#which i think is a great angle to come from

[gamebunny-advance]

I didn't get a chance to vote on the poll, but also noticed what would have been my answer wasn't there so I'm writing it in now- I personally see it as he's their CREATOR first, manager second. They don't call him manager in a lot of materials, and they also don't call him father, they call him "Captain" or "sir," (this being pulled from largely the additional voice actor's portrayals at least, which I think are worth at least considering in a wider scope of interpretation)

That feels like the title or nickname he'd prefer they use, hence programming them TO use it for him- and that betrays neither fatherly intent nor producer intent, but pre-existing intent he didn't change (lifting from prior coding) or that he preferred. Beyond that he definitely refers to them as troops- it is their aesthetic, but it's more impersonal

the items you get for the lore on 1010 are toys, and while it's not stated, I've always thought there was an implication that he had made them- His relationship then isn't one of a father to sons, but of a creator about his creations, which IS different. It's why he's as willing to literally throw them at you in combat and, simultaneously, seemingly instinctively, puts a hand out in front of himself to protect them when the final attack is coming- even if they are tools to some degree, he MADE them what they are and he's PROUD of that- He doesn't want to see his work destroyed

Obviously this gets increasingly more complicated if you believe that 1010 gain sapience of some degree, but I still think the relationship isn't quite what I'd call fatherhood. He is simultaneously all the family they have and deeply, inherently unlike them- yet there is undeniably pieces of him and influences from him present in them, because every creation will reflect its creator in some way, in ways they can't even predict

Then, y'know, yeah, it's being a manager time. Ultimately he's gotta organize them and tell them what to do- how he feels about that could be a variety of ways, but he is doing it nonetheless, so something about it matters to him as well- likely the vow to serve the city thing, if leading a boyband is the way to ensure the lights stay on, then he's going to do it 'till his heart gives out.

To start, I do think you're getting a little caught up in the semantics of the poll, but since you're making the case that "creator" is different from "father," I'll hear you out.

And tbh, I really like that interpretation. It's a little more nuanced from what I'm used to seeing, and it is giving me something to sink my teeth into.

I do differ in that I don't think Neon J. personally made the toys or the base 1010: I felt like the implication of the MKI - MKIII standee was that 1010 has actually been around since the wartime era, since MKI 1010 are build more similarly to the recycled battlebots in the Metro Division. Parallel to that, I think it's implied that Neon J. is a cyborg due to suffering injuries in the war. Since they appeared to exist at the same time, it seemed more likely to me that 1010 and NJ's body originated from the same source, but not that NJ was necessarily the direct creator of either them or the toys. (Though, I will admit that knowing that the toy company is called "J-1" does imply that he has something to do with it. But to rectify that, I'm gonna say that he just bought out the company/factory, but he didn't start them.)

But that's just an argument of history. Both interpretations can still lead to the "creator" theory in the sense that NJ still views 1010 impersonally, but still fondly. Even if he didn't make the base, he still turned them into what they are today, which is still a lot of hard work and dedication to the craft.

It's not making him out to be this overly sentimental guy (which is ultimately what I dislike about most "father first" interpretations), but he's also not heartless, and I like that. It's retaining what many interpretations (including mine, sadly) sometimes miss out on, and that's that he's an artist, just like all the other stars. He values his craft, and 1010 are the result of that, for better or worse.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

okay unironically I love so much that porter is like this world SUCKS its BAD here and it HURTS you why do you care abt it!!! and literally every single bad kid is like ngl we just hate ur ass it does not matter what ur philosophy is

[nerdie-faerie]

Just when I think the day's going well, I crash a golf cart

[aeide-thea]

very much an off-the-cuff post so there may well be bugs, i'm still workshopping my thinking here, but—

i seem to see posts fairly regularly in which a member of some marginalized group A is objecting to attempts by less marginalized group B to make connections between discrimination against A and harm experienced by B (the main thing i have in mind here is when people attempt to align themselves with visibly-trans people by pointing out the ways that transphobic legislation also impacts gnc cis people, theatrical crossdressing, &c, but there are definitely also examples along other axes)—

and like. the main objection i've seen from A is 'why do they have to connect my experience to their experience in order to care about it? why can't they just agree that i shouldn't be discriminated against as a matter of, like, compassion for fellow humanity?'

and this reaction does honestly always just seem a little, idk, naive to me?? like, i don't know, it's gotten very popular ime to complain about normies' clumsy attempts to Understand Instead of Just Accepting [this feels potentially linked to like. the way many of us now prefer silently clicking 'like' to producing our own original, maybe clumsy, responses? but don't @ me on that point], probably because a lot of the time they aren't genuinely seeking to Understand but just to point out all the ways our queerness &c doesn't fit their received (unexaminedly conservative) understanding of the world, which feels to us (very reasonably!) like renewed pressure from the establishment to make ourselves fit that established framework, and so we resist… but at the same time, idk, maybe i'm just outing myself as lesser-than-thou here, but for every sort of person i was raised to distrust and have since arrived at genuine loving acceptance/appreciation of, it's involved first coming to understand their frame of reference at least a little? not to say that there isn't a place for shutting up and listening while you're still working to understand, because there definitely is! but i do kind of think this idea that's become popular in certain liberal circles of like, 'you don't have to understand my experience, you just have to respect it,' is fine and true for keeping peace with strangers, but really isn't a recipe for winning friends or influencing people—it's a recipe for keeping people at arm's length where they can't hit you. and then people turn around and want to apply that rule to coalition-building, and get all shocked-pikachu-face when others seek to identify more active points of connection.

...

another ~Radical Objection to Liberal Approaches~ i've seen, though often not specifically in this context (of discussing the way attempts to oppress A have knock-on effects for B), is like—'there's no point in deconstructing their logic because it's fundamentally illogical! insert that sartre quote abt anti-semites!' and like. no, there's absolutely no point in debating their logic with them. but fundamentally when people assert a logical resistance to bigoted positions they are not doing it to Own The Bigots, imo, or at any rate shouldn't be; they're (we're) doing it to reaffirm the basis of their/our own camp's position, namely, we see your knee-jerk fears and reject them; we substitute instead a patient allegiance to logic, that reasons its way into compassion.

that said, obviously there's a conversation to be had here about, like, platforming bad positions, and to what extent deconstructing them is implicitly platforming them! but. i do think that complaining that logic won't win over bigots is missing the very fundamental point that the logic isn't for the bigots: it's for us. we're talking to ourselves; we're affirming ourselves. and yeah, we need to understand that this sort of intra-party discussion doesn't, on its own, constitute sufficient activism! messages need to be communicated beyond the bounds of the party! but i do think i disagree that there's no place for it.

[ckret2]

So a while ago some friends were talking about fans who claim the Same Coin theory is canon. And I made the mistake of saying:

Do you know who also has tons in common with Bill? Mabel. Yet nobody claims Bill reincarnated as Mabel. …wait now I want a "same coin but it's Mabel" AU. Funniest Bill reincarnation option. The all-seeing arsonist is making macaroni glitter art. The omnipotent tyrant is crying because a unicorn called her a bad person.

And then I overthought it for two months.

So—AU where after death, Bill's soul shoots 13 years into the past and reincarnates as Mabel. I'll call it ✨ Sparkly Coin AU ✨

Don't leave yet. Lemme show you why it works. Behold the eerie amount of parallels in their personalities, dialogue, behavior, mannerisms, tastes...

I could have kept going but my attention span ran out. All right, we all on board now? Convinced we could segue from one personality into the other? Great. Now here's why you should be interested: the juicy post-Weirdmageddon angst potential.

As long as a small fringe of the fandom still thinks Weirdmageddon is Mabel's fault, why not amp that up x100 and have some fun with it?

Is everyone sold now? Great. Let's get into the details. I've got 8 more pieces of art under the read more.

So the AU starts the instant Bill dies. Thanks to invoking his deal with the Axolotl—one way to absolve his crime, a different form, a different time—the Axolotl gives him a new shape and shoots him thirteen years into the past. Apparently, the Axolotl thought it would be very funny to stick Bill in the family that defeated him.

Which probably made for a jarring transition.

(It's fine, she's like 10 minutes old, she probably can't even tell who she's looking at. Not being able to tell who she was looking at is what got her into this situation ayyyy)

When Dipper & Mabel come back from Gravity Falls complaining about this triangular jerk Bill, their parents mention that Dipper's name was nearly Bill. See, after they knew they were going to have a boy, one night their mom dreamed about a visitor—some kind of magic pink salamander??—calling her child "BILL." Then at the next sonogram they found out they were having twins, the girl must've been hidden at a weird angle the first time, and they wanted matching names, so they thought, Bill and Bell. But they didn't really like Bell; but eventually they stumbled on Mabel, so to keep the names matching they switched from Bill to Mason. Isn't that the darnedest thing?

(Of course, Mabel and Dipper assume Bill harassed their parents to try to trick them into naming a kid after him. To be a jerk.)

When Bill meets Mabel, he's unaware that she's his future self—Bill's notably bad at doing things like, say, double-checking to see whether he's going to die anytime soon—but like... he can tell something's up.

Naturally, before visiting Gravity Falls, there were echoes of who Mabel used to be—but nothing anyone would be able to identify without context. All her Bill-ish quirks either smoothed out with time (see: how between second grade and fourth grade Mabel went from being the "freak" to the popular girl in class), or else they were accepted by her family as Mabel-ish quirks.

After they meet (and kill) Bill, they have the context to understand some of Mabel's behaviors... and unfortunately, some of Mabel's latent Bill-ness starts surfacing after she's been directly exposed to her prior incarnation.

The part of the Pines family familiar with Bill thinks the worst case scenario is that maybe Bill's survived and is slowly possessing Mabel; but far more likely, they think this is just some weird way of trying to subconsciously process last summer. Mabel doesn't think she's being weird, you guys are being weird, stop giving her weird looks. They get attacked by one triangle and now she can't wear yellow or pick up macrame as a hobby??

(It's not all red flags and uncomfortable triangle imagery, though. When Stan asks her what she'd like as a gift for some important event, she shyly admits that she thinks she's starting to outgrow her plastic gem jewelry and maybe she's old enough to get her first piece of real gold jewelry, if that's not too expensive? And Stan's never been so proud of her. Thirteen years old and already thinking about buying gold!)

But of course, the real fun starts when Mabel finds out.

That's the face of a girl who's just discovered that she tortured her great uncle. Now imagine running into the brother she possessed.

But I've already spent a million words and thirteen images on this post. If enough folks are interested in the AU maybe I'll expand on it later. Let me know what y'all think.

[grison-in-space]

from the number of asinine complaints about how "voting is NOT a form of harm reduction" because harm reduction is for ADDICTS! ONLY! I'm seeing around... all coming from OP blogs I don't recognize and which otherwise don't have much presence... well, that coordination alongside the timing of US politics sure feels like the Russian troll bots agitating again. (Yes, they absolutely infested Tumblr; I think @ms-demeanor had a great post about what the bots looked and felt like somewhere that I will have to try and track down tomorrow.)

The thing is, if you actually do know harm reduction well, the complaint makes no sense. It's not as if the origin of harm reduction is a secret or especially hard to find out more about. I am not exactly an expert in the field: I have a educated layperson's interest in public health and infectious disease, I'm a queer feminist of a certain age and therefore have a certain degree of familiarity with AIDS-driven safer sex campaigns, and I'm interested in disability history and self advocacy (and I would in fact clarify harm reduction as a philosophy under this umbrella). So I have about twenty years of experience with harm reduction as a philosophy basically by existing in communities whose history is intertwined with harm reduction, which means I know it well from many different angles, and I know how the story of the philosophy is generally taught.

See, this is a story that starts, as so many stories do, in the 1980s with something monstrous President Reagan was doing. In this case, it was the AIDS epidemic, and Reagan refusing to devote any money or time to what eventually became called AIDS (rather than the original GRIDS, which came with its own baked in homophobia). Knowing themselves abandoned by society in this as in all things, and watching as friends and loved ones died in droves, queers and addicts are two communities who see that they are the only resources that they collectively have to save each other's lives. Queers know that sex, even casual sex, is an important part of people's lives and culture... and people aren't going to stop doing it even if there's a disease, so how can it happen safely? Condoms. Condoms every time, freely available, easy and shameless, shower them on people in the street if you have to. (And other things: this is the origin of the concept of "fluid bonding", for example... both of which were concepts that were immediately adopted in response to COVID, like outdoor socially distsnced greetings and masks and "bubbles." That wasn't an accident. Normalizing sexual health tests and seeing hard results on paper before sex was a thing, too.)

Addicts, too, knew that using was going to happen no matter how earnestly people tried to stop. If it was that easy, addiction wouldn't exist. So: how do you make using safer for longer? If you could stop someone getting HIV before they could bring themselves to get clean, that's a whole life right there. If you could stop someone overdosing once, twice, a dozen times, that's more time you're buying them to claw themselves out of addiction and into a better place. Addicts see, right, needle sharing is getting the diseases spread, so cut down on needle sharing. Well, needles aren't easy to get hold of. Their supply is controlled because people who aren't prescribed needles are theoretically junkies, so taking the needles away makes it harder to use, right— and no one is complicit, and also you see fewer discarded needles lying around where they're unsanitary and unsafe, right? Except that people want to do a buddy a good turn, so they share if there's no other option, and they'll keep a needle going until it's literally too blunt to keep using if need be. So fighting needle sharing means making it easier to get needles to shoot up with: finding a place to discard used ones and get as many fresh ones as you need to use safely!

