#you'll get context. way later | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

exeggcute · 1 year ago

Text

the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators; reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

8K notes · View notes

moondirti · 8 months ago

Text

there’s something so erotic about a man who grabs your jaw when you keep avoiding his gaze so he can force your eyes on his

featuring: SOAP, afab reader, oral, spitting, mild dubcon (i.e. boundary crossing)

soap has always been intense. a bullet shot off in a steel room, bound to ricochet until it makes contact with something that can absorb its impact. you're in the right place at the right time: a bar, the gym he frequents, perhaps even a football game he'd been anticipating for weeks. it doesn't really matter what context he first spots you in – all that energy, that orderless enthusiasm he seems to prescribe to everything, sharpens to focus solely on you. bonnie wee thing that keeps sliding him wily looks, instilling in him a mission he knows he won't back down from.

at first it's how to approach you. easy enough; you like him too, that much he can tell. so when you eventually agree to a farmers market date (where he intends to spoil you rotten with food from every stall), it becomes about opening you up. figuratively at first, you have a hard time keeping up with him without getting overwhelmed. startled at how forthcoming he is, stunned at the manner in which he treats you. like he's known you for years, a childhood best friend you only met last tuesday. he calls right after your first date, asks you to accompany him for coffee before his morning run. shows up at your door unannounced, carrying tools to fix the fan you briefly complained wasn't working. is bold enough to sneak his hand on your thigh while you're watching a movie later that evening, gradually moving higher as your breath begins to falter.

he spares no effort once things get sexual, either. if you expect him to go easy for your first time, you'll come to sorely regret the mistake. quick to slip out of his too-tight shirt, even quicker to spread your legs out on your couch. manages to get your joggers off but opts to merely shift your panties to the side, fingers hooked in the thin material (which he will pocket later). when he envelops your entire cunt with his mouth, his tongue digs into every fold, every hole if it means he can swallow down the smallest part of you.

taste s’good hen, bloody mad wae it

only you’re not looking at him. instead, you’ve thrown your head back, too lost in the pleasure to pay attention to the show he’s putting on for you. why exactly, he's not sure. he’s being good, isn’t he? giving you everything you need? his heart races a mile per minute and something needy, something dark twists within him. he laves his tongue over your hole once more, collecting the juices that pour for him and gathering it behind his teeth alongside a hefty glob of saliva.

when he moves up your body, he tucks your chin in his palm, pulling your head down to face him.

it's too much. too much. he doesn't seem to realise it, but you're breathing is still inconsistent and shallow, and you're about to cry from overstimulation. now he's forcing eye contact, nose kissing yours, and pressing down on either side of your jaw so you're forced to open your mouth wide. you know what's coming, see it from the way his cheeks move. it's all you can do to brace yourself for the inevitable, unable to voice your aversion to the kink. fisting your hands, tensing your throat. but it's as you close your eyes that his self-restraint snaps.

so, he spits. it's thick and messy and heady with the smell of your sex. he doesn't even aim it properly. a significant amount of it lands on your lip, some even on your nose. your tongue gets the brunt of it though, the new weight of fluid causing you to gag. yet his pupils are blown so wide they're barely blue anymore, a cerulean ring around bottomless black, fixated on the sloppy state of your mouth, and it's hard to deny him anything that boils him down to such a state. like a puppy. over-eager and exhilarated when you indulge him so.

you never learn to like it, though it becomes a routine thing.

#written on my phone and unedited #have some garbage or whatever #also applies to price because i can definetely imagine him forcing you still so he can blow cigar smoke onto your face #johnny 'soap' mactavish #johnny 'soap' mactavish x reader #soap x reader #soap #cod #call of duty #thirst #x afab reader

1K notes · View notes

astrotruther · 3 months ago

Text

Astro Observations

misc. (ii)

🐉 Narcissists may have Mars-Uranus aspects in their chart. Mars’s energy can be either constructive or destructive; pair that with Uranus' erratic quality, and it could make one manipulative. In my opinion, Mars & Uranus having more harsh aspects to multiple other planets could further confirm this. Look out for squares, especially Moon square Mars!

🐉 Sun harsh aspects to Neptune, even conjunction can be somewhat superficial. Neptune may bless them with a mystique that attracts public attention, but they stick to a surface-level public persona. Artists with these aspects may stick to cookie-cutter projects. E.g. Colleen Hover responding to criticism by saying 'I write to entertain not to educate'. Jake Paul also has this aspect. In worst cases there's a delusional egotism to this aspect. On the other hand, easy aspects will be more willing to go within and proudly display their shadows, creating art that is meaningful and leaves a lasting legacy.

🐉 I've observed Scorpio Sun/ Moon in charts of those who backhandedly bully people over things like their appearance. Water Moons in general are capable of inflicting deep emotional wounds to others when unevolved. Having Mercury in a fire sign makes it a lot worse since the words become harsher. I've had a Scorpio Sun - Pisces Moon girl admit to me that she makes fun of people because she had the same done to her while growing up.

🐉 Libra MC are often told they should be models. Understandable because they're so photogenic!

🐉 Pluto-Ascendant easy aspects & conjunction are always reinventing themselves. It's easier for these people to let go of things that don't serve them and realign themselves with their inner true selves. They're skilled at coming to terms with their dark sides and alchemizing it to create a positive impact in the world.

🐉 On the contrary, harsh aspects may feel like they can't be themselves due to external factors or a certain image/ aesthetic that they have to uphold. Some may be child actors/ activists or made it big in early years making it hard to disrupt their public persona. It's way harder for them to branch out within their career field. Ascendant at 0° might have the same effect. E.g. Billie Eilish, Demi Lovato, Finn Wolfhard, Darsheel Safary, Malala Yousafzai, Meghan Trainor, Hilary Duff.

🐉 I've seen so many takes on the 0° & most people romanticizing it somehow. It may manifest in a divine way for those who are self-aware/ have evolved. however MOST people aren't. So it gives a somewhat negative quality to the placement, e.g. Jake Paul has his MC at 0°.

🐉 Moon-Pluto aspects not only symbolize a strained relationship with the mother but also with other women. A lot of trauma you accumulated while growing up was because of the women around you. Some of them may have made you feel bad about yourself because they were threatened by you. The signs Moon & Pluto are in could give more context, e.g. Aries Moon, Sag. Pluto = invalidating your anger, not letting you be yourself and forcing you to be someone they like, forcing religion on you from a young age etc.

🐉 Uranus square MC will have a career-ruining public scandal at least once. All I can say is avoid doing shady stuff and if it's external factors beyond your control, handle it with grace, lay low, you'll get your chance to shine again.

🐉 Moon square Lilith is an enemy placement. Moon person hates Lilith person's guts because Lilith person may have hurt them in some way. Moon could want revenge on Lilith for what they did.

🐉 Venus-Saturn aspects may have had people criticize their appearance while growing up, but they end up having insane glow-ups. Their most attractive years come somewhat later in life and they age very gracefully.

🐉 Moon in Cancer/ Moon conjunct Jupiter people possess the ability to manipulate, sometimes on a mass level. It's on them to use their emotional superpowers to influence people in a positive way and not just keep banking on their victim narratives. Nonetheless, these people can hold public interest for a long time.

🐉 Venus in 10th House synastry is often a clout/ PR couple. E.g. Glenn Powell & Sydney Sweeney.

youtube

Click daily to help Palestinians🍉🙏🏽: https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/

616 notes · View notes

222col · 3 months ago

Text

is it casual now?

★ patrick zweig x reader ★ based on the song 'casual' by chappell roan (rlly reccomend listening first!!) ★ 5.2k ★ 18+ | inc: angst (!!!), smut, m + f oral, public sex, breeding ★ an: patrick is a college student & also has a sister for context (part two)

patrick's barely dressed as he starts to leave, picking up his phone from your desk, opening the door before turning round to look at you once more. "oh yeah, my family want you to come to our beach house this weekend." no emotion on his face as he stands in your doorway. "they do or you do?" you question, sitting up in your bed, blanket covering your body. "my sister told my mom how much you helped her the other week, so they wanted you to come, you don't have to." he's fiddling with his keys, aching to leave your room. "okay, just text me the details." patrick nods to you and darts down the hall. getting yourself dressed before calling your best friend.

"sounds like his sister wants you there, not him." she tells you down the phone. "well maybe, but he could have just told them no or not invited me." you're pacing your room, desperately trying to defend your excitement for a weekend with patrick. "ugh, why are you so hung up on this guy? you're being such a loser, you know he told you no strings." you've had this conversation with your best friend so many times, yet the words just don't get through to you. "i know, i know. i just like him, okay? i think it could go somewhere." you hear her sigh through the phone. "have you heard the things he tells his friends about you?" you hold your breath, knowing this isn't going to be good. "he calls you a slut, an easy one at that, i heard him talking to art about it at tennis." you sink onto the floor, back leaning against your wall. "i'm sorry, i know it's awful to hear, but you need to get it into your head, that he doesn't think of you like that."

patrick picks you up friday afternoon, driving you both to his parents' beach house. his hand on your thigh as you stare out the window. "what's up with you? normally you would have dragged me into the back seat by now." patrick questions. "well this all just feels weird, you're driving us to spend a weekend with your parents, i feel like your girlfr-" patrick doesn't even let you finish your sentence. "we're not together." you shake your head and return your gaze to the window. "yeah, you've made that very clear, don't you worry." turning up the radio so patrick doesn't return with a sarcastic comment or dig any further. the rest of the journey is silent between the two of you, the radio serving as a distraction, after a few hours you pull up to patrick's parents' house. his younger sister is waving at you both from the front door. you met her at a frat party patrick brought her along to, the two of you got on well, and you helped her when some frat boys were being way too forward.

grabbing his own bag from the car, he leaves you to collect your own from the trunk. "not even gonna help this nice young lady with her bags, some gentleman i raised you to be." patrick's father says, appearing on the porch. patrick snatches your bag from your hands before pushing his way into the house, introducing yourself to his parents, patrick's sister shows you to your room. "you'll be sharing with patrick, obviously." she states, pushing open the door of the room. "what?" you question, patrick rolling his eyes and pulling you into the room, closing the door on his sister. "i can't exactly tell my parents we're fuck buddies, can i?"

later that night, patrick brings you with him to a bonfire on the beach with some of his friends that live nearby. "zweig, it's been too long." he's engulfed into the reunions but just about remembers to introduce you to his friends. beers are shared as marshmallows are toasted on the fire, all of you sat on logs and in the sand. one of patrick's friends coming to sit next to you as patrick catches up with his neighbour. "so, are you and patrick, like, together?" he asks you, he's not bad looking, so you think about entertaining him. "no, we just fuck." you laugh into your can of beer, taking another swig. "you're single then?" he asks you, shuffling closer. looking to him and nodding, his eyes lighting up. a shiver runs down your spine, making you realise how cold you are. "here, take this." he places his jacket over your shoulders, you could dream of patrick doing such a chivalrous act. slipping your arms through the sleeves and thanking him. "you're really pretty, by the way." that's all it takes. your lips lean up to kiss him. the only compliments you get are from patrick while he's inside you or frat boys as they spank your ass at parties. his hands wrap around your waist before you feel yourself being dragged away from his lips.

