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inkskinned · 5 months

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it is the first snow today. i think we should all have off work, even though it didn't stick. i think there should be 4 national holidays, one for each season. happy first snow, go home and make cookies. for spring it can be the first crocus. for summer the first lightning bug. for autumn, the first golden leaf. go home, kiss your dog, feed your cat (who is absolutely already-fed but somehow still starving.)

i think we should all take more showers together, but i mean that in the soft way. i mean it like taking a nap. two years ago i had 5 adult friends in my queen bed, all of us laying across each other, head over belly over thigh over hand. any time one of us would giggle, it would ripple over each of us, like pulling on a spiderweb. kim actually needed to nap and didn't get to sleep and i am still sorry for it even though this is one of my most precious memories.

i think we should all wash each other's hair, i mean. i walk my dog and i watch someone put up twinkle lights around their front porch. alex and i just moved, and i love the neighborhood. already so many of our new neighbors have stopped by to say hello. the nice lady downstairs also collects plants, like me. she gave us her number on a pink post-it note. i am trying to decide whether to make her cookies or brownies.

i am going through a very hard time. something bad happened this weekend that i do not wish to discuss. it is hanging over me. i think of the green ribbon, and the woman who had her throat cut. it feels like that sometimes, inside of my body. like i am walking and talking despite being half-corpsed. like i am hanging on by a ribbon, standing on some kind of cusp. i keep saying - at least it wasn't worse. we are so lucky it wasn't worse. the idea is river-rock smooth now, all the edges worried off.

in this very dark night - the sun sets by 3 now - people don't need to, but they try anyway. they paint the missing light into things. i have an embarrassing number of missed calls and texts, but i feel the love from them nevertheless - hey. if you need something, i'm here. i will bring you food/puzzles/anything. i got you.

i think we should all have a big group chat where we do errands with strangers. this week i got lost in a home depot, which is wild because i'm a lesbian and we are actually hatched in a lowe's lumber section. there were two other women in the whole store. we ended up shopping together, at first by accident (we all needed things in the same aisle), and then because, well, why not. one of the ladies was taller than me, so she pulled down the screws i needed. i am agile and have the personality of a raccoon, so they sent me after anything below 3 feet. we talked about holiday plans and never learned each other's names, but did learn all the drama about each other's families.

i am making you cupcakes, because i have so much affection i want to pour it into batter. you ask me if i am eating enough per meal. i wrap your gift twice, trying to do it prettily. i get excited to give it to you, just because i hope you'll be excited too.

my parents drive an hour just to see the new apartment and to do the parent thing; standing in the kitchen saying things like "oh you'll get so much use from this dishwasher" and "well, you could paint that" and "when your mother and i moved it was uphill both ways and in a snowstorm and of course your brother was an infant." my mother brought me a plant for housewarming. i always say i love you before she leaves.

i play dnd on tuesdays still, after all these years. we all keep that night free. at one point, between grad school and marriage and all of it, we had to have a serious discussion about how to keep it running. we will keep going, we decided eventually. just to see each other, even if we don't play - you are all important to me. sebastian is not prone to affection but last night he stole my usual sign off - i love you all, be good, he said. he was laughing.

i don't love the winter, actually. i like snow in theory, but i grew up in the north, and am too-familiar with the season of "mud and sludge". i don't like being cold. but i do love something kind of soft and rare: every year around this time, people remember oh yes. you and i are human together. and i have love to spare.

it is the first snow, and something in my heart is finally warm again. i have spent what felt like the last 18 months just going-through-the-motions. it has felt blank and immediate, like i would never actually feel again. that sounds extremely trite and stupid - but that is the boring and familiar experience of depression. life just washes up against your windows, and you watch it happening. you see things that should be lovely and affecting, and it just whispers too-thin. i was desperately uncreative. uninterested in my hobbies. unimpressed by my writing. i told my therapist, often, i don't know how to find hope again.

almost sheepishly, something strange and lovely is burning in my chest. i keep not-looking at it, worried it will scamper back into the shadows again. it is skittish and wild, but it is so warm i want to sink my hands into its fur and feel it breathing. i love-hate it: if it's real, it can hurt me when it leaves again. but i am icarus-born, sun-lover and poet: i can't help myself. despite my best intentions, i am falling in love with life again.

i am planning to make cookies for my friends. alex and i are going to go christmas tree shopping. we picked out matching dish towels last night, and they have little mushrooms on them.

i love you. it does come back. yes, even after a long time. even for you. i promise. keep trying. you will wake up and it will be a day you can smile about.

write me when you get there. we will take the day off of work, and i will wash your hair, and we will both be laughing.

#spilled ink #writeblr #pos #recovery #my brain is like - don't trust it!!!!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!! we can't be wrong again!!!!!!#and im like. what if the sorrow is the thing that's wrong though.#what if this - this!!!!! - is the truth

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needle-noggins · 11 months

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(CW for SA, suicidal ideation) Here we go. My favorite and simultaneously least favorite panel of Vash and Knives.

I've seen a few interpretations of this scene and before we dive into the one that really struck me, let's start with the more... chill one. We're finally introduced to the third gun of Trigun, Vash's angel arm. And the way we're introduced to it involves Knives forcing him to pull the trigger. Of course, since no one knows anything about Knives, the people of Noman's Land blame Vash for Fifth Moon, and Vash likewise blames himself (this is kinda a spoiler but if you've been paying attention, it's just par for the course). However, he's not the one who pulled the trigger, Knives is. It brings up an interesting moral question of blame - do we blame the gun (and Vash, who is being used/objectified as a weapon here), or the person who wanted it to happen? Guns don't kill people, genocidal twins do!

Now for the awful interpretation, the one that makes me cry and wish Vash was real so I could hug him and pay for his therapy. And really highlights how awful Knives is and how far he'd go for his brother in his own, fucked-up way. I touched on this in a previous post about Legato and the Murder Cafe, and the whole time I was thinking about Fifth Moon but didn't want to say anything for the sake of spoilers.

So. Pay attention to the way Vash and Knives are standing. Knives, when he first grabbed Vash's head, was standing in front of him. He moves behind him to better control him and yeah, he's still controlling him via hand on head, and now he's got his other hand gripping Vash's chest, where feathers/wings are manifesting. Knives is assaulting him. If you wanna get crazy with it and say that the angel arm is kinda phallic, you could say... yeah. This is rape. I heard that specific interpretation once and while I accepted it I also don't know if that would be generally accepted or if I'd be called out for it, so I'm trying to tread lightly here.

It also doesn't escape me that of course the angel arm has feminine features like the plants - the plants that, again, humans are exploiting for their ability to create. There's a lot of feminist commentary to be made here but many people have said it better than me. Specifically I'm thinking of this one post I saw about gender fuckery and Tristamp Vash. Anyway.

Also, the atomic bomb/black hole/sun/whatever that is in the middle... It's just so powerful. It's terrifying. The eldritch body horror here is a punch to the gut. What the fuck, Trigun? I thought this was a funky space western!!!

Oh, and here's more commentary on the following few panels:

Vashussy shot, Knives is still right behind him. Yeah, I wasn't kidding about how bad this pose is for them. Knives, you sick fuck.

Vash shoots himself in the leg (a key difference from '98 trigun, lol), because of course he does, but it doesn't free him from the arm.

The arm's getting darker/the light inside is getting lighter! Stampede did an awesome job with their interpretation of the angel arm and I don't think I would have understood it without that. Also, on my first read I didn't notice that Vash is literally levitating, which is cool, but also terrifying because ?? he's not in control of that either??

Finally. A super painful, minimalist, double-page spread. Nightow loves 'em. Vash thinks he's dying (maybe?) and he wishes he had never existed. It's not suicidal ideation per se, but he wishes he didn't exist at all because he's already caused enough suffering. This is a low for him, because he believes so strongly in the concept of the Blank Ticket. (Come on, soupy brain bitch boy, get it together!) He's a monster, it's just how he was born, and he's not in control. Very specifically too, he says "we", and then changes it to "I"... he doesn't blame Knives at all, and that's very him. I want to shake him! Stop playing the martyr, Vash!

#trimax #trigunbookclub #cw assault #cw sa #ive never tagged content warnings before please help if i didnt do it well enough #cw sui ideation #vash the stampede #millions knives #also if you say ONE WORD about plancest i will kill you with my mind because you have sorely misunderstood the point here #posting this makes me so nervous ngl #dont hate me

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infernalwitxhcraft · 1 year

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All About: House Spirits

Well, it's about time I brought them up once again, in their own post. This guide may be on the lengthy side, but it's here to explain what they are and how to begin working with them.

What the hell is a house spirit?

House spirits come from all different cultures and folklore. Known as, you guessed it, guardians of the home. They protect the house itself, the land around it (they get along with the land spirit(s) most of the time), and they also protect the family if treated right. A home certainly doesn't feel like one without these presiding spirits helping. In fact it gives the home a life of it's own.

What do they look like? Are there types?

Across many cultures, there are these spirits and the folklore varies for each. In my tribe, we consider them to usually be little dwarves or goblins that must be appeased, otherwise they will cause bad luck or even resort to curses. Regular offerings are required. Then there are the land spirits, which is a whole other topic. If given regular offerings and respect, we believe that they will not only generate good luck and events for us, but protect us and help with our daily lives. For the witches of the tribe, they will often assist in rituals and spells. That all being said, this has carried over into my personal beliefs. Many cultures describe house spirits assisting with the same things and if they are displeased, bad occurrences following. As far as looks go, it depends on the folklore surrounding your area and your cultural background(s). You may believe in one or two types or an entire spectrum of house spirits from the realm of the fair folk. You could have one house spirit or twelve. It's entirely up to your home. In some cultures, there are door spirits (yes, that guard the doors) and ones that work in the kitchen, among others for different functions of the home.

Okay so, I live in an apartment building. Can I still work with them?

Yes. When I used to live in apartments, I found it was an either/or situation regarding how many were there. Some buildings have only a few that roam around, sometimes only one that protects the entire building, or there may be multiple hanging out in one apartment. Most complexes have multiple however. And then for the lucky buildings that have one for each apartment...those are nice. I've included a short offering ritual at the end of this post, which you can use to ask questions about whatever you wish to know, including how many there are in the building.

What kind of offerings do they like?

Milk, honey, bread, and herbs are a safe bet. They especially like bread baked by you, as they see it as a labor of love and that your energy is in there. Taking time to tend to the garden and taking care of your property & home in general are things they like to see. Don't leave the house a huge mess, as many prefer a tidy atmosphere. Not an offering per say, but important to mention nonetheless.

What should I put on their altar?

I keep my altar for them in the kitchen, as it is in a place that is undisturbed and can't be torn up by my land shark (aka, my dog). I also feel that most of the house spirits I have worked with in my life enjoy hanging out in this area of the home. They seem to like assisting in kitchen magic and cooking in general and the warmth of the stove. You may also want to include a small area near the front door if you believe that there are separate spirits for there. I'd recommend a shelf, as it won't take up as much space in the entryway.

Okay, back on track. Plants (if the space gets enough light), a cauldron, candles, offering bowls, a chalice, glass, or mug of some sort. A special spoon to stir the drinks or potions with. Decorative pieces from nature. Things you craft by hand.

How can I begin working with them?

Anytime, in reality. However, you do have to develop an actual relationship with them. This can take time and the more you speak to them, give offerings, and invite them in as you cook or clean, the more they will be willing to help with your spellwork, wards, and healing. Try the introduction ritual I've included. See what happens. Document it. Try again another time the following week. And just...keep going. Make sure that they know you haven't forgotten about them by leaving a small nightly glass of milk out before you head to bed. It doesn't have to be filled to the rim (hey, cost of living is ridiculous right now). It can be a splash with a squirt of honey added. Or a sprinkle of herbs on their bowl. Or maybe a small helping of what you whipped up for dinner. Point is to show them that you acknowledge and respect their presence. That will be the biggest component. Do the ritual once a week until you start seeing signs of contact. Once you do, make your own ritual with them. Incorporate them into your daily life. Ask them to help with blessing your cooking. Ask them to make sure your wards are in tact. Ask the door spirit to purify the energy of anyone that walks in & make bad people resist coming by. Start seeing if they'd like to sit in on a ritual, if you feel comfortable with that idea. Ask for a blessing when you clean the house & to assist you in removing all the bad energy.

Brief introductory ritual

To introduce yourself to your house spirits, I recommend sitting in your kitchen. If you consider your hearth to be the living room, you can choose to do it there. Make sure to bring offerings with that you feel will be applicable. Freshly baked bread (from your own hands) and some milk with honey stirred in would make a wonderful first treat. I usually introduce myself in a new home by bringing these treats to the location of choice, and start by speaking my intention aloud which goes something like:

"Spirits of the home,

Guardians and Protectors of this dwelling,

Please come sit with me and enjoy these offerings.

I wish to have a working relationship where we can honor, respect, and help each other."

I usually spend about ten-twenty minutes meditating after this is spoken aloud. Sometimes you will feel a strong presence. This is the time I take to set up my kitchen altar as well. If there is a place that I am able to create a mini-altar by the front door, I do so there for the door spirits. The land spirits get their own little thing out in the backyard. I've found in the many places I've lived, they almost always work together and some house spirits spend quite some time out there too!

From here on out, you'll develop your relationship with regular offerings and take it from there!

#witchcraft #witch #witchblr #green witch #house spirits #hearth witch #kitchen witch #faery folk #beginner witch #witchy guide

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plutopitou · 6 months

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◇ Wash your mouth out with soap

bakugou katsuki x reader

wc: 1.1k | fluff, angst if you squint

Katsuki’s been criticized since he was a teenager about his brash personality, taking a toll on his mentality. But even from a distance he can see your brazen heart waiting for him, always.

This is slightly rewritten and reposted but enjoy luv u

Katsuki always had a mouth on him. Since the day you first saw his stone face on tv yelling at an interviewer in highschool, he’d grown to be known as the verbally abrasive hero- not that it mattered to him much at that time, anyway.

His mother had tried everything as the child grew up. The traditional hitting with her slipper, washing out his mouth with soap for ten minutes per cuss word; it proved to be unsuccessful and a distorted form of punishment that left a distinct scar in his memories.

“Pro Hero Dynamight verbally attacks civillian after villain attack!”

You look up to see the news headline pass through the screen with exclusive footage of your boyfriend getting into some verbal spew with a civilian, both covered in dust with a collapsed building in the background.

An ambulance pulls up to tend to the man’s injuries as Katsuki bitterly walks away from him before barking an unbleeped “Go fuck yourself”.

You couldn’t help but laugh at his quick outburst as the channel rushes back to the flabbergasted news anchor not expecting his foul retort, undoubtedly questioning his qualifications to be a true hero. You’re swift to turn off the TV and focus on something else.

Katsuki’s persona he was given was not something unfamiliar or a wedge between the both of you. You vividly remembered your first awkward date with eachother. How after every minute you couldn’t count on one hand how many times he was vulgar the more drinks he threw back to ease his anxieties.

People always questioned how could you ever date someone like him. The hero with not just an explosive quirk but an explosive personality that just seemed to be distasteful and rude- how could any sane person stand to be with someone like him?

However, other people’s view of him was the farthest of himself.

The clock hits five minutes to midnight before the apartment door opens, a rustling noise emerging through with heavy footsteps. You close your laptop and look over at your boyfriend tossing his backpack to the side and hanging up his keys.

“‘M home.” Muttered from an annoyed expression. Katsuki’s brows are furrowed down as he pulls his sweatshirt off, his long sleeved hero shirt hugging his muscles from underneath.

Getting up from your seat near the kitchen, you eagerly prance to his fatigued spirit. You gently push back his blond hair, cupping his hot cheeks, planting a sweet kiss where he needed it most. He can feel his unsavory mood melt away as you pull away with nothing less than a pretty smile on your face. “I missed you.” You stated delicately.

His face slowly softens, muttering how much he missed you as well. “I was gonna call you when I got a chance, but fuckin’ assholes held me up today.” He breathes out, the distaste from the events you saw earlier leaked ferociously from his words. “Some man got pissed ‘cause I didn’t get his stupid phone while saving him from a collapsed building.. ungrateful ass just causin’ a scene in front of the press, per usual.”

You watch his features tense from how much he’s holding back letting himself become irritated again about the spew earlier- you can see through his emotions better than the finest telescope. It was the first quality he noticed when he first met you.

When he talked you paid attention to every word; not in a way of faux admiration because he was a famous hero, but in genuine care of what he had to say. You didn’t get upset when he would swear a lame joke, instead you laughed like a rhythmic lullaby to his ears.

Since starting UA, all eyes were on the best in the school and he was always watched and criticized the most. His track record of saving civilians since he got his hero license didn’t matter, it was always going to be about how he’s perceived by the public from the way the media spins narratives about him. He would never admit how much it hurt, he’d rather let Deku continue to be number one than do than let society know they can wear him down.

Katsuki couldn’t advert his gaze as you started to run hot water in the shower for him. You come back and are immediately grasped into his frame. The living room is dimly lit as you slowly sway with the tempo of his warm, mellow nature.

“Shower with me?” He whispers.

You look up from his chest, chin near his heartbeat. “Already did earlier, but you go ahead and ill set the bed up for you?”

