever?

[avocant]

i have known i was queer since i was about 14 and have been comfortable and open about this for a very long time and i think i would be uncomfortable with someone asking me to explain the exact nuance and level if my sexuality because you know what i realised? i don't need a label to understand that at a fundamental level i am queer and that's okay!! no one is entitled to the exact details of my attraction to people and i quite frankly don't really want anyone to know and that is something that needs to be far more normalised than it apparently is rn because jesus christ why can't people realise that just because dream is a famous content creator, it doesn't mean he doesn't has the same right to self discovery and self expression as everyone else!!

[anewgayeveryday]

Today’s LGBT+ Character is;

Hime and Mikoto MEIKA from Vocaloid-Agender

Species: Vocaloid

Requested by Anon

Status: Alive

[not-poignant]

I assume that you spend an equal amount of time researching as you do writing. I also assume that you write some things out of curiosity.

Oooo, I don’t sadly spend an equal amount of time researching as I do writing, but I think a few things play into my knowledge base re: writing which is:

* I like to read non-fiction for fun and I’ve been that way since I was six years old (I read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species at the age of 9, with a dictionary next to me, in the primary school library while sitting between the rows of books that most primary school students didn’t seem to care about unless they had an assignment). And because of that, I have like, a few decades of taking out library books, reference books, and collecting non-fiction on a variety of subjects that I have no particular interest in beyond just learning about them? Like I remember I took out every book Ellenbrook library had on the individual elements (so like Iron, Potassium, Titanium) ‘just because’ a few years ago. There was no reason for it, it wasn’t for research for a project, and I still took notes. I got out three separate books on Titanium. Just because.

* And partly because of that, sometimes when I’m bored and can’t sleep at night, I just read Wikipedia articles. Most people’s browser search thingie on Firefox searches Google if you type in the search bar. But I set mine to Wikipedia, so I’m always searching Wiki first and Google second.

* After that, I sometimes need to research things for stories, but by then I usually have a pretty good idea of what I want to be learning so I can really narrow my focus and that saves time. I think the things where I’ve gone in really cold were like, Coll’s character (I spent several days researching the lingo, tools, equipment, culture and ‘black market culture’ of logging in Australia and compiling that into like a 40 page document, of which about 0.0005% ended up on the page), and things like that?

* I really really do like writing things I’ve never done before, or that I’m curious about (I mean I try to be curious about everything except a few things I just don’t want to write - like pregnancy, and even then, I’m curious about pregnancy irl! Just not as a writing subject). People assume that a writer’s kinks are ‘on the page’ but like, man, that is definitely not true for me. (Although there are power play elements that I always introduce that are, lol). Probably the most extensive research I’ve done for a short story was for The Best of Broken Resolutions. All of those places, streets and locations in Melbourne - the descriptions of the park, the type of streets etc. were all based purely on research. Same with the fashion. The clothing that Gwyn, Augus and Gulvi are wearing all exist, and can be searched.

Like, sometimes the most flattering comments are when people say things like ‘it’s really obvious that you have experience in X field from the way you write about it and as someone who works in X field I appreciate it’ and I actually have zero experience in that field and I just wanted to do a good job of writing/researching it.

* But, truthfully, I am a very lazy writer, and if I can get away with researching as little as possible. I will. I hate the way research can break up writing flow, so I’m...really strict about being too indulgent on a day I’m writing. Or during a writing period. 

Also I know I can be prone to infodumping and sometimes I just think ‘less is more less is more’ and I try not to like, over-learn for the page. It’s a work in progress!

I love writing things out of curiosity :D

*

From the assumptions meme.

[fukashiin]

 attractive things they do

— w. vice rizzwardens and ruggie

⤷ how the littlest actions they execute can make your heart skip a beat

cw: wee bit of favouritism put into trey’s, passive reader...c:

TREY CLOVER

telling you to focus when you’re caught staring at him.

trey's perceptive—and that normally drags you down to a disadvantage in your stance. when your eyes carelessly stray to any revealed parts of his body, to his bare neck, from his toned forearms and his veiny hands that flexed under each stroke of the pen while he jots down the next set of formulas to help you with your forthcoming exams, he breathes a small chuckle and reminds you to keep your eyes on the work, not him. are you absolutely sure you're not going to bomb those exams on the spot?

placing his hand on your forehead to check if you have a fever.

the whirling butterflies you get in your stomach just from the supposed unromantic proximity is downright laughable. and your mind's in a mess—what's with trey and his tendency to lean in unnecessarily close when he does this? until the tip of your noses are touching too? he finds it amusing how the innocence of such an act can drive you bereft of speech. you on the other hand, wonder how such things can be categorised as 'innocent' without a second thought. he playfully delivers a soft flick to your forehead after that.

smiling at you when you get excited over the littlest things.

his knowing smile goes missed when you squeal in delight. was it an announcement for the next sequel of a series you've been recently binging? your favourite artists revealing a comeback in the most unexpected timing? regardless, trey has his eyes set entirely on you while you're still on cloud 9. your moment of ecstasy gradually dies down once you notice the small smirk that graces his lips, earning a rapid rush of blood to your ears.

RUGGIE BUCCHI

placing a quick peck on your cheek when he passes by in the hallway.

when ruggie would speed to his next class in a hurry, sometimes he would see you from the corner of his eyes. the unaware, unsuspecting you who wouldn’t even hear his footsteps that blends in within the rest of the noise approaching closer from behind. when he whistles your name out in the open to capture your attention, the swift feeling of smooth, velvety lips come in contact upon your cheek. and being the devious hyena he is—he slips away as quickly as how he came by. the echoing snickers that leaves his lips has you cupping your cheeks in embarrassment.

calmly protecting you from harm.

one moment, you’re being picked on by a group of huddled pests that throw unscripted threats to your vulnerable self. the next, a silhouette appears infront of you, unhurried, as it speaks out an incantation before the perpetrators hit the ground the next second. you’re not sure how it happened, the pace of how things went flew by in a flash, but ruggie just turns back smugly and reassures you that you’re all good. there’s no mistaking it, you were charmed.

reminding you to take care of yourself.

your heart is filled with fondness to the brim when ruggie makes sure that you won’t neglect your own health when he’s gone. he’ll make sure you have every necessity checked off the list, from 10 whole packs of rice crackers and countless bottled water enough to fill a whole carriage he purchased from the nearest (and cheapest) convenience store he could find. he doesn’t leave without a fleeting peck to the lips, before patting your head and spurting off to his next destination.

JADE LEECH

calling you sweet pet names when he catches you off guard.

you’re aware that jade’s an utter meanie when it comes to grasping opportunities to elicit a reaction from you at best. when he catches you in his field of sight, unguarded, not bothering a single soul, he’ll call out to you! but, not by your name, an endearing pet name that he picked out all for you. “my dearest, would you allow me to accompany you to wherever for today?” he talks, coyly. you knew better than to let yourself stutter out the next few words you wanted to say.

staying unfazed when you get mad at him.

you wish you were wiser when it comes to disputes between you and him, but the bubbling anger gets too hard to take control of that you wouldn’t dare to see yourself the next moment when you burst. despite your outburst—which to jade—was none other than expected, his expression remains unaltered. he rather relishes in the way your body cowers back in response to his longing stare, feeling fairly shy after creating such a scene. but he just brushes it off and reminds you to take it slow, that this childish bickering between you two is doing none of you good. he’ll make sure to brew you some steaming tea (and talk about how adorable you were).

pushing your hair behind your ear.

mid-conversation, he doesn’t seem to care, jade’ll nonchalantly tuck your hair back behind your ear when he notices it getting a tad too untidy. your breath hitches, and before you knew it, it didn’t even seem casual in the least. with different-coloured eyes burning right into yours, he doesn’t overlook the way your fingers twitch and how your ramblings came to a screeching halt. he backs himself once again, insisting you to continue from where you stopped. if that’s the way you’re going to react, he might as well do this as much as he can, yes?

JAMIL VIPER

placing his hand on your waist to gently push you aside.

the sudden pressure that plants itself on your waist startles you. you were just peeling some vegetables until spindly fingers came to rest at your side, a hand that belonged to jamil, and smoothly maneuvered you aside while he whispers a low ‘excuse me’ as he opens the nearest cabinet right above both of your heads. the closeness that came out of the blue between your body and his leaves you lightheaded. he knows, very well, and when he’s done, he reminds you to not hurt yourself when handling the peeler.

casually helps out with anything you’re struggling with.

 jamil’s observant and simultaneously befuddled. he’s just...helping you with the laundry? but, it was just a small stutter. how exactly could he catch onto you that quick?  nevertheless, he rather takes immense pleasure in the way you scratch the back of your head so bashfully when casually questioned of your inability to carry out such ordinary things. he titters, just a bit, when you compliment him back on how amazingly capable he is. please, don’t start acting any more like kalim now.

sternly calls for your name when you get distracted.

you mentally curse yourself out for neglecting such a trivial task of yours. whether you’re conversing with others, a little too heart-to-heart that you’re even starting to pay less mind to a particular someone, he’ll sternly call out your name, silently nodding his head towards the direction where you both were supposed to head to, blankness and impatience that swirls in the very same eyes that look your figure up and down. forget who you were talking to, you were running to him the next instant.

ROOK HUNT

insists you to rest your head on his shoulder.

your sleep schedule can be described as nothing other than disastrous—and for rook, is sorely distraught! please, work yourself no more, he needs you to take your beauty rest until he deems you ready for the day, priming you by telling you to lay your pretty little head on his shoulder. he doesn’t mind in the least, anything for his beloved, anything to see you sheepish by the sudden body contact.

is able to detect your lies and see right through you.

a hunter takes many things into account. a human’s scent, eye movements, and...body language. he stares at you, slit-eyed as his mouth curls into a mischievous curve. forget about lying, he adores the way your eyes direct to the ground beneath you. “oh, my beloved, don’t act so shy now.”  right, he isn’t the strange one here, is he? you yourself believe that it’s you, for thinking that such words that leave his mouth makes you weak in the knees.

gets captivated by your weirdest habits.

pour the milk before cereal first? liking ice cream only when it’s melted so you can drink it? rook is more than fascinated, much to your surprise (or not?). he heartens you, telling you about how you’re the apple of his eyes and how he’s so out-and-out allured to such new habits that catches his eyes. if you get too shy to carry out this so-called habit, he tells you once again that he would never be judgemental over things that are out of your control, and he finds you so, so beautiful. 

LILIA VANROUGE

teasingly licks his lips after kissing you.