patrick pulls you off down the beach by your arm, stopping in his tracks when his friends are out of ear shot, looking down at you, his chest rising. "what the fuck are you doing?" he asks you, his words harsh. "i was making out with that guy before you interrupted." you return, arms crossed. "may i remind you that you're here with me, not some random fucker you just met?" you can feel his breath on your face as he speaks. "and may i remind you that we're not together, and i can kiss who i like?" patrick loves it when your bitchy side comes out, but right now he can't acknowledge it. eye contact hasn't broken once between you, titling your head as you wait for patrick's response. nothing slips from his lips before he grabs your face and pushes his mouth onto yours. hungrily kissing you, pushing your body back until you hit the rocks, his hand reaching under your skirt. "your friends are right there." you groan into his ear, looking back to look you in the eyes as his hand slips into your underwear. "do i look like i care?"

his fingers stroke up through your folds. "neither do you, by the feel of things." patrick hums, bringing his fingers to his lips as he sucks the wetness from between his digits, before pushing them into your mouth. smiling and nodding his head as he removes his fingers and slips them back into your underwear, inserting his two middle fingers into your cunt. the rocks disguising your bodies from patrick's friends, but you know if they looked closely enough they'd see everything. quiet moans leave your lips as patrick fucks you with his fingers, his other hand coming up to cover your mouth. "shut the fuck up, or do you want all my friends to see you riding my fingers?" patrick's fingers move at pace, curling up to hit your g-spot as he sucks bruises onto your neck. bringing his thumb up to circle your clit, leaning down to palm him through his shorts, grabbing and rubbing his cock through the fabric. "you want it, don't you?" patrick smirks, as you softly nod your head. "you want me to fuck you here on the beach, up against these rocks as my friends stand twenty feet away?" he can feel you smirking under his hand, just nodding your head. "god, where did you come from?" he moans, pulling his hands off your body to shuffle his shorts down his body. looking over to his friends, who are all engrossed in a drinking game of some kind, he lifts your leg, holding it up against the rocks, pushing your panties to the side as he pushes himself into your cunt.

leaning his elbow on the rock behind your head to keep himself steady, his hand covering your mouth again as his hips slap against your skin, thrusting himself in and out of you. even his hand pushing into your face can barely contain the noises you're making. "shut up." he groans into your ear, slamming himself into you. his cock filling you up as his friends are none the wiser. "hmm, this is so fucking hot, baby." patrick whispers to you, his breathing heavy, sweat forming on his skin as he keeps fucking you. rocks digging into your back as patrick's weight falls onto your body, his thrusts getting sloppy. pulling out of you suddenly to push you onto your knees, cuts and grazes form on the skin as the sharp rocks pierce your fall. forcing his cock into your mouth as he holds the back of your head, fucking your face before shooting his load down your throat. "fuck- such a good girl."

pulling up his shorts quickly, and helping you onto your feet. kissing you deeply before walking back over to his group of friends. sitting down on one of the logs, pulling you onto his knee. you try to hide your furrowed brows from him, not used to this affectionate side of patrick. it's rare that he kisses you after you've had sex, let alone pulling you onto his knee in front of his friends. "god, what happened to your knees?" one of patrick's friends asks, handing you both another can of beer. patrick can't help the shit eating grin form on his face, looking down at your knees to see them covered in blood. "oh, i just fell over onto the rocks, no biggie." patrick kisses your cheek, opening his can of beer, whispering into your ear. "sorry baby, didn't mean to be so rough with you." you really can't hide your reaction this time, either patrick's had more to drink than you thought or he actually feels bad for making you bleed.

a couple more drinking games later, patrick walks the two of you back up to his parents' house. patrick didn't let you sit anywhere other than his lap the rest of the night. entering patrick's bedroom, he walks over to the small en-suite, wetting a towel and starts cleaning up your knees as you take off your sandy clothes. "why are you being so weird?" you finally ask him. he looks up at you from his position on the floor by your feet. "i'm not?" he returns. "you're looking after me, kissing me in front of your friends, that is very weird, actually." patrick chews the inside of his cheek, wiping the blood from your knees as you wince at the sting. "i don't know, am i not allowed to do those things?" he's not looking at you anymore, focusing his attention on cleaning you up. "yeah, you can, it's just confusing." he throws the towel into the laundry hamper, along with yours and his clothes. you slip into an oversized t-shirt as patrick gets into bed in just his boxers, turning off the light as you lay together in darkness. "i'm not the only one being weird, you kissed my friend in front of me, that's pretty confusing too." patrick mumbles, the two of you facing each other, the moon light barely allowing you to see each others faces. "whatever, don't worry about it." patrick adds on, turning around to go to sleep.

the next morning is as though nothing happened the night previous, you and patrick spending the day at the beach with his sister. playing tennis and swimming, having fun. patrick's parents shouting over after lunch that they've booked a table at the restaurant down the road for dinner. checking the time on your phone, you head back to get ready. you hear a slap against patrick's arm as you leave the beach. "how are you not in a relationship with her?" you overhear patrick's sister ask him as you head towards the house, smirking as you go. showering before doing your make up and getting dressed, slipping a white dress onto your body, checking yourself in the mirror as patrick walks into the bedroom. "you look beaut-" he stops his words, coughing as he continues. "hot, you look hot." he corrects himself, showering quickly and changing into a button up and jeans as you finish off curling your hair.

the five of you arrive at the restaurant, enjoying glasses of wine as patrick's parents' learn more about you. his hand on your thigh under the table as they ask about your major at college and how you spend your free time. before dessert you excuse yourself to the bathroom, hearing patrick tell his family that he's going for a smoke. closing the door to the sole bathroom of the restaurant, patrick's foot stopping it from closing. pushing himself into the room quickly. "what are you doing?" you ask, as he locks the door behind the two of you. "i need you." he mumbles, pushing you up against the wall as his lips attack yours. "patrick, we're literally at dinner with your parents, can you not wait until we get home?" you protest, his hands groping your chest as he suckles the skin on your exposed collarbones. "no, need you now." groaning as he moves your hand onto his crotch. "can't you see how much you're turning me on? you look so good tonight." you've never seen him so desperate, so needy for you. finally giving in, palming him through his jeans. spinning you around, pushing you up against the sink, grinding against your ass as he pulls your dress up. the fabric bunching around your waist, your panties pulled down your legs. you hear the sound of his belt buckle hitting the floor, his cock hitting your clit as he pushes your legs open. looking into your eyes through the mirror in front of you as he pushes himself into your hole. one hand on your hips as the other instinctively covers your mouth. staring at you in the reflection as he pounds himself into you, looking back at him through the mirror too. watching him come apart behind you as he loses himself in the moment.

"god, you feel so fucking good, baby." he groans into your neck, his cock filling you up as your hips repeatedly hit the sink, bruising your skin. patrick's calloused hands trapping every sound that leaves your lips, making you so conscience of the reality of the situation. holding in your cries and moans as he pumps in and out of you. "you're so fucking perfect, fuck- i love you." you can feel your heart sink at patrick's words, as he's barely even aware they left his mouth. the grip he has on your waist tightening, his fingernails digging into the skin. your chest rising and falling, breathing deeper, focusing on his dick filling you up, desperate to not acknowledge his words. he didn't mean it, he can't mean it, he's just caught up in the moment, you have to tell yourself. his hand slips from your mouth to grasp the other side of your waist, pulling you back into him as he keeps thrusting into you. no moans leave your mouth, just hot breaths, so fixated on patrick's confession. he pulls you back onto him once more as his load shoots up inside you, groans leaving his lips as he does.

patrick holds you there for a second, before pulling out of you, his come beginning to drip out from you. frozen on the spot until he starts pulling up his jeans. i love you. the words are spinning around your head. he kisses your cheek before doing up his belt. "i'll meet you back at the table." he winks, slipping out of the bathroom. cleaning yourself up as you pull your underwear back up your legs. checking yourself in the mirror before rejoining the table with patrick's family, mere seconds before he does. "i wish you'd stop smoking, pat." his mother says, frowning at her son. "i know, i know." he mumbles back, swigging from his glass. patrick and his sister go for a walk on the beach when you all get back to the house, leaving you alone in his room. changing into your pjs, packing away your things, ready for the drive back to college the next day. it's late by the time patrick slips into bed, assuming you're asleep next to him, he places a kiss on your forehead. "goodnight, sweet girl." so grateful for the darkness as your cheeks flush, being pulled onto patrick's chest as the two of you fall asleep.

waking up on opposite sides of the bed, the two of you get ready to leave his parents' beach house. thanking his parents for being so accommodating and hugging his sister goodbye. "i like her for you, patrick." you hear his mom tell him during their goodbyes, smiling and waving as you both enter his car, beginning the drive home. "they like you." he says, one hand on the wheel, the other squeezing your thigh. "that's nice. i'm glad." you mumble out the window, his eyes darting between you and the road. he rolls his eyes at your bluntness and carries on driving, pulling into a gas station after a little while on the road. filling up the tank while you use the bathroom, coming back out to see him leaning on the car, phone to his ear. he throws you his wallet, nodding towards the clerk, signalling you to go pay. "yeah, fucked her in the bathroom of the restaurant too." he laughs into his phone. "i know, my parents just sat at the table none the wiser." ignoring the words that weren't meant for your ears, you enter the store, grabbing a redbull and paying for the gas. walking back over to the parked car, patrick still laughing into his phone. "i know man, she's so fucking dirty, maybe i'd let you fuck her and you can really see what i mean."

holding back your tears as the whispers of i love you slip through your fingers, jumping into the car, slamming the door behind you. patrick turning around at the sound, rushing himself off the phone and into the drivers seat. pulling out of the gas station as he questions your actions. your knees are up to your chest, hugging your legs as he drives. "why did you just slam my door?" patrick asks, staring over to you. "i didn't mean to." you grumble, refusing to look over to him. "yeah right, you've been acting like a bitch since last night." he rolls his eyes, knuckles tight on the steering wheel. "whatever, no i haven't." aching for patrick to just ignore your reactions and drive you home. he sighs and pulls into a old dirt road, turning off the car and manoeuvring his body to face you. stating your name as he undoes your seatbelt. "will you just tell me what's going on?" you ignore him, pushing your emotions down. grabbing your legs, he brings your body round to face him. he's smiling softly at you, waiting on your words. when you still don't reply, he leans over and places his lips on yours. trying desperately to resist his kiss, but it's inevitable, you melt into him. anger and sadness and lust wash over you, your hands on the back of his head, kissing him like you'll never be able to again. his lips travel down you, his body contorting to position his head between your legs. dipping under your skirt, pulling your underwear to the side, humming as his face pushes into your cunt.