The room smelled fresh with cool air and candles as the window curtain wisps with the melody of the breeze. Katsuki walks in shirtless with fresh sweatpants. His hair is limp and damp, skin smelling fresh and old scars on his chest and back able to breathe.

He groans lightly as he lays on his chest, head resting on his hands facing the window as you drip oil on his aching back; hands tracing down the tense cords of muscle and up his neck. Every push he releases a breath, unpacking all the negative emotion from the past twelve hours like therapy.

You loved to just stand and work magic on his body than in a sexual type of passion. It was the way you stared at the shape of the body he’d built himself since he was in school, the divots that are reminiscent of a smooth mountainous landscape. How an hour in you couldn’t tell if he was asleep the way his mouth is slightly open and his brows are straight and relaxed.

It was always a struggle to hold back the tears when he can safely sleep. You keep them back before he ever sees them; because if there was one thing you knew about Katsuki, it’s that he hates seeing someone feel bad for him.

Luckily for you, he never sees it, just feels it.

Katsuki took the hits and fall into his body without delay. There was no hesitation about it as one glance down at the grooves of pink skin peppered over his build can confirm it. It wasn’t something he regret, just something he pondered on.

You both found yourselves to fall into this routine a couple times a week when you see your boyfriend’s shoulders droop just a little lower than usual, when his gaze was just a bit more sheen with distance. It’s been years since the last war, but he was still stuck on the one inside himsef. It made your chest ache.

Outside the room he lays in he was known to be a foul-mouthed man with too much power than he knew to deal with.

You push down the curve of his back with the heel of your palm in the thought.

You wished it was that simple.

He was a young hero stuck with the weight of a cruel world on his back.

You finish kneading his muscular frame, your hands hot of every drip of emotion soaked up like a sponge in water. Turning to leave, you’re stopped with a pull at your hand.

Katsuki slowly pulls your body into his seated embrance. Your delicate fingers find his hair, rubbing down his soft back as his breath his head lays against your stomach, hands leaving ghost touches against your chilled back.

The warmth of his hands find your chin, pulling you down to his level. Your lips lightly brush over eachother before he presses his against yours gently. “I love you, you know..” He mumbles a centimeter away.

Your eyes flutter open, sweeping past the smell scar against his face to his red ones sweet with honey. “Of course I know, loser.”

In a second you’re flown to your back, Katsuki hovering over you playfully as you laugh in surprise.

Those people just wouldn’t get it.

I noticed i lose a bit of followers when I dont post for a bit or just unactive- im always here but inspiration is always a process for me to fully conjure up something as small as a 1k fic.

Please don’t be disappointed, I will try and get better with activity <3

Please like, follow, and reblog ʕ⁎̯͡⁎ʔ༄

#boku no academia #bnha fluff #bnha angst #bnha #bnha oneshots #bnha leaks #bnha fic #mha #my hero acedamia #bnha imagines #bakugou katsuki x reader #katsuki bakugou x y/n #katsuki bakugou x you #pitou.writes #pitou.fics #bnha fanfiction

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gurugirl · 6 months

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Hidden | mcc!harry

Summary: You convince Harry to take you to the Halloween Haunted House downtown. Of course you’ll both be well disguised - hidden in plain site. Thanks to this request!

Warning: 18+ only, smut, public sex, mask kink, voyeur kink (+ this is kidnapper!harry x reader and so this might not be your thing)

Word Count: 4042

Mint Chocolate Chip masterlist

“Look, Harry,” you showed him the flyer stuffed between the loose mail that had come in that day, “Haunted House Halloween: An Erotic Masquerade.”

Harry peered at the glossy pamphlet with a creepy-looking old building and the words at the bottom with contact information. $45 per person at the door. Extras not included.

“Can we go? I really want to go! Halloween has always been my favorite and we’ve never done anything together on Halloween. Please?” You sat the flyer down and slotted yourself between Harry’s legs as he sat on the couch, getting to your knees and rubbing your palms up his thighs, “It would mean so much to me. We’d have masks on so no one would even know it was us.”

Harry gave you an expressionless look. He wasn’t quite sure. He wanted to make you happy but he hated to go out in public. And he was sure there would be a lot of people at the event.

“I don’t know, pup. It’s risky with so many people.”

“Harry,” you softened your eyes and took his ringed hand in yours, bringing his fingertips to your lips, dotting little kisses to them, “I love you. How can I convince you that it’ll be worth it? That no one will ever see us?”

Well, you knew the answer to that. You knew how to get your way when it came to Harry. Pushing your fingers over his crotch, you bit your lip with your eyes on his, and pressed over his cock.

“Puppy…” he warned. He knew what you were doing. And he knew he was going to give in. If you were both in masks what was the harm anyway?

You laid your head on his thigh, looked up at him innocently, and began fumbling with his pants button, “Harry… I’m gonna suck you off now, okay? Make you come really hard and get me all messy.”

With your eyes still on his, Harry cradled the back of your head and licked his lips, “S’this what you think it’s gonna take for me to say yes?”

You nodded, your cheek smushed into his thigh. You were thriving from the eye contact he was giving you with his warm hand at the back of your head, all loving and soft with anticipation.

When you’d opened up his pants you could tell he was already thickened up to your delight. You loved making him hard. Loved that you did that to him. Loved that he picked you out of everyone because you were his special girl.

You shifted yourself and sat up so you could reach into his pants and pull him out. Sticking your hand under the band of his underwear he grunted as he sat back and put his hands behind his head to let you do your thing.

It was a struggle to get him out fully. He wasn’t helping you at all. He kept his bottom planted firmly on the couch, where normally he’d lift up so you could pull at his pants. But this was your way of showing him how much you wanted to go out for Halloween.

But you did manage to pull his dick out. Your fingers came into contact with his girthy shaft and you pushed his underwear down so you could see all of him. As you began to gently slide your hand up and down over his foreskin you looked up at him and could tell he was already gone. Dark eyes, pink lips parted, small puffs of breath falling from his lungs.

You gathered a bit of saliva in your mouth and pressed your lips to his tip, pushing the moisture out with your tongue and over his cock, using your fingers to slip it over his skin and down as far as your hand could go before his pants got in the way. You repeated, getting his cock coated with your saliva, little by little as your hand worked it over his shaft.

“It’s so yummy,” you moaned as you swiped your tongue upward to his frenulum, eyes pinned to his.

You were a fucking pro at this. Harry had taught you exactly what he liked and you were a quick learner. And now you’d perfected the skill of giving head to his preference. So much so, that Harry was already growing angrily hard with your lips and tongue and fingers working him into a frenzy.

When you’d finally put him out of his misery and you wrapped your plush, wet lips around his bulbous head he moaned and closed his eyes. He loved to feel you. Feel your lips and your tongue taking him in. The way you suckled and lapped at him as you forced yourself down until he bumped into your throat always had him trembling.

He gasped when you swallowed around his cock and spluttered over him, almost gagging but not quite. When he looked down at you your eyes were fixed up at him, already tearing up a bit.

“Puppy… my best girl,” he smoothed his hand over the back of your head as you attempted to smile at his sweet gesture, though it was hard with his thick cock lodged deep in your mouth.

So you went down further, sucking in a breath through your nostrils, and lowered down until his tip wasn’t just nudging into your throat but was slid into the back of it and pushing past your tonsils. He groaned and that spurred you on further as you closed your eyes and nuzzled down, your nose hitting his tummy and your chin pushed into his cotton underwear. You wished you could take his balls into your hands but this would have to do as he still had his pants over his thighs and only his cock was out for you.

Once you began to gag over him and the tears in your eyes started to run down your cheeks Harry bucked his hips up and pressed at the back of your head. You put your hands on his thighs to stabilize yourself as you gurgled and squeezed your eyes closed.

“Fuck… c’mere pup,” Harry’s voice was strained as he whined his words.

You popped off of him, gasping for breath as you did so, and quickly climbed into his lap as he asked.

Harry pushed your little dress up to your waist and pulled you down over him, your bare pussy already wet and puffy with need. You never wore panties when Harry was around. That was the rule.

“Want to come, puppy? Want to come with me?” Harry asked as he cupped your face.

You writhed your slick pussy against his deliciously hard cock. He was already throbbing. So close to coming, “Yes. If it’s okay.”

Harry moaned and looked down at where you two were pressed together, “It’s my favorite. Of course it’s okay. Put me inside, puppy. Ride me and make yourself come.”

And what else was there to do but obey? You pressed his tip into your entrance and let out a shaky moan as you slowly encased him and he pushed your insides apart until you had him stuffed into your pussy so deep you were seated over him, wetting his pants.

With Harry’s hands on your ass, he helped you lift up and slip down. With little gushy sounds coming from your pussy as you moved over him.

You both moaned and gasped, “Can I rub it? I want to come…” you panted as you looked down to where you were both connected. You needed to slip your fingers over your clit and you’d be done for in moments.

“Go on, baby. Been such a sweet girl for me.”

You slid your hand between your bodies and circled your clit as you continued to take his cock into you deeply. He was trembling at the way you were squeezing around him.

“Ahh!” You moaned when you felt your pussy flutter and Harry’s dick press into your guts repeatedly.

“Coming, puppy? Yeah? Needed my cock, didn’t you? It’s okay. There you go…” Harry tried to sound put together but he was panting and whining as he spoke his words to you as you came around him.

You gripped him tight and spasmed around him, thighs quivering and eyes wide, “Fuck! I need you, Harry!”

Harry clenched his jaw as his balls tightened against his body until he was pouring himself into you. He pumped his orgasm into your tummy and held you down with his teeth gritted, feeling that euphoric relief that only you could ever provide him.

. . .

You ordered your masks online. Harry’s was a skeleton mask and yours was a jeweled black cat mask. Harry was iffy about yours because it didn’t cover your lips and chin but once you tried it on for him he nodded, “Okay. That should do.”

He wore a full black suit with a black tie and you wore a long-sleeved black bodysuit with black high heels. It was actually quite sexy. And you thought Harry looked sexy too.

The haunted house was downtown. It was at an old historical home that was preserved among the modern buildings and skyscrapers. It was often used for events, dinners, parties… This time it was decked out for a Halloween masquerade. The night sky above with the old-fashioned lights hanging from the front façade and creepy spider webs at the entry made it feel so real.

There was a group waiting at the front, as people entered one by one.

When you and Harry finally got to the door your payment was taken and black plastic bracelets put on your wrists. The interior was breathtaking. Tall ceilings, crystal chandelier, a big open space for people to dance a section with a bar and tables, and seating along the wall at the back.

“This is incredible!” You held onto Harry’s hand (or better yet, he wasn’t letting go of yours) as you looked all around. The decorations were scary but tasteful somehow. Everyone was wearing a mask. The music was instrumental and slow but had a touch of something spooky as it was on a minor scale.

You both stood at the bar to order drinks. Harry decided against drinking anything. He was still on edge and wanted to keep an eye out in case of anything that should happen. Even the bartender you ordered from was wearing a mask. She was Medusa and her entire outfit was sleek but she wore a wild wig of snakes.

Harry continued to keep your hand in his as you walked around the room to check everything out. Your drink was tangy and refreshing. The further you got into the space you noticed there were smaller areas behind doorways with activities. A Ouija board room, a room with a witch's cauldron and various ingredients set on a table to add, a dark room that, once you stepped in you realized was almost as large as the main room. Couches and settees lined the walls, rugs on the floor, dim lighting at the edge, and people making out in the dark shadows, “This place has everything, Harry!” You laughed quietly as you pulled him along to the various areas.

Harry wasn’t hating it. He went because he knew you wanted to and because he tried to do anything he could to make you happy. But he was feeling more and more confident about the whole thing the longer you were there. The setup was impressive. The space was packed with people and you both were well disguised.

And also, he thought you looked absolutely gorgeous in your outfit. A tight bodysuit hugged your curves and your lips were painted a deep red. He’d consider talking you into going to the dark room for a bit of fooling around if the moment was right. He now understood the ‘erotic’ part of the masquerade. This felt almost like a big sex party. Though no one appeared to be having sex in the open, things were definitely lustfully charged.

When you’d finished your drink you turned to look at Harry, “Let’s dance a little.”

Harry shook his head, “Nahh. I don’t want to.”

He could see the pout on your lips as you protested, “I don’t want to dance by myself, Harry,” you pushed your fingers in between his and pulled at him.

“Well, I wouldn’t let you go out there to dance alone anyway. You’re not to leave my side.”

“But that’s not fair. Look,” you pointed toward the large space where masked adults were griding and slow dancing with dim lights flashing, “Just a little. Come on. Please?”

Harry sighed and looked toward the darkest corners of the dance area. There were people there, swaying and moving in synch. He could handle a bit of dancing. If it was to make you happy he’d do it.

“Fine.”

You squealed as you pulled at his hand and moved into the dancing bodies, but Harry kept pulling at you until you were outside of the area where the dim lights couldn’t find you.

Harry put his big hands on your hips and immediately you both began to swing softly. You put your arms over his shoulders and he nudged you in closer, “You look really pretty like this puppy.”

His voice was deep and you grinned at his compliment.

A couple that was dancing a few feet away had their masks moved off of their faces and were kissing as they danced together. You bit your lip and looked back up at Harry’s skeleton mask.

“What is it?” You could hear the smirk on his mouth. You wished you could see it.

“Just feels like a place where we could get away with a lot of stuff,” you swayed your hips and Harry nodded in response to you.

It did seem like that kind of place. It was dark inside. Lots of rooms, alcohol, hidden corners…

Harry dipped down to speak into your ear, “Turn around,” he pushed your hips and you turned in his arms so you were facing away. Suddenly he pulled you into him, your back into his chest and you both continued to slowly move to the rhythm.

When you felt his hands smooth up your ribs and over your tits you gasped and turned your head as he spoke into your ear, “What kind of things do you think we could get away with?”

You raised your arms and put your hands behind his neck, “I don’t know. This is a good example,” you pressed your bum into his crotch teasingly. But when you tried to move your hips away Harry brought a hand down from your breast to hold you in place, keeping his hips glued to your bottom.

“Now you’ve gone and done it, puppy.” He whispered into your ear. He kept one of his hands on your breast, kneading and squeezing as he ground his hips into your ass. You could feel him getting hard behind you and a small moan fell from your throat involuntarily.

You rubbed yourself over him harder and heard a groan from him, “Better behave.”

But you didn’t want to behave. You were feeling the sensuality of the dancefloor and everyone around you. The masks hid everyone’s identities and if their masks weren’t on their faces, their lips were connected, hiding behind skin pressed together and dark shadows.

“I want to be naughty,” you nearly purred as Harry pushed himself into your bottom and he moaned into your ear. You whispered, “I want to be bad.”

Harry couldn’t get close enough to you. He didn’t know what had gotten into himself but perhaps it was the way everyone around you two were practically dry-humping and getting themselves off while still clothed. He was sure he heard a man grunt and whine as the girl in front of him, pressed into him, coaxed him through softly with dirty words. Of course, who knew? Harry couldn’t be sure it was the sound of someone orgasming in their pants because he couldn’t see them clearly.

He felt your fingers over his as you pushed his hand down between your legs. You were warm and you inhaled a sharp breath when you pushed his digits over your fabric-covered clit. You guided his fingers over yourself as you leaned your head back into his shoulder.

Harry nudged himself into you, gently rocking his thickened prick into the fabric of his pants and into your soft bum.

You were both panting and grinding together in the dark next to other couples who were doing the same. It was like an illicit sex corner in a haunted mansion where no one knew for sure what anyone else was doing.

Soon he felt that your warm center was growing wet under the pads of his fingers. He could tell your body was growing limp against him as he kept one arm steady around your middle to hold you up, “Hold on, puppy. You’re almost there aren’t you? Filthy girl getting herself off on my fingers right in front of everyone here. Making a mess of my hand already,” his husky voice gave away that he was painfully turned on himself. He couldn’t hide it anyway, his cock was throbbing and his skin was rubbing into his underwear as he rocked himself harder into your plush bottom, the perfect amount of friction for his foreskin to move over his tip repeatedly. As good as it felt, he didn’t want to come in his trousers. He had another plan, now that he was beyond the point of no return.

You cried out as Harry hushed you. You could feel him solid, leaking between your cheeks as you came on his hand. Your legs buckled and you rocked yourself into his hand and grasped his arms. You couldn’t help yourself. You never could with Harry. He just did something to you. It had been that way since the beginning. It was as if your body reacted to him without you even needing to do anything.

You’d made a mess between your legs, which you felt when Harry finally moved his fingers from you and softly ushered you back to him, “Good girl. Needed to come didn’t you, puppy? It’s okay. You know I always give you what you want. Just like you always give me what I want.”

You opened your eyes and saw a couple staring at you. They were facing one another, griding to the music. Her lips were dropped open and she was moaning. Her mask barely covered her face so you could see her eyes on yours. The man, however, you couldn’t see, but his mask was aimed at you and Harry. They both seemed to be watching what had just happened. It was dark and perhaps they hadn’t seen everything but you had been loud.

Harry began to pull at you. You were too far gone to protest or to be embarrassed at what that couple might have just seen. Soon you were in the dark room with the plush couches and low lighting at the edges. Harry dragged you with him to the corner of a couch and made you climb onto his lap. You could hardly see his mask in the darkness but you could hear the moans and gasps of others all around.