‘to have a good taste’ is what he said. no, there’s no other hidden motives like wanting to see you flustered, is there? your bewildered gaze follows the tip of his tongue, cunningly sliding across his bottom lip, maintaining eye contact—maintaining and dominating it at that, your eyes being fidgety as it is. his sly front immediately breaks down when he can sense the heat rushing to your cheeks, you didn’t even realise it was there in the first place. can he...kiss you again to see him do it one more time?

quietly reassures you in stressful situations.

he’s a mixture of cheeky and serious when he does it. but no worries, such unruly animals can only act so brash before getting disciplined by its rightful owner. lilia tells you all sorts of quiet affirmations, squeezing your shoulders and mutters words of encouragement and that you’re a smart little one, are you not? now, don’t sully such an image that has so much concealed potential, show him that you’re way past being taken advantage of.

blows into your ear when you least expect it.

you let out a small gasp when you feel something, a tiny gust of wind brushing through the baby hairs of your ear. lilia only chuckles at such a lovable reaction, he doesn’t care about what you were previously doing in the least, he’ll run his hands up and down your arm, transmitting uncontrollable shivers that course through your body from head to toe. oh, he’s scheming to make sure to take out that flirtatious act so much more, the more you tell him not to do it, it only tugs the playful strings in his heart that makes him want to do it even more.

[therhythmafterthesummer]

Five-Point Star (M) ~Bang Chan

Pairing: Bodyguard/Assassin!Chan x Mercenary!F.Reader Themes: Smut | bit of Fluff | Angst | Strangers to lovers to enemies but lovers? (i don’t even know how to categorise this one) Word Count: ~6k | AO3 Synopsis: With a career like yours, you knew you shouldn’t let yourself fall in love. But honestly, in retrospect, there was no way you wouldn’t have fallen in love with Chris. After meeting him, you couldn’t help but hope that he’d be the last person you fell this deeply for–maybe foolishly so… Warnings: pet names · cold weapons · firearms · questionable morals · graphic depictions of violence · graphic depictions of intercourse (smut warnings under the cut) · open ending.

Author’s Note: as soon as i watched the 5-STAR trailer my creative juices started flowing, and i set camp in my google docs until this piece was born. please don’t hesitate to let me know if i missed any warnings… this one’s a bit sad (or, at least, it made me sad). i apologise in advance. thanks once again to @straylightdream and @cursed-mars-bars for reading this and letting me know it didn’t suck💜

Due to all the abovementioned warnings, this story is intended for an adult audience only. Minors please do not interact.

Part 1 (you're here!) | Part 2 >

Smut Warnings: unprotected penetration [piv. no barrier method, but the reader is presumed to be on birth control] · finger sucking · some praising, of course · oral [F&M Rec] · rimming [F.Rec] · nipple play · creampie · overstimulation · multiple orgasms

Disclaimer: the story represented in this work does not represent Stray Kids in any way; anything described in this story and all actions performed by the characters are purely fictional, this was created just for good fun.

In your line of work, it was hard to have any kind of interpersonal relationships. Having either platonic or romantic connections posed a risk, not only to you, but also to the others involved. 

Even then, you were a firm believer that, as long as no one knew your identity while you were ‘on the clock’, was enough for you to keep at least a handful of people close to you. You had a few close friends, some with a similar profession to yours, some just office or retail workers that had no idea what you did for a living. What you didn’t have, though, was a romantic partner.

It was tough to keep a relationship going when you couldn’t tell them what you did to bring food to the table. You’d always dance around the topic fairly easily, but, eventually, the situation would become unsustainable, and either you or the other person decided to break things off.

You’d been single for a while now–a long, long while–and you honestly had no active desire to find yourself a romantic companion. That was…until you met Chris.

Chris was a friend of a friend of a friend, someone you had seen once or twice at the odd social gathering you attended. He was incredibly handsome, but, most importantly, he was funny, always made you laugh whenever you interacted, and also seemed to have similar interests to yours. 

In a twist of fate–and against your better judgement–you ended up going on a date with him. A date that, surprisingly, ended with you and him tangled in his bedsheets. That night, you discovered that, not only were you compatible with Chris when it came to opinions on the current state of the world, on the theories for the next season of your favourite shows, but also in bed.

It was honestly almost crazy how good he made you feel, how there seemed to be sparks flying in the air whenever your bodies touched in any way, and, not to throw roses on your own garden, but you were confident that you made him feel good, too. So much so, the next morning, when you had to leave and he’d kissed the oxygen out of your lungs before dropping the most adorable ‘You’ll call me back, right?’ you knew you had no escape, that there was no way you’d pass up this opportunity.

Five months down the line and you already had a Christopher-shaped hole in your heart. You knew it was stupid, that it was dangerous, but you just couldn’t help it. Not when he was quite possibly the best romantic partner you’d ever had–to be fair, the bar was already quite low, but he still managed to jump ten metres over it.

In any relationship you’d ever had you always avoided the topic of work, not only yours, but the other person’s, too. If you avoided asking about their job, maybe they wouldn’t ask about yours, that was your reasoning. However, you’d discovered that people loved to talk about their jobs, that some people even made them their one and only topic of conversation, which was incredibly inconvenient.

Thankfully, Chris didn’t talk about work at all. Not his, nor yours. You had no idea what he did for a living, all you could infer was that it paid enough for him to live comfortably in his cosy flat. You honestly didn’t care, he could keep that information to himself as long as you could keep yours as well.

What you did for a living was probably not the most morally right career path, but it was your family trade. You’d been trained for it since you were very young, so it was honestly a no brainer for you. Some people called it a gun for hire, some called it being a mercenary, you, personally, didn’t particularly feel like calling it anything at all.

People hired you whenever they needed someone kidnapped, tortured, or killed. And, although you had killed for your job before, you almost always tried to turn those offers down. Clean-up was messy, and even if you hardly had any empathy for your targets, killing them always made you feel a bit uneasy.

Two nights ago you were called in for a job, the kidnapping of the eldest son of the Kim family that ruled the capital city. Seungmin, his name was. Based on the investigation you’d done he was younger than you, a bit rowdy, and an apparent oddball. He, very inconveniently for you, also had a handful of very skilled bodyguards protecting him at all times.

You couldn’t find any records of those bodyguards of his, only that they called themselves the Five-Point Stars, and that they were good at what they did. Regardless, you had a lot of confidence in your own abilities. After all, never once had you lost a fight, nor been unable to finish one of your jobs–although you’d been close to being killed sometimes, you’d admit.

As soon as you woke up, you started to recount the plan you had put together for your mission tonight.

After wiretapping his personal tailor’s phone, you heard him tell someone how he had prepared Seungmin’s suit for the night. You knew Seungmin was going to attend a screening of a new movie that was financed by his father. It’d be dark, crowded, and the perfect setting for you to sneak in, get him unconscious, take him out of there, and hopefully outsmart his bodyguards.

A particularly loud snore next to you snapped you out of your focus, and you turned around to find Chris on his back, with an arm over his eyes and his mouth slightly open. You couldn’t help but smile at the sight, and, for a moment, even if just for this morning, you decided you wanted to enjoy being just a regular civilian instead of a trained assassin.

“Baby…” You reached for Chris’ shoulder to lightly shake him awake. “Baby, wake up”.

Chris’ whole body tensed. His hand flew to catch yours that was shaking him awake, and he held it in a tight grip. Throughout your relationship you’d discovered that Chris had incredibly quick reflexes, and a very intense fight or flight response, so his sudden movement didn’t faze you in the slightest. “W–what?”

“You were about to choke, baby. You need to move”, throughout your relationship, you’d also learnt that Chris suffered from a sleeping disorder. You found out about it the first time he woke you up in the middle of the night gasping for air.

Poor thing, he’d been so embarrassed while he told you about it, but you were quick to reassure him that you didn’t mind, if anything, it only made you worry about him.

Because that was how important Chris was to you. Important enough for you to care about his sleeping habits, important enough that he warmed your cold heart.

So now, any time you were awake and you heard him snore particularly loudly, you woke him up before he could choke on his spit.

“Ah… Thank you, sweetheart”, he mumbled, clearly still half asleep. 

Chris turned to his side, scooting closer to you and pulling you into his arms. You couldn’t help the small giggle that left your lips as soon as your head was tucked under his chin, just like he seemed to not be able to contain his at all, either. 

The feeling of his bare skin against yours was incredibly comforting, his warmth seeped into you, reaching areas deep within your heart that no one else ever had before.

As you laid there in his arms, as you heard his heartbeat under your ear, and as you felt the minute rumbles of his snoring resume, you realised this was probably the happiest you’d ever been with a partner, and you hoped that your relationship with Chris would be the last one you ever had.

Getting into the movie screening was easy. Your specialty was sneaking around undetected, you’d learnt to walk without making a sound–no sound from your feet hitting the ground, nor your breath going in and out of your lungs, nor your clothes moving with the wind…

You’d also heard from Seungmin’s tailor–whose name was apparently Hyunjin–that the Kims had a special, private room in this particular cinema, so that was likely where the eldest son of the family would be.

Finding this room was the hard part. It wasn’t in any of the blueprints of the building, so you spent a good hour surveying the place, until you finally saw a waiter coming out from what seemed to be a simple wall.

Tightening the hood over your head, making sure the lower part of your face was covered properly by your kerchief, you made your way to that wall to inspect it closely. There was a tile on the wall that was shaped differently than the others. It was barely perceptible, just a tad smaller than the ones around it, so you pressed on it, and immediately you were able to push what you now knew was a door camouflaged as part of the wall.

As soon as you stepped into the room, you saw Seungmin, sitting on what looked to be a very comfortable armchair, watching the movie from behind the glass that kept this area hidden from the rest of the auditorium. 

Slowly, you approached him, careful to not make a single sound as you unclipped the rope you had attached to your belt. Before you could use it, though, you felt a slight disturbance in the air around you, and every single one of your senses zeroed in on the direction of it.

In a second, you ducked, just barely missing the bat that had been swung your way.

“Chan!” You heard Seungmin scream, but you didn’t dare turn to look at him, not when his bodyguard had all his attention on you.

It was just one man. You could barely make out the features of his face, not only because it was dark, but also because he had a mask covering the lower half of his face, and because he was moving so fast you could hardly take in anything else.

The man, Chan, based on the name Seungmin had screamed, certainly put up a good fight. Any blow you sent his way he blocked without much difficulty, just like you did his. It was a pretty on par encounter, but you were running out of time. The longer you stayed there, the more time you were giving them to get back-up, so you reasoned the wisest choice was to retreat. This mission was getting way too dangerous, and if they captured you it’d all be over.

