#apparently it was power conserve day??? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

physalian · 26 days

Text

What No One Tells You About Writing #4 (100 Follower Special!)

Have you got any that deserve to be on these lists? Don’t be shy! Send ‘em over.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

*This list contains mentions of assault, #4

1. Zero cursing is better than censored cursing

I made the mistake in the early days of writing a self-censoring character, and every “curse” she said just took the teeth out of the rest of the statement. I’m talking gosh, darn, dang, etc, not world-specific idioms a la “scruffy nerf herder” or “dunderhead” instead of “dumbass”.

Look to any American TV show that so, so badly wants to use f*ck or sh*t but has to appease the sensitive conservatives who still somehow believe strong language is worse than graphic violence and horrifying psychological damage. For shame! Your characters can be angry without expletives, so rework your sentences to include equally damning insults that don’t resort to potty mouths if you’re concerned about ratings.

Or go full-throttle into the idioms of the world or the time period like Pirates of the Caribbean. Or just… don’t. There’s zero modern cursing in the Lord of the Rings adaptation and not a single sentence that censors itself. The dialogue is above vulgarity and feels more *fantastical* that way anyway.

2. “Yeah, you aren’t the target audience.”

It’s kind of hilarious seeing the range of reader reactions to two characters I intend to have a romantic relationship. Some will go “I ship it!” after the first page of them together… and another will go “wait, I thought they were just friends” up until they kiss. Sometimes you might be too subtle, other times it might be better to just accept that you can’t rewrite your entire book to please one naysayer.

When I’m pitched a fantasy adventure book that turns out to be a by-the-numbers romance where no one is allowed to be a peasant and every important character is royalty in some way, with a way cooler fantasy backdrop, I get severely disappointed. That doesn’t mean the book is bad, it just means I’m not the target audience.

3. There is no greater character sin than making them boring

Unless you live in the wacky world we find ourselves in where any flaws whatsoever are apparently harmful depictions of so-and-so and not at all written with things like ~nuance~. I will gush over your heinous villain committing atrocities because he’s *interesting*. I will not remember Bland Love Interest who’s a generic everyman with zero compelling or intriguing traits or flaws.

There’s another tumblr post out there that I cannot find that says something like this, and I believe the post goes “his crimes are fiction, my annoyance is real”. Swap annoyance for boredom and you get what I mean. So, I don’t care what your character does so long as they’re memorable. I will either root for their victory or their doom, but I do need *something* to root for.

4. The line between “gratuitous” and “respectful” is actually very thick

Less what no one tells *you* about writing and more what no one tells screenwriters. Y’all do realize you can write a character who experiences assault without actually writing the assault, right? Fade to black, have them mention it in their backstory, or have the horrific aftermath as they come to terms with it. An abrupt cut to this devastated character when it’s all over and they’re alone with themselves can be incredibly poignant and powerful. This goes with anything sensitive, especially if it’s not coming from experience.

If you want to write it or film it respectfully, romanticizing assault, for instance, is when it’s framed as if either character has earned or “deserves” it. If the narrative in any way argues that it's justified. The victim might have "earned" it for any of the BS reasons we use in the real world, or the perpetrator might've "earned" it because of temptation, desire, pressure to assert dominance, etc. Representation is important, but are you “representing” to shed light on a misunderstood and maligned topic, or are you doing it to satisfy a fetish or bias in yourself?

5. Don’t let your eyes get bigger than your stomach

Fantasy has no limitations, which means you can dig way deeper into the well of your worldbuilding than you realize, until you look up and realize you’re stuck down there. I have never seen a more obvious inevitable disaster looming than the pilot of GoT season 5. Why? Nobody has any plans. They’re all just led around by whatever side quest the writers throw them on, twiddling their thumbs until the writers deign to pull the trigger on the White Walkers.

To the point that what should be a major character can skip an entire season because his arc is meaningless. Everything in the last half of that show was one big “eventually” while the story toiled around in an ever-expanding cast of characters and set pieces (seriously, it’s hilarious how jarring the extended version of the theme music became compared to the pilot episode to fit all these locations).

When you have too many directionless characters, too many plot elements, too many ideas you want to fully mature and get their due spotlight and then somehow combine them all together for a common foe in the end, writing can get tedious and frustrating very quickly. Why, I imagine, the book series remains unfinished. Fantasy is great for being able to create such complex worlds, but don’t be the snake that eats its own tail trying too hard.

6. No one cares about your agenda if you insult them to push it

This deserves its own post but here we go. Peddling an agenda is a paradox: those who agree with you won’t need to be preached to, and those who you want to persuade will instead reject you further because they feel belittle and disrespected. This is why so many recent “strong female characters” fail on both sides of the aisle. Feminists see an annoying caricature of the movement they’re passionate about. Antifeminists see an insufferable, shallow, liberal mouthpiece when they just want to be entertained. You have failed both sides, congrats.

The answer? Write a strong, nuanced, well-developed character. Then make them a woman. I know this has been said before but this BS keeps happening so clearly the screenwriters aren’t listening. Entertain me first. Entertain me so well I don’t even realize I’m learning.

7. Today’s audiences won’t react the same way as tomorrow’s

Sometimes genres or tropes get oversaturated and need a few years to cool off before audiences are receptive to them again—teen dystopia, anyone?—that doesn’t mean your story is inherently bad because it’s unpopular (nor does it mean it’s amazing because it is popular).

You should always write the book you want to read, not the book that chases trends. I can pick up a well-written teen dystopia I’ve never read before and enjoy it. I can continue to ignore Divergent because it has nothing to say. Write the book you want to read, but then accept that you might make no money because no one else wants to read it, not because they think it’s bad. And, who knows? You might get a boom of chatter months or years down the line when readers stumble upon an uncut gem.

8. Your characters don’t age with you

Depending on how long you’ve been working on your world and what age you were when you started, the characters, concepts, morals, and story you set out to tell might no longer reflect who you want to be as an author when all is said and done. Writing can take years, some of which can be incredibly turbulent and life changing. I wrote the first draft of my first original novel in my freshman year of college. Those characters and that draft are now unrecognizable and has left a world I’ve poured my heart and soul into in limbo.

I’ve slowly creeped up my characters’ ages. My writing has matured dramatically. The themes I wanted to explore in the height of the 2016 election are just demoralizing now. That book was my therapeutic outlet and, as consequence, my characters sometimes reflect some awful moods and mindsets that I was in when writing them. But nothing in that world grows without me tending to it. It’s not alive. Despite all the work I’ve done, there’s still more to be done, maybe even restarting the plot from the ground up. When I think of what no one told me about writing, staring at characters designed by someone I’m not anymore is the hardest reality to accept.

—

If you think I missed something, check out parts 1-3 or toss your own hat into the ring. Give me romance tropes. Mystery, thriller, historical fiction, bildungsromans, memoires, children’s books, whatever you want! Give me stuff you wish you’d known before editing, publishing, marketing, and more.

Also, don’t forget to vote in the dialogue poll!

#writing advice #writing resources #writing tips #writing tools #writing a book #writing #writeblr #fantasy #sci fi #character design

249 notes · View notes

wilwheaton · 10 months

Quote

DeSantis was the heir apparent, but as I've said along, he is a limp, wet noodle who will wither in the national spotlight. Trump is the main attraction, and the base belongs to him until he's dead or in prison. That's the reality the GOP establishment and big, conservative money machine doesn't want to admit or acknowledge. Due to a rigged Supreme Court, the electoral college, and voter suppression, it is a possibility that Trump could still return to power even if he, yet again, loses the popular vote. For mainstream media, many are not built for this moment or made for this fight. They, unfortunately, can't adapt or evolve to the changing political reality where the GOP is no longer a normal political party. They continue to distort reality with a skewed, "both sides" lens that mainstreams extremism. Example: ABC News recently referred to extremist group Moms for Liberty as "joyful warriors" who are "fighting back." Lovely. It's like Groundhog's Day if it were remade as a dystopian horror movie. No one has learned the lessons of the past 8 years.

From John Birch to Donald Trump: How the GOP got "devoured by their own Frankenstein monster"

908 notes · View notes

avelera · 1 year

Text

"Nice is Different than Good" Character Interpretation: Hob Gadling as Kind of a Bastard

Ok, slightly controversial take on Hob Gadling Is Kind of a Bastard that I've been toying with. It runs counter to some wonderful let me be clear, amazing fanon I've seen in some fics, so this is much more me going, "Hey, here's a way to do it different that might work better in different stories fan writers might want to tell," and not to invalidate other takes or even to put forth that I think this is necessarily true of Hob in a meta sense, it's just shining a light on the text from a different direction, y'know?

Hob as Neutral Evil (credit to Winter on the big dreamling server for this concept!)

I'm obsessed with the idea that Hob is neutral evil on ye olde D&D alignment chart because it makes so much sense if the axis for evil is primarily based on selfishness.

Primary evidence? How casually he talks in 1489 about having done a bit of soldiering and banditry. Those jobs are about killing people. Maybe not all the time as a bandit, ideally, but even then it's about taking their stuff. There is absolutely zero remorse in Hob's tone about being a soldier and a bandit just because he's at his most wide-eyed innocent and has since picked up a trade.

Hob as Politically Conservative until at least 1789 but possibly until 1989

Hob as far as I can tell is a model of the white male middle class existence in England throughout what we define as more or less the "modern era". As far as I can tell, there's no indication at any point prior to 1789 that Hob rocked the boat or was at all out of step with the Powers That Be.

In general, I kind of see Hob as always just this side of the "wrong side of history" and I personally find it more interesting when that's where we find him. And not in a grand sense but in a "middle of the road" sense of just going along with the day to day accepted levels of harm and evil caused by societal momentum. Generally speaking, only a very small percentage of the population takes active part in moving the needle towards good at any given time on a variety causes, and I tend to see Hob is generally speaking outside of all those minorities of do-gooders, except when it comes to taking care of his immediate friends and family. Which is a pretty average place to be.

Indeed, when it comes to the Wat Tyler rebellion, it's my personal headcanon that Hob was more likely on the side of the soldiers putting DOWN the rebellion on behalf of the local lords, and unlikely to have been interested in or part of the cause of greater equality in England. The fact he's a soldier drinking with his mates openly in a tavern when people around him are talking about Wat Tyler and he's blithely ignoring the discussion is where I get that sense.

Indeed, I believe (though I don't know where to cite it, even in the English Civil Wars, Hob was canonically on the side of the monarchy. So jot that down as Hob being pro-monarchy.

While, yes, I believe post 1789 he learned to be less of a piece of shit about taking active part if horrific industrial-level cruelty, I don't see evidence he became a superhero after that. The one bit of "on the page"altruism we see from him is him flipping a coin to Lushing Lou and telling an obvious alcoholic to go get a drink so she stops pestering his friend by offering herself to him as a prostitute, something Hob seems entirely comfortable with.

In 1989 when Hob gets out of his sleek convertible, dressed like a stock trader, he uses the Financial Times to shield himself from the rain, a periodical that apparently was just lying around in his car. As tempting as it would be to say it's to somehow show off to Dream, he has no reason to believe Dream would come back to his car so more likely, it's just something for himself.

All of these put together show me on the page that Hob stayed pretty fixated on making money even after deciding and coming to regret being part of the "shipping business".

And to be clear, we don't actually know when Hob quit the shipping business. Personally, I like to think he did it right after Dream asked, but that's a romantic take and deliberately so. Hob having the opinion by 1889 that slavery is wrong is not necessarily a progressive take by then. Regardless, even if in 1789 he learned it was wrong, that still puts him just slightly ahead of the curve, philosophically speaking.

If we pull in comic canon we do know Hob was ahead of the curve on feminism by 1912 in Hob's Leviathan but again, women would get the right to vote by 1918/1928 in England after the issue had been discussed for at least a century (keep in mind, male Catholics couldn't vote in England until the early 1800s) so again this puts him as palatable to modern readers but not necessary terribly ahead of the curve.

Now, let me also be clear, where Hob is at in 2022 is anyone's guess. Personally I think Dream not showing up in 1989 was a second wakeup call for Hob. If he'd drifted back towards selfish hedonism by 1989, as his whole vibe suggests, he might very well have looked in the mirror and thought, "What if this is why my stranger stayed away?"

We know he becomes a teacher. That probably would go a long way towards changing his politics. We know he's a history teacher, so now he's got the long view. He's spending time in academia, which tends to lean left. My point is, Hob in 2022 is anyone guess and I think there's a lot of evidence and word of god evidence that he's become a Good Person by then, but I also think it's the 1989 meeting that jumpstarted him being Good and not just Nice. Because I do think Hob throughout all these periods of being morally a bastard was always good to the people close to him in his life. I think he was a good friend and a good husband and would have been a good friend to Dream had he allowed it. And that's what I enjoy most, that he could be both of those things, Nice and Not Good.

Hob as non-religious

I admit, this one is very near and dear to my heart for personal reasons of identifying as an atheist when it comes to Christianity and being a lifelong skeptic of Catholicism for the brief time I was technically a member of that organization (all of which while I was a minor). To be clear there is just as much evidence to say Hob is any number of religious alignments as there is that he has none. It's a totally personal choice by any author, I'm just outlining my evidence for why I write him as effectively an atheist.

The Black Death is considered the period that broke the spine of the Catholic church as a monolith in Europe. All the good priests who did their duty taking care of people and giving last rites died leaving only the ones who fled or were young, with tons of money given to the church because of all the rampant death.

Hob would have been born into an era that was particularly rife with both fanaticism and anti-church sentiment. There was a lot of evidence abounding that being a good Christian just got you killed.

