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revkooks · 11 months

Text

“trust issues”

pairing: jeon jungkook x reader

genre: strangers/friends to lovers, fluff, smut

summary: you’ve spent the past two years preaching about how much you enjoy being single and that dating was never a concern for you, until you meet jeon jungkook, the sweetest guy around, who completely changes that idea for you.

word count: 8.5k

warnings: nsfw, contains smut, alcohol consumption, unprotected s*x, oral (f receiving), brief bl*wjob, spanking, rough s*x, creampies, c*m eating, f*ngering, brief h*ndjob, heavy making out

Laughter fills the quiet room of your apartment as you and your two closest friends, Chae and Jennie, catch up on the latest gossip you had to share while sharing drinks and overall having a good time. It'd been too long since you'd went out of your way to have a full girls night, it felt good to finally have that closure as you certainly weren't receiving it from anyone else.

You were, what do they call it? Celibate, you guess you could say. You were painfully single. Dating never turned out right for you which lead you to wherever you were now, single for two years and counting. You never understood why dating was such a big fuss within your friend group, you'd been pestered multiples times to even go out and 'catch a dick' but you felt weirded out by the thought. You were a strong believer of destiny and if you were to meet someone you'd want it to reach you first instead of joining dating apps.

So when the topic of dating inevitably came up, you almost rolled your eyes unintentionally, ready to hear what every single friend of yours had been telling you for the past two years come from both Jennie and Chae's mouth as they collectively turned to you. "You know, Y/N", Jennie started, "It's been awhile since I've seen you with a man. Don't you think it's time to overcome this dating break of yours and meet someone new? You never know, your soulmate could be right around the corner."

You instantly waved her off, "Thank you, Jen, but I'm fine. I don't understand why everyone assumes you need to date to be happy, I'm just fine on my own."

"There's more to it than being happy. I mean, having a partner is like having a best friend who you can love and share affection with at the same time." Chae butts in, before adding, "and sex—most people love sex, don't deny it."

All you could do was laugh softly and scoff a little at her vulgar choice of words, you didn't disagree with her but you also brushed it off being the stubborn girl you were, you knew what you wanted and didn't feel the need to take in their words when it didn't mean anything to you. After some continuous bickering they finally decided to let the topic go after finally accepting the fact that you wouldn't budge, sharing detailed stories about their own personal lives as more laughter chimed in. You were already far gone at that point, lost in your own world and thoughts as you stared down at your feet situated on the floor, your mood had dropped slightly from the conversation prior to this one.

It wasn't that it was Chae nor Jennie's fault, it was the fact the topic of dating had been brought up countless times to you and you gave the same response each time so you never understood why you were constantly bugged.

"I'm fine by myself."

"I'm just not interested."

"Dating doesn't concern me."

Those words played in your head and while it was true you also knew deep down what the major problem surrounding you not wanting to date was.

The cause was undoubtedly your past and last relationship with your former boyfriend, Eunwoo. It all started 5 years ago when you met and even from your first interaction with him you were starstruck. He was utterly gorgeous, not only that but his personality was perfect, he was sweet, patient and caring towards you, he treated you the best you'd ever been treated and always had you feeling like you were still talking to your crush 2 years into your relationship. Then when the 3rd year hit, something in him just drastically switched, it was like he was an entirely different person around you and you couldn't bare it. He was irritable, finding all the many different reasons to somehow get mad at you and when he wasn't mad he was simply neutral, never acknowledging your affection or 'I love you's.' The most you got back in response was a nonchalant 'You too.'

Something wasn't right and you knew it, if he couldn't even bring himself to tell you he loves you then why the hell was he still with you? Your gut told you he was too busy giving someone else what he was supposed to give to you though you were too in denial. Flash forward a few weeks, you come home early from work one night and there he was, with another girl. Your heart had shattered and you resorted to kicking him out the apartment, now 2 years later and you feel like you still may be wallowing in self pity with the whole dating hiatus concept.

Honestly, fuck it. If your friends were right after all then you supposed only time would tell, you still weren't interested in looking for anyone and it was going to stay that way.

Your friends had already left by the next morning, you were stationed in the kitchen, about to make breakfast until you opened the fridge and realized you were out of eggs. "For fuck's sake", you cursed beneath your breath, shutting it again before walking towards your apartment door and pulling your jacket off the rack hanging up. Luckily for you a drive to the grocery store was about five minutes away, you hurried over to your car, unlocked it and made your way there.

You instantly scurried over to the aisle where the eggs were, grabbing the box and already preparing to walk to the cashier before a voice interrupts you, stopping you in your tracks. "In a rush, huh?" The male laughs breathlessly, you turn back around to catch a glimpse of him and—damn. He was attractive, his eyes creasing as he smiled down at you, dark bangs adorning his face and a sleeve tattoo covering his arm. You simply nodded, "Yeah, I don't need anything else, plus I'm very hungry." He paused for a moment, you assumed your little interaction was over before he continued, "That's a shame, you looked like you needed help, I was already willing." You couldn't help but smile softly at his words, shaking your head, "Nope, but I appreciate the kindness, __” “Jungkook." He quickly adds, "Jungkook." You repeat, "I'm Y/N."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Y/N, I hope to see you around again some time", Jungkook flashes you a bunny grin and from that you can see he also has a lip piercing slightly hidden away, you must admit, it suited him. You agree with a subtle bow of your head, "You too!", and with an exchanged 'bye' you both proceeded to approach your designated areas, shaking off the cute yet awkward interaction you just had as you place the one thing you brought on the cashier's desk. You quickly paid and swiftly exited the store, completely unaware of Jungkook's gaze on your back.

"Dude, why didn't you get her number?" Jungkook's best friend, Jimin, exclaims as he nudges the younger on his shoulder before taking a sip of his drink. "I don't know, it felt strange to ask. Chances are we might meet again and hopefully in a better environment, that's when I'll shoot my shot." He shakes his head almost disappointedly before continuing to blankly stare at the TV in front of him. "Why did you even put this shit on? You know I'm not a fan of reality shows." Jungkook asks the other as 'Love Island' blasts on the TV, the loud intro resonating through the room. Jimin shrugs his shoulders and calmly responds, "It's entertaining at least, and it might help with your poor flirting skills", the last sentence earned a piercing glare from Jungkook, narrowing his eyes at Jimin before standing up and walking into the kitchen. "Whatever, I'm gonna grab a drink."

Jimin waves the other off and continues focusing his attention purely on the screen in front of him, Jungkook pouring himself a glass of water in the meantime, thoughts of you swarming his mind as he fought to get rid of them. He was finding it almost impossible, your conversation, if you could even call it that, was weeks ago and by now he knew you'd forgotten about it but he hadn't. You were just so cute, gorgeous even, he was intrigued by you and if you were in a better setting he knew by now you'd have his number in your phone and he'd be getting to know you. The literal only thing he knew about you was that you liked eggs, and that did absolutely nothing for him.

He was determined, thoughts like these weren't a normal occurrence for him so you were really special, whatever it took to meet you again, he didn't care, it was going to happen. Fuck, why didn't he give you his number? Jimin was right.

"Dude, get in here!" He heard from the living room, heading back inside with his glass of water in hand, taking a small sip before sitting back down beside the other with a questioning, raised eyebrow. "What is it?", he asked, to which Jimin replied, "We're going clubbing. You needa take your mind off this shit, maybe even find a girl whilst you're at it." Jungkook audibly scoffed, Jimin's sudden request catching him off guard although he agreed with a shrug of his shoulders, "Alright, but maybe not the last part."

You were seated on your couch, sprawled out lazily as you flicked through channels before you heard your phone ping, sitting upright to grab it off the table and read what was displayed on the screen.

chae: get ready, you're going out with us

you: when did i agree to this? and who is us?

chae: it's gonna be fun, y/n. just me, you, jen and lisa.

You sighed, it wouldn't kill to go out, right? It'd been awhile, you used to love partying but recently you've found yourself turning any invite down, something was telling you this'd be different and it'd do you good, so you sat in thought before typing a response.

you: fine, what time will u be here?

chae: 7 on the dot

Setting your phone aside, you gathered the strength to hop off your couch and make your way upstairs to your bedroom, you had a few dresses you could wear for tonight that you found pretty so you rummaged through your closet before finding an ideal one. You held it in front of your body to get a clearer perspective of how'd you look in it before stepping out of your silk pajamas and slipping the dress on, adjusting it a little before taking one last look at yourself with a wide smile. You had no clue why you hadn't worn this before, it complimented you well and hugged your curves perfectly, it wasn't too revealing but it had a slit that started mid thigh.

You took a quick glimpse at your clock as it read 6:05 pm, that gave you just under an hour to complete your makeup which you figured would be enough time considering you wanted to go for a rather simplistic look, so without another thought you swiftly took a seat in front of your mirror and got started.

Time passed by quicker than you'd expected and you were startled to hear your doorbell ringing from downstairs, luckily for you you'd already finished up your look and after one last brief moment of checking yourself out, you were taking your bag, keys and phone with you and rushing down the steps to your front door. You got into your heels before opening the door for Chae who welcomed you with a bright smile, looking like a proud sister.

"You look fucking hot, Y/N", she complimented, earning a blush from you before you shook your head at her words and pulled her in for a warm hug, "So do you, now let's get going, I wanna last awhile before my feet start hurting." She nodded in agreement and brought you to the car parked outside where your two other friends, Jennie and Lisa were situated inside, you joined them and Chae began driving shortly after.

Loud music rang through your ears as soon as the four of you entered the club, you'd forgotten how different this was but you'd be lying if you said your adrenaline wasn't already pumping, your inner party girl side really revealing itself when you quickly found yourself walking towards the bar for your first drink of the night. You weren't certain of how long you were gonna last until the alcohol kicks in and you also weren't planning on drinking a lot, but it wouldn't kill to have one or two.

Lisa came over to join you, making herself comfortable on the high stool beside you, you'd only noticed her once she greeted you with an attempted, loud, "Are you having fun?", which was almost impossible considering how much the music drowned out her words. You turned your head in her direction before offering her a contented smile, "So far, yeah. We haven’t been here long enough for me to tell.” You spoke out, glancing around the area before resting your elbow on the bar and your chin on your palm.

“You wanna take a shot of tequila?” Lisa asked, to which you blatantly agreed, “fuck it.” The both of you ordered a shot and on the count of 3, downing it as you hissed simultaneously, the burning sensation wasn’t at all pleasant. You both went on to carry a conversation after that before Lisa got up to dance after asking you if it was okay, you wanted her to have fun, you were sure you’d find someone else to hang out with either way, you were a social butterfly at heart.

Jungkook and Jimin stumbled into the club, they were hardly dressed for the occasion as they both agreed to head out as soon as Jimin proposed the idea, Jungkook scrunched his nose ever so slightly before turning to the older who seemed to already be on his way to a table. He followed after him and they took a seat, “I’ll go get us drinks”, the younger declared and got up from the seat he had hardly sat down on before making his way over to the bar.

Unnoticeably he had taken the seat beside you, you were too busy being in your own world to notice him as he ordered for him and Jimin, he gazed at the woman next to him before looking back at the bar, then doing a double take because he swore the girl seemed all too familiar. His lips parted slowly as he caught a better glimpse of you and, to his surprise, it in fact was you. He almost couldn’t believe it for some reason despite the town you lived in being relatively small and the club popular, he just didn’t think he was going to see you again.

“Y/N!” He called out beside you, catching your attention and making you face him, your lips instantly curving up into a smile as you see the male in front of you. You were slightly shocked he remembered you considering your interaction at the grocery store was awhile ago and you barely had a real conversation, but his thoughtfulness meant a lot to you.

“Hey, Jungkook! I didn’t expect to see you here. How are you?” You spoke softly but loud enough for him to hear you, “I’m good, better now you’re here.” He gave you that same smile you adored the first time you saw, his words also making you feel somewhat special. “How are you?” Jungkook added, “I’ve been okay. I was kinda forced to come to this party but hey, it’s not too bad now.” You emphasized the last part to make him aware it was about him, feeling somewhat shy.

“Not gonna lie, my friend also forced me here—well, dragged, I did agree but it wasn’t my idea”, he chuckled, scratching the back of his neck as he eyed the beaming room, why did every time you meet have to be in such an inconvenient place?

Jungkook then remembered he was here with Jimin, the bartender placing the drinks he’d ordered in front of him and then he gazed back at you, “I’ll be right back, don’t want him getting mad at me”, you nodded understandably and watched Jungkook scurry with the drinks in his hands to what seemed to be the table he and his friend were at. Jimin could tell just by his gaze something had happened and Jungkook was already starting as he set the drinks down, not taking a seat because he knew he’d be going back to you.

“Dude, she’s here, the girl I was telling you about. I can’t pass this opportunity up so I’m gonna get her number this time, go have fun.” Jungkook rushed back to you and Jimin just shrugged, “more drinks for me.”

He made his way through the crowd to find you still in your seat as expected, he spoke up before you could, “You wanna get out of here? I’m not really feeling it.” You nodded, already getting out of your seat, “I’m not either, but I don’t have a ride, do you?”

Jungkook took your hand and lead you out the club, his voice finally clear as he replied, “My car’s over here, I’ll take you home.” You thanked him and shuffled into the passenger’s seat as he made his way to the driver’s, starting up the car’s engine and beginning to drive off while asking you for your location and heading towards there once you gave him it. You both talked about whatever, bonding over different things this time and actually forming the chance to get to know each other more, you were warming up to Jungkook and it felt like he was the same.

His car eventually stopped outside your house, you thanked him once again before opening the door, he called out to you. Now was his chance.

“Here, give me your phone, I’m gonna give you my number just incase you ever wanna talk”, you opened your bag to take your phone out before displaying it in front of him and allowing him to type his number in, you checked back and giggled inaudibly as you read the name he’d put in for himself: “Kook.”

You waved him off goodbye, reminding him to text you when he made it home safe to which he agreed before driving away, leading you to stumble into your apartment after managing to unlock it after a few failed attempts before instantly finding your way to your couch and slumping on it, ripping your heels off that were as you expected, painfully causing your feet to ache. You’d wasted no time to switch your TV back on and play one of your comfort shows, Modern Family, as background noise while you went upstairs to change back into your comfiest pair of pajamas.

Being at home like this is what you enjoyed the most, you appreciated the small amount of time you spent at the club since it got you out with your friends and also granted you the opportunity to meet Jungkook once again, who you actually had been thinking about after that one interaction you two shared but the thought eventually slipped from your mind since you figured you maybe weren’t going to meet again like he said after all, but you were wrong.

You learned a few key details about Jungkook from the conversation you had during the car ride. He was 25, a year older than you, he lived alone and had a doberman and you so happened to be a dog lover so you bonded over that, he likes art and dancing and he’s currently single, something you were relieved about because you were the only single friend in your group and you didn’t want the joys of another taken person flaunting their relationship.

You heard your phone buzz on the table opposite your couch as you came back downstairs in your silky pajamas, biting your lip to hide your obvious smile once you saw Jungkook was the one who’d texted you.

kook: made it home safe, thank you for tonight :)

kook: he was waiting for me

kook: [attachment: image]

A picture of his dog, Bam, lights up your screen and you let out a small laugh seeing the dog laying beside the door as if he was in fact waiting for Jungkook, you respond with an ‘awww’ before thanking him yet again for the ride home, you both begin a conversation from that point until you feel yourself yawning, indicating you were tired and ready to go to bed for the night. It was already 10 pm, you’d been chatting to Jungkook through messages and exchanging silly memes with each other for so long you hadn’t even noticed how quick time passed by. You dimmed the lights in your house and made your way upstairs to your bedroom, shuffling onto your mattress and beneath the bedsheets, receiving a sweet goodnight message from Jungkook and with that you set your phone aside and closed your eyes, dozing off the happiest you’ve been in awhile.

Friday, 3:30 pm.

“Finally”, you sigh. You quickly tore your apron off and hung it up on the rack before clocking out of work for the day, you were about to leave the coffee shop before a certain someone walked in, greeting you with a wide smile and you were definitely surprised to see him. “Kook, what are you doing here?” You asked, he held his hand up to his chest, pretending to be offended, “I like coffee, you know”, you playfully rolled your eyes and you were about to turn around to take his order before he stopped you, “I’m kidding, I’m not here for coffee, I’m here to see you.” You’d be lying if you said your heart didn’t flutter, you let out a small laugh, “You showed up as soon as I clocked out, that’s dedication.”

You walk out from the bar situated in front of you to stand directly in front of him, reaching up to pinch his cheek teasingly, “But I appreciate it, thank you for coming here.” He smiles and nods his head at you before speaking once again, “also, I came to ask, are you interested in going to the movies with me this weekend? I wanna see the new Guardians of the Galaxy.” His words almost earned a chuckle out of you, you weren’t the biggest fan but with his doe eyes and promising expression, you couldn’t turn him down. “Of course, Kook, I’d love to.”

Did this mean you two were going on a date? Maybe it didn’t, you don’t know how Jungkook viewed you but for now you both were just friends, and friends can go and see a movie together alone without it being a date.

Jungkook’s face lit up in excitement, he mumbled a soft ‘yes’ beneath his breath before glancing around the small coffee shop, it was particularly empty so he decided to lead you to a table for two and treat you with a coffee for yourself. You couldn’t fathom how he was so sweet, undeniably attractive and overall perfect yet still single? Jungkook was utterly charming, you found yourself involuntarily admiring him as he got up to order you a drink and you quickly snapped out of it once you realized what you were doing. There’s no way you were falling for him, right? Just months ago you were preaching about how you wanted to stay single and it was gonna stay that way and yet here Jungkook was, completely changing that for you.

You doubt Jungkook even saw you in that way, every kind gesture of his seemed to be friendly to you, unless you were just completely unaware. Perhaps you were in denial? Dating has always been such an no-go for you, it’s like you were off limits but not at the same time, you have said that when the time comes you’ll let it be and this might be the time you were referring to you’re experiencing right now. Over the past month, you and Jungkook have grown closer and closer and you’ve been texting nonstop, you know so much about him as he does with you, you haven’t had many chances to see each other though which is why you appreciated him coming to your workplace.

Now on Saturday you were finally being gifted the chance to spend a day with this man and you were most definitely excited about it, it’d maybe put your thoughts of possibly falling for him at ease.

You snapped out of it as he came back with the drink in his hand and that infamous bunny smile plastered on his face, placing it down in front of you, you offered a small ‘thank you’ before taking it in your own hand and beginning to quietly sip on it. You eventually finished and the two of you were standing up and exiting the building, calling it a day, he made sure to tell you he’d be picking you up at 5:30 tomorrow and you made a mental note of that. You rushed to your car and headed inside before driving back to your apartment after a long, boring day (aside from seeing Jungkook), and you spent a lot of time pondering about tomorrow rather than doing your usual activities.

