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ode2rin · 8 months

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it has become an awful pattern of habit how much itoshi sae always shows up at your doorstep only when he wants to.

“don’t go out with oliver.”

and here he was again, like a recurring relapse that happens every single time you thought you’re doing better. the kind that hits when you think you're finally making progress, that momentary flicker of doing better before it all crumbles.

and you were. you’re doing good, doing better, but god, does it hurt like hell when he pulls stunts like this.

it was a relentless tug-of-war, a game he played so unfairly, leaving you with no rules, no defenses. you were damn sick of it.

“really?” the word escaped as a scoff, a blend of disbelief and irritation coating your voice. “you're showing up to my place at this hour just to say that?”

a drawn-out exhale left sae's lips at your reaction, the scent of alcohol accompanying it—a scent foreign to the sae you'd known. was he drinking? itoshi sae doesn’t drink – or at least the sae you knew would never let a single drop of alcohol taint his flesh.

“just don’t. he’ll hurt you.”

a bitter laugh escaped you, “you're one to talk about hurting people, aren't you?”

if you didn't know better, you'd mistake the look he shot you for something resembling an apology mixed with regret. but no, you knew that those eyes can never hold such, not for you, not for anyone.

“news flash, itoshi. you don’t have the right to decide who i can or cannot go out with.”

“don’t i?”

his challenge lingered in the air, a question not constrained by words but driven by conflicting wills, a daring meeting of gazes that had been evaded until now.

you're so fucking unfair, itoshi sae.

“leave,” you spat, your grip on the doorknob tightened, fingers almost digging into the cool metal.

“don’t i, y/n? do i not have a right to you?”

“please, sae. just go,” you murmured, eyes squeezed shut, a trace of tears threatening to break free.

“— because you have all damn rights to me that it fucking terrifies me.”

and there it was.

the vulnerability he so fiercely and stubbornly concealed, laid bare for you to witness. it slipped out like an admission, raw and unguarded.

sae's insides churned as your gaze bore into him, the intensity of it feeling like a searing heat that left him exposed, his thoughts laid bare. it was as if you were looking at him as if he had grown a second head, an incredulity mirrored in his own disbelief at what he had just blurted.

but it’s the truth, a truth etched not in alcohol-induced haze but in the sobering clarity that you, ever loving you, terrified him.

“you– you terrify me," his words stumbled out, like he was admitting a secret he never meant to reveal. “you’re the first thought that comes to my mind, and the last one before i sleep. i feel you everywhere, your presence, your absence — it terrifies me, y/n.”

he ran a hand through his hair, a gesture of frustration that echoed the inner chaos he couldn't quite contain. the sting of alcohol just added to the jumble of thoughts, like mixing a cocktail of emotions he wasn't prepared to deal with.

sae had never been great with handling drinks, and here he was, wearing his heart on his sleeve, a little more vulnerable than he’d intended.

after all, a body so foreign to alcohol can only handle so much.

and it's ironic how that also applies to sae's acceptance of your love – like a liquor he's not used to, but still very much would like a taste.

he knew he had absolutely no right to show up here; he had no right to stop you from going out with another man; he had no right to claim a part of you, not after he shattered your heart because he was afraid of his own.

he knew that, but itoshi sae is selfish. he wanted you, terrifyingly so. he hoped — prayed, even—no one will ever have you the same way he does.

and he meant that in the most selfish way possible. because, time and time again, itoshi sae was selfish, even more so when it came to loving you.

“it terrifies me,” he carried on, a touch firmer this time, his gaze unyielding as it held yours, “how much you consume me, and it frightens me even more how much i would let you.”

“then just let me, you stupid asshole.”

the words burst out of you, a declaration that felt like a leap of faith. your arms instinctively reached out, embracing him as if to underscore your determination. you had caught his confession like a lifeline, and now it was your turn to throw your heart into the mix.

“and you have all the damn rights to me too,” you murmured against his lips.

the truth is, he doesn't deserve you, not in the slightest. but god, you want him to— so bad. and after hearing what he said, you knew he wanted the same thing too.

you wrap your arms tighter around him, and it's like fitting together two missing pieces. you missed this, missed him. no amount of trying will ever relieve the longing. because truth be told, hearts aren't great at playing hide and seek; that much can be seen from the way you’re both holding on to each other.

“i'll love you slowly, until it's not scary, until you get used to it,” you whispered, forehead pressed against his.

in the quiet space between your whispered words, sae felt the world shift beneath his feet.

love with you wasn't meant to be frightening. love with you wasn't meant to be all-consuming.

love with you, he realized, only needed to be exactly like this— your fingers against his nape, a smile curving your lips, and the assurance in your gaze that promised better times ahead.

“i’ll get used to it.” maybe the words came off wobbly, but he couldn’t care any less now; it was a promise.

“you better.” you let out a chuckle, genuine this time, and it took just one chuckle for sae to realize that everything will be just fine.

[extra]:

“sae?”

you pull his attention, sensing his wakefulness from the lingering kisses he peppers on your skin. the same man who laid bare his heart to you was sprawled within your sheets, his breathing gentle against your neck.

though his lips stay sealed, the comforting squeeze of your hand relays that he was listening.

“where did you hear that i’m going out with oliver?”

a brief pause, followed by a scoff. way to ruin a moment, sae’s inner voice grumbles at the timing of your question. why bring up another guy's name now, especially when he's shirtless and right above you? the nerve.

“doesn’t matter.” he dismisses your question.

yet, there's something oddly satisfying about riling up the usually composed sae, it’s one of your life’s greatest pleasures. and so, you press on, unable to resist the urge to tease.

“come on, now. i want to know what made my cold and grumpy sae to show up at my door at 2 am, professing that i terrify him,” you pushed, meeting his irritated glare with an arched brow. “— and don’t give me that look. those were your words, not mine!”

tch. he clicks his tongue, fully aware you won't let him live down his confession. “got it from shidou. he told me right before asking me to drink with him.”

as those words escape sae’s lips, you burst into laughter, leaving him to wonder if he broke you with last night's late-night affection.

“what’s so funny?” he raises an eyebrow at your sudden outburst.

“shidou tricked you into drinking with him, love. i turned down oliver without a second thought. we didn't even get close to going on a date,” you playfully reveal, your grin growing. “i kind of mentioned that to shidou. we share gossip occasionally, you know.”

sae froze at what you said, and he didn’t need no damn mirror to see that he was turning red from the embarrassment and realization that he had been lured to drink.

“i’ll kill him.”

“and i’ll thank him.” may shidou get all the dopamine he so cunningly desires.

note. i also don't know what this is so don't look at me now :P i'm throwing tomatoes at myself

#☁️ my ode to you #itoshi sae x reader #itoshi sae #itoshi sae x y/n #blue lock x reader #blue lock imagines #itoshi sae fluff #bllk x reader #bllk imagines #sae itoshi x reader #sae itoshi #itoshi sae angst #blue lock angst

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velvetures · 9 months

Note

Hi!!! I saw your post about taking some requests so I thought that I'll give it a shot. If it's possible, could you maybe do a Captain Price one? I haven't seen a story about him yet on your page, so I hope that this request can finally add one to your masterlist.

So here it goes: A Price x virgin!reader one. I feel like he's the type of guy to be really gentle and slow when he realizes that the reader is inexperienced, mostly due to his calm and caring nature. But once they start to get comfy, he'll get kind of rough in some way? And aftercare, I just know that this man would be an expert at it. Would help in washing them up in a tub or even cooking them a meal after. I could see that he's also a sucker for cuddles and just being close to them in general.

So yeah, I really hope that you'll consider this request and possibly write something out of it. If not, that's totally okay!!

Side note: I just wanted to say that I love your stories and that it brings me comfort, too:))

I Knew, Sweetheart

A/N: I'm so sorry this is so fucking looonngg!! I just couldn't get it right and I ended up going for "better is more" in the hopes that it'll hide the god-awful writing. :( Anyways, please don't burn me at the stake. It's my first Price fic, and I've still not got his voice or character dialed in. Summary: Reader is Price's gf, and while they've been together for a little while... sex hasn't come up. Nor the fact that the reader is a virgin!. Reader goes about bringing it up a little unconventionally, and things progress. T/W: virgin!reader, fem-reader, NS/FW 18+ ONLY, p-in-v sex, fingering, unprotected sex (don't do that IRL), established relationship, a little bit of an age-difference?, cursing?, first-time anxiety?, aftercare, probably missed something else. proofreading is for people w/ friends of which I have none.

John Price set himself apart from most of the men that he often worked alongside when it came to matters of his personal life and the ways in which he operated. A lot of people would often make jokes, saying it was nothing more than his being an “old man” who couldn’t adjust to the newer ways of life. But fuck, he wasn’t that old when it came right down to it, and yes he liked going along with the traditional ways specifically when it came to relationships, at least when he had the chance to. He’d been a lot younger at one point, not seeing how detrimental his actions could’ve been affecting the women he associated with or spent a few hours in bed with just to leave without another word sent their way.

Captain Price knew he’d made many mistakes when the heart was involved. He threw away a lot of advice he’d been given growing up -some good and some bad- all because he thought he knew better or had enough intelligence to figure it out as he went. Much of that changed when he started realizing that he wasn’t fulfilled in the slightest. For a few years, he was bitter over the emptiness. Not understanding where it came from or how the fuck he could get rid of it. Unraveling layer after layer like a frayed pair of jeans, John kept questioning how he’d come so far just to be that alone. Praying his mistakes hadn’t destroyed his chances of finding a little sliver of humanity outside of his work to motivate him. Keep him sane in the most bitter of hours, and soft when everything and everyone else around him kept adding brick after brick into never-ending, emotionless walls.

Then you showed up out of nowhere, sitting on a barstool in one of the pubs he frequented when he had some time away from his work. Close to home and nowhere near busy enough to call a bar or club; John immediately thought you looked like you’d taken a wrong turn and wound up in an old man’s hangout. It took him a few hours of watching out of the corner of his eye to finally weigh the options of being shot down, or possibly making something out of a whole lot of nothing. His offering to buy you a drink led to taking a few puffs off of his cigar outside. From there he learned just about everything about you within the first few weeks of seeing you or calling here and there.

You liked to talk, a lot. Something John was thankful for since he developed a bad habit of just staring at your pretty face instead of listening like he knew too. Fuck it made him feel ten years younger. And that was something else that made your relationship feel unusual to the Captain. More than six years in age difference didn’t sound all that significant on paper. Yet it was more interesting than either of you thought it would be initially. Aside from just simple pop culture references and enjoyment of music and other low-stakes things, your lives were on different paces. John was stable… at least as stable as his work allowed for. While you’d finally got the job you’d been dreaming of, and hadn’t been working for a full year when you met him. Everything all together challenged John, and you as well, with figuring out what you wanted from each other. How you planned -or wanted to- go about making that happen. And if being serious was something that you shared an interest in.

A few months of going on dates and John walking you home was traded for him sharing half the dresser drawers in his bedroom with you. He was gone nearly all of the time, which put a damper on things but he liked having peace of mind that you were safe and in his home. Besides, it was a short drive from his house to your work and you could stop paying half your paychecks on rent and start saving it up for anything you really wanted. At least… anything John hadn’t already bought or given you. Well… there was one thing John hadn’t given you. And it began gnawing at your mind harder and harder every time he went away for a mission and came home without the slightest inclination to do more than give you a kiss.

John Price still hadn’t asked or hinted at wanting to have sex with you.

At first, you thought it was refreshing. Seeing a man old enough and patient to understand that sex wasn’t just given but earned. Yet every time you thought there would be a moment after a date or a ‘welcome home reunion’ where he’d finally bring up the topic, your expectations fell short. Plenty of excuses floated around your brain, including the more rational ones: he was just very respectful. While others were much more self-conscious and saddening: he was getting it somewhere else, or he could see that you weren’t experienced. The age-old struggle of being a virgin past the age of eighteen.

Too old for half the population, and far too young and inexperienced for the others. Sheltered didn’t describe you. You had toys and knew how to give head as well as having been on the receiving end. But going “all the way” eluded you by some miracle or curse. Looking at John in comparison to yourself was just as attractive as it was intimidating. You knew better than to think he didn’t know his way around the bedroom. He was just too smooth. Far beyond any man, you attempted a relationship previously. You wanted to think he respected you, but at the same time, waiting for much longer for him to make a move just felt like another eternity you lacked the patience and confidence to endure. So after a long night of overthinking and wondering how you could even go about bringing it up, you made a decision that when he got back home from his latest mission, you’d be the one to bring it up.

God your hands were sweating. He was supposed to have been home two hours ago and there was still no sign of his truck in the driveway or a single message from him on the phone you had gripped between your damp palms. Everything had been just fine all day, until the sun began to set over the hillside in the backyard, leaving you less than six hours away from John coming through the door. Worried didn’t even begin to explain how your stomach was tied in knots with a low burning fire in your throat. John had been nothing short of perfect -save for being gone so often- and you knew there wasn’t a single reason for you to be so overwhelmed at the mere thought of being an adult and asking him to have sex with you. Of course… You made up your mind to omit that you’d never done it before and just hoped the Captain would be too preoccupied with something else to notice.

Noticing the details quickly got turned around on you when the front door creaked open on its hinges and you hadn’t the slightest clue that John was standing halfway through the threshold with bags slung over his back and a small look of curiosity on his face. His pretty little thing, sitting on the couch with her arms wrapped around her bent knees and a deep stare somewhere far away from the both of them. He had to admit it wasn’t the first time he had caught you sitting with your eyes “comfortable” as you liked to call it; however, it was the first time he’d seen you wearing something quite that lacy for no damn good reason before.

Some kind of black, strappy, and frilly little number. It hardly left anything to the imagination, and John had to force himself not to go into deep thought about how you’d even got into the thing without instructions. It made your figure that much more eye-catching, and after staring at nothing but rain and mud for two weeks you were a sight for sore eyes. Even a Captain had to admit his biggest weaknesses to overcome himself and improve, but he wasn’t sure in that second if he could ever overcome -much less forget- how divine you looked. Honestly, he didn’t even know you owned it to begin with. But by the way, you kept spinning your phone in your hand, he had the vague gut feeling that you had something on your mind. A little more than dinner or fussing over the possible injuries he could’ve sustained while gone.

“Waiting on someone?” He asked lowly, trying his best not to startle you too much. Right away your eyes locked on his and widened. Almost like a little rabbit cornered by a fox and no hole to scurry into. He watched a flash of sudden panic overtake you and how quickly you reached for one of the throw blankets at the end of the couch to hide behind. Price chewed his tongue, forcing himself not to smirk at you at the moment. Wanting so badly to tease you a little bit for looking so sexy in that bodysuit, but acting nothing short of the little shy church girl getting kissed on the cheek for the first time.

“J-John,” Your voice sputters on his name a bit, forcing a smile to his face. He couldn’t help it after being away for this long without the chance to hear you even over the phone for a few minutes. “You’re home a little late.”

He nods, guilty. “Delayed flight. Weather kept us from movin’ out on time.”