Chan wasn’t giving up, though, and he was making it incredibly hard for you to make your escape. You managed to kick him in the chest, but aside from a grunt of discomfort he didn’t relent, and, with a swing of his bat, he was able to land a hit on your arm.

It was painful, yes, but you could hardly feel it with the adrenaline pumping through your system. Taking a knife from their designated place on your bodice, you threw it in Chan’s direction. It didn’t stab him, but it did manage to cut one side of his mask, enough to distract him so you could make your escape.

By the time you were out of the cinema the place was full of guards, so you knew your night was over.

It didn’t matter. 

You hadn’t lost. You were just experiencing a set-back.

“Missed you so much, gorgeous”, Chris mumbled between kisses, further pressing you against the back of your front door.

“Missed you, too”, was all you mumbled back, unable to keep your lips away from his for too long.

You hadn’t seen Chris for seven whole days. It wasn’t because you didn’t want to, you were honestly desperate to see him, but once you were back at your place after your failed attempt to kidnap Seungmin you realised how hurt your body was.

That guy Chan had certainly done a number on you, and the only thing that kept you from bursting into flames by the rage you felt, was the fact that you were sure you’d done a number on him, too.

Your bruises had now just started to fade, so you figured they were now normal-looking enough that your boyfriend wouldn’t think much about them. 

You were supposed to go out for dinner tonight, but as soon as Chris was at your doorstep, as soon as his lips were on yours, you both quickly realised you didn’t want to go for dinner anymore. How could you, when the taste of each other was much better than any meal you could possibly have?

“Come here”, Chris pulled himself away from you, taking a hold of your hand and tugging you towards the sofa. “Haven’t been able to stop thinking about those nudes you sent me”.

You couldn’t help the smirk that came to your face. Of course he couldn’t stop thinking about the pictures you sent him. That was their entire purpose, after all. They were simple, really, but clearly enough to rile him up. It was just you riding one of your favourite dildos, with your ass on full display for him to ogle.

Chris pushed you to the sofa. As soon as you were seated he dropped to his knees, and spread you open for him. Wearing a skirt to your date was certainly the wisest choice you made tonight.

“Maybe I should send you a video next time. I’ll ride it just like I ride you”, you said, just as you lifted your hips enough for him to pull your underwear down your legs.

“Fuck, you spoil me too much”, was the last thing to come out of Chris’ mouth before he dived between your legs. His lips found your clit with expert ease, gently sucking on it.

Your entire body came alight, a moan of his name escaped your mouth, and you brought a hand to his head so you could tug on his curls, just how you knew he liked it. “So fucking good with your mouth, baby, fuck…”

Chris simply hummed in response, sending vibrations through your body, making you whine.

With his hands on the back of your thighs, he pushed your legs further towards your chest, getting better access to your centre. Chris had very quickly learnt his way around your body, and he’d even shown you new ways in which you could feel good, ways you’d never even imagined you’d get to experience.

His tongue changed focus, from your clit to your entrance, diligently licking your folds, and he groaned at the taste of you on his tongue once he pushed it within your walls. He stayed there for a while, occasionally coming back up to lick and suck on your clit only to come back down to slurp you up. Until he finally moved further down so he could lick the tender skin of your ass, all while he stimulated your clit with his fingers, making you shiver. 

Desire pooled in the pit of your stomach, and the most pathetic whine left your mouth as soon as he started to lave at your skin. You would’ve never thought how good this could feel, never let a partner come anywhere near your ass, but one night, after drinking one too many beers, the topic of things you would’ve liked to try in bed came up. 

You could still remember the look on Chris’ face when he confidently said ‘I’d really like to eat your ass. Like, would love to, honestly’. And maybe it’d been the fact that you were a bit tipsy, or the fact that he was so utterly unashamed when he said it, or maybe even the fact that you trusted Chris like you’d never trusted anyone else before, but you weren’t entirely displeased with the idea… So you gave it a try, and now you couldn’t even fathom getting head if you didn’t feel his tongue on your ass at least once.

Without detaching his mouth from your sensitive skin, he brought two fingers to your mouth, and you wasted no time on wrapping your lips around them, sucking on them, licking them. You couldn’t help but moan around his digits, and Chris simply gave you a satisfied hum in response.

He let you enjoy the feeling of his fingers in your mouth for a while, until they were thoroughly coated in your saliva. As soon as he removed them from between your lips, he brought them to your entrance and pushed them into you, to the last knuckle. “C’mon, baby. Show me your pretty tits. Hm?”

You just nodded in response, unable to form a sentence with the now relentless pace of his fingers continuously hitting the most sensitive areas within your walls. With trembling fingers, you unbuttoned your blouse and squeezed your breasts over the fabric of your lace bralette before you pulled them out of the cups.

“Shit, look at you… Touch them, baby. Just how you like it”.

So you complied, lightly dragging your fingers over your now stiff nipples, sending tiny shocks of pleasure up and down your spine with the motion. The stimulation you were giving to your chest, Chris’ fingers going in and out of your cunt, and the dirty words coming out of his mouth brought you close to the edge, and you started to feel incredibly desperate for your relief.

“Chris, baby…” You whined as Chris sped up his motions, as you rolled your nipples between your fingers.

“Yes, sweetheart?” Chris’ voice was so soft, a complete contrast to the brutal pace of his fingers.

“Want your–Your mouth”, you could barely hold eye contact anymore, seeing the desire in his eyes brought heat to your cheeks. It was always the same when he found himself between your legs, he always looked at you like you were the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, and it made you feel incredibly wanted. 

���Hmm… You sure that’s what you want?”

You nodded, a bit frantically, you’d admit. “Want your mouth to…make me come, please, love–”

You knew that the second the word ‘please’ left your mouth you’d get exactly what you asked for, and you barely registered the broken moan that flew past your lips as soon as his lips attached to your clit once again.

Chris’ movements didn’t relent until you were coming. They didn’t even relent while you were coming. He kept sucking on your clit, fucking you open with his fingers, turning you into a whimpering mess as he pushed you past the brink of overstimulation, and making you fall face first into a consecutive high.

When he was done with you, you were still trembling, panting, and he finally left his place on the floor to sit next to you on the sofa and pull you into his chest so he could softly caress your hair, mumbling sweet words of encouragement. ‘Mmm… Such a good girl, aren’t you, love? So good to me. You did well…’

You just hummed, burying your face in the crook of his neck to leisurely press kisses on his skin. 

As soon as you regained some of your composure, you kissed him. You kissed him with such want one would’ve thought he hadn’t just made you feel like you’d gone to the moon and back four times. You quickly undid his belt, unbuttoned his jeans, and tugged them and his underwear down just enough to let his length free of its confinements.

In no time, you had straddled him and sunk yourself on his cock, eliciting a shared sigh of relief.

You sneaked a hand under his shirt just as you leaned in to kiss him again. His abdomen tensed and relaxed while you slowly traced every muscle with your fingertips, your soft caresses eliciting content sighs to fall from his lips and get lost in your mouth. Taking a hold of the hem of his shirt, you tried to get it off of his frame, but Chris shook his head, pulling your hands away and mumbling a “no time for that… God, bun, move…”

Chris held your ass tightly in his hands as you bounced on him. His mouth attached to your chest, sucking your nipples into his mouth so he could lick them, nibble on them. Under the unfaltering pace of your hips, it only took a handful of minutes to turn him into a moaning, whining mess.

“Fuck, baby… If you don’t slow down, I’ll blow”, Chris nuzzled his face on your chest, and you brought your hands to the back of his head, further pushing him into your cleavage.

“Good”, was all you told him, admittedly a bit breathless. “Need you to fill me up, Chris, baby… Need it so bad…”

Chris swore under his breath, and his hold on your buttocks tightened. It wasn’t long until you got exactly what you wanted. With a moan of your name, your boyfriend pumped you full of his release, making you whine at the warmth of his cum reaching deep inside you.

You didn’t stop moving, though.

Even if your thighs were burning, you kept bouncing on his cock, until his groans of relief turned into desperate whines, until he was whimpering against your chest and digging his short nails on the supple flesh of your buttcheeks.

“P–please…” You heard him whine, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t felt accomplished by the sound. That was when you took pity on him, finally sitting down fully on his lap and stopping your movements.

Chris groaned, exhaling all that air he’d been holding in while you overstimulated him. He threw his head back to rest it on the backrest of the sofa, looking eighty shades of fucked out of his mind. He was breathing heavily–as were you–and he could barely keep his eyes open, but he still let out an incredulous laugh, giving you one of his blinding smiles, making you smile in return.

Cupping your cheeks, he pulled you down for a kiss before he whispered, “I fucking love you”.

And once he said it, you finally let yourself voice those thoughts that had been roaming your mind for a while now, just before you leaned in for another kiss. “I love you, baby”.

By the time you had both thoroughly enjoyed one another, you were too tired to leave your place. So you ordered takeout, got into your comfiest pyjamas, and decided to have your dinner date in the warmth of your home while watching your favourite show together.

Although, to be fair, you didn’t get very far into the show. With your now full stomachs, Chris pulled you into his arms while you both laid on the sofa, softly caressing your hair as he sang to you, inadvertently lulling you to sleep.

This Chan guy was seriously testing your patience. 

Every time you tried to get to the Kim kid he’d always be there, he’d always manage to get you to back off. It was starting to hurt your pride, and, even if you were one to avoid killing, you started to genuinely consider taking his life just so he could stop being a nuance.

You’d had three other failed attempts at your task since that fiasco in the cinema, so tonight would hopefully be the day you succeeded. Seungmin was to attend a piano concert at one of the classic theatres his family owned, meaning he’d once again be in a dark, crowded place. There was no hidden room as far as you could tell from your surveillance earlier this week, so that gave you some semblance of peace.

You weren’t sure if it was the fact that this particular job was taking longer than usual to get it over with, or if it was the fact that you kept being forced to retreat by that one bodyguard of Seungmin’s time and time again, but lately you’d been incredibly frustrated, and it seemed like the only way to get that frustration out of your system was to get it fucked out of you. Luckily, even if your boyfriend didn’t know what was going on, he had been giving you exactly what you needed and more any time you asked for it.

The droplets falling down Chris’ pecs and his toned stomach added a delightful shine to his physique, yet you could hardly focus on any of it. The only thing you could focus on was the feeling of his cock on your tongue, heavy and warm, the delicious sounds coming out of his mouth and bouncing off of his shower’s walls as you took him in and out of your throat, and the dark, lustful, but somehow still loving look in his eyes. 

