#this gifset is a tiny way of showing my love for it

[twelves]

the school of extraordinary lovers

by stylinsoncity | 191k 

“We keep telling the other, I love you and I love you, and we do, though we both know where the knives are.”  – Laura Van Prooyen

Harry is a third-year witch and violinist at Laitswold, the only magical academy in the UK, with dreams of taking on the world, and hopefully breaking the centuries-old curse on his family while he's at it. He does not dream of facing off against his childhood rival and duet partner, but Louis is back in town after six years abroad, so that's exactly what happens.

#the school of extraordinary lovers #stylinsoncity #fic rec #ao3 #this fic means so much to me. your writing means the world to me #everything you put out is my favorite thing #this story specifically should be a book #the marbas plot – unmatched #thank you for giving us this #and all the others #your stories changed my fandom experience and i'm forever grateful <3 #this gifset is a tiny way of showing my love for it #mine #g* #ficedits

[javigutierrez]

Are you alright, Honey?

Javi Gutierrez x afab!reader oneshot

Summary: You’re going on a long weekend with your gorgeous new boyfriend, and after a day of unresolved sexual tension out on a roadtrip you’re ready to jump him the second you get home. Unless he finds a movie at the gas station he had been looking for for years and he wants to watch it with you. Will you be able to mask your desire for him, to enjoy a movie that means so much to him? (Spoiler alert no you won’t)

Rating & Word count: Explicit | ~8500 words

Warnings/tags: fluffffff, freshly established relationship, pining like whoa, very explicit smut, f!oral, f!fingering, tons of nipple play, non-penetrative sex (sumata ig?), unprotected penetrative sex, multiple orgasms, allusions to squirting, pleasure dom!Javi vibes, tw alcohol, tw food mention, Javi is a major dumb of ass but he makes up for it, reader has female genitalia, some boobs, and long enough hair to tuck it behind their ear but no other descriptions (let me know if you find anything else!), no age references

A/N: Here it is, after years of contemplating I'm posting my first fanfic in 12 years and my first fanfic in English ever. Please be kind, English is not my first language ❤ This is a huge thing to me, and I wouldn't have been able to get there without the help and encouragement of my lovely friends - I owe a kidney to @psychedelic-ink and @shellshocklove for their tremendous help as my betas, and to @iamasaddie @perotovar @chronically-ghosted @wannab-urs for listening to my bitching and moaning along the way and still staying my loyal cheerleaders 🥺 The whole idea popped into my mind like a movie while editing this gifset (which was inspired by @prolix-yuy’s Javi story, so special thanks to LJ 🥰), that 5th gif corrupting my mind for the next 2,5 months and this was the only way I could finally get it out of my system. 🤡 I hope you'll enjoy it! ❤

This was quite an eventful day. You spent your whole day out with Javi, having a road trip at Côte d’Azur. After a little bit more than a month of dating you had decided to go on a long weekend together, choosing the French coastlines. You had been absolutely amazed by the experience; clear azure waves embracing golden shores, the streets of seaside towns winding through history with beautiful architecture and warm colours, mountain tops lurking on the horizon behind the town. After Javi had told you he would get you into the Cannes movie festival, you were already talking about coming back for a few days. 

The sights were unbelievable and the food was delectable, but what really made the trip unforgettable was your new boyfriend. Spending time with Javi was so easy. With him, all your anxiety washed away - his sweet and caring personality was like a soothing balm for your soul, and with his fun-loving side, you really felt like living your life to the fullest. Not to mention how he showed his true colors in the bedroom. Absolutely devoted to your pleasure, he could be worshipping you, making you feel like a goddess, other times he would make you beg, then shower you with praises while he was giving you exactly what you needed. Who would have thought only a few weeks before, when​ you had started chatting with a stranger waiting in line at the cinema, that he would sweep you off of your feet almost immediately and turn your life upside down in the best way possible? 

There you were right now, coming home from another amazing day spent with him, laughing with him, staring at his profile while he was driving, smoothing out his sun-bleached locks tangled up by the wind in the cabrio while he was looking at you all doe-eyed and dopey-smiled. You were holding his hand, feeling his hand on your bare thigh, resting at the hem of your bunched-up sundress comfortably and sometimes you had caught him looking at you with the same intensity. It was safe to say, by the time you got in the car to get home you were ready to jump him. 

There was only one tiny thing you hadn’t calculated for when you had been planning your night (or rather imagining it dreamily from all angles): finding a DVD at a gas station. When his eyes fell on the item, he’d looked confused for a few seconds, but then taking it from the shelf and reading the cover his face lit up like a child’s in a candy store. 

As it turned out, it was an indie French movie he had watched with his parents back when he was young and they had been on a holiday. They had rarely spent quality time together, so he cherished those few occasions he’d felt like he belonged to an ordinary, loving family. He remembered the time fondly and he always wanted to find the movie because of the nostalgia of it all, but he had forgotten the title and didn’t know the actors, so after a lot of unsuccessful attempts, he’d given up trying. 

“Can we watch this tonight? Please?” He looked at you with big brown eyes, enveloping the DVD in his hands, (dwarfing it, really) and pressing it to his heart. And how could you say no to him? If he looked at you like that, you would have agreed to watch a 10-hour-long film about paint drying on a wall. 

“Of course, Javi,” you smiled at him gently, your heart melting from his child-like joy as you watched him gallop to the cashier to pay for the gas and the DVD. You pushed the slight disappointment of not being able to climb this gorgeous goofball of a man as soon as you get home, to the back of your mind. 

At the end of the day, you were genuinely happy to just spend time with him. You blamed your hormones and the fact that you were still in the honeymoon phase for being pent up all day. You couldn’t help it, but you are a big girl in an adult relationship, you decided, you can have one night without having sex with this tall, broad, gentle but surprisingly strong, passionate, generous, highly skilled–

“Let’s go!” he urged you with an adorable grin and shining eyes, grabbing your hand and tugging you out of the gas station. Your heart swelled from the sight. Yes, you can have a peaceful night if it makes him happy, and you will be just as hyped to watch the movie as him. It did seem like a good movie based on the cover, and you knew it meant the world to him, so you wouldn’t spoil his fun with your neediness. 

By the time you got back to your rented house, it was already dark, and the early autumn weather had gotten a bit more chilly. Javi practically jumped out of the car (but still rushed to your side to open your door). 

You agreed that you would prepare the snacks and set up the TV, while he would start the fireplace and get a bottle of wine from the cellar. He gave you a soft peck on your lips, one hand resting on the back of your neck, then he pretty much ran to the cellar - you think you even heard him giggling on his way. His enthusiasm was infectious, even though you’d never even heard about the movie before, now you were excited to watch it.

When you found out how to get the DVD to work Javi was already tinkling with the logs on the fireplace, a bottle of wine with two glasses on the kitchen counter already. You let yourself get lost in the sight for a good minute, your cavewoman brain activated by looking at him focusing on his task with his arms flexing, but then you shook yourself from your reveries, going to the American-style kitchen to put a bag of popcorn in the microwave and wash some grapes, then putting the wine on the coffee table next to the couch.

You couldn’t help but steal a few more glances at him. His short-sleeved shirt was now unbuttoned, hanging on his shoulders and your eyes fell on his white tank top straining over his torso. He seemed especially broad like this, and you couldn’t wait to cuddle with him and bury your face in his chest, kissing over the constellations of freckles on his shoulders and chest you were so familiar with by now.  

Once the fire was lighting, he looked at you proudly and you beamed back at him. The more his eyes were on you, the more his look grew softer. His gaze full of adoration made butterflies whoosh in your stomach - you were overwhelmed by emotions for this man, sometimes it even made you scared of falling too hard. 

“Are you sure you’re okay with watching this movie tonight, cariño?” He asked tenderly, his voice raspy and deep. He walked up to you to put his hands on your waist, caressing you with his thumbs and lowering his head to really look into your eyes. “I know these four days are supposed to be about the two of us.” There was no hurt or any malice in his voice, he was ready to drop the plan the second you said so. It felt like he was staring into your soul and suddenly you felt guilty. You obviously didn’t try hard enough to support him if he felt the need to ask and that made your guts tie up in a knot. You put your hands on the sides of his neck, then lowered them to his shoulders, then his chest. You never broke eye contact.

“Honey, I’m absolutely sure. We had a long day so a movie night is perfect to wind down and this movie seems super interesting! I swear, I can’t wait to start it already!” You rose on your tiptoes and laid an innocent kiss on his lips. He didn’t let you go, holding your face to deepen the kiss and a zap ran through your body as his tongue slipped between your lips to taste you. 

You felt his little huff on your upper lip, and you couldn’t resist the quiet moan that escaped your throat. The sound somewhat sobered you up, and you broke the kiss, feeling a little dizzy. He opened his eyes slowly, looking a bit disheveled himself. You had a mission to accomplish, you couldn’t get distracted all the time… you went back up just to give a small kiss on the tip of his nose, which made him smile bashfully, his eyes crinkling adorably. 

“Come on baby, let’s start it!” 

You grabbed the snacks, but he took them from you with a kiss on your temple, and you both headed to the couch. He put the snacks down on the table and plopped down on the L-shaped furniture as you went on a quick round to light some candles around the room, bathing it in warm colours. You started with the candles in the back and as you worked your way back up you caught him pouring wine into your glasses, then he started to explore the menu of the DVD to set up an English subtitle. With a small sigh, you allowed yourself to indulge yourself in his sight one last time while you were finishing up the candles. 

He quite literally took your breath away. His lovely locks you adored to bury your hands into so much, his eyes sparkling from the TV’s light and crinkled with a smile he probably didn’t even notice he had on his face. Your eyes followed the curve of his prominent nose and fell on his lips under his neat mustache. Those pouty lips... you had some vivid memories involving them. The man might look innocent, but he sure knew how to do sin when he wanted to. 

He leaned back with his legs propped up and reached out to you. You climbed on top of him and nestled yourself into his chest. He held you close to him, situating himself so you were sitting between his legs, resting your back on his chest. 

“Ready, cariño?” He hummed into your neck, pressing a small kiss there. Your blood sizzled under your sensitive skin. 

“Never been more ready! Let’s go!”

Javi started the movie and scooted even closer to you, if possible. Strong arms resting on your stomach, caging you in, he nuzzled your neck with a low hum, leaving a trail of kisses up your jaw, finishing with the softest of kisses on your cheek. You felt intoxicated, despite the untouched glasses on the table. His warmth was making your whole body melt, the way his chest rose and fell rhythmically behind you soothed you, and his cologne filled your nostrils with something warm and spicy and citrusy. But below all those layers it smelled uniquely like him, perfectly complementing his perfume. You would recognize it anywhere, after so many times of tasting his skin all over his body – it was the perfect concoction.

He was none the wiser about your… rather delicate situation, eyes glued to the screen, hands absentmindedly caressing your hips and stomach. You tried to focus on the movie, and you were able to catch glimpses of it and laugh at the jokes, but his touches kept distracting you. More often than not you caught yourself looking at his sinewy forearms, the golden watch on his wrist, and the ring on his pinky catching on your dress from time to time. You slowly traced the veins on his arms, and as you tried to focus on the screen again you played with the edges of his watch and ring. He gently caught your hand, intertwining your fingers and raising it to his face for a kiss on your knuckles. 

“Some wine?” He murmured sometime later. 

You were grateful for the opportunity, slightly going mad from the tension as you were stewing in your juices. He barely finished his question, you were already leaning for the glasses, handing him one. “Oo-kay,” he chuckled at your enthusiasm, albeit a little confused by your behaviour. He paused the movie and sat up at the corner of the couch. You were still between his legs, but you both positioned yourself to turn to each other more at the corner. His left hand held the glass, and his right was on your waist, keeping you close to him. His eyes were glazed over looking at your face and you could only imagine how ridiculously smitten you must have looked like. 