The next morning arrived quickly, it was also the day of your ‘date’ with Jungkook, or platonic hanging out, whatever it was. You were over the moon as you got out of bed, and you were never typically a morning person so that spoke for itself. Jungkook had already sent you his daily ‘good morning’ text that he always manages to send before you wake up, his small efforts to make you happy genuinely meant a lot to you because everything he did was just so well thought out. You had a lot of time before he was going to arrive to pick you up so you didn’t need to worry, making your way downstairs and preparing your breakfast.

Jungkook was still happy over the fact you even said yes to watching this movie with him, he didn’t know you were a fan of Guardians of the Galaxy, were you?

Whatever, he thought to himself. Jungkook wasn’t going to lie, he’d been thinking about you way more often recently and it seemed like his brain was just accumulated with thoughts of nothing but you. He felt bad, almost. You had no idea about his secret crush on you, he didn’t want to say anything or make a move just yet despite you being in a friendship for quite awhile now. He couldn’t tell how you felt about him, he wanted to wait for an occasion like a date, you’d be alone and spending quality time together and that in his opinion was a great way to start something more. Jimin sometimes would urge Jungkook to take it a step further but he never complied, it’s not that he was nervous—maybe he was—he didn’t know, he was conflicted.

He wasn’t conflicted about his feelings towards you, he knows he likes you and he’s known it ever since he saw you in that grocery store, he was conflicted about your feelings towards him. You flirt over text, you compliment each other and now you’re getting ready to see a movie together, you could’ve shut him down but you didn’t. Then again, you may just see him as a friend and this could be a friendly date to you, that’s why he doesn’t know what to do.

Jungkook sighed to himself softly, he checked his phone incase there were any new texts from you before deciding to just set it down and go and take a shower, already preparing for the date 5 hours prior.

5:25 pm.

“He’s gonna be here any second now”, you mumbled to yourself, you checked your outfit in the mirror and made any necessary readjustments. You decided to wear a white crop-top and a miniskirt, throwing on your jacket to complete the look before shuffling into your shoes. That’s when you heard your doorbell ringing, quickly standing up from the couch to open it and you were met with a cheerful Jungkook, “Hi”, he spoke softly, to which you replied back, “Hey”, you gave him a smile and he helped you outside, his hand splayed on your back.

“You looked beautiful, by the way”, you heard him address, your cheeks flared with a slight tint of blush as you thanked him, he lead you to the car and began driving you two to the theatre.

You both arrived and you followed Jungkook inside as he fisted his hands inside his pockets, waiting in the small line for the tickets to the movie as you glanced at the different foods they had on the menu, Jungkook turning his head in your direction before he asked, “You want anything? Popcorn?”, you suddenly felt shy and also bad as he had already offered to pay for the movie and now additionally snacks so you shook your head.

“You sure?”, he spoke again, “I don’t mind. It’s my treat, after all.” To which you finally agreed and asked for a simple small popcorn but he still ordered you and himself a drink alongside it, paying for the tickets as well. You both walked to the designated room for the movie and took your seats, he’d picked ones that were right at the back of the theatre and you weren’t complaining because you hated sitting up close. You got the best view from back here.

After awhile, the lights dim and the screen extends, Jungkook’s already shuffling around in anticipation while occasionally taking a sip of his drink and you can’t help but find him adorable, you didn’t mean to focus on him more than the movie. You hoped he hadn’t noticed you staring so you quickly focused on the big screen in front of you. You hear laughs and different reactions from the audience at every other scene, you find yourself getting comfortable in your seat and eventually you’re drawn into the movie just like everybody else.

Jungkook was stealing glances at you as well, you looked too damn good in your outfit, he could see your curves as the skirt hugged them perfectly and then his eyes trailed further up to your lips, he wanted to kiss them. He was content just seeing you enjoying the movie, you were like his own personal movie as he found himself enjoying watching you way more. Was he being weird? Probably. Did he care? Not really.

You go to glance at him only to realize he already was, you make eye contact and for a moment it’s awkward but Jungkook just silently laughs and smiles at you, turning back to the movie. You were blushing by that point, trying to get over your own thoughts as you fixated your gaze on the screen.

By the time the movie was over, Jungkook was emotional and so were you, but he definitely expressed it more as he walked out the room with you, going on about his favorite parts of the movie and how much of a wreck it made him. You chuckled at how dramatic he was, he eventually came down from it and he yet again splayed a hand across your back, giving it a gentle rub before walking you out the theatre completely. “Thank you for seeing that with me, you’re honestly the best.”

“You’re the best for taking me, Kook. I enjoyed it a lot.” You rested your head against his shoulder tiredly, the movie was pretty damn long so by the time you two were out it was already 8 pm. He ended up taking you back home and you continuously thanked him for the amazing night, you were definitely planning on doing this again with him some time. You entered your apartment, replaying the moments in your head. He made you so happy, you couldn’t believe how much your boring life had changed upon meeting Jungkook, he appreciated you and showed you what it’s like to be cherished. He was always so sweet to you, Jungkook had a heart of gold and constantly went out of his way to do things he knew would make you happy.

He’d asked you what your favorite type of flowers were one day and after you replied with ‘roses’, he showed up at your workplace with a bouquet full of them. No guy has ever bought you flowers, not even Eunwoo, that had you thinking back on your last relationship and suddenly you were distraught again.

Eunwoo was sweet at first as well, then it went downhill. That wasn’t to say that Jungkook would be the same but this is exactly why you had trouble with dating after him, you had trust issues. You were convinced Jungkook was the sweetest guy and wouldn’t do anything to hurt you but you also felt that way with Eunwoo at first. You didn’t wanna paint Jungkook out to be any type of bad guy because he’s shown that he’s nothing but good to you, you’re just an overthinker and you can’t help but get flashbacks of your stupid ex-boyfriend whenever something like this happens to you.

You didn’t want Jungkook to have to put up with this if you ever even reached the point of a relationship. Your issues weren’t his problem, it’s not his fault you’re scared to commit.

You narrowed your eyebrows as you thought of Eunwoo again, if you never met him things would’ve been fine. Now he’s probably out there living his best life and you’re still stuck on the damage he gave you.

But when you thought of Jungkook, a whole new wave of happiness swarmed through your body and everything about him put you at ease, you felt safe around him, he treated you like you were the only girl in the world. You had to admit, you were falling for him, and that’s something you thought would never happen with anyone.

“I’m falling for him.” You declared, almost a little nervously as you glanced back and forth between Chae and Jennie.

You’re surprised when Jennie exclaims, “See! I told you so. I knew you liked him, this is perfect. I’ve always wanted you to be with someone just like Jungkook.” And you turned to Chae who only shrugs as though she was silently agreeing with Jennie. Their reactions do make you laugh but you also roll your eyes slightly because you’d been over this with them before, that you don’t want to date and you don’t need a man and here you were, a few months later, stating you’d met someone.

They knew about Jungkook already, after you left them at that party you had to apologize and Lisa caught you out, telling the whole groupchat she noticed you walking away with a guy by your side so then you had to explain the full story in detail. They were happy for you but it was also a semi “I told you so” moment which had you scoffing, you didn’t like defeat and them taunting you only made it worse. Your friends were practically like the sisters you never had, they were constantly looking out for you so if Jungkook was approved by them you figured that had to mean something good. You don’t think they’ve ever met him and if they have then you certainly don’t remember, but given the amount of stories you’ve told them, they have a good enough vision of who he is and what he acts like.

You really didn’t think in a million years you’d be here with your friends at your apartment, admitting you finally like somebody but that’s just life. You never know what’s around the corner, you certainly didn’t expect Jungkook.

Jungkook was on the same page as you, he was telling Jimin all sorts of things about you, what your favorite movie was, your favorite book, food, things to eat, songs—he couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t say he was in love but he was just so infatuated by you, Jimin didn’t seem to mind Jungkook’s chattering as he was his personal wingman after all and this is what he’s always wanted for his younger friend. He loved seeing him happy even if he enjoyed teasing him about it at times.

“You’re obsessed, bro”, Jimin snorted, Jungkook shot him a glare, “I’m not, I just like her a lot. I’ve never felt this way about anyone.”

A few days went by, you felt your phone vibrate in your pocket and you instantly knew who it was, swiping upwards on your screen to open the message as a smile spread across your lips.

kook: can i come over?

kook: i miss you

You replied with a ‘yes’ and then you were sat on your couch awaiting his arrival. Jungkook had been visiting more frequently recently, your feelings for each other were still unknown but your friends most definitely knew, you both had no idea you’d been talking about how much you like one another and yet you still haven’t had the guts to say it upfront.

It wasn’t long until you heard a knock on your front door, you got up to answer and expectedly you were greeted by Jungkook, you stepped aside to welcome him in before heading back over to your place on the couch, offering him the seat beside you. He sat down and the couch slightly dipped from the added weight, he subconsciously wrapped his arm around your shoulders and you inched yourself closer towards him.

“Wanna watch a movie?” You asked as you turned to look up at him, he responded with a small hum, “Sure, do you have Netflix?” You nodded and clicked the Netflix option on your controller before flicking through different movies to watch, you just settled on a random one that seemed funny to you and Jungkook didn’t mind that. You didn’t have to necessarily be talking to him to enjoy his presence, you appreciated just silently cuddling like this on the couch while watching a movie.

You couldn’t help but feel like you were being watched, though, moving your head from your position to gaze up at Jungkook and as you thought, you were correct. He was staring at you and he didn’t bother to look away even after you caught him, you nervously laughed and mumbled out a quiet, “what?”, to which he didn’t answer at first but after a few moments he spoke up.

“You’re just so beautiful, Y/N. And I mean that.” You swallowed harshly at his words, trying to suppress your smile but of course you failed and gave him a wide grin—he wasn’t done yet, though. “Ever since I first laid my eyes on you, I’ve felt things I’ve never felt before and I know it’s taken me awhile to say this but, I do like you.”

You didn’t even know how to respond, the only thing you could think of was to wrap your arms around his neck and pull him into a kiss, which you did.

Jungkook was quick to return it, you could sense his eagerness just by having his lips on yours and you loved it, you fluttered your eyes shut in contentment while deepening the kiss gradually, throwing a leg over his knee and he easily obliged, grabbing onto your thigh to forcefully prop you on top of his lap. Your lips meshed with one another’s perfectly, you let out a small gasp as he sucked on your bottom lip and slipped his tongue inside due to your mouth falling open, you slid your arms from around his neck down to his chest and finally they found a place on his cheeks.

He knitted his eyebrows slightly, pulling back to catch his breath and also mumble out, “Let’s go upstairs, yeah?”

You barely made it inside your room before the door was being slammed shut and Jungkook was using his strength to pull you into his chest, leaning down to reconnect your lips into another messy kiss, you couldn’t get enough of each other. He lead you towards the bed by pushing you back step by step until you eventually stumbled and fell onto the mattress, Jungkook swiftly climbing on top of you with his lips still pressed against yours. His hands roamed your body, feeling every curve he’d been oh so desperate to touch and now he finally was, he finally had you and he wasn’t going to let you go. He’d spent months thinking about you, jerking off to the thought of you, now that you were underneath him he wanted to do everything he’d dreamed of.

Jungkook was the first to break the long lasting kiss, the both of you catching your breaths while he was already in a rush to remove his shirt, impatiently undoing the buttons one by one until he finally managed to slide it down his arms and your thighs were already clenching at just the sight of his toned abs. He swiped his tongue over his bottom lip, sliding a hand beneath the expanse of your back to lift you up and carefully roll your panties down your legs with the other, your skirt coming off next. You spread your legs for him, causing him to groan softly as he positioned himself in front of you with his face hovering in front of your pussy and lower body almost off the bed. “Been dreaming of this pussy for so long”, he sighed out quietly, “You don’t know how much I’ve craved to be inside of you, Y/N.”

His words made you whimper softly, you were practically begging for him at this point as you eased your pussy closer to his face and he took the hint, burying his face between your thighs and already lapping his tongue over your entire cunt. He stopped at your clit and began teasing it with the tip of his tongue at a slow pace, you whined lowly and arched your back, a hand coming down to tangle within his hair as he worked his mouth along your pussy perfectly.

“You taste so fucking sweet”, he mumbled against your cunt, sliding his tongue between your folds and collecting your essence with it before wrapping his lips around your clit and hollowing his cheeks ever so slightly as he sucked, making your pussy a complete mess. His drool seeped down his chin and landed on different parts of your cunt, meshing with your own slick and making you so unbelievably wet. Jungkook released a breathy moan at your taste, relishing in it every time he brought his tongue back up to meet your clit, his lips continuing to suck before he eventually drew back and slid his ring and middle finger inside of you.

The unexpected action caused your back to arch even higher, his fingers reached parts of you you didn’t know were capable of reaching but Jungkook made it work, curling them on every thrust in while diving back down to continue mercilessly lapping his tongue over your pussy. You were a moaning mess beneath him and you were positive his tongue would make you cum soon enough, your hand desperately grasped at his hair and you unnoticeably pushed him even further into your cunt which made him release a low chuckle.

You lost all composure when Jungkook brought a third finger up, you were so wet he managed to slide it in effortlessly and thrust them all at once in a repetitive rhythm that had you gasping for air, his tongue doing absolute wonders on your clit not making it any easier for you and before you knew it, you were clenching around his digits and cumming hard, your legs shaking intensely for a brief moment.

Jungkook was already in the process of unbuckling his belt and shoving his pants down impatiently, releasing his hard cock, taking himself in his own hand and giving himself a few pumps before sitting upright on the bed, discarding his clothes and kicking them off his ankles completely as he positioned himself in front of you.

“Shit, I need you so bad. I can’t wait any longer.” Jungkook whispered out quietly, a quiet hiss following from the pleasure he was already receiving from stroking his cock at a slow pace.

“Please”, you managed to mumble out, hands weakly coming up to slip your top off and unclip your bra, exposing yourself completely to the man in front of you. His gaze fell darker than it already was, cupping both your tits in his hands and thoroughly massaging them before releasing his grasp to dip his head down and take one of your nipples in his mouth, nuzzling his face against your breast simultaneously while sucking. You bit your lip softly and rested your hand on the back of his head, the other coming down to pump his cock for him which made him growl and draw back.

He gently removed your hand off his cock, if you jerked him off he knew he wouldn’t be able to last long and he wanted to cum inside of you. You thought he was about to enter you until you were abruptly flipped over onto your stomach, you felt a hard spank across your ass which made you dig your nails into the bedsheets and whine quietly.

“Up”, Jungkook commanded, his tone had dropped a few octaves lower which made you excited. You did as he told you, arching your back in the air for him with a sway of your hips that had him clicking his tongue. He rested a hand on your waist for support, inching himself closer to you, he was on his knees behind you and now he was dangerously close because you could feel his tip poking your entrance from behind. You were growing impatient, you were waiting him to slide into you already and—

Your thoughts were cut off as soon as you felt his thick cock filling you up, he had completely bottomed out and shoved himself into you all the way, earning a breathy, loud moan from you. He barely granted you with enough time to adjust to his size before pulling out and slamming back in again, he set this repetitive rhythm of drawing back almost all the way just to shut you up with his dick again and it had your toes curling. He hit all the right spots inside you, his hips rocking forward into yours deeply and his tip reaching your gspot effortlessly, you weren’t sure you were going to last long from how hard and well he was fucking you.

He unexpectedly struck another hard slap against your ass and you let out another needy whine, Jungkook was pounding away at your pussy and you heard him occasionally grunt beneath his breath. “Fuck”, he cursed out, “You feel so fucking good around me, so tight.” You purposely clenched at his words and it made him groan quietly, snapping his hips forward in order to forcefully fuck his way through your walls and all you could do was take it, allowing him to use you as he pleased.

Jungkook brought a hand down between where you were connected and he felt around your clit for a moment before dipping his fingers between your folds and deliberately pressing against it, rubbing your clit in a circular motion and applying pressure to make you feel it properly. The stimulation on your clit and the way his cock was ruining your insides was all too much for you, you felt another orgasm coming on and you were just going to let it happen.

He halted for a moment as he was buried all the way inside of you, teasingly rotating his hips and you swore you almost came on the spot, he proceeded with his reckless pace on your cunt and his fingers continued caressing your clit in that same circular motion and with a few more hard thrusts, you were coming undone within seconds beneath him, your pussy contracting around his cock as another orgasm hits you. Jungkook pulled out slowly and flipped you onto your back again, “Wanna see your pretty face when I cum in you”, he murmured out as he leaned down to connect your lips again, you weren’t even sure if you could call this a kiss from how messy it was as he smothered his lips against your own, his hips driving forward which lead to his cock sinking impossibly deeper into you and before you knew it, he was pounding into your cunt once again.

Jungkook traveled a hand down the expanse of your thighs before grabbing onto one and effortlessly throwing it around his waist, the new angle allowing him to thrust further into you, you moaned weakly against his lips as he quietly shushed you and gave you rough, senseless strokes. He released a string of curses as he felt his own high approaching, sitting upright and settling both hands on your waist instead, leaving your leg to dangle around his hips without any support, you weren’t sure if you could keep it up for much longer.

His head hung low, his jaw clenching tightly to suppress the loud moan aching to escape his throat, giving you precisely harder and deeper thrusts until a particular one had him reaching his high, finally spilling his cum inside your pussy with a dragged out, pleasured sigh. He felt himself gradually softening, pulling out before curling his finger in a ‘come here’ motion and you took the hint, crawling towards him on your knees, “Clean me up, baby.”

You wrapped your lips around his tip and made sure to drain the remains of his cum out, lapping them up with your tongue and swallowing all of it. You earned a breathless ‘good girl’ from him, you didn’t stop your movements on his dick and you even went as far as to push your head further down, almost turning it into a blowjob until he stopped you and collapsed beside you on the bed.

“I’m gonna need awhile to recover from that.” Jungkook joked, you giggled softly and laid next to him, hugging his larger body against yours and making yourself comfortable in his arms as he wrapped his around your shoulders like he always does.

“Y/N?” Jungkook spoke out, you hummed in question and he hesitantly continued after a small pause, “I think after that, it’s only right if I ask you the question.”

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

The wide grin on your face was enough of an answer to him, but he still felt relieved when he heard you say, “Of course I will, dummy.”

You reached up to give him a peck on the lips before resting your head against his shoulder, you both dozed off like that, cradled in each other’s arms and now official.

You never would’ve thought you’d end up in this situation.

But one thing you do know, is that you love Jungkook.

And Jungkook loves you.