licking a line through your folds, swallowing the wetness on his tongue as he licks over your clit. your head leaning on the window, hands in his hair, moaning out his name. "my name sounds perfect when you moan it like that." patrick whispers against you, tonguing your clit, sloppy kisses placed there as his fingers push inside you. the radio playing is overshadowed by the mewls escaping your lips. his dark curls tickling your thighs as your fingers scratch at his scalp. your hips bucking onto his face, grinding against him as his tongue laps you up. his nose bumping over your clit as your thighs clench around him. the sunlight through the windows highlighting the wetness over his face, his blue eyes looking up at you, smirking into your cunt. his fingers curling up as your body jolts, orgasm washing over you, whimpering his name as he removes his tongue. slipping out his fingers, pushing them into your mouth. smiling at you as you suck the taste of yourself off his digits. smoothing your skirt back down as patrick repositions himself in the drivers seat. he laughs, wiping the wetness of you from his chin. the two of you smiling at each other, putting your seatbelts back on as patrick reverses up the dirt road, carrying on with the drive home.

the two of you laugh and talk the whole way home, arriving at your dorm as patrick grabs both of your bags out of his car. "can i stay the night? i can't be bothered walking to my dorm." he asks, his car already locked and keys in his pocket. "patrick, your dorm is like a five minute walk away." you laugh at him, grabbing your room keys from your purse. "please?" it's so rare that patrick's soft like this, you've seen it more this weekend, and you've learnt you can't say no to it. "sure." you smile, leading you both to your room. dropping your bags by your desk, patrick slumps onto your bed, pulling you on top of him. "this weekend was nice." he mumbles, nuzzling his head into your neck. "yeah, your family are nice." you say, avoiding the idea of acknowledging any of the new found emotions between the two of you. "my sisters cool, my parents are fine." he responds, keeping your body on top of his, arms wrapped around you. "it was cool having you there to distract me." you'd assume he means with sex, but his tone tells otherwise. luckily your phone starts ringing before you can confess to patrick how much you enjoyed the time with him. "hey, yeah, we just got back, me and patrick are just at my dorm." you talk into the phone to your best friend, sitting up on the edge of the bed. patrick kissing the back of your shoulders as you speak. smiling back at him as you listen to your friend.

"when?" you ask down the phone, patrick peering up at you, furrowed brows. "yeah sure, i'll ask patrick if he wants to come. see you later." putting the phone down, turning to face patrick, his head on your pillow. "ask me to come where?" he smiles at you, arm snaking around your hips. "a party, tonight. do you wanna go?" patrick grins widely, nodding his head at your words. patrick heads to your bathroom to shower, sitting at your desk to do your make up. wishing for some time alone to process your weekend at patrick's beach house, to really consider his words and actions, to force yourself out of this idea you've created that patrick could actually like you. but knowing you'd never send him away, it's like your addicted to him. unable to tell him no, wanting to savour every moment with him, not knowing when he's going to snap back to his old ways of leaving you naked on your bed as he darts home. enjoying these domestic moments you and patrick are sharing, feeling like his girlfriend, playing house before his attention is drawn elsewhere.

pulling your denim mini skirt over your hips, and readjusting your crop top, patrick re-enters your room. zipping up the fly of his jeans and pulling down his polo. "are you trying to kill me?" he asks, mouth slightly agape as he breaths out deeply. you laugh, applying another layer of lip gloss. "what do you mean?" you ask, leaning down to your mirror. "you look so fucking good." patrick states, spanking your ass as he sits to put his shoes on. laughing as you do up the small buckles on your heels, putting your phone into your purse and heading out the door. patrick laces his fingers through yours as you walk down the hall of your dorm, heading for the frat house hosting the party. looking down at your joined hands, then up to patrick. "what? your hands are soft." even patrick doesn't believe the reasoning he gave as you laugh at his words. "whatever, i can fuck you but not hold your hand? is that how this works?" patrick laughs as you shake your head, tightening your grip on his hand and heading off campus.

your best friend is waiting outside for you when you arrive, patrick dropping your hand as you walk up the pathway. "i'll meet up with you later okay? i'm still staying at yours so don't leave without me." patrick winks to you as he enters the house. hugging your friend as she sighs at patrick's words. she leads you into the back garden, handing you a white claw and kicking some frat boys off the garden furniture. you tell her everything about the weekend, her eyes rolling and brows furrowing as you explain the details. "he told you he loved you?!" she almost shouts, shushing her immediately. "keep your voice down!" you return, checking your surroundings for patrick, luckily he's nowhere to be seen. "it was during the bathroom hook up, i don't think he meant it." she breathes sharply, opening another can of white claw for each of you. "well, have you talked to him about it?" she asks, handing you the can. "no, oh my god, no!" shaking your head as you swig your drink. the two of you continue gossiping about your time away with patrick, laughing your way through more drinks. heading inside to the kitchen to get more alcohol and have a dance together, your best friend stops you in your tracks. "don't turn around." she holds you in place. "what? why?" you ask, forcing your way out of her grip and spinning on your heels.

in the corner of the kitchen stands patrick, his arms laced around a blonde, kissing her lips. her hands in his hair, bodies pushed together. your heartbeat fastens, eyes closing slowly as you take in the scene before you. shoulders dropping, watching patrick's hands caress her skin. "c'mon, let's go back outside, he's an asshole." your best friend says, barely hearing her over the ringing in your ears. she picks up a bottle of vodka from the kitchen counter and pulls you back outside. your eyes welling up, sitting back down on the plastic chair, sipping from the bottle she hands you. stealing a cigarette from the boy smoking next to you, she lights it and hands it to you. "fuck him, okay? he's fucking awful, you can do so much better." her words barely getting through to you, hands shaking as you bring the cigarette up to your lips. "but he told me he-" she knows what you're going to say, cutting you off before you can finish. "don't. you can't think about that right now." she tells you, leaning over, stroking your knee. a single tear falls from your eye, wiped away by your friend before it can reach your cheek. she sits with you quietly, letting you get yourself together. wiping away your tears and collecting your breathing. "do i look okay?" you ask her, stubbing out the cigarette. smiling at you like a cheshire cat, she stands up. "you look hot. c'mon, let's show that asshole what he's missing."

holding your hand, the two of you enter the group of people dancing, swaying together and letting your hips around to the music. letting some semi-hot frat boy pull your back to his chest, arm snaked around your hips as you grind onto him. your friend running to the bathroom as frat boy's lips press to your neck, eyes forward as you see patrick leaning against the wall. his eyes on you, between all the bodies blocking the path to each other. smirking, drinking his beer as you continue dancing, eyes never leaving his.

the night continues like this, patrick alone watching you from the sidelines as you dance the night away. the party starts to clear as patrick comes over to you and your best friend, both of you ready to call it a night. "c'mon, let me take you both home." he sighs, ready for you to fight him on the idea, but you don't, you can't. "fine." the three of you walk in silence, heels being carried in your hand. you and patrick walk your friend to her door, before carrying on down the hall to your dorm. the two of you enter your room, dropping your shoes and bag on the floor and sitting on your bed, back leaning against the wall. patrick moves your desk chair to sit opposite you. "what's going on? why were you dancing with that guy all night?" he questions. "what's it to you? you were kissing that girl anyway, surprised you didn't go home with her instead." your words hiss, the alcohol in your system bypassing any filters you would typically adhere to. patrick scoffs at you, leaning forward, elbows balanced on his knees. "i didn't know you saw that." he says, his words soft, almost guilty. you shrug your shoulders, bringing your legs up to your stomach, chin resting on your knees. "you told me you loved me." you whisper, as though saying it any louder would make tears fall from your eyes. "what? speak up." patrick asks, shuffling the chair closer to the bed. taking a deep breath in you repeat yourself. "you told me you loved me."

patrick's eyes flutter closed, lip between his teeth. "i didn't mean it." he lies to you, not that he'd ever admit it was a lie. tears slowly fall from your eyes, grasping your legs tighter. "but you-" you whisper again, before patrick cuts you off. "i didn't mean it, okay? we're not together, we fuck, we're fuck buddies, there's no strings." his words are like daggers, your eyes closed, tears slipping out through your lashes. "okay." is all you can muster, finally looking him in the eyes. his heart breaking at the sight of you. "can you please leave?" you ask him, your head falling down onto your knees. as if looking at his face would break your heart into smaller pieces. "yeah, okay." his words are heavy, refusing to look up as he stands and grabs his dufflebag. opening the door to leave, turning to look at you once more, but your eyes stay planted into your lap. sighing, he closes the door behind him.

falling onto your side, the tears falling faster from your eyes now, hugging the pillow that still smells like him. so angry that you let yourself fall for his charm, disgusted at yourself that you really believed he could love you, and just so sad knowing all you wanted to do was say it back. hating yourself for letting it drag on so long. falling asleep in your mini skirt and crop top, eyes puffy as you know that'll be the last time you see patrick zweig.

#challengers #patrick zweig #patrick zweig x reader #patrick zweig au #patrick zweig smut #patrick zweig x you #patrick zweig fic #challengers fic #challengers au #challengers smut #josh o'connor

505 notes · View notes

animasola86 · 9 days ago

Text

🟩 A SHOT TO REMEMBER

slime x f!reader 🔥 very explicit 🔥 words: 2.8k

After you drank a mysterious green jello shot, you don't feel so good. But don't worry, you'll soon feel a lot better...

WARNINGS: NSFW! Explicit sexual content! Slime monster! Tentacles! Triple penetration! Aphrodisiacs! Mind control! Overstimulation! (READ ON AO3!)

A/N: This is part 3 of my CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE smut series! 1 🔸 2 🔸 3 🔸 4 🔸 5 🔸 6 This is OPTION 2/PART 3 - but can be read individually, let me just set the scene:

CONTEXT: You were invited to a Halloween party in a mysterious house, dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, and on your search for the bathroom because your stomach is acting up a little, you come to a long hallway full of doors, and you decide to go through the door a few feet away.

ADDITIONAL WARNING: If you're a little squeamish, you should probably pass on this. Mentions of vomiting and slimy things and orifices being filled with the hint of dubcon.

As soon as you pull open the door, you know you're at the right place. The bathroom is huge, though. Dark tiles all the way up to the ceiling, a fancy chandelier in the middle, its light warm and not as bright as you'd expect from a bathroom, a large floor-to-ceiling window showing nothing but darkness beyond the thick red curtains pulled to the side a little. There's a fancy bathtub on clawed feet in one corner, a more modern shower nook with a wide glass door opposite it, large enough to at least fit five people, and then you have a long vanity sporting two sinks and a giant mirror, and a fancy looking toilet on the other side.

The perfect mixture of vintage and modern – but you only have time to look at it for so long before your stomach starts churning badly once more. You stumble to the toilet, its lid opening automatically as you approach, and before you know it, you're hugging the bowl and dry-heaving into it, your whole body shuddering under the exertion. But strangely enough, nothing comes out, despite the feverish attempts of your convulsing body. All you can do is gather the saliva in your mouth and spit it into the porcelain, before you stand up on shaking legs and walk to the vanity, rubbing your hurting belly.