“For this perfect day, and for the unexpected gifts it has brought us,” he said, raising his glass. 

“For this perfect day, that is about to get even better,” you answered, making him grin with his bottom lip caught between his teeth. 

You clinked your glasses and raised it to your lips, him barely tasting the wine through a sip, while you downed the whole glass. Leaning back against the backrest of the couch, you tried to look put together. The taste really was divine, and you had hoped it would help to calm your nerves a bit. Javi was visibly amused looking at you.

“You liked it, huh, cariño?” He asked, getting your glasses and putting them on the table leaning over your legs. 

You giggled in response, smiling shyly at him with a small shrug, “It tasted amazing, Javi. It was a great choice.” 

“I knew you would love this. Say the word and a box of these will be at my house by the time we get home,” he said, as he tucked a strand of hair behind your ears and kept his hand on the side of your face. 

“Consider it said.” You winked at him and he breathed out a silent laugh, but he tilted his head a little with a small frown between his brows, seemingly inspecting you. You had a feeling you had looked a bit nervous, only because you’d tried to clumsily mask your desire for him, wanting to give this night to him to enjoy a movie that meant so much to him but… you clearly weren’t succeeding. You knew he was about to ask you about it, so instead you grabbed the remote before he could speak. 

“Shall we?” You asked nonchalantly. 

His hand dropped from your face. “Of course,” he said. 

He shook his head a little, failing at figuring you out as he leaned back on the couch. You laid down in front of him so you could continue watching the movie while he spooned you, and pressed the play button. You’d hoped that with this new pose, there would be less temptation as you’re not laying on him anymore, but boy, were you wrong. 

He hoisted you closer to his body, his hand splayed out on your stomach, and kept you there, almost protectively. Staring at it, you dumbly wondered about how much smaller your torso looked under his hand than your own and that activated something primal in your mind again. You felt his crotch pressed up to your ass, and though he wasn’t hard, it made your cunt throb around nothing. It was so close, yet so far, and you weren’t allowed to do anything about it. Your guts twisted, and you wiggled every few minutes, pressing your thighs together, uselessly fighting the arousal that kept getting more and more suffocating. 

A few minutes later he nuzzled at the back of your ear, and the combined sensations of his breath in your ear and the soft tickle of his mustache and stubble made a shudder run through your body, followed by goosebumps everywhere.

“Are you alright, honey?” He murmured, looking at your profile. 

“Of course, Javi,” you said, not very convincingly. “Just trying to find the perfect angle.” You explained as you wiggled some more, still staring at the TV, as your thumb gently smoothed across his knuckles to soothe him. 

“Right…” he replied. 

Whatever he thought, he didn’t say anything else. 

However, a few minutes later the hand that had been on your stomach slowly wandered down, below the hem of your sundress, and he gently, but firmly lifted your thigh to fit his between your legs. The movement was so unexpected that you couldn’t hold back a small groan from the pleasure the friction gave you. 

“You sure you’re alright?” Javi asked innocently behind your back, his hand now smoothing over the bare skin on your thigh, leaving an electric feeling beneath your skin in its trail. Every single one of his touches made arousal pool between your legs. You silently cursed at your body for growing more and more sensitive, begging for him to come closer. 

“Yeah…” you practically squeaked. You were close to your breaking point. 

Javi only hummed, his hand stopping to rest it on your stomach again. You were fighting your instincts to rub yourself on his thigh for a few minutes, and you were proud of yourself for resisting, but then he moved between your legs a little, enough to give attention to your aching clit, and the hiss that escaped your lips made him come to a halt. 

It felt like the time froze for a few seconds, none of you daring to move. You, trying to take back control over your treacherous body, and him obviously assessing the situation. You mentally did a facepalm as you felt your wet underwear sticking to his pants. He didn’t say anything, but his hand moved down from your stomach and bunched up your skirt. He breathed out your name, almost admonishing, and it made your heart jump. His hand was dangerously close to where you wanted him the most, and as his palm covered your mound, thick fingers reaching your soaked panties, he buried his face in the back of your neck. 

“Oh, honey…” he choked. He took a deep inhale, smelling your scent, then suddenly sat up and paused the movie. 

“No, Javi, I was watching it!” You wanted to wince at yourself, your act was truly ridiculous at this point. 

“None of that, cariño.” He shook his head, turning you on your back with a firm hand on your hip. “You obviously need me, please let me take care of you.” 

“It really can wait, I don’t mind!” You protested. You wanted nothing more than for him to touch you, but you didn’t want to be selfish. 

“Well, I don’t want to wait!” He declared, his gaze burning you as it fell from your face, scanning your body splayed out in front of him. “What about this: I eat you out, then we can continue the movie. Would that be okay for you?” 

You stared at him like a deer caught in a headlight. Is he serious? But his words definitely affected you. 

“Please, cariño,” he continued in a gentler tone, his pleading eyes finding yours again. “Let me eat your pretty pussy, now.” 

That was the last nail in your coffin, you swore under your breath as you almost went cross-eyed from his words only. “Fffuck, okay… okay let’s do this” you croaked after a few seconds, your defenses crumbling like a house of cards in a tornado. 

“Atta girl,” he smirked, and in an instant, he was on top of you. 

His fingers found their way into your hair as he put his lips on you, the press of his body a comforting weight on you. His kiss was electric, hot, and sensual. He sucked your lips in with a primal hunger, his tongue licking against the seam of your lips, opening you up to him and claiming your mouth with dominance. You barely noticed the soft sounds coming from your throat, only when you felt the corners of his mouth curl up slightly in a smile. You felt like you had to anchor yourself as you gripped the back of his open yellow shirt so hard, it was protesting against your ministrations on his shoulders. 

“Mmmtake—this—off,” you whispered desperately against his all-encompassing kiss. 

Javi leaned back, his hair disheveled, to practically tear the shirt off of himself. With a huff through his nose, his eyes gazed at your kiss-swollen lips with hunger. You were out of breath from the intensity of the kiss, panting softly as you took in the sight of him. 

He still had his tank top on, your mouth already dropping from the show. His top only accentuated his wide shoulders and narrow waist, and his skin kissed by the firelight was glowing in a golden light, its colours and the way the lights and shadows exaggerated his features made you drool. You could never resist the freckles on his shoulders and chest either. If you weren’t already on the edge of insanity, you would spend hours kissing and biting along his torso, but now clearly none of you had the patience for that. 

He came back to you and started suckling on your neck, one of your hands flying to his back to weakly trace the ridges of his shoulder blade, while the other clutched his bicep. Keeping up his ministrations on your neck he gently bunched up your dress above your stomach. His thigh found its way back between your legs and this time you bucked your hips up shamelessly. He groaned as he felt your wet warmth staining his pants and his lips traveled lower. As he trailed your collarbone with the tip of his tongue between his lips, two of his fingers touched you through your panties and you moaned out loud. 

“Javi, please!” you whined as he trailed his middle and ring finger up your seam, and tapped on your clit through the soaked textile. You were so worked up, you felt your heart pounding in your ears. 

“Shhh cariño, I got you,” he murmured, his voice impossibly low and his breath burning your chest. 

His fingers never gave up, but he always kept his touches light, making you throb uncontrollably. You watched him move lower, and you couldn’t decide what to stare at: his lips and tongue molding against your fevered skin, or the dips and hills of his shoulders and biceps flexing as he kept himself up with one arm while torturing you with the other. He traced his tongue around your navel and he looked up at you as he licked over its valley, his fingers mimicking the movement below. He then had the audacity to send you a cheeky wink as your whole body shuddered.

“Fuuuck, stop teasing me, I can’t take it anymore!” you sounded pathetic, but you didn’t care at this point.

“Okay, baby. You earned it.” 

He consoled you quietly with a final kiss to your lower stomach, before hooking his fingers into your panties to slowly drag the piece down. If it was anyone else you probably would have felt awkward about how the fabric protested at first, sticking to your cunt, but with Javi, if anything, you felt powerful. 

He was visibly trying to compose himself as he gently helped you get both your legs out of the ruined piece and with a shaky exhale he scooted back. He shove a cushion under your ass as he laid down on his belly, navigating your thighs over his shoulders, eyeing your center with blown-out pupils. 

“I will never get used to this,” he mused to himself with wonder in his voice, as he splayed his hands across the crease of your ass to softly spread your cunt wide open with his thumbs. You felt his heavy huff on your pussy, and it made you twitch again. He looked captivated by the sight.

“Javi, I swear to go—oohhh my god,” Javi cut you off as the flat of his tongue licked a broad and firm stripe through your folds with a depraved moan.

Your whole body lifted up, and he hooked his arms around your legs, grabbing at the top of your thighs as he held you down, keeping you close to his ravenous mouth. He gave you a few greedy laps, slowly exploring all of your cunt before his tongue lazily went around your hole. Your muscles were twitching, your chest and neck aflame, and if his sight weren’t so hypnotizing you would have thrown your head back already. You felt boneless. 

Your abs shaking from the strain of keeping you upright, you grabbed a few cushions you could reach from your position, and shoved them under your head, angling yourself perfectly to watch him at work. He was licking at you tirelessly, mapping all your sensitive spots, before he started to fuck you with his tongue, slowly but deliberately grazing your walls all around. 

You let out a raspy moan at the sensation - he was the first person who had ever done this to you and you were still surprised by it every single time. The feel of his agile muscle prodding at your sensitive flesh made your vision blur and sweat gather around your temple. He went as deep as possible, and after an inhale he buried his nose in your clit, slightly moving it left and right. You felt him everywhere as if he was surrounding your entire body. One of your hands grabbed a cushion so tightly, it made your knuckles ache, your other hand finding purchase in his soft locks. 

You were scraping his scalp with your fingernails, and he practically purred, the sounds vibrating against your raw flesh, starting a fire in your guts as goosebumps erupted on your skin. You couldn’t help pulling at a handful of hair as your pussy spasmed around his deft tongue. His purr turned into a growl as he removed himself, gulping some air still a few inches away from your cunt. Your hands lifelessly plopped down around you. 

“Fuck, cariño, I won’t ever get enough of you,” his speech was slurred like he was drunk and he looked up at you with disoriented eyes. “You taste so good, I would happily drown in you.”

You wanted to react, you really did, but as he was talking one of his hands left your thigh and traced an invisible pattern down the apex of your thighs, fingers traveling through your cunt and gathering your juices, then reaching their destination, a thick digit slipping into you just when you wanted to answer him. Whatever you wanted to tell him, he rendered you speechless with literally a swipe of his finger. The cracking of the fire and the slick sounds of your pussy were the only noises around you, until you felt his mouth on you again. He lapped up the juices escaping you around his finger, sucking on your lips with obscenely loud noises. You wanted to cover your face because you suddenly felt self-conscious, but his free hand grabbed your wrist as you heard him call your name brokenly. 

“Please don’t hide away from me, I want to see your face as I bring you pleasure,” he pleaded, his accent a bit stronger than usual. 

The mere look of him was debauched, all messy-haired and shiny-faced, looking at you like you hung the moon and the stars in the sky. Your heart skipped a beat, and you held onto his hand, his thumb tracing reassuring circles on your knuckles immediately. Your other hand smoothed his unruly hair out of his face, and he went back, keeping eye contact with you. 

“Look at me,” he rasped one last time before diving in.

He dragged his tongue up between your folds as his finger started moving again. He looked up at you the entire time from under his lashes, eyes half-lidded. As he reached your clit you jumped a little, and he opened his mouth wider so you could see his tongue moving against the tortured little nub with a small wiggle. You had to compose yourself not to let your eyes roll back, the sight somehow multiplying the already devastating sensation tenfold. 

“You’re so fucking good to me, Javi,” you uttered, caressing his hair and you could see a shiver running down his spine. “I’m so—so—“

“I know, mi amor, I can feel it. Let go for me.” 