Making free needles available to junkies and free condoms for the bathhouses was not a popular solution with politicians, for perhaps obvious reasons. Nor was routine testing of the blood supply, because that cost money too. But these things work to stop the spread of disease. Thus the principle of harm reduction: policy interventions in response to communities that frequently engage in risky behavior should focus on whatever reduces aggregate harm by reducing the risk rather than by trying to reduce the behavior. The homos and junkies say look, all your societal judgement in the world hasn't stopped us being homos and junkies yet. You ain't going to look after us? We'll look after our own. And this is the form that takes. Not increasing the pressure to act like people who aren't is, but making it safer to be the people we are while we try to be the happiest versions of ourselves. Even if that means being morally complicit in a whole lot of casual sex and drug abuse.

The thing is, harm reduction is a philosophy rooted in the defiance of people who knew that their society thought they deserved to die painfully, young, invisible and alone. This is not the kind of thing that people come up with and get mad if you adapt it and share it, especially if you tell the story of where it came from. And importantly, harm reduction is not purely the child of addiction: that philosophy, from the get go, was cooked up to apply both to substance abuse and casual sex. It didn't just spread from addiction care; it was born straddling addiction care and queer & feminist health care.

So it doesn't make sense to see actual activists who know harm reduction well complaining that this is a term exhibiting semantic drift when we talk about voting as harm reduction. It's actually a good metaphor: you're reducing the overall risk of the worst case scenario metaphors by voting Democrat, at least until future votes can install a system where multiple parties can flourish on the political scheme. (Democrats and Republicans are essentially coalitions of a pack of arguing factions anyway, and those factions are essentially what would be classed elsewhere as a party in its own right; the US essentially just lumps political granularity rather than splitting it in our political system.) And anyone who understands harm reduction itself knows that.

So it's this wildly inorganic complaint being voiced repeatedly by different sources. Sounds like a pretty good flag for a potential psyop to me.

If you want to learn more about harm reduction and its history, especially from an addiction perspective, I cannot recommend Maia Szalavitz's Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction (2022) highly enough. Szalavitz has a history of addiction of her own as well as being a clear and accessible writer with an excellent grasp of neuroscience and history. I have a lot of respect for her work.

[fyodior]

IM NOT ONE OF THOSE CRAZY GIRLS.

pairing: chuuya x afab reader (no gendered terms used)

cw: sex pollen trope :3 horny nonsense, F and M masturbation, riding, creampie, pm!reader. MINORS DNI

wc: 1.9k

It had been a mission just like any other mission - some, now formerly, Port Mafia-associated grunts had been dealing arms behind their backs, and you and Chuuya had been sent to swiftly and quietly take care of them. It’s what the two of you did best - swift, quick, quiet. Silence those who need to be silenced, force confessions out of those who need to talk. The two of you were the most highly coveted and revered duo in the PM for your abilities, supernatural and otherwise. 

Something… odd had happened during this one, though. One of them had an ability of some sort, of which he had been trying to activate when Chuuya promptly eliminated him. You had noticed something shimmering in the air around him, but you truly didn’t think twice about it, considering the commotion had kicked up a lot of dust in the old warehouse. But now, sitting in the back of the car next to Chuuya on the way back to headquarters, you’re starting to wonder if his ability had been activated by the time Chuuya had killed him. Because this very odd feeling in your body is surely not normal.

Beads of sweat gather on your upper lip and forehead as your breath quickens, and you can feel your face burning. A sour, swirling feeling in your gut is making you feel sick, and every square inch of your skin feels like it’s on fire, making your vision blur. And worse? You’re so fucking horny you can barely see straight, the throbbing in your pussy barely quelled by squeezing your thighs together. 

“Chuu, I’m not, uh,” you gulp, struggling to get the words out. “I’m not feeling great.” 

When he doesn’t respond, you look over to find him in worse shape than you. His normally pale cheeks are cherry red, sweat dripping down his forehead and matting his ginger hair to the sides of his face. Chest heaving, it seems like he’s gasping for air, and, wait - is he whimpering? When your eyes trail down his slim body, you spot the final confirmation needed to know that he’s in the same boat you are - he’s rock fucking hard, a clear outline of his dick painfully obvious in his slacks. 

“ ‘m not feelin’ great either,” he grunts, words shaky. He tries to cross his legs but yelps, even the slight amount of friction clearly too overwhelming. 

Never in your life have you felt this aggressively aroused, to the point where it’s damn near painful. At this point, all you can think about is touching yourself, and getting something inside you. 

“How much longer ‘til we’re back to headquarters?” your words are stunted, dripping with desperation. 

Chuuya checks his phone, hand shaking. “Thirty minutes.” 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” you whine, burying your face in your hands. 

It’s clear that both of you are feeling it, but neither of you are able to admit it. Not until Chuuya finally breaks. 

“I- fuck- I gotta come so bad before I fucking pass out,” he grunts.

Your eyes go wide at the statement - Chuuya was usually such a composed, disciplined man, that seeing him in such a frazzled, desperate state is shocking, and a testament to the potency of… whatever this is. But honestly, you can’t blame him. Instead, your mouth waters as he fumbles with his leather belt, unzipping his slacks and pulling out his thick cock. 

A hearty groan tumbles past his lips as he wraps a hand around his throbbing cock, pre already leaking out of the angry red tip. His left hand digs into the leather of the seat while he pumps his fist up and down his length, angling his body away from you as a last ditch effort to preserve his dignity, but it’s no use. 

“Fuck- sorry, sorry,” are the only words he can get out, jerking himself off faster and faster.

You hadn’t realized you had been holding your breath this whole time until your body finally forces you to release it. Chuuya and you had never been anywhere near an item, had never shared anything more but alcohol induced lustful eye contact during work events, but it would be a bold-faced lie to say you had never thought of him like that. But how could anyone blame you? It’s Chuuya. So the fact that the man is jerking off mere inches from you is… overwhelming to say the least. And is only worsening the ache between your own thighs. 

In a haze, you undo your own pants before shoving a hand inside, even the feather light pressure against your clit making you yelp. But, fuck, even the half-second of stimulation had your hips bucking, begging for more. With no other choice, you give in to your altered self’s demands, massaging your clit frantically and haphazardly. The groans and moans you let out are completely involuntary - you feel completely detached from who you are, what you are. The only thing you can think of at this point is how desperately you need to come. 

The problem is… it’s not happening. No matter how fast you massage circles around your throbbing clit, no matter how many fingers you shove inside your sopping cunt, it’s not enough. You’re getting close, close, close, right on the edge of reaching the release you so badly need, to be broken free from this obvious curse that’s been bestowed on the both of you, but it just won’t happen. And, looking at the man next to you, it’s clear he’s not faring any better. 

Chuuya’s all but given up, hands laying limp at his sides and head fallen back against the headrest as he pants, his still hard cock twitching in his lap. Your eyes flit between his face and his cock.

“Is it…”

“It’s not fucking working,” he grits, teeth clenched and eyebrows knitted together. The man is miserable. 

But maybe… Maybe the answer is each other? Maybe to break this curse, to undo this ability, you have to fuck someone else? It’d be a shit ability if you could just take care of it yourself… But proposing that to Chuuya? To the man you respect and revere so highly, a top executive at the Port Mafia, the man who could ruin your life and career in a second if you chose to jeopardize it like this… Fuck it.

“Maybe I could hel-”

“Please do,” he interrupts, pulling you in roughly and mashing your lips together. It’s all teeth and tongue and spit but all either of you can think about is how badly you need each other, how badly you need to be connected and to fucking come. Even through the haze of your curse, you still feel it. How Chuuya is doing the most to keep himself in check, doing his best to not crush you with his inhuman abilities, in the midst of a drunk-like state. Even at his worst, Chuuya is the most respectable man you know. 

A hand comes to wrap around his cock, but he stops you, gripping your wrist.

“Get on top,” he growls lowly, and you don’t need to be told twice. 

Shedding your pants in a frenzy, your heart races and your breath is ragged as you clamber onto his lap, wasting not even a second before you sink down onto his cock. Gravity does the work of fitting all of him inside you, and both of you let out broken, strangled grunts and moans of not only pleasure but relief. For the first time, it actually feels like a step has been taken towards relief. The answer had been there the whole time - each other.

The space is cramped in the backseat of this SUV, but neither of you could care less. Wrapping your hands around his neck, you use every ounce of strength you have in your thighs to bounce on his lap in time with his upward thrusts. It’s messy, haphazard, and both of you are just barely keeping it together.

Swift, quick, quiet has turned into sloppy, wet, horny. 

But god does it feel heavenly. It’s not just the curse that’s making this feel so damn good, Chuuya clearly knows what he’s doing - even if his game might be a little off currently. His thick cock is stretching your slick pussy deliciously, rubbing against each and every one of your sweet spots with every thrust. What he lacks in length he makes up for in motion, bucking his hips up into you at just the right angle to have you babbling a mixture of curse words and his name over and over. 

One of his hands snakes down between you, finding your clit and pressing against it - the sudden pressure makes you cry out, throwing your head back and clenching tight around his length, making the man hiss. 

“Feel good, yeah?” he smirks, rubbing small but quick circles around your neglected clit. 

“More,” is all you can manage, gripping his shoulders for better leverage as you ride him faster, desperate for the friction. The combination of his cock inside you and fingers massaging your clit finally has you reaching the climax you’ve been frantically chasing.

“C’mon, sweetheart, come for me,” Chuuya whispers against the shell of your ear as he fingers work rapidly against your sweetest spot. His words are suave and yet his voice still quivers, evidence of the fact that he’s still just as under the spell as you are.

“Y-you come too,” you stutter. “Us- both.” 

The broken sentence is barely out of your drooling mouth before your orgasm hits you like a fucking truck, and you cry out as it washes over you, feeling like electricity running through each and every one of your nerves. It’s a high you’ve never felt before, an ecstasy like no other.

The way you clenched and rut against him as you came has Chuuya following you not long after, spitting hot, thick ropes of come inside your pulsing cunt, but neither of you could care less. That’s a problem for a later date. Right now, both of you are just trying to come down from… whatever the hell that was.

Foreheads pressed together, both of you try hard to catch your breath, panting dramatically. A sharp hiss escapes your lips as you climb off his lap, his softening cock slipping out with a string of cum connecting the two of you. Things are slightly awkward as you do your best to shuffle back into your pants in the backseat of the car, and Chuuya makes sure to direct his gaze out the window, as if he wasn’t just balls deep in your pussy. 

It’s a given that neither of you can speak about it. It happened, it’s done, it’s over, you’ll return to being platonic work partners and pretend that this never, ever happened. And you’re fine with that, you really are. Until…

The tingling feeling is back. You’re getting hot all over, and your breath is quickening. And of course, the aching between your thighs. Looking over, and sure enough, Chuuya is already half-hard again. Fuck. The two of you make knowing eye contact. There’s only one direction this can go. Looking out the window, you’re minutes away from HQ.

“Your place or mine?”

[blindbeta]

Exploring How Toph Beifong Could Be Played By A Blind Actress and Refuting Reasons Some People Believe She Couldn’t

[Image Description: Toph Beifong from Avatar: The Last Airbender. She is waving her hand in front of her face after joking that she spotted the great library, tricking the Gaang only to remind them that she is blind. She rides on Appa who is flying above a desert landscape. End I.D.]

The live-action adaptation of season 2 of Avatar: The Last Airbender is underway. This means people are discussing Toph again, much like they did during pre-production of season 1. I have seen and even participated in promoting the idea of Toph being portrayed by a blind actress. Similarly, I have come across push-back against the idea.

Instead of if Toph Should Be Portrayed by a Blind Actress, Let’s Focus on How She Could

(should and could are bolded for emphasis)

This post will address common misconceptions that serve as barriers to the idea of a blind actress portraying Toph.

A Few Notes Before We Start

These points come from posts on online forums, YouTube comments on videos related to the casting of Toph, and tumblr posts. No one will be specifically called out here, as while these points may be attributed to certain individuals online, they represent much wider views that are shared by many, even without malicious intent. These common misconceptions stem from unchecked ableism and general lack of information. Keep in mind that my intention is not to call out any individual person, as ableism is a widespread, collective problem. The reasons I refuted in this post showed up repeatedly and were not isolated opinions of one or two people.

1. No, it would not be too difficult to find an actress who is Asian, blind, and the right age

[Image Description: Toph as The Blind Bandit uses earthbending to create three pillars of rock that shoot at an angle from the ground and smash into her opponent, throwing him against the arena wall. End I.D.]

This point suggests that it is difficult to find candidates fitting Toph’s description. I suspect this is due to racism and ableism, in that a white and abled person is considered default and therefore believed to be more common, especially by Western studio standards. This is not truly the case. People of color and disabled people are auditioning, especially for the comparatively few roles that seek them out specifically, such as Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Blind Asian people exist. Some of these people are also actresses. Some have backgrounds in dance or martial arts, especially because many actors do similar activities to increase endurance and versatility. Finding a pre-teen or teenager to play Toph would not be as challenging as many people believe, especially those who already underestimate the amount of blind people in the world and their abilities.

Those who argue this point may be under the impression that a blind actress would be out of reach due to low numbers and lack of interest in auditioning. Blind people are auditioning. The reason you don’t see them on screen is because most of them are ignored in favor of abled actors. For example, in this video, Molly Burke discusses not being chosen to play a blind character whom she was told was based on her own life. The actress chosen to play the character was not blind. You can watch it here.

Additionally, Netflix has the ability to hold a widespread casting call. They are not a tiny studio doing productions in someone’s backyard. They have access to a wider pool of actresses than the average person might think, particularly if said person is not familiar with the resources big studios often have at their disposal.

In fact, Netflix is doing just that. Below is a link to their casting call, which encourages blind and low vision actresses to audition.

Link to casting call here with alt text.