You feel full (and you wonder why). Seeing your messy reflection only makes it worse. After washing your hands, then your face, you decide to wash up completely, and a few moments later you stand in the shower, stark naked as one should, and marvel at the fancy apparatus in front of you. There's a rain shower, but also several nozzles embedded in the wall, and you have no idea which of the many buttons you have to press for it to do something, so you just press them at random, yelping in shock when a few of them send their hard jets straight at your cramping stomach.

You bend over, leaning away from the harsh water spray, and this time you feel something moving up your esophagus as you retch violently. Your head is spinning as you put one hand on the tiled wall, trying to steady yourself. Your lips part as you squeeze your eyes shut under the strain, and it's the strangest sensation when something slimy rubs along your tongue before it falls from your open mouth and right between your feet, splashing down.

The cramps are gone, but the sticky feeling in your throat remains, and when you straighten up and open your eyes, looking down, you almost slip when you try to get away from the little green thing on the floor. At first it looks like the jello shot you forced down earlier, but then it moves, changes form, becomes more rounded before little antennae spread across its body. You stare at it in sheer horror. That thing was inside your stomach? You feel as if you're going to be sick all over again.

But it gets worse. It grows. As you press your back against the shower wall, unable to move or look away, the slimy thing gets bigger, those little protrusions growing longer, thicker, its round form swaying under the constant spray of water from above. It looks almost see-through, the green shimmer growing fainter the larger it becomes. There's an eerie squelching sound as it rubs itself against the opposite shower wall, stretching, moving upwards, using its countless appendages to carry itself higher – until it stands at your height, a shapeless almost-transparent green blob with swaying tentacles, staring at you without eyes or even a face.

And you're frozen in shock, unable to process what is happening, what you're seeing. You must be drunk or high or completely out of your mind. This isn't real. You are not standing in the shower with a strange slime monster. No way. Fighting the reality of it, you don't even move or make a sound when the thing reaches out to you and brushes the tip of one of its tentacles against your leg. The touch is cold and wet, testing, careful. Your eyes follow its many movements, but you soon feel dizzy trying to count its tendrils or make sense of its shape.

More tentacles move towards you, and you stay completely still as they coil around your ankles, your wrists, seemingly holding you in place while others slither up and down your body, exploring every inch of it. It's when you feel them rubbing against your shamefully erect nipples or between your wet folds, that your heart beats faster. You struggle against the soft looking tentacles, but they're stronger than they appear. As the first sound escapes your mouth, a weak little whine, another tentacle rises and quickly pushes between your lips, forcing your head back as it pokes straight at the back of your throat, triggering your gag reflex, causing your body to convulse violently.

Desperate muffled whimpers try to choke past the tendril in your mouth, but that only makes more spit gather on your tongue before it drips past your lips and down your chin. You are utterly helpless, held in place, and all you can do is watch the slime thing come closer until it presses against you, from head to toe, its texture cold and sticky as it engulfs you completely. The strangest thing is that you feel eerily calm as that happens, all panic gone in an instant, and you can even breathe as it closes around your head. Maybe it's that tentacle that's forcing its way down your throat, maybe you are dreaming this after all.

It doesn't feel real, and how should this be real? You are being absorbed by a large slime monster, turning into a blob yourself, even though you feel more like an insect being encased by sap, soon to turn into amber, frozen in time, preserved for all eternity. It's the last conscious thought you are able to think before you feel your body being moved, and you end up on your back, suspended in the air, held up by the large translucent mass around you. It's taking up the entire lower half of the shower now, the pitter patter of the water against its wobbly form almost soothing, with how distant it sounds in your prison of slime.

Even though your mind is empty, spinning slightly in place, you can still feel everything that's happening to you. Despite being enveloped by a firm and wet substance, with the consistency of jello, you don't feel restrained, not that you want to move anyway. You're floating, body reclined, legs hanging in the air, wide open, arms extended in an almost T-pose, but you are relaxed, swimming inside the gelatinous body of the slime. The tendril in your throat is just resting there, supplying you with oxygen, seemingly, it's not even a bad pressure, it's just there.

Just like the other tentacles that push out of the mass and into any orifice they can find. It's literally filling you up, stuffing your ears, leaving you deaf to your own sounds except your steady heartbeat, poking at your nostrils until they join the larger thing in your throat. Somehow you're still able to see, even blink, as you watch what's happening to you in a deep daze. You've never been this calm before, even as you watch more tentacles form out of the unassuming mass that are clearly bound to fill up all your other holes.

You still flinch a little when you feel two of them poking between your ass cheeks, like tiny fingers, pressing against your sphincter before they breach the tense ring of muscles, but they don't push in, they only hold your hole open, stretching it gently, before you are being moved a little lower, allowing the slime to press its form into you. You moan around the tendril in your throat as you feel it hardening against you, assuming the shape of a very thick tentacle that is eager to invade every available inch of your ass – and beyond.

You feel it pushing in, first in little undulating motions to ease your muscles, before it presses harder, forcing its way deeper. You can't fight it, and you don't see a reason to do so either, and it's not as if the monster gives you time to adjust to the sensation anyway as it focuses on your last hole next. A deep thrumming motion goes through the wobbly mass, causing you to shiver and your thighs to twitch, and all you can do is watch with hooded eyes as not one but three tentacles glide against and between your folds in a dizzying rhythm.

Your head is swimming, eyes threatening to roll back, but you want to keep watching as they stimulate you, rubbing and rolling, it feels so good, so gentle, like waves lapping at your skin, a cool sensation against your heated flesh. You'd moan and mewl, buck your hips against them, but you're immobile, gagged, unable to do anything but watch and feel.

Luckily the creature seems to sense what feels good to you (maybe it can read whatever lurks in the depths of your empty mind?), and it starts moving exactly like you want it to move. It lifts your hips, up and down, in tandem to the strokes of its undulating appendages, causing your wetness to gather between your folds, and you wished you could hear the squelching sounds or at least be able to moan properly without anything blocking your throat. No matter. It still feels too good to be true, and when one of the tentacles slips beneath the hood of your throbbing clit, a deep shudder crashes through your body as you convulse on the waves of bliss.

The slime seems to feel your ecstasy and doubles it efforts, rubbing and prodding harder, firmer, faster, until you come properly, your eyelids fluttering shut as lights explode behind them, your thighs twitching, your still empty cunt clenching around nothing. You do squeeze around the thick tendril in your ass that stopped moving when it reached your bowels, just resting there now, deep inside you, filling you out, holding you up as if you were a mere doll impaled on a ventriloquist's fist.

Your orgasm subsides slowly, and when you open your eyes lazily, you notice just in time how the tentacles between your legs meld into a particularly large one before its tip presses right between your puffy labia, poking at your entrance, and you'd scream if you could as it plunges into you, forcing its soft form into any crevasse it can find before pulling back and impaling you again, and again, until your tense muscles give way for it to penetrate you deeper.

It's a strange sensation. It's clearly a heavy mass inside you, pushing against your squishy walls, pressing deep until your cervix stops it, but it's also soft enough to mold itself to your shape, filling you out, and in doing so stimulating all the sensitive spots deep within you. You are a writhing mess as it starts moving inside you, pulling back and pushing in, in and out, back and forth, moving alongside the tendril in your ass as it guides you into its thrusts, and you're like a boat in a storm, pushed and pulled, that way and this, unable to do anything but feel.

It feels too good to complain. Head empty, just bliss. You can't even focus on your orgasms because they just come like you do, gentle at first, a soft wave crashing over you, then getting more intense, more and more, until your whole body is spasming in the slime's hold, your juices seeping into its body, getting absorbed, and it seemingly feeds off them, grows bolder in its movements, faster, harder, more relentless.

And it never stops, or so it feels. You are floating on that incredible high, disconnected from the world, it's just pleasure, no pain, orgasm after orgasm, and you'd think you'd faint from the exertion, from how your heart pounds in your stuffed ears, but somehow the slime keeps you conscious enough to feel it, over and over again. And how you feel.

All its tendrils move in a synchronized rhythm, in and out, the one in your cunt hammering into you, the one in your ass undulating as it feeds more and more of itself into your body, and the one in your throat moves as well, gently up and down, like little vibrations that thrum down your esophagus, and you'd think it would reach your stomach soon, to be met by the other one pressing from the other side, but you can't think about it, can't think anything, just feel...

You're drifting, slipping in and out of consciousness, but you always come back to another wave of pleasure, held up by the slime's mass and its unrelenting tentacles, head spinning, eyes hooded, drool dripping past your lips and right into the gelatinous mass encasing you. The same happens every time the thing in your cunt makes you squirt by pummeling into your g-spot with vigor, when the heat from deep within pushes out of you with force, only to be absorbed by the monster holding you captive.

It's an endless cycle of coming and being let down only to be propelled back up again, over and over, and every time you orgasm the thing around and inside you moves faster, vibrates more, seemingly grows stronger and bigger, putting its new strength into ramming its tentacles into your holes more fiercely, and it's when it finally reaches what can only be its max capacity that a sudden jerk goes through the wobbly mass.

It's only a second when it pauses, but it's enough to allow you to watch out of tired eyes as its massive body presses against the glass door of the shower, spilling over it, losing some of its dense form, and you feel yourself slipping in its hold, its tendrils impaling you but unable to hold you up any longer. It even slips from your ears, unplugging you, and the first thing you hear is the shattering of glass as it pushes out of the shower, making the door explode into tiny shards that get stuck in its outer shell.

It slips through the large opening, pulling you with it, and you glide out of its mass like a newborn calf, wet and slimy all over, shivering as the cold air of the bathroom hits your exposed skin. Its tentacles withdraw from your holes, and you feel strangely empty without them, your muscles still trying to clench back into their original form. The one in your throat is the last to leave you, and once it does, you feel the sudden urge to cough, to inhale sharply, to get as much air into your burning lungs as possible.

With the need to breathe comes the need to think, and when your mind restarts from its forced slumber, you blink in confusion, trying to make sense of your position on the floor, why you're so wet, why the shower door is broken, why you feel so weird all over. Weird, but also... good? Filled even though you're empty? Satisfied beyond belief?

Slowly you sit up, wiping at your face, pushing a strand of hair out of your forehead. As you scramble to your feet, which proves difficult with how much your legs are shaking, you see something out of the corner of your eye, a motion, something green disappearing out of sight. Frowning as you turn your head to look around the bathroom, you wonder what happened, having no recollection whatsoever.

Apparently you slipped in the shower, broke its door and woke up after who knows how long, just lying on the floor? Perhaps. Doesn't explain the sticky feeling between your legs, but maybe you just had a wet dream, stranger things have happened. Nothing to worry about. Let's wash up and move on, hm? you think to yourself as you step back into the shower, not even wondering where all the glass shards of the broken door have gone.