#jungkook smut #bts smut #jungkook fic #jungkook fanfic #bts fanfic #jungkook x reader #jungkook imagines #bts imagines #jungkook scenarios #bts scenarios

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inbarfink · 1 month

Text

I think a lot about the Concept of ‘choices that matter’ in video games. Like, in terms of what it is that makes a choice ‘really matter’, what do we perceive as a choice that matters or has a consequence, how do different games with different amounts of branching or non-branching storylines play with those ideas… Especially because Undertale is one of my favorite games of all time, and it has often been hyped as ‘a game where your choices REALLY matter’ and… honestly, I dunno if all of this hype was fully conducive to Undertale. Because the way it handles the concept of Video Game Choices is actually a lot more interesting and complex than that simplistic descriptor makes it seem.

Because Undertale actually has a lot of choices that ‘don’t really matter’! Lots of dialogue choices and silly little decisions that on a first playthrough seem like they’re some sort of moral choice or a branching plotline but end up always leading to basically the same result regardless of what you do!

And the game doesn’t really try to hide the fact that these choices are kinda 'Fake'. I mean, on a first playthrough a player might assume there’s gonna be some Massive Consequences for picking the ‘wrong’ drink on Undyne’s date, but the game’s narrative expects for there to be multiple playthroughs and pretty much every Choice that Doesn’t Matter is peppered with that Undertale brand of wacky character-focused humor that inherently makes the moment memorable. Papyrus leading Undyne straight to you no matter what you do is basically a cross-timeline running gag.

On some level I see this as a sort of gag that serves as meta-commentary about the expectations around Choices That Matter in Video Games. As in, a lot of games have their Moral Choices happen in clearly easily marked ‘this is a Moral Choice!’ moments within the story, while the actual gameplay (and any violence the player might cause as part of said gameplay) is basically entirely divorced from any element of narrative-branching and doesn't effect the story at all. Undertale basically entirely inverts this dynamic; the most important factor for which Route you’re own is how you handle your FIGHTs, and what seems like clearly-marked and obvious Moral Choices are just goofy insubstantial minor changes in dialogue.

But also… there is also a level where you must ask yourself ‘what does it mean when we say that these choices Don’t Matter’. I mean, it’s not like they didn't change anything about the game, the Player still made the character say that other thing, the choice probably led to an alternate piece of dialogue, probably a joke with a call-back at the end of the game… The line between a one-off joke and an actual story-changing moment can be a little blurry if you look at it too deeply.

For example, near the end of the Waterfall part of the game, the Player is given the choice to save Monster Kid even at the risk of having to face down Undyne.

Pretty much anyone who isn’t deliberately trying to be an asshole is going to rush to save them and obviously that includes the Pacifist Route Players. But you can actually leave Monster Kid to die without it 'mattering' in the sense that it wouldn't divert you from the Pacifist Route. Undyne saves them instead of you, and ends up with slightly less HP for her battle (which might Matter for Runs when you try and FIGHT her but obviously not in Pacifist Runs) and… by the end of the game, during the extremely happy True Pacifist Ending, they still clearly remember that you abandoned them and are upset by it.

So… does saving Monster Kid ‘matter’ or not? On one hand, choosing not to save them mostly just changes a few lines of dialogue but… these lines of dialogue kinda recontextualize this happy ending and the Player’s actions in general. Despite the True Pacifist Ending otherwise portraying the Player/Frisk as a kind-hearted and brave hero... they still did this undeniably cowardly (and perhaps even cruel) act to one of their friends .

Was running away and leaving Monster Kid to die a brief but significant moment of weakness that the Player regrets and has cost them what could’ve been the start of a lovely friendship? Or is that simply that being a True Pacifist was always more of a matter of pragmatism rather than ideals? Were they only acting as a Pacifist to get that promised 'Best Ending', and only Monster Kid has an inkling they are not as heroic or kind as everyone thinks they are?

And then there’s the Snowman ‘quest’.

A free healing item given early in the game, with your mission being to carry it along in your inventory for as long as you can without ever consuming it. The only reward you will ever see from it is a few lines of dialogue…

But for many, it is more than enough of an incentive to preserve the Snowman’s Piece. You can do whatever you want with the Snowman without it ‘mattering’ in terms of Ending or consequences. You could carry it through all of your adventures with care and kindness... or you could eat it while he can’t see you and then go back to him and tell him that you ‘lost’ it and then get another piece and eat that as well, you could eat it right in front of his face, horrifying him.

And much like with Monster Kid, you can STILL get the True Pacifist Ending after doing that, all that would change is a few optional pieces of dialogue from the Snowman…

And a total recontextualization of the Player’s behavior and the ending. The Snowman sees the Player as a cruel and heartless person who is just pretending to be good so they can be liked - the way they acted with this immobile, powerless Snowman who could do nothing for them and their reputation reveals their true self. And he says their friends will realize that too one day...

Doing a True Reset on the Pacifist Ending is, by definition, a (almost) consequence-free action and yet it changes future Pacifist Routes immeasurably. Turning the Player into a Hypocrite doing the exact same thing they were trying to stop Flowey/Asriel from doing - trapping all of their friends into a time-loop so they can play with them forever while never actually letting them to enjoy freedom on the surface, simply because they are not willing to move on or put their friends' wishes and agency above their own. Nothing in the game actually changes, not one character can even suspect that you did something like that, and yet for the Player - this choice makes the entire Meaning of the game flip on its head.

Even the most famous and heavily-toted Big Consequence in the whole game - selling your soul to Chara after completing a Murder Route… mostly what it does is just… recontextualize the ending of the Game.

As a game, ‘Undertale’ is very much about the ways in which a Player engages with a game can radically recontextualize it. The huge chasm of difference between the Pacifist and Muder Routes is just the most literal example of it. But, in a way, even the tiny little Dialogue Options - where the lack of real choice and consequences is Obviously a Joke - matter. Because of the way they can recontextualize the Player Character’s behavior.

(Okay, maybe not this one, but hear me out…)

Do you trust Papyrus to not betray you, even after you spied on him with Undyne?

Do you have the integrity to admit you forgot something or got it wrong even when there’s no consequences for just lying about it?

Are you a hypocrite for trying to get Alphys to be truthful with Undyne only to then immediately turn around and lie to Undyne yourself?

None of these choices matter for the ending, some of them don’t even get, like, a call-back joke or anything, but… if you are engaged in this story as a narrative, if you are invested in these characters as if they were people, if you are honestly trying to be the best person you can be, if you are trying to self-reflect at the way you approach this game… even the silliest little dialogue option can suddenly be imbued with deep implications and you can make them matter.

Undertale is one of the best demonstrations of this concept, but this is absolutely not exclusive to it. For example….

‘Ace Attorney’ is pretty much as far away as you can get from a ‘branching narrative’ within the video game sphere. It is a heavily-linear Visual Novel where 70% of the time it won’t even let you talk to random characters at anything but the exact order it expects you to and any ‘Bad Endings’ are basically just glorified Game Over Screens. (... because this is the Internet and something something piss on the poor, I should probably specify that I am talking about ‘Ace Attorney’ because I love Ace Attorney and these are neutral descriptions of the game and not complaints. There’s nothing wrong with a game being linear.)

If there’s any Dialogue Choice in AA, it’s generally a very basic ‘right answer-wrong answer’ choice between Progress and a Penalty, or a total non-choice that just gets you to the same final result regardless. Except… Well… as we just talked about, getting to the same final result doesn’t necessarily mean a choice is ‘meaningless’, does it?

There’s actually a lot of great storytelling moments where Ace Attorney, despite its otherwise strict linearity, uses this exact sort of recontextualizing mindset I’ve talked about with Undertale to make choices with some really powerful emotional impact…. Even if technically, the ending is the same ending. It can be something as basic as ‘even if picking this Wrong Answer doesn’t get me a penalty, it still embarrassed my character and disappointed my friends/rivals and thus I feel bad for picking it’. Consequences as recontextualizing your character as more incompetent than they should’ve come across at that moment.

And then there’s moments like the iconic ending of ‘Justice for All’. That moment before Franziska bursts into the Courtroom with the case-making evidence and saves the day. The moment where it seems like Phoenix really is gonna have to pick between protecting his best friend and carrying out a rightful sentence.

The player gets to pick between the two options, but Phoenix never gets to say his choice out loud before Franziska comes running in... and yet… he, and the player, still made that choice. Even if no one ever has to experience the consequences of your choice, even if the rest of the world has no idea what Phoenix Wright would’ve chosen if the Miracle hadn’t happened, we know what we picked and that knowledge of the choice matters. Because of how we feel about this choice and what it says about our interpretation of Phoenix… and about us.

There’s also a bit of this ludonarrative device in ‘The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures’. During “The Adventures of the Runaway Room”, when you investigate the Omnibus for the second time and start finding things that… don’t quite fit together. When you’re finally starting to make progress with proving McGilded’s innocence, while also maybe starting to notice that something is… wrong with these pieces of evidence.

The unchanging linear narrative of the game is that Ryunosuke does eventually realizes McGilded's trickery, puts truth ahead of victory in court and yet, despite his effort and good intentions - the case still ends with a false Not Guilty verdict. And yet, the Player has the choice to... tweak the details.

There are several points where Ryunosuke can object, where he can call out the inconsistencies even though they help his case, where he can support Van Zieks in his accusations of tempered evidence... or he can not. Not necessarily intentionally misleading the Court as much as subconsciously trying to ignore the inconsistencies in the name of trusting his client.

And yet… in the end it doesn’t matter. Maybe Susato calls out the inconsistency instead of him, maybe Van Zieks does, maybe it remains uncontested but... no matter what you do, the case will end with a Not Guilty verdict (I mean, I guess you can deliberately fail the game but that will not progress the plot), McGilded doesn’t seem like he held a grudge (in the few minutes he had left to live), and a few cases later - Ryunosuke would always be punished for his part at this false verdict.

So it doesn’t really matter what Ryunosuke did back then? Does it matter if he did his best and called out every single inconsistencies or if he kinda half-assed it until he (and the Player) had to? He’s still going to suffer the same consequences down the line. And yet….

And yet, I think there’s something so powerful about giving us that option. About knowing that Ryunosuke, and we, did try and do something about McGilded's dirty tricks- even if it didn’t work. Or alternative, knowing that there was more that Ryunosuke and us could’ve done even if it was not nearly enough. Even if in the eyes of the game and the British Justice system there is no difference, the fact that we know what did and what we could’ve done can radically change the way the player feels about all of the later scenes concerning the truth about McGilded’s trial. It can radically change the way the player interpret Ryunosuke’s feelings about it as well.

Because even though the game itself keeps playing along with the same script regardless, that trial had irrevocable consequences for the Player.

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tocomplainfriend · 3 months

Text

SEE!? THEY DON'T CARE!

TW: Rape, SA, Homophobia, Misogyny, Misandry

The specific censored word with "-", it's for my own reasons and comfort. It's not censored up and in tags due to filtering! Sorry if I made mistakes like forgetting of filtering or similar, I haven't used tumblr much before!

THIS IS A R-PE JOKE! THAT'S WHAT I HAVE BEEN FUCKING SAYING! ONE OF MY BIGGEST PROBLEMS WITH EPISODE 4 IS THE FACT OF "we want to write an empowering story about men getting sexually assaulted. Men victim don't get that attentio-" BITCH, YOU MADE MANY R-PE AND SA JOKES ALL THE FUCKING WAY THROUGH HELLUVA AND KNOW HAZBIN! You are the one making fun of scenarios where your male characters get assaulted or r-ped.

HOW TF DO YOU PRETEND TO BE SOOO ABOVE PEOPLE (INCLUDING VICTIMS OF SA AND R-PE) THAT'S EXPRESSED HOW THEY FELT ON THE EXECUTIONS AND WHO WORKED IN EPISODE 4. WHEN YOU YOURSELF MAKE JOKES ABOUT IT????? For some context, Sir Pent is trying to get with Cherri, but always deflects first in case she rejects him. He offers her a drink, but immediately says it's because he'll buy a drink for everyone on the club. Then he asks Cherri if they can have sex- and deflects back (a repetition joke) "Because I'll have sex with everyone here". Then he gets dragged into a room by other people, yelling wait and no! And the door closes as you heard him scream.

Out of context in the screenshot, you might even think it might be a serious scene where something happens to Pentious. BUT NO! IT'S BRUSHED OVER REAL FAST AND PLAYED AS "HAHA SOMETHING BAD HAPPEN TO SIR PENTIOUS AGAIN LMAOO"- it's the punchline.

Then at the end of the episode he gets out asking "Where is Cherri" (who btw is having sex with a random guy).

And please don't say "Well, he asked for it"- you know how you sound. The whole point of the joke is that he is trying to get with Cherri and failing astronomically. The point here is that he really doesn't want to have sex with a bunch of random people, but he has to do it because he is getting dragged into a room. (Again, Pentious is like Moxxie Their joke it's getting trashed and bullied by the world or people around them).

You made a whole episode about dealing with a male character's sexual assault, abuse or r-pe. Saying how much you respect victims, and your episode, it's just perfect about the topic. BlaBlaBla- no, you don't. You made all this jokes since HB season 1. This new joke was episode 6 of HH. You never acknowledge power dynamics, or coercion. You never acknowledge anything bad in your show.

Remember, as much as this shows go for LGBTQ+ representation and Queer media. As a ""Female lead show"". This jokes link back (not only to making fun of SA and R-pe itself, but to) homophobia and Misogyny. A scenario of where a man gets SA'ed or r-ped by another man or woman- leads to a scenario where the character is made fun of for not being "masculine enough" for being a victim or for not being able to defend themselves. In a scenario where this happens by a man to man, "It's funny because the victim is viewed as gay. As less masculine = gay and that's bad cause gay = weak and feminine and the idea of feminine = weak".

(There are a few jokes here and there, like Blitzo touching Moxxie's dick after making fun of him for having a baby penis.)

If you didn't notice, Moxxie gets attacked by multiple succubus, and that's apparently funny. KEEP IN MIND is not basic physical violence-no he comes out with lipstick kisses marks, the sounds effects are (ugh)... and Blitz tells him "Don't let them access any of your holes". In other concepts, I want to point out that the times when Moxxie is viewed as a bottom or feminine- he is made fun of. When Millie pegs him, he is made fun of because he is the man of the relationship, being implied as the bottom. When he wears the outfit of unhappy campers, he is extra objectified or made fun of even more than in any other episodes. He is also forcefully put on a dress in his wedding.

He is made fun of for being SA'ed for being uncomfortable scenarios:

These aren't jokes made by characters that "are bad because they are from hell". These are scripted jokes written by a person searching for the audience to laugh.

AND the reason why many audiences accept this jokes or even find them funny is because of some of these views (internalized or not) above. You'll also notice how all these jokes are directed at men (if you find an R-pe or SA joke directed at a woman in this two show, say something about it! POINT IT OUT!). People accept and write these jokes more because they care less about the idea of a man being a victim of such situation. More often than not- in the present, a woman getting assaulted or anything similar in any media gets noticed and called out. THESE JOKES OR THE NORMALIZATION OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT, ASSAULT, COERCION, OR SIMILAR TOWARDS WOMAN STILL HAPPENS!!!! There is an idea that men just tend to just want sex all times at any time. -And that a man getting SA'ed or r-ped by a woman it's just sex, cause "Why wouldn't you like free pussy". When it's a gay perpetrator is viewed as funny cause "that makes you gay or a woman" and that's apparently hilarious. Men can be r-ped no matter what. Men can be targets of all of these acts.

Remember that all the scenes of sexual abuse, harassment and r-pe in Poison are directed by the R2. Who, once again, is into r-pe porn- and they themselves said they are not an SA victim either. So remember, not even a victim trying to cope with their own R-pe or SA. This person draws and ships "R-pe ships", and tags it as "naughty men uwu" bullshit. Also, a person so obsessed with the character of Angel that they changed their name to Tony (Angel's real human name), make themselves look like him, and become a sex worker like Angel. They themselves looked at a comic of Val threatening r-pe and abuse on Angel as "thank good you have balls to draw something mean with these too, I was so bored" ???? (this stuff is in:) and cosplay and take photos of your Val x Angel ship

Congrats if you as a victim yourself thought that the scene with Angel was good. If it helped you be and feel seen. But remember the rest of the show, the hypocritical writers, don't care enough to view it as a serious topic to not joke about. Both HB and HH written by the same people (as in Vivziepop), take their sweet time to turn these topics into jokes.

What pisses off more, it's the trying to make yourself be viewed as a sensitive person about such topic. Make it seem like you are a savior for writing about it in such "serious, powerful and not sugar coded" way. But then you drop that on the fucking ground to make a joke about it when you are tired of pretending you are so good. If you were so informed of SA and r-pe, you wouldn't be making these jokes. If you knew how much SA male victims struggle to get viewed as serious or their stories taken into account-you wouldn't be this shitty.

God, you are so proud of the joke too.

My poor snake guy... one of the few characters that I like-

#vivziepop critique #vivziepop critical #helluva boss critique #helluva boss criticism #helluva boss critical #hazbin hotel critical #hazbin hotel criticism #hazbin hotel critique #anti vivziepop #tw sa #cw abuse #spindlehorse criticism #tw rape

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chosetherose · 11 days

Note

"The Alchemy" = Karlie's POV of how she's going to take Taylor from Travis?

"I haven't come around in so long

But I'm making a comeback to where I belong"

Karlie showing up at the Eras Tour! Taylor didn't spend long enough with either of the beards for "so long" to make any sense as being about them. How do you make a comeback when you're barely a thing to begin with? Karlie's comeback was headline news though.

"So when I touch down

Call the amateurs and cut 'em from the team

Ditch the clowns, get the crown"

Her football fan baby ("fly like a jet stream") is touching down and coming to sweep away the understudies, users, narcissists and clowns. King of my Heart coming to reclaim her crown! We can only hope 🙏

"Cause the sign on your heart says it's still reserved for me"

Taylor can rewrite history all she wants, but Tratty was never a thing and no-one with a brain can buy the idea that he was the love of her life ten years ago, while Kissgate was happening right in front of him. Peak Kaylor era. When we all saw with our own eyes how she looked at Karlie! But, no, it was Matty all along! Sure, Jan.

Meanwhile, even the "anyone but Karlie" Gaylors who hate her can't deny Taylor has been writing songs about Karlie for a decade now. Even they think she's not over her. So who "still" has Taylor's heart and could make a comeback? Mmhmm.

"I circled you on a map"

Flashback to Taylor highlighting Kaylor-related towns on the weather map in the Lavender Haze music video. Uh-huh.

"Who are we to fight the alchemy?"

Alchemy is the process of turning things into gold. Are we really going to sit here and pretend this isn't Ms Gold Rush, Ms "it's like your eyes are liquor, it's like your body is gold"? Are we really going to pretend Karlie hasn't been gold coded since the beginning? But no! This is about Travis! Totally! Does your blindfold fit snugly enough, babe, or do you want me to tighten it some more for you? 🙄

"Hey, what if I told you we're cool

That child's play back in school

Is forgiven under my rule?"