2. Some people believe Toph isn’t really blind and therefore the actress who plays her needs to be able to see

[Image Description: Toph as The Blind Bandit using bending, with shots showing her hands and feet. As her bare foot slides sideways across the ground, the camera zooms out to show her sensing vibrations. The image turns greyscale, with circles of white vibrations emanating from around Toph’s body, where they expand and flow outward. End I.D.]

The rationale behind this is probably the same as it is for Daredevil, meaning some don’t consider Toph to be blind because of the way she uses her bending.

An argument could be made that Toph’s powers erase her blindness or that her powerful abilities make her less relatable to the average blind person. However, I suspect that many sighted people engaging with these discussions of Toph’s casting are not also concerned with questions of erasure or relatability. In discussions questioning her blindness, the evidence given mostly centers on Toph’s physical abilities rather than relatability to real blind people.

Her bending aside, Toph is certainly blind. She experiences ableism from her parents and general community. Blindness shaped her life in a lot of ways, even with her bending, which is also influenced by her disability.

We see Toph being guided while running on the airship, needing assistance while walking on ice, and struggling to travel in a desert. She uses her other senses, including hearing and tactile senses. She has limitations regarding how she is able to interact with an unaccommodating world, such as inaccessible reading and writing systems.

There are also lifestyle and cultural implications of blindness extending beyond the inability to see. Being blind is not only about what one can and cannot do, which is true of Toph’s experience as well. Blind people may have different values, experiences with family and friends, different senses of humor, or may place higher value on other sensory experiences compared to sighted peers.

Whether or not Toph is good blindness representation can be argued. However, she is still a blind character. Her blindness influences her whole life, even as she is more than her blindness at the same time. Her life as a blind person is about more than limitations and abilities. Reducing her, and any blind person, for that matter, to only these facets of her experience oversimplifies what it is like to be a blind person.

Claiming that she isn’t a blind character because of her ability to do x, y, and z can be incorrect for a lot of reasons.

Blind people are more than what we can do or what we produce. Our experiences are rich and varied. Our lives are inherently meaningful no matter our abilities or limitations. It is both ableist and inaccurate for sighted people to attempt to put us all into boxes.

Additionally, blindness is a spectrum. [Bolded for emphasis.] You can read about it at the following posts on my blog:

here

here

here

and here.

Here is a good list of legally blind YouTubers with various types of visual experiences.

According to various sources on the blindness spectrum, about 85% to 95% of blind people have some remaining vision:

93% according to RNIB

This Perkins School For the Blind fact sheet estimates about 90 to 95% of blind have some remaining vision

American Foundation for the Blind estimates about 15% of blind people are totally blind and discusses the spectrum of blindness here

The spectrum of blindness is important because our experiences become even more diverse when the spectrum is considered. This means that assumptions about what we can and cannot do become even harder for sighted folks to guess accurately.

This accuracy is important if sighted people are going to try to put limitations on blind people, which they have no business doing anyway. They are not the authority on what blind people can do, what we cannot do, or what is good for us. Only blind people can answer that for themselves.

Lastly, blind people are already used to navigating and interacting with their surroundings. They have had anywhere from months to a lifetime of experience, which would translate better to Toph’s ease with her blindness and confidence in her bending.

While an actor wearing contacts to obscure their vision might stumble around and have difficulty on set, someone who is actually blind could lend Toph’s character a much more relaxed, confident attitude in addition to possessing experience navigating in a way that works for her. She is used to being blind. Therefore, an actress who is also used to being blind brings a lot to the performance in terms of physicality, attitude, and the ability to focus on portraying the character, rather than simulating blindness.

Which leads me into the next point.

3. The idea that Toph doesn’t move like a blind person relies on stereotypes of blind people

[Image Description: A GIF from the episode “The Runaway”. Toph, Sokka, and Aang all con some con artists and cheer after their victory, Toph raising her arms high before snatching the prizes. They all run away. End I.D.]

There is no specific way of moving like a blind person. Like sighted people, the way blind people move may be influenced by many factors, such as level of vision, how long they have been blind, their mobility aid, navigation techniques, familiarity with their environment, level of confidence, feelings of safety, other disabilities, energy levels, cultural factors, and more.

While there are mannerisms that are recognizable to blind communities, there is no one way to move like a blind person. Just as there is no one way to look blind.

The ideas of “not moving like a blind person” or “not looking blind” come from stereotypes of blindness. In fact, these ideas can be so pervasive that blind people who don’t fit stereotypes may be accused of faking. I explore this subject here.

In this video, Sam from The Blind Life discusses the experience of performing blindness or being pressured to act more blind than he is. Link here. He explains while he has some vision, he uses his cane to indicate to others that he is blind. This is one of the main functions of a cane. Sam explains feeling pressure to adhere to certain stereotypes about blindness or risk being accused of faking.

Similarly, in this video linked here, Molly Burke discusses the stereotype that blind people’s eyes look noticeably different from sighted eyes. This includes the inaccurate belief that all blind people have cloudy eyes, blank eyes, eyes that are always closed, or eyes that simply must be covered in dark sunglasses to protect the sensibilities of sighted people. Molly explains that while blind people can certainly have these attributes, not all of us do. Molly laments that the phrase, “You don’t look blind,” is either used to invalidate her or to praise her for passing as a sighted person, which is ableist.

Just as blind people don’t look the same way, we don’t move the exact same ways either. That applies to Toph as well. For example, she prefers to keep her feet on solid ground for bending purposes, orientation, and possibly due to cultural factors valuing stability and connection to the earth.

4. The idea that accommodations would be impossible to provide is rooted in ableism

[Image description: A GIF of Toph and Zuko sitting beside each other on the floor at the Ember Island theatre episode. Toph punches Zuko’s arm. Metaphorically for the purposes of this post, she is punching ableist ideas that have nothing to do with Zuko. End I.D]

Here is a thread I shared in the early days of this blog, wherein the topics of blind actors and accommodations are discussed. The entire thread might also be helpful for this post, as I explore the same points, which shows how common these misconceptions are. While this may seem to be an isolated online disagreement, none of these arguments are new. That is why I believe this topic is important— these arguments about accommodations being too difficult or a burden on others also pop up in conversations about other workforces and other disabilities.

A blind character not being played by a blind actor is one thing. A blind person not being hired for a job they are qualified for due to resistance to providing accommodations is not so easy to ignore, not so seemingly isolated a concern. These barriers don’t only apply to blind actors looking for work. They apply to all blind people looking for work.

That means most of this isn’t really about Toph, nor the opinions of random people online. Instead, I hope to highlight common patterns in ableist thinking and dispel these ideas using a character people care about. This is, of course, in addition to my own desire to have a blind actress play Toph.

With that said, let’s explore what work accommodations might look like using examples of blind actors.

Dionne Quan is a blind actress who has an extensive filmography for voiceover work, including popular characters such as Kimi from Rugrats. In this article from when the character was first introduced, she discusses how she performs. Link.

Quote from the article: “Most of the recording was done in a studio with just a mike and a stand for the script. I had the lines in braille, and I would read them on the way over to get into character. You have to have your bag of tricks ready to go.”

Most of the work Quan discusses involves typical acting stuff. The accommodations given to her are similar to adaptations that might be made in an office setting. Additionally, with all the technology available now, it is easy to make a script accessible through large print, VoiceOver and memorization, Word document instead of a PDF, a Braille display, etc.

And as of August 2024, Quan can add adult Toph Beifong to her list of characters. Which is super exciting and, I thought, an appropriate fact to include in this post. You can read more here.

To continue the discussion of accommodations for actors, I would like to discuss Ellie Wallwork. Wallwork is a blind actress who has performed on Doctor Who.

She describes her experiences on set, such as blocking scenes and using tactile accommodations in this short video from the SeeSaw podcast. Link here.

Transcript:

Elie Wallwork speaking:

“Obviously, markers are just normally flat bits of tape on the floor. I had to have some sort of tactile ones so I knew where I was stepping onto. And it takes longer. It definitely takes a bit longer. I guess the thing that frustrates me about the industry is that sometimes casting directors will think, ‘Well, how could a blind person possibly do this, do that? How could they do stunts? How could they even navigate around set?’ But it’s perfectly possible if you— for example, with the crew that I had on all the productions I’ve been on, they’ve all been really kind, really patient with me and able to understand that, yeah, okay, it might take me five minutes longer to block a scene, but that’s fine because it means it’s authentic.”

End transcript.

You can listen to the full episode here.

Lastly, I find that many sighted people are not generally knowledgeable when it pertains to what blind people can or cannot do. Examples of this lack of knowledge include frequent questions about how blind people read, exist in online spaces, cook, etc—and these are simply from posts on my own blog.

Here is a link to a discussion thread that explores ableist assumptions people often make what blind people are or are not able to do. It particularly relevant for this topic. Link can be found here. Please remember that while I did respond to some folks who expressed opinions colored by ableist assumptions, that post is not about them. Just as this post is about addressing ableism in general rather than from a specific source.

The point is: consider why abled people are so comfortable stating what blind people can and cannot do, when one of the most common questions about blindness is still “how do you use a phone or the internet?”

People who aren’t blind often fail to grasp what our limitations actually are. Many people are still surprised to learn that technology or accommodations exist for us, despite having access to various forms of technology themselves. They struggle to understand that we can live our daily lives, possibly because they personally cannot imagine themselves without the vision they rely on, such as that time a professor asked blind content creator Stephanie Renburg [quote] “How do you live?” when the conversation was supposed to be about school accommodations [Link here].

This brings me to an assertion that is often made when sighted actors obscure their vision in order to play blind characters. It is often noted that it was too hard for them emotionally, mentally, and physically. Because of this reaction, the assumption is made that a blind person cannot possibly perform the role.

For example, in the article linked here, this is stated about Jamie Foxx in his role as Ray Charles. “Some actors, including Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles in “Ray” (2004, best actor) and Blake Lively in “All I See Is You” (2017), have chosen to wear ocular prosthetics, rendering them literally blind during their performances. But this creates a new problem: Unlike real blind people, who can spend years honing their orientation and mobility skills, the blindfolded sighted person becomes lost, confused and frightened with the sudden loss of sight — Foxx told interviewers he began hyperventilating as soon as his eyes were glued shut with the custom prosthetic eyelids that the filmmakers affixed over his eyes.”

Being blind is different from a sighted person temporarily obscuring their vision. Blind people have a better handle on being blind because we’ve been doing it longer. Blindness is part of our lives. Of course blind people are going to have an easier time portraying blind characters. This means most of the concerns people bring up when discussing sighted actors struggling with being unable to see won’t actually apply to blind people who have been at this for far longer.

I also wanted to address the idea that hiring blind actors would cost more, according to the assertion made in that thread about hiring blind actors, which you can read here if you haven’t already. While I can understand why someone might believe hiring a blind actor would cost more, I believe it would actually cost less.

Blind actors can use their own canes or other assistive devices used by the character, which saves money on expensive materials

Blind actors likely already have experience with O&M training, saving money and time that would otherwise be spent training a sighted actor, such as described here

Blind actors don’t need contacts or prosthetics, which may otherwise be used help an actor simulate blindness

And blind actors would have an easier time navigating sets, dancing, or doing required physical activities while blind, which reduces the learning curve that sighted actors with obscured vision need

A few Disclaimers:

1) Blind people learn from our communities and through life experience. While we naturally have more experience being blind, our knowledge is enhanced through learning from other blind people and participating in training designed to improve our life skills. I maintain that a sighted person obscuring their vision for a few hours will not have the same level of experience.

2) Reminder that blindness is a spectrum that a blindfold cannot replicate.

and 3) This post is not to say that sighted actors cannot do well or cannot put effort into their performance. According to the article above, Charlie Cox won an award from the AFB for his commitment to portraying Daredevil. However, just because there are sighted actors willing to put in the work does not mean blind actors can’t. I wanted to include this disclaimer in case someone sees the AFB article I shared and worried I’m trying to disparage actors who have already portrayed blind characters and happened to do a good job. After all, I love the original performance we received from Michaela Murphy, who originally voiced Toph. That doesn’t mean studios should not make an effort to cast more blind actors moving forward, nor does it justify any of the silly or explicitly ableist reasons people give for why sighted actors must be chosen over blind ones.

Let us return to refuting those excuses with the last thing I wanted to address.

5. Some people are concerned that a blind person might get hurt doing martial arts, but so can literally anyone else

[Image description: GIF of Toph dressed in Fire Nation attire. She punches through a rock.]

Kids can get hurt in any kind of sport, yet society doesn’t try to keep children from these activities for their own safety. However, disabled kids—and adults for that matter—are often reminded that we are being kept out of spaces for our own protection. Which we didn’t need, nor ask for.

This need to protect disabled people can be not only infantilizing, but hypocritical as well. For example, a blind person might be discouraged from playing recreational sports in a misguided attempt to protect them. Conversely, structures that keep blind people at risk are allowed to stay firmly in place, such as discrimination around transportation, inaccessible infrastructure, and poverty.

Blind people play sports anyway. Often, these sports carry their own risks of injury, as most sports do. Blind people have the agency to understand this and consent to it. Examples include blind football [link] and goalball [link].

Here is a video of Sadi the Blind Lady discussing goalball with Eliana Mason, a Paralympic athlete who plays goalball professionally.

Transcript: “Goalball is sport for blind and visually impaired athletes. It was created after World War II for blinded veterans and is now a Paralympic sport. The coolest thing about it is that everyone wears eyeshades so no matter what your level of vision loss is—because blindness is a spectrum— it equalizes it. The ball has bells in it and the court is straight with tape over it. It’s on a volleyball sized court. It’s three on three. And basically in offense, we are throwing the ball as hard as we can with a lot of technique involved, about 30 to 45 miles an hour to have it hit the ground and roll and hit the other players on their bodies. And on defense, you are throwing your body out and diving in front of this 3 pound ball and blocking it. So essentially you want to get hit with the ball.”