Careful, he dropped his bags off at the front door without the slightest concern about how long they’d sit there. More important things were swirling around in his head. Trying to decipher if you were planning something and just backed out, or if you just needed a little bit of coaxing to not be so shy. Hostage negotiation wasn’t something he thought would ever come in handy when it came to interacting with you, yet John found himself rounding around the chairs on the other side of the living room from you, and planning each step he made to ensure he didn’t spook you. That lingerie wasn’t for nothing, and he desperately needed to know what you planned on doing with it.

He licked his lips, taking a steadying breath. “What’s under the blanket, sweetheart?”

You swallowed thickly, “N-nothing… I thought - I hoped it’d look nice,” Fumbling pathetically for an excuse, you finally spit one out all under the very soft and lightly amused eyes of one John Price. “It doesn’t fit.” The second it left your lips, you internally cursed yourself.

John’s eyebrows raised, instantly grabbing onto that loose thread and pulling on it. “I’m sure you’re wrong about that…” He came closer, standing just in front of you on the couch with his hands on his hips. “Come on, why don’t you let me have a look? I’ll give you a second opinion.” His words made your heart stutter, and you weakly shook your head in response.

“I should just return it.” You mutter, scooting over to the side of him and attempting to sneak off with your protective blanket.

You’re not even close to getting away from John when he chuckles, one arm curling around your shoulders and the other getting a firm grip on the material you’re hiding under. Naturally, you don’t exactly fight to get away. But a furious blush breaks out over your cheeks and neck, feeling the preverbal trap tightened around your throat. He’s turning around and sitting down on the couch with a nonnegotiable silent order for you to take a seat straddling his lap. That alone is enough to drive you up a wall with anxious feelings. Not that you’d never sat on his lap before -actually it was quite common- but under these circumstances, there was a lot more than just a little bit of heat passing between the both of you. Very slowly, John found the edge of the blanket and slipped a hand under, searching out for your skin and eventually landing on a little bit of the lacy material stretching in a high cut over your hip. You can actually see his eyes darken, tracing along the hemline and mentally picturing what was under his fingers. Touch alone was making you squirm, avoiding eye contact and trying to keep quiet so as not to embarrass yourself even more than you already felt.

“Oh, sweetheart… fits like a fuckin’ glove.” He whispers lowly, hand palming your asscheek and toying with the thin little string that disappeared into the cleft.

“It’d be a shame for you to get all dressed up… go through all this trouble… then not let me see your hard work.” His voice lulled slow and steady, swaying your fears just enough for you to feel your head nod up and down a couple of times before letting the blanket fall off your shoulders and pool on Price’s lap. The front of the bodysuit had been well-hidden up until now, with you sitting so lady-like in his lap. But the thin straps just crossing around your tits and holding them up without a single stitch of material covering them totally, John thought he’d been shot right through the chest. Between the innocent look in your eyes, and that damned outfit making you appear about as sinful as hell, he couldn’t keep from letting out a low growl and squeezing your ass just hard enough to make you gasp.

“This is what you were trying to hide?” His breathlessness couldn’t be masked, nor could the frequent shift in his eyes between your practically bare chest and eyes. John chuckled, hands drifting towards your hips and up to rest on each side of your ribs. Pushing your tits together just a little bit, almost bewitched by the sight of you like that on his lap. “Oh, you’re such a pretty girl…” He muttered, almost to himself.

Shifting in his lap, you tried to keep your growing arousal and nervousness under control. Each touch set you on fire, and with John moving this slow you couldn’t be sure you’d live long enough to see another day. It was too good feeling a man actually appreciated a woman in front of him. Not just finding the small bits and pieces he preferred and overlooking the rest. You knew being nervous was natural, but the more John rubbed and soothed, it was getting harder and harder not to whine or ask him for just a little bit more to satiate you. Right away, John’s eyes darted up to you, and something you couldn’t quite describe flashed through his eyes just long enough for him to lip his lips and sit up a little straighter, pulling you to sit straddling just one of his thighs.

“I think I know what you want, sweetheart.” He smiled so damn affectionately that it made your heart jump. “But just so I know… why don’t you go ahead and tell me, that way I don’t miss anything. I don’t like to disappoint.” Toying with the zipper of his sweater, you suck in a nervous breath to steady your nerves.

“I want you to, have sex with me.” You hardly whisper the second part, still drawing your own attention towards anything minute that could serve as a focal point with your body shaking so badly.

“Hmm…” His thoughtful hum sends shivers up your spine, and the feeling of his hands massaging your hips makes it hard to breathe. “So I was right,” A smile crosses his face. “Well then, how about you go ahead and take care of this.” He growls a little, his fingers slowly tracing over the barely-there strip of fabric covering your core, already soaking wet with your arousal. Your little moan slips out before you can even try to cover your mouth, and John’s fingers slip away like he was purposefully trying to be mean and deny you a taste of relief.

“John, please…” You whimper, hands resting on his shoulders hoping he’ll take mercy on you.

He just shifts down to rest against the couch a little more and bounces his knee a few times, sending jolts of extreme sensation right up your clit into your lower stomach. You didn’t get it at first… what he wanted you to do. But now you did, and John almost grinned when he saw the realization, followed by the shy look you gave him. Encouragement was needed, and he was more than happy to deliver. Slowly rocking your hips back and forth along his pants, purposefully having settled you on the side that his thigh-holster was strapped to, adding two extra ridges that instantly began working to overstimulate you. It was too good, and not enough. Pushing your inhibitions just a little further out of focus and forcing you to really focus on how nothing more than his thigh was getting you to a release quicker than any toy or trick you’d tried on yourself. Impeccable alone, it was his low voice right in your ear that made everything outside of John Price holding you on his lap disappear.

“Doin’ so good, sweetheart…”

“Making me feel bad for not helping sooner… If I would’ve known how needy you were.”

“That’s it, love. Keep going, want you to let go. Right on my lap, then I’ll take care of you.”

His lips suffocated your moans and whimpers, swallowing each little pleasure and claiming it as his own. John hadn’t taken his time like this in years, but damn it was special seeing you -his pretty little thing- so needy and whining his name. So sensitive to the texture of his cargos that he was actually wondering if you could withstand something more… purposeful. God, he hoped you could. He wanted to tase you so bad after feeling just how wet you were. Fuck, even the dark khaki color of his pants was getting darker with each little jerk and grind of your hips. Thighs twitching and clenching around him like you couldn’t get the right angle, and were slowly getting more pathetically and innocently frustrated. He needed you hungry though… wanted to ensure that this was done properly. And if it meant withholding from you just enough to make sure you were desperate, he’d bite back every urge he had to give you everything right away.

John knew right away that you were a virgin. Either by just his ability to read people or by the way that you didn’t particularly use sex appeal to draw him in right when you first met. You weren’t innocent of how you looked though, and always dressed and acted much to the benefit of being seen as the valuable woman Price always believed you to be. Yet it didn’t escape his curiosity as to how you’d been able to slip through the grasps of so many disrespectful and predatory men who would’ve done anything to have taken their chance at you. Fuck, he was thankful beyond belief. He hated thinking that you could’ve needed to experience pain or discomfort at any point… but he never asked you simply out of respect and the knowledge that at some point the topic would come up. Only, it didn’t come to fruition quite like he expected. In fact, he never imagined that you’d had your first orgasm with him riding his thigh while sitting on the couch in his house. He wouldn’t change it for a goddamn thing, though.

In the moment, he’d wanted nothing more than to hear you. After hearing so many little whines and pleas for his help, he knew you’d sound so beautiful. But his own intentions fell to desire when he crashed his lips to yours, taking those cries of pleasure for himself. There would be plenty more to come for him to bask in the sound of. The first one though? He needed it. It was his to taste and keep forever. Alongside the taste of your pleasure, he relished in your shaking legs and the harsh bite of your nails digging into his shoulders hard enough to feel through two shirts. He felt your desperation just as deeply as his own, and while his cock straining against his zipper was not totally lost to his attention, John could easily stave off his own needs to make sure you were satiated just as thoroughly as deserved for coming on his pants like the good little things you always were.

“Good girl… You did so good for me, sweetheart.” His rough voice rumbled against your ear as his kissed you softly.

Petting your hair and rubbing his other hand down your quivering thigh. As much as he wanted to keep you right here and not disturb your come-down, he wanted you in bed. Needed to see you laid out like he pictured when jerking his cock after weeks of pent-up stress needed a release. Fuck he wanted to take you slow in his bed and wake up in the morning with you wrapped around him and the smell of sex on the sheets. Before you could really even catch your breath, John had you spread out on the bed with him staring down at you almost astonished. You were just as affected, seeing the heavy outline of his dick parallel to his zipper and ending just at his belt. His eyes caught your lingering, and he chuckled, biting his tongue with his back teeth before squeezing himself and shrugging like it wasn’t the hottest thing you’d ever seen him do. The little gasp you let out only gave him that much more confidence to keep teasing you as much as he’d been.

Slowly, painfully, stripping off one piece of clothing at a time and letting it drop to the floor. Eyes locked on yours like he was getting off to how you reacted to each little inch of skin that was bared to you. If you didn’t know better, you would’ve thought he enjoyed all of the attention on him. When in reality, he was just mesmerized by how in awe you were of him, looking like a war-torn soldier with his scars and hardened body. You were holding your breath for the moment he pushed his underwear down off his hips, standing downright predatory with his fist tight around the base of his thick and glistening cock. If you ever had a moment of hesitation about doing this with John, they dissolved in that single moment. Because your next movement was to reach your hands out, wiggling your fingers for him to come closer.

“What would you like?” He asks, coming to stand at the foot of the bed just out of your reach.

“You.” You answer a little plainly, making him chuckle.

“Not quite specific enough, sweetheart.” His eyes drop to your body hugged in that black outfit and he bites at his cheek. “But as much as I love you in that, I’d like to see you take it off.” A very easy request. Had it not been for your inability to reach the little snap at the back that kept you tied into all of the lace and straps. So, you very politely raised up and sat on your knees with your back to John and gave him the sweetest look you could manage.

“Give me hand, Captain?”

He nearly ripped the fucking thing off.

The moment he had your seduction tactic of clothing balled up in his fist, he felt the first little surge of his common sense holding him back a little bit. Base instinct screamed for him to sink into you as quickly as possible. But feeling your hands rub over his chest and your shy little kisses to his neck reminded him of circumstance. Pinned against your belly, his cock twitched in response to your teeth grazing accidentally over his collarbone. You were about to whisper an apology when John wrapped a hand around your throat to tilt your head up and suck hard just under your jaw. He liked when you did that… The thought gave you a little bolt of satisfaction. One that progressed into your hands sliding down his stomach until your fingers curled around his thick shaft, earning a warning sound of a moan deep in his chest.

“So fuckin’ soft…” He murmured against your shoulder, kissing it hotly and slowly rocking his hips against your hands. Teasing himself. Edging closer to try and raise a little bit of resistance so he wouldn’t spill his load on the bed long before he was damn well ready. Your silky little hands spreading his arousal over his length only lasted for a few minutes before John was pulling you away with heaving breaths and a flush breaking out over his cheeks.

“Too much?” You ask a little giggly when he lays you back and crawls up to kneel between your spread legs.

His reaction is one of raised eyebrows and a devilish kind of smile that makes you feel like you just made a little too accurate of a joke to be laughing. John gives you a little warning ‘tsk tsk’, shaking his head like he could try and hide the lust and affection swirling in his dark eyes at the sight of you giggling, and all spread out for him like a five-course meal the Queen of England couldn’t afford to buy. A wiser man might’ve believed himself worthy of you, enough that his dirty hands could touch you and try to give you pleasure in the way they assumed to know best. Yet John leaned over you with the knowledge that he was one of the most unworthy men on the planet, and you had so much grace and love inside of you that it didn’t matter. One little touch and you could cleanse him of every blood stain he’d not been able to clean or sinful act of revenge he couldn’t resist committing. Above all else, you’d decided in all your innocence of the world that you trusted him with your body as much as you’d already handed over your heart and mind.

John kissed you. Hard. With everything he had to offer in return for the invaluable

With that, he’s, hauling you up against him. He wants you laying right on top of him so he can sleep soundly with you right against him. He’s very quick to give you more praise and ask again if you’re feeling okay mentally and physically. You mention feeling just a little insecure, despite all of his very purposeful care throughout the whole process, but Price won’t have it.

Right away he’s kissing you softly, hands rubbing over your back and butt affectionately. Letting you know just how special he feels that you trusted him, as well as just how lucky he was to find someone like you in the first place. Holding the back of your head and gently cradling you against his lips; Tongue licking into your mouth and groaning softly when you mirror his movements, even going far enough to nip at his tongue. Using that same little hint of him enjoying your teeth on him. Just like before, you’re met with another warning sound of a growl, and John is pulling back and moving his head between your legs with a careful watch on your reaction.

“Can’t wait any longer, sweetheart.” He kissed your inner thigh sweetly. “Please let me taste your sweet little pussy.”

His words shock your body, and your head falls back with the little bit of erotic pleads overwhelming you. God, it was making you drip onto the sheets feeling him so close yet waiting for your answer. Pathetically, you couldn’t get the word ‘yes’ out of your mouth for a few long minutes. Just enough time for him to lovingly suck bruises onto your inner thighs and mean you scream out his name, squirming under his hands to try and get some real relief.

John takes pity on you, stopping long enough to let you catch your breath. “Come on pretty girl. Just say the word… I’ll make you feel so fuckin’ good.”

“Yes, yes, yes… please. I need more!” Your airy pleas fall like angel’s trumpets on his ears, as his mouth descends hungrily onto your cunt.

Licking through your slick folds and growling your own name back against your core with the sweet and alkaline flavor. Your hips buck up and you cry out, feeling his tongue lash over your clit for the first time and right away he’s got one forearm over your hips to hold them steady with the other hand held tight with his fingers intertwined with yours. His mustache tickles against your skin and you can feel him resting his head against your thigh, almost like he’s getting comfortable for an extended stay with his tongue in your cunt.

Another orgasm is ripped from you without warning less than ten minutes into John’s unyielding assault on your sensitive clit. And it’s this time that John ensures your thighs can’t wrap around his head for the sole purpose of hearing your loud and raw scream of his name. Blissed out, and shaking once again, John smiles against your pussy; Lapping up any remaining release he’d missed mere seconds before and feeling the dull pressure of your heels digging into his back.

“God, you’re so good for me sweetheart,” His praise blows cool air over your folds and you jerk a little, whining when you feel his lips return back down to you. Slowly, teasingly, he began all over again just as he did the first time.

It takes a couple seconds for you to realize he doesn’t plan on stopping. But when you do, crying for him to stop when he begins using his thumb to tease your clit while his tongue fucks slowly in and out of your clenching hole. John almost laughs, darkly and amused with your little cries and moans. Feeding off of your pleasure just to give it right back to you in the direct motivation of making you come on his tongue and fingers this time.