Harry lifted his mask and pushed yours off your face and his mouth was on yours so fast you nearly fell backward off his lap. You could feel him fooling with his buckle and you leaned away, “What are you doing?”

“I need to come puppy and I’m about to burst. Need you to pump me in your hand and then put me in your mouth so I can come and we don’t make a big mess. Understood? I don’t think anyone in here will see us. It’s too dark. Besides, look,” he gestured toward the couple at the opposite side of the couch. You could hardly make out their bodies but you could see them moving rhythmically and you could hear what sounded like sex, skin sliding and gently thwacking together.

“Oh my god…” you whispered as you looked back toward Harry.

“Pup, I really need it. I’m in pain. Your wet pussy is all over my hand and it’s driving me crazy. If you take me in your mouth it’s the only way to keep me from coming in my pants.”

You would do anything he wanted. There was no way you’d say no. He had made you come moments earlier so it was the least you could do, “I could ride you. You can come inside of me. Might be even easier.”

“But your bodysuit–“

You interrupted, “Has a button to open it at the crotch for practical purposes,” you laughed. But it was truly meant for practical purposes. It’s why you selected the bodysuit. An opening so you could use the bathroom without having to take the full bodysuit off.

“Fuck baby, you don’t mind doing that?” Harry's vision was fuzzy he was so turned on. Normally he’d never go for something like that but the atmosphere of the place, and you were getting to him.

You straddled him properly, “Pull yourself out and I’ll get this open,” you whispered as you plucked at your button and unfolded the fabric from your wet crotch.

Harry was already out and stroking himself by the time you’d finally pulled the material off your crotch. He was so hard it almost hurt as he pulled you down on himself with a guttural moan. But you were so slick you had him coated and were gripping around him in no time.

Harry set his feet flat onto the floor and fucked himself up into you slowly. Each thrust had you bouncing slightly, and squishing down over him each time you fell. You both panted until Harry captured your mouth, his tongue finding yours right away. His mouth caught your moans as he slid himself into you deeply. Your head was spinning. You couldn’t believe you were having full-on sex in public with another couple likely doing the same thing as you just feet away.

The music and the noise from the others in the room covered the sounds that were coming from your own body. Your wet hole slopped over Harry’s wide cock and you were sure that despite him not wanting to make a mess, his pants were already wet and coated in your cream.

When Harry’s cock began to thrum inside of you and his groans into your mouth grew louder and more desperate he began to plunge into you faster. You held onto his shoulders tight and he shook as his thighs worked himself into your pussy eagerly. You knew he was about to come.

“Give me your come. I need it, Harry,” you whispered against his lips as a man not far from you let out a cough of ecstasy. It would be hard to deny that whoever that was had been coming at that very moment. The other man he was with moaning pathetically.

“Fuck, puppy…” Harry groaned against your lips as he held you down over his cock tight, “Coming… fuck ‘m coming… milking my cock like you need it…”

Harry leaned his head back and his mask slid down over his face as he released into you, small moans falling from his mouth. You loved making him come. Loved how it made you feel that he got so weak with you.

When Harry’s cock was properly drained he lifted his head back up and looked at you from behind his skeleton mask, “This is the best Halloween party I’ve ever been to.”

You laughed as you nuzzled against Harry, wrapping your arms around his neck, his cock still deep inside of you, “It really is. Want to go dance again?”

Harry chuckled lowly, “If we dance again we might just find ourselves back in this room fucking in this very spot. Or maybe I’ll have you bent over the couch arm next time…”

You grinned and leaned back to look at him, “Sounds perfect.”

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msgrieves · 17 days

Text

𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒃𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒚 𝒊𝒔 𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒅

summary : tom riddle decides to give you a lesson in herbology when you seem to be slacking 💞

warnings : smut, in public (a library), she/her pronouns used, dumbification, handgag??, fingering, lowercase intended!!

ೃ⁀➷ this is my first time writing a fic/smut so be warned for cringe; fyi i chose to make the reader's last name carrow!!; written in 3rd person because i can't bring myself to write in 2nd person rn 😣😣; no use of y/n

lonely, she felt. amidst the solitude of the library she felt lonely. all signs of life had long left, leaving her alone with merely her own consciousness and the heavy snores emitting from madam scribner's dribbling mouth.

she felt like she was going crazy, rereading over the same article over and over again, fruitlessly scavenging for any information she hadn't picked up through her last fifty searches. in the pindrop silence she heard a cough, nearly sending her into a heart attack; glancing up from her disordered desk she met the protruding gaze of tom riddle,

"miss carrow, are you aware the library closed over twenty minutes ago?"

his expression mocked her, as if she was unaware of such primary rules. of course the library had closed long ago, she'd been checking her rustic pocket watch every five minutes in fear of a professor waltzing in and catching her. she feigned a tone of innocent obliviousness:

"oh sorry tom, i seemed to have lost track of time, i best be on my way now."

she hastily shuffled out of her seat, slotting assortments into her rugged leather satchel and slinging it over her shoulder in a hurry.

"not so fast.." riddle tutted at her condescendingly.

he took a sharp inhale, glancing at his dress shoes before back up her, taking a small step back.

"how come you're out so late?"

the dreaded question.

she'd hoped to escape him before he had the chance to completely humiliate her: give her a good scolding.

"..studying" she answered, vague.

a questioning look arose on his face.

"studying?" he repeated, his voice mocking hers.a simple nod would do.

"for what?"

"herbology."

an incredibly useless subject she took only because she wanted as many qualifications as possible.

he scoffed, he'd certainly shown up in a pissy mood. there was an uncomfortable pause, him looking her over before opening his mouth again.

"you're free to go."

her eyes widened, her tongue unable to stop herself from saying:

"what?"

...

"would you like a detention then?"

"..no" she shook her head, quickly.

"then leave, now." he repeated, this time firmer than before.

well this was shocking. he'd allowed her to leave freely. normally it'd take an entire hour of him berating her before even considering letting her return to her dorm - usually accompanied with a week's worth of detentions, just because he could.

she didn't pass the oppurtunity, scurrying out before he had the chance to rethink his decision. she didn't question why he let her off the hook. she was simply thankful he did.

a day had passed. it was now sunday night. she had the huge herbology test in only a few hours. she couldn't score anything below outstanding, otherwise her parents would be upset with her, professor beery would be dissapointed, and riddle would get one over on her but that mattered very little to her considering the worser consequences.

again she sat at her little table tucked away in the corner of the library. the incompetent librarian snoring away as per usual.

she took a break from her relentless studying, idly volunteering her help by sorting jumbled books which the first years had so carelessly tossed around.

she strolled a lap of the lavish library, sorting out obvious messes of disordered books before returning to her desk, finding riddle occupying her seat.

without needing to announce herself, he spoke up, somehow just knowing she was there.

"you've got this all wrong."

a focused look fixed upon his face as he flicked through the endless notes she'd written over the past week on the various plants professor beery had instructed the class to research.

"excuse you?" she scoffed in annoyance, striding largly over to him and harshly snatching the worn notebook from his hands.

who did he think he was? searching through her personal belongings?

"your notes. they're all wrong." he repeated, a blank look on his face as he fixated his gaze on her now, leaving her stomach a fluttering mess which she chose to ignore in fear of what could be revealed about her stemming from it.

"you shouldn't've even been snooping through my stuff. get up." she urged, waiting for him to move so she could reclaim her seat.

"but they were wrong-"

"-i don't care, get up."

his jaw clenched and he inhaled sharply, standing up nevertheless as she resat in her wooden chair. he pulled another over, inviting himself to join.

"i think you're forgetting whose in charge here."

he gave her a daunting glare, sitting down next to her. in all fairness as head boy he had the ability to send her back to her dorm right now, seeing as she was out past curfew, again.

"now.." he took a breath "do you need my help?"

he sounded empathetic. shocking for someone like him, who despite his charming reputation she knew to be one carless soul.

"no, i do not need your help-"

"-i think you do." he replied, his blunt tone not budging.

he brought his chair closer to her, gently taking the notes from her hands and spreading them on the table in front.

before, him going out of his way to help her seemed like a distant fantasy. what on earth was his motive behind this?

"read over your notes for me."

he placed a strong hand on her shoulder, patting it harshly as if it were an easing, friendly gesture, but instead it caused her to stiffen and shrink further into her seat.

"the entire thing?"

"would you like a detention?"

he kept using that stupid threat. it worked every time though. she took a deep breath, biting back her anger.

"lavage-"

"first of all you've spelt it wrong."

he interrupted abruptly, bringing his hand from her shoulder to point it at the word written in a messy scrawling at the top of the parchment, then residing it down on her thigh. she tensed up, unsure of how exactly should she react.. should she push him off? she wasn't quite sure how she felt just yet.

with his right hand he borrowed her quill, scratching out the incorrect spelling to rewrite it as 'lovage' in a smaller font just above her old writing.

"continue" he hummed, now drawing light circles with his thumb onto her upper thigh.

her breath hitched, she tried to steady its pace, restarting her reading.

"lovage.. similar to broccoli-"

his hand made a sudden dip to explore her inner thigh.

"celery." he corrected, not arrogantly.

strange. he was being helpful, not mocking her for being wrong.

"celery." she repeated affirmatively, "its common use-"

merlin this man wouldn't shut up and let her talk.

"start from the beginning. once your done you can return to your dorm.. depending on how well i think you've done."

how well he thinks she's done?? in what world is that fair. she scowled at him, giving him a distasteful look, though he was too focused on the notes in front of the two of them to notice.

she took a deep breath,

"lovage." she repeated, rather dramatically.

his fingers began tracing higher up her thigh, slipping up her skirt and beginning to toy with the elastic hem of her undergarments beneath the desk.

"similar to celery, its common usages are-"

her sentence was cut by a breathy moan, where in gods green earth did that come from.

he'd traced lower down to her cunt, his fingers precise and sure.

"restart." he sighed exasperatedly, as if nothing out of the ordinary was occuring.

for merlin sake, he was nearly fingering her under the table- and she let him??

she groaned, in annoyance of his persistance, in annoyance of his fingers hovering so teasingly over where she needed him most.

"lovage. similar to celery. its common usages are for befuddlement draughts,"

"and what else?"

"what do you mean 'what else'??- the book only sAI-"

his index had slipped between her already moistened folds, applying the lightest pressure to her clit as he dipped the tip of it into her hole, she stiffled an unholy noise from seeping out from between her lips.

"quiet. madam scribner's still asleep." he warned, holding back a cocky grin.

what a sick freak. fingering her in a fucking library?? what was he thinking?

she covered her mouth at the attempt of another moan pushing through with his movements unceasing, abiding silently despite the protests inside her head.

she shook her head after a moment, her brows furrowed.

"i can't do this."

"sure you can dear."

"no, no, no i genuinely can't-"

she couldn't. not with someone she hated so much but was so attracted to? all it did was fuck with her feelings.

"keep reading."

she gulped dryly, trying to restart but without warning he'd slipped a first finger into her. she covered her mouth with her hand again, muffling the lewd noises from the innocent ears of the librarian a few metres away. sure the distance between them and madam scribner was large but it was only them there. if she woke up, there was no hiding.

deep breaths.

"lovage, similar to cE-lery, its common usages are for befuddlement draughts,"

her voice cracked as he swiped her clit with his thumb.

"well actually any confusing draughts." he interjected.

she groaned loudly in frustration with him interrupting and with the pressure he fiddled her with. he now clasped his own hand around her mouth, shushing her.

"that's all you need to know for this plant, don't worry about the rest dear." he eased, her taking his word for it seeing as she just wanted him to end this torture already.

he pushed in another finger, her slouching down on the chair as much as she could to push him deeper inside her.

he waited a second, slowly beginning to slide them in and out, careful as to not make excessive amounts of noise with the obscenely slick sounds envolping the silent room. the rough ends curled up, fingers exploring her insides with expertise.

she could've came on just two fingers alone.

"tell me, what was the name of the plant again?" he questioned quietly, his pace fastening by the second.she was limp now, lost in his touch. this was becoming clearer now. it was just his sick and perverted way of humiliating her.

"..huh, m'sorry..?" she asked, nearly sounding drunk as her eyes gazed up at his again.

"name of the plant dear," he uttered, looking her into her soul as he was reminded of how easily he would sway the morals of others simply by using his less.. dignified skills along with his good looks.

"lavage," she answered, confident as she didn't think over her answer.

"haven't you been listening? or has me simply slipping a finger or two into you made you this dumb?" he cooed, his words lined with a condescending type of mocking.

"oh, fuck- lovage i meant-"

she was quick to correct herself, earning a swipe at her clit as he began to pay more attention to it.

he sighed, as if this was an inconvenience to him - if so why was he doing this?

"and it's similar to?"

merlin, she didn't need an entire herbology lesson whilst he was messing around with her insides.

"celery,"

she was met with an ever deeper push of his fingers, hitting a spongey area deep inside her, one she didn't even think was possible for him to reach with his fingers alone.

"again."

"..celery..?"

she was confused to say the least, his motive was rather unclear.

he tutted and abruptly pulled out his fingers, wiping them on the inside of the fabric as he slipped them out of her panties, smearing the remainder of her juices that he unsucessfully wiped away onto her thigh, making the sheer tights she wore glossier.

she squirmed, an uncomfortable tensing in her abdomen having being left to suffer.

"why- why d'you stop?" she murmered, her thighs rubbing together to mimic the previous sensation but not even being able to come close to the pleasure of it.

"i need to work harder to knock my teachings out of your pretty little head."

ೃ⁀➷ sorry for the abrupt ending i just wanted to get something out, lmk if you want a part two !!

➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶

#tom riddle #knights of walpurgis #tom marvolo riddle #tom riddle smut #voldemort #tom riddle x reader #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle x oc #harry potter #chamber of secrets

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it-happened-one-fic · 6 months

Text

Special Delivery - Wriothesley

Author Notes: It has been a journey in learning how to spell this man's name. This fic honestly just sort of happened. I didn't have a song I listened to while I wrote it and didn't really exactly have an idea either, outside of the fact that I've always though guys should get flowers just like girls. After all, flowers are pretty. I leave it up to you to decide what sort of flower was gifted here though. As per usual, Reader is gender-neutral. I hope you enjoy!

Type: Gender-Neutral Reader/ Fluff/ Flirtation/ Teasing

Word Count: 1308

Just as it was with other nations, there were many, many different jobs and positions that one could hold in Fontaine.

But yours was very unique.

It wasn’t that you were anything nearly so grandiose as the receptionist to the revered Iudex or the widely-beloved Archon. And you also didn’t work for the Spina de Rosula or The Steambird.

No. You didn’t hold a position quite that illustrious. Instead, you were a delivery person.

You delivered ingredients, bandages, medicine, and, yes, even teas to the infamous Fortress of Meropide. After all, while such commodities were the norm of the Overworld, finding the same goods at the bottom of the sea was hardly possible. So you delivered them. Sometimes making two to three runs between the sunny upper side of Fontaine and the dark prison hidden in the depths.

Your delivery runs were always waited for with bated breath by the people within the massive prison complex. Especially when the denizens of the depths knew you were going to be bringing special commodities, such as books for Sigewinne sent from Monsieur Neuvillette himself.

You strolled through the metal hallways with purpose as you went to make your final delivery for the day, and no one looked twice as you marched right up to the warden’s office and went in with barely even a pause.

Most inmates had no clue as to what you might be delivering to the duke who guarded these halls. You almost always had to make a stop at his office, though, and most preferred not to think too hard about what might be in the box you were carrying.

But, despite their fears, you held nothing quite so terrifying as what they might suspect. In fact, the box you held against your hip always held the exact same thing. Namely, tea.

To be fair, he usually requested an assortment of varying teas, but the regularity of his orders was somewhat concerning, and it might be worth mentioning to Sigewinne as to whether excessive consumption of tea could be detrimental to his health.

You walked up the steps silently as you entered the well-appointed office that you were now quite used to. Though you did have to wonder where the man in question hid his doubtlessly impressive tea stash since all the shelves of his bookcases were filled with books.

“There you are,” Wriothesley’s pale eyes immediately lifted from where he’d been looking at a stack of papers so that he was looking up to where you’d appeared at the top of the staircase as he stood from behind his desk. Almost like he’d been waiting for you. Or rather, more than likely, his beloved tea.

He walked around the desk with a slight smile as he met you halfway and accepted the box from your arm before immediately sitting it down so that he might peer inside at its contents. And you waited patiently as his gaze scanned container after container of fine tea and tea blends, nodding approvingly at certain intervals before he at last looked your way once more, “Perfect as always.”

There was a subtly teasing lilt to his voice that had you smiling before you shifted and revealed what you’d been hiding behind your back with that hand that had not been occupied by tea.

“Special delivery,” You announced cheerily as Wriothesley’s gaze darted between the potted plant in your hand and you. His expression shifting amusingly from curiosity to confusion.

After a brief moment of silence, he sighed, almost as if surrendering, “Y/n, you’re gonna have to help me here. I’m not the most well-versed in the language of flowers, but is this some form of hate mail from the House of Hearth or something?”

You rolled your eyes before handing the fully bloomed flower to him, “No, Sigewinne’s been telling me about how you’ve been staying holed up in your office, and you’ve mentioned that you rarely get to see flowers since you’re usually stuck down here in the fortress. I bought this for you to try and brighten the place up,” You gestured widely to the room as you finished, still smiling at the man who continued to stare at you.