“Shit… You always tell me how good I am with my mouth… But what about you, baby, huh?” Chris leaned his head back on the tiles, holding your head in place so he could start slowly thrusting into your mouth, making you moan.

You just couldn’t take it anymore, you needed him to fuck you dumb, you needed to further disconnect your mind from reality outside of these walls. So, with a tight grip on the base of his cock, you pulled your mouth off of Chris and started pumping him in your hand, looking him right in the eyes.

“Fuck me”.

Chris just laughed as soon as the words were out of your mouth. He swiftly helped you to your feet so he could turn you around and push your chest against the cold tile wall. “Someone woke up a bit needy today. Hm?”

“And what if I–Fuck…” You completely forgot where your sentence was going as soon as you felt your boyfriend push himself into you, stretching you open just so perfectly all you could do was rest your forehead against the wall when he started to move.

“Maybe you should move in…” Chris attached his lips to your shoulder, kissing and sucking on your skin as his hand found its way towards your front, right between your legs to diligently rub that sweet bud at the apex of your thighs. The mix of his motions between your legs, of the words he mumbled against your skin, and the obscene sound of your wet skin colliding time and time again was steadily clouding your reason, enough to genuinely consider what he was offering. “If you did, we could do this every day, sweetheart…”

“Maybe I should…” You were certainly delirious, there was no way you could live with another person while trying to keep your trade a secret. But the longer you stayed in that shower, relishing the company and precise motions of your boyfriend, the more you wanted to believe it was possible.

Even after he’d coaxed a mind-numbing orgasm out of you, after he’d stuffed you full of his cum, and after he’d helped you dry your hair with the hairdryer he kept in one of the drawers of his bathroom, when you both were getting dressed in his bedroom, you desperately wanted to believe it was possible to have a normal life. Maybe you should start considering retirement… But would you be able to live a civilian life without the thrill of your job? You weren’t too sure. For Chris, though, you might try…

“Come here, bun”, Chris suddenly held your waist and dropped to his bed, bringing you down with him. All you did was laugh, scrambling to find a comfortable position on top of him so you could kiss him.

He was really giggly today, and the sound warmed you up. You dragged your fingers over his still damp curls as you peppered his face with kisses, chuckling with mirth and an immense amount of love for this man that had managed to make you feel a bit normal again. 

“Pretty?” Chris tried to get your attention. You just hummed in response to let him know you were listening, but you didn’t stop pressing kisses on his cheek.

With his hands on your waist, he tried to get you to look at him. “Listen, baby. There’s…there’s something I’d like to tell you…”

You finally pulled yourself away a bit, enough to look him in the eyes. He looked incredibly serious, more than you had ever seen him over the course of your relationship, and it gave you pause.

Chris opened his mouth to speak, but before any words came out, the obnoxious ringtone of his phone interrupted him. With a roll of his eyes and an annoyed sigh, he gently pushed you off of him, muttering a ‘Gimme a sec, gotta take this…’

You watched Chris leave the bedroom entirely before you stood up from his bed and continued getting dressed. You could hear your boyfriend’s hushed voice coming from the living room, but you couldn’t make out a single word. Maybe it was for the best, you honestly didn’t like to pry on his private conversations. After all, you’d hate it if he tried to eavesdrop on yours, all things considered.

By the time he was back you had already gotten yourself into a fresh set of clothes. There was a frown on his face, but it quickly disappeared the moment he spotted you by his mirror.

Standing behind you, he placed his hands on your belly, pulling you back towards his chest as he pressed kisses on your neck. You just hummed, watching him through the mirror and melting in his hold. 

“Babe”, you mumbled, getting him to open his eyes and look at you through the mirror. He rested his chin on your shoulder, intently listening to you. “What’d you want to tell me?”

Chris took a deep breath, pulling himself away from you to take a hold of your hips once you turned around and looped your arms around his neck. “It’s nothing urgent. Say… What if we go on a little vacation to the coast this weekend?”

“Mmm… A little escapade?” You chuckled, and Chris hummed in response, cupping your cheek with one hand to pull you in for a kiss.

If everything went well tonight, you’d more than appreciate some time to wind down from the entire thing, and spending the entire weekend relaxing, barely even clothed, listening to the waves crashing against the breakwater with Chris sounded like absolute heaven. It’d be like your own little celebration for your win over that insufferable guard dog of Seungmin’s.

“Sounds like a great idea, baby”, you told your boyfriend as soon as his lips detached from yours, smiling brightly at him.

The sound of the piano could be heard perfectly even outside of the theatre. You didn’t know the name of the piece, but it was clear that it was being played by expert hands. Even if you were mostly impassive whenever you fell into your…professional mode, you were still a bit on edge after months of having your plans ruined by Chan, so the melody floating in the air certainly helped soothe you a bit.

The corridors to the main hall were empty, completely quiet save for the sound of the piano bouncing off of the walls. The old construction was a bit difficult to navigate, but you’d gotten well acquainted with the place throughout the past week, so you found your way to the concert hall with ease.

Everything was dark, save for the lights shining on the stage, illuminating the silhouette of the musician sitting on one of the three pianos that’d been set on the podium. 

Something felt odd, though.

In an instant, you noticed the emptiness in the hall. The music stopped, replaced by a loud bang and the sound of the bullet hitting the wall, right where your head had been just seconds before your instincts kicked in and you moved away.

It was a trap.

You’d stupidly let them lure you in here, where Seungmin was, very clearly, not even present.

No matter. You might not get your target tonight, but you could still get your peace back.

Chan kept firing at you from the stage, and you continued to expertly dodge his bullets as you swiftly got closer to him. Somewhere in the back of your mind you could hear your father’s voice from back when he was training you, telling you that chasing after someone that wasn’t the one you’d been hired to attack was foolish, that it’d put you at risk. You didn’t care, this was personal now.

Taking one of the knives from your bodice, you threw it in Chan’s direction, just barely missing his form when he ducked out of the way. It felt like it lasted for a long time, you throwing knives at him, and him shooting at you, until you made it to the stage and he had no option but to physically fight you.

He was incredibly agile, but so were you. Especially after having fought him so many times. You’d picked up his tells, how he shifted his weight on his heel before he threw a punch, how he moved slightly to the left when he kicked, so it’d gotten easier to counterattack each and every single one of his moves.

Chan was good at what he did… But you were better.

With a kick to his knee and a push on his chest, you managed to send him to the floor and pin him under you. He tried to move, but you swiftly pressed one of your knives to his neck, effectively stopping his movements.

There was a moment of silence, a moment of you staring down at him, and a moment of him staring up at you.

This was the first time you’d actually gotten to see his face this clearly. There was usually barely any illumination whenever you’d fought before, and both of your quick movements made it easy to miss the details on the exposed areas of your faces. His straight hair pushed off of his forehead–save for one single piece that seemed to always be out of place–gave you plenty of room to see the blue contact lenses he wore. You couldn’t help but wonder if those were simply for aesthetic purposes, or if they held any sort of special tech quality to them–he worked for the Kims, after all.

There was something eerily familiar in the way his eyebrows furrowed, in his eyes, even with the obviously fake blue colour. Whether you were going to kill him or not, you suddenly felt an intense need to see his face. All of it. So, with your free hand, you hooked your finger on the side of his mask so you could pull it off.

For a split second, you couldn’t help but wonder if your eyes were playing a trick on you. Despite the straight hair and the blue contacts, the curve of his lips and the shape of his nose were so distinct there was just no way this man could be anyone else.

You tried to never speak while on the clock. After all, your voice might be a very good indicator of your identity. It might’ve been the shock of seeing such a familiar face, but you really couldn’t help the name from coming out of your mouth, as a barely audible whisper. “…Chris?”

Confusion crossed the features of the man under you. His eyes jumped all over your face–or what could be seen of it, at least. His angry frown turned into a look of shock, mixed with some concern, and you saw his Adam’s apple bob in your peripheral vision when he swallowed, almost audibly.

You still had the knife pressed to his neck, but you were honestly unable to move at all. So much so you didn’t even flinch when he slowly started to move himself.

With a trembling hand, he reached for the black kerchief that covered the lower half of your face. You didn’t stop him, you just let him tug it down to your neck and reveal your face to him.

The sound of your name, coming out as a breathless whisper out of his mouth hurt more than any hit you’d received throughout the past handful of months.

“What the…fuck”, the hurt tone in his voice broke your heart, and you could feel the lump form in your throat. “All this time…?”

“I had no idea”, you couldn’t help the tremble in your voice, and you weren’t sure if you hated yourself for being so vulnerable in front of the enemy. But then again, he wasn’t only an enemy, he was also the man you’d fallen madly in love with.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to get to Seungmin?” His voice trembled, yet neither of you dared to move further.

“I was hired to do it”, you replied simply.

“By whom?”

“I won’t tell you… I…can’t”, you could feel them. The treacherous tears that pricked your eyes… Crying in front of the enemy was unheard of, but you supposed these weren’t normal circumstances.

Chris swallowed again, and you could see tears of his own well in his eyes. “So…what now, bun?”

The sound of the pet name coming out of his mouth fully obliterated the remaining pieces of your heart, and you couldn’t stop the tears from falling anymore. So you didn’t. “I–I don’t know…”

“You should kill me”, Chris said, very confidently, without any semblance of doubt in his voice. And even though your grip on the knife tightened, you didn’t move it, you just shook your head in response, trying to contain the sob that threatened to come out of your mouth.

“You should”, he repeated after a few moments of silence. “I’ve done…many horrible things in my life. I’ve killed people, tortured people… I’ve done it proudly, too”, Chris brought a hand to your wrist, holding it gently, but firmly. “I’ve made peace with all that a long, long time ago… But knowing I’ve spent months hurting the woman I love is something I can’t live with…”

“You didn’t know”, your hand started to tremble, too, and Chris’ hold on your wrist tightened to keep it steady.

“Doesn’t matter”, finally, tears started to fall from Chris’ eyes, and his voice broke a bit when he spoke to you. “I wanted you dead. Even if I didn’t know, I was trying to kill you”.

You shook your head, closing your eyes tightly.

Maybe, if you closed them hard enough, you’d realise this was all a dream, a horrible nightmare you could still wake up from.

“Why don’t you kill me instead?” You mumbled after a while, when you finally opened your eyes. “I, too, was trying to kill the man that I love…”

“I can’t stop protecting Seungmin. I won’t stop. I’m the only thing keeping you from reaching your target, pretty. Look at us…” Chris’ thumb softly caressed your wrist, right on the sliver of skin your gloves exposed. “Look at our positions. You know you already won”.