End transcript.

Getting hit with a ball, especially in the face or stomach area, is going to hurt. That is okay, because as long as safety precautions are taken, pain might be part of the experience depending on the rules and anticipated possibility of injury.

Martial arts and dance, which are backgrounds sought specifically in the Netflix Toph casting call, can also lead to accepted forms of pain or discomfort. While one could argue that sports injuries could and should be preventable, this post is more concerned with the expectation of pain, injuries, and what steps are taken to prevent them, such as protective gear or an experienced coach / teacher.

A blind person auditioning for Toph knows that martial arts will be involved. She will spend time learning choreography, building trust with co-actors, and figuring out works best for her. This structure is similar for blind people playing football or goalball or tennis or fencing or whatever else they want to do.

Lastly, people who aren’t blind also experience pain or injury during sports. Same with martial arts or dance.

The actress who plays Toph might get hurt. She might not. Some pain might even be an expected part of training. That is no reason to exclude a blind person from participating. That is no reason to say Toph couldn’t be played by a blind actress. [Bolded for emphasis]

Lastly, anyone training actors on fight choreography already knows how to do so safely. That fact that this is choreography is also helpful, allowing for memorization of actions and reactions. Conversely, the sports and physical activities I listed above are not choreographed, with the exception of dance, and are therefore less predictable. Therefore, if blind people can get head injuries playing on a recreational blind football team, a blind actress can handle fight choreography.

Closing

Thank you for reading all of this. My points still stand whether or not a blind person is actually cast for Toph.

Too Long, Didn’t Read:

Unchecked ableism can lead to oppression even if it is unintentional

Blind actors exist

A blind actor would better capture Toph’s ease and confidence with her blindness

Blind people can do a lot more than sighted people usually think they can

Blind people also face discrimination and limitations that sighted people may not have considered

Blindness is a spectrum and most blind people can still see something

There is no one way to look or move like a blind person

Accommodations are not that difficult to provide

Hiring a blind person would actually cost less money

Most of the popular reasons people believe Toph cannot be played by a blind actress are rooted in ableism

This post is not only about Toph or actors, but an example of how unchecked ableism can be harmful

For example, low employment rates for blind people, inaccessible online resources, or Toph-related posts shared without image descriptions

Toph Beifong could totally be played by a blind actress

[punkshort]

Home

Pairing: (Hallmark) Joel Miller x f!reader

Summary: You finally move in with Joel and Sarah.

Warnings: language, fluff (the cheesy hallmark kind), established relationship, reader has a previously explained nickname, smut (18+ MDNI), oral (f!receiving), unprotected piv sex

WC: 4.8K

Series Masterlist

Dividers by the lovely @saradika-graphics

Joel was nervous. He never really got nervous, but that particular day, he was nervous.

Sure, it was a big step in your relationship. Or maybe it was because months ago when he asked your father's permission to marry you, he promised he would wait until you moved in together.

And now, that day had arrived.

Where did the time go? He swore it just flew right on by, time that was filled with memories of dinners, parties, dates and holidays together. He hadn't planned what he would say and he felt woefully unprepared. He hadn't even talked to Sarah about it yet.

Just because today is the day you're moving in doesn't mean today is the day I need to ask, he thought to himself. Still, it was a big step. A big, symbolic gesture on both your ends. One that screamed, I'm in this for the long haul.

"Mornin', babygirl," Joel said sleepily as he entered the kitchen, Sarah already sitting at the table in front of an empty bowl and scrolling quietly on her phone.

"Hey," she responded distractedly. He poured himself a cup of coffee and looked around the room. It would be the last morning in his kitchen that didn't include you, and the thought made warmth bloom in his chest and excitement flicker under his skin.

"Big day," he said, but Sarah only nodded. "Y'know, been meanin' to talk to you 'bout somethin'."

She pulled her gaze up from her phone and cocked her head to the side. "Yeah?"

He nodded and took a deep breath before sitting across the table from her. He told her it was about you and she sat back in her chair.

"Bucky?"

He nodded, the silly nickname coming from his daughter's lips that only previously came from your immediate family making him smile.

"You know I'm cool with her moving in, we talked about it months ago. I think it's great. She's amazing and we have so much fun-"

"It's not that," he said, cutting her off before he lost his nerve. "One day - and I ain't sayin' today - but one day, I wanna ask her to marry me."

Sarah just continued to stare blankly at him, so he continued.

"I love her so much, babygirl. She means so much to me, 'n so does her family. I can't imagine my life, our life, without her."

"Yeah, duh," she replied, giving him an incredulous look. "Obviously if she's moving in I figured that would be the next step."

He frowned. "You did?"

"Dad," she whined, rolling her eyes. "I'm seventeen now. Soon, I'll be in college. I want you to be happy. I don't want to worry about you being sad and alone when I'm gone."

"Gee, thanks," he scoffed over his mug, and she giggled.

"What I'm saying is, I think it's great. Go for it. She'll totally say yes."

He scratched the back of his neck nervously. "Yeah?"

Sarah gave him a deadpan look. "Yes, Dad. She's moving in with you. She's not expecting friendship bracelets."

He smirked and looked down at his coffee. One thing was checked off the list, now he had to think about when and how he would ask you.

It was a long day.

You hadn't even lived in Texas for a full year yet but you managed to accumulate a lot more shit than you thought. Fortunately, between Joel, Tommy, your dad and Josh, your brother in law, all the furniture was quickly unloaded. The time consuming part was working out the angles in hallways and stairs. Since Joel and Sarah already had more than enough furniture, the two of you decided to put your old couch and television in the basement, an idea which Sarah excitedly jumped on board with.

You could hear the men grunting and talking through different ideas on how to get your couch into the basement all the way from Joel's - your - bedroom upstairs with Sarah.

"I am obsessed with this purse," Sarah sighed, tossing a red leather Michael Kors tote over her shoulder. Prior to living in Texas, you lived in New York City and had created quite the collection of designer clothes and accessories thanks mostly to your ex-fiancé. Since moving, you found very little use for most of it and your style evolved to one that was much more relaxed and comfortable. More you.

"Keep it," you told her as you opened up a box of your bathroom things. She gawked at you while you began to drag the box towards the bathroom, already smiling to yourself as you thought about Joel seeing all the girly face masks and perfumes cluttering his once rather masculine space.

"Are you serious?"

You glanced up at her and shrugged. "Sure. I haven't used it in a year and I have plenty more. It's all yours."

"Oh, my god," she murmured, holding the bag close to her chest. "Thank you!"

You grinned and pulled out bottles of shampoo and conditioner. "Don't mention it."

There was a loud thud that came from the basement and you both froze, waiting to hear panicked calls for help, but after a moment laughter erupted amongst the men and you both exchanged looks of relief.

"I bet Dad that Uncle Tommy would be the one to hurt himself," she told you, crouching to help unpack more of your toiletries.

You laughed and shook your head. "You're probably right."

Glancing at the time, you stood up and weaved your way through the boxes littering the floor to grab your wallet laying on the bed.

"Would you mind calling in a couple pizzas for delivery?" you asked Sarah, handing her your credit card. She nodded and patted down her pants.

"Shoot. I think I left my phone in my room," she said as she headed towards the door. "Ronny's Pizza, right?"

"Yeah, that's good," you called after her before stubbing your toe on a half empty cardboard box. "Shit," you muttered angrily, then squat down to scoop up what was left in the box and get it out of your way.

Wrestling with an armful of socks and bras, you carefully made your way to the dresser and yanked open a drawer. You mistakenly had opened Joel's underwear drawer instead of the one he had emptied for you, but right as you were about to close it, something caught your eye. Was that...? Slowly, you reached forward and nudged a pair of boxers out of the way so you could get a better look.

Your eyes went wide and your heart jumped into your throat when you saw the small, black velvet box nestled between his things. The fingers holding up the pair of underwear began to shake and you nervously swallowed the lump in your throat.

Maybe it was a class ring.

Maybe it was a piece of his mom's jewelry he saved for Sarah.

Or maybe it was a fucking engagement ring.

You heard creaking on the stairs and you quickly dropped the boxers back over the box and slammed the drawer shut. By the time Joel entered the room, you had successfully found your drawer and were halfway done putting your clothes away.

"Hey, darlin'," he murmured, sidling up behind you. He buried his nose in your shoulder and slowly circled his arms around your waist.

"Hey, yourself," you replied, hoping your voice sounded normal and he couldn't feel your heart slamming in your chest. Already got the ring he had said to you drunkenly the night before your sister gave birth. "How are things going down there?" you asked, trying to refocus and get your mind off what you just saw.

Joel breathed in deep and began to sway you both back and forth. "Good. Everythin's all set. Got a nice man cave set up now."

You giggled and closed your drawer before turning around in his arms. "Man cave, huh?"

"That's right," he said softly with a grin. "Gonna be great in 'nother month when football season starts."

"I don't know, I think Sarah was already making plans to have her girlfriends over down there. Might cramp your man cave style," you told him, arms draping loosely around his neck.

"'S'alright, I just give her a hundred bucks and let her borrow the car and then it's all mine," he murmured, pressing a soft kiss against your throat. "Be nice to have some privacy down there, too," he added, tilting his head in the other direction so he could give the other side of your neck the same attention.

"Yeah? Privacy for what?" you teased, chin lifting up to give him better access. You felt him chuckle against your skin.

"For anythin' we want," he replied, tearing his mouth away from your shoulder so he could brush his lips gently over yours.

"Mmm, like board games?" you asked, giggling when his lips froze and his face pulled away, giving you a look of disbelief.

"Is that what we're callin' it?"

You nodded and stretched onto your tiptoes so you could kiss him again.

"Okay, the pizza'll be here - oh. Gross," Sarah said when she appeared in the doorway. You pulled away and grinned while Joel looked over his shoulder with a frown.

"Gross?" he repeated, voice laced with disgust. "Seein' me happy is gross?"

Sarah rolled her eyes as she navigated the minefield of boxes in the room to hand you back your credit card. "Is this what it's gonna be like now? You guys sucking face in every room?"

"Hate to tell you, kiddo, but it's always been that way," you told her as you dropped your arms from around Joel's neck to take your card back.

"Pizza?" he questioned excitedly as if he just processed what Sarah said, and you nodded.

"Figured you guys would be hungry."

Joel groaned in delight and wrapped his arms around you once again, making you laugh.

"Alright, gimme a second to leave at least," Sarah said, turning towards the door as quickly as possible, but not before you caught the smile on her face.

"Hey, can I give you a hand?" Tommy asked as he entered your kitchen. You could hear Josh, your father, Sarah and Joel laughing in the living room with the television on in the background.

"Oh, Tommy, that's so sweet but I got it. You've done so much already today, thank you for your help," you said with a smile as you continued to clean up the pizza. Tommy leaned against the counter and watched you move around his brother's kitchen like you had been there your whole life, and he couldn't help but smile.

"You look right at home already," he told you, making your cheeks warm. You pulled out some foil and shrugged.

"I've stayed over a couple times, what can I say?"

He chuckled and continued to watch you work quietly for a moment.

"Say, what'dya think 'bout you and Joel goin' on a double date with me and Maria?"

"Oh, I would love that!" you exclaimed, meeting his gaze briefly as you moved towards the fridge. "Must be getting serious if you're ready to introduce her to family, huh?"

"Yeah, I think so," Tommy said, shyly looking down at the tile floor. "She's so pretty. Smart, too. And funny. We have such a great time together. I'll tell you, I ain't ever remember feelin' this way 'bout a girl before."

Your jaw hung open in shock after you turned away from the closed fridge. "Tommy! This is... amazing!"

He scratched the back of his neck and grinned. "Yeah, it is," he agreed warmly.

"He botherin' you, baby?" Joel asked as he strolled into the kitchen with a beer in his hand. He shot you a wink right after Tommy gave him the finger.

"I was just telling Tommy we should go on a double date with him and Maria," you said, leaning into the hug he gave you. Tommy gave you a thumbs up behind Joel's back and you smiled over his shoulder, knowing intuitively that his brother would tease him mercilessly if he knew Tommy was the one with the idea instead of you.

"Oh, yeah?" Joel asked, pulling back to look at Tommy. He nodded.

"Yeah, sounds like fun. Maybe grab some drinks down at Mike's. Play some pool."

"Alright. Set it up, can't wait to meet her," Joel told him before squeezing past you to get another beer from the refrigerator.

The men spent another hour or so relaxing in the living room while you and Sarah did the best you could to clear up the remaining boxes in your bedroom. You did rather well, too. By the time everyone was ready to say good night, you only had two boxes left, both of which you stacked and shoved into a corner to deal with the next day.

You were looking forward to collapsing into bed after a long, eventful day when Sarah asked if she could go to the movies with a few of her friends.

"Please, Dad? School starts up in a couple weeks," she begged, and Joel didn't have the heart to tell her she didn't need to bother to beg. He handed her some money from his wallet and she rushed up to her bedroom to get ready, announcing her friend Katy would pick her up in twenty minutes.

"Strange how Katy knew to pick her up before I said it was alright," Joel told you with a fake look of confusion. You laughed and plopped next to him on the couch, resting your head on his shoulder while he flipped through the channels on the television.

You wrapped your hand around his bicep and snuggled in closer as he wavered back and forth between two different action movies. When you really thought about it, it was funny. Your life was so different just a year ago. You were engaged to someone else, living in New York City, wearing expensive clothes and dining at restaurants you didn't really care for but your fiancé did, so you pretended to like them, too. Now you were living a completely different life. One of comfort and love and joy and you had never felt happier.

As if he could read your mind, Joel lifted his arm and tugged you closer by the shoulders, then planted a kiss on the top of your head, further emphasizing how perfect your life seemed now.