He groaned and sucked your clit into his mouth, laving it with his tongue. You squealed, not knowing if you wanted to escape from his ministrations or let him consume you. You tried to trash around but his hands came up and covered the bottom of your stomach, holding you down again. You had half the mind to notice him slowly grinding onto the couch, but then you felt his tongue swirling around the sensitive nub, along with his finger rubbing that perfect spot inside you again, and you felt like a lightning struck you. 

All your muscles seized up as white-hot pleasure coursed through your veins. At first, you couldn’t even breathe, let alone make a sound, but then a groan tore out from the depth of your chest and you fell back on the couch lifelessly. Javi never let up licking at you, prolonging your catharsis, not stopping even when you tried to squirm away from oversensitivity. 

“No, no wait—“ you pleaded with a shaky voice to no avail. Everything was too much, but you couldn’t escape from his iron grip. Javi greedily explored all your sensitive spots around your swollen vulva and hole with firm strokes, before he found the button of your clit again, sucking on it harshly dragging you under the waves of ecstasy for a second time that night with a squeak. His mouth was sucking at you relentlessly through the helpless spasms of your body, draining all the energy from you and filling your brain with fuzzy cotton. You fell back limply, muttering nonsense while his mouth gently cleaned you up.

You had no idea how long you were just laying there uselessly, basking in the afterglow with Javi still between your legs. His face rested on the plush of your thigh, his breathing slow but heavy, his eyes closed and his hands flexing. 

Once your wits came back to you, you noticed a faint dent on your thigh from Javi’s ring, a thought of how you wanted to tattoo it on your skin filled your mind – to keep it there forever. 

You played with his hair again, curling a silky strand around your finger by scraping little circles on his scalp. As if you woke him up from a stupor, he looked up at you, breathing now almost normal, but his pupils were still blown out. He wiped his face on your inner thigh, then kissed and sucked off the remnants of your wetness there and you giggled, his facial hair tickling you. He crawled up your body with a smile across his face, before he laid next to you. You immediately followed him, decorating the hot skin on his shoulders and collarbone with lazy, open-mouthed kisses. He weakly pawed at your waist to bring you closer to him, then dragged the bottom of your dress over your thighs to give you some decency. 

“Sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted,” he pondered and gently pinched your ass. You snickered as you playfully swatted his chest, before laying your head on his pecs. His heart was beating wildly and it made you swoon, so much so that you had to lay a soft kiss between his pecs, just above the hem of his top before nuzzling even more into his blushed chest, as a content sigh fell from your lips. Your gaze couldn’t help but fall to his bulge - he was visibly affected by your previous endeavors. 

“Javi…” you whispered in his neck, while your hand gently caressed his stomach. You felt his heavy exhale under you. “If you want… we can continue…” 

“Oh! Of course, cariño!” he said, perking up, reaching out for the remote control and pushing the play button again, eyes immediately glued on the screen. 

You laid there, having a mental tantrum. Well, things weren’t going the way expected. How can he still be thinking about the movie? 

Squashing that ugly disappointment down, you turned in his arms to try to focus on the TV again. You weren’t allowed to complain, he said he would make you cum and you would continue the movie, and he did just that and more. You couldn’t help the ravenous hunger you had for this man though, it was never enough of him. You laid a soft kiss on his bicep below your head and your arm reached behind to gently shove him back against you. He followed you diligently, but he tensed as his bulge, now hard, rested against your ass again. 

“I’m sorry honey, I’ll just need a minute,” he apologised quietly, voice strained from embarrassment and barely veiled desire. 

The devil on your shoulder took over you as you rolled your hips against him slowly but deliberately. The filthy sound coming from deep in his chest melted your bones, making it hard to keep back your own needy whine. 

“Wh—what are you doing?” 

His strong grip on your hip felt like a warning, but his voice was so weak. That’s what made you throw all your culture out the window, giddy roiling in your guts from feeling him get fully erect against you. You barely registered your hand moving mindlessly, grinding your palm against him. His hand clenched around your forearm easily, but he didn’t move it away. 

“I need you, Javi,” you begged shamelessly, turning your head back in his direction as much as possible. 

“Fuck…” he breathed, eyes closed shut with a loud gulp. When he opened his eyes again his gaze was intense, one of his hands cradling your face as he propped himself up on his elbow to look deeply into your eyes. “I thought you wanted to watch the movie…” 

That made you freeze with confusion, even your hand stopped moving over him. 

“…me?” You asked incredulously. “I mean yeah, it does seem like a great movie and I’d happily watch it any other time, but I couldn’t wait to be alone with you the entire day. I’ve wanted to eat you up since we crawled out of bed this morning. But I’m happy to do anything as long as I’m with you– and you looked so happy to find that movie… I don’t know… I just didn’t want to ruin your joy with my neediness, I guess” you confessed hastily with warm cheeks. 

A soft sound of surprise got stuck in his throat as he looked at you with saucer eyes, gaping like a fish. It looked rather comical if you were honest. If you didn’t feel so sheepish about your clumsy confession, you would have giggled at his expression. 

He shook his head lightly, as if processing your words. “So that’s why you were acting so weird tonight!” He exclaimed, relief evident on his face. He breathed out your name softly, his thumb caressing your face ever so gently. 

“I felt the same way the entire day. I got distracted by finding the movie, I give you that, but up until that moment, I was contemplating taking you in the bathroom in every single place we visited. Even in the car, consequences be damned,” he huffed, and you had to clench your thighs to alleviate the need growing between them again from the mental image. 

“Cariño, I have the DVD now, I can watch it whenever I want!” He tutted, “I swear, one day I’m gonna write a screenplay for you to be the lead in it, you’re such a talented actress. You seemed so eager to watch this movie that I felt guilty for trying to distract you,” he smoothed a strand of hair behind your ear with a chuckle, “I suppose both of us were fools…” 

You couldn’t hold back a rather unsexy snort at that, but it made him beam at you with crinkling eyes. 

He cupped your jaw and leaned over to press a sweet kiss on your lips, but it immediately grew hungry. The stark difference between his precious face and the taste of yourself still on his tongue made a shudder run through your body. 

Javi can really do both, you thought dreamily, but you were quickly snapped back to reality when he rolled you on top of him and deepened the kiss as he slowly sat up, helping you to position yourself on your knees around his hips. He planted his feet on the couch and grabbing your bare asscheeks firmly he dragged your pulsing center down on his bulge. 

Your hands flew to his hair, arms resting on his shoulders, feeling like passing out when you felt his cock twitch against your bare pussy, tearing a low hiss out of him. He bunched up and gripped your dress around your torso. 

“This little dress was teasing me all day,” he groaned, slowly pulling down the zip on your back, the edge of his thumb caressing your bare spine in the process. “It looks fantastic on you, honey, but I need to see all of you, right now.” 

By the time he finished his thought, he already tugged it off of you, your breast jiggling in front of his face from the impact of falling out of the secure hold of the dress, his heavy gaze falling to them immediately, your body now bare in his lap. 

“Oh god, look at you… tan bonita,” he murmured as his hands slid over your ribs firmly, before they slipped under your breasts with a feather-light touch. 

He cupped the mounds gently as his thumbs smoothly explored the skin. The pad of his fingers traced your areola, then softly rubbed over your sensitive nipples. You arched your back, leaking some more wetness on his trousers as you rubbed yourself heavier on him. One hand molded a breast into his waiting mouth, tongue wiggling around the achy nub and the other slipping down your shivering stomach, across the top of your thigh and teasing at your seam across your ass. 

The suckling sensation on your nipple, while his hand was prodding teasingly at your swollen entrance made you go insane. You had to center yourself around something. You clasped the back of the couch tightly, using it as support as you pushed your chest more in his face. Without hesitation, you vigorously moved your clit against his bulge, your head arched back in ecstasy.

His wrecked moan was the prize, your breast slipping from his lips as you watched a tremor course through his entire body. Once he came back to his senses he doubled down his efforts, nuzzling the other breast and sucking the pebbled nipple in his hot mouth. 

His tongue started to swirl around the hardened nub at the same time as two of his fingers drowned in your slick pussy, finding your most sensitive spot with devastating accuracy. Your mind went blank, and your gasps came out in hiccups. Your instincts took over as you were riding his bulge with trembling legs, chasing your blinding pleasure. You only had enough wits to sit back to undo his belt, ripping off his fly, and with his help, you were able to push his pants down his thighs, freeing his erect cock.

His hand grasped the base and gently tapped it against your sensitive clit, and your hips started moving again, trapping his length under your pussy as you continued to slide over him. He softly bit on your nipple in response which blazed off fireworks in your lower stomach, his other hand never stopping its brutal pace grinding against your most sensitive spot. You were so close to cumming you could practically taste it on your tongue. 

“Feels so good—,“ your voice was desperate, and he let out a wrecked moan around your breast. 

The soft pulling sensation, coupled with the warm, wet caresses of his mouth on your nipple, the expert touch of his fingers on your g-spot, and the tantalizing friction of your clit rubbing against the ridges of his cock, quickly sent you spiraling into a world of ecstasy and pleasure. You came with a wail, your back arching and eyes rolling back. You faintly felt Javi’s hands at the base of your back and along your spine, keeping you close to him while his eyes feasted on you falling apart for him. You fell back on his shoulders, weakly grasping at his elbows as his palms caressed your back and he showered your neck with small kisses, humming quietly between them. 

“You did so well, you’re fucking amazing,” he breathed against your skin, as you felt your pulse slow down a bit. He kissed a path down your sweaty chest and came back the same route. After some blissful peace, you felt his cock twitch against you and you whined. 

“Do you have one more in you, mi amor? We can rest,” Javi asked gently, his eyes searching for yours. 

Bless his heart, he made you come three times and he would finish the night here and there, hard as a rock. Your body was still buzzing and you felt sore from his thick fingers but one look at his sinful state was enough to get you in the mood again. 

His lovely locks were now sticking to his face, the perspiration on his chest only making him glow even more. His mouth was agape, plush lower lip kiss-swollen, and his dark eyes silently pleading with you. Instead of giving him an answer, you gripped the hem of his tank top and peeled the offending item off of him as he held up his arms, helping you and keeping his lustrous eyes on yours. 

Resting your hands on the top of his chest you kissed down his neck, between his collarbones. Sitting back lower on his legs, you could trace your tongue between his pecs and down to his soft stomach. You couldn’t help but kiss around his little belly, giving him a playful bite which made him jolt with a small laugh. Your finger traced the soft patch of hair below his navel, and understanding your silent request, he kicked down the remaining of his clothes while you kneeled on the side. 

You were fascinated as you watched his cock in all its glory, shiny from your juices, precum already leaking from the angry, red tip. Your mouth watered at the sight, and you were already in motion to have a taste for yourself when he stopped you, gently putting his hands around your arms. 

“It pains me to stop you, but the second I feel your mouth on me, I would be a goner.” His husky voice was layered with desire. “C’mere, I need to be inside you,” he added, and you almost jumped on him. 

You crawled back over his hips while he pumped his cock a few times, his veins bulging in his cock and forearms. It was one of the hottest things you’ve ever seen and you filed the idea for later exploration. You went lower on him and he smeared his member over your slit, covering him in your juices generously again, then he prodded the head at your entrance. 

“Come on, cariño, let me feel you, please,” he growled, and you carefully descended down on him. 

You were over quite a few nights with him, but your pussy still struggled to accommodate his size, especially now that you were still sore and sensitive from earlier. The struggle felt like a pinch and you whined, but he cradled your face and kissed your forehead. 

“It’s okay honey, take your time,” he whispered and let you take the lead for the moment. 

He caressed everywhere he could reach. He sucked two fingers into his mouth and lead them to your clit, ever so slightly drawing circles around it. At first, it felt like a needle stab, but a few seconds later it turned into pleasure. You swallowed more of him with a quiver. You felt so full, even though you were still a few inches apart from sitting down completely. 