“F-fuck - John! Sh-shit,” Your stuttered voice falls into an unabashed groan when he teases his finger at your entrance, and slowly slides it deep into your fluttering pussy, squeezing around it tightly. Hungry for more, and weeping with each small curl of the digit hitting on your upper wall.

Your eyes roll back, and you attempt to push John’s head back to try and ease the stimulation, just to feel his hand holding you back and in place. It’s maddening, feeling so good that it’s almost bringing tears to your eyes, having already come twice -more than you typically gave yourself- and no sign of him letting you escape.

God, John was pushing you to the boundary of everything you knew about your own body, as well as giving you the first, raw, experience of just how good sex could be. Lifting your head up just to try and get a small glance at him, you catch the sight of his eyes, fiery and intense looking right back up at you with your own come soaking his mustache and the entire lower half of his handsome face. You clench around his digit again, being pushed that much closer to the edge just at the visual alone.

Your third release came as quickly as the first two, this time resulting in the delicious stretch of John’s three fingers pumping in and out of your cunt, literally slurping up your release; Almost dragging it out of you like he couldn’t stand the thought of not swallowing every drop. He whispered your name so gently as he came to rest on his forearms overtop of you, kissing your forehead with his wet lips and feeling his hair stick against your sweaty forehead.

“Sweetheart…” his tone had softened to the smallest whisper you’d ever heard from him. “Are you sure you want this? We can stop here if you’d like.”

Opening your eyes to see his handsome face and the slight of his hair in a total mess, you knew getting away with not mentioning your lack of experience was impossible. Your John… wasn’t nearly as unobservant as you’d wanted him to be. Without more than a tired little smile, you nodded. Raising your head weakly just far enough to kiss him gently, tasting yourself against your lips and feeling the slight quiver of his breath.

“Please, I want this. I want you John.”

Initially, no matter how much he’d taken care to prep you there was still a deep stretch as his thick cock began slowly entering you. Sweetly, he worked you through each little discomfort, giving you kiss after kiss and running his hands through your hair. Distracting from the little sting that had never been present with your toys, and praising you until his hips pressed flush against yours.

“Fuucckkk yes,” Price couldn’t hold back the loud groan as he looked down to see your pretty little cunt taking every last inch of his dick and squeezing so hard he could barely think straight.

“Takin’ my cock so good… Such a pretty girl, my good little thing…” His murmurs and curses slowly devolved the further you progressed.

Your body slowly adjusted to the intrusion and the gentle thrusts John made the moment you began squirming and pleading with him to move through your little hiccups. The unusual feeling of John moving inside of you slowly began to coax moans and praise from your mouth every time the crown of his cock rubbed deep against a swollen, textured, spot inside of you that built up pressure so quickly that you needed to wrap your legs around his hips to keep them from shaking uncontrollably. Each stroke got harder and harder, with John eventually pounding his cock deep inside of you, moaning and using one arm to wrap around your waist to hold your lower body still so he could bring both of you closer.

“J-John…” Your voice jolted with each snap of his hips as you tried to warn him.

Feeling that familiar yet almost destructive power of another climax rushing through your lower body. Convinced you didn’t have enough left in you to come again, you felt tears pricking your eyes, overwhelmed with immense pleasure skyrocketing you towards a final orgasm you kept denying until John’s fingers reached between you and expertly began rubbing tight circles around your clit, violently tossing you into whited-out vision, and muted hearing.

Above you, John found his own release and shared it at the same time as yours. Fisting the bedsheets to keep from grabbing ahold of you too tightly and bruising you; his cock getting squeezed so tightly from your climax that it was almost painful to stay seated inside of you. With so little arm strength left, he fell nearly full-weight on top of you and only propped himself up by his elbows to keep from suffocating you.

Utterly wrecked, and feeling more than you’d ever experienced more than you’d felt in your life, it took minutes before you could open your eyes and actually have enough of the mental capacity to realize that John was gently stroking your head, kissing your forehead and your nose, and holding you tightly to him as the strong muscle jerks and twitches in your body began to die out.

“You here with me?” Low and comforting, you smile dazedly with your eyes heavy and trying to focus on him.

You merely nod your head yes and give what you assumed was a ‘mhmmm’ but might’ve sounded more like a small animal being choked or drowned. Naturally, John’s lips spread into a very happy and amused smile, cupping your cheek with his hand and pressing a kiss to your lips softly.

“Come on, sweetheart…” John whispered, pulling your head up to his chest and gently easing himself out of you with a low sigh.

You’re once again lifted up and whisked away, this time, into the bathroom just off to the side of the bedroom where John carefully sits you down on the edge of the bathtub and starts running hot water with the lights dimmed low. Certain he’s got everything for your bath within your reach and the water is high enough for you to really sink down into in and relax, he gives you a soft kiss and promises to return after just a couple minutes.

He returns before you even work up the desire to wash your hair, and immediately takes over the task of getting you cleaned up himself. In between the lulls of soaps, and conditioners, John will pose quiet questions, asking how you’re feeling and wanting to know if there was anything that hurt you physically or was bothering you mentally. His care was intense and very personal, giving you much more confidence and comfort after having such a draining experience. Of course, you felt fantastic throughout, but when he asked if you were tired, there was a feeling that he already knew you were and expected you to tell him how he could best support you.

Other than letting your head rest against his chest. Leaving not one inch of your body neglected, from your face to your feet. Throughout the process you watch through sleepy eyes, seeing a very peaceful sort of look on his face while soaping you up and helping you rinse off and step out of the slippery bathtub into a warm towel you could only assume he’d thrown in the dryer just for your comfort.

Holding the towel around yourself, you peck him on the lips and smile, too tired to really say anything of real value. However, you’re certain John understands by the way his arms wrap you up and hold you tight to his bare chest while running his fingers through your wet hair, helping get out some of the little tangles your conditioner couldn’t quite take care of alone.

“I love you, John. More than anything.”

He drops a kiss on top of your head, rocking your weights back and forth in the dimmed light of the bathroom. Admiring your little form in the darkened silhouette of his much larger one.

“I love you too, sweetheart.”

“You’re my best friend.”

He chuckles, finding that so very endearing.

“You’re mine too.”

yeah... the "you're my best friend" part, me and my husband do that <3 so.... that's a thing.

#john price #captain john price #captain price #mwii #cod mwii #john price x reader #john price smut #captain price x reader #captain price smut #velvetures #velvetures writes #velvetures answers #cod #anon <3

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tarotofzhivamoon · 27 days

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Masterlist • P@tr30n • Personal readings

Pause and take a big breath in, then choose the pile you feel the most drawn to🦋

Hi! Thank you for stopping by and reading my work. I hope that you’re going to find the guidance that you need��🏻 You can now book a reading with me! Visit my services here and just message me if you are interested in booking any reading.

Pile 1

**This could also resonate with you if you have: Cancer, Leo, Pisces, Aquarius, Taurus, Scorpio placements

Who are they?

Your person seems to be someone from your past, with whom you already had a relationship with and it didn’t really work out. They definitely seem to be someone who right now, is only present in your life in your memory and you might be daydreaming about them especially if this relationship has ended recently, or they may not be fully in your life, being a bit in and out. If it hasn’t ended recently, they made an impact on you and you definitely would like to give it another shot with them because you still feel a lot of love for them in your heart. This person is someone who has worked really hard to balance their feelings with their intellectual side, maybe when the two of you met in the past they weren’t really good at it because this has definitely been quite a long and slow moving journey for them. it feels as though maybe you were somewhat ahead of them and the incompatibilities were too high at that time. Now they seem to be on your level from that perspective. They have been working on themselves, slowly, and they’ve reached a point in which they are able to find a really beautiful harmony between mind, body and spirit, which is actually making them be more prepared for a relationship. They could’ve been incredibly held back, even being extremely gullible and other people might’ve made them believe various different things about themselves and the relationship with you, which wasn’t the best for a connection. They now can say about themselves that they are well balanced, able to set goals for themselves and go after them and a better team player than they were before, especially because they got used to a life in which it was only just them, one in which they were only thinking about themselves, which limited them in the way they were showing up in a relationship and working as a team with you.

How are they going to show up in your life? (relationship skills and obstacles they need to overcome)

They seem to still have a lot of things to overcome, even with all the progress that they have made from when the two of you decided to go your separate ways, but the difference here is that they found their inner strength and they are better equipped to deal with the obstacles that life and relationships bring them. I would definitely say that when it comes to relationship skills, they are definitely able to be compassionate towards you and actually understand where you are coming from, making them more likely to actively listen and compromise with you so that the both of you feel safe in the relationship. They have taken back control over their ego and it’s not really the main thing that runs the show anymore, so now they’ve expanded their capacity to show and receive love in a really sweet manner that they weren’t really able to do before. This is probably one of their best relationship qualities beside the strength that they have to fight for you and for the relationship no matter what anyone else says or thinks. Once they’ve chosen their partner, they are definitely the type who will prioritize the well being of their partner and of the relationship before anything else, as they are looking for success and they have come a long way, facing many challenges to learn how to be a good partner. They’ve come from a really sad past, they probably have lost a lot of things in life and there was definitely sadness when the two of you decided to call it quits, they might’ve blamed themselves and feel as though it was their fault because they weren’t good enough and it was like a war in their heads, going back and forth, being their worst enemy because they do like to feel connected to someone and have a romantic relationship that brings them joy. So they took their weaknesses, they took their own self-judgements and they transformed those into strength that helped them become better. Thing is, I don’t believe that this person has had another significant or important relationship to actually practice these skills and so they might be a bit clumsy at times in their relationship with you, so they might be learning how to actually apply them in a relationship with you. The obstacle here is literally not knowing how to properly adapt in a relationship to that flexible extent, they might take a while to practice to be able to reach a more proficient approach and show up the way they envisioned for themselves.

If you enjoyed this reading, the extended is available to read on P@tr30n which you can find at the top of this post. Thank you so much for your support💗 Likes and rbs are appreciated🦋

Thank you all so much for reading and I hope this offered you the guidance you needed! Much love xx

Pile 2

**This could also resonate with you if you have: Pisces, Libra, Scorpio, Aries, Sagittarius, Aquarius placements

Who are they?

Your person is definitely someone who’s loving and kind, they definitely seem to be the ones who have a really good heart, ready to give, ready to embrace love and offer it in a really sweet way and they totally do want to get married/be in a relationship and have that long-term commitment with someone. The issue here is that even though this person has a golden heart, the might’ve been taken advantage of it and they turned out to have quite a few self-defense mechanisms that you would need to get past before actually seeing the true them. It’s not that this person is actually testing you in any way, they just are extremely careful about the way they move into the world to be able to push aside anyone who doesn’t have genuine intentions towards them. That means that they take a lot of time to open up and at first you might see them as being indecisive, not knowing what they want or need, and kind of not moving the right way in a relationship because they are still testing the waters. You might see that this is actually out of their element in some way, the way these vibes fall onto them is just now who they really are and somehow, you will actually manage to see beyond this and expect or wait for more from them. They will do a lot to protect their own hearts, always being defensive of the most previous and sensitive parts of their being and they won’t reveal their true self all at once because that approach has hurt them in the past. They might feel extremely inadequate as well, especially having dealt with people with ill intentions, and they might feel as though there is no one genuine in the world, that they have to pretend they are someone they’re not just to protect themselves and they don’t think that’s the right approach, but that they have to do it anyways because if they don’t, they’re going to get hurt again. Once these layers of protection fall bit by bit, you’re going to see a new, adventurous and playful side of them, one that actually has a lot of hope and love to give. They’re extremely loyal, especially to those who are closest to them and want to explore life by their side.

How are they going to show up in your life? (relationship skills and obstacles they need to overcome)

When it comes to how they’re going to show up in your life, there’s definitely a lot of insecurity and pain that will come through here, because they doubt themselves a lot. You can see that this person is someone who’s able to create a safe space for you to be fully yourself, one in which you feel loved and cared for, them being your biggest support system with anything you may need help with, especially mental health wise, they’ve been through a lot so they know a lot and they know how to handle different situations and be the person they never had for others. They are also incredibly good at understanding their emotions, for seeing things as they are and honestly, they are also extremely self aware, able to accept the truth about themselves and no run away from it no matter how harsh it might seem, but they’re still at a crossroads now, trying to get out of being the person they’ve been, with defense mechanisms, overthinking, over giving, over working, being at a distance from themselves and not being able to truly find themselves, to actually becoming something new. They have a lot of great things about themselves that they’ve forgotten about all this time because they were so stuck in being someone they were not due to their experiences. Now, in the relationship, they need to overcome a lot of obstacles and that might create more obstacles in the relationship, on your side of it as well. You may or may not be equipped to deal with their baggage, as it seems to be a lot to handle from their side and it might feel that when the two of you make progress towards being closer to one another, something happens and the progress you made is null. There are a lot of cycles on their end that are challenging and making the relationship difficult to maintain long term, because they have lost themselves and you might not fully see their actual sweet side for a while. They might give you bits and pieces here, but they’re not allowing themselves to be who they are out of fear, which is definitely going to make you think that they don’t have the bestest intentions towards you and that they’re just playing games. They will try their hardest to make you happy, but that’s going to cause stress for them, maybe even being paranoid most of the times and not believe in themselves that they can do this. They don’t want to disappoint you but they are a bit buried under the pile of behaviors that have helped them to keep on going. Change might be on the horizon though, something might trigger it in this relationship and they will have to make a decision to heal and move on from the old, as you might be nothing like those who took advantage of them. Trust needs to be built here.

If you enjoyed this reading, the extended is available to read on P@tr30n which you can find at the top of this post. Thank you so much for your support💗 Likes and rbs are appreciated🦋

Thank you all so much for reading and I hope this offered you the guidance you needed! Much love xx

Pile 3

**This could also resonate with you if you have: Libra, Virgo, Leo, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Scorpio placements

Who are they?

Your person is someone who has come a long way in their journey of discovering themselves, especially because they seem to have started off with some beliefs and ideals that you can think your way through life, without feeling it at all. Feels like this person has been seeing life as an adventure, maybe even climbing their way up to where they are right now and things haven’t always been easy for them, especially in the beginning. They were unsure of themselves, unsure of their moves, only being equipped with very little knowledge about life from their caretakers and at times they had to learn the hard way how to deal with the things that came their way. This required them to be equipped with a sense of exploration when it came to the way they were thinking about things and the way they were perceiving them, thus managing to get out of their comfort zone and take risks due to the hunger and curiosity they had for life. Their parents might’ve been protective of them, there is this sense that they were quick thinkers, adventurers and wanting to explore the world, but being limited by the things around them, which has, in fact, never stopped them from going after what they wanted. Though, this has limited them a bit only on exploring the mind and not the heart. This person has matured rapidly, which also is a great example of someone who didn’t have time to learn all the skills necessary to enter the emotional world due to a lack of guidance and a push in a specific direction, so with that, they kept on exploring the mind until they started understanding it in a really elevated way up until they hit a dead end in their exploration which required them to dive deep into their emotions as well. That’s when they understood that it’s not all about what you think, there’s also always feelings involved that can offer as much information, if not more, than what the mind is providing.