“So you bought this for me?” He clarified with raised eyebrows, causing you to nod in amusement before you saw the glimmer that entered his eyes at your wordless response. A small, childish part of you whispered that you never should’ve entertained the thought of buying him a gift, but you ignored such thoughts.

Instead, you focused on the man in front of you as you braced for whatever it was he was going to say next.

“Well, something coming as a gift from you certainly is a ‘special delivery,’ but I must say, you’ve done what most can’t. You’ve surprised me, Y/n.” He paused, eyeing you closely, before pressing a hand to his chest with a grin slipping onto his face, “I never expected you to try and woo me.”

Somehow, you weren’t even surprised by his words as you leaned relaxedly against his desk and sat the gift down, causing the flower to bob lightly. “And what makes you think that this is me wooing you?”

He leaned forward, that grin still on his face as he spoke once more, “Isn’t that what gifts of flowers usually mean?”

Unperturbed by his teasing, you tilted your head, “Weren’t you the one who just implied that this plant was flower-coded hate mail to start with? And flowers are common get-well-soon gifts anyway; they don’t necessarily have anything to do with romance or wooing.”

“But I’m not sick,” He was quick to point out his apparently good health almost immediately. Straightening with an almost smug grin that had you shaking your head slightly.

You smiled at him innocently, though, automatically reminding him of Siegwinne’s concerns regarding his habit of holing himself up in his office, “But Sigewinne is worried.”

He mimicked your motions, propping against the desk and half-caging you in with his body but still leaving your escape open, “Is this why you've been delivering such especially high-quality teas?”

You grinned slightly, despite yourself, at the man before you gestured lightly to the now abandoned box that sat on his desk next to him, “That’s the brand you always request, Lord Duke.”

His title slipped off your tongue easily, and you stared at each other silently. Wearing matching grins and similarly bright eyes as you each waited for the other one to make the next move.

After a moment, though, he shrugged and leaned back. Seemingly giving up even though that tell-tale glimmer still hadn’t left his eyes, “If you say so. I still find it suspicious, though.”

You held out his receipt for the delivery, watching as he took and signed it obediently before handing it back over. You accepted the slip of paper, having to actually tug it out of his hand as his gaze held yours with that persistently amused smile. But this was becoming a steadily more common set of interactions with you. A careful dance of teasing that he almost always slipped some form of flirtation into.

You were still smiling as you finally managed to free the paper from his grasp without it tearing and without having to grasp it with both hands and yank it out of his hand, “Duly noted.”

He snorted slightly at your words but didn’t respond, and with that you were on your way. Not stopping until you were outside of his office and being greeted by Sigewinne.

“Did he like the flower?” The Melusine’s eyes were wide with giddy curiosity, and you paused.

A smile flickered across your face as thought back to Wriotheseley’s amused grin, teasing tone, and glimmering eyes before you nodded, feeling oddly satisfied with yourself, “You know, I believe he did.”

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ratrrriot · 11 months

Note

How do you feel when people call Amy a stalker?

People can call her what they want, however…

Do i think it's fair to call Amy a stalker?

In some of the games? Yes, and even in some of the ones she wasn't a stalker per-se, she still showed possessive and obsessive tendencies. So i get where it comes from...

Generally? No. Her character originally wasn't supposed to be a harasser and she sure isn't one in the present. the franchise has been clearly trying to do better for her these past few years.

I think Amy's changing characterization is an interesting topic of discussion, so even though i technically already answered your question i'll take this chance and proceed to talk about my fave for way longer than i need to :).

Note: This is just my take on Amy and the way i understand her ENGLISH PORTRAYAL. I won't be talking about her japanese one which would deserve its own analysis.

Sorry for any writing mistakes in advance (english is hard) and feel free to correct me if i'm factually wrong about something (i wrote this thing mostly from memory so i imagine i must be.)

Amy has changed A LOT troughout the games and has been in the hands of many different writers across Sonic media ,so when talking about her is important to be specific about what game,series or comic we are talking about (and language),and while i know that some of you might not agree and i respect that, i think that -looking at the subtleties- Amy has had at least 6 different portrayals through the course of the games. That being said,i believe the idea that she is a stalker comes especifically from the characterization they started giving her around 2003

Originally,Amy was envisioned as a sweet 12-year-old kid who had a huge unreciprocated crush on her idol and a passion for fortune-reading ,but who wasn't exactly much of a heroine herself. In the classic era,her place in the narrative was just to serve as a damsel in distress and a cute,funny detail. Ofc,in comics and animated shorts for games like Origins, we have gotten more content of classic Amy being fully independent and capable of defending herself (even more with the upcoming playable mode for her in Origins Plus), but i think we can all see how such aspects of her character weren’t included at the time she was created (only exception being Sonic Fighters)

Especifically in the adventure era (AKA the birth of modern Amy) they gave Amy her iconic strong,compassionate,romantic personality and an interest/love for adventure (and her sassy attitude ofc). She's outspoken,stubborn,brave and honest. I also want to point out that in this first portrayal ,her love for Sonic feels more like innocent childish idolization than an obsession and that her character doesn't revolve exclusively around it (she will stand in his way if she doesn't think what he does is right). Tbh i think she's incredibly funny,cool and lovable,

They slowly started planting the seeds for her character to stop being a "damsel in distress" by making her playable and defeat ZERO all on her own at the end of SA1,then also being playable in Sonic advance and helping Sonic get out of prison in SA2 (and tagging along for the rest of the adventure). In all these games,her character revolves around empathy,optimism and kindness. The way she protects the flicky since the moment she finds it,how she defends Gamma from Sonic and the iconic moment in SA2 where she convinces Shadow to help save earth are all great examples.

THEN, in Heroes , they decided to try something new with her taking her confidence and sassy attitude to a whole other level. Giving her the chance to be a fully-fleshed hero who didn't need rescuing anymore. She became independent and the leader of her own team of friends who she wanted to help. I love this Amy cause she feels really strong,determined and empowered without losing her peppiness,silliness,positivity and kindness. Her flaws are also especially endearing to me: How much of a wild kid she is,How even if she means well, she relies way too much in brute force, How she has trouble getting out of her own head, etc. She really feels just as confident and energic as Sonic,but just like him,you can tell she has a huge heart.

HOWEVER, as much as i love how they made her strength and bravery shine in this game, Heroes was the game that gave birth to the idea that Amy is willing to chase and even fight Sonic just to insist that they should marry (in SA2 she did follow him to the prison but it was only to help him and tag along in the adventure).

Ofc this was supposed to be comedic and to be seen as childish,harmless behavior- I say this because the rest of the characters,including Sonic himself,don't seem to take it seriously- but what was supposed to be seen as an endearing flaw at the time, would rapidly mute into what's probably Amy's worst portrayal ,as the writers turned it into harassment for the next mainline games (Ignoring Shadow the hedgehog where she is the same as in heroes and only has a brief appearance.)

Before i go into Battle,i just want to say that the definition of stalker according to google is “a person who harasses or persecutes someone with unwanted and obsessive attention.” A definition that definitely did not apply to her before Heroes,but that i can't deny that does apply to Amy for the next few games:

In Battle, Amy is suddenly written as aggresive and self-centered. All her compassion and empathy from the adventure era is gone, intimidating people (even Cream) and demanding information from them from the get-go. Of course she does a few good things throughout the game too,like take care of Emerl and such,but she still mainly uses him for her benefit (calories counter and emerald radar). Right off the bat,at the start of her storyline she insists on searching for Sonic even when she herself assumes he is hiding from her -which implies she knows what she's doing is worth hiding for- and tries to justify her behavior by saying that Sonic actually loves her and that he is being “ just shy “ or that “ he got cold feet”- while others characters react in a way that implies that's obviously not the case and that her behavior is worrysome..

I think it's important to mention that before Battle, we hadn’t gotten a single line of dialogue that implied that Amy tought that her behavior could be hurtful for Sonic, nor did she ever threaten anyone at all unless it was self defense. She knew he didn’t reciprocate her feelings and was actively trying to make him fall for her anyways,sure, but we gotta remember that while the canon ages might have been scrapped recently, at the time Modern Amy was created they were still very much canon and you can tell they had them in mind when writing these characters. Amy was supposed to be 12 ,so it makes sense that she didn't understand why Sonic wouldn’t accept her affection. She idolized him and misinterpreted the fact that he always was protecting her as possible romantic interest,but never actually imposed anything on him. The worst thing she ever did to him was wanting to hug him without consent,and again, the games implied that she clearly didn't realize such a thing wasn't ok. Sonic also didn't seem to want to hurt her feelings so while he did run away and expressed being annoyed by her he never explicitly told her to stop. I actually think that if he had sat her down and made it clear to her that what she was doing was truly bothering him, The Amy from the adventure era would have stopped, but i doubt he cared enough to do that honestly (after all ,in his recap screens it is implied that what truly bothers him about Amy being near him is not her crush,but that he thinks shes exposed to danger.)

BUT in Battle and for the next three games,Amy doesn’t seem to be written as a 12-year-old who mistakes admiration for love anymore. This is where the writers started to portray her as someone who is clearly still young and definitely childish but not innocent. Her whole character revolves around harassing Sonic and using her strength to intimidate others, and don't get me wrong,I like that Amy gets angry easily!! i like that she isn't afraid of a fight,that she complains a lot, and that she isn't peaceful. After all,those are important parts of who she is. But Battle!Amy is on a whole other level: she gets mad at her friends just because they don't agree with everything she does or says. It's not about having a strong personality anymore,she's just generally aggressive. For the next few games she and Sonic can't have one normal conversation that isn't Amy imposing her own wishes over him and him trying to get away from her, so it's hard to believe she wouldn't realize that what's she's doing is wrong nor accidental as we were supposed to before. This time It just feels like she is deciding to ignore the signs.

This continued in advance 3 ,where she literally threatens him with her hammer just cause he shows signs of not being interested in spending time with her when they meet, Then in rush she becomes possesive and jealous the second he mentions Blaze and also seems to treathen him with the hammer in the credits scene because he is running from her hug.

They changed the direction of her characterization again after Rush. The best way i can describe the Amy that is present in Riders,06,etc is one that has two very polarized sides to her personality. On one side,she is a peppy,sweet,over enthusiastic and romantic girl, on the other she is a pretty intimidating one with an obsession with Sonic and very fiery temper. However,contrary to her last portrayal,she is more polite and actually asks Sonic if she can come with him various times,doesn't harass him and doesn't threaten people simply cause they don't agree with her anymore, but she still doesn't seem to have any sense of boundaries,still follows Sonic without permission sometimes and still clearly has no consideration for his personal space. Another thing about this Amy is how her flirting is really intense, and even if she isn't as aggressive as the Amy from Battle,if someone messes a bit with her she doesn't hesitate to resort to intimidation or take her hammer out.

She still gets violent towards Sonic sometimes,but what's different from her last characterization is that instead of doing so merely because he doesn't show romantic interest in her ,its mostly because he doesn't follow on his promises (end of Black Knight) or shows up to save her “properly” (Referring to 1- that scene in Riders where he blows eggman -who had caught Amy- away with wind and she chases him with her hammer because “how could he not think that would hit her too “ and 2- the one in Zero Gravity where he arrives late to save her and she playfully throws him a few fists saying that “it took him long enough!”). I don't think she's necesarily right to do that but i don't consider it to be problematic either, since by that point the games had strongly implied that there was a non-spoken agreement between the two that he'll always show up to save her and the whole thing feels more playful than anything else. Mostly because Sonic seems to be fine with her being around again, as he never really denies her acussations or runs away when she gets mad,and even tries to explain himself to her.

So yeah,this Amy is one of the more famous -and infamous- ones,as her negative and positive qualities are more balanced than the one from Battle. However,i personally don't like her much as there's almost no focus on the empathetic/compassionate side of her character that was so prominent in the adventure era and ,even if i wouldn’t call this version of her a Stalker , she's still is way too obsessive and possesive for my liking. The writing for her character is still pretty much completely based on being attracted to Sonic, to the point that In 06 she tells Silver that, if she had to, she'd “choose Sonic over the world".

In Sonic Chronicles , Amy gets a lot of dialogue. She gets jealous in a scene but its not as bad as in Rush and she tries to make Sonic jealous by inventing a fake boyfriend (terrible trope) but her levels of aggressiveness are up to the player's treatment of her. I am ,however , mentioning this game because of a scene in specific near the final section in which Amy is scared they might die and aks Sonic if she can have a moment with him. She then tries to have a serious conversation and politely asks if he cares about her or if he likes her at all. if the player chooses to make Sonic say he does care for her she is legitimately surprised and thankful. Idk what happens If he rejects her cause i haven't been able to find any recordings of that and i never owned this game,but i'll assume that her reaction won't be too bad considering she is asking in the first place(?) feel free to tell me if you know…

This portrayal of Amy is still present in Unleashed (2008) ,in which Amy is there to cheer/support Sonic on throughout the game and to serve as an important indicator that Sonic is quite self conscious of his looks when he's a werehog. She is generally very sweet towards him in this game (especially when she shows no rejection towards his werehog form,which is a detail i adore), even if she does get annoyed when he doesn't pay as much attention to her as he does to Chip or reciprocate her feelings.

A good example is how, before the last temple ,she asks him if he'd like to go on a date with her after everything is over. If you choose the positive dialogue option she is ,again, positively surprised and thankful. If you make him say no she complains about how he's being mean, but doesn't insist on it and just accepts it.

In Free Riders (2010) ,Amy just generally acts extremely out out of character (like,she doesn't even fit into Battle's portrayal). It really feels like someone who didn't know anything about the character wrote her, so for the sake of the pink hedgie let's ignore it and go back to talking about portrayal 4.

I already mentioned her brief apparition in Black Night and there's nothing worth mentioning about her in Generations so i'll skip them.

This portrayal ended in Lost World (2013),In which they toned down Amy as a character in general,leaving out all of her flaws and iconic traits out. She feels plain and her strong personality,confidence,sass,energy,etc all seem to be completely gone. She's just sweet and that's it . For some reason there's a scene where she literally tries to confess to Sonic and is cut off before she can finish,which is very funny considering it had never been treated as a secret before??? it really goes to show how hard they were trying to pull some kind of reboot on her. Fortunately,this characterization was only a two-game-thing (She is just as plain in Forces (2015)) so i'll put it in the same bag as the Free riders one and we'll leave it at that.

After Lost world came Boom (2014) ,and then we got the most recent change of Amy's personality,which we all know has had a mixed reception from the fandom. Originally people thought that this Amy would stay just in the Boom universe ,but this personality has been showing up in the mainline games for a while now,like in Team Sonic Racing (2019) and Frontiers (2021).

This Amy feels older than any of the ones that came before her. She kept the sass,the love for romanticism,the positive attitude,the confidence and the strenght but her bad temper and over enthusiasm are gone,as she is generally more calm,less energetic and not childish at all. Most importantly,this Amy is extremely emotionally intelligent,as the rest of characters seem to look for her help and advice constantly ( to the point that she has been given the "therapist friend" title by the fandom and is even referred as "the nice one" by Eggman himself ). Another interesting thing about this Amy is that she doesn't flirt with Sonic anymore,In fact, she barely expresses her liking for him (She does so a bit more in Japanese chz the characterization varies) and Sonic seems completely comfortable with this version of her around.

A lot of people say that this version of her is out of character and I completely understand where that comes from, but i must disagree because this characterization of Amy is the first one since the adventure era that focuses on her compassion/empathy rather than on her crush on Sonic, which combined with her intelligence,makes her not out of character,just the most emotionally mature Amy to date instead. I actually think that if the og modern Amy had grown up,this is the kind of personality she would’ve developed while becoming an adult (although she isn't supposed to be one). A good argument to defend this point would be that one Egg-memo you can buy through the fishing minigame in Frontiers where Eggman talks about how Amy has "come a long way" and how it took her some time "to find herself" and get out of Sonic's shadow.

Only problem i have with this Amy is that i wish she was more flawed and bubbly,mostly cause she can come off as very plain from time to time and way too mature. She is a bit too perfect for my taste. I'd like her to mess up more,to not always be so smart,to be more impulsive,a little bit more clumsy,fiery and wild,just so she could have some more of the charm of the original,y'know?

Before i talk about her more recent Videogame portrayal (TMoSTH) i want talk about IDW Amy:

in IDW, all of Amy's flaws and positive traits from past games are balanced pretty well: she is flawed and relatable and can mess up a bit sometimes because of her impulsivity,but she's emotionally and strategically inteligent, optimistic and incredibly kind. She is a great fighter and leader,but also a wonderful friend who offers emotional support. She has a strong personality, lots of sass and can be very aggressive and intimidating towards her enemies, but not any less of an empathetic and compassionate person because of that. Her strength and confidence are pillars for her character instead of nonsensical anger,but she still shows self doubt and fear from time to time. She is energic, idealistic and still a romantic,but not obsessive nor possesive. peppy but emotionally intelligent. She still loves Sonic, but her feelings for him feel authentic rather than childish idealization,and given that she now respects his space,she's written to be happy just with fighting by his side and jokingly flirt from time to time. (their bond also seems stronger,but that's a topic for another day.)