The child's play is the bearding. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. It's getting so old to never grow up. Karlie is saying it all means nothing.

"These blokes warm the benches

We've been on a winning streak"

Her British beards have just been keeping Karlie's seat warm. While she and Taylor have privately been on a winning streak.

(Seriously, the construction of this song makes no sense if you believe it's about Travis. How could she have been "on a winning streak" with him, while "these blokes" were present-tense warming the benches? Or are we supposed to believe they're just waiting on the sidelines for Taylor to get back with one of them? Even though things are so great with 🚜 and she's said multiple times she doesn't want that? So . . . how is any of this working, exactly? What benches are they warming? Are we SURE the "we" is Travis? Hmm?)

"He jokes it's heroin but this time with an e"

People are so distracted by this "dig at Matty" they can't see what's right in front of their faces. Heroin with an e = heroine. As in, the female hero of a story. The joke is that the one to "save" Taylor won't be any of these jokers dressing up as kings. It's a woman. A HEROINE. Not a hero.

And then we get a football metaphor everyone will assume is about Travis, even though Karlie's love of football is well-documented. Do we really think Travis cares more about the beard he's made his meal ticket than he does about winning a trophy? Yeah, right. The days of wasted celebration with no Taylor in sight really give that impression. The thirst traps he was liking on Instagram while "dating" Taylor really show he only has eyes for her. Totally.

Meanwhile we have a million songs where Taylor tells us all her obviously-Karlie lover ever wanted was her.

I can't see The Alchemy any other way than as a Karlie comeback song. Bring it home, Karlie! We're all rooting for you! Go! Fight! Win! 🏆

Wow, Anon! I love this take! Lots of food for thought.

#CTRask

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zepp-l1n · 8 months

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The Same

Pairing: Daniel Matthews x Fem!reader

summary: Daniel meets someone in the same boat as him at a "Jigsaw victim therapy group" session. fic type - hurt/comfort, post Saw 2, fluff?? warning - 2000s emo x 2000s emo, canon level Saw violence, both reader and Daniel have PTSD, mentions of past drug use, mentions of body scarring from the traps, self harm (??) word count - 1,779 a/n: hiiii! sorry my posting has been kinda off and on for the past few months, but I'm hoping now that school and my personal schedule is a little more chill, I'll be able to write and post more often. <3 (also, what's up with the lack of Daniel fics?)

Group therapy wasn't Daniel's idea. He knew he needed to talk about the things he had gone through and seen, which is why he had originally gone to one-on-one therapy, but when his therapist had suggested joining Bobby Dagen's group he had been very apprehensive. At first, Daniel had been very against the idea. He found Bobby very pretentious and overzealous, and the entire "Jigsaw victim therapy group" to be a scam for Bobby's fan's entertainment. For months his therapist and his mother brought up the group again and again, leading to Daniel finally deciding to go in the hopes of getting them to shut up about it.

Now, Daniel found himself in the room Bobby would rent out for each session. They were all sitting side by side in the formation of a circle, letting each person have a clear view of everyone else. Not one person in the room, other than bobby, looked elated to be there.

Daniel sat in his folded out seat, arms crossed and head turned downward. So far, the entire experience had been uncomfortable. Bobby had gone on one of his regularly scheduled "We should be grateful!" spiels, and multiple people had shared their sob-stories. For 30 minuets Daniel had to endure the same arguments and conversations over and over. He sat in silence, never once making himself known - choosing to sit and pick at his black, long-sleeved undershirt the entire time.

Daniel had been so focused on his own thoughts that when he finally glanced back up, he noticed all the eyes on him. "Daniel?" Bobby called out.

"Hmm?" his reply was short and uninterested.

"I asked if you would like to share your story with the others. Would you?" Bobby asked. The smile he gave Daniel as he spoke made him divert his eyes. Daniel shrugged, not knowing if he truly wanted to. "If you'd like to wait that's okay. Whenever you're ready, Daniel."

The other's diverted their attention to Luba afterwards, taking in her story. Daniel silently listened, just waiting for the session to be over. They continued this way, story after story, until the door swung open, creating a loud noise. In it's opening was a girl, presumably around Daniel's age from what he could see.

"Ah, (Y/N), nice of you to finally join us." Bobby sarcastically spoke.

The teen stepped into the room, waving at a man in the corner that Daniel hadn't noticed before, and continued towards the circle. The silver chain hanging from her belt loops lightly rattled against her black cargo-jeans as she walked his way. "Oh shut up, Bobby. Some of us have lives outside the whole Jigsaw shit." she scoffed, her eyeliner covered eyes glaring at the older man. The girl, (Y/N) as Daniel her Bobby call her, took a open seat a few chairs down from Daniel, giving him a tight-lipped smile and a wave of her ringed hand before turning towards the others.

"Now, now, (Y/N). There's no need for hostility here - we're all the same." Bobby cheerfully stated, causing the girl to roll her eyes. "Here, since you missed when everyone else did it, why don't you introduce yourself to out newest member. This is Daniel." his arm directed (Y/N)'s eyes to her fellow teen.

(Y/N)'s dark-red lips turned up into a forced smile before she spoke. "Hi, I'm (Y/N). I'm the girl who was found a week after a trap that wasn't even hers, half dead and tied to the mutilated corpse of her sister. Nice to meet you!" The smile dropped immediately after she finished her sentence.

"Sorry Daniel. Just ignore her. She's still a little apprehensive to be doing this." Daniel awkwardly nodded at Bobby's explanation. "Good, now why don't we continue..." Daniel couldn't focus on Bobby as he spoke - his attention was solely caught on (Y/N)'s appearance. On top of the jeans and chain, she also had a shirt similar to what he would usually wear. It was red and white, and he could tell it was showing some kind of band-logo, but he couldn't get a clear enough look to tell what band. Glancing down at his own white t-shirt, he caught similarities between the two, finally realizing who it was. "Wrath of the Gods." he whispered.

(Y/N)'s head lightly turned her head, seemingly asking him to repeat himself.

"Your shirt. It's 'Wrath of the Gods' - like mine." he lightly smiled. "You like them?"

She glances down, taking in her own shirt and then his. "Huh... Yeah, my sister, she uh, introduced me to their music a few years ago. This was her shirt actually; she gave me it when she got a new one before the trap."

"Sounds like she was pretty cool." Daniel muttered. By this point, (Y/N) had moved over a seat so they could talk without bothering any of the others.

She smiled before whispering back, "She was."

Now that she was closer, Daniel could see the scarring on her face, neck, arms, and hands. He couldn't help but wonder what she fully went through if that was the result of her trap. It also made him wonder if the same scarring would cascade down her legs and torso too. Did the scarring all look the same; how many were there; were some more gory than others? Hundreds of questions flew through his mind as he looked at her.

"How'd you get them?" Daniel didn't even register the fact that he had spoken.

"Huh?" (Y/N) whispered.

"Sorry, uh, your scars. If you don't mind me asking, how'd you get them? I mean, you don't have to tell me. Y'know, I don't want to cross any boundar-" Daniel's rant was cut off by (Y/N).

"It's fine, Daniel." she sighed, giving him a sad smile. "I got these during my sister's 'game'"

"Your sister's game?" Daniel asked, hoping she would clarify.

(Y/N) looked over at the others, making sure no one was bothered by their conversation, before continuing. "Yeah. My sister was the one being tested. It was my fault, but she was the one who got the consequences." she paused, taking a moment to fully think about how to explain her experience. "My parents died when I was little, and my sister had turned 18 a few weeks before they did. After that, she took me in; became my legal guardian, y'know. She was a nurse too, so a lot of the time I was either by myself or out with friends. When my friend Amy finally got her learners, we went out one evening and ended up in an accident. That led to me being on a shit-ton of pain meds, and eventually I got hooked. It was really bad. Jane, my sister, had access to a lot of pain medication, and I used that against her. I begged for weeks for her to steal me them. She, uh... She eventually couldn't take seeing me so bad, so she broke a lot of rules and brought me some. I guess Jigsaw found out, and he thought I was pulling her down. When he took us, his whole argument in the tape was that I was bad for her, and if she got rid of her baggage - me - then she'd be free and would go places in life. If she didn't get rid of me, she'd die." Once again, (Y/N) paused, collecting herself. "He had us tied together to this weird chair set up. It was on these rails, and in front of either of us were these things I could only describe as 'the open-faced turkey sandwich version of a woodchipper'. She was supposed to kill me - push me into mine. I begged and pleaded for her to just do it, cause, I mean, he was right. I was the only bad thing in her life. She would've been better off without me."

"If she died, and didn't want to hurt you, then how did you end up with all the scars?" Daniel quietly asked.

"I did it to myself." Daniel's eyes widened at how casually she said it. "She wouldn't push back and put me into the woodchipper, so I did it myself. I put my feet on the edges of the rails and pushed myself forwards into it. I got close enough to cut myself up a bit. I thought I was gonna save her." (Y/N)'s eyes began to water, and she quickly wiped it away. "Jane was always stronger than me, though. She pulled back and kept us at the midpoint. We were there when the timer went off. I guess it was motorized, cause when the timer went off, we moved backwards. Jane went straight into it. There was nothing I could do but sit there and listen to her screams. Jigsaw and his little groupies never came for me. I was supposed to die, so they left me there. For about a week I was strapped to the trap and what was left of my sister, out of it from blood loss, hunger, and dehydration. Some homeless guy eventually found everything and called the police."

"Wow..." Daniel muttered.

"Yeah, I know." (Y/N) hesitantly chuckled. "Since then I've been doing two sessions of regular therapy a week, this, and rehab."

As she finished her sentence, Bobby loudly spoke up. "Alright guys, today was great! It is time we wrap up though. I hope to see everyone again next week, and I hope you have a great rest of your week." The two teens watched as he walked back to the doorway of the room, stopping next to his wife, lawyer, bestfriend, and publicist.

"Well, I guess that's enough trauma dumping for today." (Y/N) glanced back over at Daniel. "Listen, uh, y'know, 'Wrath of the Gods' has a show this weekend. You should come, so we could hang out some more. To be honest, I need more friends who listen to music I like." she laughed.

Daniel grinned, "Yeah, why not?"

"Good, good." (Y/N) mumbled. "Listen, I gotta go, my foster dad picks me up from these things, but I'll see you this weekend."

"Yeah, yeah, see you later." he smiled. Daniel contently watched as she got up, and headed for the door.

As she got closer to the door, (Y/N) turned back around and waved at him. "Bye, Danny."

(Y/N) turned back around and exited, leaving Daniel to sit in the room alone, thinking over what had just happened. "Holy shit." he dramatically exhaled. Maybe coming to the "Jigsaw victim therapy group" wasn't that bad of an idea.

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breadnauppercrust · 1 year

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some designs i came up with for the girls in miraculous. the idea was 'what if they could have multiple outfits like sailor moon, as told by ginger, or totally spies?' and 'what if their clothes reflected their story arc?' however, i kind of gave up on them because i no longer have time to work on it as much as i would like to, so below this are copy+paste from my wip instagram account. lowkey its fanfiction-y lol

Alya:

Alya redesigns! tbh don’t know if they’re cohesive but 🤷‍♀️

S1: dresses for comfort & is geeky - think DrWho/Marvel/Tumblr. Obsessed w superheroes & has dedicated blog for each one, & that includes LB. Beginning of her & Maris friendship, starts to dates nino halfway s1.

S2: Mari influences her way of dress, still geeky but experimenting w clothes. Ladyblog becomes popular, interested in finding out her secret ID. Is also investigating akumas, HM, The Who/what/where/whys. Lowkey figures out who ladybug is but doesn’t say anything. Has been given fox miraculous at least a couple times.

S3: notices changes in Maris behavior & confronts her. Becomes fox miraculous holder full time, helps LB figure out who HM is & shares all the info she’s found. CN lowkey pushed to the side, causing friction, bc wrapped up w finding out who HM is ig. Constantly wears a Fanny pack now for trixx. Goes w comfortable but stylish clothes (ig lol idk) also at this point is BFF w Mari

Chloe:

S1: wears preppy designer brands to impress mom, despite living in diff countries. Basic mean girl, her only friends being Sabrina and Adrien - whose a childhood friend & lowkey helped him attend school. Both know how it feels to “lose” a parent & Adrien has seen a softer side of her. Probably has a crush on him ig. Maris bully, jealous of her talents at sewing & making friends easily, & prob her knit tight family.

S2: still preppy but w 60/70s inspo. Given bee miraculous a couple times, has resisted akumas - info she uses to help others later. Helping ppl & being somewhat nice makes her feel good & likes the appreciation from others+LB. Maybe Mom moves back to Paris w half sister, Zoe - might be significantly younger than Chloe idk. Didn’t like her at first but warms up to her as season goes on. Sees lil sister copying her & their mom, has an epiphany ig. Connects dots on akumas & feelings & tries to be better.

Should Zoe exist tho??? idk

S3: preppy but more casual. She’s nicer but still sarcastic, has made a few new friends, treating Sabrina better. Still trying to get moms approval tho & follows her around, even to fashion things w the Agreste. Notices Gabriel is acting strange, more distant towards Adrien, doesn’t notice what he’s doing or where he’s going. pt queen bee ig, probably given towards the very end of the season tbh by Adrien/CN after being ignored by LB bc of RR involvement w finding out HM id. AND noticing Chloe change significantly in the past several months (?) does Adrien reveal to her IDK he is still loyal to LB but eH

Mari:

1st Mari is shy, her outfits are safe & she kind of disappears in a crowd. She just became 🐞 & isn’t 💯 with her role yet. She’s designed and made her own clothes but doesn’t wear them outside of the house bc Chloe, oof

2nd she’s now comfortable being 🐞 & that boosts her confidence as Mari, she’s wearing more bold colors & outfits that she may or may not have designed herself 👀

3rd 🐞 is now the guardian of the miraculous box, has bigger responsibilities & problems to deal with. Being 🐞 has creeped into her daily life. Doesn’t have time to design/make clothes so wears w/e, but tries to appear happy.

Kagami:

i like the idea of kagami being prim and proper looking all preppy at the beginning, but after making friends she starts to rebel by modifying her school clothes w accessories but eventually wears w/e she wants w a punkish vibe. lowkey worried about falling into a trope so idk

#miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #chloe bourgeois #kagami tsurugi #alya cesaire

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anyasathenaeum · 6 months

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Elysium (Dad!Vash fic) - Chapter 1

A/N: Hi everybody! So, I felt kinda beat up after Tumblr wiped my requests, but then I randomly got inspiration to write a Dad!Vash fic. This is going to have multiple chapters (no idea how many yet), but I'll be writing it as I can. I've cross-posted it to AO3 here.

Story Summary: Vash the Stampede remains in hiding after the disaster of Julai city. In the year since the disaster, you and Vash have had children and are living a quiet life in town, until one day, the arrival of bandits threatens to rip away the life you and Vash have built together. What will Vash give to protect his family?

Warnings: Reader is AFAB in this work, referred to using she/her pronouns and "Mama" by the kids, explicit mentions of pregnancy, childbirth, and violence

Chapter Wordcount: 5.8k

Chapter 1: On The Horizon

"Mama? Mama, wake up."

A little voice called from the side of your bed, and you groggily registered the feeling of little hands tugging on yours as your eyes fluttered open.

All you could see were two pairs of identical blue eyes, both wide open as they gazed at you curiously and somewhat impatiently. As soon as you awoke, two sets of identical grins broke out on your children's' faces.

"Mmm? What is it, my loves?" You asked groggily, sitting up in bed with a big yawn as you rubbed your sleepiness from your eyes. It couldn't have been later than 6 or 7 in the morning, but your twin children had always been early risers, much like their father.

"We brought you something!"

You watched as the boy, Nicholas, and his sister, Rem, came into your room with a tray they were holding. On it was a plate of food, as well as a cup of water and some beautiful flowers.

"Oh? Did you two make me breakfast in bed?" You asked, your heart warming at the sight of your babies doing this for you, "Thank you, my loves! I love it."

You took the tray from your children and placed it beside you on the bed before leaning over and enveloping both children into your arms, hugging them close and kissing their heads, causing them both to giggle happily as they hugged you back.

"Love you, mama!" Nicholas chimed happily, with Rem nodding her head in agreement and echoing her brother's sentiment, "Yes, mama, we love you!"

You chuckled happily as you hugged your children close, feeling their small bodies against your own. As you glanced up at the doorway, you felt your heart flutter at the sight of your husband smiling at you and your children.

Vash couldn't help but feel his heart swelling in his chest as he watched his children, your children, hugging you and giggling happily as you held them close in your and his shared bed, his smile only growing as he watched the scene before him.

In the past, Vash never would've dared to let himself hope that he'd ever experience happiness like this. He never would've let himself dream that he would have a family, have children and a spouse that he loved more than anything in his life. And yet, against all his expectations, against all his beliefs, happiness fell into his lap the day the two of you realized you were expecting.

You had found Vash shortly after the disaster at Julai city, when the entire city was turned into a crater in the ground and 90% of the population had been wiped out when Vash fell from the sky. Vash had been a broken man, unable to even speak from the grief and the shock of what had happened when you found him. His memories surrounding the incident were muddy at best, but eventually, they returned to him and Vash slowly began to work through what had happened.

During that time, a kind woman by the name of Sheryl and her only living grandchild, Lina, had taken you both in and gave you refuge as you and Vash recovered from the Julai incident, with Vash taking on the name "Eriks" as you both hid from the world. Many nights were spent with you comforting Vash as he wept from nightmares that plagued him constantly, or Vash holding you close and protecting you as memories tried to pull you into their dark depths.

Those nights together brought you and Vash closer together than ever before - the two of you had always been fast and good friends, but this... being each other's anchor when one was caught in a storm of grief and sadness and anger... it brought you two together in a way neither of you had anticipated.

You two had both chosen to silently let whatever bond the two of you had develop and become whatever it was going to become. However, after one particularly bad nightmare where Vash had dreamt of losing you and woken up crying, only to find you looking at him worriedly and with such warmth and tenderness behind your eyes, Vash couldn't help but blurt out those three words.

"I love you."

Vash had fully been crying as he said those words to you breathlessly, as if desperate to get them out into the real world, desperate for you to understand how much you meant to him. He had clutched you desperately to him, his face buried in your hair as he took in your comforting, familiar scent between sobs, mumbling over and over again.

"I love you. I love you, (Y/N), I love you. You're everything to me. P-Please... don't go."

Your heart had broken for him that night, before being set alight when you realized what Vash had said to you. He loved you. You wanted to scream with joy, but instead, all you could do was pull the man you loved so much closer to you, burying your face into him as you held him tighter than ever before as he cried against you.

"I love you, too, Vash. So, so much."