How are they going to show up in your life? (relationship skills and obstacles they need to overcome)

In all honesty, you can expect this person to be a little bit passive in the relationship as they are someone who usually introspects and self reflects a lot, rather than taking a really big and confident stand in any relationships. That’s something they still need to learn how to master, though they’re in the process of understanding their own emotions and they’re coming off as passive simply because within themselves, there’s big inner conflicts that keep on going on without ever stopping. They are trying their best to figure things out for themselves, making sure they are successful in anything they learn or acquire but don not expect huge gestures in the beginning from them. The more they explore their emotional world, the more inner conflict they have because they are going through major transformations in how they perceive the world around them and what they believe about various aspects of humanity and relationships in general. When one’s beliefs are being challenged, through various experiences, they’re not in a position in which they can actively respond because what they know to be true is actually crumbling and being replaced by a new one. It’s not that they wouldn’t want to show up in one way or the other, it’s that they are still learning how and while you might see this composed person, in reality, within themselves, they aren’t as composed as they appear. This exploration that they’re still doing is one of their obstacles, something they need to overcome and figure out on their own, but it’s being brought up by your relationship as you have a different approach than what they learned. Their positive side here is that they are open to learning and open to growing so this person is definitely going to want to learn more about how they can be a good partner to you and how they can show up so that you feel loved by them. They’re still new with emotions, but they are quick learners and over time, with their openness, they’re going to be really good with expressing their feelings for you and receiving the love that you’re giving them as well.

If you enjoyed this reading, the extended is available to read on P@tr30n which you can find at the top of this post. Thank you so much for your support💗 Likes and rbs are appreciated🦋

Thank you all so much for reading and I hope this offered you the guidance you needed! Much love xx

Pile 4

**This could also resonate with you if you have: Scorpio, Aquarius, Gemini, Virgo, Cancer, Aries placements

Who are they?

They are someone who have been looked forward to having a relationship for a really long time. For a very few of you, this is someone who has either been forced to remain single due to religious reasons or to get ready for a pre-arranged marriage that wasn’t going to make them happy/they could also be divorced as well. It feels as though this person wants a good marriage, they want to be married if that is where the relationship leads, though it’s not constantly on their mind because to them, the most important is the journey of getting there and just experiencing and devoting themselves to a long-term commitment. This person could also have some physical disabilities or even struggle with some mental health disorders that to the world, they get to be a bit marginalized or pushed outside, and that’s felt lonely to them for a really long time because they felt as though no one really understands them for who they really are. This person, no matter of their characteristics which might be particular and fit only a few of your situations, they have been working really to be able to identify some things and certain people that are rare and beautiful within and without in the crowd. They’ve been looking for someone to stand out in ways that no one else would notice, only them, because they have sharpened their eye and their energy field to be able to feel who is that person that they have been looking for and so they do tend to trust their instincts pretty much when looking for new people in their life. They’re extremely kind and connected with their emotions, but very quick witted as well all at the same time. They are always changing and improving themselves, wanting to do and be better, especially because they have been treated poorly by others and they believe that change in the world starts with change within oneself. You might be seeing them struggle with an impostor syndrome as well, as they have gone through major negative experiences and they struggle a lot with believing in themselves and their own skills.

How are they going to show up in your life? (relationship skills and obstacles they need to overcome)

When they come into your life, this person is going to definitely come off as stubborn and very subjective in their interactions with you; you might see them projecting a little bit onto you too especially due to the negative romantic experiences they have had before. With this person, it’s full of ups and downs, they might not be in your life for a really long time because they might not be actually the person that you’d like to be with or there is going to be some sort of break up and them coming back later on. It’s definitely going to be a combination of being kind of carless and projecting without thinking of consequences, which is going to cause them even more pain. The world has put a lot of pressure on them and has hurt them a lot, and that is just making them either be careless, not worry too much for too long and continue running away from themselves because they just don’t feel safe enough to remain in a single place. You might be fall for them, you might feel as though this person cares for you, and they do, they just have an extremely bad way of showing it because they’re still hurting and you definitely don’t have to stick around for that if there isn’t an equal exchange of energy between the two of you. It feels as though you’re giving this person what they need, sort of like it’s helping them start addressing and seeing themselves a bit more clearly, but they are in no position of giving back to you, due to being starved from love their entire life but also because you are way out of their league, especially when it comes to emotional maturity and growth. They’re in the process of becoming more mature, but they have a lot more to experience to get there and they don’t seem to be fully in alignment with you. The obstacles that they need to overcome here are created by themselves, they’re just self-sabotaging everything and then feeling hurt that they sabotaged it. They’re still hurting and they can’t fully see past that; it feels as though they are a bit stuck in a dream in which they’re doing everything right for you, in their heads, but when it comes to how they’re actually showing up for you, they seem to distance themselves and pull away, then they don’t understand why you do and say the things you do and say to them. They need more time on their own before actually being ready for something serious.

If you enjoyed this reading, the extended is available to read on P@tr30n which you can find at the top of this post. Thank you so much for your support💗 Likes and rbs are appreciated🦋

Thank you all so much for reading and I hope this offered you the guidance you needed! Much love xx

Pile 5

**This could also resonate with you if you have: Pisces, Sagittarius, Taurus, Scorpio,Virgo, Gemini placements

Who are they?

This person might be someone who has been stuck in situations in which they might’ve been the third wheel in a lot of situations, either at work, either in their friend group or in another relationship. It’s very likely that their previous partner has taken advantage of them, broke their heart because they wanted to be with someone else, or they have been in a polyamorous relationship in which the parties involved struggled with communication and building trust and safety. It didn’t really end well, but their past has a lot to do with commitment and whether or not that commitment was worth it to them, regardless of their own circumstances. They dedicated themselves to the person they were with and they over extended themselves to make that relationship work, they might’ve went above and beyond and in the end, they just received a really big baggage to carry. This person is still learning how to love themselves and how they can take care of their own needs and wants, they’re sort of in an exploration journey of figuring out what wounds are open, what hurts, what works for them and what doesn’t because they don’t really want to continue on being stuck in the same cycles over and over and over again. They are experiencing a lot of pressure and inner conflict on how to go about this, they don’t really know what to think to this day about what has happened in the past, but they are doing their best to keep going and try to figure it out, hoping that there is a better future waiting for them. They have a great support system, though, it feels like this person doesn’t like to ask for help and they’re only relying on themselves most of the time, which is no making it easier for them to deal with their issues. They might not trust people around them and they’re really independent, as they have learned that they can only trust and rely on themselves to be safe.

How are they going to show up in your life? (relationship skills and obstacles they need to overcome)

As you might’ve expected, this person is still going through a process of transformation that’s most likely going to last for a while so for a few years of you two being in each other’s lives, you might see that they are struggling and that they are in pain, which makes them have a little capacity for the love that they will show you. This doesn’t mean that they won’t do their best to be there for you and take you out and try to work as a team with you, but the extent to which they will do it might not feel your cup fully. They weren’t really looking for a relationship when they met you, but they actually ended up catching feelings for you and having you in their life just gives them hope that the future is going to be okay. Now, their challenges are just their pain, as if they do not properly deal with it, they might unintentionally hurt other people around them, including you, as a result of still being emotionally stuck in that moment in which they felt extremely betrayed. They are still grieving that relationship but most importantly grieving the happy and safe version of themselves that they left behind. They are sinking into this pain, giving into the desperation that they might not be able to figure it out and they certainly struggle with communicating their own pain. It feels as though this person might intellectualize it a lot, if they think about their feelings, they will probably not have to feel them and therefore they will not have to feel their pain, which is just a work around for them wanting to escape that experience and the feelings of pain that they have. They are avoiding it, whether they realize it or not, they are running away from it because they are on survival mode right now and until they learn how to calm their nervous system down, they will keep running away from their own self. This person is incredibly strong and resourceful, though they like to be in an energy of pursuing romantic interests, of being romantic and going on dates, building that relationship slowly. This also means that they usually like to find solutions to issues and they seem frozen right now so they do feel extremely powerless and guilty for now being able to show up in the way you should be treated. They will express their love through acts of service or taking care of you/buying you gifts, so while it may not seem like a lot, especially if that’s not your love language, they are doing it in the ways that feel safe for them. The positives here is the fact that they want to change, they want to do better, and right now they are a work in progress so even if they want to, it will still be on them to actually become who they want to be.

If you enjoyed this reading, the extended is available to read on P@tr30n which you can find at the top of this post. Thank you so much for your support💗 Likes and rbs are appreciated🦋

Thank you all so much for reading and I hope this offered you the guidance you needed! Much love xx

Dividers by Kawaii-Lau on Tumblr

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another-lost-mc · 1 year

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When It's MC's Turn to Cook THE DEMON BROTHERS x gn!MC | 1.1k words | SFW Rating/Warnings: Mostly fluff and silliness. Some jealous/possessive behaviour if you squint. [ Obey Me! Masterlist ]

Belphegor

It’s not surprising that he’s the least interested in helping you in the kitchen since it’s exhausting cooking for so many hungry demons every night

He complains when it’s your turn to cook because it means he has to nap alone

He has trouble napping when you’re not with him, so he’ll wander into the kitchen with a yawn and ask if you need a hand (but you both know it’s a hollow offer - he’s just trying to be polite)

Depending on how sleepy he looks, the most you ask of him is to help you set the table

Instead of returning to the attic for a restless sleep, he’ll simply go to your room instead where he can hear you in the kitchen while he tries to doze off

You let him know that dinner’s ready first by waking him up with a kiss, followed by relentless tickles if he still pretends to be asleep

Beelzebub

Cooking is challenging entertaining when Beel is around, but you need to strategize if you want food to actually make it to the table for everyone else

You have some quick snacks ready by the time he walks into the kitchen to see you - there are some sandwiches, cut up veggies and dip - light fare that won’t ruin his appetite but will keep his hands and mouth occupied

He’s one of the brothers that won’t shy away from making requests for certain meals, especially if there’s something he heard about that he wants to try (only if he thinks you’ll like too - he appreciates its hard work)

He likes going to the shops with you after class to help you pick out ingredients, and he’ll carry all the bags home without breaking a sweat

Asmodeus

Asmo loves spending time with you in the kitchen, but he’s more like your personal cooking cheerleader than a hands-on helper

He sits on a stool nearby and keeps you company while being out of the way - this also prevents him from getting his clothes or hair dirty if something splatters or spills

He talks about new pictures and gossip he sees on Devilgram, and calls you over to look at his DDD when he comes across something really interesting or scandalous

He knows you don’t like having your picture taken so he takes candid shots of your dinner-in-progress with your blurred form somewhere in the background

You can guess when he’s posted something on Devilgram because more of his brothers (particularly Mammon) come and visit you in the kitchen shortly after

Satan

Satan is a fantastic partner in the kitchen when you’re in the mood to try cooking something new or adventurous

He learns about a lot of human world food from the books and TV shows, so sometimes he requests things even you haven’t cooked or eaten before

He likes to help you plan things ahead of time so he gathers a couple different recipe options to see which one you want to use

Once you’ve chosen the recipe, he goes through the ingredients and adjusts the amounts on your shopping list so it'll be enough to feed everyone + Beel + leftovers (if you can hide them from Beel fast enough, anyway)

Satan is skilled with a knife and eager to show off help with the prep work

If you ask him to teach you a particular technique, he stands behind you while he holds your hands in his as he guides you through the motions until he's satisfied you can repeat it safely

He has a short fuse if Mammon his brothers barge into the kitchen and flirt with distract you while you're cooking together

Leviathan

Levi is happy enough to sit in his room and wait until he’s called for dinner, cooking isn’t a task that appeals to him and he’d rather spend his time catching up on new anime releases

Some days if he feels particularly social, he’ll sit on a chair like Asmo does and play his handheld while you cook

If you’re not sure what to make for dinner that night, usually you’ll ask Levi - he never asks for something that’s complicated or takes too long

More often than not, he suggests ordering takeout instead - the sooner you eat, the sooner you can play games with him

He likes to cuddle with you in his tub while you keep an eye on the delivery tracker app

Mammon

Mammon isn’t the most skilled at food prep or cooking, but when his brothers aren’t around he’s with you in the kitchen the entire time you’re preparing dinner

After he’s helped chopped some vegetables for you, he brings them over with a faint blush on his cheeks and mumbles that it’s harder than it looks

He’ll flash you cocky smile when you tell him he’s done a wonderful job, and he says that’s why you should just ask him for help whenever you’re cooking instead of his brothers who obviously aren’t as gifted as he is

Sometimes you have to slap his hand away when he tries to stick his finger into a dish to taste it

When you tell him to use a fork or spoon if he wants to sample something, he surprises you when he holds it to your mouth expectantly so you can have the first taste

It’s hard to resist when he offers you something you know he worked really hard to help you make, after all

You remind him to use a clean utensil for himself, but he pops yours into his mouth as soon as you look away

Later when you ask him how it tastes, he says it’s perfect (but he’s not referring to the food)

Lucifer

RAD business often keeps Lucifer on campus later than everyone else, so some nights you rarely see him before dinner is finished and served at the table

You’ve mentioned in the past how you had special family dinners on Sunday nights growing up, and when your cooking night falls on Sundays in the Devildom, you try to uphold the tradition

Lucifer is usually less busy on Sundays too, so cooking together to create more elaborate meals becomes something of a ritual you both take comfort in

He takes you to the market himself and helps you when you’re unsure of which Devildom ingredients to choose; he’s also more knowledgeable when it comes to choosing and cooking Devildom meats, so that is his responsibility the nights you cook together

It’s not practical to drag the record player into the kitchen, but music streams from your DDD while you both work quietly on prepping and cooking that night’s meal

Lucifer is surprisingly relaxed in the kitchen - the top buttons of his shirt are undone, his sleeves are rolled up, and he has an apron tied around his waist

When he works beside you at the counter or walks past you to retrieve something, you can feel his hand brush against you gently, an affectionate gesture that leaves a pleased smile on both your faces

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armoricaroyalty · 3 months

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Film Grammar for Simmers

What is film grammar?

"Film grammar" refers the unstated "rules" of editing used in movies and TV. Different types of shots have different associations and are used by editors to convey different types of information to the audience. Many of these principles were first described in the early 20th century by Soviet directors, but they're used consistently across genre, medium, and even language: Bollywood musicals, English period dramas, Korean horror movies, and American action blockbusters all use many of the same techniques.

Because these rules are so universal, virtually everyone has some internalized understanding of them. Even if they can’t name the different types of shots or explain how editors use images to construct meaning, the average person can tell when the “rules” are being broken. If you’ve ever thought a movie or episode of TV was confusing without being able to say why, there’s a good chance that there was something off with the editing.

Learning and applying the basics of film grammar can give your story a slicker and more-polished feel, without having to download shaders or spend hours in photoshop. It also has the bonus of enhancing readability by allowing your audience to use their knowledge of film and TV to understand what's happening in your story. You can use it to call attention to significant plot details and avoid introducing confusion through unclear visual language.

Best of all, it doesn't cost a dime.