You shook your head again, and Chris pushed on your wrist, further digging the blade into his skin as he mumbled, “Do it…”

He was right, you had the upper hand. Logically, it made sense for you to kill him, but there was no way you would. What a selfish thing for him to ask… Did he think getting to Seungmin was more important than his own life? That you’d be fine just…taking it?

Yanking your wrist out of his grip, you threw your knife to the side, as far away from you as possible. Chris just looked at you, confused, hurt, and you just couldn’t bear to see that look in his eyes. In an instant, you were standing, finally getting off of him.

“Baby…” You mumbled, trying to steady the sound of your voice. You turned your back to him, unable to look at him any longer. “I’m sorry… I don’t think I’ll make it to our vacation this weekend”.

With that, you started walking, trying to get as far away from that stage as possible.

The last thing you heard before you left the theatre altogether was the cacophony of sounds produced by what you knew to be the erratic smashing of piano keys, a complete contrast to the soothing melody you’d been listening to when you came in here… That soothing melody that you now knew was being played by Chan, by Chris, by your biggest rival who turned out to also be the love of your life.

As you left, with tears in your eyes, with your heart shattered in your chest, you realised that this was the first time you’d truly lost. There had been no room for you to win since the very beginning.

Part 1 (you're here!) | Part 2 >

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General Masterlist

[communistkenobi]

genuinely curious, if you think "it's a girl!" and "it's a boy!" categorisations are inherently oppressive, do you believe a world where gender isn't recognized in any meaningful way before the child has means to define it for themself to be the best alternative?

I’m going to use a different abolitionist example to illustrate what I mean: when people advocate for abolishing the nuclear family, they are not saying “get rid of parental relationships” or “get rid of fathers.” They are identifying a specific social relation that is used as a building block of society and advocating for a world where it doesn’t exist, because its existence is the foundation of certain forms of oppression. The western social model where children are raised in private detached housing by a maximum of two parents (and realistically, mostly by their mother - a huge problem in itself!) who have complete control over their material, emotional, and social needs produces a fucking huge amount of adverse outcomes - abuse, trauma, dysfunction, poor health - the list is nearly infinite. And this family model also inherently reproduces class, race, and gender by virtue of the fact that children inherit those things from their parents and are forced to exist in those contexts. And even in individual cases where it doesn’t produce abuse, even if you have very good parents who are not abusive to you in any way, that social relationship is still oppressive, in the same way that having a cool boss doesn’t mean that wage labour is good. A society where children are not entirely dependent on one or two people for all of their needs, where they are free to form meaningful relationships with adults outside of strict categories of family, where children are not legally and socially treated like the property of their parents, where bloodline is not privileged as the dominant mode of intergenerational transfer of knowledge, culture, skill, wealth, etc, is a much better world!

“Gender abolition” is, I think, a poor term for a similar goal, and one that has a lot of reactionary baggage (baggage that is not coincidental - I think its imprecision as a term is useful for terf politics). Abolition of patriarchy is probably more precise - I am advocating for a world where gender is entirely non-coercive, where gender does not produce any oppressive social relations. You can engage in gender as a culture in the same way you can engage with different forms of art, in a way that is purely voluntary. This configuration does not prohibit the possibility of trans people; we would just exist in an entirely different form than the current western, medicalist, patriarchal, white supremacist context we are forced to navigate.

So yes, I think for gender to be truly emancipatory, it needs to be engaged with as a voluntary form of human culture, as a form of art that we do with ourselves and our bodies, and to do this we need to abolish sex distinctions on medical records, gender markers on state documents, gendered facilities, and many, many other things.

[dxckgrxsonx]

omg ella i am OBSESSED w the dick pic jason storyline,,, may i please ask for more 👉🏻👈🏻🥺 (and also for ur hand in marriage)

by the power vested in me, i pronounce us married.

**

His hair is soft between your fingers.

The strands slip like silk through your hands and you spin the ends into little curls before tugging them loose and starting again. Jason rests his head on your knee, broad frame tucked between your thighs as he sits on the floor.

“What shampoo do you use?” You ask, only half listening to the movie playing in the background. Jason prods at your ankle as you disturb the comfortable silence and in retaliation you kick him in the side. “Your hair is so soft.”

“Yours.” He manages to get out through a yawn. “You always buy the expensive stuff and it smells nice so…”

“So what? You steal it from me?” Leaning down, you contort your body into a shape unknown to science and shove your face into his hair. Breathing deeply you hum, satisfied, and ignore the little noise Jason makes in the back of his throat. “Yeah okay, you get a free pass on that one. It does smell good.”

Jason tugs his phone out of his pocket and you watch curiously over his shoulder as he starts flicking through his text messages. Some of them you can read, and it ranges from stupid photos from his brothers and sisters, to things more high profile. But there are some in languages you can’t understand and it’s strange how you immediately categorise his intelligence as attractive.

Across the top of his screen a new message flashes up and your eyes dart over it before the words can fully sink in.

‘Just tell her how you feel, Jaybird. You deserve to be happy, and I know that’s exactly what she makes you.”

Jason swipes the message off almost as soon as it appears and he tries to sit up, tries to assess your reaction and go straight into damage control. But you don’t let him. Won’t let him sink into his own head. Pulling just slightly at his hair with one hand you use the other smooth over his shoulder.

“Jay, it’s fine. It’s okay.” You say, and he’s tense all over. “M’just surprised that this is the first time I’m learning that you have a crush on someone.”

“Ew.” He chokes immediately. “A crush? What am I, twelve?”

“On a scale of one to ten? Hell yeah you are.”

Whistling appreciatively, Jason raises his hand and you go straight in for the high five.

“That was smooth. I’m impressed.”

Rolling your eyes you snigger, “Jay, you were impressed when I managed to boil an egg for the first time. The bar is pretty fucking low.”

Slapping your thigh Jason tips his head back until it’s resting against your tummy. There’s a light flush to his cheeks and you watch him dart his gaze over your face, nervous, subconsciously searching for any more concrete information on your genuine reaction to the text.

You don’t give him anything.

“That was huge for you.” He exclaims. “And who can forget that time where you fell over in front of literally ten people in the middle of the street. That was impressive too. There wasn’t even anything ther–”

Placing your hand over his mouth to shut him up you cry, “Stop bringing that up you bastard! Let me live my life without that memory. You’re supposed to love me! This isn’t love.” Something mischievous sparks in Jason’s eyes and you grit out, “Don’t you dare. I know that fucking look, Todd. Don’t you dare!”

Swiping his tongue straight across your palm you reel back and immediately wipe your hand on the outside of your thigh.

“You’re a goddamn child.” You grin, flicking his forehead. “I hope you’re happy.”

“You always make me happy.”

**

[learnyouabiology]

Fun Fact: Hagfish Suffocate their Predators with a Cloud of Slime!

(This week featuring my own art, bc I got a new thing and I wanna USE IT)

Sometimes, I come across an animal that makes me go: “Huh. That seems like a fictional monstrosity, fit only for tabletop roleplaying games and fantasy novels. Except I guess this one is real! Weird!”

 The hagfish is one of those animals.

Hagfish are quite spooky to behold: Rather than looking like a fish, hagfish look more like scaleless, leathery-skinned worms with little tentacle-like things called barbells around what appears to be their mouth.

Except the polite little opening that you can see in the drawing above is not its mouth. That’s its nostril.

This is its mouth:

**SCREAM**

(ok that’s technically a tongue that has teeth on it, but it’s mouth-adjacent so I STAND BY MY STATEMENT). (drawing based on this picture from this paper)

THIS IS THE STUFF THAT NIGHTMARES ARE MADE OF (and I, for one, love it!)

You don’t need to worry too much about the hagfish’s nightmare mouth, though, since hagfish are pretty much only interested in eating things that are already dead (except maybe a few fish, so if you’re a fish, watch out, I guess). 

Plus, they can go more than 6 months without eating and can survive without oxygen for 36 hours, so that’s nice.

(it’s hard to tell, but this is 2 hagfish eating a dead rockfish, plus a third hagfish possibly taking a nap. They’re having a lovely time!) 

 These guys love a good whale carcass.

Hagfish are a type of jawless fish which are categorised into the class Myxini. They are the only known animals with a skull but no vertebral column and possess 4 “hearts”: a systemic heart in the usual place, a portal heart that’s beside the 1st heart, a cardinal heart in the head, and a caudal heart near the tail. Technically, only the first 2 are considered “true hearts”, but Whatever!  x

All of these things are very strange and wonderful, but the weirdest thing about hagfish, in my opinion, is possibly their most distinct feature.

They possess weaponized slime.

Remember that time a bunch of hagfish stole a car were dumped onto a highway in 2017? Everyone (human) was fine, but the slime was REAL (source: x). 

This slimey car crash occurred because hagfish excrete slime when disturbed (they caused the slime part, I mean. The crash itself was something else’s fault). Considering the fact that a single hagfish can excrete a maximum of 24 litres of slime (given ideal circumstances) and that there were roughly *checks notes* 13′000 hagfish in the truck, you could end up with around *does some math*... 312’000 litres of slime!

For reference, that’s equivalent to approximately 1’560 bathtubs full of slime. 

(my rough math can be found at the bottom of the post, if you’re curious).

That said, this crash probably didn’t feature 312′000 litres of actual slime. What the hagfish excretes is a relatively small amount of a substance which is a combination of mucus and long, thin proteins reminiscent of super-fine silk threads.

When this substance is mixed with water, it immediately expands 10′000 times its original volume!

The resulting slime is 99.996% water (source x). So, unless the truck was also carrying 312′000 litres of water to transport the hagfish in (which is doubtful), the slime probably wouldn’t have been able to reach that volume. (assuming they didn’t try to clean the mess up with water, which is... fully possible)

For my favourite demonstration of this, here’s an (admittedly old & grainy) video of someone transforming a beaker of water into a beaker of slime using a itty bit of mucus scraped from a hagfish.

(it’s cooler in the video, tbh)

What is all this slime even for? Well, mostly to protect the hagfish from predators! 

Imagine if you bit into a sandwich and then 24 litres of slime suddenly exploded into your mouth. That would suck. A lot. You probably wouldn’t even finish the sandwich! Probably. I don’t know your life.

Understandably, predatory fish also hate to have a mouthful of slime, except it’s even worse for them, because the slime quickly gets tangled in the fish’s gills, which are important for gas exchange (aka being alive). It is for this reason that hagfish generally don’t get eaten, it seems!

(Ha! That’ll teach you to try to eat in the ocean! i love this paper tbh) 

As far as I have been able to research, there are no recorded instances of hagfish being  successfully eaten in the wild (though we have seen predators make unsuccessful attempts, resulting in them having an extremely bad time!)