After that night, you and Vash were inseparable, and it was clear to anybody who saw you and Vash together that the two of you were in love and nobody would ever come between you. Grandma Sheryl and Lina had been kind in helping you both find a home to call your own in the town. A beaten-up, neglected old house on the outskirts of the town that desperately needed some love and care eventually became your new home, a home where neither you nor Vash needed to hide.

One day, out of the blue, you had suddenly realized your body was changing. When Vash had placed his hands on you, your belly had begun to glow with faint plant runes, much like the markings on Vash's body whenever he tapped into his Plant abilities and powers. As you looked at him curiously, you watched Vash's eyes widen and his jaw drop open.

"(Y/N)... you're pregnant."

"Woah, woah, woah, what do you mean "pregnant"?" You replied immediately, frowning at him. "That's not possible... is it?"

Vash looked down at you and replied softly, his eyes trained on your stomach, "It's possible. Just... extremely rare."

Your mind had began to spiral as your hand pressed to your belly protectively, as if to shield the life that was growing within it from the world.

"I'm pregnant," You repeated, clearly stunned, your hand beginning to mindlessly rubbing circles over your belly, tracing the plant markings that announced your pregnancy.

You and Vash had to sit down and discuss how everything was going to change now that you were pregnant, and at the end of that conversation, Vash had taken your hand in his and stood up before guiding you towards town.

"Vash? Where are we going?" You had inquired, gazing at him as he continued walking ahead of you, almost as if in a hurry.

He didn't answer you, instead just borderline dragging you through town until he stopped suddenly before an unassuming building. You had raised an eyebrow at him, clearly asking for an explanation.

"Marry me."

You blinked.

"What?"

Vash had grinned at you, his smile warmer than anything you'd ever seen from him before.

"Marry me, (Y/N). You're pregnant with my child, and I want you to be assured that no matter what happens, I'll always be there to love you and our child and protect you both for as long as I live."

You continued to stare at him as if he had grown a second head, failing to take in exactly what Vash had asked of you. Once it sunk in, your eyes widened and you had begun to splutter.

"B-But, Vash, what if you have to go on the run again? I can't be the reason you're held back! That's not fair to you."

Vash had stepped forward and pulled you to him, his large hand splaying over your abdomen protectively yet incredibly tenderly. His voice was low and gentle.

"(Y/N)... I don't care. You and this child are my family, now. And I swear to always protect my family. I love you both so much, and I refuse to let any harm come to either of you. I'll be damned if I leave you and my child unprotected. The best way for me to ensure your safety is by staying by your side. Forever."

You felt yourself moved to tears as you looked at Vash, who was simply smiling down at you with such love that it made your heart flutter in your chest. You pulled him down by the back of his neck and kissed him with everything in you, trying to show him just how much you loved him through your actions.

"Okay," You whispered softly once the two of you had broken apart, "I'll marry you."

Without another word and grinning like he had just won the greatest prize on the planet, Vash took your hand in his much larger one and guided you into the building, where the two of you signed a marriage license and exchanged vows and rings to symbolize your commitment to each other.

After that day, you and Vash prepared for the arrival of your child. You had managed to create a nursery, crib and all, and awaited nervously for the day your child would arrive.

Your pregnancy advanced more rapidly than that of a regular human, given your baby was half-human, half-plant, and you found yourself struggling to carry the baby as your pregnancy progressed. Your body had to adjust more rapidly than anticipated, and Vash was terrified for your safety as time went on. He refused to let you do anything that potentially risked your safety or the baby's, constantly stepping in and taking over whatever task you were trying to accomplish.

"(Y/N), be careful," Vash would admonish you gently, "Don't want anything to happen to you or the little one."

It got to the point where Vash would've wrapped you in bubble wrap if he could've, and it drove you gently insane.

"I swear, Vash, if you don't let me do this, I'm going to scream."

Eventually, your waters broke about 4 1/2 months into your pregnancy and you had rushed to the medical clinic in the town. With several hours of screaming various profanities, pushing, and nearly breaking every bone in Vash's hand, you had managed to bring your baby boy into the world.

"Nicholas," You had uttered the moment you saw your little boy, panting heavily as the nurses took him away to get him cleaned up and swaddled.

"Nicholas?" Vash asked gently, clearly fighting off tears as he gazed at the little blue bundle in the nurse's arms. "After Wolfwood?"

"Yeah..." You replied, gazing at Vash with a warm smile as he held your son, "I think it fits."

"I-It does," Vash choked out, tears beginning to pour down his face as he held little Nicholas close and nuzzled the little baby's cheek with the tip of his finger, "Our little boy. Our Nicholas."

Vash looked over at you as he began to weep completely, "Oh, (Y/N)... thank you. Thank you for giving me him. Thank you for giving me my family. I love you so much. You two are everything to me."

You had smiled and opened your mouth to reply when another crippling contraction ripped through you, tearing a scream from you. Vash jumped and immediately came over, reaching out to you, fear evident on his face.

"Mayfly?! What's wrong?!"

You couldn't even answer him, groaning and crying out in pain as contraction after contraction wracked your body, your hands gripping the sheets for dear life. The doctor and nurses came sprinting in, and after a minute or two of careful assessment, the doctor promptly announced.

"There is another baby, it's coming now."

"Another?!" You shrieked, looking at the doctor and then at Vash, who looked positively stunned, his mouth open and his eyes owlishly wide.

"Yes," The doctor confirmed, "It seems you were carrying twins. The second baby is coming now."

Thankfully, this baby came quicker than its older sibling, and within a couple pushes, another little wailing sound filled the air as your daughter announced her arrival into the world.

You were completely exhausted, unable to even keep your eyes open as the nurses brought your daughter back, cleaned and swaddled to rest on your chest. As your energy slowly returned, you managed to open your eyes and look at your daughter for the first time.

Both she and Nicholas had wisps of Vash's blonde hair, and the same big blue eyes he had. They even had matching birthmarks under their right eyes, complimenting the one Vash had beneath his left eye. Near carbon copies of their father.

"(Y/N)..."

You glanced over at Vash and you could see him sobbing almost hysterically from joy as he leaned down and kissed your forehead.

"Mayfly... oh, Mayfly... they're perfect. They're perfect. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you..."

Vash sat by your side and held you and your children close. The little girl yawned on your chest before dozing off promptly, much like her twin brother was sleeping happily in Vash's arms.

"What should we name you, little one?" You whispered gently, caressing your daughter's soft cheek with your fingertip.

You and Vash sat there quietly, just gazing down at your newborn babies, reveling in how things had forever been changed when Vash suddenly whispered.

"What about "Rem"?"

""Rem"? Like your adoptive mother?" You asked softly as you gazed at your daughter.

Vash nodded, wiping away his tears gently, "Yeah... is that okay?"

"I think it's perfect," You answered softly, reaching out to hold your husband's hand gently, squeezing it as you spoke.

"Nicholas and Rem," Vash repeated back, gazing down at the little bundled blankets in his and your arms.

He gave a watery smile as he looked back up at you, tears silently streaking down his face.

"My family, (Y/N). Our family."

Vash let out a shaky laugh before continuing, "I never thought I could ever be this happy. I feel like I swallowed a box of fireworks. I love you, (Y/N). I love you more than anything, and I... I love them. Little Nicholas... little Rem... I love them. Do they know just how much happiness they bring with them? Do they know I'd do anything to protect them?"

You couldn't help but laugh a little, your own tears going down your cheeks as you kissed Vash's cheek.

"I'm sure they'll know as they get older. I love you, Vash. I love our family, and I'll do anything to protect you, to protect them, too."

Vash slowly scooted into your hospital bed, sitting next to you and holding you close as he continued to hold Nicholas and as you continued to hold Rem. This was your family, now.

Rem and Nicholas proceeded to grow up pretty quickly due to their being half-human, half-plant, and within a year, they were already the equivalent of a human 4 year-old, able to walk and talk and tell stories and do things, like making you breakfast in bed with some help from their father.

"Thank you, my love, for making sure they didn't burn down the kitchen."

Your voice snapped Vash from his revelry as he stood in the doorway, and he looked up to see you smiling lovingly at him from your shared bed, your breakfast tray next to you and your children still hugging you tightly.

"Oh, my pleasure, Mayfly," Vash chuckled as he walked in and hugged you and the children, all of you giggling and laughing together. A moment of complete and utter happiness.

"Now, what should we do today?" You asked playfully, pressing a kiss to the top of both Rem and Nicholas's heads, before glancing up at Vash with a warm smile.

"How abouuuut...." Vash drawled playfully, before snagging Rem and Nicholas under their arms and pulling them into him as they squealed and laughed happily, "We all go see Grandma Sheryl and big sister Lina?"

"Yes!" Nicholas cried happily, clapping his little hands together, "Grandma Sheryl! Big sis Lina!"

"I wanna go!" Rem cried out, echoing her brother's sentiment as she tugged on Vash's shirt, looking up at him with the same big blue eyes he possessed.

You couldn't help but laugh at the sight of your family, and you exclaimed, "Alright, then! We'll do a field trip to Grandma Sheryl's and big sis Lina's! Papa's gonna go call Grandma Sheryl to let her know we're coming, but why don't you two come tell me what you made me for breakfast?"

Nicholas and Rem beelined right back to you, quickly crawling onto the bed and pointing at the different things they had made you for breakfast as Vash headed downstairs to call Grandma Sheryl.

"I made the eggs!" Rem said, a proud smile on her face.

"I made the pancakes!" Nicholas chimed in, crossing his arms over his chest.

"No, Papa made the pancakes!"

"No, I did!"

"No, you didn't!"

You couldn't help but laugh and pull the twins into you, hugging them close to stop their bickering, "Now, now, fighting won't get either of you anywhere. You both worked very hard to make me breakfast, so thank you, my loves. I love you both very, very much."

"Love you too, mama," Nicholas replied, burying his face into your tummy, as Rem snuggled into your side with a mumble of "Love you, mama."

You sat there as you slowly ate your breakfast, chuckling as the twins took pieces of food themselves from your breakfast tray ("Just to try, mama!" Rem assured you as she put a piece of pancake in her mouth).

Once you were done, you sent the kids to get dressed and ready to go see Grandma Sheryl while you took the time to shower and get ready for the day yourself. As you came out of the bathroom, you were greeted by the sight of Vash sitting on your shared bed, a frown on his face. He seemed lost in thought.

"You alright, Vash?" You asked softly, coming over to stand in front of him.

Vash quickly snapped out of his thoughts as he glanced up up at you, a small smile appearing on his lips as his hands came up to grab your hips before tugging you closer to him.

"Nothing, Mayfly. Just..." Vash trailed off, clearly trying to find a way to explain whatever was bothering him.

"It's okay, Vash," You encouraged him, cupping his face in your hands and making him look at you, "What's wrong?"

Vash sighed heavily before saying softly, "Grandma Sheryl says bandits have been wreaking havoc in town over the past couple days. Sounds like they've been behind all kind of trouble. I don't think we should still go see her. I don't want to risk your safety, or Rem's or Nicholas's. I don't want anything happening to you."

You frowned as you heard this, and you thought to yourself for a few moments before speaking up, "Well... why don't you and I go into town first and see how bad it is? If it's truly dangerous, we come straight back and spend the day home, instead. If it's okay, then we can bring the kids along and go see Sheryl."

Vash just gazed at you, carefully taking in your words and your expression before exhaling softly, "That might be the safest approach. Although, I don't think you should come either."

"Why not?" You asked, looking at Vash with a frown on your face.

"Because I don't want you in any danger, (Y/N)," Vash answered simply, pulling you into his lap and hugging you close to him, nuzzling his face into the crook of your neck, "And I don't want to leave the children home alone if bandits are in the area."

You sighed as you felt Vash press a soft kiss to your neck, and you knew he was right - if bandits were nearby, causing havoc in town, it was best not to leave Rem and Nicholas alone, unprotected.

"Alright..." You conceded, looking down at your husband, "I'll stay here with the kids. But, you need to be careful, Eriks. Promise me you'll come right back here."

You shot him a look as you used his fake name. He was never "Vash the Stampede" anywhere except within the four walls of your home; instead, he was "Eriks Saverem".

You had originally thought him using his adoptive mother's last name wasn't the best idea, but Vash argued that he needed a last name and Rem's last name was as good as any, given she was his mother in every way that mattered.

"Besides, who else would recognize that last name?" Vash had asked, a small smile on his face as he remembered his adoptive mother.

"Your brother, all the individuals who work for your brother, Brad and Luida..." You had listed off, counting them off on your fingers, which caused Vash to whine.

"(Y/NNNNNN)..."

"Alright, alright," You had conceded in the end, sighing with a roll of your eyes, "But don't come crying to me if you have to go on the run again."

In the present, you pressed a soft kiss to Vash's lips before you stood from his lap, patting his back gently.

"Be safe out there, my love," You whispered gently, "Come home to us. Come home to me."

"Always, Mayfly," Vash replied with a warm smile, "I will always come home to you. I swear it on my life."

"Good," You retorted, "I'll be keeping you to your promise."

"I'd expect no less."

Vash grinned at you, before taking your hand in his and pressing a kiss to your wedding ring - a way of sealing his promise to you.

"I love you, Stampede," You whispered to him, reaching out and brushing a strand of his now-long blonde hair out of his face, tucking it behind his ear tenderly.

"And I love you, (Y/N)," Vash replied softly, catching your other hand in his and kissing your palm tenderly in return.

"Alright, off with you," You chuckled, stepping away from your husband and turning to head downstairs, "That way you can be back sooner."

All you could hear was Vash chuckling as you went downstairs, finding Rem and Nicholas playing in the living room of your small home. When you appeared, both of them looked up at you and smiled.

"What is it, Mama?" Rem asked suddenly, cocking her small head to the side as she studied you intently, almost exactly the way her father did.

You quickly forced a smile as you came over to where your children were sitting, joining them on the carpet.

"Well," You began softly, "Apparently, it's a bit hard for us to go see Grandma Sheryl and big sis Lina right now. Papa's gonna go take a look and see if we can still go."

Nicholas and Rem exchanged looks, and Nicholas now piped up, "Hard, mama?"

"Yes, my love," You answered, continuing to explain, "There are some bad guys in town, and neither Papa nor I want anything to happen to you two."

"Bad guys?" Rem asked, her eyes filling with a bit of fear. "Are they gonna hurt us?"

"No, my love," You replied immediately, "Papa and I will protect you two, we won't let anything or anybody hurt you. I promise."

Rem quickly scrambled over and hugged you tightly, and you could feel your daughter trembling in your embrace. You quickly held her close, stroking her hair gently.

"Mama's got you," You whispered to her gently, "And Papa's got you, too. Always."

Nicholas slowly came over and joined the hug, and you held both of them close. Suddenly, you felt an additional set of warm, muscular arms wrap around you and the twin, and you heard Vash's voice speaking gently.

"Mama and Papa will always protect you two. Always, my loves."

Rem and Nicholas shifted slightly so that they could hug both you and Vash at the same time, and you all held your group hug for a few moments before Vash finally pulled away.

"Alright, Papa's gotta go on a little adventure," Vash said gently, patting the children's heads, "I'll be back soon. Promise me you'll protect each other and Mama if anything happens."

"We will!" Nicholas exclaimed immediately, standing up straight, "I'll protect Mama and Rem!"

"No, I'll protect Mama and Nicholas!" Rem retorted, nudging her brother.

Before the twins could get into another small spat, Vash laughed heartily and pulled them into another hug.

"That's my girl and boy! I'm relying on you both, okay? See you both soon. I love you two."

"Love you, Papa!" Rem and Nicholas chimed in unison, and you mouthed to Vash as he glanced at you, "I love you".

With a final kiss to the top of the twins' heads, and a gentle kiss to your lips (met by loud "EWWWW"s from the twins), Vash stepped out of the house and headed into town.

Grandma Sheryl's warning had proven to be true - as Vash walked through the town, he noticed multiple buildings that now had holes in the wall, windows that were shattered, and that the inside of these buildings were filled with debris and torn to shreds. Vash could see smoke coming from some other part of town, and a feeling of dread began to take root in his chest.

'Oh, Gods... should I tell (Y/N) to get the children ready to move? Should we run? Should we go somewhere else, to a different town?' Vash's thoughts began to go wild as he carefully treaded through town, keeping an eye out for any sign of trouble. 'What if (Y/N) gets hurt? What if one of the children get hurt? What if-?... No, Vash, no, don't go there.'

Vash was snapped out of his internal panic by a cry from not too far away, and as he looked up, Vash saw a couple bandits surrounding an older gentleman who was laying on the ground, curled up in the fetal position as he tried to protect himself from the blows of the bandits. Vash recognized the older gentleman as the town doctor, the same doctor who had helped you deliver Nicholas and Rem about a year ago, a kind man who many looked to as the town grandfather.

"Hey!" Vash immediately shouted, his body moving before he could make sense of the situation, "Leave him alone!"

Vash managed to intervene, getting the bandits away from the doctor and helping him to his feet. The poor doctor was bleeding from his face where he had no doubt been kicked or punched, and one of his eyes were turning black.

"If ya know what's good for ya, get outta here!" One of the bandits, likely the leader of this particular squad, sneered at Vash. The other bandits circled around their leader, no doubt waiting for a sign to go after Vash and the doctor.

"Sorry, but no," Vash replied coolly, gazing at the bandits and trying to ascertain how much of a threat they posed. "What reason could you possibly have to attack the town doctor?"

"Because he said something I didn't like," the bandit leader retorted snidely. The bandit leader squared himself and approached Vash, getting much too close to him for Vash's comfort.

"I'll say it one last time - if ya know what's good for ya, leave. Now. Or we won't hold back on ya."

The bandit leader's eyes blazed as he said this, poking Vash hard in the chest in an attempt to intimidate him into backing off. However, Vash just shook his head once more.

"Sorry, guys, but violence doesn't fly with me. I'd suggest you get out of here before things go badly for you," Vash replied, even going so far as to smile at the bandit leader.

This, however, incensed the bandit leader, and he immediately swung at Vash, who easily dodged his attack and moved fast enough to flip the bandit leader onto his back and slam him into the ground.

"Aww, come on, guys!" Vash exclaimed, "There's no need for fighting! Just leave the doctor alone, simple as that!"

The other bandits came at Vash, but not one of them managed to get close to him as Vash swiftly dodged and evaded their attacks and used their attacks against each other. Within moments, most of the bandits lay on the ground, moaning softly and stirring a bit as they tried to regain their bearings.

"Mr. Saverem, thank you so much!" The doctor cried, shaking Vash's hand enthusiastically, "Your assistance was greatly appreciated!"

Vash went to answer the doctor, but he noticed how the bandit leader was now gazing at him, a look of pure and utter hatred on his face. Vash felt his heart fall to his feet - this wasn't over yet.