His tongue found your breasts again, laving at the skin with bites and kisses alternating between them, tongue chasing your puffy nipple with confident laps. When he sucked in your soaked bud to bite down on it your cunt bottomed out, swallowing his cock entirely as a fresh wave of slickness coated his base. He tore away from your glistening nipple, burying his face between your breasts with a heavy groan. 

“You’re so fucking tight around me,” he rasped into your damp chest. “You were made for me. And your skin is so fucking silky.” 

Just to prove his point, his greedy tongue made its way up your chest, across your neck and jaw and to claim your mouth in a hedonistic kiss, as his hands grabbed the meat of your ass; not to force you to move, but to ground himself. 

The kiss was a little clumsy, but no less toe-curling, his tongue exploring your mouth and teeth clashing as you started to rise and fall against him. You felt so full, as if he was in your guts. Your lungs burned as you felt more and more overwhelmed by the inferno in your body. You broke away from him only to lay back, hands grabbing his shins while continuing to move up and down on his cock. 

The new angle was exhausting, but it rubbed your insides from just the perfect direction, and your vision blurred from the sensation. From this angle he had the best view of his cock disappearing in your puffy cunt, then appearing again, covered in your juices. Javi was hypnotized by the sight, his mouth dropping, and eyebrows knitted tightly together. 

“That’s it, use me, just like that,” he grunted, trapped under your spell over him. 

Heavy-lidded eyes followed your every move, and as he reached out to touch your overworked clit again your thighs started to tremble so hard that you couldn’t continue gyrating against him. He swore under his breath as you throbbed around him another time, and you leaned over his body to grab his shoulders. 

He prompted you to rise higher on your knees above him as he secured his feet on the surface of the couch. One arm braced himself next to his torso, while the other slipped up your back to grab your shoulder from the back, and he started to pound into you mercilessly, stealing your breath. You could barely stay in place, so you grabbed the backrest of the couch as you felt tears pricking your eyes from the intensity. 

“Are you close, baby? I’m so close but I need you to come first,” he strained, seemingly every muscle in his body tensing from the exertion.

He looked like a sculpture of a deity from ancient times, especially when his head fell back, the thick column of his gorgeous neck on full display. You could only nod, not being able to even form a coherent thought anymore as your desperate whines became constant. He raised his head again - he couldn’t keep his gaze away from where you connected, his face almost looked angry from the concentration. 

“Fuckfuckfuck, rub your clit for me,” he roared, and you followed his order immediately. 

Almost as soon as you touched your clit, you started shuddering violently with a loud and raspy cry, tears running down your face as he kept grazing your g-spot with every powerful thrust. You felt possessed as your entire body short-circuited, and your ears started ringing. You faintly registered his load painting your walls as your throbbing core milked him dry, his growl echoing in your ears. 

You collapsed on him like a ragdoll, your sweaty bodies colliding as he kept you close to his chest. As you came back to your wits a few minutes later you felt raw and weak and vulnerable, but it was okay because Javi was there, embracing you with strong arms and gentle kisses across your face, swiping away your tears. His body was like a shelter as you clung to him with all your limbs and he kept you safe from whatever was happening outside of your bubble. 

“Are you okay?” He whispered, your name falling from his lips like a prayer as his hand smoothed over your hair while his body swayed you gently. 

“I’m… I’m more than okay,” you croaked, still feeling boneless as you weakly clasped into his body. “Thank you, this was a spiritual experience.” He huffed a small laugh at that. 

“You are incredible,” he cooed. 

You lazily nuzzled deeper into his neck with a hum, letting his scent calm your frayed nerves down. You stayed like that, limbs intertwined for a while, before Javi reluctantly pulled out of you, making the both of you groan as he gently helped you to lay on your back and he hurried to the bathroom in all his naked glory. 

He came back soon, but that little time was enough for you to realize that your thighs and mound were drenched. That explains the out-of-body experience. 

Javi sat down next to you, a warm and wet washcloth in his hand. He cleaned you up with reverence, eyeing the marks he had left over your body. He seemed worried, but you wore them with pride.

“That’s very kind of you, but I think we will need to shower anyway,” you smiled bashfully, and he placed a smooth kiss on your forehead.

“I wasn’t sure if you had enough energy for that,” he rasped.

“If you help me, it won’t be an issue,” you sat up slowly, your coordination akin to a newborn foal, his hand held out to help you to stand. 

“Of course, cariño.” 

His warm eyes made your knees buckle, this time not from your physical activities. As if on cue, the credits rolled on the screen with a blaring sound, and both of you jerked your head in its direction with alarm, obviously forgetting about the movie going in the background the entire time. You looked back at each other with wide eyes, laughter erupting out of you at the same time.

“So, you wanna watch the movie when we get back home?” He snickered.

“Definitely!” You perked up at the prospect of spending more time with him after your getaway. Besides, now it was your mission to finally really watch the movie. “Unless you’ll need me again,” you added, wiggling your eyebrows at him. He chuckled and smacked your ass gently.

“I was hoping for that answer.”

—————

THE END.

Thank you for reading! Reblogs & feedbacks are highly appreciated ♥️

#are you alright honey? #pedro pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #javi gutierrez #javi gutierrez fanfiction #pedro pascal smut #javi gutierrez smut #javi gutierrez x reader #javi gutierrez x f!reader #javi gutierrez x you #javi guterrez oneshot #fanna writing

[desidarling123]

SAB Scene Breakdown: Inej's Hallucination

OK, so I had actually been meaning to write and publish some meta on this particular scene (and just tons of SAB S2 meta, in general) in the weeks after the second season of the show came out. But life has been crazy recently, so I truly never found the time.

However, I reblogged a certain gifset a few days/weeks ago, slapped some tags on it, and realized there might indeed be some interest in some more #detailed thoughts.

The analysis that follows is at a pretty minute level of detail (and all of course based on MY views) so... take that with a grain of salt.

Also - fair warning - it's long as hell 😂 but entertaining, I hope!

I find this whole sequence in general super fascinating - it's one of my favorite scenes in the second season, and one that's also arguably subject to the absolute worst takes in fandom (iykyk... and if you don't, well, you're about to find out.)

So, let's get into it:

We start off strong with a very specific choice, made early on: it's not Inej seducing Kaz; rather, it's Kaz who's drawing Inej into this vision.

I get a bit more into the broader implications of that a bit later, but it's definitely important that it's done this way, rather than the other way around.

It's also, very notably, an inverse of this scene from a few episodes earlier:

What's unique about that previous scene is that in that moment, he's deliberately pushing her away (for reasons, mind you, that she's not entirely privy to, but definitely hurt her regardless - even if she pretends not to care about it to his face later on).

This is different. Instead of pushing her away, he is asking her to stay.

The choice of words is specific too: the word 'disappear' most obviously references her status as his spider. But it might also be an apt description of her own personal trappings, of 'disappearing' when in the throes of trauma-induced pressure.

Some atmospheric details I love:

Their IRL confrontation was in his office-cum-bedroom (👀shutup), a tiny, crammed space that matched the tension of that scene. This is the opposite of that - the room has a more open layout, imbuing the whole sequence with a more relaxed vibe. We can even see his cane chilling on the table behind him, just in reaching distance.

The DeKappel painting which they jointly stole in the books (and presumably on the show as well) is behind them.

Fire burning as a symbol for latent passion is not exactly groundbreaking imagery, but don't fix what ain't broke, amirite? :P

Malina, very notably, gets the same fire imagery treatment in their own love scene as well:

Will it show up again in a future season for kanej? Between that and, well, the recurring church imagery, we're in for a tossup, folks

But anyways. Back to the scene at hand.

You'll notice Inej goes back to a formal stance, hands behind her back, like she's preparing for a debrief or for an assignment. It's for a few seconds, if that, but it shows that she's grasping at some semblance of normalcy in this decidedly not-normal vision.

That facade lasts for all of, two seconds, tops, when he does this:

It's sexy! It's intimate! There's knives involved!

Okay, but seriously, for the sake of time I actually will not get into a deeper discussion of the ~implications~ because I'm sure it's been done a zilllion times before and it's also fairly obvious lol

Now, the one thing I *do* want to pivot to here is that by this point, both Inej and the audience understand that there is something very subtly yet fundamentally different about hallucination!Kaz.

But what is it?

Speaking on this scene, Freddy Carter had a quote (that I cannot be arsed to find rn) where he basically said that he deferred to Amita when playing hallucination!Kaz because "she (Amita) knows better (than I do) what it is that Inej likes about Kaz"

And what is it, exactly, that she likes about him? The next few gifs tell all, using actions rather than words.

This is her reaction to him pulling her knives from her. And what I find so interesting is that she is so (rightfully) startled....

But that is absolutely NOT the expression on his face at all.

In fact, he's remarkably self-assured.

And THAT, I think, is the crux of 'what it is she likes about him', as Frreddy said.

She likes his decisiveness, the single-minded precision with which he operates.

She's seen him apply it to every last scheme, every seemingly-hopeless situation... to damn near everything in the world, really, but her.

But here, in the depths of her hallucination, he does.

There are none of his usual hangups, none of their typically frustrating back-and-forths.

No. Here, he doesn't hesitate. He wants her, and he makes it known.

Striking, sexy stuff, to say least.

Let's go on:

Nothing to add here except that I'm obsessed with the way their heads turn at the same time here.

It's funny, because for all their personal hang-ups when it comes to physical intimacy, these two are SURPRISINGLY physically attuned to each other.

Goes to show, really, how much both of their problems are in their heads (obviously) -- and how, when they're actually ready to heal, relying on their intuition may be a better approach than getting too cerebral about it.

Again, Kaz does not break eye contact with her here, and it's such a contrast to what he might have instead done if this were happening in real life - in fact, does happen, in real life, though I'd argue that isn't exactly his fault.

I love that we get a moment where Inej looks down and sees his hand hovering near her waist, just so that it's made explicitly clear what he's asking for and what the ~implications~ are.

And then, she says yes! Enthusiastically, I might add.

Not but seriously the sheer want, the little touch of eagerness on her face kills me here. She's never had this experience before - has only ever known men violating her in the most horrible way possible - and yet this tiny little thing, of Kaz asking her for consent, means so much.

Oh my God Kaz is so sexy here sorry no words anyway carrying on.

Now even after she said yes you can see this sudden little beat of hesitation on her face, like she's maybe not sure what's going to happen or if Kaz is going to do what she asked. For her it's a moment of incredible vulnerability, even though Kaz is the one sort of making the advances on her - because this one time, she actually gets to say yes.

I think that shot of his arm going around her waist is so gorgeous and so sensual - but as we pan up we can see that maybe all isn't well.

Now, Amita also really does a fantastic job at portraying the turbulence of Inej's emotions -- she goes from clearly wanting it and saying 'yes', to visibly panicking once he acts on it. We see her shift around in his grip and even swallow nervously, blink-blink-blinking herself back into the moment.

Her response is reminiscent of this passage from the books:

But what might have happened if he'd spoken that night? If he had willingly offered her some part of his heart? What if he had come to her, laid his gloves aside, drawn her to him, kissed her mouth? Would she have pulled him closer, kissed him back? Could she have been herself in such a moment, or would she have broken apart and vanished, a doll in his arms, a girl who could never quite be whole?

You can see the very beginning of that sort of panic start to set in, here. This is completely uncharted territory for Inej - her own desire, the shame and baggage that comes with it, is all getting uncovered for the first time in what is arguably the 'safest' way possible - within the confines of her own mind - and yet, she's still panicking.

More on that in a bit. Let's keep going.

Anyways well Freddy's got a huge hand sorry anyway 

I love the way she closes her eyes here. And you can see again it's not without effort - like there's still conflict within her, you can see all of those different emotions warring within her - but she is trying to let herself have this moment. She's trying to take comfort in this touch that she so desperately wants and yet hasn't had any sort of good connotations with in recent history. 