After you cleaned up properly, you dry off with the provided towels and get dressed again, before you check your reflection in the mirror one more time. Looks good enough. Time to get back to the party. Because that was why you came to this house. Where they gave you this strange jello shot... Before your memory comes crashing back down on you, you turn to the door, shaking your head to clear it, feeling as if you were in dire need of some fresh air.

Because whatever you think to remember happened, could have never actually happened. Nope. Not in a million years. You just have a very big imagination.

So you slip out of the bathroom back onto the hallway, hoping nobody would notice the missing shower door or the mess you made on the floor.

1 🔸 2 🔸 3 🔸 4 🔸 5 🔸 6

YOUR NEXT OPTIONS ARE:

reach for the door opposite you

good to the end of the hallway

MASTERLIST // AO3 // ORIGINAL WORKS

KINKTOBER 2024 MASTERLIST

#x reader #x reader smut #monsterfucker #slime x reader #choose your own adventure #part 3 of 6 #monster smut #monster x human #original fiction #kinktober 2024 #kinktober #f!reader #fem reader #monster x reader #terato #teratophillia #slime #tentacles #consentacles

287 notes · View notes

howtofightwrite · 8 months ago

Note

Have you read GRRM books? He claims swords needed to be “especially designed for women’s hands” how true is this?

About as true as all of those, “girl guns.” Because, as you know, a woman cannot hold a Glock unless it's pink or sky blue. Which is to say, not even remotely true.

You might get a situation where a child would be unable to operate a weapon designed for adults because the grip is too cumbersome, but even this is going to be something of an outlier. Even years later the Nicholas Cage's line from Lord of War (2005) sticks with me, when describing the AK he narrates, “...so simple a child could use it, and they do.”

Just like basically any other common grip you encounter in your daily life, from screwdrivers to steering-wheels and cell phones, selling smaller, or more colorful ones, is strictly a marketing gimick.

Now, is a legitimate context, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the wielder's sex. If they had the money, the time, and the desire for a perfect grip, they might commission a smith to produce a grip specifically for their hand. Though, the only place I've ever come across this was in competitive fencing. I have seen cases where someone modifies their blade's grip with tape or other materials to better fit their hand, or the addition of a leather (usually shagreen) wrap over their grip, but even that is somewhat unusual. (Shagreen is leather from a shark or ray, and it grips the skin, making it easier to hold, especially when wet.)

Ironically, girl guns do illustrate the one case where have some weight: Weapons as fashion accessories.

I know I've complained about weapons (particularly handguns) as fashion accessories in previous posts, but the truth is that using weapons like this is not new behavior. In the early modern era, one of the ways the rising middle class liked to display their status was with a sidearm. (In this case, referring to a sidesword or, later, a rapier.) I've looked specifically into women carrying sidearms at that point in history, but it really would not surprise me in the least if they did, and if there were, that at least some of those swords were specifically designed to be more delicate and, “feminine,” per their owner's tastes. (Though, to be fair, a more delicate grip on a rapier would be fairly impressive, as the grips tend to be pretty thin.) This is a case where you might want to look into it further, if it really catches your interest, but I've never really run this down before.

If you're still dubious, feel free to wander into nearly any HEMA event, and you'll have a better than average chance of a woman being willing to prove this idea false with a Zweihander, that may in fact be taller than she is. (Historically, Zwiehanders could be over 2 meters long, and chances extremely good that you're shorter than 2 meters.)

I know I'm regurgitating previous posts here, but it really is worth remembering that swords are much lighter than people think. Zweihanders are some of the heaviest battlefield swords from history, and even the heaviest examples weigh less than 9lbs. Women in HEMA can, and do, use them effectively. Swords aren't about being big and heavy, they're about being a (in this case) seven foot long razor blade.

Since we're on the Zweihander specifically (and this may also apply for some of the other greatswords, such as the Scottish Claymore), this is a case where you might have a custom weapon forged for you. However, in this case, that's more about the right blade length, then worrying about the grip being too thick or too thin. Ideally, you want the blade length to match your height (roughly), this is because of the drills with the weapon itself, though you could adjust to a longer blade if that's what you had.

Now, to be clear, the idea of someone, particularly a noble, having a blade custom forged for them specifically isn't strange. That's something that did happen, both at the noble's request, and also as diplomatic gifts from other nations. Examples of the latter resulted in beautiful art pieces that you would never take into battle.

If you had a situation where you couldn't use a sword because the grip was too large (for, whatever reason), there are ways to fix that. In an ideal situation, you could simply pop off the pommel and grip, and then replace the grip with one that was a better fit to your hand. If the tang itself was the problem (this is the metal core of the grip, and is part of the blade, which the pommel attaches to), you might be able to shave (or file) down the tang, and then replace the grip with a new one, fitted to the now smaller tang. I'm not particularly wild about modifying the tang directly, simply because there is a (minor) risk of reducing the structural integrity of the sword in the process. Though, replacing the grip (especially on a sword with a threaded pommel) is very doable, and unless someone, somehow, screws up catastrophically, it should be a pretty trivial modification. (Again, replacing a sword's original grip with a new shagreen grip does make a lot of sense if the owner wants that improved grip.)

But, to the original question, it's not really a thing.

-Starke

This blog is supported through Patreon. Patrons get access to new posts three days early, and direct access to us through Discord. If you’re already a Patron, thank you. If you’d like to support us, please consider becoming a Patron.

#writing reference #writing advice #writing tips #how to fight write #starke answers

747 notes · View notes

keksalot404 · 9 months ago

Text

Uh oh! Some BOZO decided to play UNDERTALE and UNDERTALE YELLOW at the same time (Both games FUN value was 66) and now the timeline is F*CKED (By about one year; It wasn't that long till Frisk came along)

This is the Guide to UNDERTALE ROM LEAK, mostly a frame of reference for me and you regarding this AU born from a doodle and a dream. Those who just want to see the art with no context, feel free to click the top pic and swipe down or something.

A Tale of 2.5 Souls

Seems like whatever the reason Frisk went to the mountain, they ended up tailing Clover, where the game begins. Control between the 2 fallen children is split, meaning that both Frisk and Clover are free to express their quirks and personalities more.

Adding to that, NarraChara is also here, being visible to Frisk, Clover, AND the player due to more determination in the area. Frisk still has higher DT than Clover, so they're in charge of LOADing and SAVEing as well as playing leader.

Prepare For Trouble, Make It Double!

Now obviously the timeline can't really be UT or UTY if all major events need to be dealt with. The universe's solution? Now every Major Character (and perhaps minor ones) are paired up with their cross game counterparts. While encounters for each monster can be seperate, eventually they will cross paths with eachother and the fallen humans.

With each section of the Underground now longer with even paired area newly connected (More on how that works later), it'd feel like even 2 player characters can't make it easy. Fortunately for a certain route, you may get some help...

Kanako

To fill a void for a Certain Short Scientist, seems fate pulled a few strings, and brought a new friend back from near-death! If you don't kill any monsters during RUINS, Kanako will sense your pure hearts and join the party, acting as the Ralsei to this Diet Fun Gang.

With healing and shield magic, she'll make your journey a lot more manageble, at the cost of not being able to kill any monsters all the way until Asgore (She will still allow you to spare monsters by lowering health but if she senses a chance to kill she will block the attack and scold you for it.)

Being a much more attentive protector than the Skeleton, she'll accompany Frisk and Clover through the emotional highs and lows of their journey, and perhaps maybe...

You'll find out the true reason she's helping you.

Stronger Monsters

For the characters of the 2 timelines being destined to meet, it is also true that destiny will point into blocking your path. For the Major Battles at least, you'll have to fight both of them at the end of each paired areas. An example being meeting North Star in Wild East only for Starlo's betrayal being calling Undyne to hunt you during Waterfall.

Expect combo attacks, fused soul modes, and complex strategies when facing the duel bosses. Some might even compromise Kanako from assisting. No fight has the same solution as the UT and UTY fights (except maybe Papyrus and Martlet), so be prepared and stay determined!

So have fun while you can, won't you? It's not likely you will get these games together again. You wouldn't waste this once-in-a-while experience just to do something you'll regret.

You wouldn't waste it just to see what happens...

...right?...

...

930 notes · View notes

rafesfavgirl · 7 months ago

Text

with a broken heart — r. cameron

part 1. something a little more lighthearted to make up for breaking y'alls hearts :)

series: every few lifetimes

❝ i was grinning like i'm winning i was hitting my marks 'cause i can do it with a broken heart ❞

pairing: ex-bf!rafe x fem!reader

context: after getting your heart broken, you pack your bags and leave the obx, only to come face to face with rafe again, eight years later.

words: 2.4k+

warnings: rafe and reader are aged up (26/27), old flames, FLUFF

"now remember, this client's a big prospect," your boss says as you follow him out of the office car and into the building you were scoping out today. "i guarantee if you can close this deal, you'll be well on your way to becoming the next junior partner."

"hank, are you serious?" you stop in your tracks and he looks at you.

when you first left the outer banks for new york, you went to nyu without a clue on what you wanted to do with the rest of your life. somewhere along the way, you graduated magna cum laude and pursued law school at columbia. your first year, hank took you on as an intern, and by the time you graduated, you had a job lined up for you at one of the biggest real estate agencies in the world. and though you knew how well you did your job, becoming junior partner as a second-year associate was way beyond where you thought you'd be—it was nothing short of a dream come true.

"don't think what you've done for this company has been lost on me, y/n," he tells you. "you're an asset. i knew it since that first summer i took you on as an intern."

a smile comes across your lips. "well, i can't disappoint," you say. "let's close this fucking deal."

"that's what i like to hear, come on," he continues leading you through the building, until the two of you reached a tall guy with a buzzcut wearing a navy blue suit scoping out the place.

"mr. cameron," you don't miss the familiar name when you and your boss stop behind him, your breath hitching when the guy turns around to greet you both. "this is-"

"y/n," your name rolls off rafe's tongue the same way it always did, your heart beating so hard you feared it'd jump out of your chest.

hank's eyes shift between the two of you, as he shakes rafe's hand. "you two know each other?"

"yeah," rafe nods, his eyes set on you—he couldn't believe that you were actually standing in front of him. a part of him thought that when you left the obx he'd never see you again. "we uh— we went to high school together."

"well that's wonderful," hank smiles. "no need for the awkward introduction then."

except— it was awkward. you didn't just go to high school together. you fell in love in high school. and two months before you chose to go to nyu, rafe broke your heart.

"y/n here will be the one walking you through the contract, and hopefully setting you up with one of our best architects," hank explains to him, while you continue trying to process the fact that he was actually here.

what were the odds that he was the client you needed to win over in order to make junior partner?

—

"so, does that all sound good to you?" you finish going over the contract for the building and look at rafe.

the two of you hovered over a table in the empty space that you'd spread out all the documents on.

"yeah, y/n, it all sounds great." the smile he throws your way makes your stomach turn in the worst way—making you realize that the piece of your heart that never stopped beating for him still existed. "where do i sign?"