"S-Saverem, eh?" The bandit leader wheezed out, slowly getting to his feet and shooting Vash a wicked grin, "Good to have a name for the man whose ass I have to kick."

Vash sighed tiredly, "Look, buddy, I'm not in the mood to fight you again. Can you please leave so I can get on with my life, as can the rest of the town? I'm pretty sure you guys got everything of worth from here, anyways."

"We'll see about that," the bandit leader replied coolly, grinning once more at Vash and the doctor before holding something up in his hand. Vash felt his heart twist violently in his chest as he realized what it was - a picture. The picture Vash always carried on him in his pocket.

Of you, Rem and Nicholas.

Where did he get that?!

"My, my, she's a beauty," The bandit leader mused, his eyes filled with fire as he traced your smiling face in the photo. Vash had never felt such a strong urge to burn a picture before as the bandit leader traced over your face and then the faces of the twins, "And look at them. They look just like you, Mr. Saverem. You're a lucky man."

Vash suppressed a shiver as the bandit leader said his name with emphasis, and the smirk that grew on the bandit's face made Vash want to sprint home and hide you and the twins away from the world, somewhere where nobody could ever hurt any of you.

"Although..." The bandit leader continued, still smirking at Vash as he spoke, "I wonder at what point your luck will run out."

Vash had to bite his tongue, instead desperately fighting to remain calm and seem unbothered by the bandit leader's faintly veiled threats towards himself, towards you and the children.

So, instead, Vash merely shrugged and answered as if he didn't understand the threat the bandit leader was making, "I'm not sure."

The bandit leader's evil smirk only grew bigger as he crumpled the picture in his fist and threw it down on the ground, "Guess we'll have to find out."

With that, the bandit leader turned on his heel and stormed off, his lackeys trailing behind him as best they could as they ran off from where Vash had fought them off.

"Mr. Saverem..." The doctor spoke quietly, looking mortified, "I-I'm so sorry, I- I didn't think-"

"Don't worry, doctor," Vash responded kindly, picking up the now-crumpled photo off the ground before helping the older gentleman stand up a bit straighter and guiding him over to a bench nearby, "I think that guy was gonna find my name out one way or the other."

"You need to get home, son," the doctor spoke softly, looking at Vash worriedly despite his own wounds, "He made a threat to your family. And there's plenty of bandits in town. God knows what they might try to do. You need to go home. Now."

Vash shook his head, the fear beginning to seep into his veins as he replied, "I can't just leave you here, though. What if they come back?"

"Somehow, I don't think they will," the doctor answered, the smallest smile appearing on his lips. "Now, go home. Go to your family."

With a final nod, Vash quickly took off towards your home, going from a walk to a jog until he was full on sprinting towards the house. His panic was beginning to overwhelm him as he sprinted back towards his home, where his family was hidden. Hopefully, you'd still be there, playing with Rem and Nicholas, none the wiser as to the threats made against you and your children because of Vash's actions.

'Please, please, please, let them be there. Let them be alright,' Vash pleaded in his mind, unsure of who he was pleading to as he sprinted home.

Right away, Vash felt a sense of relief when he saw your shared home. None of the windows had been smashed, the doors were all closed, and your home looked completely untouched. No sign whatsoever of any kind of break-in.

'Thank the Gods,' Vash breathed a deep sigh of relief as he raced up the steps and opened the door, coming into his house, fully prepared to pull you and the twins into a tight hug and not let go of any of you for quite some time.

"(Y/N)? Mayfly?" Vash called as soon as he entered the house, quickly looking around to try and spot you or the children.

However, nothing answered him except silence. The house was eerily quiet.

"Rem?! Nicholas?!" Vash called, his voice growing louder as he walked from room to room. There wasn't even the slightest sign of any disturbance having occurred in any of the rooms - everything was perfectly in place.

'Where are they? Did (Y/N) take the kids out somewhere?' Vash wondered, continuing to look around until he had searched the house from top to bottom for some sign of where you and the children might've gone.

As Vash came back downstairs, he was at a complete loss of where you all might've gone. The panic and fear from before began to reappear, taking root once more in Vash's stomach as his mind began to race.

Where could you have gone? Where were Rem and Nicholas? Were you alright? Were you alive?

Vash's mind swirled with so many questions that he nearly missed the piece of paper lying on the kitchen table, alongside something glinting in the bright sunlight - your wedding ring, next to a piece of a broken children's toy that both Rem and Nicholas had treasured.

As Vash picked up the note, staring at your ring and the broken toy, he felt his heart shatter into a million pieces before it began to thunder in his chest from fear and horror as he read the unfamiliar handwriting on the note.

"Your luck has run out. Check the abandoned school building."

#anya's athenaeum #trigun stampede #trigun stampede x reader #trigun x reader #trigun #vash the stampede #vash the stampede x reader #vash x reader #eriks x reader #eriks!vash #trigun eriks

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redtsundere-writes · 1 month

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Jinx | Sukuna Ryomen

mma fighter!sukuna ryomen x femalecoach!reader

Part 7. Help Me To Help You

Beginning. ← Previous | Next →

Spynosis: Sukuna is a world champion with anger issues. It's believed by many that he is untrainable. Yeah, you can't train him, but you can dominate him. Contents: Fighting. Sukuna being Sukuna. female reader being dom. Jinx AU (the BL, not the character from lol) Reader is a baddie. Warnings: MDNI. +18. Cursed words. I only read it once, lmao. Smut. Raw sex. Vaginal. Oral. Humiliation. Reader is dom. Sukuna is sub. Word count: 4149 words. A/N: We are finally in the middle of this story. Thanks for all the support and the comments! Hope you like this chapter.

Less than 48 hours left until fight night. This time, the championship night would take place in Tokyo, it was always good to fight at home so we didn’t have to worry about traveling and having jet lag. Sukuna and Naoya had gone through the judges and referees for the official weigh-in at the official UFC facility. Luckily, Naoya threw me some flirtatious glances and didn't say a word to me during the brief encounter. If Sukuna found out that I betted my position as a coach, he would kill me without hesitation.

The band was moving under my feet. I couldn’t give up. The outcome of this fight rested on my attitude to the circumstances. My arms swayed with every step I took. I had to secure Sukuna's luck no matter what. I was losing my breath due to fatigue. Sukuna won the last fight against Toji Fushiguro thanks to me. My feet were moving on their own. Should I fuck him again?

“Hey!” Sukuna shouted in my ear, waking me up from my thoughts.

My feet stopped dead in their tracks on the treadmill, causing me to lose my balance and stumble. The band pushed me off the platform, sending me rolling to the ground. My head was spinning, so I lay down on the ground to recover. It's a lousy idea to get up suddenly after a serious fall, that's how you pass out.

“What the fuck is wrong with you today? You're acting weird lately,” Sukuna asked me, annoyed.

“Shut up,” I mumbled with a frown.

“Are you worried about the fight tomorrow?” he asked, irritated.

“Of course I'm worried! If you don't win tomorrow, I'll have to go back to the Zenins!”, I thought, but I couldn't tell him that. I had gotten myself into this mess on my own, I was willing to get out of it alone and teach that jerk Naoya Zenin a lesson.

“A little, but it will be all right. I trust your good luck ritual will work, by the way, do you have someone to fuck already?” I asked, trying not to sound too obvious.

“Keep your fucking voice down!” Sukuna scolded me between whispers, kneeling down next to me to look me in the face. “Only Yuuji should know, but he opened his mouth and now you and Gojo know,” he whispered, after making sure no one around us was paying attention.

“Megumi knows about it too.”

“That nosy little shit,” he grumbled.

I didn't think he was embarrassed by his lucky ritual. Yes, it was unconventional, but I didn't know it was a big open secret. Usually male athletes are not embarrassed about fucking multiple women, they even flex about it by bringing a different woman to their matches. I thought Sukuna would be like them, I was surprised he wasn’t.

“Get up now, you look stupid,” He said as he offered his hand to help me.

“Good thing I caught you resting, Sukuna,” Nanami announced his presence as he approached us. “Hey, weren't you supposed to leave 10 minutes ago?” he asked me directly. I looked at my watch, it was 2:10 pm. I had to leave soon if I wanted to get to my appointment on time.

“That's right! Thanks for reminding me,” I thanked Nanami before rushing to the lockers to change.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going? Tomorrow is the fight night!” Sukuna shouted angrily as he grabbed my arm to stop me from running away.

“It’s going to help you win! I promise!” I exclaimed to get him to let me go.

“Are you going to let her go just like that?” Sukuna asked Nanami as if he was my dad.

“She asked to leave early a month ago, she told me it was important. It's in her rights,” Nanami explained calmly.

I abruptly let go of Sukuna, and he grumbled in contempt. He knew Nanami was right. If he didn't let me leave, I could file a complaint against him with HR. I assured him he would thank me later, and he just death glared me. That was so him.

At the lockers, I took off my stinky clothes from training sweat. I opened my gym bag and took out the denim skirt I had packed. The last time I wore a denim mini skirt was on my first date with Naoya, a special event. “I can't believe I'm going to wear this again,” I thought as I saw how short it was, it barely covered my butt. I had to wear it, this would be a special day too.

2 hours on a train ride later, I arrived at my not so exciting destination, The Golden Pot, a Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of Kyoto, known for having the best wonton soup in town. I never thought I would return to this place. It brought back bittersweet memories of my relationship with Naoya, as I had the best dates of my life with him here. It was amazing how the person I once grew to love more than myself became my #1 enemy.

Naoya has a less troublesome luck ritual than Sukuna. Before every fight, he must eat a bowl of wonton soup to secure his stomach and his victory. He always did this in the evenings after the official weigh-in. When he travels out of the country, he usually eats it before taking the plane. Since he was fighting in Tokyo, I knew he would be at the restaurant. I zipped up my Team Black jacket and walked confidently into the place.

I spotted him at the table where he always used to sit. A table in a booth with red cushions and an intimate atmosphere. He was alone and undercover as if he were a spy, wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses despite being indoors. I really didn't want to approach him, but I had to be brave. I had traveled all the way from Tokyo to confront him and put him out of his comfort zone, I couldn't afford to chicken out now.

“Is it good?” I greeted him reluctantly. Naoya looked up from his bowl and took off his glasses to make sure his mind wasn't playing tricks on him. Taking his time to run down my bare legs, getting used to the idea that I was standing before him.

“Well, well… What brings you all the way to Kyoto?” He asked me with a smile.

“Since you came to visit me at the gym and my house, I thought it would be nice to visit you at your favorite place,” I replied as I sat down across from him.

“You are so cute,” he commented before eating a wonton.

A waitress came to our table quickly to take my order. She tried giving me a menu, but I already knew what I was going to order.

“I'm not going to stay long, I'll just have a wonton soup to go and an iced tea for here,” I asked.

“Are you in a hurry?” Naoya asked me disappointed, once the waitress left.

“A little, I have to go back to Tokyo early to continue training Sukuna,” I answered.

“Do you care about him?” He asked me seriously.

“Of course I do, it's my job.”

“No, I mean, do you really care about him?” He corrected the question.

I frowned in response. It was true that Sukuna was on my mind 80% of the day, but that's because he is my job. I have to make sure he eats right, does the exercises correctly and is in his best mental state before every fight. I have seen him progress in the last four months that I have been training him, and I was proud of my work, but where was I going with that kind of question? Naoya sighed when he didn't get an answer.

“Do you like him?” he asked confident that he knew the answer already.

“No,” I answered coldly, before he makes up weird ideas on his head.

I couldn't imagine jumping from one idiot to another. Sukuna could be an amazing athlete, an extremely attractive man and a good protector, but he was still a traitor, a rude champion and someone who uses women to his advantage. We had grown up together these past few months, but I was not to be confused, he was still Sukuna Ryomen.

“This brings back so many memories. This is where we had our first kiss. We were so young and immature,”. Naoya sighed as he imagined the scene.

“We are still young and immature, especially you. You still cling to the past and want to pull me with you,” I mumbled.

“What's wrong with wanting to take back what's mine?” he wondered, annoyed that I had broken his illusion.

“That I am not your property nor Zenin’s,” I answered.

“We'll see about that tomorrow,” Naoya self-assured.

The waitress arrived with my order carefully wrapped in a plastic bag and the tea in the typical yellowish plastic cup of this kind of restaurant. I smiled as I saw the full glass in front of me, “This is what I came for,” I thought as I took a sip.

“You're right, let’s not to argue now,” I thought out loud as I got up from my seat, ready to leave. “We'll see about that tomorrow,” I said with a confident smile.

I poured the iced tea over Naoya's half-eaten wonton soup. His eyes widened at the reckless act I was pulling. I was ruining his good luck ritual before his eyes. I slammed the glass down on the table in front of him to grab his attention back.

“You'd better keep your part of the bet,” I threatened him in a low voice so that he was the only one listening to me.

“I hope you too, cutie,” he glared at me, this time he had stopped smiling to restrain himself from hitting a woman in a public place.

I left the place with my food and sighed relieved that the conversation had not escalated any further. I checked the time. It was almost 6pm, I had to get to the train station if I wanted to make it to the next part of my plan on time.

SUKUNA POV

A sharp pain invaded my neck as I moved my shoulder again. A grunt of pain escaped from my lips as I moved it in circles as Shoko recommended. The hot water from the shower helped dull the pain. I should be embarrassed. I couldn't let such a superficial injury stop me. I had to give my 110% in tomorrow's fight as always. My honor and my title were on the line again. I shouldn't be worried though, no one knows that my shoulder is injured, and I have y/n, who has been teaching me all of Naoya's moves. My chances of winning were still pretty high.

I let the hot water run over my body some more. I didn't want to get out of the shower, but I had to get ready to greet the prostitute I had hired in advance for tonight's ritual. I wrapped myself in my shower robe and went on to dry my hair, so I would have it ready for tomorrow. I was in my best possible shape, but aesthetics are also important for sponsors.

The doorbell echoed through the penthouse, letting me know that someone was waiting at the door. I frowned at the time. It was barely 8 o'clock, the hooker was arriving at 9. "Who the fuck is it this late?", I asked myself annoyed. I walked over to the door to see who it was.

It was a rather pleasant surprise to see y/n through the peephole. She was waiting patiently outside the door with a plastic bag in her hands. I was going to open the door, but I saw her take off the black gym jacket. My cheeks flushed slightly at the sight of her in something other than workout clothes. She was wearing the shortest denim skirt I had ever seen in my life and a pink shirt that allowed me to see her cleavage thanks to the height difference. I had seen her wear things that revealed her stunning body, but this was the first time I had seen something that made her look like a girl and not like someone who can kick my ass.

She started to lose her patience. She rang the doorbell again, bringing me back to reality. I was a weak man if just looking at her made me blush. “Fuck,” I thought, annoyed with myself, before opening the door.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I scolded her. “Who the fuck gave you my address?”

“What a nice way to greet your coach,” she joked, sarcastically. “Nanami gave me your address. I came all the way from Kyoto to bring you a good luck wonton soup,” she explained as she handed me the plastic bag.

As soon as she moved his jacket from one arm to the other, I noticed something about her outfit that I hadn't seen through the peephole before. It was a detail I shouldn't have minded in the least, but my eyes hyper-fixated on it anyway. The pink rim of her thong protruded above her skirt, gently draped over her hip. The fact that I even noticed it surprised me. I'd seen that on thousands of models at parties, why did it matter to me so much in y/n? Had she done it on purpose? It was hard to tell, since I only know her in working hours. This was the first time we had met outside the work environment.

“Are you going to let me in?” she wondered.

“Did you really go all the way to Kyoto to bring me a measly wonton soup?” I asked as I inspected the contents. Y/n slapped my arm at the rejection of her gift.

“It's the best soup in the world!” she scolded me, offended. “Also, I went to ruin Naoya's lucky ritual,” she confessed, embarrassed.

“Are you fucking stupid!? That's why you left training early?!” I yelled in annoyance.

“Hey! You should be thankful that I'm taking every precaution to ensure my victory!” she finished off by raising her voice to reach my volume. She always has a stupid answer for everything.

“Your victory…” I tasted the phrase in my mouth. “Are you only doing this just for yourself?”

“My victory is that you remain as the champion,” she clarified.

“Well, you did what you had to do,” I told her, ready to close the door.

“You didn't answer the question I asked you earlier,” she reminded me, it was as if she didn't want the conversation to end.

“What are you talking about?” As soon as I blurted out the question, she blushed and avoided my gaze.

“Do you already have someone for your lucky ritual?” She asked, still avoiding my gaze.

“Yes, she's coming in an hour. You can go home now,” I said, tired of explaining myself to her. I tried to close the door, but she pulled her body into the penthouse to avoid it.

“Are you sure she will satisfy you?” She asked me, almost desperate.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” I yelled, opening the door again. “You've been so weird since we made the strategy! Is there something you want to tell me?”

“I just want to make sure that your ritual goes well...” she whispered in embarrassment. That sounded like a damn lie.

“Y/n!” I scolded her. She was startled by the scream and then sighed in surrender.

She told me all about her history with Naoya in a low voice. From how they met to how he continues to stalk her to this day. She told me how she came to his house out of nowhere and betted on her freedom to get rid of him once and for all. “Are you such a dumb bitch! How could you even think of doing that!”, are things I wanted to scream at her until her ears bled from her stupidity, but I couldn't do it seeing her so emotionally drained. No wonder she was so desperate, this was the only way she has to be able to get rid of him. What a mess she was in.

“Help me out, Sukuna,” Her eyes begged me for mercy, I couldn't say “no” to that.

“Come in, it better be as good as in Dubai,” I threatened her as soon as I let her in.

“I will do my best,” she promised.

Despite being shorter than me by a head and looking so tender in that outfit that left almost nothing to the imagination, this little shit pushed me against the bed with all her might. In my own house! She had already seen me naked and knew how I behaved during sex. So it was easy for her to undo the knot of my shower gown and unwrap me as if I were her birthday gift to find my hard cock. She didn't hesitate to take it all the way into her mouth. Each suck and lick felt desperate. I knew I wanted to make her come, so she could secure tomorrow's victory, but sometimes the idea that she was really desperate to have my cock inside her for simple pleasure tickled my brain.

“You really want to impress me, don't you?” I asked her as I took off my robe completely.

I pushed her towards my crotch, hugging her by the shoulders with my leg to show her how flexible I had become since she had taught me floor techniques. The splashes coming from her wet lips, her eyes watering from having my monstrosity in her little mouth and her hands holding my thighs to keep my balance were a sublime image. I could come just seeing her in that state.

I pulled her to me with one tug to do what I had wanted to do to her since I saw her through the peephole. I ripped off her thin pink shirt to reveal the pink lace bra that matched her thong. “She came prepared,” I thought with a satisfied smile. I usually like to remove the bra because it gets in the way, but I decided to leave this one on because it was cute. The little flowers looked so pretty over her beautiful breasts. I yanked down her skirt and reached into her slutty cave. She clung to my body as she moaned my name as praise. My fingertips rubbed her sensitive clit as they bathed in the natural lube. Y/n struggled against her own body to maintain her composure.