She also opens her eyes just as he starts to lean in and I think that was a great, deliberate choice on Amita and Freddy's part.

It's that precise moment, really, when it becomes super super clear to her what's about to happen.

No notes, I just really love this forehead lean, it's that little bit of tenderness and intimacy that she's been subconsciously craving.

 Again, it's fascinating to me that we can see all of Inej's nervous tics coming into play here, but for hallucination!Kaz there's absolutely no hesitation at any point whatsoever.

It looks like, for all intents and purposes, he is going to kiss her.

And then at the very very last second you see him move back, ever-so-slightly --

and then she moves all the way back and delivers her line:

Ouch. Like a punch to the gut. True, but still ouch.

Now one could probably ask, in hypotheticals: why didn't he actually kiss her at this moment? And the answer to that simply is: this is her hallucination, you know? Even though she's not conscious of it (she's dying lol), she's the one with all the power, here.

And truthfully, whether she knows it or not, nothing is going to happen in her hallucination if she doesn't want it to.

But wait, you might say. Doesn't she want to kiss Kaz?

Like that original excerpt from the book indicates, it's complicated. Everything pertaining to desire generally will be, for her.

Not that her subconscious doesn't put up a good ol' fight. Hallucination!Kaz, you have to remember, isn't so much Kaz as he is a very precise amalgamation of her own memories and desires.

And boy, does he make a good argument:

The word want, again, spoken so directly here - it's that sort of straightforward speech that neither party is actually really capable of (at this point) in their arcs, not when it comes to each other.

Again, Kaz is behaving perfectly in the prescribed character of his hallucination persona - direct, confident, not rattled in the slightest.

It's interesting also that he doesn't say: this is real. He isn't able to lie to her in her own fantasy, but he does instead tell her exactly what she wants to hear, which is arguably even more dangerous.

And what I feel so terrible about is you can see this tiny little spark this little bit of hope on her face that she has.

She wants to believe this so so badly. She wants it, damn it!

So this time, she actually moves closer, crosses that distance between them. 

You can't see it super well in this gif, but you can see a little tiny muscle twitch in her jaw, a nervous swallow as she's bracing for him to kiss her the second time. And once again, Kaz isn't hesitating, there isn't any note of that discordant thing that they have in real life from his end.

Now another thing that drives me crazy is people claiming that they did kiss in the scene like bro. Bro. Freddy and Amita did not shoot this scene at no less three separate angles for you to tell us that they kissed!! They didn't kiss, they make it incredibly obvious that they did not kiss, and if you're the one person on planet Earth whose definition of a kiss is front lips brushing for .0000000002 seconds then I'm sorry, you belong to a different category, okay?

And again, that was on purpose! It totally would have defeated the purpose of this particular sequence if they had (and would've given detractors of this scene a real leg to stand on - again, more on that at the very end.)

But as it stands, they don't kiss, and that's also kind of critically why this isn't just a sexy scene to watch back.

AND THEN (I'm out of allowed images HAHA) she pulls away. And she says the words that end it all - This isn't real. This is the poison.

The premise of the hallucination is completely shattered, and she looks so heartbroken, but she's finally able to articulate what she's really known this whole time, and that is that nothing she's seeing is real. It is a lie being fed to her by her poison-addled brain as her body slowly succumbs and dies (dark).

But you know, she does get out of it through sheer willpower, and we love her for that - but oh man but what cost?

This particular sequence is definitely a catalyst for her changed behavior going forward. I do actually wish it had been a little better handled in the show (as in, better supported by dialogue in scenes before and after this one) but regardless - this scene is a Big Tipping Point and starts what is essentially a pseudo-regression arc for Inej (paraphrasing Amita directly, bc that's truly the most apt description of Inej's behavior for the rest of the season.)

It's really bad timing, unfortunately, because it happens just as Kaz is starting to open up like never before. He's starting to see the world in a completely different light while she's doing the exact opposite -- she is shutting down her own dreams and desires when it comes to him, because she's come to the conclusion that it's simply not going to happen.

And you know what, she's not entirely wrong for that assumption, but I do have beef with some of the particulars of how it was executed in the show. But that's a discussion for another day.

Now, onto a brief rant that I alluded to at the very start of this post - my single biggest grievance with fandom is that someone on the internet decided that this scene somehow ‘erased’ Inej’s trauma, when in fact that exact trauma is what underpins the whole damn thing.

The fact that this scene more or less parallels the passage from the books beat for beat, shows, in my opinion, that book fans who make these claims of 'erasure' must have deliberately chosen to ignore this passage from the books, or never even read it in the first place.

Because frankly? Once you take that passage into consideration, the intent of this sequence couldn't have been more obvious!

Just to underscore my point, I want to ask anyone who's reading this to please compare and contrast Inej’s hallucination with Matthias’ dream. If the intent, as many so often like to claim, was simply to make this moment in Inej’s mind a sexy, titillating scene, well then, it would have been shot a lot more closely to the way Matthias’ dream was shot: there's no lack of kissing and even implied penetration (!) which is crazy, because of course, Matthias and Nina have gotten nowhere near that in real life.

There's a sexual aspect to her dream, for sure, but it's not a stereotypically-passionate 'sex dream' so much as it is a thinly-veiled reading into her own desires and the inner turmoil that comes with it.

There's also a very subtle undercurrent here that I picked up on and explore in my ongoing fic , which is that Kaz, in these fantasies, is really always the one taking the lead, so to speak. Inej is not pulling him close or asking to kiss him - and we see that even when she consents to the act, she looks like she's bracing herself for it, rather than excited that it'll happen.

That is fueled no doubt by 1) her realizing it isn't real but also 2) the fact that she is still very much in the middle of her own trauma (having been freed like what? mere days ago? if that?)

Any concept of her own independent desire is still saddled with IMMENSE baggage - and this sequence showcases it perfectly.

I think after the fact, she's consciously aware of 1) but not yet aware of 2) which is beating around in her subconscious and is probably gonna cause her WAYY more problems going forward lol

TLDR; Inej doesn't know it just yet, but she's got loads of her own issues to work through, and until she does, she's going to be stuck in this weird purgatory of being a voyeur to/of her own desires.

#kanej #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #sab #shadow and bone #my meta

[i-want-my-iwtv]

How do you interpret the Louis vampire transformation in the book, not the show. It seems very sexual from my understanding although Lestat is a complete a**hole. I'm starting to reread the books again it's been awhile.

…"Are we close to God when we create something out of nothing? When we pretend we are the tiny flame and we make other flames?"

nansorella, this question could be an essay answer 💗! I'm glad to hear you're rereading the books, definitely try to get through TOBT if you can, that's where the above quote came from. There's a lot of layers with Lestat giving the Dark Gift to Louis. But I'll try to keep this as short as I can, and we can always delve further in a follow up ;}

[^X by @xxhellonursexx, read the caption on that bc it's in line with my answer on this ask! Vampiric feeding could be compared to breastfeeding, but specifically their turning is really the most comparable, a child feeding on the nutrition from their parent's own body.]

Focusing on the book, yes, my reading is that it's intentionally very sexual (even complete a**holes can be capable of sex!). Since vampires can't get pregnant, the Dark Gift is their method of sexual reproduction; I would argue that it's the most intimate act they can perform. Yes Lestat is being more than a bit of an a**hole in that moment but I can excuse it partly bc it was AR's first time writing a vampire turning and Lestat was for sure the main antagonist in that story, so he had to be sassy/cruel even in what should have been a loving moment but that's another entire discussion. Ppl can be awful during the act of giving birth, too, so... yeah... I would also argue that the '94 movie softened that scene somewhat, Lestat was positively thrilled about doing it and wasn't awful to Louis (except for when he had to break away from Louis, but that's also comparable to childbirth, which has pain involved for sure, and then you can see how sexually gratified he is laying back and watching Louis transform after they separate so ANYWAY!).

Since Lestat has so many fledglings, it was kind of a fandom joke that every time X sound occurs, Lestat makes another fledgling... maybe it's because he gets so much pleasure out of performing the act itself, and, transforming someone into a vampire, he gains a kind of parental and creative ownership of that person. It's his blood in them, after all!

Louis describes the act of killing as being a celebration of his making, (my bold & italics emphasis added):

"Killing is no ordinary act," said the vampire. "One doesn't simply glut oneself on blood." He shook his head. "It is the experience of another's life for certain, and often the experience of the loss of that life through the blood, slowly. It is again and again the experience of that loss of my own life, which I experienced when I sucked the blood from Lestat's wrist and felt his heart pound with my heart. It is again and again a celebration of that experience; because for vampires that is the ultimate experience."

[X for a great gifset of this quote by @fetch-me-a-block]

And then in Tale of the Body Thief, Lestat's reflecting on the creation of Claudia in a similar way to how ppl talk about the creation of their children:

[^X St. Patrick’s Cathedral, NYC, 11/7/15.]

“I lifted the long wax wick, dipped it into an old flame, and carried the fire to a fresh candle, watched the little tongue grow orange and bright. What a miracle, I thought. One tiny flame could make so many other flames; one tiny flame could set afire a whole world. Why, I had, with this simple gesture, actually increased the sum total of light in the universe, had I not? …«But why, Lestat?» Because she was beautiful, because she was dying, because I wanted to see if it would work. Because nobody wanted her and she was there, and I picked her up and held her in my arms. Because it was something I could accomplish, like the little candle flame in the church making another flame and still retaining its own light - my way of creating, my only way, don’t you see? One moment there were two of us, and then we were three. …«Are we close to God when we create something out of nothing? When we pretend we are the tiny flame and we make other flames?»

That book has an undercurrent of Claudia haunting Lestat (possibly as a ghost, but possibly as just his own imaginary manifestation of her) and pestering him about why he created her, maybe trying to provoke him into an apology, and I feel like he's able to make peace with her in his ruminations about her in that book. This is why I encourage ppl to read the canon books, even on beyond the first 3, because there are gems like this that add a richness to the characters, we can explore them along with Anne Rice 💗💗💗

#vampire chronicles #lestat #lestat de lioncourt #the vampire lestat #louis de pointe du lac #iwantmyiwtv has opinions #quote #actual quote #tale of the body thief #the dark gift #memeything #textmeme #prolific #fanart #xxhellonursexx #long post #well not TOO long but still #candle #flame #nansorella #thank u for the ask! #ask

[uselesstimetraveler]

Man, I love ncis. I think the shows I was first ever obsessed about were csi and ncis. I've loved this show for ages now. Annnd with being an og ncis fan comes the adventure that was following Tiva's story upclose for all those years they were on screen. If I'm being honest, truly honest, even though I always name another couple (that also gave me so much) when asked which is my favorite otp, the real answer has always been Tiva. The way just the thought of those two makes my heart vibrate is... otherworldly.

And I've been active here on tumblr for so many fandoms but never for ncis/tiva. And I don't know why???

I started watching ncis when I was a child and I'm almost 30 now. I'm not an American and I didn't have any friends who liked it when I was a teenager, not even my fandom friends on the bird app, I was literally the only one watching it, dying over tiny Tiva moments alone... so I never posted anything about it. Sometimes I write fanfiction, but my only Tiva fic I wrote just a couple years ago, and I also love to make gifsets but I don't think I've ever made anything ncis related. That frustrates me now, because I just noticed the amount of people here I could've been interacting with.

How come I never thought of checking out the ncis and tiva tags in here??? I remember it being so SO lonely watching and suffering through Ziva's departure alone 'cause there was nobody to talk about it with. A couple seasons after that I dropped ncis for a while, but couldn't stay away for too long and went back to watching it.

I'm still as in love with it as the first day. All other shows that last this long tend to lose intensity and/or quality, but ncis just keeps on giving me life. These days I've been missing Tiva way too much, my heart hurts. I started rewatching the show and wanna be making some tiva content.