Given Hob is a soldier drinking with his mates 1389, I don't see much evidence of him being particularly devout there. No less so in 1489, by the way. Not saying there's evidence against it, just that there's no evidence for it and indeed, societally there's justification for him to not be devout given the century he was born.

1589 I'd say we've got some evidence Hob isn't devout: he seems unperturbed by King Henry's ransacking of the monasteries. Politically speaking, if Hob is a New Man, he might have even benefited from that ransacking personally. In my personal view, Hob is an opportunist and most likely converted to Church of England at the earliest possible opportunity to curry favor with the Powers that Be. I don't personally see him as someone who would bother pretending to be Protestant while continuing to practice Catholicism, because:

Why would Hob bother to be faithful at all? He can't die. The #1 reason to be devout is to avoid Hell or get into Heaven. Hob has clearly chosen the secular world as the only Heaven he cares about. He says that his current life is what, "He once thought Heaven would be like" and it's a very secular vision of good food and safe streets. He does not appear to be pining at all for any spiritual version of Heaven and indeed, speaks of Heaven as a dream only in the past tense.

Personally, by 1689, I think Hob has plenty of reasons to hate God after what he's suffered and the fact he's still not interested in dying to me seems a pretty strong indication that he does not hold romantic views of the afterlife.

Finally, for 1789 to the present, there was absolutely a class of gentleman who were progress minded, obsessed with technology and the Age of Reason. Many American Founding Fathers were self-proclaimed deists, basically a safe form of atheism that said eh, yes God exists and is out there and we owe him some deference, but he doesn't impact day to day life and we can safely ignore him most of the time. Personally, and this is pure headcanon, I put Hob in that group cheerfully ignoring religion and never looking back because he's more interested in the new technologies of the day and not the crusty old church.

We also know, canonically, that at least in 1789, Hob does not consider himself Jewish.

And of course, we can't forget: Hob has evidence that the Christian cosmology is wrong, somehow, given his stranger and his own immortality.

Frankly, given that Hob appears on the page to be a hedonist with no fear of dying, it's interesting to speculate on what his moral boundaries would be at all coming from a world where Heaven and Hell were the primary means of moral social control. It is possible to speculate that Hob could have gone completely off the rails as far as worrying about his soul for a bit there, other than thinking he's already sold it, which could go either way as far as trying to redeem himself but again, he speaks casually of being a soldier and a bandit, so it doesn't sound like if he worried about his soul being sold already, he thought there was anything that could be done to redeem it.

#the sandman #sandman meta #hob gadling #just a collection of some headcanons I have #sometimes I use these in fic #sometimes i don't!#just stuff to think about

727 notes · View notes

abbonation · 7 months

Text

Kinktober Day #9, Din Djarin

WOOOOOO!!!! The largely uninspired Abbo returns with a 2.3k cockwarming fic 😍😍 literally unheard of! Any whoosies, yeah. It's hot, it's explicit, what else do we want from Kinktober, anyway?

Warnings/tags: 18+ ONLY!!! Cockwarming, AFAB!Fem!Reader with little (Or a lot ;) of chub <3) the crest DIDN'T DIE,

He had tried to restrain himself, he really had, but when he watched your eyes as you lowered your robes down your shoulders and onto the cold floor of his ship, he knew this wouldn’t last long.

You’d traveled in the Crest with him while he was without Grogu and then became somewhat of a caretaker to him when he returned from training with Luke. You had seen the very near destruction of Crest on Tython and, now, you were all back together again; living and traveling through space on the never-ending journey that was his life.

Through the nearly two years of close proximity, you had grown close. He knew your quirks and you had grown accustomed to his- and, despite his best efforts, he had developed rather intense feelings for you. Never acted upon, never spoken of but you had to know. By the way your look lingered on him both in and out of battle. By the way your head turned when he talked with others, it felt like you were two magnets hovering against the others’ pull, never close enough to click together.

Then, you encountered a beast that the local planet-dwellers later told you was called a Boma. He knew you shouldn’t have gone separately but he really needed some time to be alone and splitting up under the guise of catching your quarry faster would allow him time to do what he needed to keep his sanity. You agreed to meet back at the Crest before sundown and use the comms only when necessary to conserve their power- however, when he hadn’t heard from you and started to notice the darkening sky, he worried.

“Hey- you okay? On your way to the Crest yet?”

"—"

After a few moments of silence, he tries again, “Are you there? It’s gonna be really dark here really soon.”

A shrill scratching sound chirps through the speaker on the comm and, instantly, he knows he needs to find you. When he does though, after racing back to the Crest and turning around to follow your trail instead of his, it’s been nearly an hour and he finds you walking towards him, pulling behind you a creature nearly the size of yourself.

He jogs over shouting, “What the hell happened to you?”

“Well, I guess I can tell you the whole tale. If you’ll carry this thing the rest of the way,” You smile and shrug up at him and he feels his stomach clench as he realizes just how anxious he’d been to find you, and how much better he feels now that you’re here.

“So it just ran up to your legs, smelled your cape, and started attacking?”

“That’s what I said, right?” You deadpan.

“Why would it wait to attack you until it could smell you?”

“Mando, I don’t know, can we just get some food and get back to the ship, my ankle fucking hurts from where I fell.”

In the small town is where you learned of the nature of these “Boma” . They were just your run of the mill beast, but apparently they had a real liking for eating Mandalorians.

“Well, at least I know it wasn’t my stench that he didn’t like,” you joked to him over your dinner.

“We’d better get back though, I’m… really tired.” You had this look in your eye though. One like you weren’t very tired at all. One like how you look right after battle.

So you thanked the bartender and made your way back to the Crest, confirming Grogu’s safety in his pram and fixing a couple glasses of Ne'tra gal for you and your Mando. He swallowed and tried to shove down the one thought in his brain since dinner. You smelled like him.

“Thanks for trying to save me. Even if I didn’t need your help.” You hand over his glass and sit on a crate across from him in the hold.

“I just didn’t hear you respond to my comm, I was worried,” He looks at the bottom of his cup.

“Yeah well, this bad boy here had my back,” You lightly tap your thigh a couple times where your knife sheath lies and his eyes zero in on the spot as he moves up his helm slightly to sip.

“I- know you can handle yourself. I just-” He trails off.

“You just what?”

“.. I just want you to be- protected.. From everything.”

You smile gently at his visor and he can feel his cheeks heating at your stare.

“You know that’s not possible, Din.”

He wishes he could show you the power you hold over him. He has to look away from your eyes when you say his name.

“Have I,” You swallow and steel yourself, “Have I ever shown you any of my scars, Mando?”

He looks up again, your face looks different now. You look more.. hungry?

The ale in your blood and food in your belly fuels your courage and you stand from your crate, walking over to stand in front of the Mandalorian. You place your hands on his shoulders and bend your knee up and place your foot on the ledge of the crate he sits on, inches from where his dick is imprinted into the fabric of his flight suit.

He says your name and looks up at your face, “I- what are you-”

“Do you want to see, Din?”

He realizes then, you feel it too. He’s been so blind and his head swims at the confirmation of this.

“Yes, show me.. please,” He places a gloved hand at your ankle under the hem of your robe and begins moving it up your calf.

You press on his shoulder to stop his hand and raise the hem of your robes up to right above your knee, down the skin right in front of his visor runs a jagged line of skin thicker than the rest.

“This one I received when I killed a man who was trying to stop me from leaving his bed.” Din swallows and looks at your face, he’s speechless.

You move your hands to pull the hem higher and stop again, right above your knife sheath, so that the fabric is caught in the crux where your thigh meets your hip and is tucked under your belly.

“These are from a cat on my home planet,” What looks like little claw marks blossom from the side of your thigh. He moves his thumb up to brush over them, and you smile at the memory of your friend from home.

“And, Din,” You step down from the crate and stand between his open legs. He’s aching to touch you now. Running his palms up and down his thighs to avoid doing something he’d regret. You move your fingers up to the buttons at your neck that fasten the robe to your body and unbutton each one carefully, taking deep breaths, “These will be a different type of scar. Ones on the inside, ones I won’t soon forget.” You drop your robe to reveal your body to him, your underwear the only remaining coverage. Din sucks in an audible breath from the vocoder and stands from his spot.

He chokes out your name, backing you over to the wall next to his sleeping quarters. “Do you know what you’re doing? Do you want this? If we do this, things will be different.”

“I know that- I want them to be,” You lean up to whisper into his ear. “You think I can’t hear you in your bed nearly every night. Rubbing yourself raw at the thought of me- of this?” You place your hand where his thighs join and he buckles, dropping his helmet down to your own shoulder and thrusting his hips into your palm. You reach your other hand from where it toys with the curls that peek out from under his helmet to cup his ass, pushing his hips forward into you.

“Please,” He moans.

You turn to his bed and pull yourself inside, moving backward into the dark space. “You liked that the creature smelled you on me, huh?” You chide him. He stands at the threshold as if deciding whether to make the leap. To change his life forever.

“You wanted to come save me from it yourself so something would know I belong to you, right?” He leans forward into his room, hands resting on the top wall, tent in his pants more than obvious now.

“Or were you just too busy jacking that cock in the forest to notice anything?”

The choice is out of his hands now, he’s not acting of his own volition. He kicks off his boots and crawls in above you, quickly closing the door and locking you both into silent darkness.

When he continues to say nothing even as you hear the ruffling of clothes and sheets as he arranges himself you whisper out, “Din?”

From mere inches above you, you feel his breath fan down on your face and realize he’s removed his helmet, his hand moves over your belly, between the space where your breasts splay out and up to cup your throat. “Yes?”

You shudder at his unfiltered speech. “Do you- are you-” Suddenly you’re the one at a loss for words when he leans his forehead to rest on yours, and runs the hand that was holding you down your side to your thigh.

“I did like that you smelled like me. I really liked it.” He punctuates his words with a thrust into your belly.

“I want to lay you in this bed and fuck you every day so that you never stop smelling like me.” Another thrust. “Would you like that, sweet girl? Would you like to lay here and be my cock sleeve? Just for me to use whenever I want?” You’ve never heard someone speak to you like this, much less the ever-reserved Mandalorian, you’re shocked into silence by his tongue and he continues.

He moves your legs to open for him and you reach down to stroke over his thighs where he kneels above you. He groans at your touch, “So sensitive, Din. C’mere.” He moves down to lay his lips on yours, he gets more comfortable the longer you lick and nip at each other, and he keens when you run your hands up over his scalp and give his hair a very light tug,

“Oh, please, do that again, mesh’la,” You continue running your fingers through his hair and move to lick up the column up his throat. His noises are free-flowing now, heavy breathing floating through the air in his bunk.

He lifts his head to make room between you and presses his crotch into your clothed pussy. You can feel your arousal making your underwear slick against your entrance, and clench to thrust up against his stiff dick.

“Fuck, that's- that’s perfect, sweet girl.” He does it again, setting you into a rhythm of humping while he rubs over your tits, rubbing your nipples between his fingers when you show him that’s what you like.

“Fuck Din, you feel so good,” You moan out to him and his hips stutter, “I’ll cum if we don’t stop, I- want you to feel good too-” So you slow your movements and move to push down your underwear, “Take off your pants Din, we’re gonna start slow, okay?”

You maneuver to be on top and line his cock up at your puffy entrance. “Do you feel that, Din? How, mmm, how wet you’ve made me?”

“Y-yes, I’m so hard for you,” He moans out.

You rub your clit with his tip a few times and notch his head just inside “I don’t wanna come yet-” he huffs into your ear.

“You won’t, I’m gonna slip down and then we’re gonna get you used to me, okay?”

A deep rumble leaves him when you start to slide down his thick length, stopping when your clit rubs into his pubic hair. “Jesus, Din- you’re.. fuckin’ big” You flutter around him unintentionally and he thrusts against you, holding onto your lush hips.

You lay down over him and he roves his hands over your back, resting one against the back of your head and the other ghosting over your ass.

“Can we just stay like this for a minute?” He asks.

“We can do this as long as you need,” You tell him, reveling in the way his pubic bone bumps against the hood of your clit. He stretches your walls deep, which you can’t say you didn’t expect- but to know you were right feels good. You sit up some when he pulls his feet up the cot, giving you room to lean back against the top of his thighs, and, with him still inside you ghost your fingers down over your breasts and belly to tease over your cunt.

“Are you touching yourself?” Din questions.

You clench at his voice, “Yes, Din. I’m– gonna rub my clit until I come around your cock and then you’re gonna come too, okay?” Your voice is much more high pitched and your usual level-headedness has obviously gone.

“Fuck, I wish I could see you, your tits bouncing in my face,” you feel his cock twitch inside you and rub two fingers around your clit, working up speed.

“You wanna watch my face when I cum, huh, Din? Wanna see me give in to your pleasure?”

“Ngh fuck yes, that's all I want, my sweet girl, my mesh’la.” He’s grasping at the sheets of his cot now, desperately thrusting up into your cunt.

“Mm, fuck, are you ready?” You whine out as you feel your walls start to flutter from the stimulation, “Are you ready to come for me, sweet boy?”

“Oh fuuuck, yes I’m gonna- I’m-” And he does. He pushes your hips down onto his cock to keep you still as he empties inside you, limply thrusting for another few seconds as you come down.

You move to get off his cock and he holds you still again, so you opt to just lay back down on his chest resting your face next to his.

“Can we just.. stay like this for a while?” You can hear the smile in his question.