(Thriving. Moisturised. In their lane. x)

While the slime sticks to the predator, the hagfish has an easy way to get the slime off its own body: they simply tie themself into a knot, wiping away the slime, and then goes about their day, unphased.

This has been Fun Fact Friday, bringing you nightmare fuel in this, the fine season of Halloween!

I know that it’s September, but if the dollar store can say that it’s already Halloween season THEN SO CAN I DANG NABBIT.

(bonus of that fish getting pwned, just bc I LOVE those pictures:

(Corrected) math under the cut:

3′400kg of hagfish in the truck (source)

each adult hagfish is around 180-260g (source)

3′400 kg/0.260 kg = ~13′000 hagfish

one hagfish can produce “a teaspoon” of slime (~5 mL), which can expand “10′000 times” its original size when it hits water (~50′000 mL -> 50 L) (source)

This^ is wrong! It’s actually 24 L, max (new source x)

one average bathtub can hold ~200 L of water (source)

(24 L x 13′000 hagfish) / 200 L = 1’560 bathtubs

[merrivia]

Okay, I have read the Captive Prince trilogy and have so many thoughts...

(And if you like this, I have another essay on Auguste and Laurent here) 

I think the question of why Damen first fell for Jokaste and then Laurent, is so interesting to me. Yes, there’s the blond hair/blue eyes (and the trope of opposites attract + rarity of that colouring), but I think crucially, Damen is smarter than he looks or seems, and I think, desires a partner who can match him. Not in complete equality but in a myriad of ways that achieve a sense of balance...

With Damen’s physique and fighting prowess and his cheerfully open sexual desires (ok fine, horniness), plus his innate, black and white sense of honour and fairness, you can see how people would assume that he is...well, not that bright. He’s so rooted in his physicality himself, so drawn to simplicity too, it can be difficult to see. He’s clearly not stupid, but it is human to categorise, and just like Auguste was probably seen as brawn and Laurent as brains, so Damen probably gets shoved into that first category. But one of the first things we hear about Damen from another person is that he is smart- he has a ‘mouth on him’ as one of the handlers warns. He isn’t brutally cutting and filthy in the way Laurent is; he’s just smarter and quicker than you’d expect. That first line to Laurent- ““I speak your language better than you speak mine, sweetheart.””- amply displays how he is quick; when he ironically calls Laurent’s mood “delightful”, the next day...this is not a clumsy, dumb jock. 

Even the way Damen speaks languages and understands warfare and military strategies, shows his clear intelligence- he isn’t good with the twisty machinations of Vere because it’s completely outside of what he knows. He wasn’t educated that way. Clever Laurent, as a young teenager, wasn’t good at it. No-one, we assume, is born as a ready-made Machiavellian (though arguably, Laurent’s incredibly sharp mind that is good at puzzles etc., makes him innately good at it once he learns). You also have no need for plotting and planning and intrigue, when you get what you want, by virtue of who you are. Not only is Damen the heir, and pretty much the exemplary model of Akielon masculinity, but that gives him this shield of golden self-confidence- he walks into the room, and gains love and respect immediately; failing that, everyone at least has their head on the ground. He has been given such an outpouring of love from everyone around him, he sees the world far more simply because he has never had to see it any other way. As Nikandros says, no-one has ever refused him anything. Why would he recognise the long game of political manipulation- a game to get you what you want, when you can’t have it directly? 

Over the months of Damen’s time with Laurent, he not only starts to pick up far more quickly on Laurent’s impenetrable personality but also gets a much firmer grip on Veretian (read: the Regent’s ) political intrigue- when he does, it’s often describe in terms of a radical shift in mindset, a complete tilting of his worldview. The reason why he didn’t get it before was a lack of experience of a world so cynical and dark; why he does get it after, because he is intelligent enough to start to grasp it. This might be a good time to mention also how Laurent calls Damen arrogant in Prince’s Gambit (“You, with your barbaric attitudes, your brutish, domineering arrogance, are always right”). This is actually, finally, a bit of angry honesty from Laurent. Damen has thought of Laurent as unbearably arrogant from the start of the trilogy; here, it seems, Laurent actually thinks the same thing of him. Yes partly that arrogance could be seen as body language and the way Damen holds himself, the look in his eyes, but also it’s how he speaks. He challenges Laurent with his mind.

And Laurent challenges him back. After all, when does Damen ever feel challenged? What tests the full repertoire of his skills? No-one can beat him in the field; he’s the best and he knows it. Yet, he does derive real pleasure from Laurent’s capabiilities- as a swordsman and his horsemanship. It’s why it was important that Laurent finish the okton first- and how happy that made Damen. The rooftop chase, too- Laurent can keep up, and he’s exhilarated by it. The true challenge though, lies in Laurent’s verbal repartee and his mind. Damen actually does like to use his brain, to engage in witty banter- it’s fun. The rooftop is fun. Laurent and Damen laugh together a number of times, and Damen is having a blast. Laurent is difficult, and to Damen, where everything hitherto has been easily won, this challenge is finally giving his brain and his body what they wanted. There is a whole other post I could make on why Laurent in turn is attracted to Damen, but I’ll just put here that I think, the way he pivots Laurent towards healthy relationship dynamics, where being happy and laughing freely together is how you can be with someone, is part of it.

I think this is also why, tragically, Jokaste, despite her self-sacrifices to save Damen, was never The One for him. As beautiful and cold and clever as she is, there’s nothing mischievous or light-hearted about her- you can’t see her and Damen having a laugh together. He likes how smart she is, and her ruthlessness because that is how she radiates power and that feels like equality to Damen (something he can never get from a romantic partner, as he outranks everyone), but she isn’t fun. Not only that but, ruthless-as-a-result-of-trauma-and-for-survival, is very different from ruthless-because-I-am-purely-ambitious; Laurent as the former, does get to retain a sense of honour and compassion that Jokaste seems to lack. Mostly though, Laurent gets to be Damen’s near-equal; where they don’t quite match, they complement. Where Laurent needs incisive, perceptive honesty, he gets it through Damen’s mind not his muscles. The moment that Laurent actually tips Damen into the first throes of love is when he gets out Volo’s cap- the sheer cleverness of it, makes him feel the “first dizzy edge of a new emotion”. In the end it is a mutual intelligence that binds them together as much as physical desire. 

[partypuppynastja]

When overuse of AGAB becomes transphobic

So, it's often said in trans circles that "we should never have let cis people know about AGAB as a phrasing", but I've lately encountered a few cis people not understanding why. So, a few points of note:

It sets up a new pseudo-gender binary that effectively imagines a world without trans people, "ok if it weren't for all this trans nonsense, what gender would you be then?"

It ends up being a woke dressing of TERF perspectives. AGAB becomes for would-be trans allies, what "biological sex" is for TERFs. Something simple, binary, and immutable. Whereas TERFs do not recognise that sex and biology are almost as complex as gender and sociology, would-be trans allies now skip straight to the same conclusion (and same real-world results of invalidation and discrimination) with different words and without being so science-denying as TERFs.

It creates false social categorisation rooted in presumed biological reductive essentialism. AFAB becomes shorthand for "people I think of as women and lump together despite their only point of critical commonality being a matter of dubious bureaucracy, usually decades ago", and likewise contrariwise for AMAB.

A penstroke decades ago is almost never, actually, what the speaker means to talk about. Please consider saying what you mean, instead.

"I've only ever been with AFABs"—the very use here shows how an adjectival past participle has become a stand-in for a noun, or else how could it be countable? Those people were assigned female at birth, they aren't assigned-female-at-births. Nor would "...with AFAB people" be a big improvement because it's just letting "AFAB" (merely a description of what was written on a certificate long ago) stand in as a placeholder for what a TERF would call "biologically female" (regardless of actual biological sex, because the assignation at birth is what's important to them too, not facts or real biology beyond a primary-school textbook level). So it's abusing the term already, and chances are you didn't ask your partners about their birth certificates, you just assumed.

"I didn't know AMAB people could lactate"—what you probably meant to say was something to do with anatomy or hormones, not bureaucracy. You must realise it's not a certificate that allows or disallows lactation, so figure out what you meant, and say that.

"I'm only attracted to AFAB people"—really? The certificate's the qualifying factor for you? Not their anatomy, not their hormones, not their general appearance, not their physique or genitals and even, perish the thought, their personality? It's the certificate that does it for you? Probably not. Just say what you mean, instead.

"Should AMAB people be allowed to... [thing that has female-only as its qualifying characteristic]?" again, is that penstroke the real matter at hand, or were you thinking about dicks, or extant/recent social roles, or something else? Just say what you mean in a way that refers to the actual people you mean.

Etc

One final criticism is that AMAB and AFAB have the same quirk as MTF and FTM when describing trans people—it centres that wrong gender for us. That M or F at/near the front there stands out and says "this is the bit we really need to focus on".

A TERF would say (with a degree of inaccuracy, but what do they know) that I am biologically male (tell that to dozens of hormonally-directed factors of my anatomy and physiology, but again, what do they know).

A would-be trans ally, slightly better-versed perhaps in how biology works, would instead dodge science entirely, and skip straight to bureaucracy, and call me AMAB. Why are you centring maleness like that? What has that to do with me? What is that "M" doing anywhere near me? Most circumstances, it suffices to call me a woman. Sometimes, it might be relevant to call me a trans woman.

Note: it does not mean that people who use AMAB/AFAB, or even MTF/FTM, are intentionally transphobic, and yes, some trans people will use those terms sometimes. What I am saying here is they're usually misused as a euphemism for something else, and almost always harmful in some fashion. Transphobia exists whether it's intended or not, and yes, sometimes it can come from inside the house.

And yes, sometimes it's just convenient, and occasionally it will really be what's relevant. But, especially if you're a cis person, please consider whether you're saying what you mean, or whether you're just euphemising an imprecise generalization.

Genuinely inclusive, non-invalidating, harm-minimizing language means sometimes using words that you might have been embarrassed to say as a child, and sometimes the context calls for it. Sometimes you really do mean people with dicks. Sometimes you really do mean people who menstruate, who have prostates, who have uteruses, who etc etc.

Note that in many of those cases, would-be trans allies might be quick to generalise inaccurately as "people with dicks = AMAB" (not true, not all people who were assigned male at birth have dicks, and not all people who have dicks were assigned male at birth), "people with uteruses = AFAB" (not true, not all people who were assigned female at birth have uteruses, etc)

tl;dr:

only babies are AMAB or AFAB. The rest of us are no longer "at birth". Consider updating re who and how the person is now.