(btw, what are all these rumors about them coming back, I'm about to have a heart attack just thinking about it)

Well, I just wanted to kinda introduce myself on here to make up for lost time haha

#tiva #ziva david #tony dinozzo #ncis #ncis fandom #tiva fandom #tiva fanfiction #tiva gifs #ncis gifs #cote de pablo #michael weatherly

[villaofthemysteries]

...and yet he loved this thing

Hello, and welcome to The Devil’s Minion Week, which celebrates the relationship between Daniel Molloy and Armand in The Vampire Chronicles series, specifically from The Queen of the Damned. This chapter of the book, and the relationship it describes, is some of the best writing and characterisation in the whole series, and the layered, twisted, deeply romantic relationship that ensues is beloved by many fans.

To celebrate, this week is dedicated to quotes from the chapter, and fans are invited to make gifsets/photosets, artwork, fics or videos, that relate to, or are inspired by, each quote. This includes images from the recent TV version of Interview with the Vampire, as well as other onscreen appearances of both Daniel and Armand, as the aim is to appeal to both book and show fans. It runs from 10 o’clock in the morning of the 4th of September, to some time in the evening of the 10th of September (all times in Greenwich Mean Time).

You can submit your creation before then, or feel free to post it to your own account and tag @villaofthemysteries using the ‘and yet he loved this thing’/’the devil’s minion week’ tags, which we will track throughout.

The quotes for each day are below - you can use them directly, or relatively, or interpret them in a new and different way. The main idea is to have fun with them, and with the relationship in general, in whatever form that will take.

************************************************************************************************

Day 1 - I want it. I want to live forever. Daniel had sat up, climbed to his feet slowly, struggling to see Armand more clearly. A dim bulb burned somewhere far down the hall. I want to be with Louis and with you. Laughter, low, gentle. But contemptuous. "I see why he chose you for his confidant. You are naive and beautiful. But the beauty could be the only reason, you know."

Day 2 - Daniel was past all decision. Daniel lived only in two alternating states: misery and ecstasy, united by love. He never knew when he'd be given the blood. He never knew if things looked different because of it-the carnations staring at him from their vases, skyscrapers hideously visible like plants sprung up from steel seeds overnight-or because he was just going out of his mind.

Day 3 - “Armand [...] always knew where Daniel was. He could hear Daniel's call. The blood connected them, it had to-the precious tiny drinks of burning preternatural blood. Never enough to do more than awaken dreams in Daniel, and the thirst for eternity, to make the flowers in the wallpaper sing and dance. Whatever, Armand could always find him, of that he had no doubt."

Day 4 - “You came back to me because you wanted to, Daniel,” Armand always said calmly, face still and radiant, eyes full of love. "There is nothing for you now, Daniel, except me. You know that. Madness waits out there."

Day 5 - "Be alive, Daniel." A low whisper, like a kiss. "Let me tell you from my heart that life is better than death."

Day 6 - “… Let the demonic gods war with each other. This mortal has been to the top of the mountain where they cross swords. And he has come back. He has been turned away.”

Day 7 - “...the sight of Armand made him want to cry. Even in deep shadow, Armand's dark brown eyes were filled with a vibrant light. And the expression on his face, so loving. He reached out very carefully and touched Armand's eyelashes. He wanted to touch the tiny fine lines in Armand's lips. Armand kissed him. He began to tremble. The way it felt, the cool silky mouth, like a kiss of the brain, the electric purity of a thought!”

#the big damn quotes post #and yet he loved this thing #the devil's minion week #armand x daniel #the devil's minion #the vampire chronicles #interview with the vampire

[berestweys]

since 2022, after watching kinnporsche twice that summer and losing my marbles, i've fallen into a deep well of thai tv.

shout out to love in the air, bad buddy, and cutie pie, my 2nd, 3rd, & 4th bls watched in the fall of 2022. they were all so delightful (in very different ways) that i simply had to keep going.

in 2023 i watched 24 thai dramas: mostly bl's but 1 notable gl gap the series (and another tiny gl if you count zero photography with inkpa my beloveds), and two shows that are neither (mama gogo and the warp effect should be on everyone's watch list! so great!) i have never in my life watched this much television.

my favorite of 2023 is definitely my school president. there was a lot of competition (wedding plan! moonlight chicken! so many more omg) but msp is the only one i rewatched immediately. the chinzhilla babies stole every inch of my heart. it couldn't be anyone but them.

last twilight is still ongoing so i'm going to count it as 2024, and since it hasn't finished i can't say for certain it will end as beautifully as it started (i think it will. i hope it will.). it is currently rearranging every molecule in my body 24/7. i think it's going to be one of my favorite shows ever heyyyyyyyyy. I'M SERIOUS I AM VIBRATING

also currently watching cherry magic with taynew and it is completely adorable. my dash is soaked to the gills with the sign and pit babe, though i'm not watching either show. it's entertaining to watch them both in gifs (every pit babe post i see hacks another week off my life though. lord.)

2024 is off with a bang.

it's pretty funny that so many of us started watching thai bl's because of kinnporsche, looking for more of ~that~, because as it turns out there is no other show like kp, and yet i am completely hooked. i think i've seen enough of them at this point that i have a feel for the rhythms of the genre, though my watchlist is tiny in comparison to a lot of the blogs i follow. i love it and i have loved learning more about thai language, culture, & politics.

it's been a wild fun time, and i'm thankful to everyone i follow, including my handful of mutuals who have given me recs, made gorgeous gifsets & vids, written fic, & thrown some of the best and most hilarious tags in any fandom i've been in. you're all fantastic!!!

happy new year and let's keep collecting blorbos

#having a marvelous time #i love fandom #bl fandom

[wrenhavenriver]

top 5 outsider lines (just in the first game to make it easier)

god yes thank you for putting limits or else i'd be staring at this empty ask box and crying for the next 5-7 hours trying to decide. i'm limiting it even further to the base game because the DLCs are a whole other ball game, please help me, it's so dark in here

"Your life has taken a turn, has it not?" - it's such a simple sentence but there's somehow a gravitas to it, an acknowledgment of how wildly corvo's life has careened out of control, of everything he's lost. i made a gifset at some point putting it together with the happy mask salesman's "you've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?" from majora's mask because that's it, that's exactly the vibe and it makes me want to chew through concrete.

"You spared High Overseer Campbell, the leader of a great cult dedicated to loathing me. I'm older than the rocks this place is built on, and even I didn't see that coming." - the way he very casually throws out the fact that he's existed on a time scale beyond human memory - and yet, despite all those millennia of watching humans do the same dumb shit over and over again, you've somehow managed to surprise him. it's so tasty.

the entirety of the Flooded District speech after the poisoning but especially the opening and final lines: "Here you are at last, in a ruined and drowning world. [...] Perhaps that's just the nature of man." - it's such a bleak sentiment, perfectly matched to corvo being at his lowest point, abandoned and half-dead and powerless to help his daughter yet again. it feels like, yeah, there really is a hole in the world. but depending on how you play, you can prove him wrong in a sense, can't you? or at the very least show him another side of humanity - a less cynical, more merciful nature you can choose to follow. and we know the outsider loves when there's a choice to be made.

"Strange how there's always a little more innocence left to lose." - needs no explanation i think, this one soundly won the "best dh1 outsider quote" poll and for good fucking reason.

"Farewell, Corvo." - another deceptively simple sentence that somehow cracks my ribcage open and makes me feel things? it's said so gently, almost softly, by an entity whose warmest emotional expression throughout the game has been cold amusement or occasional surprise/intrigue. again, this guy is older than the rocks the empire is built on - and yet you still get the sense that this tiny little blip of time has meant something. been noticed, appreciated. it mattered.

#askbox games #assassinregrets #the outsider

[inkedroplets]

20 Questions More

A deeper and more detailed version of the 20 questions for AO3 fanfic writers. Thanks @eqt-95 for the tag

1) How do you keep getting ideas for your ship/fandom?

I always have too many ideas and not enough time to actually write.

2) Which authors inspire you in your fandom, and why are they so freakishly good?

There are way too many authors to list that I feel like would deserve a mention. I would love to give a huge thank you to all the gifmakers still in the fandom-sphere. I can probably thank gifsets for a lot of my ideas (even if I still haven't actually written them down).

3) Aside from the characters of your main ship, who are the characters you love to write?

Within the Supercorp-sphere, I love writing for Sam. I think because I would have loved to see her stick around longer in the show itself.

4) Are there pairings or tropes you know for sure you'd never write about? Which ones?

I don't want to say any trope is technically off the table but I don't think I'd ever write a true enemies to lovers fic. I slow burn enough as it is, if I tried to write that, I'd never finish it.

5) What is your writing process and why is it cursed?

My editing process is akin to pulling weeds. I like to reduce my word count by maybe 10% on the first edit. Add back maybe 5% more and repeat the process until I'm finally happy with it. Spoiler alert: I'm never happy

6) What is your favorite part of your writing process?

I'm much more a gardener when it comes to writing so I never know where the story will go exactly. So just writing the first draft is always the most fun for me. I sometimes think the characters will act a certain way and they kind of take a life of their own and I'm just along for the ride.

7) What’s the weirdest thing you’ve had to research for a fic?

I remember having to research art forgery for essentially a throwaway line but it really was interesting. E

8) Is there a particular writing rule you struggle with (grammar, spelling, tense, reality in general)?

None in particular, but that's not to say I don't make many many mistakes. I do tend to make tiny changes as I go which means that I've doubled up on some sentences in the past and I am always mortified when I find them after I've already posted the chapter.

9) What was your hardest scene to write so far and why?

Scenes with urgency give me trouble. You want the scene to breathe but you need to be aware that time is short so what the characters can say, what they want to say and what they actually get to say are so different. There was a scene like that in A Rich Girl With Issues that I kind of agonized over. How much should I let Kara and Lena speak to one another, what's important, what should be left unsaid?

10) Have your characters ever done something you didn’t expect, changing your plot completely?

All. The. Time. I never have a plan. I sometimes have scenes I want to write and hope the story veers in that direction so I can write it but it always turns out so different.

11) If you could converse with any of the characters, who would it be and why?

Probably Lena because she's the loml (Apologies to the actual loml)

12) What are some of the tropes or themes that you find yourself returning to in your writing?

I am addicted to pining. Not just pining, angsty pining. I love writing something that's so obvious to everyone else when the characters are so in love or so full of self-loathing that they can't let themselves even begin to imagine their feelings being returned.

13) What's your most important resource as a writer?

Reading. I read voraciously. I'm normally surrounded by books. Some that I pick up to just read anywhere. It's helped me find my voice and it's helped me grow as a writer (at least I think it has)

14) Can you share some of your strategies for editing and revising your work?

I do small edits as I go but nothing major. If a line sticks out that I really don't like then I usually tinker with it before I move on. I think that's not good advice in general but it bothers me too much to ignore. But if you do edit as you go, there's a lot less to polish in the final editing stages.

15) Which is worse: making the summary, picking the tags, or the anxiety when you post your fic?

I hate making the summary. I don't even know what the fic is about, how the hell am I supposed to tell other people?

16) How do you define success for your fanfic - hits? Kudos? Comments? Bookmarks? Or just if you like it?

I feel like my writing is very selfish in a way. They are stories that I want to read and I get enjoyment out of writing them. So every kind comment I get, there's always a sense of wonder because it's so strange that someone else is interested. I truly do cherish every comment and there are many I like to revisit when I'm not feeling so confident in my writing.

17) Do you have a playlist for your favorite character/ship?

I usually make a playlist for each multi-chapter fic. Some fic ideas get their start as a playlist. Please someone ask me about them, I have so many.

18) If fan art was going to be made from your work, which fic would you pick and which fan artist would you like to create it?

I have been very blessed that people have made fan art of my work and I'm still in awe. I could never even begin to describe how touched and honored I am that anybody did that. One of the pieces has been my computer background for ages. It's not an exaggeration that I cherish every single piece. I honestly don't think I could ever adequately describe how much it means to me.