#din djarin x reader #din djarin x reader smut #din djarin one shot #din djarin #the mandalorian x reader #the mandaloria/reader #one shot #kinktober #mandalorian smut #din djarin smut #x reader fanfic #reader insert #plus size reader #chubby reader #spankbank

199 notes · View notes

contemplatingoutlander · 10 months

Text

This is an important article by Linda Greenhouse, writing in The New York Times. Therefore, the link above is a gift 🎁 link, so anyone can read the article, even if they don't subscribe to the Times.

Below are some excerpts from the article:

To understand today’s Supreme Court, to see it whole, demands a longer timeline. To show why, I offer a thought experiment. Suppose a modern Rip Van Winkle went to sleep in September 2005 and didn’t wake up until last week. Such a person would awaken in a profoundly different constitutional world, a world transformed, term by term and case by case, at the Supreme Court’s hand. To appreciate that transformation’s full dimension, consider the robust conservative wish list that greeted the new chief justice 18 years ago: Overturn Roe v. Wade. Reinterpret the Second Amendment to make private gun ownership a constitutional right. Eliminate race-based affirmative action in university admissions. Elevate the place of religion across the legal landscape. Curb the regulatory power of federal agencies. [...} That was how the world looked on Sept. 29, 2005, when Chief Justice Roberts took the oath of office, less than a month after the death of his mentor, Chief Justice Rehnquist. And this year? By the time the sun set on June 30, the term’s final day, every goal on the conservative wish list had been achieved. All of it. To miss that remarkable fact is to miss the story of the Roberts court. It’s worth reviewing how the court accomplished each of the goals. It deployed a variety of tools and strategies. Precedents that stood in the way were either repudiated outright, as the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision did last year to Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, or were simply rendered irrelevant — abandoned, in the odd euphemism the court has taken to using. In its affirmative action decision declaring race-conscious university admissions to be unconstitutional, Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion did not overturn the 2003 Grutter decision explicitly. But Justice Thomas was certainly correct in his concurring opinion when he wrote that it was “clear that Grutter is, for all intents and purposes, overruled.” Likewise, the court has not formally overruled its Chevron decision. Its administrative-law decisions have just stopped citing that 1984 precedent as authority. The justices have simply replaced Chevron’s rule of judicial deference with its polar opposite, a new rule that goes by the name of the major questions doctrine. Under this doctrine, the court will uphold an agency’s regulatory action on a major question only if Congress’s grant of authority to the agency on the particular issue was explicit. Deference, in other words, is now the exception, no longer the rule. But how to tell a major question from an ordinary one? No surprise there: The court itself will decide. [...] My focus here on what these past 18 years have achieved has been on the court itself. But of course, the Supreme Court doesn’t stand alone. Powerful social and political movements swirl around it, carefully cultivating cases and serving them up to justices who themselves were propelled to their positions of great power by those movements. The Supreme Court now is this country’s ultimate political prize. That may not be apparent on a day-to-day or even a term-by-term basis. But from the perspective of 18 years, that conclusion is as unavoidable as it is frightening.

#us supreme court #18 years of the roberts' court #chief justice john roberts #affirmative action #second amendment #separation of church and state #regulatory agencies #women's reproductive health #linda greenhouse #the new york times #gift link

133 notes · View notes

wangxianficrecs · 5 months

Text

The Architecture of Heartbreaks by tigersugargirl

The Architecture of Heartbreaks

by tigersugargirl

T, WIP, 5k, Wangxian

Summary: In the span of days, the foundations of Wei Wuxian's bright, idyllic life crumbles : His aunt discovers that he's dating a boy and disowns him for shaming the conservative Jiang family, and he finds out that Lan Wangji, the guy he's dating, has only been dating him as part of a bet. Left adrift, Wei Wuxian nevertheless tries to slowly rebuild his life, with the help of his friends and the kindly Uncle who shares his love for historical buildings. It's nothing grand, but he thinks he's on his way to building a small, warm home for himself in the world. But when Lan Wangji is finally forced to face his feelings for Wei Wuxian and comes knocking on that painstakingly built home, will Wei Wuxian let him back in? Kay's comments: This story hasn't been updated in a hot minute, but it shouldn't deter you from reading it. I already love the story it tells. In which, Wei Wuxian's life falls apart in one day. He gets kicked out by Madam Yu after it came out that he dated Lan Zhan and it's also revealed that Lan Zhan apparently only dated him as part of a bet. However, there are still people who have Wei Wuxian's back. Chief among them He Su (and I love, love, love it when he appears in stories, he's a chronically forgotten character) and Lan Qiren (who doesn't know that the guy who broke Wei Wuxian's heart is his nephew rip). Excerpt: And three months ago, Lan Wangji told him he loved him, and Wei Wuxian had thought that like that, his life was just perfect. Now, three months later, Wei Wuxian is chased out of his own home - Someone had seen him with Lan Zhan and told Madam Yu, and he is given barely an hour to pack his things. A bad influence, she screams. An immoral wretch like you, just like your mother. Now, three months later, Wei Wuxian stands in the middle of a room of laughing, drunken people as Meng Yao calmly, almost sweetly, congratulates a drunken Lan Zhan for upholding the end of his bet for three months : Dating the campus flirt Wei Wuxian. Now, three months later, the foundations of Wei Wuxian's life cracks and crumbles - spider-like cracks creeping through the walls of his heart, shattering his windows and buckling his columns. He runs past laughing, jeering people, through the open doors, and doesn't look back.

pov alternating, modern setting, modern no powers, homophobia, college/university, fake/pretend relationship, break up, implied/referenced abuse, rich lan wangji, student lan wangji, student wei wuxian, volunteer wei wuxian, families of choice, good uncle lan qiren, healing

~*~

(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)

60 notes · View notes

ghostofskywalker · 7 months

Text

Trapped, Cold, And Annoyed: Another Mission With Anakin

Anakin Skywalker/Reader

Fictober Day 8 of 31

Words: 1,020

Summary: You would think that clearly traveling in a diplomat's vessel would grant you safe passage through the galaxy. But apparently that wasn't the case, and now you're stuck in a snowy wasteland with a Jedi you can't stand.

Anakin Skywalker Masterlist

"This is all your fault!" Your annoyance echoed through the ship, making your voice seem louder and more powerful than it actually was. It had been hours at this point, and you were no closer to putting the ship back in hyperspace, let alone closer to your home planet.

But the unfortunate side effect of that metallic echo was that your companion's voice was also amplified. "How was I supposed to know that other ship was there?"

"Aren't you supposed to have the kriffing Force or something?"

"I'm guessing someone else on that ship did too, or I would have been able to sense them!"

After a frustrated sigh, you stomped your way to the cockpit of the ship, where Anakin Skywalker was fiddling with something on the control panel. The dashboard was completely dark, and you could see a wall of snow outside as it crept up and slowly consumed the ship, the impact so much more intense due to the way that you had slammed into the surface of the planet at breakneck speeds. This was supposed to be an easy journey, because no one would ever dare attack a diplomat's vessel, especially when there was a Jedi on board. Right?

But of course, you had to be paired with the one Jedi who you couldn't stand, the one Jedi who always manages to find trouble in the galaxy, and then he goes and crashes the ship. You were already expecting things to just worse as time went on, just because that's how much the galaxy seemed to hate you right now.

You had spent a good bit of time on board his flagship and with his troops, and while you were immensely fond of the 501st, you could not say the same thing about their general. Anakin Skywalker may be (unfairly) good-looking, but you and him had never gotten along. He had an inflated ego with subpar abilities, and you had no problem calling him out when he suggested things that were crazy or outlandish. It was only thanks to his Captain's ideas that you were able to successfully deliver aid to several planets that needed it this time around, so you were understandably upset when you found out that it would be him that would provide security for your transport back home.

You had bitterly thought things would go sideways when you were first briefed about the assignment, and you had been right. Another hour passed, and there was still no sign that the ship was any closer to being fixed than it was when you first crashed. And as the suns on this snowy planet began to set, you were starting to grow chillier and more tired by the moment.

You could hear footsteps approach where you were camped out on the opposite side of the ship, and then Anakin's voice broke your train of thought. "I have good news and bad news."

You looked up at him. "The good news better be that we're leaving this Maker-forsaken planet within the next hour."

Silence.

You knew what that meant.

"The earliest we can leave is tomorrow morning," he said. "We need to wait for the battery on the temperature system to finish charging."

You nodded. "So what's the bad news?"

"In order to make sure neither of us are dead before we are able to leave, we need to conserve body heat."

Now it was your turn to be silent. If he meant what you think he meant, and you were pretty sure there was only one way to take his statement, you'd have to cuddle up with the man you couldn't stand from the moment you met him, and you did not want to do that. "Are you sure there's no other way?" you asked, trying not to annoy him any further. You did want to live, and if that meant doing something you'd rather not think about, then so be it.

"If there was I wouldn't be suggesting this right now," he said, clearly a little bit annoyed that you even asked.

So here you were, curling up into a ball on the ship's cot, with the only blanket on board covering both you and Anakin. You were just grateful that the cot was built for multiple people, and that the two of you fit (fairly comfortably) on it. To be clear, that still meant that this whole situation was incredibly uncomfortable, but at least you weren't hanging off the side of the bed.

You tried not to think about the man laying next to you as you drifted off to sleep, but it was nearly impossible to ignore. It certainly didn't help that he was like a human furnace, and the chill was really starting to set in your bones. Several times you caught yourself instinctively moving closer to him, and you had to pull yourself back. You weren't that desperate yet.

He was fast asleep, clearly not having the same moral quandary that you were. At one point you felt his arm across your body, and it seemed that he was trying to nuzzle closer. If you were anywhere else right now, you might have slapped his hand away and sent a cutting remark to really drive home your opinion, but this time you couldn't bear to ruin the moment. Besides, he really did help warm you up.

Part of you hoped that when you woke up and resumed your journey tomorrow morning, that things would be at least slightly better between you. Because as much as you traded insults and you called him unimpressive, he was still a pretty good Jedi, and he clearly cared about his troops and friends. You hoped that eventually the two of you could move past the way you acted right now, no matter how unlikely it seemed that he would ever feel anything but contempt for you.

In the last few moments before you truly drifted off the sleep, you could have sworn you heard him whisper your name, but you couldn't tell for sure.

Besides, you were too tired to really register it.

- the end -

i no longer have a taglist! if you're interested in being notified when i post, you can follow my library blog @ghostofskywalker-library and turn on notifications!

#ghostofskywalker.fictober #anakin skywalker #anakin skywalker x reader #anakin skywalker x you #anakin skywalker fanfiction #star wars x reader #starwarsficnetwork #anakin skywalker x gender neutral reader

63 notes · View notes

creature-wizard · 11 months

Text

Hey folks, dunno who needs to hear it, but all of this stuff about mind control and creating alters via gemstone programming, metal programming, theta programming, and whatnot comes from a woman who calls herself Svali, who apparently started putting this stuff out there back around 2000 or so - it's archived on bibliotecapleyades.net:

Svali is yet another fraudster in the vein of people like Mike Warnke, Lauren Stratford, and Bill Schnoebelen. She claims to be a former Illuminati programmer, and pushes the same "Satanists are running the world, only the power of Conservative Jesus can stop them" narrative as all the rest. These days she's running a blog where, in addition to her global Satanic conspiracy garbage, she's also pushing stuff like antivax conspiracy theories.

(EDIT: After doing more research, I've discovered that Svali got a lot of her ideas from Cisco Wheeler and Fritz Springmeier, whose claims are even more ridiculous than Svali's - these people claim autism is caused by SRA, claim genetic memory is a thing, and claim that men are naturally predisposed to sadistic behavior whereas women are not, and many other ridiculous things. So yeah, it goes back a little ways, but it's clowns all the way down.)

#satanic panic #sra #satanic ritual abuse #svali #mind control #conspiracy theories #conspiracism #conspiracy theorists #programming #alter programming

91 notes · View notes

zvaigzdelasas · 10 months

Text

Finland's economy minister, Vilhelm Junnila, has resigned his post after sustained allegations of ties to right-wing extremists as well as a series of distasteful Nazi jokes. Junnila is a member of the anti-immigrant Finns Party, which is part of Finland's new four-party center-right ruling coalition. Though he survived a vote of no-confidence called by opposition politicians in Finland's Parliament on June 28, Junnila announced he was stepping down Friday, saying, "For the continuation of the government and the reputation of Finland, I see that it is impossible for me to continue as a minister in a satisfactory way." Junnila had come under fire for, among other things, a public speech that he had given in 2019 related to a far-right memorial in the western Finnish town of Turku. He was also criticized for repeated Nazi jokes.

The populist apparently joked with a fellow Finns Party politician in a campaign speech on March 10, calling his candidate number — 88 — a good omen. "First of all, congratulations for the excellent candidate number. I know it's a winning card. Obviously, this '88' refers to two H letters which we won't say more about."[...]

The bloc, which holds 108 of parliament's 200 seats, took power on June 20. Though it seems likely Junnila will quickly be replaced, some observers have raised questions as to the coalition's viability. Junnila's resignation makes him the shortest-serving minister in Finnish politics. That distinction had previously been held by Karl Lennart Oesch, a military general who served as Finland's interior minister for 12 days in 1932.

30 Jun 23

The Finns Party said in a statement that Wille Rydman, 37, was chosen “unanimously” for the post. [...]

In early January, however, Rydman joined the nationalist Finns Party after he was ousted from the NCP last year because of allegations of harassment and improper relationships with young women and teenage girls. The case led to a police investigation, and he was later cleared of suspicion of misconduct.[...]