"I'm coming downstairs now! Stop making out!" Sarah warned as she stomped down the steps. You stifled your laughter and Joel shot her a scowl.

"We're just watchin' TV."

"And I'm just covering my bases," she said with a grin, holding her hands up in surrender. A faint beep came from the road and she grabbed the purse you had given her earlier that day and said, "don't wait up!" over her shoulder before the door clicked shut.

"Don't wait up?" Joel repeated with a snort. "She's seventeen goin' on thirty."

You giggled and gazed up at him from your place against his side. "You wanna play some board games?"

He looked confused for a moment before the realization dawned on him.

"Hell, yes."

The basement looked nicer than you expected. It wasn't completely finished but there was an area Joel had built a wall around and painted years ago. He had installed a drop ceiling and some laminate flooring but he never got around to actually doing much else with it until you moved in and had extra furniture. An area rug from your old apartment was in the center of the room, your old couch resting on top and your television was placed on your entertainment center across from the sofa. You had some floor lamps and end tables you could arrange in the space later on but for now, it was nice.

But all that didn't really matter that particular day. Not when your shorts dangled around one ankle, which was slung over the back of the couch, your legs spread wide as Joel kneeled on the area rug, his fingers gripping your hips as his tongue feverishly lapped at your pussy.

"Fuck, Joel... I'm close," you whined, hand clawing at his hair, your hips grinding shamelessly against his face. He just groaned, eyes fluttering closed as he drank you in, your scent engulfing him, absolutely loving the way you fell apart under his tongue.

"Joel," you gasped, mouth hung open as your gaze fixed on the top of his head. "Joel, d-do t-that thing-" you moaned loudly, cutting yourself off when he repeatedly grazed his teeth over your clit while working two fingers into your cunt, curling them so they pressed against that one spot he knew drove you crazy each time he dragged them in and out.

A moment later, your body went rigid and tears sprung to your eyes as you came, ragged groans melting into quiet little whimpers until he finally pulled away from the center of your thighs. His eyes were dark and wild as he panted for air, watching you with a cocky smirk as you struggled to come to your senses.

"Gonna let me fuck you now, baby?" he murmured, his pants already pushed halfway down his legs. You nodded in a daze, thighs trembling still when he stepped out of his jeans and kneeled onto the couch. He hovered over you, pressing his thick length against your pussy while he bent forward to bite and suck at your throat.

You gasped sharply and grabbed his shoulders when he first entered you. The initial stretch always took your breath away, regardless if he made you come first or not. You came to crave that feeling, those first few seconds of intrusion that made your mind go blank and your heart stutter before your body made room for him and relaxed. And because you knew he loved to hear it, your mouth found his ear and you whimpered, "so big," and you smiled when you heard his responding growl.

A few days before you moved in with Joel, you laid awake at night in your apartment, thinking back to your relationship before him. When you moved in with Will, it seemed like something shifted almost immediately, and not in a good way. The spark fizzled out as you adjusted to living with one another, putting up with each other's quirks and bad habits. Logically, you knew that spark was dying before you moved in together but at the time, you didn't want to admit it. But anxiety still crept up and you wondered if the same thing would happen with Joel.

What a stupid thing to worry about.

What you had with Joel was so different, it was hard to describe. But it was a feeling, something deep inside that couldn't be denied. This was special. This was unlike anything you ever experienced before and it was foolish to try to compare it to anything else.

As if you needed further proof, Joel sensed your mind had drifted elsewhere and he nipped at your lower lip to draw your attention back to him.

"What's wrong?" he whispered when you met his gaze. His hips had slowed down, worried you were uncomfortable and didn't want to say it. You slowly smiled and draped your arms around his neck, looking up at him with such love and adoration that he couldn't stop himself from smiling in return.

"Nothing's wrong. Everything's perfect," you told him. You tugged him down so you could give him a kiss, then mumbled, "you're perfect," against his mouth.

Joel flushed and shook his head gently, resuming his steady pace. Sometimes he had a hard time believing you were real. He spent a good chunk of his adult life thinking he would never find true love and after a few years of loneliness, he grew to accept that. He threw himself into his work and focused on raising Sarah but when he met you, it was like everything changed. He couldn't stop thinking about you to the point where he would have been content with just getting to know you better, but the moment he first felt your lips against his, he knew he didn't stand a chance. But when he first made love to you, it was all over. He knew within seconds he could never let you go, and he never did.

"You're the one who's perfect. God, so fuckin' tight," he groaned, flexing his hips with a little more force. You rewarded him with a sweet little moan and tipped your head back into the couch. "That feel good, baby?" he breathed, watching with pride as you writhed underneath him.

"Yeah," you whispered before sinking your teeth into your lower lip, skin already red and sensitive from where his own teeth had laid claim. "Again. Harder, Joel," you pleaded, and his eyelids fluttered as he tried to slow down his own orgasm that was already growing all too quickly.

He gave you what you wanted, hips snapping into yours roughly. Your whole body rocked beneath him, breasts bouncing free under your thin T-shirt, jaw slack and back arched so beautifully he had to look away before he came too soon.

"Oh, fuck, Joel," you whined, face pinching as he forced another orgasm to the surface with each powerful thrust.

"You like that?" he murmured, his dark eyes raking over your body greedily. "Tell me, baby. C'mon, wanna hear it."

"Yes," you whimpered, eyes still screwed shut, "feel so fucking good, Joel, fuck... so... so deep, I want more." You took in a deep breath, your release so close you could taste it. "More... don't stop, please... I-I need..." you were rambling now, unable to form a full sentence, barely aware you were saying anything at all and fuck, did he love being the one to make you do that. Make you lose control and give in, putting all your faith and trust in him to give you what you want. To make you feel good.

"I know what you need," he said through gritted teeth, then grabbed ahold of your hip and ground himself roughly against your cunt. Your eyes flew open and he smiled when you cried out, clenching around him after only two or three passes over your clit.

You were whispering his name mixed with something else incoherent as you came down and he couldn't hold himself back any longer. He slammed into you over and over, eyes fixed on the way your pussy strained around his girth, his cock all shiny and slick with your arousal and he came with a loud groan, thrusting into you deep and slow until he was spent.

His arms began to tremble so he slowly lowered himself down to rest the side of his head against your chest and instantly, your hands came up to card through his hair. He sighed and closed his eyes, soaking in your gentle touch as his heart began to slow.

"Do you think it will always be like this?" you asked softly, fingers still threading through his curls.

"Yeah, I do," Joel replied, eyes still shut as he nuzzled into your chest.

"Good. Me, too."

Maria was fun.

You knew immediately you would get along. Her sense of humor and her carefree attitude completely contradicted her profession as a newly appointed Assistant District Attorney, and you absolutely loved how full of surprises she was, especially how good she was at pool.

"Y'know, we just let you girls win," Joel teased when he put his pool cue down.

"Oh, yeah? Is that why I heard you and Tommy talking strategy on my way back from the bathroom?" you shot back. He grinned and tugged you into his chest, kissing the crown of your head before releasing you.

"C'mon, Tommy. Losers buy the next round," he said, giving his younger brother a playful shove. Tommy squeezed Maria's hand and gave her a warm smile before following Joel to the bar, leaving just you two to find an empty table. Maria spotted one right when a group of four were standing up to leave and she grabbed your arm, practically dragging you across the crowded floor to snag it before someone else did.

"Good eye!" you told her when you slid into the booth, the green, plastic cushion underneath you essentially useless after years of being flattened and never replaced. The table was sticky from spilled beer and droplets of hot sauce, so you each got to work yanking handfuls of napkins out of the dispenser at the end of the table and squirting hand sanitizer over the tabletop to clean the area as best you could.

"I don't think Tommy told me how long you two've been together," Maria said, her eyes lifting to search the bar for your dates.

"Uh, eight months or so," you told her, "we met right before Christmas."

She raised her eyebrows and smiled. "I would have guessed much longer. It feels like you know each other so well."

You could feel your cheeks warm from the compliment. It was clear to you what you had with Joel was special but it was always nice to hear others could see it, too.

"What about you and Tommy? He's been keeping you a secret but I want to guess... two months?"

"Three, actually," she corrected you. "We both agreed to take things slow. I had just gotten this job and I knew I would be putting in long hours, I wasn't really sure if I had the time to devote to a relationship but he stuck it out. I really thought he was going to bail when I kept having to call it early so many nights and cancel dates last minute but he's a trooper."

You leaned across the table and wiggled your eyebrows at her. "That's 'cause he really likes you."

She giggled and waved you off but you could see the delight in her eyes.

"I'm serious! I've only known him for as long as I've known Joel but from what I was told, Tommy didn't bring girls around often. Especially lately. You must be special," you teased, making her smile widen.

Unbeknownst to you, across the bar, Tommy and Joel were having a similar conversation.

Now that Tommy had a few beers in him, he was more open to telling his brother about Maria and how happy he was with her.

"I'm tellin' you, Joel, I think she's the one," he was saying, slamming down an empty shot glass next to Joel's on the messy bar top.

"I like her, she keeps you in line," Joel quipped, taking a sip from his beer to chase the shot of whiskey. "Girls are gettin' along real good, too."

Tommy nodded and looked across the bar. "And how's things goin' with you two? She wanna move out yet?"

Joel laughed and shook his head. "Nah, it's only been two weeks. It'll probably take at least a month 'fore she realizes she made a mistake," he joked.

Tommy chuckled but caught the fond look in Joel's eye when he thought about you.

"So, you think this is it for us?" he asked, and Joel glanced up from his beer. "We finally found the ones?"

The corner of his mouth pulled up into a smirk and he nodded.

"Hope so." Then maybe he was feeling a little braver, or maybe it was the alcohol, but he added, "got the ring already, be a little tough tryin' to take it back."

Tommy's eyes bugged out of his head. "You - what?"

Joel sucked in a deep breath and nodded. "Yep. Had it for a while now. Asked Paul 'n everythin'."

Tommy's mouth opened and closed like a fish, completely stunned.

"And Sarah?"

He nodded and took a nervous sip from his bottle. "Talked to her, too. She's thrilled."

Tommy broke out into a huge grin and tugged Joel into a quick hug before pulling away and giving him a playful shoulder shove. "So when are you gonna do it?"

Joel sighed and looked around. "I don't know. When it feels right, I suppose."

"Shit," Tommy replied, rubbing his chin. "Gonna be a hell of a year."

Joel nodded and looked down at your drinks sitting on the bar. "We oughta go find the girls."

"Yeah," Tommy agreed, shaking his head like he was snapping out of a trance. He reached for Maria's drink while Joel grabbed yours but before they began to weave their way through the bar, Tommy stopped him.

"Congrats, brother. I'm happy for you."

"She didn't say yes yet," Joel reminded him with a raised eyebrow, but Tommy just shrugged.

"She will."

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[hellsslibrary]

there is literally not a single thought in my head other than wanting to spoil reo or isagi ROTTEN in bed. they’re just so sweet taking care of everyone around them and now it’s their turn to be taken care of. i just need to praise and shower them in love.

The sweetest things in the world deserve the most mind-blowing pleasure and comfort.

MASTERLIST is here.

#a.n. : they really deserve it, right!! Isagi after the last chapters of the manga especially... My poor boys :(

!!Warnings: top!SOFTdom!male!reader, pillow princesses!Reo and Isagi, praise (very much), fingering, anal sex, protected(!) sex, nipples play, Reo has a boobs(idk, I just want to squeeze his pecs), crying, many kisses, pretty wholesome.

Isagi Yoichi.

"Hey? How are you feeling, baby? Is everything okay, hmm?" your voice is gently carried over his ear, to which he can only nod and mumble something unintelligible. "Come on, say something."

Isagi swallows dryly, looking at you with eyes clouded by lust, love, and the sensations of the previous two orgasms, and barely whispers: "Ye-yes, [Your name], just fine... Although... A l-little slower?"

Your thrusts become slower on an almost instinctive level, but they remain just as deep to make sure that you constantly hit the sweet spot that your sweet boy NEEDS.

Until his brain melts, until he forgets all the players on his and someone else's team, until he forgets why he was mad at them... Until the very word football disappears from his brain.

"Great, baby, whatever you say. Anything else?" he just whimpered at your question, trying to get his brain to work for at least five seconds by grabbing the sheets next to his head while he looked at you with teary eyes.

"...Hug?" Yoichi practically hisses, coughing a couple of times, your thrusts immediately slow down, which is why he closes his eyes, opening them only when he feels a drop of water on his lips.

"Drink it, honey, come on," you gently press the neck of the open bottle against his lips and he greedily gulps down the cool liquid until you remove the half-empty bottle from his lips.

You kiss him on the cheek, leaning over his body. Your chest is pressed against his chest, and his arms immediately wrap around your shoulders, squeezing you. You resume your thrusts, lifting his hips slightly to increase the angle of the thrusts.

You can hear him sobbing into your hair, moaning with every thrust, while you kiss his neck and chin, leaving hickeys there from time to time. The way his tears run down your hair. The way his fingers dig into your back, even though your thrusts aren't that hard. The way his cock twitches against your stomach.

You feel every cell. Every dangerously pressed part of his body against your own. Even the way his heart beats, which is exactly like your own rhythm.

"Fuck, so tight... Such a good boy, you take me so well. Do you think you can cum again?"

Isagi hardly hears your words, he just feels with his being that this is something pleasant and his cheeks turn even more red as he tries to figure out if his body can take more.

"Yeah..?"

He mutters, biting his lower lip, not sure if he can. But at least he'll try, for your sake. Although in this situation, you obviously won't be satisfied with such a sacrifice.

"Are you sure? I don't want to overexcite you, honey," your lips touch his lips to stop him from gnawing on his bottom one.