"uh— right here," you pick up your pen to draw x's on all the lines he had to sign on, before holding it out to him.

he takes it from you, and you watch as he leans over to sign on each and everyone of them, your eyes trailing over how well his suit fit him.

he must hit the gym at least four times a week, you thought. he's grown quite a bit since you last saw him.

"there you go," rafe hands the pen back out to you, and you take it from him with a smile.

"thank you," you say. "you won't regret it."

"oh, i know," he nods, eyes scanning over your face. "i'd never regret anything that involves you."

you feel the heat rise on your cheeks, but you keep it professional, gathering the files on the table back into your folder. "well then, i'll leave you with the contacts of our architects and if you have any further questions, you can reach out to hank or any of the other executives."

"yeah, okay," he replies, hiding his disappointment in the fact that you didn't tell him to contact you with any questions he may have.

"it was a pleasure doing business with you, mr. cameron," you hold out a hand to him for a handshake and he stares at it for a second, before reluctantly placing his hand in yours.

"it sure was," he smiles. "but you know you can just call me rafe, don't you?"

"this is how i address all my clients," you tell him. "it's just the professional thing to do."

"yeah, yeah, i get it," he nods. "guess i'm just not used to it coming from you."

you crack a smile at his somewhat nervous stance—you weren't used to seeing him this way. "it was nice to see you again, rafe. good luck with everything."

"yeah," he grins. "you too."

you turn to walk away, while rafe stays back, scratching the back of his head in contemplation before calling out to you. "hey y/n?"

"yeah?" you ask, stopping to look at him again.

"you got any plans tonight?"

"rafe, i-"

"oh, come on," he cuts you off, slowly closing the distance between you two. "there's no reason we can't be friends, right?"

wrong—there were many reasons. one being that you spent years piecing yourself back together after he decided to give up on you.

"let's catch up," he persists, his blue eyes locking with yours. "get a drink with me tonight."

despite your head screaming no, you agree. "one drink," you say, causing a smile to spread across his face. "ten o'clock. meet me at the bar on fifth."

—

the second you walk into the bar, rafe rises from his stool at the counter and waves you over. he had gotten there 30 minutes early to make sure you weren't left waiting for him—you'd done enough of that.

"hey," he seems nervous when you reach him, wiping his hands on his slacks before reluctantly wrapping his arms around you in a hug.

you resist the urge to giggle—it was kinda entertaining to see this six-foot-two tall man get nervous around you—and briefly return his hug.

"have you been here long?" you ask, taking off your jacket and taking a seat in the empty stool beside him.

"nah, just about five minutes or so," he lies, shrugging and giving you a lopsided smile, as the bartender walks up to greet you both.

"anything i can get you?" she asks, eyes lingering on rafe for a little longer than you.

"just a glass of whiskey for me," rafe tells her. "neat."

"and i'll just have a glass of pinot noir," you say, when the girl turns to look at you. "thank you."

"and you can just put it on this," rafe reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, and you cut in. "rafe, you don't have to-"

"nonsense," he shakes his head at you and slides his black amex across to the bartender. "i invited you out. it's on me."

the bartender picks up his card, and gives him a smile. "rafe cameron. i'll remember that."

subtly, rafe rolls his eyes and you hold back a snicker. "please don't."

the bartender huffs as her eyes shifts between the two of you, but walks away without another word to get your drinks and charge rafe's card.

you kink a brow at him. "you get bartenders flirting with you a lot?"

"i guess it happens every now and then," he shrugs.

"it's definitely the buzz," you tell him, as a different bartender brings over your drinks and hands rafe back his card.

"thank you," he briefly acknowledges him, before turning his attention back on you, an amused smile on his face. "you think?"

"yeah," you nod, bringing your wine glass up to take a sip. "it makes you look older— more mature. it suits you."

he cracks a smile, a small chuckle slipping out from between his lips. "and being a lawyer suits you."

"you really think so?"

"yeah," he nodded, taking a sip of his whiskey. "you looked so cute all dressed up in your little suit," those words make the heat rise on your cheeks, and you hide it with your wine glass. "i've never seen you more in your element. what made you choose law?"

"well…" you trail off, wondering whether or not you should tell him the truth. oh, fuck it. "after we broke up, i found out got into nyu. i was so… mad and hurt over you ending it that i packed my bags and i left, without looking back. during the summers, i stayed here and worked internships with the school just so i'd have an excuse not to go home."

he listened intently, a look of indifference falling across his features. a part of him was hurt at hearing that he'd broken your heart so badly you felt the need to leave, but the other part was proud. you really did that. figured your shit out and made a life for yourself—just like he always knew you would.

"after my second year, i worked an internship with a property management company in brooklyn. we scoped out places all around the city, and i don't know… i kinda just fell in love with it. seeing how happy people got when we'd found them the right apartment or the right space for them to start their business just made me feel really good. so i declared real estate as my major junior year and decided on law school," you continued.

"doll, that's amazing," he smiled, blue eyes twinkling. "which law school did you go to?"

"columbia," you reply, his eyes only widening in amazement. no words could describe the amount of pride in his chest right now. "but enough about me. what about you?"

"oh— uh…" he started and set his whiskey down on the bar. "after you left, i went to rehab. went in and out of that place for about two or three years… i mean, you knew how bad it was— wasn't easy."

you frown upon hearing his struggles with rehab and relapsing, but nod along as he continues.

"been clean for about four years now though," he shrugs, as if it wasn't some big accomplishment.

"rafe, that's amazing," you tell him, setting your glass down on the bar. "good for you."

"i had to," he nodded. "not only for me, but for dad, too. he was starting to talk business and expanding the company, and i just… i couldn't let him down. especially not after i let you down."

you glance down, no longer being able to meet his eyes. you knew that your past together had to come up at one point, you just weren't ready for it. mainly because even after all this time, there was still that little piece of your heart that never stopped belonging to him. it would always be his. "rafe…"

"i hope i'm not being too forward when i ask you this but…" his hand reaches out to touch yours, and you look up at him. "are you seeing anyone?"

"no, i'm not," you shake your head. "after we broke up, i didn't really date much. and even when i did, nothing ever really stuck."

that was enough to have a smile crack across his his, eyes brighter than you'd seen them in a really long time. "guess that makes two of us."

"guess so," you shrug, thoughts running through your mind a hundred times a minute as you try to find a way to change the subject. you weren't ready for where this conversation was about to go. at least, not yet. "but, uh— tell me about cameron development, how's that going?"

he chuckles at your eagerness to change the subject, as you sipped on your wine, but goes with it. he'd break you down again. eventually.

—

after finishing your drinks at the bar, rafe offered to walk you home since your apartment was only about a block or two away, assuring you that he'd just get a cab back to his hotel afterward.

and while a part of you screamed at you to say no, that little piece of your heart that still beat for him won over, and you agreed.

"well, this is me," you say, stopping in front of your apartment complex and looking at him. "it was really nice to see you, rafe."

"so that's it?" he asks, catching you off guard. "this just ends here?"

he takes a step towards you, making your heart pitter-patter, as his eyes scanned your face.

"rafe-"

"don't you ever wonder…" he cuts you off, his gaze lingering on your lips for just a moment before his eyes shifted to meet yours. "what we could've been? what we could be?"

"i-"

"i know i fucked shit up with you, a'ight?" he said, hand coming up to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear.

the gesture threatens to make your eyes flutter close at the feeling of his familiar touch, but you keep your composure.

"i was young and i was stupid, and i thought you deserved better," he continued. "but y/n, there isn't a day that has gone by in the last eight years that you haven't crossed my mind. i think about you all the time, just hoping for the day you'd finally come back to the banks."

your breath hitches at his confession, that tiny piece of your heart that held onto him, growing three sizes.

"i know i don't deserve a second chance, i know that," he told you. "but i'm not the guy i was back in high school. i'm clean now, and i've turned my life around. i can be that guy for you now. the one you needed me to be all those years ago."

"okay," you whisper.

"what?" he musn't have heard you right.

"i'd be lying to myself if i said i haven't thought about you either, rafe," you say.

a small chuckle falls from his lips, which spread into a smile. "seriously?"

you nod. "come pick me up at seven tomorrow. let's give it a chance."

part 3 coming soon!!

i'm rooting for them tbh

reblogs and comments are deeply appreciated <33

click here to be added to my tag list!!

tags: @chiaraanatra @ijustwanttoreadlols @wearemadeofstardust0 @rafesgiirl @solanathascientst @10ava01 @werewhatkilledthedinosaurs @void21 @groovycass @azrielsgirll @rroslitas @crvptidgf @star-girl-05 @redhead1180 @shadyshadyy @prettypimpcess12 @emotionsmgcbabe @outerbankspov @letmeintourheart @gublerstylesobrien1238

#rafe cameron #rafe #obx #rafe obx #outer banks #rafe cameron x reader #rafe cameron x y/n #rafe x reader #rafe x y/n #rafe outer banks #rafe cameron fic #rafe fic #rafe fluff #cute rafe #obx fic

667 notes · View notes

krypticcafe · 2 years ago

Note

Okay so we’ve got the boys reacting to being called babygirl, but how would their partner react to being babygirlified??

When they call you babygirl (COD:MWII)

rating: mature

character(s): GN!Reader, Kyle "Gaz" Garrick, John Price, John "Soap" McTavish, Simon "Ghost" Riley, König, Gary "Roach" Sanderson, Hound

warning(s): language, suggestiveness, angst, a smidge of a graphic injury, general military violence, no beta read haha

a/n: reminder to all my gn and masc readers that I'm using babygirl in a gender-neutral context and so is the reader!! Also, I can't guarantee that it'll all be lighthearted as the last part but I can guarantee y'all eatin good tonight :)))

Gaz

Funnily enough, he purrs it out when you come to bed after a long day of work, pulled into his side the moment you laid down.

"How's my babygirl doing? Good, yeah?"

You're stunned, surprised at the fact that he even used it at all.

He's amused by your reaction and presses a soft kiss to your head, making a mental note to use it more often like this.

Like him, you try not to fall too into the feeling, but he already knows the effect on you.

Luckily for you, he doesn't abuse it, but almost torments you with it, using it in private or a soft tone that only you can hear.

But you like it. It's intimate, a little special in how he uses it to get you smiling or flustered. Much like a lot of other aspects of your relationship, it's something you can trust him with and be respectful about.

Most of the time, you'll find him using it on a sleepy morning, arms around your waist with his chest against your back and his face nestled on your shoulder blade, mumbling a "mornin'" or a "how'd you sleep last night?"

For him, it's best when he can get real close to you and just pour his affections out with that simple little nickname.

He watches you stumble out of bed while he pours a cup of coffee for the two of you and smiles innocently when he offers it.

"Sleep well last night, baby-"

"You are so damn lucky I love you." You warn, taking the cup and rolling your eyes when he laughs.

Don't worry, he knows he's one lucky bastard.