President Sauli Niinistö will formally appoint Rydman on Thursday.[...] Orpo’s four-party coalition government, described by political analysts as Finland’s most conservative Cabinet since World War II, was sworn in on June 20.

5 Jul 23

71 notes · View notes

scary-grace · 6 months

Text

Love Like Ghosts (Chapter 14) -- a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

You knew the empty house in a quiet neighborhood was too good to be true, but you were so desperate to get out of your tiny apartment that you didn't care, and now you find yourself sharing space with something inhuman and immensely powerful. As you struggle to coexist with a ghost whose intentions you're unsure of, you find yourself drawn unwillingly into the upside-down world of spirits and conjurers, and becoming part of a neighborhood whose existence depends on your house staying exactly as it is, forever. But ghosts can change, just like people can. And as your feelings and your ghost's become more complex and intertwined, everything else begins to crumble. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16

Chapter 14

There’s something wrong with your house, but you knew that when you bought it. Right now, your house, like everybody else’s, is a total mess. Your fence is down, but Keigo’s yard is scorched lifeless, and the front façade of Aizawa’s house looks like a whole construction crew took a wrecking ball to it. You’ve all been fighting with your insurance companies to make them pay to fix the damage, which involves coming up with a reason for the damages that’s not a bunch of ghosts fighting to the death. Weirdly enough, it’s Tomura who comes up with the explanation: A tornado. The insurance companies buy it, given the reports of unexpectedly high winds that swept over your side of town that night. Sort of. Enough that you all get the repair work at least partially paid for.

You can’t skip work, and you don’t want people messing with the house while you’re not there, so Magne comes over to observe the workers from just outside the property line. The other option was Tomura materializing and staying that way for the duration of the repair, and Tomura’s back to conserving power for when you get home. Now that he knows you like hanging out with him, he’s extremely hard to put off.

The repairs aren’t the only new thing in the neighborhood. The neighborhood’s also got three new residents – Natsu, Nemuri, and the Shirakumo-ghost hybrid that’s going variously by Oboro (their human name) and Kurogiri (their name as a ghost). Natsu hangs out in Keigo’s house, while Nemuri and Oboro live with Aizawa and Hizashi. You’ve got no idea how Aizawa and Shinsou cope with being completely outnumbered by ghosts. The original suggestion was for Kurogiri to stay with you and Tomura, but Tomura rejected that at lightning speed, for reasons he wouldn’t share but were apparently clear to every last ghost in the neighborhood. It’s beyond embarrassing, but you’re getting used to it.

What you’re not used to is the feeling you get when you and Tomura hook up, the one that’s pleased with this but wants the rest, too. The two of you haven’t gone all the way, and you’ve been thinking about it more than you’d like to admit. You don’t want to raise the topic with him. In spite of all of Dabi’s taunting the day you first crossed Hizashi, you’re still not sure Tomura knows what sex is, and part of you is still wary about putting ideas in Tomura’s head.

The rest of you is hinting, dropping massive hints that any human would have picked up on weeks ago. Taking off most of your clothes, not just the ones that are in the way of whatever his hands and mouth are trying to do. Wrapping your legs around his waist and grinding against him until his hips are rocking forward to meet yours. Lying back on the couch or the bed or the floor and pulling him on top of you, talking to him just the way he likes, until he comes at the barest hint of your touch.

Today he’s sprawled out between your legs with his head on your shoulder, struggling to catch his breath as his fingers trace idly along your hip. You beat him to the punch this time, making him come first, and now you’re tense and anxious and almost absurdly wet. The light brush of his fingers over your skin isn’t exactly helping. “Come on,” you complain. You lift your hips slightly, in case he’s at all confused. “Don’t tease.”

“I’m not teasing,” Tomura says without lifting his head. “I’m trying not to leave. You don’t like it when I leave too soon.”

He’s right, although you’ve never said as much out loud. “If I can stay longer, we can do more,” Tomura says. His hand shifts from your hip to trace along the back of your thigh, and you startle. “Things we haven’t tried yet.”

Your stomach twists, not entirely with nerves. “Yeah? Like what?”

“You’re the human.” Tomura shifts to one side and his fingers slip between your legs. “You tell me.”

“Um –” You try to think, but now he’s actually teasing you, and it’s hard to think around. It’s also hard to think when you’re running through the list of stuff you’ve already tried and getting wound up in the memories. “There’s fingering, I guess –”

“Isn’t that what I’m doing?”

“Yes,” you say, hating the breathiness in your voice. If Tomura was human, you’d never in a million years suggest what you’re about to. “But I could finger you.”

He lifts his head off your shoulder to give you a strange look. “Where? I don’t have one of these.”

His fingers dip briefly inside you, coming away soaked. You’re dragged temporarily out of the moment when you realize that you’ll have to explain anal to someone who’s never needed to use the bathroom, and you push the thought aside. “I’ll explain when we try it,” you say. Tomura nods and lets his head fall back down to your shoulder. Even though you’ve dodged a bullet, you can’t help what you say next. “I could eat you out, too.”

Tomura’s hips twitch against your leg. He likes that idea, even if he’s got no idea where you’re suggesting putting your mouth. “What else.”

“The shower, I guess. We could do all this in there.” You know Tomura’s fascinated with the shower, which is why he keeps trying to sneak in there with you no matter how many times you kick him out. He shifts against you with more purpose this time, and you realize with a jolt that he’s getting hard again. He might not have a ton of stamina, but his downtime is ridiculously short. “Or we could just have sex.”

“I thought this was sex.”

“It is,” you say. You decided a while back that anything involving an orgasm and another person – or ghost – qualifies as sex. “A lot of things count as sex. But when people say ‘having sex’, they’re usually referring to – ah – one thing in particular.”

Tomura’s still teasing you, mostly, but every so often he presses against your clit with the heel of his hand or slides two fingers inside you, curling them at the perfect angle. Your face is heating up, and it’s getting harder to think. You open your mouth to try to explain further and a little gasp slips out. “A thing we haven’t done yet,” Tomura repeats. You can tell just by his tone of voice that he’s pleased with himself, but he never keeps up with the teasing long once you start losing your composure. “What is it?”

He’s relentless now, somehow never rough, always the right speed and pressure to make your legs shake and your back arch. You taught him well, back when you didn’t know you were teaching him anything at all. You struggle to collect your thoughts, but all you can think of is what Tomura’s doing to you with his fingers. And there’s your explanation. “The same as what you’re doing right now,” you say, “except you use your cock.”

Tomura sits bolt upright and stares at you. You’d regret every word you just said if his fingers weren’t still moving, almost on autopilot, working you up to the edge and over it. Lately he’s gotten into kissing you when he knows you’re close – you think he likes feeling your breath catch – but this time he just stares as spots fill your vision and you gasp for air. “Sex,” he says, and you nod weakly. “Let’s do it now.”

“No.” You sit up and scramble backwards on the bed. “We don’t have time for that right now.”

“It won’t take long,” Tomura says confidently, and you burst out laughing. “What?”

You can’t explain. It’s too funny and you’re too out of breath – and if you don’t get out of bed soon, you’re going to be late. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“You can’t tell me that and then say we can’t do it right now.”

Maybe your timing was a little bad. You only jumped on the first chance you saw because you’ve been trying to figure out how to bring it up for weeks. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Stay.”

“I can’t,” you say regretfully. “It’s Himiko’s party. I have to go.”

Himiko’s birthday was back in August, when you were all on high alert about Garaki. She didn’t really get to celebrate it. Now that the house is fixed and things have died down, her mom’s throwing her a belated birthday party, and everyone on the block’s invited – plus almost everyone from Himiko’s class at school. You’re bad at presents and so is Keigo, so the two of you jointly got Himiko a gift card to her favorite clothing store. Her favorite store’s expensive. It took both of your contributions to get her a card she could use to buy more than a pair of socks.

You manage to make it out of bed without much more complaining from Tomura, although he lurks outside the bathroom door, pouting. “Why do humans celebrate birthdays, anyway? It’s just getting older. Getting older –”

He stops talking, which is what always happens when mortality comes up. “Humans don’t see it like that,” you say. Then you think about how your mom used to react to her birthdays. “Okay, some of us don’t see it like that. And nobody sees it like that when they’re a kid. When you get older, you get more freedom. You can do more of the stuff you want to do. People take you a little more seriously.”

You always looked forward to your birthday. Your parents never made many rules for you, or paid much attention unless you screwed up, but they liked a party as much as the next people. “And you get cake and presents. Most people like that.”

“And everyone has a birthday,” Tomura surmises. “When’s yours?”

“It already happened. Don’t worry about it.”

You change into clean clothes, collect Phantom, and head to the front door. Tomura follows you there, like always. Embodied, like always. He’s almost always embodied when you’re home. “When are you coming back?”

“In an hour or less.” You know Himiko invited the whole neighborhood on purpose, but it’s still going to be mostly middle-schoolers, and you’re not the best with kids. “I’ll drop off the present and say hi and be back.”

Tomura still looks unhappy. “You’d stay longer if I could go.”

“You wouldn’t like it,” you say. “Too many people. Too many ghosts.”

“I don’t know if I like it. I haven’t tried it,” Tomura says. He’s quiet for a second. “I wish I could.”

It used to unsettle you when Tomura said things like that. Now it bothers you. Tomura had the chance to embody himself, to break free of the house without destroying it, and he didn’t. You clip on Phantom’s leash and open the door. “I’ll tell Himiko you said happy birthday.”

“I didn’t say happy birthday,” Tomura says, because Tomura’s an asshole. You raise your eyebrows. “Fine. Tell the brat I said happy birthday.”

“Thank you.” You lean in and kiss him quickly, skittering out of range before he can get too into it. The last thing you need is Tomura’s horniness ruining a thirteen-year-old’s birthday party. “We’ll be back soon.”

You and Phantom don’t have to walk far to get to Himiko’s party – it’s just at her house, in the backyard, and in case you weren’t sure, the pink balloons everywhere would be a giveaway. You’re a little late, as evidenced by Keigo hanging out near the gate, clearly a little antsy. “Dabi went in there ahead of me,” he says. “What took you so long?”

He takes a look at your expression and nods. “Right. Been there.”

“Recently.”

Keigo winces. “Yeah. Recently.”

Dabi’s still a scar wraith, and still pretty much an asshole, but the behavior changes you and Hizashi hammered into him have stuck. He’s being a lot nicer to Keigo, which has resulted in their relationship picking back up, which has resulted in Dabi using every chance he gets to pay back Tomura for all the times Tomura’s put the entire neighborhood in the mood. You’ve managed to convince Tomura that ignoring it makes Dabi look dumber than if he tries to compete, but it took a lot longer than you wanted it to.

Still, you and Keigo are in the same boat. It’s nice not to be alone with it. But something occurs to you as you step through the gate. “Wait, there are people here. How is it safe for Dabi to –”

“He’s been practicing embodying the rest of him,” Keigo says. You glance at him, surprised. “Not permanently. He says he’s never doing that. But sometimes he’s all the way there.”

“That must be weird.”

“Yeah. Weirder when he isn’t.” Keigo stops at the edge of the party, and so do you. “How are you doing with that?”

“With Dabi being embodied? Not my circus, not my clown.”

Keigo snorts. “No,” he says. “With Tomura still being a ghost. When he dealt with Garaki, we all thought he might –”

He trails off, giving you a curious look. You look back, daring him to say it. “Might what?”

Before Keigo can answer, you hear a shriek from somewhere at the center of the crowd of kids in the Bubaigawaras’ enormous backyard. Himiko’s spotted you. She breaks from the group and hurries over. “I’m so glad you’re here! Is that for me?”

“You know it.” Keigo passes over the card. “It’s from me and her. Happy late birthday.”

“Happy late birthday,” you echo. Himiko hugs you. “Tomura says happy birthday too.”

“Really?” Himiko beams. “I wish he could come to the party! Jin’s mom made cake! I bet he’d like cake.”

“I don’t know,” Dabi drawls, strolling up from behind Himiko to sling an arm around Keigo’s shoulders. “Cake’s for humans, and he made his call loud and clear.”

Himiko smacks him. “Don’t be mean,” she instructs. “He could still change his mind.”

“How? It’s not like another asshole’s gonna hop the fence.”

“It’s my birthday. You can’t argue with me,” Himiko says. Dabi sticks his tongue out at her, and she sticks hers out in response. Then she seizes your hand with the hand that’s not holding the birthday card. “Come with me! You have to meet my friends!”

Himiko has a lot of friends. That’s not a surprise – she’s the friendliest ghost on the block other than Eri, and she doesn’t like to take no for an answer. She’s invited her whole class, plus a few from the other class in her year, and she introduces you to one kid after another as her “human girl neighbor”. If her friends think it’s weird, they don’t say so. Most of them are too excited about meeting Phantom to pay attention to you. You get yanked through introductions with almost two dozen kids, until Himiko pulls you around and you find yourself face-to-face with someone familiar.

It’s the last person you expected to see here. Your jaw drops. “Izuku?”

Izuku looks really excited to see you. “Hi!”

“You know her?” Himiko’s eyes widen. “How?”

“My dad’s her boss,” Izuku explains. “I helped out with the – you know, the –”

He lowers his voice. “Ghost stuff.”

“Oh.” Himiko nods knowingly. “That was so spooky! You should have seen it! My humans mostly stayed inside, but my big brother Jin went out to fight. So did Magne’s human, and Hizashi’s – and Tomura’s human, too! We thought Tomura was going to lose until Hizashi told him that the conjurer had –”

“Hey, birthday girl!” Hizashi interrupts. You didn’t see him coming, but you’re not spooked. Lately it seems like he’s been making an effort not to scare you. “Let’s stow it with the shop talk, yeah? You’re among friends right here, but your guests might not want to know.”