His hips immediately move up, and his hands tangle in your hair as he responds to a slow, almost savoring kiss from your side. The beautiful blue eyes close and a couple more tears flow out of them.

"Yes, yes, I'm sure... Just don't stop, please?" he chirps between kisses, biting your tongue in the process, which makes you pull away, looking at his sweetest face, and then wiping the tears from his eyes.

If he wants something, he'll get it.

Reo Mikage.

"Please, please, m-my love... Please," Reo bubbles, tilting his head back while he sat on your lap.

All you've been doing for the last fifteen minutes is finger him, and your mouth is literally glued to his nipple, as it seemed to Reo. Your hand felt his chest, as if he had tits, as if there was something to knead except muscles, although you didn't really care.

"Relax, I want you to completely relax," you whisper as your tongue runs over his nipple, and with the tip you deliberately press on the hollow in his nipple, forcing him to squeeze your thighs harder.

"I would have relaxed faster if you hadn't been pretending to be a newborn," Reo chuckles softly, biting his lips with the pleasure of your long fingers inside him, moving so smoothly and precisely where he needs them.

You just smile back, moving to the other nipple, which makes Reo moan, arching his back, and one of his hands gets tangled in your hair.

You can feel his hips moving slightly on your lap, trying to make your thrusts with your fingers even deeper, while his mouth opens in quiet, almost inaudible moans and rare praises from his lips to motivate you to continue.

"The main thing is that you feel good. What difference does it make how I behave? You like it," he just smiles at these words, but nods convulsively when your fingers poke exactly the spongy point that he needs.

"That's right... So just keep going, yeah?" Reo exhales, pushing his head back, and then shudders slightly as he feels you lowering him onto the bed, hovering over him in the same position.

His fingers grab your shoulders, trying to hold you in place, on his chest, not that you're going to run away, of course. His hips lazily moved to the beat of your fingers, trying to push them even deeper, although doing nothing to do so.

Your free hand squeezed one of his pecs, massaging that hard but pleasant muscle, stroking the pink, hard bump on it with the tip of your tongue, causing his purple eyes to close, fluttering.

His sweet sounds echoed throughout the room as his body lay flat on the soft pillows, allowing you to do whatever you want for his own pleasure. Reo wanted to cry just from the thought that you were completely focused on his pleasure, even if it didn't look like it considering how hard you were sucking on his chest.

But it warmed him up like hell, and he did... He wanted the same thing.

"Can I do something for you too? I'm embarrassed that you're aroused without any friction," Reo asks, kissing the top of your head, making you finally pull away from his nipple, which makes him sigh softly as the cold hits his wet nipple.

"Stay down, Mr. Mikage. Relax, stop thinking about your humble servant," you smirk, kissing his fingers on your face, and then bending down and kissing him, causing his body to melt instantly.

Although he immediately twitched when he felt a third finger enter him and he hit you on the shoulder, throwing his head back with a loud half moan, half sob.

"Warn me next time..." Reo whispers, frowning, even though she doesn't do anything to stop you.

He just lies there relaxed, letting all thoughts disappear from his pretty little head, watching as your mouth cups his nipple again and just sighs contentedly.

[despazito]

I'm anti captive cetaceans but it is frustrating how well meaning people pressure aquariums stop doing live shows because a lot of those animals really do benefit from those performances as enrichment activities. They're already in tanks and now whatever novel experiences they got to have has been taken away just because it felt "wrong" on some dialectical level.

In general I think the angle of "exploitation" is not a very great approach to argue for better welfare, it's an extremely abstract and subjective measurement. We've come a long way from Barnum and Bailey style animal tamers. The reality is for a lot of intelligent animals in accredited zoos, getting to interact with their keepers and new humans is actually a highlight of their day and not some kind of torture they dread lol.

Idk people have it in their minds that a species probably not best suited for captivity must therefore be spending every waking moment of its life acutely suffering, but I don't think that's a fair assessment unless it's a neglected roadside zoom and it flattens nuance. A lot of the cases it's not so much "is this animal in a torment nexus" and more "can we simulate a good breadth of the species' natural environment and behaviours for them to really thrive" which I think is challenging for many giant, long lived, socially complex species with tight family bonds.

[cxffecoupx]

asking to place lipstick marks on 'it'

seventeen x reader 18+, nsfw, svt down bad warnings: suggestive content, love making wc: 1.0k author's notes: such a CRAZYY thought to have, so i decided to do it :) but i cant believe it took me this long to finish writing this (read: uni is kicking my ass). anyways, wouldn't say i'm very satisfied with it, but i really hope you guys like it!! also, special thanks to @simpxxstan for giving me ideas for a few members

➼ choi seungcheol

very interested in the idea. would get so excited for this. would ask if he can select the shade of lipstick and runs to your dressing table when you agree. but most likely would end up buying a new set of lipsticks because the shade he wants 'is not there' (it's an excuse for him to buy you a new set). by the time you're able to finish your mission, you're over three rounds and he's a sweaty, moaning mess. neither of you sleep that night.

➼ yoon jeonghan

would become so smug when you suggest it?? like full on smirk on his face and just goes, "if you wanted me to fuck you, you could have just said that." but will eventually agree when he sees your boba eyes and gets excited seeing your excitement. will probably squirm and whimper because of the sensations at first, but the sex later on is crazy.

➼ hong jisoo

confused eyes. looks so adorable you end up smushing his face and kissing his lips in fondness. man is actually so clueless at first, but then ever more confused when he realizes what you meant. becomes beet red until you promise him it's just for fun and not necessary until he's okay with it, hearing which he quickly agrees cause if you're gonna have fun, why would he not indulge you? would become so adorably shy when he sees the result. makes you cum with just his fingers and mouth as thank you.

➼ moon junhui

mindblown by your idea. becomes so excited; it's like a child waiting for candy. so endeared by you that he ends up making you smooch all over his face. then he starts kissing all over your face. the lipstick marks meant for his dick end up on your faces, but neither of you could be happier than at this moment. slowly turns into a gentle love making session.

➼ kwon soonyoung

you ask him in a very usual way, but it's only after he accepts that you realize this is a great opportunity to tease him. asks if he can record it (because he's very amused by this idea) and searches for the perfect lighting and angle while you prepare. thinks he's so prepared for it, but starts shaking and pleading the moment you start kitty licking his tip. by the time you're finished, he's panting and wanting for more.

➼ jeon wonwoo

you ask him while he was gaming; he leaves the game so fast you wonder what went wrong. but then he goes and picks up a random shade of lipstick and pulls you in between his knees as he manspreads on his gaming chair. holds your hair as you work on him. hours later, the lipstick and your clothes lie forgotten by the bed.

➼ lee jihoon

wants this whole event to occur in his studio. literally agrees when you offer to come to the studio for it. he'd be acting so nonchalant but you can clearly hear his heart racing in his chest and his ears going red. also likely to voice record the whole thing with your consent to use as 'inspiration' later (will use it to get off during desperate times).

➼ lee seokmin

another one who'd get red. very shy. "woah where do you even get ideas like these?" as he goes wide-eyed and still manspreads on the couch to invite you in. goes weak in his knees when he sees you make eye contact with him as you look up from between his knees wearing a shade he considers sexy. you have to abort the mission because he ends up pushing your face few many times.

➼ kim mingyu

GIGGLY MESS. you don't understand what he's been giggling about ever since you proposed the idea, but you're currently down on your knees in front of his naked body and he just cant stop giggling??? when you ask him about it though, he says he's way too endeared by this whole task and wants you to kiss every inch of his body. so, an hour or so later, you're panting, straddling a happy mingyu who's entire body is covered with lipstick stains. time to make a new folder in your gallery.

➼ xu minghao

lowkey becomes concerned about you. he already suspected you were upto something when you approached him with a cheeky smile, but he never thought it'd be this... wild? almost instantly rejects until he sees you get down and look at him with such hopeful eyes that he cant resist. still finds it weird as you mark him, but gladly indulges you. takes photos of it (without you knowing,,, or so he thinks) because you are the artist, and he ends up liking the art a little too much.

➼ boo seungkwan

lowkey judges you first, before highkey agreeing to it. it's one of the "how dare you make stupid decisions and do them without me" moments. judgmental most of the time: "is that the shade you're choosing? it doesnt look good on my skin tone," "the lip shapes arent perfect, pucker them a little more," etc etc. after lots of advice and nagging, you finally finish the job. you get up with a satisfied smirk as you look at his pretty pink cock and his spent form.

➼ chwe vernon

deeply contemplates it. quickly nods when you say, "it's for the art" and asks for some time. leaves. comes back saying "okay, let's do it." when you ask him where he went, he goes "i had to be clean and ready." waits for you to prep for it, but almost cums then and there when he sees you naked, wearing only his favourite shade of lipstick. by the time you could finish the task, he's lost all his marbles and begs you to ride him. finishes with his cum painting your chest and stomach.

➼ lee chan

turns red as a tomato. one moment you suggest the idea, the next he has to physically pull his head outta the gutter because his thoughts escalated into something else. and no matter how hard he tries to deny that he was indeed having very mature thoughts, the blush creeping to his cheeks screams the truth. asks somewhere in between if he can mark your chest with his lipstick marks, and honestly? who are you to resist? by the end of the night, he's spent and at your mercy and you havent yet completed the task.

[novaursa]

A Flame All Her Own

- Summary: Caraxes always knows how to snatch all your attention for himself. Which leaves Daemon jealous of his own dragon. 

- Pairing: sister!reader/Daemon Targaryen

- Rating: Mature 16+

- Next part: the bold and the beautiful

- Tag(s): @sachaa-ff @alyssa-dayne @oxymakestheworldgoround

The morning air is thick with the salt of the Narrow Sea as you stand by the cliff edge, Caraxes sprawled before you, his great, sinuous body stretched luxuriously along the rocks. His scales glisten, the deep crimson reflecting in the morning sun as his slitted eyes, always watchful, follow your every movement. The dragon’s head rests lazily beside you, large enough that one of his breaths could likely knock you off your feet, yet gentle as he huffs softly, nuzzling your hand as you scratch just beneath his horned jaw.

“You’re spoiling him,” comes Daemon’s voice from behind, laced with a tone that’s both disapproving and… sulking? You smirk without turning around, knowing full well what that look on his face must be: arms crossed, brow slightly furrowed, mouth drawn into that familiar pout that’s often mistaken for mere arrogance but, today, has a hint of jealousy.

“Am I?” you respond, your voice light with feigned innocence as you continue to scratch Caraxes. The dragon rumbles in pleasure, tilting his head like a hound angling for more affection. You can feel Daemon’s eyes drilling into your back, but you don’t let up, laughing softly as Caraxes leans closer, nearly knocking you sideways in his enthusiasm.

“Yes, you are,” Daemon steps closer, his dark cloak billowing slightly as he stands beside you, looking down at his dragon with mild disdain. “He’ll be insufferable now, demanding pets and scratches like some slobbering mutt.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk,” you tease, glancing at Daemon. “You’re as spoiled as Caraxes is.”

Daemon’s eyes narrow at the comparison, though a glimmer of amusement tugs at the corners of his mouth. “Spoiled, am I?”

Caraxes’s head shifts, his large, amber eyes drifting from you to his rider as if sensing Daemon’s displeasure. He rumbles again, a deep sound that vibrates the rock beneath your feet, and Daemon gives his dragon a flat look.

“Not you too, you great overgrown lizard,” Daemon mutters. “I am your rider, remember? Mine, not hers.”

Caraxes blinks slowly, looking almost unimpressed. You swear, for a brief moment, that the dragon’s gaze shifts back to you with what could only be called affection. It’s as if he’s saying, “Oh, but she’s my favorite.” You can’t help but laugh at Daemon’s expression.

“I think he’s simply decided that I give better scratches,” you say, grinning.

Daemon arches a brow, eyes glinting with a mixture of challenge and feigned affront. “Is that so?” He steps closer, nudging you out of the way so he can place a hand on Caraxes’s scales, patting his dragon’s neck with exaggerated enthusiasm. “You like me, don’t you, boy?” he asks, scratching roughly—too roughly, if Caraxes’s sudden flick of his tail and indignant huff are anything to go by.

“See?” you laugh, folding your arms as you watch with a smirk. “Gentleness, Daemon. Perhaps Caraxes prefers a softer touch.”

Daemon looks at you with a pointed glare. “Are you suggesting I’m not gentle?”

“Oh, Daemon, of course not,” you reply, lips twitching as you fight a smile. “You’re a Targaryen knight in shining armor.”

“Knight, indeed,” Daemon snorts, but there’s a glimmer of mirth in his eyes as he takes your bait. He shifts closer, one arm snaking around your waist, pulling you to him with a quick, possessive motion that sends a thrill down your spine. “Tell me, then. Should I be jealous of my own dragon? Or are you so starved for attention that you’ll take affection where you can get it?”

His words are laced with mock offense, but his hand holds you firmly, his thumb brushing against your waist in a way that belies his teasing tone.

“Jealous?” You raise a brow, feigning surprise. “Of Caraxes?”

He leans closer, voice dropping to a murmur. “Perhaps I ought to start breathing fire to gain your favor, then.”

You tilt your head, amused by the thought. “Imagine how well that would go at court,” you muse. “The Rogue Prince, reduced to petty flames for his sister’s affection.”

Daemon chuckles, the sound warm and rumbling, yet his hand on your waist tightens. “I’d reduce more than just my pride to flames if it meant keeping your attention on me.”

Caraxes huffs suddenly, a low rumble that sounds suspiciously like laughter, if a dragon could laugh. He lowers his head to nose at your shoulder, nudging Daemon’s hand away in the process as if to say, “She’s mine, actually.” You burst out laughing, leaning into Caraxes’s scaled cheek, feeling the warmth radiate from his skin.