The basics: types of shots

Shots are the basic building block of film. In Sims storytelling, a single shot is analogous to a single screenshot. In film, different types of shots are distinguished by the position of the camera relative to the subject. There are three big categories of shots, with some variation: long shots (LS), medium shots (MS), and close-ups (CU). This diagram, created by Daniel Chandler and hosted on visual-memory.co.uk illustrates the difference:

Source: The 'Grammar' of Television and Film, Daniel Chandler, visual-memory.co.uk. Link.

In film, scenes typically progress through the different types of shots in sequence: long shot, medium shot, close-up. When a new scene begins and the characters arrive in a new location, we typically begin with a wide establishing shot of the building’s exterior to show the audience where the scene will be taking place. Next comes a long shot of an interior space, which tells the where the characters are positioned relative to one another. The next shot is a medium shot of the characters conversing, and then finally, a close-up as the conversation reaches its emotional or informational climax. Insert shots are used judiciously throughout to establish themes or offer visual exposition.

Here's another visual guide to the different types of shots, illustrated with stills from Disney animated films.

This guide is almost 2,000 words long! To save your dash, I've put the meat of it under the cut.

Long shot and extreme long shots

A long shot (sometimes also called a wide shot) is one where the entire subject (usually a building, person, or group of people) is visible within the frame. The camera is positioned far away from the subject, prioritizing the details of the background over the details of the subject.

One of the most common uses of long shots and extreme long shots are establishing shots. An establishing shot is the first shot in a scene, and it sets the tone for the scene and is intended to give the viewer the information they’ll need to follow the scene: where a scene is taking place, who is in the scene, and where they are positioned in relation to one another. Without an establishing shot, a scene can feel ungrounded or “floaty.” Readers will have a harder time understanding what’s happening in the scene because on some level, they’ll be trying to puzzle out the answers to the who and where questions, distracting them from the most important questions: what is happening and why?

(I actually like to start my scenes with two establishing shots: an environmental shot focusing on the scenery, and then a second shot that establishes the characters and their position within the space.)

Long shots and extreme long shots have other uses, as well. Because the subject is small relative to their surroundings, they have an impersonal effect which can be used for comedy or tragedy.

In Fargo (1996) uses an extreme long shot to visually illustrate the main character’s sense of defeat after failing to secure funding for a business deal.The shot begins with a car in an empty parking lot, and then we see the protagonist make his way up from the bottom of the frame. He is alone in the shot, he is small, and the camera is positioned above him, looking down from a god-like perspective. All of these factors work together to convey his emotional state: he’s small, he’s alone, and in this moment, we are literally looking down on him. This shot effectively conveys how powerless he feels without any dialogue or even showing his face.

The same impersonal effect can also be used for comic purposes. If a character says something stupid or fails to impress other characters, cutting directly from a close-up to a long shot has a visual effect akin to chirping crickets. In this instance, a long shot serves as a visual “wait, what?” and invites the audience to laugh at the character rather than with them.

Medium Shots

Medium shots are “neutral” in filmmaking. Long shots and close-ups convey special meaning in their choice to focus on either the subject or the background, but a medium shot is balanced, giving equal focus to the character and their surroundings. In a medium shot, the character takes up 50% of the frame. They’re typically depicted from the waist-up and the audience can see both their face and hands, allowing the audience to see the character's facial expression and read their body-language, both important for interpreting meaning.

In most movies and TV shows, medium shots are the bread and butter of dialogue-heavy scenes, with close-ups, long shots, and inserts used for punctuation and emphasis. If you’re closely following the conventions of filmmaking, most of your dialogue scenes will be medium shots following the convention of shot-reverse shot:

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To keep long conversations from feeling too visually monotonous, consider staging the scene as a walk-and-talk. Having two characters move through a space can add a lot of dynamism and visual interest to a scene that might otherwise feel boring or stiff.

Close Ups

Close-ups are close shots of a character’s face. The camera is positioned relatively near to the subject, showing just their head and shoulders. In a close-up, we don’t see any details of the background or the expressions of other characters.

In film, close-ups are used for emphasis. If a character is experiencing a strong emotion or delivering an important line of dialogue, a close-up underscores the importance of the moment by inviting the audience to focus only on the character and their emotion.

Close-ups don’t necessarily need to focus on the speaker. If the important thing about a line of dialogue is another character’s reaction to it, a close-up of the reaction is more effective than a close-up of the delivery.

One of the most iconic shots in Parasite (2019) is of the protagonist driving his employer around while she sits in the backseat, speaking on the phone. Even though she’s the one speaking, the details of her conversation matter less than the protagonist’s reaction to it. While she chatters obliviously in the background, we focus on the protagonist’s disgruntled, resentful response to her thoughtless words and behavior.

In my opinion, Simblr really overuses close-ups in dialogue. A lot of conversation scenes are framed entirely in close-ups, which has the same effect of highlighting an entire page in a textbook. The reader can’t actually tell what information is important, because the visuals are screaming that everything is important. Overusing close-ups also cuts the viewer off from the character’s body language and prevents them from learning anything about the character via their surroundings.

For example, a scene set in someone’s bedroom is a great opportunity for some subtle characterization—is it tidy or messy? what kind of decor have they chosen? do they have a gaming computer, a guitar, an overflowing bookshelf?—but if the author chooses to use only close-ups, we lose out on a chance to get to know the character via indirect means.

Inserts

An insert shot is when a shot of something other than a character’s face is inserted into a scene. Often, inserts are close-ups of a character’s hands or an object in the background. Insert shots can also be used to show us what a character is looking at or focusing on.

In rom-com The Prince & Me (2004) (see? I don’t just watch crime dramas…) the male lead is in an important meeting. We see him pick up a pen, look down at the papers in front of him, and apparently begin taking notes, but then we cut to an insert shot of his information packet. He’s doodling pictures of sports cars and is entirely disengaged from the conversation. Every other shot in the scene is an establishing shot or a medium shot or a close-up of someone speaking, but this insert gives us insight into the lead’s state of mind: he doesn’t want to be there and he isn’t paying attention.

Insert shots are, in my opinion, also used ineffectively on Simblr. A good insert gives us extra insight into what a character is thinking or focusing on, but a poorly-used insert feels…unfocused. A good insert might focus on pill bottles on a character’s desk to suggest a chemical dependency, on a family picture to suggest duty and loyalty, on a clock to suggest a time constraint, on a pile of dirty laundry or unanswered letters to suggest a character is struggling to keep up with their responsibilities. An ineffective insert shot might focus on the flowers in the background because they’re pretty, on a character’s hands because it seems artsy, on the place settings on a dining table because you spent forever placing each one individually and you’ll be damned if they don’t make it into the scene. These things might be lovely and they might break up a monotonous conversation and they might represent a lot of time and effort, but if they don’t contribute any meaning to a scene, consider cutting or repurposing them.

I want to emphasize: insert shots aren’t bad, but they should be carefully chosen to ensure they’re enhancing the meaning of the scene. Haphazard insert shots are distracting and can interfere with your reader’s ability to understand what is happening and why.

Putting it all together

One of the most basic principles of film theory is the Kuleshov effect, the idea that meaning in film comes from the interaction of two shots in sequence, and not from any single shot by itself. In the prototypical example, cutting from a close-up of a person’s neutral expression to a bowl of soup, children playing, or soldiers in a field suggests hunger, worry, or fear, respectively.

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The Kuleshov effect is the essence of visual storytelling in a medium like Simblr. You can elevate your storytelling by thinking not only about each individual shot, but about the way they’ll interact and flow into one another.

Mastering the basics of film grammar is a great (free!) way to take your storytelling to the next level. To learn more, you can find tons of guides and explainers about film grammar for free online, and your local library doubtless has books that explain the same principles and offers additional analysis.

Happy simming!

#armorica tips #armorica ooc #i finally got off my ass to finish this guide which i started back in August right before I got extremely sick and ended up in the hospital #anyway....hope you enjoyed this post which was a veiled excuse for me to complain about how people overuse close-ups and inserts #and i can't tell what's happening in their stories ;fdsklsjadf;laksdf #Youtube

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nightgoodomens · 8 months

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Fanfiction by NightGoodOmens

Fugitives (in progress)

Archangel Aziraphale sacrificed his relationship with Crowley for the greater good. But when Metatron ordered him to murder the love of his eternal life as part of the Second Coming plan, he fled. Now he and Crowley are fugitives, chased by Angels and Demons, and nowhere is safe for them. They need to learn how to live as humanly as possible to avoid being tracked. They need to hide, constantly move, fight, find moments of sanity in the insanity... but most of all they need to learn how to communicate - or they will not survive.

Love Thy Monster (in progress)

Michael is a detective in a fairly small village called Eden, a place now suffering from horrifying murders. It is up to Michael to figure out who's behind it and why. Within the horror, there is love. Michael can't keep his eyes off the new neighbour called David who seems to have many secrets of his own. But in a village stuck in the past, so focused on tradition and religion, and filled with many urban legends, can they make it work? How well can they hide? And what do you do when you realise you have fallen in love with a monster?

Broken Wings (one shot)

Will Aziraphale manage to catch Crowley before it is too late?

A Game between Satan and God (in progress)

Aziraphale is now the Archangel on a mission with not a single friend by his side. Crowley has been offered to become the Duke of Hell, a job he does not want, but might need to take if he wants do keep his Angel and their world safe. Both are wrong about the reason the other left.

A war between Heaven and Hell is coming.

The God and Satan are placing bets.

Were Aziraphale and Crowley the plan all along?

What If We Chose Us? (in progress)

That day Aziraphale chose Crowley.

Now they need to escape Metatron who's right outside the bookshop.

Is Crowley powerful enough to hold Metatron back?

Why Metatron wants Crowley gone?

What will happen next?

Sinner (one shot)

Aziraphale discovers that Crowley likes to fix things the human way which he finds fascinating. He also discovers that it often involves Crowley getting sweaty, dirty, and shirtless. Aziraphale decides that breaking things is the answer, because he is ready to sin.

Funny and sexy one shot inspired by that moment in the show where Crowley explains to Shax how to fix the boiler. I think a certain angel would find a hands-on demon very sexy.

The Confession (one shot)

The war is over. They have their cottage. Everything should be perfect. But they still have not talked properly and Aziraphale misses seeing joy and happiness in Crowley's eyes. It is time to bring it back - and Christmas might be just the most perfect time for it.

#good omens #crowley #ineffable fandom #good ineffable omens #ineffable husbands #ineffable boyfriends #ineffable dumbasses #ineffable idiots #ineffable lovers #aziraphale #aziracrow #good omens fanfiction #aziracrow fanfiction #fanfiction

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tennessoui · 3 months

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so i've been thinking about this premise for so long but it wasn't working for obikin (which of course i took as a challenge) and i think i finally got it where i want it so

au where 35 yo obi-wan is a music sensation across the world but he's recently divorced and going on tour again after releasing a very cutting, personal, and well-received album

and 19 yo anakin joins his tour with his very small band of two other people (ahsoka, padmé) to be his opening act - they have a small but loyal following, a pretty big social media presence, and there are even people who ship anakin and padmé which you know means these are die-hard fans

anakin has definitely looked up to obi-wan and his music for a good portion of his life and he's like. beyond excited that he's going to tour with The Obi-Wan Kenobi - this is big, not just for his music career but also for himself and the little boy he was listening to obi-wan's music for the first time!!

i'm just imagining like....obi-wan and anakin meeting after a few days of rehearsal for opening night, and it's not the most auspicious start because obi-wan's going through like 20 different emotions at any given moment (he's on tour, he's divorced, he's tired, he loves the music, he can't be the person he was in his twenties when he was first on tour but that's a whole different matter, he has all the media training and charismatic instinct to cover up these less than savory emotions with flirtatious empty words) and anakin is just like. sorta starstruck sorta shy sorta eager sorta awkward so:

"i'm uh, i'm a singer it's nice to meet you. hi yeah. hello. i'm on tour. as well. with you. actually." "ah no, are you one of my backing vocal artists? we can't have that - you're much too gorgeous and my ego is much too dependent on the audience focusing on me." "um 😳"

so it's a relationship that begins with a lot of flirting and being flustered and progresses through moments of vulnerability and honest emotion which turns into mutual affection which turns into anakin's celebrity crush becoming very real....meanwhile obi-wan googled anakin and the opening band after the first show/introduction and finds all the stuff about him and padmé being together and that's. that's fine. young love. how sweet. any sort of disappointment obi-wan feels is because he's recently divorced and bitter about it and he's going to have to spend at least half his tour watching the lovebirds snuggling up together.

and even when all the misunderstandings about relationship statuses have been addressed and the pretense has fallen away to leave just attraction, both have to think about their careers - it's all well and good for obi-wan to date someone sixteen years his junior, post divorce, but that's an image he's never wanted to deal with or be associated with. and this is the biggest shot of anakin's career - his best chance to make it in the music industry. in the words of his bandmate, is he really, honestly thinking about risking it for a chance to sleep with The Obi-Wan Kenobi?

but what his bandmate doesn't seem to really understand is that for anakin, obi-wan hasn't been The Obi-Wan Kenobi in a long time. he's just been obi-wan. and that makes a world of difference.

#kit's silly lil aus #obikin #my social media algorithm pulled me into music-tok but make it instagram reels lol #and then i watched the grammys last night #so i was like fine lets come back to this and figure out what's missing #so i know it basically sounds like what if firefighter au obi-wan was a little more jaded and less flirty #coupled with what if band au anakin opened for firefighter au obi-wan #but i'm seeing different nuances for the characters so i feel comfortable making this its own post #like. what if you met the person you were going to love forever at somehow #both the best time in the world for your career #and the worst time in the world for your personal life #etc etc #sorry for the long post i hope you can tell this is all i thought about on a 5k run today lol

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genericpuff · 2 months

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Can you call Tina Belcher driving through a parking lot at an anxious snail's pace a driving "style"? So why do we try to use "style" as a defense for LO's pacing problems?

There's something about how Lore Olympus engrosses people within its weekly doses of H x P content and cliffhangers that makes people not realize just how long Lore Olympus takes to get to the point of, well, anything. Many plotlines are setup, and then go untouched for weeks, sometimes months at a time, before seeing any sort of progress, much less a resolution. In this, I'm going to actually give you time ranges on some of the more egregious payoffs and continuations of plotlines that were setup - some that are now resolved, others that have yet to see the light of day.

CONTENT WARNING: I will be discussing the SA plotline, and there will be spoilers for Episode 265. I will also be showing pictures of some rancid ass tattoos, I know that sounds random for what we're discussing, but trust me on this one, I have a point to make. Also there's a Junji Ito panel from The Enigma of Amigara Fault... yeah, that one.

LEUCE

Let's start with an easy one that's not exactly tied to the main plot. The Leuce plotline. She was first introduced in Episode 201 as a 'bargaining chip' from Zeus to Hades, in a misfired attempt to get Hades to call a truce over the embargo between the Underworld and Olympus.