19) How many WIPs do you currently have?

For Supercorp I have 15+ I do plan on actually posting them in the new year.

20) What's your advice to new fanfic writers?

I would say to write for yourself first and foremost. Sharing your art or your writing or even your head canons or ideas takes a lot of courage. It's scary to put something out there that means so much to you. I'd also advise not to get too hung up on hits/kudos/comments etc. I can't say don't look at them because I'd be a hypocrite but I would say to focus on the journey rather than the destination.

- - - - -

tagging (respectfully and without pressure) @fazedlight @autisticlenaluthor @rustingcat

#ask game #writing #oh this was fun

[lenakluthor]

5,7,9 for the gif makers question thingy

YESS I KNEW YOU'D COME THRU ILY

5. What is your favorite movie/TV show to gif hmmm, that's tough because there are some shows i loved giffing that i no longer have any desire to gif. but of my current fandoms, i think supergirl is my favorite. sometimes the lighting gets hard to work with, but most of the time it's fun to color and it's inspiring me the most to make more fun gifsets instead of just straightforward gifs of scenes.

7. Who are your top 3 gif makers there are a few gifmakers that aren't active anymore that i still really love, but i'll stick to people active bc i'd rather shoutout people who are here. in no order, i'd say @richardgrimes - i really admire the way she plays around with color and her gifs always bring me the fun, saturated colors i crave. i had a fangirl moment when @saw-x followed me back because i think her gifs are SO creative and fun and the quality is always so clear. and i also really enjoy @morgana-pendragon's sets- she has so many interesting and creative ideas and i love seeing what she come up with. but also there are SO many talented gifmakers on tumblr choosing three was HARD.

9. What/who inspired you to start making gifs i'm gonna be real, i've been making gifs for over a decade now so i don't really remember. i honestly think i was just seeing them all over tumblr and wanted to learn to do it myself. i remember the first gif i ever made was this tiny litle gif of reese witherspoon doing something funny for an interview, and i was so pleased with myself that i had figured it out. and then i just kept going because i loved it so much. i may take years off at a time sometimes, but i always come back to gifmaking eventually. i love it. coloring, specifically.

gifmaker asks!

#katie answers #i love talking about this #i used to have a best friend who also made gifs #and we would talk about it constantly #but we don't really talk anymore #so i have no one to geek out with #anyway thank youu for the ask! #ask: obliviouskara

[tbcanary]

Hiii, I love ur edits so so much!! Was just wondering, how did you edit the last gif for the lucius fox edit? The way the glasses reflected was so cool to me

hello! this is a very good question, and i'm happy to answer it for you. but i feel like I should say to start that this is a pretty convoluted thing, the way i do it. i am almost positive someone else out there does it in a simpler and more straightforward way than i do. that being said, I can show you my process!

the main tools for this particular trick are layer masks and the animation timeline tool. i’ll also be using the movement/selection tools, but those are pretty straightforward I think? we’ll see, i guess!

i’m going to use this catwoman panel as an example.

let's start out by cropping it in and removing all the text bubbles/extra things, just to get a blank slate. i have a tutorial on how I edit panels here, and how I size them here, if that’s something you need. It’s not really necessary for this trick, but I like a clean visual.

i end up with something like this:

now you’ll want to make a new blank layer on top of this one. this will be the one you work on. this part comes down to kind of personal preference/artistic decision making, but you want to fill this blank layer with the sliding effect you want to have. this would be the reflection in lucius’ glasses, or the arrows in this ga/gl gifset.

(it looks very silly, I know. trust the process on this one.)

then, on the layer where I’ve just drawn the white lines, I am going to create a layer mask. select “layer” in the toolbar, find “layer mask,” and select “reveal all.” this won’t change anything about the visual at this point, but it’s necessary for creating this effect.

two things to do right away: unlink the lines from the mask by clicking the little “chain” between the two, and select the layer mask itself to work on.

wrong:

right:

(ignore groups one and two, by the way. those are just old versions of the panel/lines in case i screw up and need to go back to a previous one for some reason. you don’t have to do that; i’m allergic to the delete button.)

use the selection tool to pick the area where you want the affect to appear. for me, that’s all the yellow facets of the diamond, so i’ve outlined it like so:

on the layer mask, fill those sections with black. then hit either ctrl+i or command+i to invert the layer mask, so the white portions become black and the black portions become white. in my case, this makes the white lines… disappear! magic.

basically, what the layer mask is doing is choosing when the pixels on a layer show up. by coloring something in, you’re saying, ‘I don’t want the white lines to show up when they live in this space.’ so because you’ve inverted it, you’ve turned everything outside of the area you want to animate into a no-show zone, and only the area you want to work on is left.

this is probably not a very good explanation. sorry about that. mess around with it on your own and I guarantee it’ll make sense.

we are now done creating the layer mask! click on the layer itself to make sure you’re working on that for this next bit, like so:

this next part is like. actually really hard to explain. but i’ll try my best.

i’ve done a tutorial on how I animate gifs before. some of that might help here, but it does function a little differently. first, you’ll want to go to the timeline at the bottom of your screen.

create a new frame in the timeline with a 0-second delay. then go back up to the image itself, and select the lighting effect you made (my white lines, in this case). move it just a little bit. i’m opting to go just until I can see the first line or two on the diamond.

it won’t look like much. here’s the difference:

you can see (I hope) the tiny bit of “shine” on the upper left corner, where the mask is white and the pixels are visible.

now i’m going to make another new frame in the timeline, and nudge those lines a little more. let’s say six pixels to the right, and two pixels down. now it looks like this:

you will notice the change is almost imperceptible. that’s fine. the resulting animation will be smoother if you do smaller movements, as opposed to bigger ones.

basically… just repeat that. new frame, nudge a little. new frame, nudge a little. over and over, until the lighting effect has moved fully off the area you’re animating on the other side. These edits can get a little long/the number of frames can get huge, so if you catch that happening, wait until you get to the end and then select either all the even or all the odd frames and delete them.

this will double the speed of your animation, but given the very small increments in which we are moving things, it still won’t look too choppy. you could certainly start with bigger movements to cut this off at the pass, but it’s a LOT easier to cut these frames out than to add new ones in if it ends up looking too rough, so I opt for more frames and then remove them later.

once you’ve moved the lighting effect all the way across the image and over the other side, make sure you play it through at least once or twice to get a feel for it. this is what I have:

this is way, way too fast to me. that’s okay! we can mess around with the timeline settings to increase the delay to pretty much anything. I’m going to set it to 0.2 seconds per frame, with a longer setting for the first and last frame to give people a breather between the start and end of the effect. now my timeline looks like this:

and my gif looks like this!

that works better, i think. the more I’ve made gifs, the more I’ve allowed for pauses and slower animations; when I look back at some of the first ones I did, they feel way too fast. but it’s all up to personal preference, really, so mess around with the settings all you want until you get the vibe that you want.

you can also mess around with opacity. if you want something to fade into the background as it moves, use a white-to-black gradient instead of just stark black or white spaces. if you want the shine to be less prominent (not at all necessary here with such a small effect), change the opacity of the entire layer until it's subtle enough for you.

basically, the world is your oyster, and you can mess around with this as much as you want. this is my method; it does not have to be yours.

I hope this helps! happy making <3

#tbanimation #how to #ask.tb #anonymous #sorry for the delay answering this one #i had to sit and think about the best way to walk through it lol and i am still not. entirely sure i got there? #i tried though!!

[whump-side]

Whump Challenge

I got tagged by @whump-captain to participate in the challenge. If you see this and want to participate, feel free! Don't by shy~ 1. Favorite whump trope(s)? Anything that'll make a whumpee bleed from the side. Shot, stabbed, you name it !

2. Least favorite whump trope(s)? I'm really not into whump with a whumper or pet whump. 

3. Top 3 whump scenes and why? No.6 episode 11. Oh man, this whole episode goes so hard, if you know, you know Detective Conan Chapter 251-254. I remember obsessively rereading these chapters as a 8yo kid No third place because there are 100 scenes fighting for the 3rd place in my head so I'll leave this empty

4. Top 3 characters to whump and why? Lance from Voltron. I love goofballs getting whumped. The switch between their goofy personalities to just pain, yes. Kaeya from Genshin. If anyone has good whump fanfics, please send them this way. This man is a walking whumpee Can't think of a 3rd character so I'll say my OC Birb 

5. Favorite fandom for whump (show, series, etc)? Anime/manga, animated show (Voltron, Avatar, in these kind of styles where adults look like adults) or Webtoons 

6. Do you prefer written or watchable whump? Watchable but I also enjoy written 

7. Do you also like hurt/comfort? Hell yes ! 

8. What do you think the difference between hurt/comfort and whump is? Hurt/comfort : gentle pat pat to soothe the pain Whump : stab stab to do the pain 

9. How would you explain whump to someone who’s not familiar with it? Angst but add pain, blood and injuries to it. 

10. Is there any old whump you particularly enjoy? (say, pre 2000?) It's gonna be 2000 exactly : Mulan. The moment when she realised she got hurt by Shan Yu. 

11. Why do you think you like whump? Good question it's always been there since I was really young. 

12. When did you realize you liked whump? Never, as mentioned before, it kinda was there all the time. 

13. Favorite posts with whump (gifsets, picspams, etc) ✨Art✨ 

14. Are you “out” to people in real life? My bff know that I love "angst" especially when it's bloody. I think I told them once that I found the whump community, but I'm sure I didn't say the word whump specifically 

15. How did you find the whump community? I was probably looking at "injured" or similar tags until I think I found an anime whump gifset and connected the dots when I saw the tag "whump" 

16. Any unusual mediums you like for whump (plays, music, vlogs, etc)? Stock photos. With enough imaginations, lots of things can be whumpy. It's like using a filter but with your brain. 

17. Any meta about whump you’ve been dying to share? None that I think of at the moment. 

18. Whump fic(s) you’d love to see? I'd love to read some Thoma whump from Genshin Impact. Haven't check now if there's something new with him 

19. Whump you’re looking forward to? (Maybe something teased or something you haven’t seen yet?) I am well fed with whump at the moment 👌 

20. Top 3 favorite whump fics? Oh god. I never save fics and then regret it when I want to read them again. The Purity of Sin by IcyPanther. I red it in one sitting before going to bed and then I realized it's 4am when I was finished There was a fanfic with Lance getting pneumonia while being stranded with Shiro and I can't find it ;-; A fic with my fem!Hawkle and Fenris my bff wrote me a few years ago 👌

21. Tropes you think are overdone? Whumper/Whumpee and captive whump. Let whumpees be hurt by nature in the wild far from any humans for a change. 

22. Tropes you think we could use more of? Environmental whump or whump without a whumper. 

23. Favorite sites/archives for consuming whump? Tumblr, AO3, Pinterest, Youtube 

24. Have your whump preferences changed recently? If so, why? Recently nothing has changed, but I'm always down to explore new tropes. Like I did with a tiny whumpee some times ago

#whumpchallenge #whump challenge #whump game #sorry for the long post I can't make the read more thingie work for some reasons

[thestalwartheart]

i know you're a bond writer, but have you ever thought about expanding into the rest of the ben whishaw cinematic universe? namely the this is going to hurt fandom. there are less than 30 fics on ao3 and half of them are russian or chinese, and half of what's left is either some weird shruti/adam stuff (no that's not a typo) or a random crossover. never known a fandom as overlooked and unloved in my life! if this was 2012 there'd be 8467847684 fics. like, a canon gay main character with multiple possible love interests??? we'd be drowning in coffee shop au's and kink meme entries and all sorts. instead we have nothing, it's really bizarre.

(yes this is a shameless attempt to poach you, no i won't be mad if you tell me to take a hike sjfhfhs)

hsjksjsj attempting to poach me for another fandom might be one of the biggest compliments I've ever had. I'm not gonna tell you to take a hike.