I believe this portrayal of her is one of the best we've gotten in the sense that she represents a good mix of most things that has made her positively memorable since the beginning and lacks every problematic aspect of her character that was added post her creation. And because of this good mix of characteristics, IDW Amy is constantly praised by the fandom. But something i hear a lot is people saying how they love IDW Amy and despise "Main Amy" -by which i'll assume they refer to videogame Amy just in general- and that way of summarizing all of Amy's game portrayals feels very odd to me, especially because IDW Amy is a culmination of every single good aspect that has been added to this character combined with most of what she was meant to be at the start. In other words,IDW Amy couldn't exist if it wasn't for all the game Amys before her.

It's true that in IDW we haven't seen her character be as impulsive and outspoken as in the Adventure era or Heroes, and i miss that as much as every other Amy fan. But I do think that ,because so much assertiveness wouldn’t coexist very well with things like careful thought, the reason for that change must be that IDW is writing an more mature version of the character and It’s hard for them to keep such aspects of her personality intact without her being seen as childish by the audience now that they are paired up with big responsabilities (ex: the restoration) Especially since that super impulsive nature of hers probably came naturally at the time because she was supposed to be a 12-year old and wether we like it or not, it was implied by the narrative that it was one of the main reasons she got caught by eggman both in SA1 and SA2. Aka,IDW Amy isn't allowed to make as many mistakes as the og.

After all ,Amy used to be written to be mostly seen as a comedic character and as an "extra addition" to the main team rather than as an important,needed member of it. ( even in Heroes,where she had formed her own team,she was still trying to catch up to Sonic and his team because she had been excluded of it.) If she made a mistake and got caught by eggman because of her stubborness,the writers would just make Sonix fix things. In IDW she doesn't just feel older,but she has also gotten to have important roles in the fight against Eggman and people rely on her with their lives,so it doesn't surprise me that the writers try to make her be more conscious and careful when it comes to her actions now that she has more responsibilities and can't allow herself to make as many mistakes as she did back when she was written to be more immature and impulsive because of that extreme assertiveness.

Now,I personally believe that Amy in TMoSTH is the same as in IDW, just that she feels more like her OG self in TMOSTH because ,for the most part ,Bday Girl is on that train literally to just have fun and do as she pleases. She doesn't have any weight on her shoulders nor expectations,she is free of responsabilities all the way until the climax of the game and the game itself is very comedy-centric for the most part, so the writers pobably felt like they could set that impulsive,assertive side of her loose again, and i loved it!

In this game her character doesn't revolve around Sonic and she messes up a lot (The way she was so ashamed of how she broke her hammer when she tried to escape the closet with brute force that she lied, how she didn't realize Sonic was actually hurt because she was too excited about the game, how she was overconfident and impulsively tried to solve the case and completely failed ,how she and vector started beating a wall violently after realizing the train was alive,etc),but her positive qualities shine throughout the game as well ( How she took the time to organize a party that she'd think everyone would have fun at,How she is so thankful that everyone showed up and doesn't mind that Shad and Sonic didn't bring gifts, how she makes sweets remarks about others and cute jokes in distressing situations,how she has faith in Shadow's goodwill, The way she delivers the final blow at the end and says that despite everything,she loved the party because it was an adventure,etc ). Throughout the game,Sonic and the rest treat her in a way that really goes to show what a good friend and a lovely person she is ,and she expresses great appreciation for everyone's presence in her life.

It's honestly an amazing coincidence that this game takes place on her bday considering that it's the one that made this portrayal of her "game canon". As a fan of her, i celebrate it and hope we get more of it in the near future.

So yeah, i didn't talk about Sonic X Amy,Archie Amy nor all the comics,series and games that came out between the big videogame titles. There is much more about how Amy has been written that could be said, but i think i did a pretty decent summary of the most important changes her character has gone through the years mainline game-wise,at least good enough to defend my point that she wasn't a stalker originally and she definitely isn't one now. As i mentioned before,i agree that she was portrayed as possesive and obsessive for a long period of time and as an actual harasser for a shorter one , and that we should definitely recognize it and be critical of such things being portrayed as “quirky” and “funny” aspects when they are in reality, hurtful. BUT summarizing her whole character by calling her a stalker and an obsessive fangirl is defining her based on the worst examples of her characterization and ignoring her good ones completely.

Feel free to disagree with my character analysis,my opinions and the way i categorize her portrayals,but i strongly believe that Amy rose isn't meant to be a harasser,an obsessive fangirl or personal space invader.

My girl deserves better.

#also don't get me wrong i love battle #is just that Amy is really hard to like in that game #props to her for carrying weights for half of it tho we stan a strong pink rat #if you actually read this whole thing props to you #also thanks anon for giving me an excuse to talk about amy #amy rose #sonic spoilers #character analysis

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sleepinthrumyalarms · 1 year

Text

— to tame a demon

pairing: wednesday addams x fem!oni!reader

warnings: none

summary: a new mid-semester arrival in the face of the gloomy addams girl meets the resident demonic student who's all witty remarks and tusked grins, and something inhumane draws her in

word count: 4.8k

"There are many flavors of outcasts here," Enid began, hands behind her back as she guided Wednesday through the yard, "but the four main cliques are Fangs, Furs, Stoners, and Scales," she counted, pointing to the table where a group of neat-looking students sat, sipping at some bottled red liquid, "Those are the Fangs, a.k.a, vampires. Some of them have literally been here for decades."

The girl moved on, and Wednesday's unimpressed glare flicked to another group of students.

"That bunch of knuckleheads are Furs, a.k.a, werewolves. Like me!”

The fuzzy-haired teens sitting at the table howled at the mention, greeting their kin.

"Oh, you see that girl? That's (Y/n) (L/n). She's not a werewolf, but a close thing. An oni demon.”

The young woman was sitting at the table next to the Furs, hitting her werewolf friend in the shoulder to get him to stop with the loud noise. She didn't really stand out — the girl wore a set of the standard issued uniform, her jacket and a few top buttons of her shirt unbuttoned. But one thing about her appearance really did catch Wednesday's eye — her canines, both top and bottom, crooked at the ends and big enough to protrude from a small slit between her lips. Despite the effect they had on her mouth, the tusks didn't make her face look inhumane, and, as the demon looked up to wave at Enid, Wednesday noticed a pair of snake-like slits in her (e/c) scleras.

The ravenette caught herself thinking of how pretty those eyes were.

"A close thing?" She wondered out loud, making a show of gazing somewhere away from the face of the oni girl, as if she was asking the question out of sheer curiosity.

"Yeah, well, she doesn't exactly "wolf out", per se. Think of her as... a girl with unresolved anger issues who lets her inner demons out every Blood Moon. So like, basically all of us," the blonde said, giggling at her own joke, "Dunno if it affects her looks, though... No one has ever seen (Y/n) during one of her demon furies."

Wednesday looked back at the oni, catching sight of the girl talking with her friends, a small grin on her face as she listened to their energetic rambles with amusement.

What an interesting creature.

Wednesday wasn't extremely enthusiastic about botany lessons. Thanks to her mother, she was practically an expert in the field of carnivorous plants. But skipping just wasn't her style, and she walked into the classroom, hoping the disinterest she had in the subject was clear on her pale face.

As the girl looked around the class to find herself a seat, her eyes quickly traveled above the heads of her classmates. She noticed Enid next to Yoko, so sitting with a person she was at least a bit acquainted with was off limits. Wednesday felt far from sad about the fact - having to neighbor with the hyperactive blonde in the dorms was enough excitement in her life.

Her gaze then suddenly fell on the two half-empty desks in the second row. One of the vacant seats was right next to Xavier, and mulling her decision over she realised she would prefer to sit next to a wolfed-out Enid rather than the miserable artist. Quickly making up her mind, Wednesday walked up to the other desk, and felt Xavier's gaze on the back of her head as she sat down, taking her backpack off to place it at her feet. She still had a few minutes before the class started, she could indulge in some macabre reminiscings of hers before the actual torture began.

"Oh. Hey," the gloomy girl heard a voice call out on her right, and turned to look up at her neighbor. Her breath hitched as she realised it was the oni girl, her cheek leaning against her fist as she smiled at Wednesday lazily, her top lip rising to her gums slightly to bare the intimidating tusks. If she was trying to scare Wednesday away, it certainly didn't work, "You're Wednesday, right? Enid wasn't exactly secretive about her new sombre roommate. I was hoping I'd get a chance to meet you."

The girl offered a clawed hand as a greeting, "I'm (Y/n)."

Wednesday took a moment to look the demon over. Her (h/c) hair was put up in a messy ponytail, some of the locks falling in front of her pointed ears, framing her face, and her (e/c) cat-like eyes were staring down at Wednesday with a playful glint. She was wearing the same uniform as the rest of the class, and the undone buttons exposed the top of the girl's collarbones.

What an annoying habit. Didn't she know what formal dress code was?

“Huh. The teeth don't seem to affect your speech, despite their uncomfortable positioning,” the ravenette noted, shaking the taller girl’s outstretched hand, finding it rather warm in contrast to her own dead-cold skin. If the demon found the temperature or the rather rude comment off-putting, she didn’t show it, “I hope I didn’t intrude.”

“No, no, you’re good,” (Y/n) reassured, leaning her elbow back against the seat, “And those? Yeah, I’m not an orc, you know. You should see how big they get when I... on second thought, you probably shouldn't." She stopped her rant bashfully, cheeks warming slightly at the realization of a rather sensitive topic not being suitable when meeting someone new.

"Not a pretty sight?"

"Outrageous."

"Hm.” Wednesday looked away from the other girl’s face, staring at the board in front of the class.

“I think I'd love to see."

That made (Y/n) chuckle, “You do seem like the type to enjoy outrageous and hideous things.”

Their conversation came to an end when Ms. Thornhill entered the classroom, holding a big pot in her gloved hands, and both girls turned their attention to the teacher.

(Y/n) had to admit that hers had seemed to switch to her new intriguing neighbor a few times. She watched Wednesday from the corner of her eye, taking in the girl’s frigid expression as she listened to the lecture without any interest, and found it hard to refocus on the lesson again.

It was the early hours of morning as Wednesday walked to the dining hall, completely devoid of any appetite but having nothing to do in this ungodly time. Most of the students were still asleep, and the halls were empty, letting the gloomy girl enjoy her solitude, her platformed shoes the only sound accompanying her.

Seemingly enjoying the peacefulness too much, she didn’t notice another person coming down from the other side of the stairs, and bumped into them, the collision powerful enough to tear her out of her thoughts.

Ready to put the culprit into the hospital for the rest of the school year, Wednesday looked up, and her emotionless gaze met the (e/c) - colored one.

“Good morning, Wednesday. Up to tackle people to their deaths so early?” (Y/n) chuckled, straightening her jacket before looking the smaller girl up and down, “You alright?”

“Peachy.” Wednesday deadpanned and turned around without another word, continuing on her path to the cafeteria. Much to her disappointment, she heard the other girl follow her, catching up to her smaller strides with ease.

“Were you walking to breakfast too? What a coincidence. A perfect morning for an early snack, I’ve been feeling hungry myself.”

Wednesday didn’t answer, and it was silent again, for which the ravenette was thankful. She could even say she enjoyed walking in the presence of the demon, as long as the latter kept her snarky toothy mouth shut.

"So, do you prefer your human flesh rare or straight from the limb?" The smaller girl asked suddenly without looking at her companion.

"Why, you got some to share?" (Y/n) chuckled, "Nah. I'm more of an animal meat kinda girl. Some of my ancient ancestors did have their man-eating tendencies, but they didn't exactly wear uniforms or went to school either."

"Sounds about right. Otherwise Nevermore would be an all-you-can-eat restaurant for you. Maybe even the whole Jericho town."

The oni laughed at the statement, a loud rough guffaw that almost made Wednesday’s ears bleed. Except it didn’t.

Wednesday found herself standing in the center of the dorm of her demon friend, hands dutifully by her sides as she looked around, catching the smallest details of (Y/n)’s lair. Her bed was made neatly, and some of her notebooks and papers seemed to had been hastily put in a messy pile on her desk, an obvious last-minute measure to make her working space look presentable.

Before she left to get the textbooks she had forgotten at Yoko’s the last time she had a sleepover with the vampire, the girl pulled up a stool to the desk, inviting the other girl to sit down and make herself comfortable, then, before Wednesday could utter a single world, sputtered some nonsense about her awful hospitality and gestured at her own, admittedly much bigger and softer chair, kicked the stool away, and left the room as fast as she could, promising to be back in a flash.

The girls had agreed on studying for the upcoming exam period, and, considering Wednesday was in no need of preparation, let alone tutoring, she made it the most heartfelt gesture to help the (h/c) – haired demon not fail any subjects. The ravenette told herself that she had no choice, that the oni wouldn’t stop whining and pestering her about how much work there was to be done and how little time she had left, but in reality (Y/n) had to only ask once.

Wednesday agreed, but not without grumbling about how annoying and tiresome the demon’s presence was.

Addams moved to take off her backpack and placed it on the desk, taking some books out of it before she took a seat in (Y/n)’s chair. She looked up at the opposite wall, examining the different posters and trinkets hanging on it. A small bonsai tree was sitting on the table that stood against the wall, obviously tended to caringly every single day, if the flourishing green leaves were anything to go by.

Noticing a much more imposing decoration, the girl stood up to get closer to a stand where two samurai swords were displayed in a matching daisho set, a katana and a smaller wakizashi sword. The sayas were of black waxed wood, golden kashiraes mounting both in peculiar bows. Wednesday moved to take a closer look, noticing a face of an oni demon neatly engraved into the scabbard of the katana.

"Something caught your eye?"

Wednesday turned around and away from the sword stand to look at the oni who had managed to sneak up on the other girl, but didn't scare her in the slightest.

"It's nice craftsmanship." Wednesday deadpanned, staring up at her.

(Y/n) looked somewhat pleased with the comment.

"I'm glad you think so," her slitted gaze moved from Wednesday's face to the kake, and the (h/c) - haired girl sighed, her hands behind her back and her shoulders tense, "It's been a while since I've last touched the blade. Don't exactly have a reason to train right now. Peaceful times." She said, almost with a hint of sorrow.

"Why didn't you join the fencing club?"

"Because I deem my swordsmanship a resemblance of my bloodline's ancient traditions, not a sport or a hobby." She answered firmly, but her tone held no offence.

"Strange. I'd see it as an opportunity to be undefeatable at something."

And to outdo Bianca again, no less. What a pleasurable thought.

Wednesday watched the other girl chuckle sheepishly and move her hand up to scratch at the back of her head.

"Well... My thrusting speed has been slacking lately. I'm more into powerful crushing slashes, you know."

"Hm." Wednesday seemed lost in thought, her gaze distant, before she turned to the taller girl again, "You and I should fence sometime. To keep you in shape."

The demon looked taken aback, both at the proposal and the intensity of the ravenette's gaze that wasn't there before. Then she smiled, her eyes warm.

"That'd be an honor. And you know I how I feel about that thing."

Wednesday stared up at the top shelf, aggravated, as if the glare adorning her face would make the book budge and fall into her hands.

She was at the library, looking for the Nightshades book, or anything that would lead her a step closer to the mysterious society. She wished she had brought Thing along. Tall bookcases wouldn't be a problem for him.

Frowning deeper, the ravenette tried to raise her hand a bit higher and jumped, the tips of her fingers barely grazing the spine of the book she assumed was the one she was looking for. She huffed, crossing her hands on her chest and looking around the room for some stool or a ladder.

"Wednesday, good evening. Up to some late night reading?"

Wednesday looked up at the entrance of the library to see (Y/n) going down the stairs, a smirk on her toothy lips as she observed the scene in front of her.

"Yes, I am, actually."

"Which one do you need? I'll get it for you."

Wednesday pouted for a few seconds, then pointed at the top shelf where the dark - purple book was sitting, taunting her.

The demon raised her hand to reach for the book, "Honestly, how are you so tiny?"

"(Y/n), I'm at a perfect height for breaking your kneecaps. I won't hesitate."

"Mhm, I'm sure you won't," grabbing the book, the taller girl took it off the shelf, but didn't hurry to hand it over to Wednesday, "Now, what's the magic word?"

"I don't have time for -"

"Wrong, Addams. Try again." The oni grinned, clearly enjoying herself.

Wednesday glared at the girl, her gaze murderous, but after a few moments she complied.

"Would you give me the book, (Y/n). Please."

"There, was that so hard?" (Y/n) pressed the book into the ravenette's hands, and the shorter girl quickly looked over the cover, exasperated when she realised it wasn't the one she was looking for, "Are you up to a research or something? Do you need an extra pair of hands, maybe?"

"Why would you want to help me?"

"Isn’t that what friends are for? And maybe it's the lack of anything better to do."

"You're such a slacker. I have no idea how you're still in this school," She put the book on the first shelf she could reach for, then turned around and headed for the exit, "Let's go."

The (h/c) - haired demon shook her head with a small smile before moving to follow the busy girl.

"I want to punch Xavier in the face," (Y/n) grumbled, her hands folded on her chest, a brush covered in yellow paint sticking in between her clawed fingers as she stared daggers at the pair of young people a few feet away from her.

"Huh? Why?" Enid looked up from the boat she was painting on, crouched on the ground, confused at her friend's sudden violent statement.