At the time of this episode's release, by all accounts this seemed to be a cut and dry reference to Hades' first wife, Leuce, unfortunately reduced to a mail-order bride who Hades, of course, turns down, because he doesn't want the "I can't believe it's not butter" Persephone, he wants overpriced, tastes-the-same-but-costs-more-because-of-the-brand-name Persephone.

But then she came back, 36 episodes later - in real time, this was roughly 38 weeks for free-to-read users as the series went on a 2 week hiatus near the start of S3 - only to be used as a cliffhanger leading into a recycled Minthe plotline, in which she attempted to seduce Hades in Episode 238, only to be shot down for the second time.

If you're having a tough time wrapping your head around how long 36 weeks really is, that's nine months. If you got pregnant when Leuce was first revealed, you'd be entering the final window of pregnancy by the time she returned, assuming the baby didn't come pre-term.

Another 7 weeks later, enough time to actually get pregnant again following that first baby, we got the sudden continuation of that plot, with Persephone invading her home and filling it with barn animals, with a not-so-subtle threat to Leuce to stay away from her husband.

"But what about the text messages? Were they really from Hades?" Well, if you were someone reading this comic in real time, you wouldn't have this question answered for another SIX EPISODES - that's a month and a half in real time - and the answer would ultimately be "she made it up, she was 'manifesting', none of it's real, they should call her Deleuceional!" Six weeks for a nothingburger answer to wrap up a nothingburger sideplot, all in the pursuit to 'prove' for the 1275903729 time that Hades and Persephone are truly meant to be together.

EROS AND PSYCHE

This is a big one. The Eros x Psyche plotline was one of the most popular romance subplots, second only to Hades and Persephone, throughout the comic. And yet, despite people holding their breath to see what would become of the star-crossed lovers, a mortal and a god-

-readers in September 2021 would not find out how their recent skirmish with Apollo in Episode 171 would resolve itself until Episode 218, A YEAR AND TWO MONTHS - ROUGHLY 60 WEEKS AND A MIDSEASON HIATUS - LATER, and even then it would only show us Eros, who quickly summarizes what happened to him during the entire trial and Kronos arc that his anticipated romance storyline got sidelined for - he got married and now he has a child.

And it wouldn't be for ANOTHER six weeks that his wife and the mother of his child would actually show up, not alongside Eros, but Aphrodite and Hephaestus, in Episode 224.

What happened to her after finally having her 'true form' revealed to Eros? Well, that's not shown for another three weeks in Episode 227. During this a bunch of info about how Psyche got out of that sticky Apollo situation is dumped on us and we just have to go along with it as she becomes a goddess, not because she earned a place among the Olympians, but because Zeus needs her to spy on Apollo, which was actually shown one episode prior in 226.

So let's say you got knocked up again after that Leuce baby, when Eros and Psyche were shot out of the sky. Welp, in the time it took for Rachel to get around explaining what happened to the both of them, now you just had your second baby and for all we know, you could have gone for a third and already be well into or near the end of your first trimester, if you really wanted to get busy. You'd have a Dionysus, a Melinoe, and maybe even a Demophoon. Congratulations.

And speaking of Melinoe-

MELINOE

Turns out the interloper and the child in Tartarus were one and the same, or at least that's what I'm assuming, because otherwise that would mean there's some whole ass other baby to worry about that we haven't even been introduced to yet.

Melinoe, or "the child deity", was first established in Episode 218.

But as per LO tradition, the child would only mentioned in passing every now and then until finally being revealed as Melinoe in Episode 252, a whopping... THIRTY EIGHT FUCKING WEEKS LATER.

And that waiting is still ongoing as Melinoe is, of course, still trapped in Tartarus, with no end in sight. Since then, Hades and Persephone have gotten married, kidnapped a child, Persephone has terrorized a nymph and caused yet ANOTHER genocide, and they've resurrected a child that was suddenly revealed to be Demeter's. Thirty eight weeks and counting of dragging on a plotline that we're supposed to believe is dire while the characters do sweet fuck all.

What was the name of that other dream baby that Rachel referenced from some obscure non-legitimate source?

Riiiight, Brimos. Congrats, there's pregnancy number 4. But can we find a way to make a fifth happen?

KASSANDRA

We're first introduced to Kassandra, another implied victim of Apollo's, in Episode 226 when a photo of her is found on Apollo's pen drive which was conveniently left on the ground for Psyche to swipe.

In Episode 227, they theorize on how they could track down this mystery woman, using either Eros or Aphrodite's abilities to find her through the power of

✨love✨

How will that actually work though? Has anyone ever been in love with Kassandra, or has she ever been in love with anyone else?

Any bets on how long it would be until we'd get our answer?

Episode 251. The same episode where we're finally told about Leuce's delusions, we suddenly skip to the reveal of Kassandra being Apollo's personal oracle.

And it still doesn't end up answering our question as to how Kassandra was tracked down, by the way. Eros and Psyche sorta just conveniently find her at the same time Apollo happens to be there when he's getting her to deliver her big prophecy to him.

That's twenty four weeks, meaning you're now near the end of your second trimester with child #4. Whoever the child is remains to be seen but I'm sure Rachel will find a way to shoehorn another helpless baby into the plot for Hades and Persephone to rescue who we can use for this metaphor.

But none of these come close to the greatest unresolved plotline of them all, the one plotline that has outlasted even the main H x P plotline of Lore Olympus' story-

APOLLO

Or more specifically, the SA. Rachel has tried so hard to twist Apollo into a villain of Disney proportions, through his sudden involvement with Ouranos, while also using him as a mouthpiece for her own critics by having him literally dish out word-for-word the criticisms that have been made towards Rachel's writing of Persephone-

But the core foundation of his plotline goes all the way back to 2018, when he assaulted Persephone, a plotline that has yet to resolve itself or show any progression beyond Rachel's half-baked attempts at speedrunning Persephone's healing process, while Apollo is still at large and hasn't been brought to justice.

We've seen her in very poorly-written therapy where her assault was addressed once. We've seen her grapple with the potential consequences of the SA through a gynecologist scene that, as I've discussed before, does more harm than good in helping the discussion around women's sexual health. And of course, Rachel will pepper in vague references to the SA every now and then when she's bothered to remember that it's a plotline she wrote and still hasn't resolved:

And judging by how the story has been progressing, Rachel seems far more intent on simply using Apollo as a mouthpiece for criticism and a puppet for Ouranos rather than focusing on the bigger issues, all while Persephone has helped more people cope with the assault that happened to her rather than receiving help herself.

What's really telling is that despite half of the Olympians at this point knowing what Apollo did, not one of them even tries to convince Persephone to come forward, or say something themselves. Daphne has more than enough reason to come forward. Artemis, Hera, Eros, Hermes, and Hephaestus all know what he did, and yet none of them say a thing, even when those of them who haven't been conveniently shoehorned out of the plot are still in the same room as him-

The assault scene happened in August 2018. It's been five and a half years since it was established, and while there have been small efforts made to resolve it - from Hera and Hephaestus having the photos deleted to Persephone seeking therapy - there's less reason now than ever for it to not be addressed, especially with so much at stake. I could side with Persephone not wanting to say anything in the beginning, when he was blackmailing her with the photos and her TGOEM scholarship was on the line, but now that she's a Queen, rich, and married to Hades, living in the Underworld where he can't get to her, without any schooling or scholarship or job to worry about or the photos hanging over her head, it comes across as flat out irresponsible that not a single person thinks it's worth mentioning. Even the narrative itself seems to be trying to undo the SA entirely.

At this point, I'm not confident it will be mentioned at all, and that Apollo will be conveniently dealt with as a pawn of Ouranos rather than as a perpetrator of violence towards women.

A FINAL ANALYSIS OF LO'S PACING

There are certainly far more examples of this weekly edging happening throughout LO, but I hope the ones I provided get across the point I'm trying to make about its pacing.

Of course, none of these gaps in time are happening back-to-back-to-back. This is Lore Olympus' writing "style", if you can call it that - constantly bombard the reader with separate plot points so that they'll either not remember the ones that were left behind, or so that Rachel can buy herself time to get herself out of the corner she wrote herself into. It's the equivalent of clickbait, constantly grabbing your attention with shiny new things that will replace whatever you just saw in your brain, on a constantly repeating cycle. It's the writing process of inexperienced amateurs, like what you'd see in short stories written by fifth graders - "and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened", with no theme or overarching meaning tying them together; and if you were to ask them why a certain thing happens, especially if it logically doesn't make sense, the answer is just, "well, because it does." There's no rhyme or reason, they just thought it was cool.

And I say "style" because while fans of LO have definitely defended the story's pacing as just a writing style, the actual execution of what they're implying is painful to watch and not what any experienced writer would call a legitimate style. It's not uncommon at all in long-running series like this to jump from plotline to plotline, often times longform stories like these have to balance multiple side plots at once to keep things engaging and to bulk up the plot with more actual content.

But in most cases, the reader will expect the speed of a plot's resolution to be relative to its urgency. If a casual B plot with low stakes is introduced, it's not necessarily doing any harm if it just sits there for a bit before finally being resolved. After all, it's low stakes and no one is being hurt by it existing on the sidelines. It might feel a bit like pointless fluff, but there's nothing necessarily wrong with fluff and it can offer fun and relaxed reprieves from the overarching narrative, assuming you integrate them well so they're not drawing attention away from those more urgent plotlines at the worst possible times (looking at you, Stranger Things S2 Episode 7-)

But when even the high stakes plots are being hung out to dry and treated like distractions and fluff, it comes across less like a decisive writing "style" and more just directionless pantsing from an inexperienced writer who's gotten themselves in way too deep.

And that's what really separates Rachel's writing problems from "style". Style is decisive. Style is the act of referencing over a set period of time, crafting what you like and what you've learned into something new, with rounds and rounds of fine-tuning. Style is experience put into action.

And, while I don't typically like using my own work as a comparison, LORE | REKINDLED is meant to try and recapture the original magic of Lore Olympus' art style and writing foundations - and even then, you can still see the clear difference between Episodes 14 and 44, which use the same panel from the same scene, but look vastly different due to the improvement and refinement that's happened over time.

Same style, but different levels of experience and skill, which is to be expected after weeks and weeks of fine-tuning and deliberate practice.

If you're lacking in your fundamentals, whether in art or writing, you can't equate that lack of skill to "style" because you're not choosing to be inexperienced, you just are. And that's okay! But to try and pass it off as 'style' implies that you're choosing to be inexperienced - when in reality, if you tried to put out anything beyond your skill level, you simply wouldn't be able to, because you haven't gained those skills yet. Like fifth graders writing short stories with the "and then this happened" model, "it's just my style" is often used as an excuse by young artists and writers who don't understand that style is not exclusively an end result of inexperience.

I'm gonna go on a tangent here, but there's this controversial but trendy style in tattooing called 'ignorant', and it's best defined as "tattooing badly on purpose".

These tattoos are regularly praised for their simplistic ingenuity and visual aesthetic but equally criticized for being the opposite of what many artists have worked to overcome - being "bad at art". After all, who would willingly pay for a bad-looking tattoo? It's because it's the style that's in demand. I would argue that it takes a lot of confidence and mastery of the craft to be purposefully bad at it and make it look good, as contradictory as that sounds.

As much as the lines may be wobbly and the anatomy poor, ignorant style tattoos are done purposefully by experienced artists who still know how to properly tattoo. As much as they may look like they were drawn by a middle schooler, they will still heal properly, the lines will hold up, and the client will not (or at least, should not) experience any excessive scarring or unhygienic practices as one would experience from an actual inexperienced artist-

In a genuinely poorly-done tattoo, the evidence of the inexperience is literally written all over the body. The skin swells, the ink bleeds out, the lines are inconsistent in their depth, and there's clear signs of trauma to the skin that will undoubtedly result in a poorly-healed tattoo (and that's not even getting into the larger health risks such as contracting blood diseases due to a poorly kept space). It's not hard to see the difference between a bad tattoo and a tattoo that's intentionally bad.

It's the age old saying in a different medium - only once you learn the rules can you properly break them.

Rachel never learned these rules in her writing and it's evident to anyone who knows these rules and is viewing LO through a critical lens - or in my case, experiencing it on a week to week basis. It's a regularly occurring problem in the medium of webcomics as a whole - thinking that knowing how to draw is enough, and that writing comes dead last, if at all. When in reality, comics are a marriage of art and writing, you can't simply do one really well and allow the other to drag behind. That's not to say there aren't comics that succeed at having bad art and good writing, if anything a well-written comic can save bad art-

But if you have a comic with good art and bad writing, that's when a comic opens itself up to harsher criticism. As much as art may be the visual forefront of comics, if you want to keep your audience along for the long road that stretches ahead, you need to have a strong foundation in writing, or at least, enough of a plan to ensure you're not driving in the dark. The art can be as gorgeous as you want it to be, but if the plot is weak, then no one will have any reason to check back in week to week.

And such is Lore Olympus' biggest weakness. Much of what we praise LO for back in its first season was simply its foundation. It's very easy to praise a story's writing when it hasn't had to payoff what it's setup. Having ideas is easy, and early LO is rife with good ideas - but many of those ideas have since fallen flat, even the ones you wouldn't expect.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, but actually executing them in a way that can be engaging from start to finish and resolve itself in a way that's satisfying is a whole other challenge that many creators, including Rachel, find themselves unable to tackle; and nothing is a greater example of that than LO's third season, which is now fumbling its plotlines that have failed to resolve themselves properly after 5 years, while introducing new ones that serve as mere distractions, as if they were a laser pointer aimed at a cat.

I hear the argument, "LO is a better story if you binge read it" a lot, which - while I can certainly understand in today's culture of content that's churned out to be binged - I still fail to see how it actually makes LO a better story. Binge-reading LO doesn't remove the pointless plotlines. It doesn't fix its blatant timeline problems, its retcons, or its inability to stay focused on one topic for more than 5 panels. All it really fixes is the waiting, the ritualistic toiling over each and every cliffhanger that caps off the weekly episodes just for them to either be resolved in the next week or left behind with no in-between. And while having all that waiting removed certainly makes the reading experience a lot smoother, it doesn't make the story or its writing better.

The relationship between a story's writing and how the audience experiences it shouldn't be overlooked. Many stories depend on how the audience experiences it within the mind to succeed and leave an impression.

Junji Ito utilizes the dreaded page turn to scare his audience, an effect that can only be truly gained and appreciated if you read his books in traditional print.

Marvel spent years meticulously building up its Avengers franchise, culminating in a once-in-a-lifetime cinematic event through Avengers: Endgame, which is truly the epitome of "you had to be there", because if you watch Avengers: Endgame in 2024 in your living room, you're likely not going to experience the same level of hype as audiences experiencing it in the theater in 2019.