She took possession of my body as soon as she climbed into my lap. I thought the fun was finally going to begin, but she decided to keep playing with my senses. She took possession of my cock to rub the tip against her clit in slow circles. I bit my lower lip to keep from moaning like a bitch in heat.

“Don't be shy, I want to hear you,” she asked before gently twisting my nipple.

My eyes popped open as I felt his fingers against my sensitive spots. I think it's the first time I've ever been touched like that. She smiled as she realized the same thing I did. She approached me slowly to kiss my nipples gently. We had only slept together once, and she already knew my body better than I did. Oh Naoya, was this what he missed because of his stupid shit? Poor bastard. She flicked her tongue and gently sucked on my erect nipples from the cold of the night. I closed my eyes to enjoy the tickling that ran mercilessly through my body as I moaned for her.

“How cute. Your cheeks match your hair and my underwear,” she whispered in my ear as she saw the blush that covered my face.

She shoved my cock in her all at once, bringing back memories of Dubai. This time, my back was no longer suffering from being pushed against a small wooden table. She rode my cock like a pro, making sure the tip had the biggest impact point. Her breasts bounced in my face, her moans were music to my ears and her hips were moving to the beat of a forbidden song. I wrapped my arms around her waist to hold her close to me and made sure my cock went all the way in to her cervix.

She kissed me passionately without ceasing to impact her hips against me. It was wild, rushed, and powerful. She pressed my body against hers like a snake mercilessly choking its prey. I had no intention of fighting her, I could die in between her thighs and I would be so fucking happy.

I wasn't going to last any longer if we kept going like this. My mind kept repeating the national anthem to last longer in heaven, but it wasn't working. Y/n knew what she was doing, and she was doing a great fucking job. My cock was high and wet in her pussy, I wanted more, I needed more of her. My hips were moving on automatic to penetrate her fully. Her tits bouncing in my face was the best sight I have ever witnessed in my life. Y/n felt so tight and delicious, I was about to explode. Before I could help it, I came in her. My cock was slowly pumping her full.

“Are you done?” She smirked.

“Shut up,” I sighed tiredly. She pulled away from me to go to the bathroom to clean herself. I grabbed her arm and pulled her back to the bed. “I'm not done with you yet.”

”Huh?” She asked, confused.

“I may be satisfied, but you're not,” I told her before spreading her legs apart.

I wasn't used to eating pussy from hookers, they just made me cum and left, but seeing my coach's face all flushed and surprised made my night. She really didn't expect me to go deep into her body to finish what I had started. I dipped my head into her crotch to part her lips with my tongue. She stifled a moan and closed her legs at the tickle that ran down her back. She pressed her thighs against my face, drowning me in her delicious pussy. Y/n arched her back to bring her clit closer to my nose and thrust my tongue deeper inside her.

It was sour and sweet at the same time, I didn’t like the taste much, but I was a fan of the texture. I looked like a fucking junkie once I got used to the slimy sensation on my tongue. She pulled me by the hair to suck on her clit. I opened my mouth wide to eat the food God blessed me tonight. Y/n looked like a hot mess and I loved it. She moaned, writhed and called my name with lust.

“Just like that!” she moaned as she pushed my face, a sign that I was doing a good job.

I kept doing exactly what she asked until she squirted on my face. I jerked away confused as to what had happened. I wiped my face to see Y/n lying there like a happy starfish, arms, and legs spread across the bed tired.

“Good job,” She moaned in satisfaction.

I was going to answer her, but the doorbell grabbed my attention. It must be the prostitute. I wrapped my robe around me again and grabbed my wallet from the nightstand. I didn't want to waste time with her, I wanted to go to sleep soon so I could be well rested for the fight. I opened the door to find a blonde girl who reminded me of a bitch I know.

“Hi, handsome. It's nice to meet you, I always see you on the sports channel and…”

“Look, thanks for coming, but lets canceled. Someone already emptied my balls, take 100 dollars and leave,” I said, throwing the bill at her and slamming the door in his face.

I went back to the room only to find y/n completely asleep under the covers. She looked exhausted, I shouldn't wake her up. I sat next to her on the bed and sighed tiredly. My horniness was decreasing, and I questioned whether I should let her sleep or ask her to go home. I looked at her again. She looked very comfortable and content tucked into me in the wet covers from our fluids.

“Looks like I'll be sleeping in the guest room,” I thought out loud

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runwayrunway · 7 months

Text

THE MAN ON THE TAIL: AN ALASKA AIRLINES WHOISIT

Last time on Runway Runway...

The short answer, reiterated: nobody knows.

The long answer: Nobody knows. A lot of people have no idea or have never even thought about it. Many people have a person in mind they think he resembles, but they know that it's probably wrong. A non-negligible number think they know, but they do not necessarily agree with each other. After the research I have done on the topic, I believe that I do know who this face is, but this is not going to be an argument for my position - merely a presentation of this logo's origins and the theories as to who this face represents, a few thoughts about community and feeling like something is part of yours, and the story of an incredible man.

But first, a content warning, and a disclaimer:

This post will discuss use of an outdated term used to refer to Inuit and Yupik peoples which is broadly considered offensive. It is, unfortunately, inseparable from the story of the face on Alaska Airlines' tailfins. While I have discussed somewhat heavy subjects, including racism, on this blog before, it has generally been in reference to statistics or vague allusions to commonly held offensive sentiments, and I think that discussing a specific word which has caused pain to a group of people requires a little bit more of a specific warning.

Below the cut, there will be discussions surrounding Alaska Airlines' use of said word, with a bit on its broader context. This post is not meant to be a downer, and I don't think it ultimately is. But there is a lot to the story of the "happy face", and there is no use telling the warm and fuzzy parts inside the hood of the parka while ignoring the temperature outside of it. There is so much more to this story than outdated language, but it is still a part of it that can't be left out without overlooking the very people who the tail represents.

I imagine the context of that warning, unfortunately, becomes clear immediately.

Indigenous Alaskans make up 15% of the state's population, made up of various groups of what are called 'circumpolar peoples', who historically lived in the very northernmost habitable parts of the planet - Alaska, Siberia, Greenland, and parts of Canada and Scandinavia. While these groups are broadly somewhat related they are distinct in culture and history.

Alaska, specifically, has over 200 federally recognized tribes, around the same number as is present in the entire rest of the country. (That has its own context, but my point here is to illustrate the diversity of indigenous Alaskan background.) These cultures include the Athabaskan, Aleut, Eyak, and the two that those without personal familiarity tend to think of - the Yup'ik and Iñupiaq. All of these terms themselves further comprise multiple communities, and indeed Yup'ik and Iñupiaq refer to specific groups of peoples from the larger groups of Yupik and Inuit peoples - the groups in question being the ones who live in Alaska rather than Siberia or Canada.

The reason this is important is that it is generally agreed that the face on Alaska Airlines' airplanes is an Alaskan Native, and specifically a member of one of these two groups. A few people apparently assume him to be Abraham Lincoln or Bob Marley or some other famous person (in fact, I am editing this to say that one of the replies to my first post was someone saying they'd always thought it was Abraham Lincoln) but I doubt these theories are ever serious. It would be weird to put a representative from Kentucky on a livery for Alaska Airlines (...which admittedly is based in Washington). The reasons for this assumption are fairly straightforward - it's a reasonable leap from a face surrounded by what looks like a fur hood being identified as Alaskan. But I wouldn't be making this post if the answer was just 'eh, some Alaskan Native'. (And I would find using the generic ornament of an indigenous group as branding more than a little tasteless, in all honesty.) It is broadly thought that this logo is based on the likeness of a specific individual. The question is who.

MEET OUR MYSTERY MAN

So, let's start at the obvious place. He's their logo, so...what does Alaska Airlines say about the identity of this mystery man? Let's take a look at the press release for their 2016 rebrand.

I'll be honest, I wasn't keeping up with airline livery news in 2016. Indeed, I wasn't keeping up with much of anything and I can't recall much from that period. So I...did not know about this, and it took the wind out of me a bit when I learned it happened.

So, let's begin with that term. 'Eskimo'. I feel gross even typing it. This is an exonym used to refer broadly to Yupik and Inuit peoples, though many who use it aren't necessarily aware that the term refers to multiple distinct cultures. I've heard it used for the Alaska Airlines man, and I had always assumed this was out of the ignorance of individual people. I live in the United States, where it's still often used casually (as are a few other unfortunate terms other places avoid - the country seems to have perpetually not gotten the memo, so to speak). In Canada, it is more or less universally considered to be offensive, due to the groups in question expressing their opposition to its use, and this seems to be the general trend over time in the US as well. So while, unfortunately, I do hear people casually say it from time to time, that's mostly annoying classmates. I didn't expect to hear it from Alaska Airlines.

The phrasing, however, is just as much of a problem. 'Our' Eskimo, as a probably unintentional consequence of phrasing choices, implies ownership of not just the logo but the man himself. I don't think I particularly need to explain why some might take issue with this.

And take issue they did. There was a petition! The hashtag #notyoureskimo was started on the website formerly known as Twitter. Anchorage Daily News quotes user angelascox making a statement I think really cuts to the quick of it: "No, @AlaskaAir … you don't own an Eskimo."

Alaska Airlines did listen.

Well, that's..........better, I guess. Unfortunately, it does still use the word 'Eskimo'. And I should note that it isn't universally considered offensive and I've found Alaskan Natives who state that they don't mind use of the term, but these seem to be the minority, and as time goes on it's being phased out further and further. In the context of Alaska Airlines' use, the Anchorage Daily News provides a few perspectives:

Maria Shaa Tlaa Williams, director of the Alaska Native Studies program at the University of Alaska Anchorage and Tlingit, said in an email the broader issue is about the use of "a somewhat antiquated word." "(Eskimo) is a colonial term and it should be: Inupiaq, Yup'ik/Cup'ik, Siberian Yupik or even Inuit, or even generic term such as Alaska Native," she said. Bobbie Egan, media relations director for Alaska Airlines, said the company made the decision to keep using the word "Eskimo" after conducting focus groups with Native leaders throughout Alaska, but she did not have details about those focus group results. "Many of our employees and customers commonly refer to themselves as Eskimo and we've always sought the input and counsel of employees and customers," she said.

I do wish those focus group results were made public, but all the same this isn't particularly surprising. Whenever a term begins to be considered offensive this opinion is generally adopted in a bit of a mosaic fashion, with typically younger people first expressing discomfort and those from different walks of life having their own opinions - some more swayed by the distasteful aspects, while others refuse to let that stop them from using a word they've called themselves their whole life. This is broadly true across all sorts of contexts. I do think it's never an outsider's place to critique someone's choice to use whatever language they feel best represents them, but if there is a large portion of the group in question who find it derogatory we should avoid using it ourselves. There are certainly 'outdated' terms I use for myself but would feel a bit unhappy seeing used carelessly by someone who didn't understand what it meant and was using it, bluntly, because they didn't know better or didn't care to know better. If you are from a group which has historically been derided by others you can probably fill in your own example here.

There are a few reasons for the distaste many have for the word 'Eskimo'. To begin with, it's an exonym. This term was not used as an identifier by any of these groups, but by outsiders to refer to them, and particularly by Europeans and settlers who heard these words from other groups they encountered earlier and then never bothered to ask the people in question what they actually called themselves. Beyond the inherent issue of self-determination, the fact that these were the historical users means that it was often pejorative and othering and ought to be left behind with terms like 'oriental'.

The term is generally thought to have originated from a corruption of an exonym used by one or more Algonquian-speaking groups. The most popular conception is that it stems from a Cree term meaning 'raw meat eater', which people understandably find pretty offensive. There are a number of other theories, and recently linguists seem to most support an interpretation that it is derived from an Innu-aimun word meaning 'one who laces a snowshoe'; it could have evolved from both of these terms or neither, and I don't think it matters when it is already widely perceived as meaning something offensive. 'Well, actually'-ing somebody who says a term is offensive to their ethnic group by pointing out a benign linguistic origin is a pretty pointless thing to do - we've had this conversation before about the name Lufthansa. But beyond that, basically every slur I can think of was once a completely innocuous word that just needed someone to invent a hateful enough way to use it. And people have been using this word rather hatefully for centuries. Regardless of origin, it is a dated exonym, and if the groups it refers to don't feel it represents them that's enough reason for me to stop using it.

The other reason that this term is broadly bad to use is that it's just not a good way of conveying which people you're talking about. 'Eskimo' is generally agreed to encompass Yupik and Inuit peoples, which are two large and diverse populations spread across Siberia and North America. These may be closely related and similar cultures but they are not interchangeable. 'Inuit' has recently seen more frequent use as a replacement, which is at least a step away from the language, but is often outright factually incorrect, as it will be used to refer to Yupik people - who are not Inuit, but are the largest indigenous population in Alaska. 'Alaskan Native' and 'circumpolar peoples' exist as umbrella terms which are understood to be umbrella terms by just about everyone, but there is a legitimate misconception that these groups are all the same because of the use of a single term for them.

Maybe Alaska Airlines uses the term because they think 'Alaskan Native' is awkward for a slogan and they don't want to tie themselves into knots by committing to specifying whether the man is Yup'ik or Iñupiaq. That would be a problem, as they don't actually know who he is.

Beyond the term, there is the issue of objectification on a larger scale than phrasing. Annie Wenstrup, the writer of the petition linked earlier, makes an important point - if the Alaska Airlines man is the likeness of a real person, that person has not been paid for its use. Beyond that, Alaska Airlines is using the very concept of an indigenous Alaskan to market itself. There is definitely a dehumanizing element to it. Alaska Airlines is far from the only company to have ever used ethnic groups as branding, and I think that ultimately it's not my place to linger on this topic. It would be wrong to not mention that this is an element of his story, that people do raise this issue, and that this is a discussion that should be had. I, however, don't have a fully developed opinion. This is a conversation for Alaskan Natives to have, I think - I just don't understand the context of their relationship with the airline specifically, and I have no more ownership of the man pictured than Alaska Airlines. Because he was not an object. There is every likelihood that he was a real person.

WHO IS THE MAN ON THE TAIL?

The website mentions a short film. Unfortunately, the Way Back Machine didn't manage to get it, but it did catch the associated article. The thing this article communicates most clearly is that nobody knows who this man is.

Whether the artists were inspired by [a real person] remains a mystery to this day – both within the company and without – as no official documentation has ever been uncovered indicating that [...] the Eskimo [...] was based on a specific person. Even Alaska’s archivists, a team of retirees and long-time employees passionate about preserving the company’s history, can’t agree.

As someone who is myself studying to be an archivist, I am currently tearing my hair out and flinging tables at people mere decades ago for never keeping any records!!! What is wrong with you people?! Why do you never think of me in the future wanting to know the context of things you probably think are obvious?!

Well, anyway, this might indicate that he's just a generic representation of an Alaskan Native. That would not just be a disappointing answer to this mystery, it would also be pretty offensive. I know that the NFL (an organization known for its racial sensitivity, as I think we're all aware) is a bit slow to catch onto this but I think at this point in history we're all on the same page about using indigenous groups as mascots, right? It's weird and dehumanizing. But that's generally in reference to a stock character based on a stereotype of this group, and often one which is an offensive caricature. Given the percentage of Alaskan Natives in the population, some of whom were certainly involved in making Alaska Airlines what it is, isn't there a chance that this is a loving homage to the group native to the land this airline represents? A way of saying 'this is who this airline connects to faraway places'? I think this was certainly at least the intention, and whether this is still tokenizing, whether the phrasing on the website - a warm, welcoming presence and a reminder of commitment - stirs up an uncomfortable feeling is ultimately a question for Alaskan Natives, and one with a far less unanimous answer than that of outdated terminology.

However, I'll say this up front: he is not a generic representation. He is a specific individual. If he weren't I wouldn't have written a whole post about him.

So let's go all the way back to the beginning. If we do this we find our mystery man was actually not created to be a generic literal face of Alaska Airlines. The intention was not an indigenous mascot, but to represent Alaska's heritage...in more than one way. Mr. Alaska Airlines was once a jellybean.

YOU MIGHT AS WELL PUT HIM ON THE TAILS

image: Vic Warren

In 1972 a set of four new "Alaskana" liveries were introduced for Alaska Airlines' relatively small 727 fleet, replacing the older 'Gold Nugget Jet'. (I will definitely be reviewing those one day.) They were designed by Vic Warren and meant to represent the heritage of Alaska's population, and came in four variants:

"The Prospector" - in red, a miner with his pick, representing the people who flocked to Alaska from the lower 48 during the Gold Rush

"The Totem Pole" - in green, a totem pole design representing Southeast Alaskan indigenous groups such as the Eyak, Tlingit, and Haida - I wish I could be more specific but I can't seem to find the specific totem pole this is based off of

"The Onion Dome" - in fuchsia, today I learned that's actually what those are frequently called! They are meant to represent the history of Russians in Alaska.

And, "The....you know. Him." He's in blue. You may notice he looks a little bit less genial here. , and there's a bit of lighter color detail. No elaboration needed.

It does feel distinctly less tokenizing when there's a white prospector right next to him. In fact, the rephrasing in the quote taken from the archivists is actually because they were referring to both our mystery man and the prospector, whose identity is even more lost to history. This feels quite a bit less sinister than naming your football team a racial slur. It's like if an airline representing Massachusetts (keep reading, Cape Air, this is a free idea for you) had a set of jellybeans featuring a Wampanoag person, a furious man in the process of being given a traffic citation, a whale, a large textile workers' strike, a university-aged Dunkin Donuts employee who can just barely cover the rent at the two-bedroom apartment they share with seven roommates, Giles Corey being pressed to death, Paul Revere, the Harvard University logo, and Tom Brady. It goes from feeling exclusively dehumanizing to

Over the years, though, use of the other three designs dropped off. I'm not sure why it did (well, I can hazard a guess about the Onion Dome) but that's just the reality. Maybe the totem I understand being difficult to immediately identify as a totem when it's in monocolor with little detail on a large plane. I do think it's a bit of a shame - I love jellybeans and I love representing more than one culture in a place as large as Alaska - but I get it, their fleet was small.