“Oh, right!” Himiko looks ever so slightly shifty, and suddenly you’re convinced that at least one of these other kids knows about ghosts. Once Hizashi’s gone, she lowers her voice. “I told Ochako.”

“I told Kacchan by accident,” Izuku says. “It’s okay. No one will believe them.”

There’s something a little unsettling about how cheerfully he says it. Someone calls out for Himiko and she hurries off, leaving you and Izuku standing there. Something occurs to you. “How come you’re in Himiko’s year? I thought you were fifteen.”

“I’m thirteen.” Izuku gives you a curious look. “Why’d you think that?”

Because Izuku was conceived while Mr. Yagi was still a ghost, and Mr. Yagi embodied himself permanently fifteen years ago. But maybe you misheard that. Fifteen and thirteen sound sort of the same. Izuku looks like he’s gearing up for something. You watch him, and he watches you, and finally he bursts out with the question, practically vibrating with excitement. “Can I see Tomura?”

“Why do you want to do that?” you ask blankly. “You’ve met live ones before. You met Nemuri when you got here. And Dabi.”

“I’ve never met one who’s still with their house,” Izuku says. “And never one that strong. Dad says Tomura’s almost as strong as he was before he changed. Can I meet him?”

“Um –” You have a feeling you’ll get in trouble with Mr. Yagi for saying yes, but at the same time, you wonder if it wouldn’t be good for Tomura to talk to somebody who’s not you. “At the end of the party. Before your parents pick you up. We can go over and say hi. From outside the fence.”

“Right,” Izuku says seriously. “Live ghosts that still have their houses are supposed to be really territorial. I don’t want to make him mad.”

“After the party,” you agree. Someone collides with you from behind, and you turn to find Eri. “You okay there?”

“Phantom!” Eri hugs your dog, sneezes, and turns her attention to Izuku, her eyes widening as she looks him over. “You’re like us! A –”

“Eri,” Aizawa says, and she claps her hands over her mouth. He looks to Izuku. “My apologies. You are –”

“Half,” Izuku says. Aizawa’s eyes widen, and Izuku turns his attention to Eri again. “Half ghost. The other half of me is human. Like your human.”

“He’s my Dad! He’s not my human,” Eri corrects. “I’ll show you my human! Toshi –”

Eri takes Izuku on the grand tour of the party, introducing him to every ghost – Magne, Dabi, Atsuhiro, Hizashi, Nemuri again, and even the Nomus, who’ve figured out how to use their human side’s life-force to hide the fact that they’re ghosts from anybody who doesn’t know what to look for. For the ghosts’ part, they’re intrigued by Izuku. Hizashi even remarks that he’s never met a half-ghost before. You don’t get the sense that Izuku spends a lot of time with people like him, because he looks like it’s his birthday instead of Himiko’s. You have a feeling that Mr. Yagi is going to have to pry his kid out of your neighborhood with a crowbar.

With that in mind, you definitely shouldn’t take him to meet Tomura, but he sneaks up on you when you and Phantom are trying to sneak out just a little early. “This is the greatest neighborhood in the world,” he says, out of breath. “Can I meet Tomura now?”

“Not alone,” Aizawa says from somewhere nearby. You glance over your shoulder and find him approaching. “It’s unsafe.”

“I’m not alone. I’m with her.”

“The rules are different for her,” Aizawa says. “If you plan to meet Tomura, I’ll accompany you.”

Izuku doesn’t argue, but he does ask questions as the three of you and Phantom make your way down the sidewalk. “Why am I safer if you come along than if you don’t?”

“Tomura is territorial. Paradoxically, he shows some respect for others’ territory,” Aizawa says. “He views me as belonging to another ghost, and is therefore unlikely to harm me.”

“How do you feel about that?” Izuku asks. Aizawa raises an eyebrow. “The possessive stuff. Like how Eri calls Shinsou her human. Does it bother you? Or you?”

He’s looking at you now. Aizawa actually looks surprised by the question – surprised, and like he’s thinking about it hard. You decide to leave the answer to him. He’s the ghost expert, after all. “I don’t believe it’s meant by them the way it sounds to us,” he says after a while. “Not for all of them, at least. Eri says “my human” the same way she says “my brother”. To her, it’s an expression of affection, not ownership. The same goes for Magne and Himiko, I believe. The possessive isn’t problematic in those cases.”

You hear who he’s leaving out, and so does Izuku. “What about Dabi and Hizashi?”

“Ghosts with that degree of power don’t interact with their environment so much as impose their will upon it,” Aizawa says. “They see everything as belonging to them, if they want it and have the ability to take it. Initially they see their humans the same way, until they realize that they can’t get what they really want from us by exerting their power. It’s a significant perspective shift. It takes time to implement.”

“So they don’t learn until they have to,” Izuku says, and Aizawa nods. Then Izuku looks at you. “Tomura’s powerful now, but he didn’t start out like that. How does he look at it?”

You’re in front of your house now, just outside the gate. “Ask him yourself,” you say, and your front door creaks open.

Tomura materializes slowly as he descends the steps and crosses the yard, not settling into full embodiment until he’s at the gate, on his side of a line he can’t cross. He looks warily at Izuku. “What are you?”

“I’m a half-ghost! My mom is human and my dad was a ghost. He’s embodied now, but he was a ghost still when Mom got pregnant with me.” Izuku gets all the words out in one breath. “I’m more like an embodied ghost than anything else.”

“I’ve never seen an embodied ghost like you before.”

“I’ve never met a live ghost like you, either!” Izuku is beaming. “Is this your house? It’s so old. How does it hold together so well? Do you make it hold together with your powers? I guess you could – Dad said you’re strong, and you’re definitely really strong, but –”

“Stop. You’re making my head hurt.” Tomura holds up one hand and Izuku quiets down. “What do you want?”

“I wanted to meet you,” Izuku says. “My dad told me all about you, and me and your human have been trying to track down your conjurer. I know you probably don’t like people coming near you, or other ghosts, but I thought maybe –”

“Maybe what?”

“We could talk or something,” Izuku says. “You’re the only one left of your conjurer’s ghosts, and I’m the only one of me in the whole country. It can get – weird – to be the only one.”

Maybe you’re projecting, but when Izuku says “weird”, the word you hear is “lonely.” And it wouldn’t surprise you if Izuku felt that way. It wouldn’t surprise you if Tomura felt that way, either, today more than other days – when every other neighborhood ghost is out in the world at a party with their humans, and he’s alone in the same house he’s existed in for a hundred and ten years.

But Tomura wanted it this way. If he didn’t, he could have destroyed the house, or he could have seized the chance offered by Garaki’s death to embody himself permanently. He’d rather be a ghost. This is the price.

Tomura studies Izuku for a long moment. Then he turns and goes back in the house. Izuku looks at you, crestfallen. “He hates me.”

If he hated Izuku, he’d have dematerialized in front of him. You shake your head, and a moment later, Tomura comes back with something tucked under his arm. When you realize what it is, you almost lose your shit laughing. “Do you know how to play this?” Tomura asks, waving the Rainbow Fish matching game at Izuku. Izuku nods eagerly, and the gate swings open. “Sit down.”

Next to you, Aizawa makes a sound you’ve never heard in your life – the world’s wheeziest laughter, muffled a second too late. Tomura doesn’t notice. He’s too busy directing Izuku to set up the cards in a specific grid – only after mixing them together – and then realizing that he won’t be able to reach the cards on the sidewalk. “I’ll help,” you say. “Just tell me which ones to choose.”

Phantom is whining and pulling at her leash, but you can’t let her through the gate without wrecking the game. You lift her over the fence and set her down on the lawn, and she runs off to pee behind one of the few live plants in your front yard. When she comes back, she scrambles into Tomura’s lap, and he takes a break from scanning the cards to cuddle with her. Izuku watches, wide-eyed. An embarrassed flush comes up over Tomura’s face when he realizes he’s got an audience. “What?”

“Most embodied ghosts don’t like animals,” Izuku says. “And most live ghosts see them like batteries. Did your human have to explain about Phantom to you?”

“No,” Tomura scoffs. Phantom licks his chin and he shoves her snout gently away. “I never saw them like that. Either of them. Are you done yet?”

Izuku sets the last cards down. “You can go first. It’s your game.” He watches as Tomura points out two cards for you to flip, then poses another question. “Did you know my dad was a ghost when he came in?”

“Hard to miss him. I had bigger problems,” Tomura says. Izuku takes his turn, coming away without a match. “There were people in the house. We didn’t want them there. I needed to figure out how to make them leave. Without making my human leave.”

“That could be tricky,” Izuku says. Tomura points out two more cards to you, one of the same as before and a new one. “Obviously exerting your influence is the fastest way without materializing, but that could scare your human, too. What did you end up going with?”

“Some guy was smoking on the porch and I stuck my hand through it.”

“Nice.” Izuku flips two cards and collects a match.

Tomura was nice about losing to Eri, but you have a feeling he’s not going to be nice about losing to Izuku. Izuku collects a second match, then misses his next one, but not before revealing a card Tomura’s been looking for. He points it out to you and you pass both cards to him. “My dad says nobody’s lived here except your human,” Izuku says to Tomura. Tomura nods without looking up, totally fixated on choosing his next card. “You sort of got to pick who stayed, right? Why’d you pick her?”

Aizawa clears his throat. “That’s personal, Midoriya. If you don’t spend much time around ghosts, you wouldn’t know, but it’s not polite to ask ghosts how they chose their humans.”

It’s less that it’s not polite to the ghosts and more that the ghosts will explain, at length and in cringeworthy detail. It’s not so bad if you’re asking Eri. It’s downright horrendous if you’re asking Hizashi. “Sorry,” Izuku says to Tomura, shamefaced. “I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know, either.” Tomura points out two cards to you, one he’s flipped before and one he hasn’t, securing a second match. “You don’t have a human. I can tell.”

“Dad says I’m not old enough to have a human.”

“Two ghosts on this block are younger than you. They’ve got humans.” Tomura’s third turn doesn’t pan out. He sits back, still idly scratching Phantom’s ears. “Do you want one?”

“Eri and Himiko might have embodied themselves as children, but they’ve both existed for longer than Midoriya has,” Aizawa points out as Izuku loses his next turn. “Additionally, human customs are different. The relationships ghosts have to their chosen humans can take a variety of forms – parent and child, sibling to sibling, romantic partners. When humans choose another human it’s typically in the romantic sense, and not until they’re older.”

Tomura looks up from the cards. “How old?”

“Older than Midoriya, certainly.” Aizawa considers it. “Legally, humans can’t marry until they’re eighteen or older, but I believe the average age of marriage is rising.”

You majored in sociology. You know this stuff, or you should. “It’s twenty-six,” you say.

“That’s how old you are,” Tomura says.

You don’t like where this is going. “It’s still your turn.”

Tomura gets two more matches, upping his lead, then turns over a card neither of them has flipped yet and loses the turn to Izuku. He fires off a question of his own. “It makes sense that I don’t know this stuff, since I can’t leave. You’re out there all the time. Why don’t you?”

“There aren’t a lot of ghosts left,” Izuku says. He collects three matches in a row. “Not in this country, anyway. My dad and his master did a really good job getting rid of the bad ones. And the other ones mostly keep a low profile, to be safe.”

Tomura snorts. “Nobody around here keeps a low profile.”

“Including you,” Aizawa says severely. Tomura rolls his eyes. “In your case, however, that’s to our advantage. Dabi represents the larger security threat.”

“Not anymore.” Tomura invariably sounds smug when this comes up. “He couldn’t kill his conjurer, so I did it for him. It was easy.”

You don’t like it when he says that. “He almost got you.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“I was watching. I was right there and I know what I saw.” You glance at Aizawa for help. Izuku’s looking back and forth between the three of you like he’s watching a tennis match. “You saw, too.”

“The same thing happened to Tomura as happened to you,” Aizawa says. Your confusion must show on your face, because he sighs and elaborates. “When you hit Garaki with the fencepost, you didn’t hit him as hard as you could have. Your subconscious checked your swing, because your mental barrier to severely injuring another person is relatively high. In Tomura’s case –”

“I didn’t care about killing him. I already killed the Nomu.”

“In Tomura’s case, it likely wasn’t Garaki himself that gave him pause,” Aizawa says, like Tomura didn’t say a word. “Garaki was drawing on a thousand other ghosts to maintain power. Defeating Garaki meant killing them, too.”

It’s quiet for a second. You hadn’t thought about that. Based on Tomura’s expression, he’s been trying not to think about that. “Maybe that’s why there aren’t very many ghosts,” Izuku says with an impressive degree of tone-deafness. “If lots of them die every time conjurers are killed, then I’m surprised there are any.”

“Most conjurers have less than two dozen ghosts,” Aizawa says. You wonder where he’s getting that statistic from. “Conjurers as strong as Garaki are extremely rare.”

“You know a lot about this stuff,” Izuku marvels. He misses his next match, and Tomura promptly capitalizes on it. “You should write a book.”

“He has. Lots of them,” you say. Most of them are still in your house. “You can borrow them if you want.”

Izuku beams at you, but then a car skids to a stop right in front of your house, tires squealing. All four of you jump, and when you see who’s driving the car, your heart sinks. “I am here to pick you up, Izuku,” Mr. Yagi says. He looks furious. “What on earth is this?”

“Just a game,” Izuku says. “We’re being safe, see? All the cards are on my side and Tomura tells his human which ones he wants to choose.”