AMAB and AFAB tend to be stand-ins for what TERFs would call "biologically male" and "biologically female". Consider not thinking about us the way TERFs do, just without the appeal to inaccurate misunderstandings of science.

AMAB and AFAB emphasise "M" and "F", and when applied to trans people, almost always backwards, and becomes misgendering with extra steps. Please don't do that.

What someone wrote on our birth certificates decades ago is almost never actually really the criterion for whatever you're talking about. Please just say what you mean, instead. Be brave (and as a bonus, you'll be more accurate and communicate better too).

[fayes-fics]

Hormones

Pairing: benedict bridgerton x pregnant fem!reader

Summary: Benedict's wife suffers from pregnancy hormones.

Warnings: Err I guess a bit smutty? Nothing compared to my usual. Swearing. Attempted humour.

Author's note: Here, have a comedy drabble. No idea where this came from. Enjoy! <3

“Wait, I think that was someone... I really think we should maybe… ohhh”, with a squeeze of internal muscles, you manage to shut him up.

“I don't care if someone is there”, you answer, breathing hard. “We are doing this”, dragging yourself forcefully up and down in his lap.

“Okay… just you know, let's do it quietly”, he implores with a pleading look in his eye, holding your hips loosely.

“You’ll have to gag me if you want me to shut up”, you warn testily.

“Fine, but just don’t bite me this time, please”, his sigh almost weary.

—

You never expected to become that person.

But four months into your first pregnancy, that is precisely the person you have become.

Anything, and you do mean anything, can make you horny. Last week just the look of a peach had you storming across the house to pull down his trousers bossily.

Your husband is not sure what to make of it, frankly. At first, the novelty was a real turn-on, and now weeks later, you swear he has taken to hiding from you on occasion.

Today there's not even a particular trigger. It's a warm sunny day, and you are tending to some roses when the urge appears, intense and sudden. You inhale quickly, drop your pruning shears, tear off your gardening gloves and stride purposefully around to where you last saw him.

He’s still there - painting the rolling hills of the countryside, idly flicking some flower detail into the bottom right corner of the picture with a fine brush.

“Hello love”, he starts “, how are y…mpffhh.” 

His words are cut off by your lips landing on his forcefully.

“Grab my face”, you order between kisses.

“My hands are covered in paint”, he protests as you briefly let him up for air.

“I don't give a f….”, you dive back in, and he does as asked, smearing paint along your jawline and cheeks. He knows better than to argue when you're like this.

“What was it this time?” he asks as you attack his trouser buttons with an enthusiasm that suggests they cause you personal offence. “See a particularly nice piece of fruit? A suggestively shaped vegetable?” He laughs to himself at that one.

“Get on the fucking ground Benedict, right the fuck now”, you growl.

“Okay, okay, fine, give me a chance, will you”, he laughs again, always genuinely baffled by how furious you can be when you're horny. He has decided to categorise it as adorable. Slightly terrifying but adorable.

“This baby is your fucking fault”, you grind out through gritted teeth as you gather up your dress and straddle him. “Now fuck me hard, or you don't get any naming rights. I’ll call it Ethel. Especially if it's a boy.”

He pulls a face. “You wouldn't; that's bordering on child cruelty.”

“Then you better do a good job.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

no tagging as its a silly drabble

[uravity-the-infinity-girl]

ways that hero society hurts pro heroes headcanons

does anyone wanna hear the shit i think that heroes go through and why i feel they’re victims? no? ok

firstly i headcanon hero society as having extremely fucked up beauty standards where heroes face the same sort of scrutiny for their bodies as celebrities do in our world, like if a female hero is too muscular there will be men complaining that she looks like a guy and if a male hero isn’t muscular enough he’s lazy etc

i bet you anything that it was not only the fact that media interferes with hero work that Aizawa chose to stay out of the spotlight i bet in some subconscious way he was afraid of the intense scrutiny that comes with being a hero

not only that but heteromorphic people are always chastised and rarely do well in hero ranking if they don’t appear attractive or fit within the public’s view of heroes, i’m thinking of gang orca for example who is ranked number 1 in looks the most like a villain like for someone who fights villains for a living and has probably been harmed by them first hand that’s bound to take some psychological toll. that moment always bothered me and i think it’s really unfair for heroes to be categorised like that when they’re dedicating their lives to try to be useful. you just know that people with quirks like shoji will find it harder to succeed no matter how great or compassionate a hero he is.

i know it’s common in fan fiction for Hawks to have to hide aspects of his quirk that are unappealing but let’s think about that with other heroes as well like Mirko, i imagine she’s grown up with agents and superiors telling her it’s annoying when her foot won’t stop thumping or weird how she eats carrots or Mic being told to keep it down constantly-i’m sure there are loads of heroes who are made to be ashamed of aspects of who they are and have to hide them in order to sell an image and be more profitable and likeable.

i also imagine that they’re all terrified of aging and that perpetual fear of losing their spotlight is probably a huge part of their psyche as from a young age they feel they have limited time to be successful like when hawks is talking about his prime calm tf down your life has barely started.

heroes are objectified so much by the commission being treated like weapons makes them feel like their bodies are what make them useful-just look at hawks’ reaction to losing his wings calling himself crippled and pathetic because he can’t be as efficiently used despite still being able to achieve so much with his intelligence, determination and physical skill alone. Mirko may not have the same self deprecating attitude towards her injuries however her dedication to continue fighting by whatever means she can is a testament to how heroes are taught to act with no thought for their own safety if they want to be useful. this is what makes AFO scary to the heroes, the fact they can lose their quirk and therefore their usefulness is terrifying. i like to imagine that many heroes felt or still feel about AFO as korra did about amon in s1 of lok.

furthermore heroes are expected to give their lives at the drop of a hat, mirko lives every day like it’s her last because for heroes their is no safety net or garuntee that they will survive they can’t just give up or protect themselves in the face of certain death or they literally wouldn’t be doing their job. you saw how disposable Lady nagant was to the president of the HPSC clearly they don’t have any care for the lives of even the heroes they work closest with. Mirko and Aizawa cut off their own limbs without blinking because they have to and they’ve been trained this way and it’s horrific how ready to die all of the heroes are without a second thought despite how young they are. arguably it’s admirable but if i learnt anything from she-ra it’s that they need to find a bit of self worth and need to be treated as people who’s lives and well being should be a priority rather than disposable weapons to be used with no regard to their safety.

and it’s fucking beautiful that All might chose to live, the man who has been through the most and given pretty much all there is to give. He’s given up his whole life, his bodily health, his self esteem, his friends, his image as a natural born hero and so much more just to protect people. All might was able to break the cycle of death be choosing to live rather than give his life up and Deku will break the cycle by choosing to save rather than defeat or kill.

i just think that being a hero is so exhausting and must take so much out of you, it’s important to remember how much they are victims of the system

[home-of-renn]

Ya'll wanna know what I love? COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIPS!

That Danny and Jazz have a very close relationship due to their parent's neglect. Jazz is pretty much the true parental figure in Danny's life and for the most part, always has been. Jazz's nagging and constant involvement in pretty much all aspects of Danny's life increases after his accident, which Danny doesn't really seem to notice cause he's got too much shit on his plate after waking up half dead. (But also cause Jazz has always been nearby and reliable - which does wonders to soothe his Obsession, so he honestly doesn't take much notice of her mother-henning).

BUT, this does end up influencing his relationship with Dani.

Even though she's the only surviving clone, she's still extremely unstable and could pretty much dissolve into goo at any moment without warning. This makes Danny's Obsession freak out and go on high alert any time he's near her. Not to mention that Dani - despite being technically the same age - is viewed as being much younger by Danny (and pretty much everyone else as well) due to how inexperienced she is and the fact that she is literally only a couple weeks/months/years old.

So all this stress about Dani's messed-up situation and the fact that there is literally nothing Danny can do to fix it (since she wasn't really meant to exist in the first place), combined with the way Jazz treats Danny, kinda skews his perception of what a sibling relationship is actually meant to look like. Tucker and Sam don't have siblings and no one else in Amity is willing to even go near the Fenton kids without so much as a ten-meter pole, let alone comment on the obvious lack of parenting going on in that family.

So, from any outside perspective, Danny's relationship with Dani is bordering on being parental/paternal. Which freaks Danny the fuck out when he finally realises why Dani gets so cranky and snappish about his overbearing tendencies (she's never experienced any form of parental affection in her very short life). Sam and Tucker never bothered mentioning anything cause they know it's probably just Danny satisfying his ghostly urges, and they also know that both Danny and Jazz have always lacked personal boundaries - that and the fact that honestly, nothing about their family is even close to being normal, including the way each member treats one another. Not to mention, when you're dealing with the kind of spooky shit they deal with on a daily basis, it's better to be in each other's pockets than too far away when something goes wrong.

But then one of them accidentally lets slip that Danny's attitude towards Dani is very much abnormal and Danny feels like he's been dunked in cold water. Cause Dani was made using Danny's own DNA, and there aren't any hard or fast rules on how you should view your totally impossible clone.

Danny's been struggling with controlling his Obsession after the crushing realisation that he had one - just one more thing that chipped away at his already contestable humanity. He knows he's overprotective and he knows that Sam, Tucker and Jazz don't mention how smothered they sometimes feel. And then he realises he's been doing it to Dani without even realising it, and once the realisation hits he's faced with a second realisation - which is that his Obsession doesn't know how to properly categorise Dani. Cause he has absolutely no desire to display any kind of fatherly affection towards her, let alone view her as a potential daughter figure (also wouldn't that make Vlad the other parent? That thought alone makes his stomach churn).

It's an embarrassing, humiliating tension he's felt since the day he met her. A twisted thing he sometimes thinks about in the dark of his room when he's trying to fall asleep. It feels guilty and shameful and something that's too close to grief. He's never even mentioned it to Tucker or Sam, and as soon as the thought pops up he dismisses it and keeps his mouth shut. He hasn't even finished school yet.

Danny doesn't want to think about his future. He doesn't even want to entertain the idea of him one day having a family of his own. But Dani never fails to make him think about it (all the things he could no longer have).

Danny's feelings towards Dani will always be familial. When they'd first met and found out what their connection was he had subconsciously drawn that line in the sand and then shoved it into a box before abandoning it in some distant corner of his mind.

Maybe, just maybe, if Danny was older he would have viewed her as a daughter.

But he won't. He's already too close to her. One day she's going to dissolve and Danny will be left inconsolable. The small still-human part of him realises that - even if the ghost in him refuses to acknowledge it.