“Seems like he’s made his choice,” you say with a sly smile, watching Daemon’s face flicker between exasperation and humor.

“Oh, has he?” Daemon drawls, arching a brow as he watches you and Caraxes, clearly unimpressed. “Well, perhaps I should be jealous, then. I might have to fight him for your favor.”

You laugh, raising a hand to smooth over Daemon’s arm. “Poor Daemon,” you tease, your tone laced with affection. “Unseated by your own dragon.”

He rolls his eyes, though the warmth in his gaze softens his expression. “If Caraxes intends to keep you for himself, he should remember who his true rider is.”

Caraxes turns his head slightly, eyeing Daemon with a look that, impossibly, feels smug. You laugh again, patting the dragon’s neck in reassurance. “Don’t worry, Caraxes. There’s room enough for both of you.”

Daemon grunts, slipping an arm around your shoulders, drawing you closer as he casts a sidelong glance at Caraxes. “You’re lucky I tolerate you, you red menace,” he mutters, though the fondness in his voice is unmistakable.

The dragon lets out a huff, almost as if he’s rolling his eyes, and settles his head back down, clearly satisfied with his small victory. And as you lean into Daemon’s side, his arm wrapped securely around you, you catch the slight smile on his lips. For all his talk, the Rogue Prince is more than happy to share your affections—even if it means indulging in a rivalry with his own dragon.

[senseandaccountability]

the narrative that could have been

Having mulled over the game for a couple of days I have realised that the main problem for me is that Veilguard is good based on the premises they ultimately choose, but not based on the set up and promise of what was there before. I know this isn’t a unique take by any means and yes it’s all about the Evanuris and the Veil and Solas. 

Replaying really emphasises how incredibly little the game convinces me of its original main quest - to prevent Solas from doing his ritual. This is a problem as a long-term player because for three games we’ve had build up for a great crescendo tackling the overarching themes of the (restrictions and oppression of) magic, of tears in the Veil, of religious tyranny and oppression based on myths about the Black City and the temptations of flawed humans, we’ve seen and deconstructed the elves quite a bit, we got started on the dwarves and in DAI your Inquisitor can openly ask Solas if it wouldn’t be better if the Veil came down because then spirits wouldn’t be separated from the living and risk becoming demons. Cole, whose function is to reflect the plot, talks endlessly about the old songs wanting to be sung again, about how it hurts to be cut off from part of yourself, how the templars feel it, how the mages feel it, how the elves and the dwarves feel it. The Veil as a prerequisite for life has been deconstructed, the Fade demystified, the gods have mostly fallen. The Veil as an actual wound inflicted on this earth has been presented as a theory and not been convincingly rejected by the narrative. 

The game actually gives no explanation whatsoever as to why the Veil coming down would be worse than what Rook causes in the beginning and what the escaped gods then do to the entire Thedas. The entire south falls to the Blight because Elgar’nan and Ghilan'nain are let loose. The Wardens are more or less wiped out. There’s enormous political turmoil. The game gives us Solas saying “thousands” would die when he brought the Veil down, but that he had a host of spirits there to help. (Yes, I know, his sole function in this game is to Trick and Deceive so who is to say if he’s lying, HUH, but even so, THE ENTIRE SOUTH FALLS TO THE BLIGHT IN ROOK’S VERSION OF THINGS.)

The game puts emphasis on Solas's questionable methods and past horrors but it doesn't ever explain why his goals are despicable here and now. It doesn't convince us that tearing down the Veil with lots of safety measures in place and after considerations is a bad result, all things considered - save for Varric’s initial yelling about demons. (We even learned in DAI that the Veil itself creates demons because it restricts the passage of spirits, come on.) Because three games have suggested it's not, not ultimately. Trespasser especially nuances this, just as it nuances Solas’s view of this current world state. Right after his long nap he would have nuked it all, I’m sure, but the whole point of character arcs is that things happen in them and what happened to him is that he was shown layers and angles he had not considered and adjusted his mindset and ultimately his plan accordingly. That is where DAV should have picked it up. That's where the build up was headed. But, now he must serve the narrative solely as the God of Treachery and Lies which means that previous build up is washed away for the most part. (In no way do I think he is OOC in DAV, I just want to point that out so nobody thinks I’m a sappy fangirl or whatever. I think he is perfectly in tune with his inner Dread Wolf, but that is also all he gets to be, because of the narrative, and I’m always much more interested in when roles and personas clash.) Again. The main problem is that the narrative cannot explain why bringing down the Veil would be the worse option than the shit we see unfold on screen. Instead it gets a bit lost in the past.  And I have Issues with that, as well.  Like, the dumbing down of the war against the Evanuris. The war that started because the leaders of the rebellion - who previously had to carry out terrible orders so the Evanuris, the upper crust of the Elvhenan, could play gods - decided that the Evanuris was a threat to them all. And the game gives us what, a depiction of how the rebellion ended up crossing lines, too? No shit.

Like, I am fully on board with the individual theme of regret on Solas’s part and he ought to be wrecked with guilt but I wish the game could be less all over the place with what sort of things he ought to be wrecked with guilt over. Saying fuck you to the Evanuris is the best and brightest of his character, I suppose I just don't want it dragged down to the same level as him breaking the Titans. I suppose I would have wished for a narrative that also worked on a systemic level when depicting things like, you know, war and revolutions and subjugation. But we don't have that, because DAV is only about personal choices. The Lighthouse crew flippantly writing the hierarchical and violent power struggle off as being about love and betrayal is on my shitlist forever. 

No, Taash et al, it was not about pussy, it was about feeling compelled by superiors to commit heinous war crimes and being lied to about the actual purposes of your damn war in the first place. The elves shouting at Elgar’nan and Mythal in this painting aren’t driven by love and sex they have been lied to by their ruling class. It was never about freedom or ending the wars, it was always about Elgar’nan jerking off to ultimate godhood. The writing even suggests betrayal here is to be understood as Netflix drama betrayal, maybe some juicy porny plot but it’s ABOUT THE BETRAYAL OF THE ELVES BY THEIR OWN KIN.  ((ETA: I would have wanted my Dalish mage to be allowed to be furious, NOT WITH SOLAS, but with the fucking Evanuris for betraying her people and being so fucking vile that the only option that remained was to create a world where she's a second-class citizen. I would have wanted the game to recognize that not all causes are equal and that Elgar'nan's cause for godhood was objectively more vile than Solas's cause for freedom because as it stands now, there are some really iffy vibes of "both sides are equally bad" and other things authorities tend to say when comparing destructive regimes with uprisings.)) I’m sorry, this shit hits me on a personal and political rage level. 

I also can’t help but mourn a game where the Trickster God fulfilled his trope’s duty and shook the stagnation apart with his actions - for good or ill, the way trickster gods are wont to do - and where Rook was tricked into helping and then, a more complex game about its consequences could have unfolded. The Evanuris could still have been the bad guys, if they wanted big villains frothing at the mouth. There could still have been numerous unplanned consequences, like all of Solas's plans have. Maybe other ancients awake as well. Maybe ancient evils who aren’t elves, who knows. Point is - the Veil should have come down, at least in some form, at least in some outcome. THAT is what they've been building up to. In this game that never was, Rook could be an actual interesting character where we could mold her as either accepting of this trickster role (which fits perfectly for a blank slate with no ties) or set to overturn it and enforce status quo, with some vanilla option in the middle. Maybe the Veil doesn’t come down until the very end of the game, ancient magic takes time after all, maybe a lot has happened by then. But ultimately, Rook’s choice in the end should not have been about siding against Solas because he’s lying to you or because he did horrible things in the past or siding with him because you want him redeemed. The narrative should have provided those options either way. The narrative should have been brave enough to suggest that hey, maybe Solas isn't wrong at all - his methods maybe, but his goal, no. If they truly wanted mirrors between Rook and Solas, Rook should have tackled the issue of actively bringing down the Veil herself, not because it's a roses and sunshine-outcome but because it might very well be the lesser of two evils. Gods, that would have been interesting. It should have been a choice about what sort of world Rook and the Veilguard wants to see in the future. It should have been about the people, the world, not how angry Rook is that an ancient elf has tricked her. 

That would have been the game I wanted to play.  This story doesn't really give anything new to the world of Thedas, which a world without the Veil would have. It accomplishes closure for our favourite trickster god and bless them for that, but as for the plot and the world-building it ends on a meh because the narrative isn't about the people unless they're brought up as being endangered. This is why I can feel satisfaction regarding the thematic conclusion to certain character arcs, the trickster becomes the healer with the bloodiest hands, the wolf submits willingly to his trap and so on and so forth, and I can have fun with the characters and their arcs but also really mourn the game that was there, in subtext and build up over three previous games and in several tie-ins.

[stevieschrodinger]

Part One Part Six

Steve wakes with a start, yelping and then immediately panicking when the bed covers feel constricting – it passes almost immediately when he realizes where he is and what woke him.

“Hi Eddie,” Steve sighs, blinking the rest of the way awake. He rubs at his crusty eyes, the bedside clock glowing three forty seven at him. Great. “What’s up buddy?”

“Stee,” Eddie says quietly, like he somehow understands the sanctity of the middle of the night, “ow. Dead later,” and then he makes a noise like a fly buzzing. Or a bee. It’s a fair attempt at a gentle ‘bzzzz’ing noise.

Steve sighs, “okay buddy lets go.”

Eddie turns at the top of the stairs and goes down them on his butt, which Steve’s pretty sure he would find amusing if he wasn’t half asleep and half annoyed.

The ground outside is cold enough that Steve hisses when his bare foot hits it, and he does a silly hopping jog to follow Eddie onto the lawn. It is a bee, and it’s moving sluggish and confused on the grass. The weathers getting colder, the time of year plus...probably it’s old?

Steve knows fuck all about bees, but he’s pretty sure individual bees don’t live for that long, and that maybe they sort of hibernate in the winter? Or something? Isn’t that what all of that honey is for?

Maybe they could bring it into the warm and give it some sugar water or something, Steve’s pretty sure he’s heard that from someone, somewhere along the line, “okay little bee guy, here we go.” Steve uses a finger to encourage the fuzzy bee onto his hand.

Steve stands; there’s very faint, and probably first of the year, patches of frost on Eddie’s tent. It hasn’t formed anywhere else, so it’s probably not that bad yet, but still, it’s chilly enough that Steve hops back across the lawn with some urgency.

In the kitchen, Steve says, “here Eddie, you take him,” and transfers the bee into Eddie’s cupped hands. He mixes a tiny mount of sugar water in the bottom of a glass, with no idea at all if it’ll help or not. The bee should probably be asleep, right? Steve can’t remember ever seeing a bee at night, so he assumes they go to bed like sensible bees.

Steve drops a tiny bit of the sugary mixture onto Eddie’s palm, right in front of the bee’s face; he drinks it, so Steve does it again. “Okay, I think we should all try and get some sleep. Eddie, you want to sleep on the couch?”

“Sleep on the couch.”

“Yeah,” Steve rubs his arms, making ‘brrrr’ing noises and generally pretending he’s in arctic conditions. He points to the door, “cold outside. Warm here.”

Eddie cocks his head, but seems to get it, so Steve takes the bee, setting it dead center on a couch cushion, and goes back to bed.

Steve wakes again at a much more normal time; blinking at the nine thirty now on his clock and thinking that is way, way better. He wonders vaguely if the bee lived, but he doubts it. Eddie will probably be sad about it; like the bird.

If that was even sadness; if Eddie even understands the concept of death. Steve has no way to know what Eddie thinks about it.

He heads downstairs; vaguely planning his day. He needs a coffee and some breakfast, then get ready; they probably need some groceries. Working opposite shifts to Robin really sucks; he hasn’t seen her once yet this week. They talk on the phone though, and she swears she's working on Keith. He should check when he goes in later for a day they both have off so they can hang out; if such a thing even exists.

Maybe the kids will come over for a movie night; Steve does now have unfettered access to all the newest releases...and is it sad that Steve’s lonely enough that he wants to invite over that bunch of mongrels? Maybe, he’s not going to think to much about it.

Steve sets the coffee going then heads into the lounge; Eddie’s curled up into a tight ball, his spine bent at a really fucking weird angle and his tail wrapped around himself; Steve knows then that he’s never seen Eddie sleep before, because he’s definitely never seen whatever the hell is happening here. It’s like a cat. Or a snake, maybe. The way he’s all curled up tight on himself; makes Steve’s back hurt just looking at him.

At the other end of the couch is the sad, still, little body of the bee. Steve stares at it, listening to the faint noise from the kitchen; the coffee pot gurgles a little.

Eddie blinks awake, unwrapping himself.

“Morning Eddie.”

“Morning Stee,” Eddie blinks sadly at the bee, and then, very gently, leans over and nudges it with a claw tip, “dead?”

“Yeah buddy, I’m sorry. But at least he was comfortable, right? Warm and...sugared up.”

Eddie hums noncommittally, watching as Steve scoops up the bee and following him into the kitchen. Steve very nearly puts the bee in the trash can, but veers off at the last moment. It feels a little wrong, throwing the little dude out; he also doesn’t know what Eddie would thinks and feels vaguely like Eddie might...judge him.

Steve heads outside and deposits him in a plant pot instead. When he comes back in, Eddie’s raiding the fridge, “pear inied. Grapes inied. Celery inied.”

Steve sighs, “I know buddy, I’m sorry. I’ll go and get more, okay?” Steve goes out to the freezer in the garage and comes back with a whole bag of frozen peas, and that seems to completely make up for it. He pours Eddie a bowl of peas, and himself a bowl of cereal, sticking a spoon in both. He downs the coffee so he doesn’t have to make two trips.