"Because he's a creep and he has a stupid face with that pitiful look of his." The oni muttered, furrowing her brows as she watched the young man bother Wednesday, the ravenette's expression and body language doing little to tell whether she was irritated by his presence, which pissed (Y/n) off even more.

Enid followed her gaze and smirked when she realised what the source of the demon's sour mood was, "If you think he's giving her a hard time, why don't you come over and talk to him?"

"I'm pretty sure Wednesday isn't the type to be sly and subtle when someone's vexing her." The oni huffed in reply.

"Well, doesn't that mean that... On second thought, I shouldn't be the one to judge the situation," the werewolf quickly stopped herself, noticing (Y/n)'s scowl now directed at her, turning away to continue painting the boat nervously.

The (h/c) - haired girl sighed, "You're right, actually. Maybe that means she doesn't mind his company. Or maybe she doesn't want to kill a guy in broad daylight," the brush the demon was holding finally snapped under the pressure of her grip, and she gnashed her teeth, seething, "I could."

"That's the third brush today, (Y/n)," Yoko chided from Enid's side, clearly tired of the oni's behavior.

"Sorry," (Y/n) turned her gaze away from the scene she was watching, her eyes like that of a kicked puppy's as she sat on her knees next to the vampire, taking a new brush from her outstretched hand, "Thanks."

Yoko hummed and resumed painting, "You should really talk to her, you know. Before it's too late and she's snatched from under your nose."

"Yoko's right. You jealously watching her like a hawk won't do either of you good. It's kinda weird that Wednesday herself hasn't noticed the heart-eyes you constantly have whenever she's around."

The demon grunted, trying to busy herself with lining out a yellow cat eye on the side of the boat.

"Seriously, (Y/n). Tell her. What's the worst that could happen? You don't seem like the type to be afraid of rejection," Enid grinned at her friend, winking, "Personally, I'm rooting for you. I’m sure you can make my roomie happy, well, to an extent, you know.”

Except the demon was afraid of rejection her whole life. And considering Wednesday wasn't the type to give any signals, (Y/n) wasn't sure where she and the gloomy girl stood.

She tolerated her presence, at least. That was a start. But she seemed to tolerate Xavier’s, too. God, what an enigma Wednesday Addams was.

The Rave'N Dance was at its peak. The music was loud, and most of the students had long since hit the dance floor, enjoying their time in groups and pairs.

Wednesday herself was feeling rather out of breath, the collar of her black vintage dress clinging to her neck uncomfortably as she stepped into a closed-off room to escape the noise of the party for a bit.

She was alone as she sat down on one of the couches, a sigh of relief escaping her mouth as she felt the pressure leave her sore feet.

Well, despite the abruptness of it all, Wednesday would lie if she said she wasn't having at least a bit of fun.

“Hey.”

Wednesday looked up to see (Y/n) come into the room, moving the blinds out of her way carefully. She smiled at the smaller girl, and the ravenette realised she was seeing the oni for the first time that evening.

The demon was wearing a black and white haori over a crisp white high-collared blouse paired with black hakama pants, and the combination of formal wear in different styles made the girl look very dapper. She had winged eyeliner on her face, (f/c) eyeshadow framing her lids gorgeously, and her lipstick was smudged on her canines just a bit, no doubt from all the talking and drinking the oni had done throughout the evening.

(Y/n) walked over to take a sit next to the smaller girl, letting her back slump over the couch with a grunt.

“Out of your notorious inhumane stamina already?” Wednesday asked teasingly.

“Uh-huh. Thought the girls were gonna dance me to death. I needed a breather,” the oni opened her eyes and straightened in her seat, looking around the small closed-off space, “Where’s your date?”

“You could say I needed a breather too. These shoes are killing me, and not in an enjoyable way.”

The demon hummed, her eyes moving from Wednesday’s legs up her face. Their gazes met, and (Y/n)’s didn’t falter.

“You look deadly beautiful yourself, Wednesday. Very much so.” She muttered quietly with gentle admiration, and Wednesday felt her stomach flip.

I couldn't tear my eyes away from you this whole evening, was what the demon wanted to say. I wish I was the one to share the dance with you, wish I could tell you how much I adore you, and how badly I want to hold you close, to feel your touch. Me, not anyone else.

The girl averted her gaze again, moving to stand up, "Gotta go before they think I've ditched them. No patience with the vampires. Ironic, huh?" She smiled, though it didn't reach her eyes, and went to the exit, looking back at Wednesday one last time.

"Have a good night, Addams."

"Is there something on your mind? You've been very quiet for the past hour, I've gotten a lot done. It's getting unnerving."

(Y/n) smiled slightly, huffing out a laugh through her nose, her elbows resting on the stone railing of the balcony as she turned her head to look at the ravenette, "Nothing much. Just... things, I guess."

"Are they bothering you?"

Never. When I'm thinking of you, it's never a bother.

"I think I'm in love with you, Wednesday."

For the first time ever, (Y/n) saw the gloomy girl get caught off guard. Her eyes were wide open, but she didn't say anything. Her gaze traveled up to the face of the demon girl, and she stared at her, unblinking, like a hunting cat expecting a sudden attack.

"You'll get over it."

"You think so?" (Y/n) chuckled, looking out at the dark scenery in front of her, "I never thought I'd get to say that you might be wrong."

It was silent between them again. Wednesday seemed to be lost in thought as she observed the side profile of the taller girl, noting all her features lit by the dim moonlight.

"When have you started to feel this way?" She asked at last, as if a doctor examining her sick patient.

"A while ago, I guess."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"I was afraid of... how you'd react. And I didn't want to overwhelm you. You seem to have a different type of obsession going on." (Y/n) looked at Wednesday, eyes gleaming with honesty.

"I hate you." Wednesday deadpanned, unconsciously moving closer to the taller girl.

"Really? Why?"

"I hate the way you make me feel. Your mere presence is what constantly overwhelms me."

Barely any inches were left between them as their gazes met, electicity going through the sudden connection.

"Do you want to stop feeling this way?" The oni whispered, barely audible through her heart thumping in her ears.

"No."

(Y/n) froze, and Wednesday leaned forward on her tip toes to meet her, pressing her plush lips against the demon's. The kiss was soft and warm, and (Y/n)’s stomach was instantly swarmed with butterflies, the heaviness leaving her shoulders. She felt the hand of the smaller girl move closer to hers, and Wednesday pressed a finger on top of her palm gently, before the cold touch engulfed the whole hand of the oni as their fingers entwined.

“It’s been an hour already, Wednesday.”

“I know.”

“It’s getting late. We should get to bed.”

“Do as you wish, (Y/n). I’m not finished yet. Good night.”

The demon groaned at the words, standing up from the bed to walk over to the smaller female where she was typing away, the clicking sounds almost enough to lull (Y/n) to sleep. But she couldn’t, not without the presence of the other girl.

Draping herself over Wednesday’s shoulders, she watched the typerwriter print the letters at a steady pace, Wednesday’s brows furrowed in focus.

“Come on,” the oni whined quietly, “This can wait until tomorrow. You have to rest.”

“(Y/n), I’ll suplex you out the window if you don’t stop bugging me.”

(Y/n) sighed, burying her face in the smaller girl’s shoulder, “You’re so mean. You know I can’t sleep without you.”

The typing paused, and Wendesday turned to face the demon who was still mumbling something into the fabric of her sweater, blunt tusks scratching at the clothed shoulder as her mouth moved. The shorter girl exhaled tiredly before turning back to the typewriter, finishing her last sentence and taking the paper out before putting it into a neat stack next to the device. Then she turned to (Y/n) again to press a light kiss on top of her head.

“Fine, you big baby. Let’s go to bed.”

Raising her head, the demon smiled, straightening her back and taking Wednesday by the hand, pulling her up and to the bed they shared now that (Y/n) was allowed to sleep next to Wednesday instead of the hardwood floor. It was a long process, but the ravenette was able to get used to the presence of the other girl, comfortable enough to push her boundaries to an extent.

“Want me to do your hair?”

Wednesday nodded, and (Y/n) sat down on the bed, taking a black brush from the nightstand before motioning for the smaller girl to sit between her legs. When they were situated comfortably, the demon started to unbraid Wednesday’s dark hair, careful not to tangle her claws in the tresses, before brushing it gently. Wednesday closed her eyes at the feeling of the oni’s hands in her hair, goosebumps raising up her neck as she leaned back into the bigger girl’s body.

This was nice. She could get used to this.

Skipping was never Wednesday's style. She was a responsible student, dutifully attending every single class and never missing on her extracurricular activities. Not like she'd ever want to, anyway. She liked spending time with the bees, even if the girl herself would never admit that.

So what was Wednesday doing, away from her class during school time, hidden inside a barely lit broom closet as she pressed her mouth against the resident demon's, kissing her feverishly and licking over her tusks?

Oh, if only her parents could see her right now. They'd probably be ecstatic.

"Fuck, Wednesday," (Y/n) sighed against the smaller girl's mouth, hands on her waist as she pressed the ravenette closer to herself, wanting to leave no space in between them.

"Make no sound," Wednesday scolded the (h/c) - haired girl, biting at her lower lip and sliding down to place a chaste kiss along her jawline, "We don't want to get caught, now do we?"

The only response she got was a quiet whine, and she smiled against (Y/n)'s neck, pressing a few kisses there, right by the jugular, and feeling her pulse quicken under the cold touch, the demon's clawed fingers digging sharply into her hips.

The ravenette moved away, and the taller girl breathed in sharp sighs through her mouth, skin tingling and positively on fire.

Wednesday kissed her again, just for the lovesick look in her eyes.

"I'm afraid we have to go before someone notices our absence and thinks I've kidnapped you to torture for fun."

The oni girl huffed, running her hand through her (h/c) hair both to fix it and to relieve the tension that was clearly still there, her other hand resting on Wednesday's waist, rubbing her thumb against the cloth of her uniform affectionately.

"You're such a tease," she sighed, lowering her face a bit, slitted eyes glowing and hopeful, "One last time?"

Wednesday pressed her palm against (Y/n)'s cheek and got on her tip toes to gently kiss the other, lingering there before pulling away completely, leaving a small but noticeable mark of her dark lipstick color.

"There. Let's go."

The oni grinned, cheeks still red, and Wednesday couldn't fight the warm feeling bubbling in her stomach at the way the taller girl looked at her.

"Let's hope Ms. Thornhill doesn't get too mad," (Y/n) chuckled, moving to open the door of the closet, letting some bright light in through a small slit. Then she closed it with a sharp twist of her arm, eyes wide and panicked.

"Wednesday, we've skipped the whole period here."

"And?" The ravenette deadpanned.

"The class is over!"

"And?"

"What do you think! The halls are filled with people right now. There's no way in hell we're getting out of here unnoticed."

"Why would we need to do that?"

The demon girl tore her gaze away from the door, looking down at Wednesday as if she was mad, making the ravenette roll her eyes.

"You're stupid. Come on."

Grabbing (Y/n)'s hand, she opened the door and led the girl forward, tugging when she felt resistance and heard the oni groan.

"I can't believe you sometimes," (Y/n) muttered, embarrassed.

"For someone who seems to always act so cocky and aloof, you care too much about what others think. Besides," she turned around to glance at the frustrated girl, a small smirk on her lips, "the color looks good on you."

(Y/n) didn't answer, too busy avoiding the amused stares of her fellow students passing by.

Oh, they were certainly not going to let her live.

#wednesday #wednesday addams x reader #wednesday netflix #wednesday x reader #wednesday 2022 #netflix wednesday #wednesday addams #wednesday x you #wednesday imagine #wednesday the series #wednesday addams x y/n #imagine #female reader #wednesday x fem!reader #wednesday x female reader

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

Text

Deb Chachra's "How Infrastructure Works": Mutual aid, the built environment, the climate, and a future of comfort and abundance

This Thursday (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. And on Friday (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

Engineering professor and materials scientist Deb Chachra's new book How Infrastructure Works is a hopeful, lyrical – even beautiful – hymn to the systems of mutual aid we embed in our material world, from sewers to roads to the power grid. It's a book that will make you see the world in a different way – forever:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612711/how-infrastructure-works-by-deb-chachra/

Chachra structures the book as a kind of travelogue, in which she visits power plants, sewers, water treatment plants and other "charismatic megaprojects," connecting these to science, history, and her own memoir. In so doing, she doesn't merely surface the normally invisible stuff that sustains us all, but also surfaces its normally invisible meaning.

Infrastructure isn't merely a way to deliver life's necessities – mobility, energy, sanitation, water, and so on – it's a shared way of delivering those necessities. It's not just that economies of scale and network effects don't merely make it more efficient and cheaper to provide these necessities to whole populations. It's also that the lack of these network and scale effects make it unimaginable that these necessities could be provided to all of us without being part of a collective, public project.

Think of the automobile versus public transit: if you want to live in a big, built up city, you need public transit. Once a city gets big enough, putting everyone who needs to go everywhere in a car becomes a Red Queen's Race. With that many cars on the road, you need more roads. More roads push everything farther apart. Once everything is farther apart, you need more cars.

Geometry hates cars. You can't bargain with geometry. You can't tunnel your way out of this. You can't solve it with VTOL sky-taxis. You can't fix it with self-driving cars whose car-to-car comms let them shave down their following distances. You need buses, subways and trams. You need transit. There's a reason that every plan to "disrupt" transportation ends up reinventing the bus:

https://stanforddaily.com/2018/04/09/when-silicon-valley-accidentally-reinvents-the-city-bus/

Even the cities we think of as motorists' paradises – such as LA – have vast, extensive transit systems. They suck – because they are designed for poor people – but without them, the city would go from traffic-blighted to traffic-destroyed.

The dream of declaring independence from society, of going "off-grid," of rejecting any system of mutual obligation and reliance isn't merely an infantile fantasy – it also doesn't scale, which is ironic, given how scale-obsessed its foremost proponents are in their other passions. Replicating sanitation, water, rubbish disposal, etc to create individual systems is wildly inefficient. Creating per-person communications systems makes no sense – by definition, communications involves at least two people.

So infrastructure, Chachra reminds us, is a form of mutual aid. It's a gift we give to ourselves, to each other, and to the people who come after us. Any rugged individualism is but a thin raft, floating on an ocean of mutual obligation, mutual aid, care and maintenance.

Infrastructure is vital and difficult. Its amortization schedule is so long that in most cases, it won't pay for itself until long after the politicians who shepherded it into being are out of office (or dead). Its duty cycle is so long that it can be easy to forget it even exists – especially since the only time most of us notice infrastructure is when it stops working.

This makes infrastructure precarious even at the best of times – hard to commit to, easy to neglect. But throw in the climate emergency and it all gets pretty gnarly. Whatever operating parameters we've designed into our infra, whatever maintenance regimes we've committed to for it, it's totally inadequate. We're living through a period where abnormal is normal, where hundred year storms come every six months, where the heat and cold and wet and dry are all off the charts.

It's not just that the climate emergency is straining our existing infrastructure – Chachra makes the obvious and important point that any answer to the climate emergency means building a lot of new infrastructure. We're going to need new systems for power, transportation, telecoms, water delivery, sanitation, health delivery, and emergency response. Lots of emergency response.

Chachra points out here that the history of big, transformative infra projects is…complicated. Yes, Bazalgette's London sewers were a breathtaking achievement (though they could have done a better job separating sewage from storm runoff), but the money to build them, and all the other megaprojects of Victorian England, came from looting India. Chachra's family is from India, though she was raised in my hometown of Toronto, and spent a lot of her childhood traveling to see family in Bhopal, and she has a keen appreciation of the way that those old timey Victorian engineers externalized their costs on brown people half a world away.

But if we can figure out how to deliver climate-ready infra, the possibilities are wild – and beautiful. Take energy: we've all heard that Americans use far more energy than most of their foreign cousins (Canadians and Norwegians are even more energy-hungry, thanks to their heating bills).

The idea of providing every person on Earth with the energy abundance of an average Canadian is a horrifying prospect – provided that your energy generation is coupled to your carbon emissions. But there are lots of renewable sources of energy. For every single person on Earth to enjoy the same energy diet as a Canadian, we would have to capture a whopping four tenths of a percent of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth. Four tenths of a percent!

Of course, making solar – and wind, tidal, and geothermal – work will require a lot of stuff. We'll need panels and windmills and turbines to catch the energy, batteries to store it, and wires to transmit it. The material bill for all of this is astounding, and if all that material is to come out of the ground, it'll mean despoiling the environments and destroying the lives of the people who live near those extraction sites. Those are, of course and inevitably, poor and/or brown people.

But all those materials? They're also infra problems. We've spent millennia treating energy as scarce, despite the fact that fresh supplies of it arrive on Earth with every sunrise and every moonrise. Moreover, we've spent that same period treating materials as infinite despite the fact that we've got precisely one Earth's worth of stuff, and fresh supplies arrive sporadically, unpredictably, and in tiny quantities that usually burn up before they reach the ground.

Chachra proposes that we could – we must – treat material as scarce, and that one way to do this is to recognize that energy is not. We can trade energy for material, opting for more energy intensive manufacturing processes that make materials easier to recover when the good reaches its end of life. We can also opt for energy intensive material recovery processes. If we put our focus on designing objects that decompose gracefully back into the material stream, we can build the energy infrastructure to make energy truly abundant and truly clean.