Mr. Yagi comes closer, studying the setup. “I came along to prevent trouble,” Aizawa says. “There hasn’t been any.”

Mr. Yagi touches Izuku’s shoulder, and Izuku looks up at him. You wonder if they’re talking. Then Mr. Yagi turns his attention to Tomura. The two of them stare for a moment, sizing each other up. “It’s nice to meet you officially,” Mr. Yagi says.

“No, it isn’t.” Tomura’s voice is flat. “I wouldn’t be here if you did your job.”

“No,” Mr. Yagi admits. You wonder just how long Mr. Yagi and his master worked together for. If Mr. Yagi is old enough to have maybe stopped the conjurer before he bound Tomura, then he must be in his hundreds. “Forgive me. Your suffering should have ended long ago.”

“It’s done now.” Tomura looks down at the cards again. You don’t understand what they’re talking about, and a quick glance at Aizawa and Izuku tells you that you’re not alone. “We’re not done with the game yet.”

“Can we finish it?” Izuku asks. “I still have more questions.”

Mr. Yagi looks a little confused, but he nods. Izuku turns back to the cards, bowing his head to focus on his turn. Tomura does the same. When he tilts his head to the side, you spot something odd on his neck. It takes you a moment to place it, but once you do, a jolt goes down your spine. There are three long scratches on the side of his neck, in the exact same place he always scratches – but on the wrong side from where he was scratching today. You’ve only seen him scratch there once, and it was during the fight with Garaki. These scratch marks aren’t fresh. They’re scabbed. Almost – scarred.

When ghosts dematerialize, they wipe the slate clean. When they materialize again, there’s no physical evidence of whatever happened to them before. Tomura scratches his neck all the time, and you hate seeing the marks show up, but he’s dematerialized and reappeared dozens of times since the fight with Garaki. Those scratch marks were deep enough to bleed, but they should be gone. Long gone. Why are they here?

You want to ask somebody – Mr. Yagi, or Aizawa – but you don’t want Izuku to hear. Instead you stay quiet, turning over the cards Tomura points to, pretending you don’t notice the entire rest of the neighborhood gathering around to watch. About half of them are wearing party hats, and the rest are munching on leftover pieces of cake. None of them but Aizawa have met Mr. Yagi before, and as far as you can tell, reviews are mixed. Eri and Shinsou like him right away, but Himiko’s wary of him. Nemuri keeps her distance, along with Dabi and Natsu. You wonder if any of them met Mr. Yagi when he was still a ghost. What they think of him when they see him now.

Izuku’s game with Tomura ends in a tie, at which point Mr. Yagi insists that they go home. As ambivalent as the neighborhood is about Mr. Yagi, they’re much clearer on how they feel about Izuku. “You’ll come back, right?” Himiko asks. “Me and Shinsou don’t have anyone cool to hang out with but each other.”

Jin, Jin’s younger siblings, and Eri all start to protest, and Hizashi piles on by insisting that he’s still cool even though he’s two hundred years old. Izuku’s eyes are shining. He looks up at Mr. Yagi, and Mr. Yagi sighs. “Very well,” he says. “On one condition. That you don’t –”

“Go in Tomura’s house. I know,” Izuku says. He turns back to Himiko and Shinsou. “I can come back any time.”

Himiko cheers and gives him a hug. Shinsou looks a whole lot less certain about the whole thing now that he knows Izuku will be back. You’re pretty sure you’ve seen that look on your own face a time or two since you moved here.

You manage to speak to Mr. Yagi before he gets in his car. “I’m sorry. I thought it would be okay if we stayed outside the fence.”

“It was okay,” Mr. Yagi says. You blink. “I reacted out of fear, not to the facts of the situation. You made a responsible introduction. How did Tomura react to Izuku initially?”

“He wasn’t sure what Izuku was at first,” you say. Mr. Yagi nods. “But he’s the one who brought the game out.”

Mr. Yagi smiles at that. “I believe I understand how he escaped the fate of his conjurer’s other ghosts,” he says. Nobody else has had a theory yet. You raise your eyebrows. “I did some research of my own. This crop of former ghosts and families is not the first to have lived in this neighborhood. It’s been a haven for former ghosts for almost sixty years. None of them would have dared set foot in that house, but they would have sensed Tomura’s presence, and he would have sensed theirs in return. His isolation wasn’t as complete as the isolation of the others. That’s why he remained somewhat sane.”

Mr. Yagi seems confident in his conclusion, and he does know more about ghosts than you do. But you know more about Tomura than he does, and while Mr. Yagi’s probably right about some of it, you’re not sure it’s that simple. It doesn’t feel that simple, anyway. You’re still turning it over in your head as you step through the gate, shut it behind you, and reenter your house. You also have the sense that you’re forgetting something. You’re not sure what.

You remember what it is a split second before Tomura jumps you, but there’s a world of difference between what he does when he wants to hook up and what he does when he wants something else. This is something else. He wraps himself around you, both feet off the ground, holding on ridiculously tight. His voice is muffled by your hair. “You said you’d be gone an hour,” he complains. “That was longer than an hour.”

“They wouldn’t let me leave early. And it would have been rude.” You stagger back a few steps and lean against the wall. It’s the only way you’ll be able to stay on your feet. “Himiko was thrilled you said happy birthday.”

Tomura makes a discontented noise. “It’s not even her real birthday. Her real birthday’s when she got summoned.”

“When’s your real birthday?”

“Spring.” Tomura shrugs. “I don’t know which day. I just feel it when it goes by.”

“Maybe we should have a birthday party for you,” you say. Tomura makes another discontented noise. But now you’re thinking about just how long Tomura’s been alone in here, and it feeds back into the exchange between he and Mr. Yagi that you didn’t understand. “Is my boss really that old? Old enough to have stopped your conjurer from summoning you?”

“No. Old enough to kill him,” Tomura says. “And me.”

You were with it for a second. Now you’re not. “What?”

“When I killed Garaki, all his ghosts died too. If your boss beat my conjurer when they fought, he’d have gotten rid of me.” Tomura goes still in your arms. “He almost did it. I could feel it. I wanted him to.”

Your stomach lurches. “Don’t say that.”

“I wanted him to.” Tomura’s voice is flat, just like it was when he spoke to Mr. Yagi. “I wanted it to be over. We can’t kill ourselves like humans do. That was my chance. And I lost it because of him.”

“Why?” Your voice comes out in a frail whisper. “Tomura –”

“It was never going to change. I couldn’t take it anymore. Isn’t that why humans do it?” He starts to dematerialize, slipping away from you. “You know what you said. Don’t be stupid.”

“No.” You dig your fingers into the back of his shirt and tighten your grip. You’ve never once been able to hang onto him when he’s trying to dematerialized, but this time, for some reason, he lets you. “I don’t know what it was like to be you, here all by yourself. I don’t know why you let me stay, and I don’t care. But I’m glad Mr. Yagi couldn’t kill your conjurer. I’m glad you were still here when I bought this place.”

“Because you like hanging out with me.”

Because I love you. “Sure,” you say. “Let’s go with that.”

“Prove it.”

Now things are going where you thought they were going at first. It’s a relief. Maybe. “How?”

“If you like hanging out with me that much, you’ll be my pillow for a whole movie.”

Tomura’s developed a thing for sprawling out on top of you and staying there, which would be fine if he wasn’t freezing cold to the touch. If he’s up there longer than half an hour, you get a chill. “Seriously?”

“Maybe two whole movies.” Tomura finally materializes fully again, settling back into your arms. “And you have to carry me to the couch.”

“You’re ridiculous,” you complain, but you shift your weight forward anyway. “Hang on.”

In your experience, guys use Netflix as an excuse to get to the “chill” part of the evening, but once Tomura decides what kind of night it’s going to be, he sticks to it. You end up serving as a pillow for he and Phantom at the same time, meaning that most of you is uncomfortably cold and your feet are uncomfortably warm. The two of you are marathoning sci-fi horror, and Tomura keeps asking questions you don’t know enough science to answer. Finally you just wrestle your phone out of your pocket to look up a question about why space travel in real life doesn’t work like in the movies. But once you get your phone out of your pocket, you see an email notification, and you press it on autopilot. Then you begin to read, your heart racing a little faster on every line.

With his head against your chest, Tomura can hear it. “What?” he asks. “Do gravity drives really work? Are you wrong about that like you were about the tornadoes?”

“Are you ever going to forget about that?”

“No,” Tomura says smugly. He pats impatiently at the back of your hand. “What is it? Let me see.”

“Just an email.” A response to an email you wrote months ago, to the curator of the museum housed in the old asylum where Shigaraki Yoichi died.

It’s a pretty brief email. No apologies for the long response delay, just an answer to your question – yes, the files on Shigaraki Yoichi survived. Yes, they’re extensive. No, they’re too fragile to be photographed or scanned. If you want to read them, the curator says, you have to come to the museum yourself.

Fine. You’ll go yourself. You tap out a quick response to the curator and manage to send it before Tomura lifts the phone out of your hands. He can figure out phone calls, and he could probably grasp texting if you gave him the chance, but email’s a little much for him. He drops the phone back on the coffee table, annoyed. “What did it say?”

“There’s something I need to look into about your conjurer.” You think about how far away the museum is, how many documents there must be for the curator to describe it as “extensive”, how you’re going to have to take notes by hand. This can’t be a day trip. You sit up, jarring Tomura out of his preferred position, and he bitches all the way up. But as unhappy as he is about having to move, you’re about to make him unhappier. “How do you feel about having the house to yourself next weekend?”

#lovhalloweenhorror #shigaraki tomura x reader #tomura shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x you #x reader #reader insert #shigaraki tomura #ghost story #loser nerd ghost boyfriend

33 notes · View notes

sophie-hatter-jenkins · 29 days

Text

A collection of Hinny-centric drabbles, microfics and one-shots written for the Ginny Lovers Discord server 5-Year Ginnversary Bingo game.

Chapter 12 - Happily Ever After

Ginny's had a tough couple of days, but her very own Prince Charming is on hand to welcome her home.

Rating - Mature (because Ginny has a foul mouth when she's hungry)

Read on AO3 from the beginning or continue below the cut for the latest chapter (1555 words)

Ginny Potter was tired. Bone tired. She hadn’t exactly been thrilled to be covering the Arrows away fixture against Portree in the depths of the February winter in the first place, but to have it then turn into an eighteen hour feat of endurance where the snitch seemed determined to hide from the relentless sleet and gale force winds really took the biscuit.

Bolstered by warming charm upon warming charm, and what felt like buckets of hot tea, Ginny had powered through. But, by the time she’d finished her post-match interviews (during which more than one of the exhausted players actually fell asleep over the press conference table), she’d already missed two nights of bedtimes, and was at perilous risk of missing a third.

Being away from Harry and the kids wasn’t something she enjoyed at the best of times, but right now, it felt especially awful. Albus was only a few months into Muggle primary school and seemed to be struggling to adjust; Lily had suddenly morphed from a happy-go-lucky toddler into the world’s most clingy preschooler; and then there was James. James, as usual, seemed perfectly fine, sailing through life in a blaze of noise and chaos without a care in the world. Perversely, that made Ginny worry about him even more. It was always so obvious when something was bothering Albus or Lily that Ginny couldn’t help but worry it would be so easy to overlook it when something was bothering James.

Ginny was self-aware enough to know that her concerns about James weren’t rooted in reality; they stemmed entirely from an (un)healthy dose of mummy-guilt. How could she, raised in a countryside idyll, by the world’s most capable and present stay-at-home mother, possibly choose to bring up her own family in the middle of a city while pursuing not one but two consecutive careers that involved long stints away from her babies? Not that anyone had ever said that to her, of course. No, Ginny simply imagined that she could hear it in every comment about her professional success, or enquiry about the health of her children. Or maybe she didn’t imagine it at all - the wizarding world could still be extremely conservative on many topics, including that of working mothers.

Sighing, Ginny left the press tent and apparated onto the top step of Grimmauld Place. Inside, the house was quiet, but the warm lamplight and cosy decor that had replaced the unrelenting gloom she remembered from her teens immediately relaxed her. It felt so good to be home - and according to the clock on the wall, she’d made it back just in time to kiss her babies goodnight.

She hung up her thick winter cloak in the alcove by the door and swapped her boots for a pair of fluffy slippers, then padded up the stairs in search of her family.

As she reached the first floor landing, she became aware of a low, soothing voice, coming from the drawing room. She adored that voice; deep and calming and so full of love. Moving close to the door, she realised that Harry was reading a story. The door was open, so she leaned against the frame, drinking in the scene inside the room.

Harry was sitting on the sofa facing the fireplace, levitating a large book just in front of him, using his wand to turn the pages. Lily was on his knee, snuggled against his chest, while James and Albus had taken up positions on either side of him, leaning in close and staring at the book’s illustrations in rapt attention. All four of them were underneath an old blanket she recognised as the one that used to adorn her bed back at the Burrow. On the coffee table in front of them were four mugs, bearing the telltale marks of chocolatey lips that indicated hot cocoa all round.

Ginny recognised the book as an anthology of Muggle fairy tales that had been James’s first Christmas gift from Hermione. In truth, Ginny loved these stories as much as the kids, much preferring them to the wizarding tale of her own childhood. She wasn’t sure why. Perhaps seeing magic through the eyes of people to whom it was something extraordinary reminded her of just how privileged she really was.

As spellbound as her children, Ginny listened while her husband recounted the tale.