“Couch, TV?”

Eddie nods, following Steve. Eddie turns on the TV since Steve’s hands are full, and they sit side by side on the couch, Eddie very carefully using his spoon.

“Called?”

“It’s a toothbrush.”

Eddie watches from his seat on the floor next to Steve; he’s high enough to easily lean his elbows on the counter top.

“Why?”

And ‘called?’ Steve can handle all day long, but ‘why?’ has rapidly become a tricky thing to navigate.

“To clean.” Steve grins big as he can, clicking his teeth together, “teeth.”

“Teeth,” Eddie snaps back, then turns to the mirror, clicking his teeth at himself. “Eddidie clean teeth?”

Steve snorts a laugh, and Eddie looks at him, tilting his head but smiling too. Steve figures that a solid ninety five percent of the time, Eddie’s just happy to be involved.

“Okay buddy I think I have…” Steve rummages in the cupboard under the sink, “ah ha!”

“Ah ha!”

“Here you go,” Steve unwraps the new toothbrush, really, really fucking glad it’s a different color to his own. “Steve’s is blue, Eddie’s is purple.”

“Purple.”

“You got it buddy,” Steve wets the bristles of both, and then puts the tiniest little dab of toothpaste on Eddie’s before putting the proper amount on his own.

“Here you go.” Steve hands it over, and then Starts brushing his teeth. Eddie holds his own brush, watching Steve closely in the mirror before attempting it himself. His movements are slow and cautious, be he definitely gets the idea.

Steve rinses his brush under the water, leaving it running as Eddie does the same. Eddie has no trouble dropping his toothbrush into the cup next to Steve’s.

Eddie explores the bath next; all this shit must have been here when Eddie spent a night in the tub, but Steve was beaten to hell and still a little fucking high on Russian truth serum when all that was going on, so he honestly doesn’t really remember much of those first couple of days. “Called?”

“Shampoo. It’s to clean hair,” Steve tugs on his hair to demonstrate, “hair.”

“Eddidie clean hair?”

“Uh. I mean, if you want to?”

Eddie gets the cap open, squeezing the bottle carefully and sniffing the hole, “good.”

Steve’s current shampoo smells like apples, and Steve realizes what’s going to happen just as it’s too late to stop Eddie from sticking his tongue out.

Eddie smacks his lips together, looking truly disgusted, “fucking gross.”

“Hey! Language!” Steve takes the bottle from a grinning Eddie. He looks so pleased with himself Steve can’t stay mad, “damn kids,” he sighs. Eddie definitely got that one from Max, the little reprobate. “Okay, if we’re going to do this, in the tub.”

Eddie points, “in?”

“Yup.”

Eddie manages it, hoisting himself up and the flicking his tail and sliding his ass over the edge, “Eddidie in tub.”

“You got it buddy,” Steve takes the shower head down, pointing it away from Eddie while it warms up, then moving it a little onto his tail, “feel okay?”

“Warm,” Eddie reaches out to feel the water, “good.”

“Okay, here we go then.”

Eddie sits patiently, head tilted back as Steve wets his hair down and then adds the shampoo. Eddie’s hair is thick, like, insanely thick, and it takes a bit for Steve to work the lather in. The individual strands are thick too, coarse and a little wiry. The back of Eddie’s scalp feels strange too, like his skull had ridges on it; lines that all join together right at the back of Eddie’s head. You’d never be able to see it through his hair.

Steve goes through half a bottle of conditioner on him, but Eddie sits patiently through all of it, flicking his fingers through the water, even when Steve combs it through and catches on snags, Eddie’s doesn’t complain at all. He tilts his head back easily when Steve directs him to, “okay, nearly finished.”

Once they’re done, Eddie climbs out of the bath and onto a towel, sitting on the floor while Steve dries his hair; he gets the idea and dries his arms and torso himself. Steve’s so used to looking at him that he doesn’t find the lack of belly button and nipples at all odd any more. Just looks normal. Looks like Eddie.

“Okay buddy, just let me grab a shower, and then you can help me write a grocery list,” Eddie follows Steve into the bedroom, watching as Steve grabs clothes before heading for his shower. Steve clicks the lock on just in case; Eddie’s not exactly worked out stuff like boundaries or personal space yet.

When Steve comes out, Eddie’s waiting patiently, sitting on the edge of Steve’s bed, wearing his yellow sweater.

Part Eight

[p0orbaby]

Finders Keepers

summary: you’re good at catching things, leah’s eye is one of them

warnings: a little suggestive

a/n: thank you for the request !

word count: 2k

-

You’re the new goalkeeper coach for the Lionesses, which is great, except for one glaring problem: Leah Williamson. She’s distracting, in the way that a house fire distracts you from finishing your cup of tea. You’ve never coached a team that required so much attention to detail, and you’re starting to understand why. You need every neuron firing just to remember how to breathe when she’s in the vicinity, let alone when she’s talking to you.

And she talks to you a lot. It’s not always about goalkeeping either, which is alarming, because you’re really only equipped to discuss which angle to cover or how to improve reaction time. Instead, she wants to talk about where you’re from, what you think of London, whether or not you like Thai food. She asks you about your star sign once, which is bizarre because you’re not sure if she believes in that sort of thing or is just trying to make you sweat. You lie and say you’re a Pisces, mostly because it seems like the least offensive answer, and she nods like that explains something.

You try to keep your interactions professional, but she makes it difficult. For instance, Leah has a habit of “accidentally” bumping into you. She claims it’s because she’s got bad spatial awareness, but you’re fairly certain she just likes the way you flinch when she does it. You’ve read somewhere that “accidental” touch is a sign of attraction, but you’re not sure if that applies when the person doing the touching has the coordination of an european champion.

One day after training, she lingers on the pitch while you’re gathering up cones, which you suspect is an attempt to chat you up. She watches you with a smirk, and you can feel her eyes burning into the back of your head like an exceptionally focused laser pointer.

“You missed one,” she says, pointing out a cone about three feet to your right. You didn’t miss it, but you pick it up anyway because you can’t think of anything better to do.

“Thanks,” you mumble, trying not to meet her eyes, because when you do, it’s like looking directly at the sun. Leah Williamson is a human eclipse, and you’re about to go blind from prolonged exposure.

“No problem,” she replies, not moving.

She’s still standing there when you finish. You’re holding a bag of cones and looking for an escape route, but she’s planted herself directly in your path like she’s grown roots.

“You’re not running off, are you?” she asks, with the kind of grin that makes you wish you’d pursued a career in something less perilous, like bomb disposal.

“I was thinking about it,” you admit, and she laughs, which is a mistake because her laugh does things to you—dangerous, uncoachable things.

“You’re cute,” she says, and now you’re actively searching for the nearest exit, because if she keeps this up, you’re going to do something really stupid, like ask her out for coffee or give her your social security number.

“Uh, thanks,” you stammer, clutching the bag of cones like it’s a life preserver.

She tilts her head, clearly amused by your discomfort. “No need to be nervous,” she says, like it’s the easiest thing in the world to relax when Leah Williamson is standing less than a foot away from you.

You’re not nervous, you want to say, but that would be a lie, and you’re not about to start lying to yourself, not when you’ve done such a good job of repressing your feelings up until this point.

“Well,” you say, taking a step back, “I should probably—”

“Want to get a drink?” she interrupts, like she’s asking you if you want to grab a sandwich, and you nearly drop the cones because your brain can’t process the words coming out of her mouth.

“What?” you blurt out, because that’s all your synapses can muster.

“A drink,” she repeats, like it’s the most normal thing in the world for a player to ask out their coach. “You know, alcohol? Liquid courage?”

You’re pretty sure you’ve just suffered a minor stroke, because the world tilts sideways and your pulse goes through the roof. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” you manage to say, which is the understatement of the year, considering the fact that you’ve spent the last three months trying to convince yourself that Leah is just another player on the team, and not the walking, talking embodiment of temptation.

“Why not?” she asks, and you can tell by her tone that she’s genuinely curious, like the idea of you turning her down is as foreign to her as the concept of gravity.

“Because,” you start, then pause, because you don’t have a good reason, and she knows it.

“Because?” she prompts, raising an eyebrow.

“Because it’s unprofessional,” you say finally, as if professionalism is something you’ve ever been good at.

“We’re not at work now,” she points out, and you hate that she’s right. You hate that she’s standing so close to you that you can see the tiny freckle just above her left eyebrow. You hate that you want to reach out and touch it, trace the shape of her face with your fingers.

“Leah—” you start, but she cuts you off by taking a step forward, closing the gap between you. She’s close enough now that you can smell the faint hint of her shampoo, something fresh and citrusy that makes you want to bury your face in her hair and never come up for air.

“I’ll see you later, then,” she says, and it’s not a question.

-

You don’t know why you go. Maybe it’s because you’ve never been particularly good at saying no, or maybe it’s because the idea of Leah waiting for you is too tempting to resist. Either way, you find yourself standing outside the pub, staring at the sign like it’s going to give you the answers to the universe.

Inside, Leah’s already at the bar, leaning against the counter with the kind of casual confidence that makes you wonder if she’s ever had an awkward moment in her life. When she spots you, she grins, and it’s like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.

“You made it,” she says, as if there was any doubt.

“Yeah,” you reply, because what else can you say? I’m here because I’m an idiot? I’m here because I can’t stop thinking about you? I’m here because I’m trying really hard not to fall in love with you and failing miserably?

“Drink?” she asks, holding up her pint glass.

“Sure,” you say, because if you’re going to make bad decisions, you might as well make them with alcohol in your system.

She orders you a drink, something that tastes like it should be served in a coconut with an umbrella, but you don’t complain because it’s delicious and also because Leah’s eyes are twinkling in that way that makes your stomach do somersaults.

“So,” she says after a moment, “why don’t you want to go out with me?”

The question hits you like a freight train. “I never said that,” you protest, but your voice is weak, like you’re already losing this battle.

“You didn’t have to,” she replies, taking a sip of her drink and watching you over the rim of the glass. “But you’re not very good at hiding it”

“I’m not?” you ask, horrified at the idea that your feelings might be more obvious than you’d like to admit.

“Nope,” she says, popping the “p” in a way that should be illegal. “It’s written all over your face”

“Oh.” You stare into your drink, wondering if it’s possible to drown in a pint glass.

“But it’s okay,” she continues, and now she’s leaning in closer, her knee brushing against yours under the table. “Because I’m not really good at hiding it either”

And that’s when you know you’re completely, irrevocably screwed.

-

It’s not a relationship, you tell yourself, because relationships require labels, and what you and Leah have is more like an ongoing series of bad decisions strung together by moments of sheer idiocy.

You try to keep things professional, but it’s difficult when she keeps showing up at your door with that grin and that laugh and those hands that seem to know exactly where to touch you to make your brain short-circuit.

One night, after you’ve spent far too long convincing yourself that you’re strong enough to resist her, she shows up at your flat with food and a bottle of wine. You know it’s a trap, but you let her in anyway, because you’re a sucker for Thai fried rice and bad decisions.

You spend the evening on the settee, eating and drinking and pretending like you’re not going to end up in bed together by the end of the night. You watch some terrible low budget comedy that Leah picked out, and you’re about halfway through when she starts inching closer to you, like she’s trying to be subtle but failing spectacularly.

“You’re sitting awfully close,” you point out, because it’s either that or spontaneously combust from the proximity.

“Am I?” she asks innocently, but there’s a twinkle in her eye that tells you she knows exactly what she’s doing.

“Yes,” you reply, but you don’t move away, because if you’re going to go down in flames, you might as well enjoy the heat.

She grins, and then her hand is on your thigh, fingers tracing patterns that make your heart race. “I think you like it,” she says, and it’s not a question.

“I think you’re trouble,” you counter, but you don’t stop her when she leans in and kisses you, soft and slow, like she’s got all the time in the world.

You kiss her back, because you’re weak and because she tastes like wine and because you’re tired of pretending like this isn’t exactly what you want.

The rest of the movie is forgotten as you tumble into bed together, a mess of tangled limbs and breathless laughter. It’s fast and frantic, like you’re both trying to make up for lost time, and when it’s over, you’re left lying there, staring at the ceiling and wondering how you got here.

“Don’t think too hard,” Leah murmurs, her head resting on your chest, and you can feel her breath against your skin, warm and steady. “You’ll hurt yourself”

“Too late,” you mutter, but you don’t push her away, because despite everything, despite all the reasons this is a terrible idea, you like the way she feels next to you.

“We’re a disaster,” you say after a while, because the silence is starting to make you anxious, and you’ve never been good at sitting with your own thoughts.

“I know,” she replies, and you can hear the smile in her voice. “But we’re a fun disaster”

You can’t argue with that, so you don’t. Instead, you close your eyes and let yourself drift off, hoping that when you wake up, you won’t regret this as much as you probably should.

-

You start seeing each other regularly after that, though you both refuse to call it dating. Dating implies a level of commitment that you’re not ready to acknowledge, and anyway, this is more like…mutual self-destruction with benefits.

You try to keep it a secret from the team, but you’re fairly certain they’re onto you. Especially after that time Leah practically tackled you during training because she “tripped” over her own feet, which would be believable if she wasn’t literally the most coordinated person you’ve ever met.

“You’re an idiot,” you tell her later, as you’re trying to pry her off of you in the changing room, but she just laughs and kisses you on the cheek, because apparently she’s incapable of taking anything seriously.

“I’m your idiot,” she replies, and you hate how much you love the sound of that.

You’re not sure how long this can go on before everything blows up in your face, but for now, you’re content to keep making the same mistakes over and over again. After all, if you’re going to screw up, you might as well do it with someone who makes it fun.

And Leah Williamson, for all her flaws, is nothing if not fun.

Even if she is going to be the death of you.