Sometimes he feels like his Obsession has already taken away so many of his choices. Limiting his decisions and swaying his judgement. He's not entirely sure where it begins and where it ends and it makes him wonder, just how much of a different person would he be without it? Would he even be the same at all?

The moment all these realisations bloomed in his head was the day he fought with himself and convinced himself to take a step back.

So, he watches Dani from afar.

She seems happier now that she has more freedom to do what she wants without anyone looming over her shoulder. She doesn't understand how he feels - she doesn't have an Obsession. She lives her life flitting from one whim to the next.

But now she visits more, no longer staying away from Amity for as long as she can without risking Phantom coming after her.

He hadn't realised she was staying away.

Now Dani is the one who seeks him out. She wants to spend lazy days floating above the clouds basking in the sunlight. She pesters him to try every item on the Nasty Burger menu and begs him to ditch his homework to go watch a midnight screening of some tacky old horror movie from the 80s. She even convinces him to teach her the names of all the constellations as they recline on a grassy patch behind the Amity observatory (even if there wasn't much convincing involved at all).

He indulges each and every one of her childish desires. Because every time he turns his head to tell her no, all he can see are bright blue eyes dripping into a toxic green puddle. It never fails to make him bite his tongue and nod his head.

They continue the rest of their relationship with Danny keeping a close eye on that line in the sand.

He adores Dani - loves her even - and it's a feeling that grows the more time they spend together. She will always be special to him, and whatever that special thing is, it's something that doesn't need to be defined. She will always be someone important - someone who he loves the same way he loves Jazz (he makes sure of it).

-------- BUT THERE'S MORE

Not only does this anxiety-inducing realisation change the way he interacts with Dani (he no longer actively seeks her out all the time) but it also opens his eyes to the role Jazz has played in his life.

He realises that all the jokes and complaints about Jazz acting more like his mum rather than his sister aren't far from the truth. He slowly comes to terms with the fact that Jazz had a heavy hand in raising him and still continues to watch over him. It changes the way he treats her and it leaves him with a lot of guilt.

Somewhere down the line Jazz ends up realising that Danny now understands that part of their relationship, the part that Jazz had tried to hide from him - something she did to cast her parents in a better light so that Danny could have some semblance of a normal, happy family while having to grow up being a Fenton.

It hits her while her parents are still tinkering in their basement and Danny's just slipped out the window in the middle of the night to go fight a ghost. He'd seen the light under her door and let her know that he was heading out - something he'd only started doing recently. He'd stood awkwardly in the doorway and wished her goodnight before slipping intangible and disappearing from sight.

It made her realise - like switching on a lightbulb.

She'd buried herself under the covers and gone to sleep that night with swollen eyes and her library-loaned textbook dotted with salty tears.

Danny didn't comment on her puffy face the next morning and she didn't question the bruise that was blooming on the back of his neck - just handed him an ice pack and continued scrambling the eggs.

Neither of them talks about it.

~~~~

Just Danny having a complicated, anxious relationship with his clone - who has zero idea what her pseudo brother is actually feeling.

If yall haven't realised, I'm a sucker for complicated relationships

And if I'm being honest, the way Dani and Danny are depicted as twins/cousins and the two of them just readily going along with it has always been a little boring and one-note for me. I feel like having a clone - especially one that you feel a little responsible for - would open up a gigantic can of worms in regard to how you treat them and how you should feel about them. Throw Danny's ghostly Obsession into the mix you have a perfectly complicated situation.

(also I actually quite like the trans!danny headcanon - especially in regards to explaining how Dani turned out female. But in regards to this ^^^^^^^ I kinda like having Danny being cis cause it implies that Vald not only stole Danny's DNA but also mixed it with someone else's. Cause genetically speaking, it would be physically impossible for them to be clones if one has an entirely different chromosome. Which just adds another whole level of fcked up to this whole mess and just Vlad in general. Cause Danny - or at the very least, Jazz - is definitely aware that Danny's "clone" shouldn't be female and somebody realises this but can't bring themselves to speak up. Cause god forbid all of them are too young for this and too traumatised and would rather just brush that little tidbit to the side and under the rug, just so they can all move on)

(also it would leave Danny wondering who makes up the other 50% of Dani's DNA and honestly Vlad is so messed up that he could have just found a way and used his own and that would make Dani the closest thing to Dan and I don't think Danny would ever be able to face that)

[vashtijoy]

10/11: Akechi sees Okumura's death tape

So on the evening of 10/11, after Okumura has very publicly died, Akechi meets up with Sae for the last time while she's watching the Okumura tape. His response is what I'm going to categorise as "interesting as fuck":

he's abruptly shocked at the start of the scene, throwing him off-balance;

he's sickened by what he sees and sounds breathless, unwell and off-balance for the rest of the scene;

we get extensive use of the "sad sprite", which is often performative, but can also—as with the "unwanted child" inner monologue—be very genuine.

Now, since it's Akechi, we have to ask how much of this is staged. I think not very much. He doesn't really seem like he wants people to think he quails at scary videos on the Internet, yanno? I think this sequence is meant to show us something about how he reacts to the reality of what he does—as opposed to the unreal, sanitised experience he has in the Metaverse.

Here's the scene. Audio references are to the Japanese audio.

Akechi: It's been a while. Akechi: What are you watching? Akechi: *gasp* That's—

He throws his hand over his eyes and flinches away. The Japanese subs have a description for the sound he makes: "coughs as if gagging"—he looks, and sounds, very much as if he's about to be sick.

He lowers his hand so he can see what's going on (or look at Sae?), leaving his mouth covered....

Sae: This is just a hypothesis... Sae: But perhaps Okumura was bitten by his lapdog. Akechi: Are you implying that the Phantom Thieves triggered a sudden mental shutdown on Okumura?

At this point, he still sounds pretty unwell, to be honest. And he uses the sad sprite for most of the rest of what is, honestly, a fairly normal conversation for them.

Sae: There might have been a falling out of sorts, so the Phantom Thieves abandoned a useless employer. Sae: ...And to cover their tracks, they dealt with Okumura. Akechi: I hate to bring this up, but I'm actually here about that.

Still using the sad sprite at this point, still sounding off-balance and unwell as fuck. But here's his ordinary chin-stroking deep-in-thought emote—very different to the hand-over-his-mouth-about-to-throw-up emote from further up.

Sae: Did you find any evidence? Akechi: No. Actually, there's a chance that the party behind these aren't the Phantom Thieves, but someone else.

Aha. Now, even though he still sounds uncertain and unwell, we switch to the angry sprite; he knows who's behind what he just saw. Anger doesn't quite make sense for him in-character IMO (especially if you assume his revulsion was feigned), and if he was thinking of himself, we might still get the sad sprite. I think the "someone else" here he's thinking of is Shido. Even though this whole thing is a ploy to frame the PTs, Akechi's mind still goes there.

Sae: How do you mean? You were suspecting the Phantom Thieves as well. Akechi: It is still hypothetical at this point... but I don't want to rule it out.

Sad sprite reports back for action. This is actually a really interesting dual use of it. I'm interpreting it to lead on from Akechi's shock at seeing Okumura die, but you could (especially on a first playthrough) think he's sad because he's wronged the Phantom Thieves and effectively framed them for murder. Which pays off when he joins the team for Sae's Palace in a couple of weeks.

Sae: We're searching the Okumura residence tomorrow. Same with Shujin and its principal. Sae: We will find evidence on this... no matter what it takes.

Now the conversation switches track. Sae thinks Akechi stole data from her laptop, and she's about to confront him about it.

Sae: ...By the way, I wanted to ask you something. Akechi: Yes?

The subject changes, and Akechi is immediately on safer ground. That's the only time his plain straight-faced sprite appears all scene, when usually it's close to the only sprite he uses—as he tells us, people say he's "poker-faced or always smiling". He pulls his mask tighter because Sae is obviously about to chew him out for something.

Sae: ...You haven't looked at my laptop or taken files from it without my permission, have you? Akechi: That's quite out of the blue. Sae: There were traces that someone transferred data from it. Sae: It was only a small error pop―up... Sae: But I noticed it immediately after I had that argument with you last month. Akechi: And that's why you suspect me? Oh please, give me a break.

Lmao, that facepalm. He's still rocking the sad sprite, too. I've always thought that "give me a break" (勘弁してくださいよ kanben shite kudasai yo, "please forgive me"—often a polite request, but sometimes a much snarkier "let it go" as we see here) was a bit out of voice for Akechi, a bit not how he behaves with Sae—after this scene, of course, she'll later tell us that she didn't see him again until the interrogation room. That his attitude changed suddenly; that "Akechi-kun said the Phantom Thieves weren't the true culprits and left me".

And now he's about to go off on her. He talks about how he's a detective, dammit, and he values information, and would never steal data from her laptop! She should be ashamed of herself! How unjust of her to accuse him in this way! if it makes you feel better, kid

Sae: Are you saying you didn't? Akechi: As a detective myself, I honor the value of information—as well as the effort invested in it.

pls

Akechi: I take pride in what I do.

p l s.

Akechi: I thought you of all people would understand such values, Sae―san.

What a manipulative little shit, eh?

Sae: ...I apologize. Sae: But then... who stole my data?

But I can't help but wonder if anything lies beneath the surface of this angry little speech. Whether it ties into the "I am a detective, goddamn you" business—the fact that that identity and those abilities are important to him at some level, though he doesn't truly get to use them and, rather, disgraces them.

Also, he rushes through telling her off—probably because he wants to get out of there? Compare their conversation on 9/13, where Akechi also shows a lot of emotion (that is almost certainly fake), and tells Sae off, but where he's fully in control—his voice is level, we see a lot more use of the neutral sprite, and he's leading Sae along, as is their usual dynamic, rather than being led by her.

Their last three conversations (10/11, 9/13 and 8/22), actually, all end with some kind of show of emotion on Akechi's part:

On 8/22 he has the whole "if only I'd realised sooner that someone powerful was behind the PTs!", which is framing them for Okumura—that speech is very performative, breathlessly stagey, and I don't believe a single word of it.

On 9/13 he goes after Sae for threatening Sojiro's parental authority, which is interesting, since this is after he's met Futaba on 8/28. He only gets really stagey-sounding at the end—"It's a shame, since we both want to capture the culprit behind the psychotic breakdowns".

But this meeting, 10/11, is different. Akechi is unbalanced right at the start, by something he didn't expect to see and can't handle. He's full of emotion that he can't properly conceal. And instead of asking the questions as he did before, Sae is questioning him—and he doesn't like it at all.

Anyway, yes. October is when reality starts to bite.