“...so it happened that the king proclaimed a great ball to be held at the castle. All the young girls in the land were invited, so that his son could select a bride for himself. When the two stepsisters heard, they were in high spirits.

They called Cinderella, saying, "Comb our hair for us! Lace our ball gowns! Polish our shoes!”

Cinderella obeyed, but wept, because with her faded dress and worn shoes, she knew she couldn't go with them.”

Ginny allowed Harry’s voice to soothe her as he continued to read, about the fairy godmother, the pumpkin and the glass slippers. Albus looked morbidly fascinated when the sisters cut off their toes to squeeze their feet into the shoe. James made a retching noise to signal his feelings about True Love’s Kiss. Lily remained completely silent, her eyes wide and unblinking, a sure sign that she was fighting to stay awake. Finally Harry reached the end of the story, and the spell was broken.

“Can we have another story, Daddy!” clamoured James.

“Yes! Yes! Another!” chimed Albus.

“Wannanother‘un, Dada!” added Lily, sleepily.

“No more stories!” laughed Harry. “It’s bedtime for all of you. Come on up the stairs now please.”

“Ah, Daddy! Please!”

Smiling, Ginny decided it was time to intervene. “Daddy is quite right. It’s time you three were tucked up in bed.”

Four pairs of eyes, brown, green and hazel, swivelled to the doorway, and within moments, Ginny was almost bowled over as three small children hurled themselves at her with a loud chorus of “Mummy!”, closely followed by their father.

“Hi, you,” said Harry, dropping a quick kiss onto her lips. “We missed you.”

“Hi, yourself,” she smiled, bending down to gather Lily up onto her hip. “It’s good to be home. Shall we get these gorgeous little urchins upstairs?”

Harry shot her that lopsided grin that still made her heart skip, and between them, they ushered the children up to the bathroom. Harry supervised tooth brushing while Ginny wrangled Lily into her pyjamas, and before long, all three junior Potters were snuggled in their beds.

Lily and Albus were fast asleep within moments, but James hung on a little while longer, begging Ginny for a blow-by-blow account of the match in Portree, which, she suspected, was just an excuse for more cuddles with Mummy. It wasn’t, she decided, any kind of hardship to indulge him while he drifted off to sleep.

Ginny lingered at her eldest son’s bedside for several minutes after his breathing became deeper and more even, marvelling at his messy red-brown curls, long lashes and freckled cheeks. Eventually a shadow fell across the bedroom floor, and she realised Harry had come to check on them.

Quietly, she slipped away from James’s side, closing the door softly behind her and melting against her husband’s chest.

“Everything okay?” he asked her, murmuring the words into her hair as he held her close.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I just really missed you all. I can’t help worrying about them. And you.”

“We were fine,” he reassured her.

Ginny screwed her eyes closed. “I know. It’s just… I feel like when I’m being a journalist, I’m failing at being a mum, and when I’m being a mum, I’m failing at being a journalist.”

She felt a breath of silent laughter ruffle the hair at her crown. “Sounds like someone needs a pep talk from Hermione.”

“Probably,” she shrugged, pausing for a moment. “I love my job, but I wish it didn’t put so much pressure on you to pick up the slack.”

“Hey.” He took a step back, placing his hands gently over her biceps, and looked straight into her eyes. “That’s isn’t what happens. You’re amazing. Honestly, amazing. But parenting’s a team sport. Yes, sometimes you have to rely on me, but I need you to remember that I couldn’t do what I do without you either. We have each other’s backs.”

Ginny felt the tension begin to drain from her shoulders. She relaxed back into his arms, but suddenly realised guilt wasn’t the only unpleasant sensation gnawing at her. “Um… not that this isn’t lovely, but I’m fucking starving,” she confessed, her stomach rumbling right on cue.

Harry kissed her forehead, then smiled at her indulgently. “No problem,” he told her. “Rule number one of being married to a Weasley: Always have food ready. I made lasagne for the kids earlier, the rest of it’s under a warming charm in the kitchen.”

Ginny let out a soft groan of pleasure. “You’re awesome, you know? Apparently Cinderella isn’t the only person to have bagged herself a Prince Charming!”

Harry laughed. “Come on then, Cinders - I’ll even throw in some garlic bread for good measure.”

As he took her hand and led her down the stairs, Ginny smiled to herself. Life might not be perfect - might never be perfect. But, she decided, if this was happily ever after, then it was pretty damned good.

#harry potter #ginny weasley #harry x ginny #hinny #harry potter fanfiction #ginniversary bingo

16 notes · View notes

religion-is-a-mental-illness · 15 days

Text

By: Michael Deacon

Published: Apr 3, 2024

For young people today, finding a partner of the opposite sex must be dreadfully hard. But this isn’t because of the pressure to look like an Instagram gym buff, or the horrors of dating apps, or the fact that no one under the age of 30 seems to drink alcohol any more.

It’s because these days, young men and women have got absolutely nothing in common.

Seriously. All of a sudden, they appear to have developed completely different values. It’s unprecedented. In the past, the two sexes tended to hold roughly similar views on politics. But research compiled over the past five years shows that in Britain – and indeed other Western countries – young women have become more progressive, while young men have become more conservative. And the resulting ideological gap is now staggeringly vast.

Alice Evans, an academic at King’s College London, is writing a book on this phenomenon, entitled The Great Gender Divergence. She says it’s been caused by a variety of factors, including “social media bubbles” and “economic resentment”. Whatever the reasons for it, though, I think there is a vital point we’re in danger of missing. Which is that only one of the two sexes is strictly responsible.

Recently, the Financial Times published some charts illustrating how the gulf between young men and women has grown in each Western country. And in every chart, there is an unmistakable pattern. The political views of young men haven’t actually altered all that much. Their drift to the Right has been really quite gentle.

The political views of young women, however, have changed dramatically. Their move to the Left has been abrupt and profound. In truth, then, this cavernous ideological divide is almost entirely attributable to them.

Which is curious. Because, whenever the divide is discussed by politicians and commentators, they make it sound as if the problem is young men. They fret endlessly about how young men today are being “radicalised” by nasty Right-wing YouTubers such as Andrew Tate, or horrid Right-wing politicians such as Donald Trump.

Yet they never apply this word “radicalised” to young women. Why not? I suspect it’s because these politicians and commentators tend to be progressive themselves. Therefore, they see no problem with young women becoming drastically more progressive. In their view, the more progressive someone is, the better. So the fault lies entirely with young men, for failing to emulate young women’s lurch to the Left.

Personally, though, I think this lurch Leftwards should alarm us all. The future of Western civilisation is already threatened by our collapsing birth rates. And this sudden ideological chasm between the sexes is only going to make the crisis worse. No one’s going to be forming couples at all any more, if, on every first date, the woman asks, “What do you think of Gramsci?”, and the man replies, “He’s the type of striker Man Utd are crying out for.”

It’s a chilling thought. So clearly something must be done. Politicians must spend less time obsessing over the radicalisation of young men, and start paying attention to the radicalisation of young women, instead.

As it happens, the Labour Party has announced that, when it’s in power, it will help to combat the influence that Andrew Tate has on boys. Surely it would make more sense to help combat the influence The Guardian has on girls.

Otherwise, the only way young men are going to get a girlfriend is by frantically boning up on George Monbiot and Owen Jones. And if that’s what the future has to hold, perhaps Western civilisation isn’t worth saving, after all.

[ Via: https://archive.md/WlLXk ]

Apparently, it's not "radicalization" when you're calling for the extermination of the Jews; so sexist and racist that you call everyone else "oppressors"; teaching kids about the objectively true mythology of metaphysical "gender" thetans; advocating for the compulsory elimination of all privately-owned property and its forcible redistribution; and/or chanting for the dismantling of society itself.

No, that's not radicalization. It's just the self-evident values of all right-thinking people.

🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️

#radicalization #far left #far left radicals #liberal society #liberalism #liberal values #illiberalism #religion is a mental illness

13 notes · View notes

dilatorywriting · 1 year

Note

(Edit: I think this is the longest text wall I've ever sent you. I'm so so sorry - Reaper) so! about the selkie ask from the other anon

Funny thing is, I was clearing out my old tumblr blog a few days ago, and stumbled across that very post as I was mass deleting everything I'd ever reblogged. Unfortunately, I can't link it to you, because I misjudged how tumblr saves things in your likes. Apparently, if you like a post on your own blog, that you yourself reblogged, then delete the post, it also deletes the like. I did not know that. RIP all those posts I wanted to save, including that selkie one.

Anyway, at the time, that post gave me brainrot for an Azul AU that could maybe fit with your Monster Mayhem series? But I sat on it because: A) I have already cursed you with Rook brainrot. I have done enough damage B) I was aware that you were doing your exams this past week. I do not wish to be distracting C) I am invested in your Leona and Rook stories at the moment. On the off chance that this new brainrot would infect you as well, then I would be shooting both of us in the foot

But then. Mystery selkie anon comes from somewhere in the blind eternities and speaks about the exact post that inflicted my brainrot? I will take this as a sign from the gods to spill the Azul brainrot, for better or worse. I apologize in advance.

So.

Azul is some description of very old, very magical, eldritch horror sea beast. He was asleep for centuries, somewhere in a deep, dark, forgotten part of the ocean. And then some idiot woke him up.

Azul wakes to find that humanity has changed so much since last he saw it. The lower lifeforms (read: short-lived mortals) had flourished in a way that he and other beings like him had never expected. Speaking of others like him, he also finds that he's alone - he can't sense of any of the other eltdritch horror beings he remembers from long ago. He can't tell whether they're asleep somewhere, like he was, banished, or dead. He doesn't quite care either, it's not as if he was friends with any of them.

Instead he observes the humans. He's always been fascinated with humans. Their determination and what they could achieve despite their fleeting existence. It was a human, who'd put him to sleep all those years ago, after all.

Eventually, he's not satisfied anymore with watching from afar, and decides he wants to walk among them. To see them closer, perhaps even rise above them, have them revere him as they once did others of his kind, as they should have done to him in the old days but didn't. It's also lonely, so far down in the deepest darkest ocean depths. Not that Azul would ever admit that.

So Azul turns to his collection and knowledge of ancient magicks. Twsiting spells with odd rules and loopholes that he loves so much. The same tricky spells that the humans used to come to him for, while they worshiped the others. He chooses one that will allow him to shapeshift his body into that of a human, but it has a rather pricey trade off. In order to convert a being such as him into something so small and solid, there's a tiny issue of matter and energy displacement, conservation, and condensation and such. Very complicated things. In short, the spell requires that a physical object be imbued with his displaced essence, to maintain the human form. It's a very old and quite common shapeshifting spell, and the humans have many myths about it, not seeming to realize that it all comes from the same spell. Myths about creatures whose power is bound to an object. Dragons and their gemstones, Selkies and their coats, Foxes and their tails.

But it's a risky trade. Should another being come into possession of that imbued object, and take ownership of it, they would too take control of its true owner. Azul knows this well, he'd used that loophole to his advantage many times in the past. Considering this very carefully, he chooses his object. A trinket would be too shiny, too noticable, too easily misplaced. It must be something plain and common. Something no-one really thinks of taking, something one would normally have on them at all times as a human. He chooses a coat.

And Azul goes ashore.

Meanwhile, our MC runs modest little magic shop in the village. It's nothing incredibly fancy and their own magic abilities are nothing really to brag home about. They deal in common "entertainment" magic mostly. Talismans that change water to juice, or bread to chocolate. Little poppers that make tiny indoor fireworks. A potion that instantly makes a few daisies grow. Little things, mostly geared towards those that aren't able to perform magic. No-one else in the village is especially magically inclined and the general opinion of the little shop is that it's charming. And so is it's keeper!

Publically that is.

Behind MC's thickened with sugar customer service facade is someone who's running on 95% spite. Because here's the thing about magic users: they tend to judge other magic users on magical aptitude alone, and MC never had much of that. Being snubbed by every wizard, warlock, or elf you ever meet leaves one quite bitter. And from that bitterness came the decision to run a store, selling your "not real magic" to the masses, because it makes those wizards seethe, and seeing their soured faces as you "sully the name of magical arts" brings you so much joy.

Recently, however, you have a rival.

There's boy who comes to the market every Sunday, peddling flashier tricks and talismans than yours on a small folding table. Normally, you wouldn't mind, given he only comes one day a week, but that nonchalance ended the moment a sheepish customer came into your store a following Monday, trying to return a faulty item they'd bought from the boy to you. When asked, they'd adverted their eyes and claimed the boy said he worked for you and that you would handle all customer complaints.

Well.

You'd smiled very brightly, politely informed the customer of their mistake, and accepted the declaration of war.

You've been at it for awhile now, and your latest scheme to one up the mystery market scammer was to get a familiar to help you in the shop. A cute one. A sweet one. Something pretty to draw in customers and perform a little pest control. And what luck it is that you know a mage in a nearby town that deals in such familiars. Sure, Cater was a bit of a flirt, but he'd never snubbed you, or tried to cheat you, and would know exactly what you meant when you stormed in and said "I want something so cute it'll destroy someone."

On your way to Cater's, you stop at a quaint little tea shop. You buy some rosehip to take with you, since you don't come to this town often, and on your way out you notice a man quitely reading at a table. His coat had fallen to the floor and, without thinking, you pick it up. This catches his attention and, startled, he blinks up at you. You can't help but notice how pretty he is - it's almost hypnotic. Soft pale hair that frames his face in waves and bright blue eyes. The mole by his mouth draws attention to his lips. You smile at him, like it's the most natural thing in the world, and apolgize. You tell him his coat was on the floor, and that you're just returning it. As you do, you place it on the back of his chair. Your hand brushes his shoulder and there's a sharp jolt of what feels like static electricity. The strength of it almost makes you jump. Instead you shiver, shake your head, apologize again, and leave.