This is a bold engineering vision, one that fuses Chachra's material science background, her work as an engineering educator, her activism as an anti-colonialist and feminist. The way she lays it out is just…breathtaking. Here, read an essay of hers that prefigures this book:

https://tinyletter.com/metafoundry/letters/metafoundry-75-resilience-abundance-decentralization

How Infrastructure Works is a worthy addition to the popular engineering books that have grappled with the climate emergency. The granddaddy of these is the late David MacKay's open access, brilliant, essential, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, a book that will forever change the way you think about energy:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/04/08/sustainable-energy-without-the-hot-air-the-freakonomics-of-conservation-climate-and-energy/

The whole "Without the Hot Air" series is totally radical, brilliant, and beautiful. Start with the Sustainable Materials companion volume to understand why everything can be explained by studying, thinking about and changing the way we use concrete and aluminum:

https://memex.craphound.com/2011/11/17/sustainable-materials-indispensable-impartial-popular-engineering-book-on-the-future-of-our-built-and-made-world/

And then get much closer to home – your kitchen, to be precise – with the Food and Climate Change volume:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/06/methane-diet/#3kg-per-day

Reading Chachra's book, I kept thinking about Saul Griffith's amazing Electrify, a shovel-ready book about how we can effect the transition to a fully electrified America:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering

Chachra's How Infrastructure Works makes a great companion volume to Electrify, a kind of inspirational march to play accompaniment on Griffith's nuts-and-bolts journey. It's a lyrical, visionary book, charting a bold course through the climate emergency, to a world of care, maintenance, comfort and abundance.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

#pluralistic #books #reviews #deb chachra #debcha #engineering #infrastructure #free energy #material science #abundance #scarcity #mutual aid #maintenance #99 percent invisible #colonialism #gift guide

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somanyratsinthewalls · 7 months

Text

Kinktober Special Part 4

Mo’s Kinktober Special

The Crew’s Whore (Part 4) (+18)

Summary: You are the former owner of the Grand Line’s most popular brothel. Your power fighting abilities got the attention of the captain of the Straw Hat Pirates. He had asked you to join their crew but what would you bring to the team? Your battle skills were hardly comparable to many of the other Straw Hats… but you actually had a great skill. Your years working as a high end escort had prepared you to become the private plaything for this pirate crew. You joined the Straw Hats as their personal sex toy.

Pairing: Usopp x afab!reader

WC: 3200 ehehehe

TW's: Alcohol consumption, cowgirl, face sitting, oral sex m receiving, blowjob, a little exhibitionism, virginity loss, virgin usopp :( , oral sex f receiving, pet names, begging, submissive usopp :(

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

Chapter 4: The Liar

——

Earlier in the Day…

Zoro, Sanji and Usopp sat side by side on the railing of the deck watching their fishing poles in the water. The stores of meat were getting a little on the low side, and the whole crew knew what a nightmare their captain would be if there was a shortage of food, so it was all hands on deck for fishing duty.

“So I had y/n in the bathroom the other day, it was insane.” Zoro starts after several long minutes of silence and no bites on the hooks.

“Yeah, I KNOW.” Usopp snaps back at the mention of what he walked in on a few days ago.

“Haha oh yeah, I forgot about that.” Zoro chuckled and leaned back on his arm. “Sorry I’m not sorry, you were bound to see it some time. I don’t know why you don’t just have her for yourself for once, you’d understand it then. Oh wait, you’re too chicken shit.”

“Chicken shit? Oh sorry I RESPECT women, and whatever configuration you had her in was NOT respectful.” Usopp shot back at the swordsman.

“Oh yeah? Then why was she cummin’ all over the floor? Seemed pretty respectful to me.” Zoro smirked.

“He has a point, moss head. You obviously have no idea how to truly, romantically, pleasure a woman.” Sanji didn’t even turn his head to insult Zoro.

“At least I’m not in there whimpering and begging! You think you’re quiet? It’s gross, shitcook, be a real man.”

Sanji stood up, abandoning his fishing pole, his right ankle beginning to flame.

“Oh you want to fucking go, asshole?”

Zoro stands up to unsheathe a single sword.

“Anytime, curly fuckface.”

“You guys really suck, man, I hope y’all know that.” Usopp sighed and grabbed his fishing pole to move it to the opposite side of the ship. He plants his pole against the railing as he lets Sanji and Zoro’s yelling fade into the background.

“HEY BROS? I SPECIFICALLY SAID NO DIABLÉ ON THE SHIP! CUT IT OUT!” Franky’s booming voice came from the top deck as he interrupted the idiots’ argument.

Usopp thought about what Zoro said… he wasn’t chicken shit…

— —-

That Same Day, Much Later

This evening aboard the Thousand Sunny, the weather was warm and quite breezy. As per usual there was a large spread for dinner that Sanji had expertly prepared, and the alcohol was certainly flowing. You sat in between Luffy and Usopp, your ear drums basically exploded from the decibel of their laughing and story telling.

“-And if I wasn’t there, that old lady AND her cat would have DIED!” Usopp was regaling the crew with some ridiculous story about a walnut tree that had been set on fire back in Syrup Village. Was it true? Absolutely not. Was he adorable? Of course.

Luffy was laughing his ass off, believing every word.

“Wow Usopp! You’re a real hero! I bet Mr. Snuggles owes you his life!” Luffy said between bouts of laughter.

You giggled before you leaned in and poked the tip of Usopp’s nose, teasingly.

“You’re so cute, you know that?” You chuckled at him.

“I.. uh…” Usopp stuttered out before quieting down, his cheeks flushed a dark red. Luffy, oblivious, picked the conversation up again, telling a story about a cat he accidentally tried to eat during his childhood with the bandits.

After everyone had their fill of food and drink, the crew each returned to their own respective tasks and business. You hung in the galley for awhile, drinking another glass of wine and drying dishes for Sanji. He was always such a good boy for you, why not help him out?

One finishing your task, you gave Sanji a peck on the cheek, to which he fussed and fawned over you briefly, and you grabbed another glass of wine before heading down the stairs towards your room. With airy steps and chardonnay in your hand, you treaded down the hall towards the bedrooms. Before you turned the corner you heard something. A beautiful melody was being played somewhere nearby and it caught your ear. You decided to follow the enchanting sound to the door of the lounge and you pushed it open.

Inside, Brook was playing a gorgeous tune on the piano alone. You smiled seeing him so happy and in his element. You sauntered over to the piano bench and sat down next to the large skeletal man. He notices you next to him and slows his playing to a softer volume.

“Oh beautiful y/n! How nice of you to join me! Any requests?”

“No, this is great. What you’re playing is lovely, please continue.” You sip your wine and close your eyes, enjoying the soft notes from the piano keys. Brook finishes his song and you clap your other hand to the wine glass gently to mimic applause.

“Bravo, Bone Daddy.” You smile. You continue, “You know… I am sorry that you can’t… you know…”

“Oh, don’t worry sweet y/n. It’s quite alright, it’s the thought that counts, right? Yohoohoho!”

“Hmm… I guess you’re right… Here.” You stand up from the piano bench and slide out. You hike your thumbs underneath your short, black pleated skirt. You grab the edge of your pink lace panties and pull them down to your ankles and step out of them. You grab your panties and fold them up nicely. You grab one of Brook’s skeletal hands and place the panties in them and close it up. “Keep em. My treat.” You wink and you turn to walk out of the lounge. As you leave you hear unintelligible thanks spill from Brook’s bony mouth, saying he would cherish them as long as he lived (too bad he was already dead).

You chuckled to yourself as you closed the door to the lounge behind you. You realize your glass was once again empty, so you returned to the galley to fill it. You poured another full glass of wine before heading out to the deck again. It was quiet, but you notice Usopp sitting on the deck fiddling with his slingshot and some sort of supplies from his bag.

“Well hey there,” You holler at him from across the deck and begin to saunter towards him.

“Oh, hey y/n. What are you doing out here?” Usopp doesn’t look up from his project.

“Just hanging out. Though I’d enjoy this nice weather.” You walk towards the railing of the ship and lean forward on it.

“Yeah it is nice out, hey if you go back in for another drink could you grab me a-“ Usopp looks up towards you facing outwards towards the sea. You were leaned over the railing and the wind was blowing your skirt up over your ass. Having taken off your panties, your bare cunt and cheeks were on full display for him.

Usopp instinctively jumped up and moved his body behind yours to cover you. Although there was no one else on the deck, he thought to immediately shelter your most intimate bits from any prying eyes. You felt him behind you and shot up.

“Usopp…” You ask as you turn yourself around to face him, chests almost touching.

“Y/n! What the hell are you doing? You…” He whispers and looks around, “you don’t have any panties on!” He very quietly but very harshly breaths out at you.

You giggle.

“Oh, that? Yeah. Does it bother you, Usopp? You don’t like seeing my pussy on the deck like this?” You tease him as you step closer to him, bringing your breasts to press against his torso.

“No I mean I never said- I mean no! Wait yes I mean yes! Hold on, no, no I don’t dislike it I just-…” His brain was fried as if he just stuck his finger in an electrical socket. He could feel your nipples through your tight crop top.

“Ohhh… so you DO like it?” You purr at him.

“YES obviously, yes it’s great I mean-“ He stutters as you wrap your hands around his neck. You pull him closer to you and you gently press your lips against his to shut up him. He freezes. It took at least a full 30 seconds for him to start kissing you back. Usopp finally gathers the courage to place his hands on your waist as you kiss him deeply. You pull back, holding the side of his face with one hand, looking into his nervous eyes.

“Would you like to take me back to your room, Usopp?” You seductively ask. He blinks blankly at you. He wasn't chicken shit. He grabs your hand and pulls you quickly through the ship to his room.

Closing the door behind you, you wrap your arms around him again, consuming him in another heavy make out session. You could feel his hands on your body shaking.

“Nervous, sweetheart?” You pull back and coo at him.

“Ha, nervous? Nah, no never. I do this all the time! You know I used to have a girlfriend back in Syrup Village, she was basically a princess and she and I-“ You press your finger to his lips.

“We both know that’s bullshit.” You smirk at him. You trace your finger along his lips. “You’ve never touched a woman in your life. Never felt the hot, wet mouth of a woman on your cock. You’ve never tasted the sweet release of a pretty girl on your tongue. You’ve never felt the tight squeeze of a cunt while you’re deep inside of it.”

Usopp whimpers at your filthy words. You snake your left hand in between your bodies to palm him over his overalls.

“Shit- okay fine. You got me. I have no idea what I’m doing. I want to make you feel good but I.. I don’t know how…”

“Then let me show you…” You push his body back towards the bed making him flop onto it. You slunk in between his knees and removed his clothes. You slipped out of your shirt over your head and your skirts down your legs, not needing to remove your panties since you had already gifted them to your Bone Daddy earlier. His cock was so painfully hard already, it bobbed angrily in front of your face as you pulled down his coveralls.

“Are you gonna… what are you gonna do?” Usopp asks you anxiously. “well… nothing you don’t want, okay sweetheart? I was going to take you in my mouth… if that’s alright my sweet boy?” You settle yourself between his thighs and start to stroke his cock slowly.

“Yes… I-I want to be in your mouth please…” He stares intently down at you, hypnotized by your beauty and eagerness.

“Hmm…” You hum as you slowly lave your tongue over the hot mushroom tip of his cock.

“Holy shit y/n-!”

You felt your cunt grow wet at the desperate sounds of pleasure that came from his mouth. You wanted to ruin him so bad. A loud whine escaped Usopp’s mouth as you took his full length down your throat. You brought your right hand up to cup his tight, heavy balls in your palm.

Usopp’s thighs and abs tense as you continue to work him in your mouth and your hands. Nothing but moans and heavy breaths left his lips. He had never felt anything like this before, cursing himself for being too… well chicken shit, to ask for your services before now.

“Y/n wait stop I’m going to-“

You used your left hand to grab his hip and press his body further into you as you took his cock in your mouth so far that your nose met him pelvis. Usopp whined as he released his heavy load down your throat. After several more ropes shot into your mouth, you pulled off Usopp’s dick as he flopped down back on the bed.

“Woah… I kinda get what Sanji’s been talking about now…” Usopp uttered as he stared at the ceiling. You chuckled as you snaked your body up his chest to give him a peck on the nose.

“What can I say? I’m a professional.” You cupped his face in your hand and winked at him. His expression changed.

“Wait… What about you?” Usopp looked up at you with concerned eyes. “Oh sweetie don’t you worry about that!.” You stroked his cheek.

“No… I said I wanted to make you feel good… can you… can you help me? Show me?” He desperately grabbed at your hips, grinding you down onto his cock that was already starting to harden again.

“Hm… If you insist…” You smiled devilishly and sat up on your knees and moved to hover over Usopp’s face, leaving your sopping cunt mere inches above his drooling lips. His eyes bugged wide out of his head, the sight of your gorgeous bare pussy so close to his face was too much for him to handle.

“Do you want to taste it, Usopp?” You teased at him, being barely out of his reach, not sitting down fully just yet.

“Mmm Yes! Yes just sit! Mmm please just sit down I’ll do whatever you want, just use me, please!” His speech was almost slurred due to him trying to reach his tongue out of his mouth to taste you already. You gave into his pleas and fully lowered your body onto his face. A breathy sigh of pleasure escaped your lips as his tongue prodded your weeping hole.

“Mmmprhh so-mrrph good!” Usopp whined out against your sex. He bucked his hips up shamelessly, already fully erect again. You leaned forward to grind your clit against the base of his nose while his tongue fucked your hole. You threw your head back in pleasure and moaned loudly.

“Ohhh, sweetie that’s so good! You’re so perfect for letting me use your pretty face like this. Such a good boy for eating me so well!” You praised him as you continued to ride his face, bringing yourself to orgasm.

“I’m going to cum on your face now, Usopp. You’re going to lay there and take it, right sweetheart?”

“Mhmm! Mhmm” He nodded his head as you finally pushed over the edge. Your slick juices sprayed his face and neck as you cried out. Usopp moaned underneath you as his tongue darted out of your hole to lap up any remaining release from your folds.

You collected yourself and slid your body back down his chest, your pussy dragged a wet trail down his torso as you moved. You hovered over his weeping cock, leaking a puddle of precum onto his toned abdomen.

“Would you like to fuck me now, Usopp?” You looked him square in the eye. He was so drunk on your body and pleasure.

“Yes! Yes, Please, I’d like to fuck you now! Please let me inside of you!” Once again he was begging beneath you. You could definitely get used to his. “Ok sweetheart, you can fuck me now. You’ve done so good.” You coo at him as you line his cock up with your soaked entrance and slide down. He wasn’t as long as Sanji or Zoro, but it was thick and hit your spot just right as you took him to the base inside yourself.

“Fuck-!” Usopp cries out as his hands fly to your hips to ground himself, so lost in the pleasure of your tight cunt.

“Sweetie you fill me up so nice, doing such a good job-“ You moaned out dreamily as you began to grind yourself back and forth on Usopp’s cock.

“Fuck y/n… I can’t… I just gotta…”

All of a sudden Usopp plants his feet and slams his hips up into yours making you almost jolt off his dick in the process. He hit you so deep.

“Usopp!” You cry out in both surprise and pleasure. You shudder forward and lose your balance, hands landing on his firm chest to hold yourself up. Usopp continues to piston his length inside of you at an animalistic pace as you felt that familiar tightness in your belly begin to form again.

“Shit, Usopp I- I think I’m gonna- AH!” He was bouncing you so forcefully on his cock, the soft, shy Usopp you knew was long gone as soon as he sunk balls deep into your filthy cunt. Your body was being tossed in the air with every thrust, your full breasts bouncing lewdly in his face. “Gotta feel you cum again… Fucking do it… Cum on me again…” Usopp growled out at you as he took your right nipple in his teeth. You cried out in pain and pleasure as his grip tightened on your hips, holding you so hard you knew you’d be left with black and blue marks where his fingers were now. You screamed out his name as you let your orgasm wash over your body and you released all over his lower half.

“Y/n, fuck, where should I-?” Usopp gasps out.

“Inside… Need… inside…” You choke out between gasps, your body still recovering from your orgasm.

Usopp groaned loudly as he pulled your hips down so far into his that you felt his cock kiss your cervix harshly. You whined as he shuddered and came deep inside of your still spasming pussy.

His body went limp. You leaned forward while he was still seated within you to place a gentle kiss on the tip of his nose. You tried to as gently as possible remove yourself from his overly sensitive cock. He still groaned as you pulled yourself off of him, feeling his cum drip out of you onto his hip bone in the process. You laid down next to him and wrapped him in your arms. You pulled his down comforter over both of your naked bodies. You scratched his scalp as he nuzzled his face into your shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around your lower back.

“SooOOOooo… What’dya think?” You giggled as you asked him how his first time was, already knowing the answer.

“Y/n it was-“

“GLAD YOU FINALLY GET IT, LOSER!” You both heard Zoro’s drunk, booming voice from outside Usopp’s bedroom door.

“FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE!” Usopp shouted, briefly rising from his resting place in the crook of your neck.

You both laughed. You pecked him on the lips. “Goodnight, Usopp.”

“Goodnight, y/n.”

You both quickly fell asleep in each others arms.