(Would that someone would ask me to write for Paddington.)

ANYWAY. The short answer is no, I haven't really thought about expanding further into the BWCU (Ben Whishaw Cinematic Universe). Mostly that's because his films and TV shows are so good on their own that my brain doesn't feel the need to explore alternatives to the narrative. Though this ask has reminded me to rewatch The Hour, because if there's another bit of Ben media I could see myself writing for, it's that.

In regards to TIGTH specifically, I don't think it helps that I read the book first, so it's always lived in that memoir/nonfiction section of my head where I don't really tread fic wise.

I will say, however, that there is one kiss in it that I think about every time I write a Q kissing scene. It's the second one in this gifset, and it's possibly one of my favourite screen kisses of all time for how hot and natural it is. We've spoken on this blog before about Ben Whishaw being The Kisser Of All Time (cited by Hugh Grant and Mark Gatiss). In TIGTH it is incredibly obvious how true that is.

So idk if it's comforting in any way, but even when i"m writing Bond fic, there's a tiny morsel of TIGTH at the back of my mind 😉

#ask box #i have thoughts on why media (esp british/us media) starring canonically gay characters is less popular fandom-wise than queerbaity media #or media that features “straight” characters #in quotes because of kirk and spock and sherlock and watson okay? no screenwriter on earth can tell me those relationships are het #but i don't feel like getting into trouble today #so sorry tigth fandom you deserve so much better than 30 fics #deleting any mention shruti/adam from my brain now thankyou bye

[seblaineworld]

Hey, Seblainers! Hellooooo, everyone else!

It's almost here! Please join us to celebrate our first event - Seblainiversary 2022, from Friday November 4th until Sunday November 6th.

It will be 11 years on November 8th 2022 since our beautiful boys met for the very first time (who can ever forget the moment their eyes meet across the crowded room, and their instant attraction?), so to this end, we have two themes for you all to write/create around.

Eleven

Do whatever you like with this, just as long as 11 is clearly incorporated in some way. Maybe they met at 11 years old in an AU setting, perhaps they are reunited after 11 years of no contact, or could it be their 11th Wedding Anniversary? It's up to you, and we can't wait to see what you all come up with.

Steel

Steel is the traditional gift given for an 11th Anniversary, and when you reflect on some of the characteristics of steel, you'll realise what a perfect theme it is for Seblaine! Steel, is known for its durability, strength and how it is almost virtually resistant to damage, no matter what it goes through!

So we want your creations to clearly show steel as an important factor - could it refer to a plane? Something one has given to the other at some point during their friendship/relationship? Maybe it's referring to the colour, or the metal itself? It's entirely up to you! Get creative, and let your imaginations run wild!

The Rules

When?

The event runs from midnight (your own timezone) on Friday November 4th until 23:59 (of your own timezone) on Sunday November 6th 2022.

Who can take part?

Anyone and everyone who shares our love of Seblaine!

What can we submit?

Anything, as long as it is Seblaine-related! Fics, Graphics, Gifs, Gifsets, Videos, Manips, Playlists, Lyrics - anything you like as long as it fits the themes! We're looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.

Please remember to use #seblaineworld and #seblainiversary2022 within the first five tags, and also put @seblaineworld in your posts, since we all know just how flaky Tumblr can be about tags!

Be sensible and considerate. We all know that not everyone shares our love of Seblaine, and even within our own tiny (but always fierce!) Seblainer Fandom, there are those who don't enjoy mature content, so please ensure you tag everything you submit, appropriately.

Can I post on any day during the event?

Yes! You can post on any day as the two themes run concurrently. If you want to combine both themes into one piece of work, that's fine too!

Do I need to submit something for each day?

Absolutely not. If you want to contribute something for every day, then of course you can, but it's not a requirement at all. We know everyone has busy lives, so just do what you can, when you can.

Can I post a WIP or work that fits the themes even if I started it before the Seblainiversary 2022 announcement?

Absolutely! Both of us have done this before and feel it's a great way to refresh creativity, so feel free to post anything you've already started, providing it fits one or both themes!

When do we start posting?

As soon as it becomes Friday 4th November in your own timezone, post your work to your Tumblr blog, and as mentioned above, please tag it #seblaineworld and #seblainiversary2022 and make sure those two are in your first five tags. Please also put @seblaineworld somewhere in your post.

If you're going to be posting your work to another site like AO3 or ff.net, post a properly tagged link on your Tumblr.

A Seblainiversary 2022 collection will be added to AO3. More details nearer the time.

Can I post late?

Yes! We know how time can occasionally run away from us all, so everything posted will be reblogged until Friday November 11th.

You haven't reblogged my work yet!

No problem! Again, because Tumblr can be (very!) erratic, just send us an Ask or message if we haven't reblogged your work within 24 hours of you posting it, and one of us will get onto it right away.

So, that's it! We're excited to see all your work, and hope you'll join us for our first event as the new home of Seblaine events. Just drop us an Ask or message if you have a question that's not been covered here, and we'll see you all on November 4th!

Ail & Lisa

#seblainiversary 2022 #seblaineworld #seblaine #sebastian x blaine #we're so excited! #please share and reblog! #here we goooooo! #seblainer events #signal boost

[dollopheadsandclotpoles]

I really love being multi fandom honestly. Every fandom I’ve gotten into in a big way has such good memories attached to it? The Merlin fandom is ofc my home base, the longest lasting and my true love, but the TRC fandom was my absolutely favourite fandom to read and write fic for and had some of THE funniest text posts I’ve read in my life, the tiny TinCan community was the most active one, every day there was a new interesting take and everyone knew everyone - I used to get like 5 asks a day and knew everyone’s gifsets from sight. Game of Thrones was like this massive worldwide phenomenon and you’d see people on the outside talking about one thing and come on here to find the most unhinged small thing in the show making waves… I just really adore the fact that tumblr allows me to be a part of all these different fandoms each with their own personality and quirks 🩵

#about me #I’m in a mushy mood ig

[happysmilebtr]

COLOURING BEFORE & AFTER TAG:

tagged by the lovely, kick butt and awesome sauce content maker @digitalgirls​ (thank you very much for the tag!) and another lovely mutual but for the life of me my peanut brain forgot who it was so thank you also to you too if you see this!

tagging (only if you want too!): @jinniebit​ @snug-gyu @soonhoonsol @woozification @seokmins @injunnies @chogiwapadada @jeonwonwoo

welp here you go guys! my poopy gif coloring lol. i haven’t giffed much as i just started 2ish years ago now(?) and i am now working a full time job so alas, i don’t have much to really show improvement but i do feel proud with some of my colorings and here are my top 5 (plus bonus two in the read more section hehe) i guess my coloring is more so with making things brighter if that makes sense? keeping things natural but bumping up the vibrance as you can see in certain gifs like the lights one for example. i do feel content with my giffing, granted the quality could be better but that is due to me using ezgif as a converter for making gifs on photopea (i know i can use vs but vs SCARES me like everyone that uses it? you guys are officially badass like gandalf in my books! i bow down to you all lol)

if anyone wants to hear more in depth thoughts of my coloring for each gif plus see the bonus ones that are too tiny to show in a normal gifset, readbelow but if not thank you for checking this out!

gif one: starting off with my proudest one of the bunch, this gif is from my baekhyun countdown series which you can view right here oh my when i say i am proud of this, i am SO proud of this. first of, this short video is pale, REALLY pale. more pale than casper the ghost lkdsalkjda so i struggled with making sure to not overdo the coloring where baekhyun is weirdly colored but making sure it’s no longer so bright ya know? with what i work with, i think i did a good job? it was during this series i started using a gradient map as well for my coloring and ya’ll....use gradient maps lol. i would have used them earlier but i had no clue how to well, use them as silly as that sounds! i found a tutorial on how someone used them and since then i use that. usually use brown to grey to make things neutral but also make sure skinetone is as natural as possible but of course that isn’t always the case, this is something i struggle with as you can probably tell so i am trying my best! overall, a very pretty gif coloring i think! simple but pretty!

gif two: ah yes....my og fav hehe. this was during the 17 days of 17 event that happened last year almost now and this was for of course, scoups day and i am proud of it still! granted, i would do things a tiny bit more differently even though this is just what, a 6ish months difference in giffing from the first gif? regardless, this one is my favorite and all because of one silly thing...the color changed background. as you can tell in the circle, the original was purple with the lightning background and i actually did save my coloring originally with this background still! however, i was playing around with coloring and by accident, just out of curiosity, i changed the color of the background and when i say i was super shocked...i was lol. in a good way of course! don’t ask me why but at the time, i just loved this small change. i thought it was so cool and it made me so excited so i kept it. could i have kept the purple? for sure, it bothered me to this day if i made the right call because a mutual of mine said the purple looked better against scoups skintone which i agree so it eats me to this day lol. (no ill feelings to my mutual! i liked having the feedback because sometimes that initial excitment sometimes isn’t the right call and i like being told the truth!)

gif three: another of my baekhyun gif series which again.....WHY DOES SM OR WHOEVER EDITS THESE VIDEOS, MAKE THINGS SO PALE!?!??! like bro....this one baekhyun IS truly casper the ghost dsaldasl. i managed to save him in this gif set but when i kept doing double takes myself when giffing, i always went “wait, is THIS how it originally looks!?” like i was so surprised with the coloring difference

gif four: featuring my queen, lights. the only non kpop gif lol. she is the reason i got into gif making actually! my first ever gifset is for her mv “prodigal daughter” (which yes you should all take a listen too just saying) so you can thank her for my gif making! this was from her i think 3rd mv, “in my head” which you can check out the gifset here! this is a perfect example of my coloring i think, the making things vibrant but keeping it somewhat natural and for me giffing this without gradient map i feel dang proud lol. it was either this gif or another one of lights but i went with this one instead to showcase i guess my usual coloring ya know?

gif five: and lastly a baekhyun gif once again. this one is originally meant to be with a pink coloring overlay and font as seen in the original gifset but i kept the original coloring because i liked how it turned out overall! i decided to switch things up with my editing by using unsharp mask and instead of using 30% i did 135% and kinda liked the result of it! i do admit, if you are someone like me and are stuck using ezgif, make SURE the file is super hq! while this does look nice, imo it looks better with good video quality when making the gifs as i did this setting for the last 4 gifsets of the baekhyun countdown and for ones like this one, it looks nice but some weren’t very high and you can tell it looks a bit meh. this is i think my current giffing editing and i feel proud of it! this one is very natural in coloring but everything is more “pop” if that makes sense, things are more defined than smooth, the neutral colors look lively, etc. 

BONUS:

you guys thought i would leave out these ones? oh no lol. so these two gfs are from my txt “good boy gone bad” mv and seventeen “hot” mv gifsets i made! i remember seeing this gifset style being HUGE back in late 2017ish up until 2019 if memory is correct by an old school content maker. i saw they had a tutorial on how they did their sets back then so i followed it and made my own for these mv’s and man i loved doing them. not only was the setting up the scenes to use was fun but finding the right font that fit the mv vibe was fun and of course, the coloring. for txt’s, there was alot of greens as you can see here and while i like me green, i wasn’t happy with just how dark and swampy it looked lol. i get it was the aesthetic in general but i wantted it to pop alot and thus the blue/purple tones in the overall gifset which i think looks really beautiful! then for hot, i didn’t plan on the pink coloring lol. i originally wanted to do the usuals, brighten and and make the colors pop out but by moving around to color the orange colors, it turned more pink so i went with it (you can see the difference towards the end of gif of how different the pink and orange are!) still my proudest coloring on both and still am proud for the “hot” as that was originally my top set with notes until somehow baekhyun and his doggo took over xD

#fun tag thingy #digitalgirls #jeonwonwoo #seokmins #injunnies #chogiwapadada #snug-gyu #soonhoonsol #woozification #jinniebit #if anyone of ya'll read that entire essay under the readmore...i am kissing your forehead