You don't think about it again until later, when Cater tries to place an open binding sigil on your arm to bond you with a cute, fuzzy familiar, and it fizzles out immediately. Three times in a row. Then Cater says that the only reason the binding sigil would fail, would be if you'd already bonded to something. You blink in confusion, and Cater goes on to say (now with concern colouring his tone) that it would've felt like a strong jolt of static electricity. Some strange object someone might've passed you, or perhaps an animal that might've wandered up and brushed-

A man, you say, thinking of the tea shop. Cater chokes.

Your brain runs a mile a minute, picking over every detail you could remember about the mystery pretty man in the shop, focusing on him intently. Cater goes through various stages of panic as you do so ("a man?!? that's not familiar binding that's practically marriage! You're telling me you accidentally got married on the way over here?!?"). Eventually he tries his scrying mirror, to find the culprit, only for the mirror's glass to turn ink black and shatter. Cater does not take this well.

Eventually he lets you go home, but only after you agree to take his assistant, Deuce home with you for the night. Deuce, the sweetheart that he is, glares at every man who walks past like he wants to punch their lights out. You, conversely, are almost completely inside your own head. You can't bind to other people with bonding sigils - they're meant for familiars or contracts, they don't work on people - so what does that mean? That the man you met wasn't human, and instead some magic creature? But why would you bind with him just by touching his coat?

Meanwhile, Azul does not immediately notice that he'd bonded with MC. He'd registered the sharp jolt of magic, sure, but simply brushed it off as static runoff due to a magic user being in close contact with him and his coat. Nothing to worry about. Nothing would ever happen from someone just touching the coat - that was ridiculous. No, in order to actually take control & create a bind, they'd have to know the correct ritual spell. The one he personally ripped up every copy of nearly a millenia ago when he was last awake.

Then he goes to the seashore, later in the evening, to return to the ocean for the night, and finds that he can no longer revert to his true form. Or to any form other than his current one.

Oh dear.

It's easy for him to trace the culprit. In in the water of a tidepool he sees MC, deep in thought, focusing intently on him as he'd appeared to them, and thus keeping him tied to this form. Azul watches, with a mixture of contempt and fascination, as it becomes clear that this human has no idea what they've done, how they've done it, or who and what he is. Well. This'll be an easy fix at least.

He spends the night planning. He settles for the apologetic approach. An "I'm so sorry, I believe you may have accidentally set off a sigil I had in my coat pocket when you picked it up and it's linked us somehow. I'm sure it's a bother - don't worry I'll just remove it" and the whole mess should be finished.

Except it isn't. Because the moment he steps foot in your shop, your smile drops like a stone and you point an accusing finger at him. You're demanding to know what he's done to you, and Azul finds a whole millenia of patience, plus last night's planning, going down the drain in an instant as he stoops to argue with this human. Because this isn't his fault, thank you, it's clearly yours.

You shout at eachother for a bit, and come to the conclusion that it's best for both parties if this magical bond is severed immediately. But it doesn't dissolve, no matter what you or Azul try, and both of you slowly come to accept that this is going to be a little more complicated to sort out.

In your exasperation, you mutter "So that's it? I'm basically married to you now?" only to see Azul's face go the colour of a ripe apple. Instantly, you decide you will only be referring to Azul as your beloved husband going forward. It's only fair, if you're going to be stuck with him. (I apologize again for the sheer length of this monstrosity. I hope your exams went well!)

-Reaper

Oh, don't mind me over here in the corner just absolutely FROTHING AT THE MOUTH OVER THIS CONCEPT FOR MONSTER!AZUL. Reaper, my friend, you have some absolutely stellar brain worms my dude. 11/10. Never misses. My brain is going brrRRRRRRRR because I had plans! I swear I did! I had sorted Azul's lil story all into a nice, internal, filing system and was ready to lay it out whenever I finally found the time. But this selkie vibe is just so !!!!!! So!!!!! !!! I want to wrap it up in my head and never let it go. Maybe I can swipe the concepts while maintaining the og plot, or perhaps a hybrid, or maybe maybe ack! This is wonderful i want to EAT it

#Asks #Monster Mayhem #Azul Ashengrotto

94 notes · View notes

aleprouswitch · 4 months

Text

This girl I know locally was a practicing witch for years, but last November she made this big post on Facebook about how she had "accepted Jesus" and was a born-again Christian now. I didn't really sneeze at it. Peoples' religious beliefs are their business, after all.

The problem though is that yesterday, I found out that she apparently created a whole new Facebook profile because she wanted to start overt since becoming a Christian. Fair enough, right? I was going to add her back, but whooops, she's also super Conservative now. She just drank the whole damn pitcher of Kool-Aid that everyone in the Baptist Bible Belt chugs, and it's sad to witness.

I have other friends who are Christians and they're to the left politically; my downstairs neighbor is one of them and so is my cousin. One of my close friends from high school who now lives in NYC, the one who's been on the front lines marching for Palestine every day and has been a Marxist practically all her life, is also a practicing Catholic. The idea that being a Christian and being politically to the right have to coincide is such a terrible, terrible lie the West has propagated.

While I'm not a religious person - I'm still agnostic and figuring things out - I'm not opposed to other people being religious. It's kind of arrogant to think that we as just one of many sentient creatures in this universe have the capacity to definitively prove or disprove any higher powers out there when our own senses are innated flawed. With all of this being said, I am tired of people using religion - ANY religion - to justify oppressing and hurting other people.

This now apparent ex-friend of mine will hopefully figure out one day that finding a relationship with God doesn't mean that you also have to decide that certain people deserve to have equal rights and others don't, but that's on her. All I can humorously think about for now is that she's got a huge occult-inspired chest tattoo that she's probably going to have to spend a ton of money to have altered or removed. That's going to be mighty painful.

#personal #ugh

20 notes · View notes

karskilledme · 1 year

Text

NSFW Late Night Visits Kars x Fem!Reader

Kars and (y/n) have a weekly ritual of him coming over to absolutely pound her down. :)

Warnings: Vaginal sex, Blowjob, sex without love(Kinda), talk of power play(again kinda barely), smoking ciggys.

Words: 1619

Minors DNI! 18+ only or you’ll be cursed for life. NSFW under the cut!

Warm full-bodied smoke filled my lungs, its warmth comforting me as I stared longingly into the night. Friday nights were our nights. It felt like it had been this way forever but in reality it had only been a handful of months. One night, not unsimilar to this one, he had appeared out of thin air and into my life. I knew from the moment I laid eyes on him that he was dangerous, otherworldly. Something about that excited me. A mix up from my usual conservative, safe, and boring life. That man did something to me. Maybe it was his intoxicating aura that drew me in so easily, though his looks certainly didn’t hurt either. His skin was a warm brown, sculpted like fine marble statues, the kind they’d display in some fancy gallery, his eyes were piercing like they could see through you at a cellular level and his turban gave him a mysterious charm.

I shivered at the thought of that body and the way it touched me. Taking one last drag of my cigarette before snubbing it out with a sigh. With a last glance to the stars I turned to retreat to my room before being met with that daydream of a man. He stood leaned against the door frame of my quaint balcony. Arms crossed with his signature shit eating grin. I loved that look, especially when it was peeking up at me from between my thighs.

Returning his grin I spoke, “So you decided to spare me a visit after all?” I moved in closer, trailing my nails along the expanse of his crossed forearms. Despite the nights chill he was warm with life. He uncrossed his arms, straightening up, and cupped my cheek. His hand was almost terrifyingly large as it cradled me. It was no exaggeration that he could crush me in an instant. “I almost didn’t. You should feel lucky little deer.” He cooed, a sickly sweet tone of teasing in his voice. I scoffed and pushed past him, grabbing his hand from my face to pull him behind me.

It wasn’t ever a secret nor was it ever outright stated what he was here for. It was purely primal he had said on his second visit, no feelings attached, and I was fine with that or so I told myself. His body and the way he made me feel was more than enough, if he wasn’t looking for a relationship and I wasn’t either why force it?

Tonight wasn’t unlike any other, that much was quickly made apparent. Now sitting on my bed, his plush lips latched onto my neck, marking me with deep purple hickies I’d have to hide come morning. My hands made themselves busy, undoing his scarf as he worked. I didn’t get to see his hair until perhaps the fourth time he came and boy was I delighted. Hair wasn’t even the right word for his godly mane. It was so soft as my hand raked through it, applying soft pressure to his scalp as he worked little moans and mewls out of me. Kars never kissed me on the lips during our sessions. I wished for his kiss so badly, his lips were so warm and skilled just working on my body, it was hard not to imagine them against my own.

My hands feverishly traveled the expanse of Kars chest, finding their way to the band of his loincloth before quickly discarding of it. I peppered hot kisses down the expanse of his chest as teasingly slow as I could manage, my eyes never leaving his. My lips stopped short just inches from his throbbing member. His eyes spelled out his hunger plain as day while he bit his lip and stared at me. Tantalizingly slow I licked a long stripe up the underside of his dick, stopping to pay special attention to his head when I arrived. My tongue swirled around the blushed red tip, tasting the salt of his already beading precum. Satisfied that it was now sufficiently lubed up I bobbed down, taking as much of it in my mouth as I could. Kars tilted his head back with a groan and a mutter of something in another language. I gripped into his thigh with one hand and moved to jerk off the lower portion of his dick with the other. My head bobbed with determination, knowing that if I didn’t do good to help sate him now I wouldn’t be walking in the morning after he was through with me.

Kars was never vulnerable or emotional in the slightest when he came but when his dick was in my mouth and he was completely in my control there was a different side to him. He panted like a needy whore, gripping the bed sheets beside him, or my hair if he was wanting more. It was unlike any other side of him and I loved it. Seeing him unraveled under my touch, knowing that his pleasure was because of my hard work. It was enough to get me sopping by the time it came to sex.

Kars hips thrust up slightly, his tip twitching with the tell tale sign he was close. I let go of his shaft and gripped his balls before fully plunging on his dick. My throat and mouth going into overdrive as I worked to milk him dry of every last drop. Kars moaned out and gripped my hair before holding me down on his dick. His release filled my mouth as I slowed to a stop. Swallowing every last drop, I pulled off with a pop under his grip.

Kars was always quick on the rebound, ready in moments. His strong hands practically flung me up to the top of the bed. Despite not wanting any feelings involved he usually opted for breeding position or some variant of missionary unless he arrived pissed off or especially stressed. His head ran up the slick of my folds, drenching himself in my wetness. It was always daunting to start, being some sort of superhuman led to him having a superhuman sized dick.

Kars began pushing in, “So tight, will you be able to handle me tonight?” He teased. A gasp was all I could muster in response, the feeling of being stretched and filled making it impossible to think. He bottomed out and brought my legs up to his shoulders before perching over me. With barely any time to adjust he began drilling into me. It was impossible for him not to hit my gspot with every thrust since he hit every square inch of me, kissing my cervix with every bottom out. In no time I was a babbling mess. His hair was cloaked around me, his face twisted up ever so slightly while his mouth hung slightly parted. My eyes studied every beautiful inch of the sight above me before it all became too much. It was all I could manage to hold on as my eyes spun with stars and I struggled to catch my breath. Pure pleasure.

The sound of vulgar squelching and soft pants were all that was grounding me. Tingles began in my toes as he rammed in and out of me in a rhythmic bliss. “K-kaaarssss~!” I moaned out, digging my nails into his biceps. He grunted before moving in to grab one of my nipples in his mouth, picking up his pace. “Gonna c-cummm!” I screamed. Warmth flooded me, every point of contact going fuzzy like static on a broken tv, euphoria. Kars remained at his unrelenting pace, quickly bringing me to overstimulation. My body cried out for a break but my needy cunt began its ascent to a second orgasm. My body was lifted slightly as Kars moved his hand to angle my bottom towards him. It was direct strikes now. The new and overwhelming stimulation pushed me to my peak for the second time. Stifled moans spilled out of me as I bit into my own bicep. Kars removed himself from his place on my nipple to watch the sight, his eyes drinking up every inch of my blissed out expression. His pace faltered slightly before he dipped his forehead between my breasts. His panting quickened as I felt his dick begin to throb and pulse inside me. The sudden loss of sensation hollowed me before he spilled out his hot release on my stomach.

Our chests heaved in unison as he stared at the ceiling and I stared at him. No words were exchanged. He was, of course, much quicker to recover and moved off to get a rag for the two of us. Though I had thought I was fine with having no feelings attached I always found myself a little sad as his visits came to an end.

Kars wiped the cum from my tummy before crumpling it into the laundry hamper.

“I can sense that this arrangement won’t be able to continue on. Your pheromones reek of love.” Kars said, sitting back next to me as he fiddled with his loincloth. I shot up from my place in bed, my brain suddenly much clearer.

“W-what? No way Kars! You said no feelings so no feelings, I’m not that dumb.” I protested. Kars turned to meet my eyes with a seriously indiscernible face and narrowed his eyes at me ever so slightly. He turned away and looked at his nails before standing. “I don’t mean I won’t visit anymore. These times together have been very pleasant and have aided greatly in relieving my stress.” He paused and cast me another look “I just think we’ll need to renegotiate our agreement.”.

#kars #jjba #jjba kars #kars x reader #jjba x reader #jjba kars x reader #pillar men #jojos bizzare adventure #HaleyWritesStuff

161 notes · View notes