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au-starss · 2 years

Text

IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS !

༄ synopsis… they find the smallest things to adore about your relationship

༄ characters… albedo, artem, ayato, childe, diluc, dottore, gorou, kaeya, kazuha, luke, marius, pantalone, thoma, xiao, vyn, zhongli x gn!reader

༄ tags… pet names, possibly ooc

༄ words… n/a

༄ author’s thoughts… this was very cute and therapeutic pls enjoy

albedo !

sharing his theories with you

He’s aware of how outlandish some of his thoughts can be to some people

But however, Albedo knows that you are always willing to hear him out

He can say the craziest things, but you will always be there to provide some opinion

Maybe some inside jokes come out of those conversations

All you both know is that it’s something the two of you can do, free of judgement

artem !

cooking together

You are always asking Artem to teach you some of the recipes he knows

So he does, often helping you with hands on techniques

Anyway that you decide to cook, he enjoys it

Food fighting, burning the food, or a calm evening all have his heart

And you couldn’t be more grateful for him teaching you

ayato !

planting kisses on your hand

Ayato is one busy man, meaning he sometimes doesn’t have time for intimacy

He still wants to make an effort, however

So when he sadly must part too quickly from you, he’ll plant a light kiss to wherever on your hand he may reach

Palm, wrist, knuckles, anywhere

He just wants a lingering reminder that he will always be there with you, whether physically or not

childe !

training together

If you personally ask him to train you in combat, he is more than willing to teach you!

He might try and go easy on you, but don’t expect too much if you ask him not to

Childe loves watching you struggle to take him down

Much more, he loves teasing you about it all day long

It doesn’t seem like much, but Ajax is really glad something good comes out of his fatui skills with you

diluc !

having your drink ready at the tavern

Per routine, you visit his tavern after a long day of work

He always has your drink ready by the time you walk in

A small greeting, a kiss on the forehead, he gives the drink and continues conversation while working

You’d never outright admit it, but the small action alone makes your heart flutter

But Diluc already knows that deep down

dottore !

using pet names

Dottore has never been good with his actions, scared of hurting who he loves

So, he’s very adamant about his words

He uses pet names whenever possible; my love, darling, anything you want to be called he will call you that!

At first, it always caught you off guard, making you a blushing mess

But now, you’re only caught off guard when he calls you by your name

gorou !

going on patrol together

Regular patrol alone can be a very boring pass-time for anyone

That’s why Gorou gets excited when you offer to go with him

The two of you will do your routes while chatting, holding hands, and just plain loving on each other

While taking your jobs seriously, of course

He adores you and is so stricken with love, he loves moments like this

kaeya !

showing off his skill

By now, you’re used to Kaeya’s natural flirty nature

He even shows it in his combat

Whenever taking care of treasure hoarders or hilichurls, he will always make a big show of things

Maybe even shoot you a little wink while taking them out

He just wants to keep you impressed, and maybe earn your praise too

kazuha !

writing and sharing poems

Kazuha is a man of many feelings

So when it’s hard to say what he feels, he writes it instead

He’ll recite them to you with the upmost adoration and love

He loves watching your face light up with joy at his feelings

And it only encourages him to write even more for you to have

luke !

sharing memories

The time Luke spent on the national project aren’t all pleasant

He’s learning to slowly open up about some of the bad memories

Luke never goes into gruesome detail, but says just enough to take the burden away

You appreciate the gesture, always thanking him and comforting him

It’s small, sure, but it’s something you both couldn’t appreciate more

marius !

showing you off

A big CEO is always required to attend the fanciest of events

Who would he be to not take and show off his partner?

The two of you are always the brightest in the room, love clearly radiating from you two

He will constantly brag about how amazing and attractive you are

Trust me, by the end of that event, everyone will know of you and your boyfriend

pantalone !

indulging in your special interests

He’s got all the time and money in the world to dedicate to you

So why not indulge in you as his lover?

If you so much as utter a word about what you’re currently interested in, you can find something from that on your shared bed the next day

Movies, books, jewelry, antiques, it doesn’t matter

But when you ask him, he won’t admit it since he likes to try and be slick :)

thoma !

playing with his hair

Both of you are hard workers, so finding peace comes at night

Normally, the two of you will tuck in early to wake up early the next day

However, on some occasions the two of you will hang out in the living room of your shared home

You always insist on playing with his hair while watching a movie

Thoma feels so relaxed as you weave your hands through his hair, even falling asleep in your comfort

xiao !

watching you sleep

An average person on the outside may find the gesture to be weird

But in your relationship, you both understand the intimacy behind the small gesture

Whether he’s sitting in a chair next to the bed, or holding you close while you sleep, he’s right there

Xiao will ensure your safety while you’re dreaming

He doesn’t need your thanks for it, he just wants to see you wake up with a smile on your face.

vyn !

holding your hand

Vyn hasn’t had much experience with romantic relationships

But what he does know is the intimacy that can come with hand holding

He loves catching you off guard, told hold your hand while talking with some coworkers or an old friend

He’ll tease you for the blush on your face, but of course keep your hand in his

He loves telling everyone that it’s the two of you against the world

zhongli !

sharing his wisdom

Nothing warms his heart more than when you come to him with a question

Whether it be small or history of liyue, he’s always willing to answer

Sometimes, he’ll even share a personal story on the matter

Point being, he loves that you want to know what he does

And you love the knowledge and extra time spent together

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weirdmarioenemies · 1 year

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Name: The face from Minesweeper

Debut: from Minesweeper

Minesweeper is a pretty cool game! I like it. I went through my entire life not knowing how to play it, and then a few months ago decided “I will learn how Minesweeper works” and now I like it well enough. But even before I liked it as a game, there was something about it that was always charming! Even as a silly baby, I felt positive energy radiating from this game with an honestly horrific premise, because this grid of squares and numbers was Smiling at me!

The Face From Minesweeper may register as an Emoji to you, but it actually predates them! This strange creature is a Smiley. More than a mere smiling face, a Smiley is like a sort of animal. Everyone loved Smiley! You can think of it on the level of other fan-favorite animal, Dog. Just like Dog, Smiley got all sorts of merchandise! Toys, decoration, even smiling French Fries! One day, however, the magic day finally came when world leaders agreed it was time to domesticate Smiley.

Though many would have loved to have a pet Smiley of their own, it was decided that they were unfit for such a lifestyle. Instead, they would become beasts of burden... they would be Used. The selective breeding began! Over time, they became smaller, cuter. They gained a wider range of readable facial expression. Most importantly, they were now hardy enough to be sent all over the world countless times per day. And that is how Emojis came to be! Linked gene shenanigans also led to some shaped like animals, plants, objects, even symbols! Don’t worry about it. But if you are interested, I think they released a documentary about this in 2017.

After this section in which I deliberately transitioned away from smileys and toward emojis, I would like to immediately return to smileys if that’s okay. Thank you. The face from Minesweeper is always watching... but not in a scary way! In a nice way. The face is your buddy. If it ever feels too hard, you can click the face, and its square will be pressed in, and the puzzle will be reset! No shame in that.

I wonder, where does the face end, and its platform begin? Is the face even the extent of the entity? Maybe the entire Minesweeper board is just a guy, and that’s where its face is! Minesweeper is a whole character!

In that case, then, it is even funnier that the face goes :O whenever you click a space. It COULD be that it is in suspense, since any wrong move can end in disaster, but maybe it’s just because you are poking its body! And that’s a little Weird. Evidence: it does this even if you click a cleared, safe square! It is reacting to touch, not anticipation! There we have it, Minesweeper is a creature. Also, I like to use the ease of activating this face like a little digital puppet! It is fun.

Like any creature, sadly, it can Die. However, it is at least functionally immortal and only ever in danger of explosions! Unfortunately, it contains land mines. I am becoming slightly convinced that Minesweeper (game) is, in fact, a bizarre sort of medical procedure where you help to isolate the explosives embedded in this grid-based life-form’s body. The only way to save it, sadly. And sadly, if you are not a professional, Minesweeper and its precious Face will die... but it’s okay. We have more! Just press the face and reset the game and don’t tell anyone!

If you win Minesweeper, then congratulations! You don’t get anything yourself, really. But that’s not what it’s all about. Minesweeper isn’t about YOU, the player. It’s about Minesweeper’s Face, the main character here! And after achieving victory, it is Cool. And you helped it get here! It turns out Minesweeper is all about helping another person become their best self, the story of an average schmuck who, with the help of a clever stranger, can become the coolest in town!

Lastly, I would like to show you Minesweeper as it appears as a character, in the Roblox game Databrawl! I don’t know anything else about this game! Don’t ask me about it please! I just think this design is really fun and cool!

#minesweeper #smiley #minesweeper face #minesweeper character #not mario #funky friday #mod chikako

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vodika-vibes · 1 month

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Hey babessssssss 😘

I am here to send in my first request for your follower event! Congrats again on all of your new followers 🥳 You deserve them and so many more!

Per usual, I'm going to start with my number one beloved, Fives, with my birthstone, sapphire, and my favorite season, spring 🌱

Take it anywhere!

Please and thank you 💚💚💚

@the-bad-batch-baroness

Love Is Patient

Summary: Fives is in love, luckily he's patient enough to wait.

Pairing: ARC Trooper Fives x F!Reader

Prompt: Saphirre - Wise Love

Word Count: 536

Warnings: None

Tagging: @trixie2023 @n0vqni @imabeautifulbutterfly

A/N: So it's short, and I'm toying with the idea of keeping all of them around this length, though I'm not sure how feasible that will be, lol. I'm very wordy. Also, this would have been done earlier, but I was jamming to Hamilton Songs and got distracted.

“Come on, vod,” Rex’s fist lands on Fives’ shoulder, “She’s going to turn you down. This is just getting embarrassing for you.”

He flashes a crooked grin at his older brother, “You never know, she might say yes this time.”

“When she breaks your heart, again, don’t come crying to me.” Rex says with a sigh, though he might as well be talking to a brick wall for all the effect it has, as Fives scrambles to his feet and hurries over to the woman he’s had his eye on for months now.

Fives hurries over to his cyare, stopping only long enough to pluck a recently bloomed wildflower from the grass before he folds himself on the ground next to her, a broad grin on his handsome face.

“For you,” He says, as he holds the pale blue plant out to her.

She glances at the flower, and then at his face, “Back again?”

“Always,” He counters with a grin, as he leans in and tucks the flower behind her ear, “There. The perfect flower to enhance your natural beauty.”

She laughs softly, “You are relentless, Fives.”

“I’m told it’s one of my better personality quirks.” Fives replies, as he gets comfortable next to you, “Someday, I’ll convince you that it’s safe to go on a date with me.”

She ducks her head, “I don’t date soldiers. Especially not when we’re in the middle of a war. It’s not personal.”

He lightly taps her cheek, “Hey,” She lifts her gaze to meet his, and he beams at her, “You don’t have to worry about that. I’m very good at what I do. The best, even.”

“There’s always someone better, Fives.”

“I’ll always come back to you. Always.” Fives lays back in the grass, his arms tucked under his head, “After all, I love you.”

She huffs out a half laugh, before she drops the half made dandelion crown on his face, “The things you say-”

“What, you don’t believe me?”

“I do believe you.” She shakes her head, “I just don’t understand it. I’ve not done anything deserving of your love.”

“You’re you. What more do I need?” He closes his eyes,

“Fives-” She sighs.

He reaches out and lightly takes her hand in his. He rubs his thumbs across her knuckles and peers up at her, “Love is patient, cyare. I can wait as long as you need me to for you to be comfortable. I just want to be near you.”

She blinks at him, and then she sighs softly, “Turning you down would be easier if you weren’t so earnest.” She admits, before she lightly threads her fingers with his. “I don’t know if I’m ready to call myself your girlfriend. But I don’t mind spending time with you.”

Fives’ smile is wide and adoring, “I can work with that.” He plucks the flower crown off his face and sits up to set it on her head, “There, a crown for my Queen.”

She releases a whine in the back of her throat, pressing both of her hands over her face, “Fiiiives-” She drags his name out, and he laughs.

He can be patient. She’s worth it. She’ll always be worth it.

#star wars #tcw #vodika-vibes 500 follower event #arc trooper fives x reader #fives x reader #star wars fanfiction #x reader fanfiction #f!reader fic #answered asks

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sparklingsora · 2 months

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Hi. I would like to know many things about your roleswap au bc I love it very much but I have no idea what to ask I just want to know many things bc my brain has been consumed already

uhhhhh I guess can you lore dump a little bit on backstories? Idk I just wanna know everything about this au

I will be back in your ask box for this au several times most likely

-Spaghetti Brain Anon

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE ASK!!! i am SO glad that i could get this au to live in someone else's brain rent free too. all i could ever ask for in life tbh i guess i'll infodump about character backstories, dynamics, character arcs, all that juicy stuff putting it under cut because HO BOY THIS IS GONNA GET LONG

as a heads up, take the timeframes i give you with a grain of salt, because i still havent completely figured out the timeline so first of all, vox!! he's a sinner, died in the 1950s, as per canon. he's a businessman, but less stable than in canon. he's always jumping from job to job, business to business, which results in him having a lot of connections with various people around hell. soon after arriving in hell, he met and became friends with alastor. cut to, i'd say around 7-10 years before the events of the story? alastor disappears without a trace during an extermination and vox assumes him dead. having now been personally touched by the effects of the extermination, the idea to try and solve overpopulation another way is planted in his head, but wont come to fruition until much later. in the meantime he meets velvette - finds her bleeding out in an alleyway after getting too cocky and trying to fight back to an exorcist (bad idea). he nurses her back to health, they become friends and eventually start dating, yada yada yada. one day vox and velvette find a funky little cat (keekee). keekee takes a liking to them and leads them to the old ruins of a building up on the hill on the edge of pentagram city. they figure out that the cat turns into a keyblade that can be used to magically build shit (only the hotel though, as keekee is the spirit of the hotel or??? whatever the hell the canon lore is idk???) vox finally decides to realize his idea to try and solve overpopulation more humanely - through redeeming sinners! his reasoning is, if angels can fall (as proven by lute and charlie), then demons can surely ascend, right? though he's not as sure or idealistic about it as charlie is in canon. he simply thinks it has a chance of working, and opening up a hotel means a bigger sample size than if he were to just try and get into heaven himself or something like that. besides, he wouldnt wanna go to heaven, he likes it here. also, im not sure where this is situated in the timeline yet, but he was in a band with adam, lute and possibly eve at some point? the band is called brimstone eden, as mentioned in the comic i posted. im not sure yet whether he was in the band prior to eve's disappearance or after it (eve disappears 7 years before the story starts to mirror canon lilith). swap!vox, like his canon counterpart, is a very reactive person. he follows trends, he's extremely go-with-the-flow to a fault. he never really had any strong beliefs until the hotel - his character arc mainly involves him gaining something to believe in and learning to fight for that belief, 'ready for this' being more or less the culmination of his arc. jesus christ i cant believe i wrote that much JUST on vox. *slaps the top of his head* this boy can fit so much lore in him

now, velvette... she's how you'd expect her to be. same old brave, arrogant velvette. she's a fashion designer and seamstress and runs a moderately sized business which she promotes on sinstagram. she's mutuals with val there, which is how he finds out about the hotel. there's not much to write home about when it comes to val - it's insane how similar angel and him are. like literally barely anything changes when you swap them, it's very clean. he's a prn star, sold his soul to angel dust, yada yada. though a bit on his dynamic with vox - vox is very good at reading people, and doesn't like being lied to (he's a bit of a hypocrite in that regard - he puts on a facade all the time when in professional settings). he can clearly tell val isnt doing as good as he pretends he is, and wants to help him really badly, but val just sees it as vox pitying him and rejects his help (its what they fight about in ep 4, as a counterpart to the whole "charlie going to the studio" thing bc vox wouldnt do that) and now here's the fun part - ALASTOR! oh, alastor, you beautiful stuck up bitch! so turns out, he's not so dead after all! he ALMOST died in that fateful extermination, but husk found him and offered him a "give me your soul right now or bleed out in this alleyway" type deal. of course alastor chose the former, but boy he's not happy about it. he's extremely ashamed of how far he's fallen. so ashamed, in fact, that he hid from the world for those 7-10 years! yeah! he's only pulled out of hiding when husk summons him to be the bartender for the hotel. vox is of course, extremely bewildered and demands answers. alastor doesnt give them and avoids him instead. it takes a sincere conversation with valentino in ep 4 for alastor to finally talk to vox again and explain himself. alastor is basically in extremely deep denial of just how fucked his life is. he clings onto his radio demon persona like a lifeline bc its the last thing that can help him feel some semblance of control over his situation. his tension with valentino is twofold - first they butt heads because of opposing personalities, and second because they both see the other's bullshittery. it's a clusterfuck it eventually bubbles over in ep 4, they both admit how absolutely fucked they are and are friends now. wish i could say more on al & val bc i love them very much but it seems ive run out of eloquency for now. though i know i'll draw some comics of them eventually so maybe it'll come across better in comic form. anyway as mentioned above ive run out of eloquency and im honestly not sure how coherent this whole thing is so you'll have to come back for the other characters some other time, dear anon! until then, thank you so much for the ask once again, and have a nice day/night :)

#askbox #veeswap au

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