Price

"Atta soldier, how's my babygirl holding up?"

He's watching proudly from afar while you finish pummeling through a group of enemies like it's nothing.

"Doin' alright Captain, we're clear to push on." You respond with confidence.

But you don't tell him that his comment through the comms alone nearly threw you off your rhythm.

He uses it again when you're all at the pub celebrating another landmark success, subtly bragging while half-drunk about how you carried the team today.

A part of you is mortified not just because Price tends to open up a little too much when he's drunk, but also because you hated the fact that you liked hearing him call you that in the first place, how you didn't need a drink for your mouth to get dry and your face warm. Not to mention it was in public—practically a declaration that you belonged to him.

Not that you minded.

His grip grows firm on your side while he speaks with admiration, your face grows warm since one, he was calling you that in front of so many others, and two, he didn't just hand out praise to anyone so when he meant it, he really meant it.

Later when you're both headed to your shared quarters, he asks, "So were you havin' a fever earlier or..?"

Of course he noticed.

You explain to him it just caught you off guard, that's all. Especially when he says it in such a way.

In the back of your head, you hoped he'd be too drunk to remember this in the morning but knowing him...

"I see... well then, we'll just have to put that to the test tonight, won't we?"

You have no objections.

Soap

"There's my babygirl, been lookin' for that smile since we been back."

After a particularly rough mission, Soap had been glued to your side for the past hour or so, talking it out with you.

When a particularly dumb joke of his finally cracked you, that's when he said it.

You groan, still laughing while leaning your head into his shoulder, muttering about how "irresistibly insufferable" he could be sometimes.

"So you admit I'm irresistible?"

That gets him a lighthearted punch on his chest and some more hearty laughter out of the two of you.

You now find him using it here and there to get a smile out of you. He's got an eye for when you're a little more tense or stressed than usual.

He doesn't use it in excess either, he's sweet and soft about it, not as casual with the pet names as some would think.

Oh, but don't take it for granted because he can and will tease you. You like to blame him for your ability to keep your guard up for so long and for his ability to somehow find new ways to break it again and again.

And while you think it's a horribly corny pet name, you know he has nothing but good intentions, and you can't ignore the way it makes your heart flutter.

He loves it too, he's a sucker for giving and receiving cheesy nicknames, stuff that really gets a reaction out of you but doesn't cross the line.

"If you don't like it, then why dinnae you give me a different thing to call you?" Cue the McTavish SmirkTM, and you wonder what he has planned this time. And like how you got yourself into this relationship- you decide to humor him.

"You already call me 'love' and 'sugar', I don't think you need any more to torment me with, McTavish."

"I don't know... I'm thinkin' 'my fiancé' sounds pretty damn good."

"But I'm not your-"

Oh.

Ghost

You're thrown into the air and onto the ground after a blast hits, one so loud that you're left hearing nothing for several seconds.

Out of the chaos, you hear Ghost call your name, and you try to stand only to fall back into a pair of arms.

"It's me- it's me." He lowers you down onto his lap and looks over you, "Fucking hell... what did they do to you?"

You realize what he's talking about when you try to hold yourself while gasping for breath, but find a cold metal rod jutting out of your abdomen.

"Okay, I'm gonna get you up, we're gonna get to the others-" He halts when you scream out in pain and lowers you back down.

"Nonono- please Simon, it hurts, it fucking hurts so much I can't-"

His heart breaks at the sound of you choking on words, holding you closer, and trying to reassure you (and himself because he's never had his heart pounding so hard and his mask feel so damn suffocating and god dammit he can't afford to lose someone again-)

"I know, I know, I got you babygirl, I got you. It's alright now, but I'm not leaving you like this. You're gonna be alright, it's gonna be okay."

You can only nod your head, tightening your hold around his neck when he carries you. It feels pathetic every time you let out a yelp or sob of pain, but Simon's patient, he's constantly giving you reassurance and letting you know that there's just a bit more left to go. At some point, you let exhaustion take over your body.

Thankfully, you wake up laying in an infirmary bed, with a sleepless Simon at your side. "How are you feeling?" He asks.

"Could be better," You cringe at how hoarse your voice is and thank Simon when he gives you a cup of water, "You seem worse than me to be honest."

"Yeah? 'n whose fault is that? Oh right, the one who took a pipe to the stomach."

Rolling your eyes, you try to remember the last things you saw before blacking out and smirk to yourself when it comes back to you.

"So, since when were you a "babygirl" type of guy? Is it a common thing in Manchester, or are you just that soft for me, Lieutenant?"

"Maybe I should've just left you there." He groans, and you scoff, laughing as you shove at him. Even if he's shit with words, you know deep down he would never have the guts to do so.

Only a fool would.

König

Let's be honest, he'd only really say it after you've said it to him.

You don't push him, knowing he just has trouble trying to get a natural feel for it and it's not a huge deal. Plus, you already adore all the other names he's given you, most of which are more familiar and natural for him to say with them being in his native language.

Unfortunately, one night at the bar, you find someone else directing the particular nickname at you.

"Hey babygirl, what's a cutie like you doing all alone here?"

But fortunately, you were in fact, not alone.

Konig rises from the barstool behind you and his height alone should have the person pissing their pants.

"You should mind whose 'babygirl' you're talking to, arschloch."

You know what? Close enough.

You turn back to check on König and wow, that. Is. A. Sight.

König's chest rises and falls with his aggravated breathing and you find yourself lost in how intense his glare is while he watches the person scamper away. His words are on a loop in your head with how the rasp and snarl in his voice have your stomach twisting and your heart running laps.

You'd never admit it to him, but you have to repress all of your urges whenever he gets like this on the battlefield. Christ.

"You alright?" You breathlessly sigh, wrapping a hand around his.

His tension instantly melts at your touch and you smile at that.

"I should be asking you that..." He murmurs, almost ashamed as if he had any reason to be.

"Oh I'm more than fine now."

An idea comes to you.

"I'd be even better if you can tell me what you just said to them, perhaps in private? I don't think I can hear with how noisy it is in here" You snicker, tugging him closer.

You just absolutely know he's burning under that hood when his eyes go wide.

"I'm just kidding, liebe," you chuckled, taking another sip of your drink, "But honestly? That was kinda hot. Whaddya say we get outta here and cuddle tonight?"

His response is a quick and eager nod, making you laugh and whisk him away to your quarters.

Roach

Ah if only you weren't such a curious soul.

You overheard some of your teammates call each other "babygirl", which made you wonder if there was a sign for it.

You blurted out this question to your boyfriend, not thinking much of it because, hey, you always asked him about signs you weren't sure of or hadn't quite learned yet, or in this case, pure curiosity.

He stares at you dumbfounded before signing the words.

"Oh, so it's literally just 'baby' and 'girl'?"

He nods, "Yeah. What, do you want me to start calling you that or something?"

He lets out stifled laughs when he sees the look of realization on you before you throw your burning face in your hands.

"I'm a damn idiot."

"I know you are."

You nearly strangle him for that comment.

You make him forget about the conversation, but he keeps the thought in the back of his head for future reference because oh you are so gonna regret this >:)

After a mission, he comes up to you and asks, "How'd it go? My babygirl didn't get too roughed up this time, did you?"

"No, I'm good, wasn't a huge bust-" You stop organizing your gear right then and there, mentally replay what he signed, and slowly turn your head, narrowing your eyes at him. "-you little shit! I told you forget about that!"

"But you like it, don't you? You're trying so hard not to smile right now!" He gushes.

"Sanderson, I'm gonna kill you!" You run after him, chasing him around before tackling him down to the ground.

"I could get used to this." He muses, "Maybe you should call me babygirl, kinda suits me too. Oh! We should get matching patches, don't you think?"

"..."

"Wait where are you going—"

Hound

This time, you had been separated from your team for days after a mission had gone horribly wrong, with no way to communicate otherwise you'd all be jeopardized before you could be rescued.

You didn't even know if there was a rescue.

Just your luck, an enemy had you cornered with the audacity to use your own gun against you. And it was your last one, too. You brace for impact only to see them get knocked out while a voice called out your name.

It was Hound. They immediately run up to you, checking you all over, hands hovering around you worriedly, "Did he hurt you? Christ, they told me that you'd be in danger if I went but shit, how am I supposed to wait when—"

They stopped the moment you began to tremble, instantly pulling you into a tight embrace, and tucking your head in their shoulder.

"Hey hey, c'mere, it's okay. I'm here now, you're gonna be alright, it's okay." He softly repeats, and you weep in relief. "Oh babygirl... they can't hurt you anymore, I promise."

It was warm and safe.

You were warm and safe.

Hound spends the evening tending to you (you told them they didn't have to, it wasn't like you had major injuries), doing your paperwork for you, getting you food, and cleaning you up.

But all you want is to get your mind away from the events of the past few days, a distraction to feel good, feel safe, and feel loved, and he happily complies with your every need for the night.

"Figured you'd need some help after last night... sorry about that." They sheepishly mumble.

You wake up the next morning in your shared quarters, sore but in a pleasant way. The door opens and it's none other than your partner with a plate from the mess hall.

You pull them down for a quick kiss and thank them, telling them not to worry about it as you take the plate.

"You need anything else babygirl, or-"

You choke on a piece of scrambled egg, and they're already rubbing your back, holding back laughter.

"Whoops, should've waited until you were done, I didn't think you'd get so- I mean I thought after last night—" He's practically giggling now and while you'd normally relish in such a rare sight, you whine at him.

"But seriously, if you need anything, I'm there in a heartbeat."

You nod and thank whatever higher being out there for such a patient partner.

a/n pt2: hope the ghost and hound bbygirls enjoyed the "creative liberties" I took because I know I did teehee- anyways lmk how y'all feeling after that :)))

7K notes · View notes

mariaace · 1 month ago

Text

Would you go out with me...? (ft.Bllk man)

Context: How would they ask you out and where.

A/n: sooo this is an idea from @dazailoveschuuya, so shout out to them🤲🏻🙏🏻 BUT i hope everyone likes it!!

Warnings: none

Pairings: Isagi, Bachira, Rin, Reo, Nagi, Chigiri

Isagi Yoichi

Isagi would be nervous at first. He would repeat his speech for like half an hour before he actually goes to ask you out. Then he messes it up. He is such a loser outside of football, but you love him. Would have the biggest smile on his face when you say yes tho, like he's 'Really?!?!'. Like please✋ He would take you somewhere simple like a cafè or a walk in the park. It's cliche, but it's cute. You two talk during the whole time and after that he walks you back home. Would gently try to interlock his fingers with yours while walking, to see if you'll allow him to. Don't say anything, just hold his hand.

Bachira Meguru

Bachira is straightforward. He would walk up in your personal space with his usual smile and ask you right up. Would be very happy when you say yes, but then when you ask him where you two actually are going, when you should be ready, he doesn't know. He stops right away, because he didn't think that far. Then, would just ask where you want to go and if you have preferences for anything. Not exactly holding your hand, more of like jumping on you. Doesn't matter where you are or what you're doing. In the end he would ask to do it again like tomorrow.