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The same can be said for James' Cameron's Avatar, which entranced audiences with its innovative motion capture CGI and immersive 3D effects, an experience that could only be lived to the fullest if you saw it in 3D in IMAX theaters back in 2009. Without that experience, most people in 2024 find the movie to be pretty generic and uninteresting, a reverse Pocahontas with blue people in space, but when it first released in IMAX theaters in 2009, it was a cultural and technological phenomenon due to how advanced it was in its VFX. I can't even share with you clips of it, because obviously it would just be proving my point to try and show you how groundbreaking Avatar was in theaters through a bad shaky cam Youtube upload of its IMAX release on Youtube, but let's just say that it wasn't uncommon for people to brag about how many times they'd gone back to watch the same movie just to feel what they felt from the first showing all over again.

All that's to say that while Lore Olympus may offer a 'better' reading experience when binge-read - regardless of whether or not it actually helps the story's pacing problems - the reality is that LO is still being written exclusively with the weekly format in mind, and its been very much to its detriment, both in the short-term and in the long-term. Readers are often left in the dark on plotlines for weeks at a time, Rachel loses track of what she has and hasn't addressed, and the extended waiting times trick readers into believing that weeks have passed in the comic's story, when in reality it's only been a day or two, sometimes as little as hours depending on the sequence; meanwhile, if you binge episodes that had those problems in hindsight, you'll likely be a lot more quick to notice how many plot beats are either retconned or abandoned entirely, because you don't have the weekly waiting times artificially inflating the pacing of the story and causing you to forget what was established weeks before, because when binged, those weeks are reduced to hours and minutes.

And worst of all, with the assumption that you're reading on a weekly basis - as it wants you to do - Rachel tries to pull clever stunts by matching up LO's episodes with real life dates and holidays, which often just makes the story beats feel rushed or random in their execution - because to the vast majority of readers who haven't caught on to this or are reading the episodes through the physical books, they are rushed and random, and they can't exactly explain why.

Binging these episodes doesn't solve the problem, if anything it exemplifies them because, as a shining example, Hades and Persephone suddenly get married right in the middle of an ongoing issue, which isn't exactly the best time to wrap up the story's main plotline. Since then readers have become less and less interested in their story, and can you blame them? By all accounts their story is over. Everything now just feels tacked on to give them something to do in a story they no longer fit into.

There's an episode behind the FastPass lock right now, Episode 265. It unlocks for free on February 17th, three days after Valentine's Day. Guess what episode it is?

Ah yes, the episode where Hades' initiates sex without consent with his wife who's suffering from panic attacks, who also happens to be a rape victim. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

I actually made this particular discovery while writing this essay, so that was a very unwelcome surprise, but it explains the sudden random shift from Persephone being so stressed over the ongoing situation that she's passed out to Hades just deciding for the both of them that now's the time to have sex. As much as the fans will defend this as a husband and wife's last chance at intimacy before diving into a dangerous situation, they'll also still conveniently forget - just like the narrative and Rachel herself - that Persephone is a rape victim, and Hades initiating sex with her after nearly having a panic attack isn't exactly a good look.

This is why our theories as to when LO ends are so firmly cemented in one specific time range, because the story's pacing and distractions seem only intent in one thing - getting the story to last until spring, when the series will most likely conclude. It's basically been all but confirmed by Rachel, from her stating the series would be ending in early 2024, to Inklore - an imprint that seems designed specifically for Rachel and LO - launching officially in spring of this year, undoubtedly just in time for Rachel to wrap up LO for good.

(and boy, do I have some words about Inklore and its plans for "Rachel Smythe Presents", but that's another essay entirely.)

At the end of the day, LO's pacing is equivalent to paint drying on the wall, but it relentlessly convinces us to keep watching because the paint is blue and pink and maybe, maybe it'll turn into a piece of art. But as is evident in the comment sections of the newest episodes, even the fans are starting to realize that paint will not magically turn into the final piece of art they've been waiting to see if the hand that wields it doesn't know what it's doing.

Though style may be gained as an accidental side effect of one's influences and experiences, what Lore Olympus' intent is remains to be seen, and the longer the story goes on, the blurrier whatever intent it could have becomes. Unless it somehow manages to pull off a twist of Attack on Titan proportions that thoroughly explains and ties together the plotlines that have been left in the rearview mirror, the vehicle that is LO will continue to trudge along at a snail's pace, until it inevitably either crosses the finish line or crashes - but by that point, anyone waiting for it could very well be gone, their good faith left behind at the starting line when there was still plenty of time to change its trajectory or stop.

Such a time is long, long gone.

#lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus #lo critical

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transmutationisms · 4 months

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I read your review of Poor Things and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the section in Alexandria? It was horrifically executed on many levels but narratively, that part of the film is about Bella learning about class structure. She rebels against the cruelty of society through charity then by working as a prostitute, during which time she has cruelty inflicted upon her instead. Finally, she realizes that God’s creation of her was ultimately cruel, and then she runs away with her ex-husband-father only to realize that her prior self-mother was fundamentally characterized by cruelty, especially to her “lessers.” She then decides once again that she does not want to be cruel, but then she achieves this by taking God’s place as the doctor-patriarch and ruling his household with a new pet goat. The entire film is also about Bella learning about feminism: the arbitrary oppression of women is not only nonsensical, it’s bad! But then the ending has her reproduce almost all those power structures and cruelty she claims to reject, and has the unfortunate consequence of positioning her as ultimately equally cruel/callous as God, the guy she meets on the boat who shows her all the starving people, and her former self-mother, etc. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on why this is or like, what the director’s message was beyond self-contradiction and taking cheap shots at starving people?

so i would quibble a bit with the idea that bella's experience in the maison-close is exclusively or even primarily portraying sex-for-pay as a site of cruelty. i think it's more depicting paid sex as work, and work as unpleasant and repressive, and that's why the maison is the site where bella gets involved in socialist politics—if moral philosophy is the arena by which she responds to the injustice of the poverty in alexandria, then labour politics plays the analogous role where the maison is concerned. her problems there aren't inherently with the idea of being paid for sex, but with specific elements of the work arrangement (eg, she suggests that the women should choose their clients, rather than vice versa). ofc she has some customers who are cruel or thoughtless or rude, but i didn't read the film as suggesting that was universal to sex work, and the effect of the position is more to demystify sex, for bella, than to convert it into being purely a site of trauma or misery. now i don't think this film offers a particularly blistering or deep analysis of sex work or socialism or wage labour, dgmw, but i do think the function of the maison is different narratively to that of the alexandria section.

anyway to answer your actual question: yeah so this is really my central gripe with the film. lanthimos (slash his screenwriter tony mcnamara) spends much of the film gesturing toward bella's growing awareness of several hierarchical structures that other characters take for granted: the uneven nature of the parent/child relationship (god took her body and created her without asking); class stratification (alexandria); the 'civilisation' of individuals and societies via education and bio-alteration (bella's talk about 'improving' herself; her 'progression' from essentially a pleasure-seeking child to an educated and 'articulate' adult). these three dimensions often overlap (eg, the conflation of 'childishness' with lack of education with inability to behave in 'high society'), though, most overtly, it's in that third one that we can see how these notions of improvement and biological melioration speak to discourses about the 'progress' and 'regress' of whole societies and peoples, and voluntarist ideas about how human alteration of biology (namely, our own) might produce people, and therefore societies, that are better or worse on some metric: beauty, fitness, intelligence, morality, longevity, &c. this is why i keep saying that like.... this film is about eugenics djkdjsk.

the issue with the alexandria section to me is, first, it's like 2 minutes (processed in the hollywood yellow filter) where the abject poverty of other people is a life lesson for bella. we're not asking any questions like, how is that poverty produced, and might it have anything to do with the ship bella is on or the fantastical lisbon she left or the comparative wealth of paris and london...? secondly, everything that the film thinks it's doing for the entire runtime by having bella grapple with learning about cruelty, and misery, and the kinds of received social truths that lanthimos is able to problematise through her eyes because she's literally tabula rasa—all of that is just so negated by having an ending in which she bio-engineers her shitty ex-husband, played as a triumphant moment. i don't even inherently have an issue with the actual plot point; certainly she has motive, and narratively it could have worked if it were framed as what it is: bella ascending to the powerful position in the oppressive system that created her, and using her status to enact cruelty against someone who 'deserves' it—ie, leveraging her class and race within the existing social forms rather than continuing to question or challenge them. if that ending were played as a tragedy, or a bleak satire, it would at least be making A Point. but it's not even, because it's just framed as deserved comeuppance for this guy we were introduced to in the 11th hour as a scumbag, so it's psychologically beneficial for bella actually to do the sci-fi surgery to him that literally reduces him to what's framed as a lower life form. unserious

#the favourite and the lobster also have some troubling body and disability politics and i think this is a throughline with lanthimos #but this one is particularly egregious to me given the ending lol #poor things

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ruckis--rookie · 3 months

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Since this has become a hot topic as of recent, in regards to the statement "support other monster collecting games that aren't pokemon"...

pLEASE!!please!!! PLAY YO-KAI WATCH!!! I am BEGGING YOU PLAY YOKAI WATCH!! ITS SO GOOD.

It's like if you took a monster collector, but instead of little monsters you have foreign ghosts with their own afterlives, unique backstories, and personalities! I loathe when people accuse it of being just a poke-clone because it's so much more than that!

Pros include many hours of laughs, playtime, variety in characters and content. Like seriously if ya'll thought things like Pokemon BW and their sequels had a lot of content worth going back to, the 3rd game in the installment should you choose to go the completionist route is 300+ hours. I'm *still* trying to complete it. Also if fever dream, random, cheesy type humor is your taste you'll like this series. It's one of my favorite comfort games that makes my autism go 😊 while I do enjoy the English dub I recommend the sub, not only is it easier to find but a lot of the humor is swept under the rug and a looot of episodes weren't dubbed because of difficulty translating more mature jokes. The anime's humor can be very bipolar. Which leads me to my next point!

Cons include: very bipolar sense of humor. This is mostly in reference to the anime. It gets more riske the more the show progresses, but its also victim to some hella childish humor. Especially early on. Its not a stranger to potty humor. If it gets to crude or tiring I just skip the episode lmao. a lot of it is lost media and it is SO hard to find the anime episodes as well as physical games, especially the English translations. Because this series flopped so hard initially in the Americas a lot of the English stuff has been lost, and those that are found are... spensive... I was lucky enough to have gotten a physical cart of Yokai Watch 3 before it shot up in price. It's easily my most expensive game of... the last I checked... 600 dollars..... oh also if you don't like pikaclones too bad there's duplicate Yokai out the rear. And the fandom rn is incredibly miniscule. If you're a completionest this series might be a nightmare for you because of how obscenely hard some of the things are to collect. I hope you're blessed by RNGesus

So don't wait! See if you like Yokai Watch today! I need more people to talk to about this silly little series that brings me so much joy! DONT LEAVE ME IN HERE MICHAEL-

#yokai watch #ykw #youkai watch #yo kai watch #pokemon #monster collector #video games #ruckis borks

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pastelcheckereddreams · 4 months

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Sooo, I bought the Lotus Tower model kit and, of course, I went overboard making it as accurate as possible to the show. To no one's surprise, I'm guessing? 😅

For reference, this is what the completed model (sans horses) looks like without most* of my alterations:

*The awning material and decoration is my only alteration at this point, as I didn't like the fabric they included with the kit.

I had so much fun with this model! It is well-made, has moving parts, and is actually fairly easy to put together, with most parts just clicking into place. It even has furniture details inside!

Let me know what you think! Have you got the kit? How are you finding the building process to be? If you want to hear a more detailed review of it and see my progress shots and details of my own creative additions, click below:

First, unboxing!

This is how the box arrives. I ordered it from CPOP Universe and it arrived well-packaged and undamaged within a matter of weeks.

Along with the kit itself - which as you can see consists of a stack of laser-cut sheets coded from A-Q, and numbers detailing the specific parts - you receive a coaster (ceramic, backed with cork, and very pretty), little standees of difanghua, a letter styled after the ones difang recieve from Li Lianhua, and a replica of the booklet of yangzhouman techniques.

The process:

The first floor came together pretty quickly:

Glue is provided, but isn't necessary for a lot of the pieces, as I found the measurements for a lot of the joints to be pretty snug and able to hold together themselves. Glue is necessary for some parts, though, particularly for areas such as the step up to the rear sleeping area. Strong glue. Here is what the fist floor looks like:

Fitting on the ceiling turned out to be the hardest part of most of the build. All of the holes on the second floor had to line up with every joint on top of the walls and doors.

The next big step I encountered was a curiosity. How to make the rear wall work? There was a curious piece clearly meant to anchor the rope, and a round hole that - much like the doors - meant that this piece was supposed to rotate - and even lock. But I received no instructions on how to achieve that. I found this puzzle (which I like to think was an intentional challenge, given the gadget-orientated FDB) to be a fun challenge. So I won't show you the inner workings and spoil it, but I'll show you the working product:

Next was the rather fiddly job of creating the sail awning. I imagine this will be quite difficult for some as there's no clear indication of how to fix the material in place.

My instinct was to sew it as that is also a craft I have practice in, though granted not everyone who buys this kit will be as comfortable with a sewing needle. The two swatches of fabric provided is also quite prone to fraying, and is quite thick and canvas-like. So, knowing that the awning is a big feature of Lotus Tower, I decided I could do better:

On the left is the provided fabric, and on the right is my own material (an old blouse that I never wore, with patches dyed with my promarker pens).

After that, things should've been an easy home run, as all I had to do was affix the wheels to their axis points and put the horses together. However, quite unfortunately, one of the wheels hadn't been cut out in my kit. I had to cut it out myself with a coping saw, a Stanley knife and much patience😅

It came out looking rough, but nothing a little sanding and a touch up with my promarkers couldn't fix. I also eventually glued the wheel caps to the axis to prevent the wheels popping off every time I touched it, and they all still spin fine (minus the one I had to cut myself, that one's a little sticky😅). Then came the horses, and I was done!

Or so I thought. "Don't you think it looks a little too brown?" said my detail-obsessed brain. "We could do... more...."

And so I did.

My additions:

I used scraps coloured by my blue marker to create the beams of the house, and later coloured the fence posts red.

I made a second sail to hand under the stairs.

I created a second planter box (again, from the scraps and coloured with promarkers - two sets of flowers were included in the kit, so I could put one in each planter.)

And I even created a rain chain using old earring backs, jewellery findings and a chain, spray painted matte black and then painted blue-grey.

To colour the roofs, I likewise painted them a light blue-grey (/brown for Hulijing's kennel), then used a darker blue promarker to roughly add in texture.

I painted the weather vane, and used scraps to add in its missing two cardinal points.

And then finally, I made a winch for the rear wall! It's also easy to turn with the roof on, so I'm very pleased even though it's a little rough looking 😅

Had to gif my video clip because tumblr said boo no to more than one :(

And that's it, that's my latest build! I found this kit very fun, loved the process and seeing Lotus Tower come to life. I also loved adding in all the details to make it just that bit more accurate to the show. My only true criticisms are 1) small design oversights with the base wood colour being a tad too dark imo; the missing arms on the weather vane; and no second flowerbed (although I may be being a tad too pedantic about it 😅). 2) The fact that one of the wheels in my kit didn't get cut out properly (a quality check issue).

Obviously, I made the choice to use a different material than the fabric included so I can't speak to how satisfactory it is. However, if I were ever in the position to give IQiYi direct feedback, I'd suggest they include thinner fabric, and paint (or paint suggestions, as I know model paints aren't usually allowed through customs in these kinds of kits) for the roofs, because (by way of how they're constructed) they're just raw edges of the reinforced card parts - completely uncoloured, despite being a very visual element of the piece.

Thank you for reading this far lol Keep an eye out for more art and craft posts! (I have a Siji Manor set update coming shortly 👀)

#mysterious lotus casebook #lotus tower #莲花楼 #lian hua lou #model kit #model building #my builds #nikkidraws #iqiyi merch #mlc merch #mysterious lotus casebook merch #arts and crafts #li lianhua #li xiangyi #lian hua lou merch #lhl merch #now where do i keep this thing

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judithhhh · 4 months

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spanish (one-shot)

jude x gf! reader

summary : in which jude has a girlfriend who can't speak spanish at all, just like him

When Jude told you about his transfer to Real Madrid, you were totally thrilled at the thought of moving to Spain with him. The two of you looked for a nice home to install in and were fully ready to start this new chapter of your lives together. There was one thing that you forgot to think about though ; you and Jude were absolute shit at spanish. No matter how hard you tried to get used to the new language, no progress was made. This meant that the first few months in Madrid were desastrous apart from Jude's incredible debut at the club. Something simple as doing groceries or driving to a new place became a whole challenge for the both of you. Adding to that, there was the fact that the media and his fans found the fact that you were the worse spanish speakers La Liga had seen in a while absolutely hilarious. You couldn't even count how many clips of you two trying to talk with interviewers or with fans ended up on twitter.

Jude had gotten most of the backlash though. Not only his fans but also his teammates loved to make fun of him for his incompetence in the language. You, a much more private person, had not been seen on social media or out in public as much, meaning that the few clips of your disastrous attempts of speaking spanish were with Jude and not alone. You often made fun of Jude, saying that he was the most lost one, using the excuses that you had taken a few spanish classes back in secondary school so you were obviously better than him. This feeling that you could speak better quickly went away though, when an extremely amusing video of you, and only you, found its way on twitter and tiktok.

The video taking place at the Golden Boy awards, you were dressed in a beautiful black dress and was smiling widely at the camera. The interviewer first asked you questions in english about your opinion on Jude's accomplishments and more about the teams you liked ect... The interview took another turn when someone else came and started asking you questions in the unfamiliar language. Basing yourself on some classes that you took a good five years ago, you responded in the same language and, obviously, it was a shit show. Your sentences didn't add up, you used words in english or french and pretended like they were correct by saying them in a spanish accent, or you just said words, that everyone was pretty sure, never existed. At one moment, the camera panned to the spanish interviewer that looked like he was using every inches of his brain to not laugh in your face. That, of course, made Jude's fans laugh even harder.

You were not aware of this video, and of how shit your spanish was, until Jude came home, one day, yelling your name. You ran downstairs, happy to see him after his training but was greeted by the sight of your boyfriend in tears in front of his phone. You took a step closer to him and your worries went away when you realize he was actually crying laughing.

"What's so funny Jude?"

The boy tried to compose himself but could barely form a sentence in between his fits of laughter.

"You haven't seen the video?"

"What video..?"

He turned his phone around, showing you the interview. Mortified, you couldn't talk or move and just stood there flustered.

"Ain't no way... It can't be that bad babe what the fuck."

"Oh yeahhhh, it's that bad" The boy said looking everything but sorry for you. The fucker was enjoying this.

"You regret making fun of me now huh?"

"I don't regret shit Jude, leave me alone"

"Aww come onnn, don't be mad now"

You ignored him, walking up the stairs and sitting down on your shared bed. Jude was quick to follow you sitting against the headboard before putting you on his lap, facing him. His hands around your waist, he squeezed it as he began talking.

"You know it wasn't that horrible. You're English, people understand that you don't know spanish that well..."

"It doesn't matter baby. Did you see that oh my god, I was like a toddler was trying to speak."

"Well, maybe a little bit"

You groaned, burying your head in his shoulder as the boy started laughing histerically again. The two of you stayed there for a while until Jude composed himself. Taking a deep breath, he looked at you in the eyes before smiling softly.

"You know I love you right?"

"Yeah I know, I love you too"

"Even though you're shit at spanish"

"SHUT UP!"

#football #football imagine #jude bellingham #jude bellingham imagine #jude x reader #football x reader #jude bellingham x reader #hey jude :)

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raayllum · 23 days

Text

Anyway earlier this month I said I had a lot of feelings about how visual framing is used in Viren and Harrow's relationship so time to talk about it, i.e.

Harrow is almost always framed as being above Viren

Now, some of the meaning behind this is obvious. In spite of their longterm friendship, the fact that Harrow was king and had the final say, and Viren very much did not (and likely went from being Harrow's closest advisor to second fiddle with Sarai, and then back again) is something that Viren concerns himself a great deal with: "My whole life I've been chasing after things I didn't have. Status, influence, power" (4x02). Due to this difference in status, Viren's plans are suggestions, whereas Harrow's word is law, and Viren each time has to present his ideas accordingly, and the framing reflects that:

We see this desire to be close to Harrow and power more generally bleed over into other areas of Viren's life, such as his obsession with the mirror. Viren assumes the proximity to power begets or informs importance/worth, and that because "the mirror was kept closest to where [the Dragon King and Queen] slept, it must be important."

This of course is a mirror (ha) to his image of himself, in which, "I thought you were going to be something special, something important!" (2x02) and exactly why Harrow's words of, "I see the problem now: it's that you believe you are special, above the laws of this kingdom."

His happiest moment with Harrow then arguably, within the text of the show, is when Harrow invites him up to be on equal standing (and also why said portrait is what inspires Viren to offer himself up as Harrow's "equal" - amid a self-importance kink, of course). When they were 'brothers', and why the dissolution of their bond undoes this framing entirely.

It's not surprising, then, that his psyche reenacts the Happy moment with the portrait with an even sweeter, cherry on top of not just Harrow's forgiveness, but his love, acceptance, and admiration, in Viren's dark magic dreams.

Symbolized by Harrow lowering himself in order literally lift Viren up from a kneel, to standing as equals, and into a hug (+ acceptance and a mutual assurance of familial connection/importance).

(Bonus points for Harrow's sword being changed into Viren's staff immediately after their hug, btw.)

But just like 2x05 with the portrait, this moment of reconciliation and happiness even inside Viren's mind cannot last forever, as he's pushed and stumbles into an even lower place than on his knees, and this part of the nightmare is over.

This is also, of course, the most overt framing to display power and control vs feeling powerless or helpless.

That said, while Harrow above and Viren below framing wise is the most consistent framing we see for the two (besides just regular shots with things like pillars and titan hearts in between them) are the ones where Viren is framed above... and it's not usually good.

We see the Standing to Kneeling to be on level with Harrow to Standing again progression as Viren makes his case regarding Zym. Like before, I think this serves a few purposes.

Viren standing at first when Harrow does not reflects their attitudes, specifically Harrow's relief that it's finally over and Viren's suspicion that it's not

Viren then moves to be on Harrow's level and this communicates how he's pleading / trying to have Harrow understand his point of view by bringing himself down to Harrow's level. This, of course, is ironic, because by doing so, Viren is bringing Harrow down to his level in terms of morality

Viren straightening up again indicates assertiveness, being active rather than passive, and perpetuating a path that offers agency, safety, and control, horrible as it is.

And it works, since as we know, Harrow goes along with and agrees to it in spite of his reservations.

However, the most interesting flip of "Viren looking down at Harrow instead" has always been this one at Harrow's funeral in 1x04, as Viren is attempting to rush things along and take his former's friend throne. All the power is there within his grasp as he stares impassively into the fire, and yet it rings hollow and reminds him ("In his final hours, he called me brother") of precisely what lies he's telling not only the populace, but also himself.

Because the only way for Viren to look down on and at Harrow was for him to be dead.

#varrow #virrow #tdp viren #tdp harrow #king harrow #viren #analysis series #it's about the Framing #analysis #tdp meta #tdp #the dragon prince #parallels #multi #s1 #s2 #s3 #s5

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talkdutchtome · 8 months

Note

Charles Lecrerc

Childhood friends to lovers

I've Loved You Since Before I Knew What Love Was

Pairings- Charles Leclerc x Childhoodbestfriend!Reader

Warnings- Mentions of cheating, Angst with a happy ending, not proof-read

Notes- This is pretty short but let me know if you would like a part 2. This is also my first one-shot so i do apologise is if it isn't very good- my writing is a work in progress!

Masterlist Requests

“Charles can I come over?”

It was two am and you just had a huge argument with your on-and-off again boyfriend. He had come home drunk again with lipstick marks on his shirt and scratches all over his back; casing a screaming match between the two of you that eventually ended up with you leaving your shared apartment telling him that you were over and that he’d never see you again. You’d be back tomorrow of course, you knew that, he knew that, and Charles knew that too. Which is why, when he woke up in the middle of the night to the ringtone he set specially for you, he didn’t need to ask why you were calling or why you needed to come over. This situation had happened a thousand times over; you have an argument with your boyfriend, so you phone him up begging him to let you stay at his apartment, he lets you come over and cry on his shoulder, sleep in his bed all the while hiding the feelings he’s had for you for as long as he can remember.

Charles had been your best friend since you were both 9 years old. He remembers the day he met you like it was yesterday, he thinks about it almost every day. You were sat all alone on the school playground, having just moved to Monaco from the UK. Due to your lack of knowledge of the French language most of the children had ignored you all day, apart from one. A young Charles Leclerc approached you, sat on the bench next to you and started a conversation in albeit broken English. Despite the language barrier, something clicked that day between the two of you and you had been best friends ever since. From that day on you were both completely inseparable, to the point that everyone who knew you thought you were together. Even though everytime somebody asked what was between the two of you, you just laughed it off stating that you were best friends but nothing more, Charles couldn’t help but think that you would eventually end up together; how could you not he used to think to himself, this is how the story is supposed to end. That was until your boyfriend came into the picture and Charles had to give himself a reality check, had to constantly remind himself that it was you and somebody else now, that he would never get a chance to show you how good he could love you.

Not only did Charles have to accept that you and him were now never going to happen, but he also had to accept that now you had a boyfriend, you didn’t have the same time that you used to have for him. The races you attended became few and far between, you would cancel plans with him, telling him that you were busy with work but then he would open Instagram and see that you were out with your boyfriend. The worst thing about it all for Charles was knowing that your boyfriend didn’t care about you, he didn’t appreciate you. Charles had heard from your own mouth all of the horrible things he had done to you. No matter what Charles did, no matter how well he had treated you for 16 years; he still came second to somebody who disrespected you, who cheated on you endlessly. There was nothing Charles could ever do to be enough for you, nothing he could do to make you love him like he loved you.

That’s why, when he got your call, when he heard you rambling about all the horrible things your boyfriend had done this time, he wanted to tell you not to come, to tell you to go and find a different shoulder to cry on. But of course, he didn’t do that, because before you were the girl who he loved hopelessly, you were his best friend; and he knew that no matter what he would always be there when his best friend needed him. So, he let you know that the key to his apartment was under the door mat like usual and he was already pouring two glasses of your favorite wine (the same wine he always kept a stash of despite not particularly enjoying it himself).

“I just don’t know why he keeps doing this. He tells me all the time that he loves me and that I’m the only one he wants, but then he comes home smelling like someone else” the same words you had spoken so many times tumbling from your mouth as you sat on Charles’ couch. He listens to every word you say, although he doesn’t need to, having heard them so many times he could give the advice he gave to you in his sleep. The advice he gives you is genuine; he tells you that you deserve more than somebody who treats you like that. This conversation is like muscle memory to him at this point, until you say something you havent said in any of the other conversations before- “But who else would want me? Have you ever thought that I go back to him because this is all I can get, all I deserve” Charles is stunned, he immediately wants to tell you that he’s right here and he’s loved you since before he knew what love was; but he doesn’t. He doesn’t tell you that because your friendship, even in this completely dysfunctional state, means too much to him to lose. Instead, he tells you that he knows that there's someone out there for you, you just have to find them. “You're such a good friend” you tell him and despite the fact that he knows that’s all he is and all he’ll ever be, the words hit him like a ton of bricks.

The next morning Charles wakes up on the couch and even though he already knows that he’ll find when he walks into his bedroom, he still goes to check. Just like every other time this has happened, you had left whilst he was still sleeping, leaving behind only a note that thanked him for his friendship. There is no doubt in his mind that your boyfriend had phoned you early hours of the morning to apologize and beg for your forgiveness, there is also no doubt in his mind that you had accepted his apologies and had gone home to kiss and make up with him and even though he had been through this situation more times that he can count, each time he can feel his heartbreaking a little more.

The next time he sees you is a month later, in a circumstance so similar to the one before that it would be humorous if it wasn’t so infuriating. The one difference was the patience that Charles had for the situation; he had a bad week at work, first you said you were going to come to the race and then just didn’t turn up, then a Ferrari strategy error fucked up his race so badly he ended up finishing P14. But in spite of all that, he still sat up talking with you until almost four in the morning. He was tired, angry and just plain sick of hurting so when your phone rang and the screen lit up with a nauseating picture of you and your boyfriend kissing, indicating who was phoning you, Charles simply took your phone and declined the call. “Charles what the fuck?” you asked him half angry half confused.

“Okay you need to listen to me. You can go and call that prick in a minute if you really want to but first you need to listen to me. I don’t even know who you are anymore. We have been best friends since we were children and yet the only time, I see you now is when you need me to comfort you. I get phone calls from your mum asking if you're okay because you go months at a time without even sending her so much as a text message. You are constantly disrespecting yourself by going back to the same person no matter what he does, and I have loved you too hard and for too long to be able to sit and watch it for any longer. I just can’t do it any-” his rant trails off once he catches sight of your shocked face and it dawns on him what he’s just said, “You love me?” you ask him with a trembling voice. He looks at you, looking up at him with your doe eyes wide, holding back tears. He stumbles over his words, trying to find some way to back track, to find a way to back to before he told you how he felt and ruined your friendship forever. Now is the time, you realize, now is the time to tell him everything you had never told him. The time to tell him that you had been pining over him since you met each other and that for so long you truly thought you would both be together, but when he made it into Formula 1 and you saw the endless models who you knew he could have at the drop of a hat, you realized you never stood a chance and forced yourself to move on. Now is the time to tell him how you constantly went back to your boyfriend no matter how he treated you, because you were trying to force yourself not to love Charles. Now was the time to tell him that you had loved Charles since before you knew what love was. But when you opened your mouth, nothing came out, years after years of suppressing those feelings had made it, so you were physically unable to voice them, so you did the next best thing. You leant over and connected your lips with his, letting the fireworks that erupted when your mouth touched his do the talking.

#f1 x reader #f1 fanfic #formula 1 #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc #f1 imagine #f1 angst #f1 fics

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