Rin Itoshi

Oh poor guy doesn't have any idea how to ask you out. Would most likely leave a note in your locker or on your desk, because he is not that afraid you'll reject him. When you walk up to him with the note in your hand he is shaking. But when you say yes, he's relieved. Would tell you to the stadium late in the evening when there is no one there and it's almost dark. You would be kind of confused at first on why he is taking you there, but then he would point to the reddish sky in front of you two. The sunset. It's so beautiful. You sit on the ground of the stadium talking and watching the sky.

Reo Mikage

Now Reo is confident. He's got the looks, the intelligence, the athletics, the money ahem what was that? He believes in himself and straight up ask you during one the breaks between the classes. When you say yes, he is fast. He quickly rumbles when he'll pick you up and how to dress and is already on his way. When the time comes, he picks you up with a car with a driver, taking you somewhere fancy, to like a restaurant for just the two of you. You two talk all evening and then he pays, ofc. Get you back home and walks you to you to your door, like the proper gentleman. Would try or not anything depending on how open you are to it. Holding hands, etc.

Nagi Seishiro

Nagi is honestly...well Nagi. He isn't nervous, he didn't plan it, he just goes for it. If you say yes, perfect. Don't expect much from him. Asks you out on day and doesn't tell you anything more until you see a text for you to come to his house. When you do, you lay in bed, talking about whatever comes to mind. Obviously, playing video games, whether that be on the laptop, or on the phones. He explains it to you as much as he can actually. There is a chance that both of you fall asleep on his bed. He wouldn't intentionally try anything, but would without realizing. Like, taking your hand while explaining, leaning a little on you, etc.

Chigiri Hyoma

Now, if you read his trivia, it says that he once rejected more than half of his class. So he has an idea that you might like him, still is a little nervous. Asks you out by passing you a note during a class. You turn it back with the answer yes on it. He texts you after school when and the address of the place. Two days later, you two meet up in front of the place. Most likely a spa center or something similar. You two just talk while your hair is being washed and laugh. The staff knows what's happening, trust me. Walks you to your house after and compliments you.

@dazailoveschuuya @transmascaraa

309 notes · View notes

marybeatriceofmodena · 2 years ago

Note

What did Andrew Lloyd Webber do to make Patti Lupone upset? Sorry, saw your tags and i was curious

Oh.

Oh honey.

You sweet child.

Anyway, get ready for one of the most infamous showdowns in all musical theatre history, with the guy who writes the straightest musicals on Broadway (derogatory) and the one and only, the matriarch, the queen, two three-time Tony award winner Patti LuPone.

So, Andrew Lloyd Webber was basically kind of a boy genius in his prime - he met his future collaborator Tim Rice when they were 17 and 20 respectively, he wrote his first big hit, Jesus Christ Superstar, at 22, with Tim Rice writing the lyrics. And it was kind of a big deal at the time because the topic was controversial (you know, the Passion with rock music), but also because Broadway wasn't that far off from its golden age and let's just say the music and style were very different from, say, My Fair Lady. Or The Sound of Music. Or Funny Girl. It was basically the Rent/Hamilton of its time. (Yeah, Stephen Sondheim was around at that time, he worked on West Side Story which was revolutionary in of itself, but he's kind of an oddball in this case. You'll understand why later.)

Their real follow up (I'm not counting Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for a variety of reasons) was a little musical called Evita, which you might know mainly because of a song called Don't Cry For Me Argentina. Or at least, your mom has probably heard it once at the very least. It's that song that's oversung from a musical while being out of context along with I Dreamed a Dream for Les Misérables. Or Memory from Cats.

youtube

Evita tells the story of Eva Peron, the wife of an Argentinian dictator, who basically screws her way to the top and ends up becoming the mistress of Juan Peron and the most beloved woman in her country through guile and deceit. Yes, I know the historical accuracy is very much debated but I know jackshit about Argentina's history except the bare basics so don't come at me. It was first produced in the West End in London, with Elaine Paige in the role, but because of Equity issues, she couldn't reprise her role for the Broadway production. So a Julliard graduate who was mostly starring in David Mamet plays got the part instead, and that was Patti LuPone.

Patti... did not have a good time during Evita, because the part is basically the kind of score where you can tell the composer is used to writing male parts, but most female singers have a two-octave range (yes, you got Julie Andrews who used to have a three-octave range, and many others, but they're exceptions), so she struggled a lot. That being said, if you listen to live recordings of her, you wouldn't be able to tell, and it got a lot easier later on. But she had this to say:

"Evita was the worst experience of my life. I was screaming my way through a part that could only have been written by a man who hates women. And I had no support from the producers, who wanted a star performance onstage but treated me as an unknown backstage. It was like Beirut, and I fought like a banshee."

This is from Patti's autobiography, which she wrote in 2007 - 8 years after shit with ALW went down. With all that said, she won a Tony Award for Evita, and she pretty much became a musical theatre household name from then on. She played Fantine in Les Misérables, Nancy in Oliver!, Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes. Meanwhile, ALW's next big hits were Cats (I'm not even kidding, Cats was a hit), and, you guessed it, The Phantom of the Opera, which he wrote in part to showcase his then wife Sarah Brightman's triple threat talents.

So, you need to understand before I continue that ALW, from my perspective, has always had a bit of an inferiority complex. He's basically associated to writing these commercially successful musicals that show a big spectacle but aren't ultimately substantial. I'm not sure I entirely agree with that, but I do think that if he didn't have Hal Prince, Maria Bjornson, Charles Hart and Gillian Lynne backing him up for Phantom, it would have probably been a Rocky Horror Picture Show knockoff people would have forgotten about pretty quickly. This is what I mean:

youtube

Yep, that was Phantom before any of the people I mentioned above (and Michael Crawford) were really involved.

Remember how I said Stephen Sondheim was an oddball? The thing with him is that his musicals weren't always commercially successful, but in general, in part thanks to being Leonard Bernstein's protégé, he was generally pretty well-respected and it was considered that his work was bringing musicals to a whole other level. Without Sondheim, you wouldn't have Jonathan Larson, and you wouldn't have Lin-Manuel Miranda. I am convinced ALW is resentful of that, and when you stop and think about it for more than 10 seconds, it's so obvious he REALLY wants to be Sondheim or at least command the same level of respect, but that's a story for another day.

So, after Phantom, ALW had other musicals that followed that either got a meh reception or outright flopped. Then there was Sunset Boulevard, which is based on the movie of the same name with Gloria Swanson. Despite all of her griefs for Evita, Patti LuPone agreed to partake in the musical as Norma Desmond, for its production in London, with the promise that she would transfer to Broadway once that production would open. And overall, after a string of flops, Sunset was actually doing pretty well.

HOWEVER. One day, while reading the gossip column of a newspaper, Patti found out that contrary to what she was promised, Glenn Close, who was meanwhile starring as Norma in the Los Angeles production, was to play Norma on Broadway. That was a complete surprise for her since no one on the production team had bothered to tell her it was happening - and keep in mind that for the news to come up the way it did in a gossip column, it probably would have necessitated a delay of a few weeks between the producers and the newspaper, which would have given them plenty of time to break the news to Patti. And Patti kind of needed the leg up because she was pretty bitter that a) Madonna was cast in the Evita adaptation instead of her; b) they actually lowered the key to fit Madonna's voice range, and she still had to expand her own to be able to sing the (lowered) score. And trust me, Patti is mad about it to this day.

So of course, she trashed her dressing room, the cast and crew weren't even mad about it because they were as shocked and angered as she was by the news. Patti sued Andrew Lloyd Webber for breach of contract, namely for 1 MILLION DOLLARS (yup, those are the real numbers), won, used the money she got from the lawsuit to get a swimming pool, which she called (and I SHIT YOU NOT) the Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool. Since then, Webber is dead to her, to the point rumor has it she had part of a building blocked during an event so she could get out of it without coming across Webber, because she hates him so flipping much she doesn't even want to be in the same building as the guy.

(There's also drama that happened with Faye Dunaway who was supposed to replace Glenn Close after she went from Los Angeles to Broadway, except they abruptly closed the show down after Close left, but that's a story for another day)

So with all the bad press, and with ALW forced to pay 1 million dollars for Patti's lawsuit, that led Sunset's productions to close earlier than expected. ALW has stayed around since, with... mitigated output, so to say. The lowest point for a lot of people is Love Never Dies, the sequel to Phantom, which some people love, and that's fine, but it didn't do well with either critics nor fans of the original show, which ALW is EXTREMELY BUTTHURT ABOUT. And like, there are so many stories I could tell about LND alone, but I will share my own crack theory about it, since it does relate to the ask.

Anyway, buckle up.

So. There have been jokes going around for years that the Phantom in LND is basically ALW's self-insert, where he displays to the world that he's totally not over Sarah Brightman leaving him (in part because making Phantom kinda ruined their marriage lmao), despite, you know, having married since. (Aaaaaakward.) So LND basically becomes this really uncomfortable therapy session where a man writes a self-insert musical about how his ex-wife made a big mistake of leaving a sensitive artistic soul such as himself. The characters from Phantom who appear in LND are all more or less unrecognizable as a result, and one who gets it worse (in my humble opinion) is Meg Giry, who was basically Christine's sweet and loyal ballerina friend who basically went into the Phantom's lair on her own to save her friend despite the danger. In LND, she's basically a bitter hag (because ALW hates women, guess Patti was right about that), who really likes the swim and even has a stripping vaudeville number about it, written in universe by the Phantom, no less.

For comparison, here's Don Juan Triumphant (the Phantom's opera in the original):

youtube

And here's Bathing Beauty (the vaudeville number):

youtube

Yeah, so... do you see why people hate LND already?

And that's not the only thing with Meg! She's also pining for the Phantom to pay attention to her and threatens to drown the Phantom and Christine's secret love child when he makes it clear that he's gonna love Christine for EVA AND EVA.

So, with everything we learned today about ALW, would someone like him view someone like Patti LuPone as some sort of crazy, bitter diva who's obsessed with him for whatever reason? Absolutely. Would he be petty enough to insert Patti LuPone into his self-insert musical, which gave us the version of Meg Giry we got in LND? Of course. Why does Meg love to swim so much and why does she drag Gustave out ostensibly for a swim? Is it a dig at Patti's Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool? Maybe.

I kind of hope we find out one day if that theory is true. And maybe start a kickstarter so Patti can add this painting from the 2004 movie in her collection.

Fun fact: during the process of casting for the 2004 movie adaptation of POTO, ALW allegedly suggested Patti LuPone to play Carlotta... only for Joel Schumacher to have to awkwardly remind him that they were not on speaking terms. The idea was therefore promptly dropped.

#YOU'RE WELCOME ANON #anon asks #Andrew Lloyd Webber #Patti LuPone #evita #sunset boulevard #phantom of the opera #love never dies

3K notes · View notes