As for why our mystery man won the deadlock with the Prospector, that's beyond me, but it almost feels like it was destined given he was the initial basis for the concept at all. Again from Vic Warren:

The first time the Eskimo art was used was in a large newspaper ad promoting Arctic Tours. [...] Since it was a newspaper ad, the initial appearance of the Eskimo was as a large, strong black image. The marketing director at Alaska hated it, even though the ad performed well. [...] A few months later, [I was] given the assignment to create a new corporate image for the airline [...] At this time the airline [...] only flew from Seattle to Alaska and within Alaska. They had recently moved their headquarters from Anchorage to Seattle and were taking a lot of political flak for abandoning Alaska. Our direction from the airline was to “create something very distinctive and modern, yet totally Alaskan.” In retrospect, it sounds easy, but I worked for three months on every kind of jet design I could think of. [...] the airline’s account executive was sitting with me in my office. [...] He stood up and stomped out of the room, shouting, “Oh, to hell with it! You might as well put that damned Eskimo on the tails!” Ta-daaaaaa! [...] I looked at the history and culture of Alaska and came up with four designs [...] But it shortly became evident that the Eskimo was the most popular image. And it was expensive to use all those different designs, so the other three left.

And thus Mr. Alaska Airlines was brought on board properly. And people were very attached to him. The thing mentioned earlier, that the airline was getting flak for losing their Alaskan identity - that comes back later in 1988, when the airline considered replacing him with a logo of a stylized mountain in the shape of the letter A. People hated this new logo so much I cannot even find a picture of it. This attempted replacement was for reasons unrelated to the criticisms I've mentioned earlier - he looked bad when printed small, was difficult to recognize, and might suggest to the people of California that Alaska Airlines only flew to Alaska. People were so incensed about this idea, however, that the state legislature decided this was a problem for them to tackle. From the LA Times:

The Alaska Legislature, which went into session on Monday, will consider a resolution asking the Seattle-based airline not to junk the colorful logo for one featuring a stylized mountain, said state Sen. Tim Kelly of Anchorage. [...] Alaska’s 20 state senators have voiced support for the resolution, he said.

Do they not have anything better to do with their time? No...zoning laws or tax brackets or ordinances? I mean, they've got some experience in aviation, I guess - they did make it illegal to push a moose out of a plane, or to look at moose from a plane. You also can't get a moose drunk. Actually, they have a lot of oddly specific moose-related laws, which I think is a form of environmental storytelling. You also can't wake up a sleeping bear to take a photograph of it. Safety is a priority, though - it's illegal to sell a child a stun gun and you need a concealed-carry permit for slingshots, so their priorities are clearly in important places.

Regardless, one thing Kelly said stood out to me. Emphasis mine:

“It may not be the best representation of an Eskimo, but it’s our Eskimo,” he said. “(Alaskans) feel an affinity with the airline. Alaskans feel it’s their airline.”

Okay, so this could be one of two things: a coincidence (more plausible, I guess, since it's not that weird of a combination of words) or an intentional reference to this statement by the company, which I think I would respect a bit more - a nod to history, all that - but if this is the case it seems quite strange they wouldn't have mentioned it as context for the use of their phrase when apologizing for it. Not important, just wanted to bring it up.

Despite the fact that the airline got a letter of support - “a graphic designer who is related to a pilot thought it was good"- they obviously did not replace him. Vic Warren actually weighed in himself on the topic:

My position was that if the airline’s image was confusing, it was because of the name Alaska Airlines, not the Eskimo logo. If they wanted to be a more amorphous regional carrier they should change their name to a version in the Air West mold or, at any rate, something less specific than Alaska.

And I do think I agree with him. You can choose between being relatable to everyone or having a heritage, making your brand just as much about where you started as where you are. I prefer the latter, but I have the opposite mindset of an airline. I am all about history and expression, and don't remotely care about attracting customers or making money. There is a reason Alaska Airlines doesn't have a tumblr blog.

“The Eskimo is a friendly, human symbol of the north, of the spirit of Alaska,” wrote Satch Carlson, an Anchorage Daily News columnist. “Take him off the Alaska planes in favor of some abstract, hip, meaningless design, you’re taking one step closer to that impersonal austerity that characterizes most other airlines today.”

...wow, so even in '88 they were tired of Eurowhite, it seems.

THAT LOGO THAT LOOKS LIKE MY TIO

So of course they kept the face. He got tweaked over the years - the 'fly with a happy face' campaign adjusted him to look a little bit less stoic, and of course the details were updated as graphics technology improved. But this is The Alaska Airlines Guy now. People are attached to him. An interesting effect of this attachment, though, is that a lot of people are pretty sure they know who he is, and that he's from their town.

People already recognize him as any number of a massive slew of celebrities. I find this extra fascinating because I actually have congenital prosopagnosia - I cannot recognize human faces, and while I can generally identify people in daily life by context like voice, posture, fashion sense, and hair, recognizing people from photographs is far more difficult. Unless I have two pictures next to each other and can compare the individual features it's basically useless - I never get that sort of 'click' of recognition - so it's been really interesting reading all the different associations people had, of which I have seen literally dozens if not hundreds. Reddit user DaBigBird27, in one of my favorite anecdotes, relates an experience where he was told by an LAX employee to look for the logo that looks like "his tio". And isn't it incredibly fascinating how that works? How you can tell someone you've only just met to find the picture that looks like your tio, and they'll know what you mean?

Look, there's something about grandfathers. I don't know what it is. (Uncles too, probably - I don't have any, though.) I hope I'm not insane for saying this, so any other grandfather enjoyers can weigh in, but I feel like grandfathers occupy a certain formative place in everyone's mind. He is one's earliest exposure to an old man and thus becomes their fundamental conception of one. Unless he is phenomenally cruel this ties him together, part and parcel, with the features of old men that can bring you comfort and happiness. I certainly experience this with my grandfather, despite having known him for a really tragically short length of time. If I were able to recognize faces, I think there's a very real chance that I would have thought the Alaska Airlines man was him for a moment.

And this seems extra true for those from Alaska. The Anchorage Daily News continues to provide a lot of anecdotes of locals discussing the universal feeling of proximity to the logo.

Perry Eaton, an Alutiiq artist who is originally from Kodiak Island but now lives in Anchorage, said that some people insist they know the Eskimo's true identity. "It's always been sort of a tongue-in-cheek conversation," Eaton said. "Nobody's gotten emotional over it, it's just sort of interesting. He's very iconic. Some folks are adamant that they know who it is."

“If you’re from Barrow, you think maybe he’s from Barrow. If you’re from Kotzebue, you think maybe he’s from Kotzebue. If you’re from Nome, you think maybe he’s from Nome,” says former mayor Lukin. “I have not met an Eskimo elder who doesn’t sort of smile like that.”

Another piece of writing, although accompanying a story that (as far as I can tell) is fiction, or at least dramatization, contains some context that is definitely not:

By the way, that page also had a lively discussion which included a number of other theories about the origin of the image, a number of people claiming a family relationship with the person depicted [...] Whatever the case, the image has obviously evolved and become less stern over the years. When the image was digitized there were further touch-ups and adjustments made. Most sources agree, though, that a remarkable number of native Alaskan people say that the person: “looks just like my grandfather!”

Even Alaska Airlines' own (archived) website describes this phenomenon.

“When I was a little kid, we all thought it was our own grandfathers,” says former Kotzebue mayor Maija Lukin. “We all thought it was our tata. Even if it didn’t remotely look like our grandfathers.”

Well, let me finally get to the point, because at least some of these people are correct. While he was intended to represent Alaskan Natives as a whole, the man was based on the likeness of a real person. There are two leading theories thought to be plausible. Both were real Alaskan Natives with ties to aviation who lived memorably in the proper timeframe to have inspired the logo.

CHESTER SEVECK

I'll begin with Chester (his full name seems to have been Chester Asagaq Seveck Downey but he is most frequently called Chester Seveck), who is the more common theory. (And indeed the man on the tail is frequently referred to as 'Chester' by people who think this.) The above-quoted Kotzebue mayor, for example, is convinced it's Chester, who was himself a Kotzebue resident. It's a remote place which relies on air travel to provide necessities, and Chester was said to have greeted passengers and crew as they left the airplanes together with his wife. He was often mentioned to be a reindeer herder, but I was afraid that this would be all I could find about this man who clearly was beloved by so many people that to this day he's remembered this widely.

Thankfully, unlike so many people who pass into history with only vague and distant reference to memorialize their full and remarkable lives, Chester Seveck has written a memoir, published by a bush pilot who considered him a close friend. It's called Longest Reindeer Herder and is available in its entirety for free, with the pilot and friend in question, Frank Whaley, including a selection of photographs he himself took of Chester. I really recommend everyone read it. It's not very long but it's extremely dense with information, giving a first-hand account of the development of airborne connections between remote regions from the side that doesn't normally get to tell their story. It also tells a lot about Chester, his family, and the incredible things which happened to him. One that really stuck with me was the time he was shot with a rifle but unharmed, because his parka absorbed the force of an entire bullet! It reads almost like a journal, very matter-of-fact and brief recounting of events which would have at the time been whirlwinds of emotions and little details now lost to the steady flow of history, but all of this was put to paper at once, and it's staggering just how much one life really is, how much we can learn from just some of one man's memories. About him, about the world he lived in, and about reindeer herding.

When it comes to aviation, Chester's experiences are a joy to read. He recounts his first time coming to the US, together with his wife.

Then Jack Whaley take us to Los Angeles. We flew in night time. We saw the lights down under us. I remember when we newly married in the year 1912 July 12th, I was dreaming my wife and I we saw the stars and sky under us. We were above the sky and stars I told my wife. Now my dream come true.

Eventually Chester, too old to continue his work with massive herds of reindeer, retired and began to work for Wien Airlines, traveling for promotional tours and guiding tours in Kotzebue. He refers to this as 'herding tourists'.

There are stories of the Lower 48, too, of the tours he went on with his wife. He mentions appearing with Steve Allen, Art Linkletter, and even Groucho Marx. He appeared in a minor role in "Ice Palace" (1960), a very poorly reviewed film which also happened to be the motion picture debut of one George Takei.

The final section of his memoir:

For long live and joy life, I believe these things--Keep busy and do good work. Have much good exercise. Eat good food, no waste anything and every day enjoy what it gives and do not spoil this day with much worry of tomorrow. Be happy. I know this way how I be "Longest Reindeer Herder." Start 1908, finish 1954, altogether 46 years herd reindeer.

Chester was undeniably a gregarious person. He seemed to really genuinely enjoy the high profile his partnership with Wien brought him, not for any material gains but because seeing the world and showing it to other people made him happy. He had a high opinion of himself that he wasn't afraid to share but there wasn't an ounce of pompousness in it; he just knew what he was worth. He loved talking about himself and his story - I found at least one other interview he gave. If more people were like Chester I think the world would be a much happier place. I really envy the people who got to have him show them around Kotzebue.

His memoirs were taken down in 1973, and the ending sort of reads as if he's right at the end of his life, but that's not true. He lived until 1981, dying ten days after his ninety-first birthday. He has many living descendants, with 172 grandchildren and great-grandchildren at the time he wrote his memoir. I actually saw a couple of them in the wild while researching, talking about growing up and being told he was the face on the airplanes.

Chester is by far the most common claim for the Alaska Airlines face. People from Kotzebue are proud of this. I saw another Reddit commentor, who has since deleted their account, mentioning their mother telling them about him growing up.

I think Chester is a fantastic person to feature. His connection to aviation and his warmth and kindness, eagerly welcoming tourists into his home village, makes him a fantastic symbol of Alaska. This post has been my favorite to research of any I've written. Reading people's warm memories of BWIA and learning about the incredible history of aviation in Sri Lankan folklore are both things I cherish, but reading Chester's account of his own life was genuinely almost overpowering. I am a history student. Sure, I study public history specifically, but I still study history. I read about history. I read long textbooks, in-depth research documents, and primary sources. I read old newspapers, memoirs, observations by travelers. My sophomore seminar was an in-depth study of remarkably preserved legal documents from one specific witch trial in 17th-century Germany. It's rare that something comes around like Chester's memoir that reminds me how much I adore humans. We have always had so much to give. There is a legitimate debate about the ethics of Alaska Airlines monetizing the likeness of an indigenous group, but I'm happy that they put a face on their tails if only because it means I got to read Chester's writing. I wish more people did.

But there's one other person frequently speculated to be the face of Alaska Airlines, and it would be remiss not to discuss him.

OLIVER AMOUACK

There is less available about Oliver than there is about Chester - at least, less I could find. He appears to have lived from 1895 to 1987, and unlike Chester, who I only ever saw called 'Eskimo', Oliver was known to be Iñupiaq. In the 1950s he was a performer in a travelling show called "It's Alaska!", but that's about all you can find with search engines.

image: Alaska Airlines Corporate Archives This is more or less the only image of Amouack I could find. He's the man on the left. Look familiar? That's not a rhetorical question. I'm face-blind.

That isn't all there is to be found, but what else there is I don't have access to at present. Brenda Ritchey, Oliver's granddaughter, has written a biography of him - "Know the Happy Face: Biography of Oliver Amouak", published 1997. The thing is, this book is crazy hard to get your hands on. Buying a copy is definitely way out of my price range. It's hard to find them for double-digit dollar amounts, and they go up over a thousand. There are several copies held by public libraries but most are in Alaska, which is pretty far away from me. Thankfully, there is one in a collection in New York, and I'm trying to get it on interlibrary loan. If I can get access to it, I'll make a follow-up post, hopefully adding context to Oliver's story like I did for Chester's. Clearly, his granddaughter thought it was worth telling.

Although Oliver is the less frequent claim, a few people are very confident that it's him. And it is impossible to prove conclusively whether it's him or Chester, or neither...or is it?

POINTING THE FINGER

This is where history ends and speculation begins. What you read from here is not fact - it is my own conjecture, made by someone with around a week's worth of research - someone who is literally unable to distinguish human faces, no less - and I encourage questioning it. But I'm going to make my argument: I am loosely convinced that the face on Alaska Airlines' airplanes is, in fact, Oliver Amouack.

The first set of reasons are contextual. Oliver, when he was in "It's Alaska!", was directly employed by Alaska Airlines, while Chester, though he did greet tourists for the airline, seemed to have much closer ties to Wien Air Alaska. If someone was looking for inspiration in Alaska Airlines' archives I think it's far more likely that they would have stumbled on Oliver's likeness than Chester's.

The second is, admittedly, rather weak, but I still feel it's worth mentioning. While the modern "happy face" is smiling, the original Alaskana image was not.

Take a look. This man is very poised, but he's also definitely got a bit of a stern look.

Now, while there do exist images of Chester Seveck where he isn't smiling, they are rare and mostly candid, taken while he's focused on doing something, like herding reindeer or singing, and often faced mostly away from the camera. They also tend to be from when he was younger, which the man in the image is clearly not. Given how frequently he was seen looking overjoyed just to be wherever he was, I find it a little bit unlikely that Chester would inspire an image I would go so far as to describe as 'frowning'.

image: Vic Warren

Now that's a bit more like Chester, but this isn't the original image. Rather, it's a later edit to make him smile, for Alaska's "fly with a happy face" campaign. I find it somewhat hard to believe that, were this Chester, it would have needed editing at all.

I also think that, were he to be the basis for the image, Chester would have brough it up when putting down his story. His memoir is from 1973, and the livery was introduced in 1972 with an even earlier newspaper ad featuring the same image. Chester had the healthiest high self-esteem I've seen in my life and he would definitely have mentioned this with pride. Maybe he was never told, but I suspect if this were the case he would have asked about it. It would be a little hard to not notice your own face on an airplane while greeting its occupants.

There's a major spanner in the works, though. That spanner is Vic Warren, designer of the initial Alaskana liveries, himself. Although it is no longer up, the Way Back Machine has helped me find an old post on his blog, discussing the logo and his design process. When I quoted him earlier, that's where I got it from. And he does kneecap my theory quite a bit - he outright states it's Chester.

Back in 1973, when I designed the Eskimo, an elderly Eskimo gentleman in Kotzebue was working as a greeter for the airline on its Arctic Tours. You got off the plane in Kotzebue and he was one of the folks who came up and helped you into a fur-trimmed parka to protect you from the cold. It was sort of an Eskimo version of the Hawaiian lei. We had photos of him and others during the welcoming procedure. I used one of those photos as the basis for the art. His name was Chester Seveck Downey. Surprisingly, lots of rumors have announced that the art was based on all sorts of people, including Richard Nixon. Once, I heard a story that he was really Bob Marley!

So that should settle it, right? Maybe. Actually, though, I think Vic Warren may be misremembering. I don't mean to gaslight this artist who created an extremely recognizable and enduring logo, but he already states that the design was done in 1973, which is impossible because the liveries were introduced in 1972. He actually gives 1973 as a date throughout the post multiple times, even though I've seen it claimed the design was in the works as early as 1970. The post was first written in 2014, so I think it's perfectly reasonable for your memory to slip over 40 years.

Getting a date slightly wrong and forgetting who you based a logo on are two different levels, but I'd like to further argue my earlier point - if the reference truly was Chester greeting passengers I am absolutely sure he would have been smiling, and I can't imagine why Warren would have changed this in his art. I think it's possible he misremembered, and I also think it's possible he assumed the photograph of Oliver was of Chester somehow. Far be it from me to accuse someone I've never met of racism, but, look, most people fail implicit association tests. I think it is entirely plausible a (presumably) white man contracted by an airline he didn't work for personally could see a photograph of one indigenous man and just assume that it was of a different one he was more familiar with, especially if Oliver and Chester have similar faces, which I assume people who can tell think they do.

I don't think any of that conjecture is particularly convincing. I wouldn't personally be convinced by it. The burden of proof here is a lot higher than 'maybe he was confused'. But what finally swayed me to believing Amouack is most likely our man was a post on, of all sites, the digital sewer pipe known as Quora.

An aside: Quora has introduced a feature where at the top of the page you are given a response by ChatGPT. While this is going to give you an answer of higher quality than many of those provided by the 'human' users of the website, I find the answer it generated for this question both incredibly factually wrong and somewhat disrespectful.

So the most obvious thing is that ChatGPT is misgendering Oliver/Chester. This immediately makes it clear that this answer is fully nonsense to basically anyone sentient, though it still may well fool some Quora users. The 'names' given, Tlingit and Haida, are both those of indigenous Pacific Northwest peoples. As in ethnicities, not individuals. Fred Kabotie was a real person, and a real artist, and accomplished and prolific, and someone you should absolutely learn about, but he was not Tlingit - he was Hopi. As in, from Arizona.

image: Grand Canyon National Park

I am rather confident Fred Kabotie has nothing to do with Alaska Airlines.

What really disturbs me is that, while there is an option to ask more questions in an app, and an option to downvote, there is no place to state that the information given is wrong, never mind to correct it. Even the app formerly known as Twitter has that.

Beyond that, there's no way to give this feedback to the bot. Downvoting isn't the same thing as actual negative reinforcement. This means that there is no way to stop the bot from giving the same answer to the same question in the future, even though it is wrong, and even though in this particular case a major aspect of its wrongness is that it seems to believe all North American indigenous people are one coherent group to the point it considers Hopi the same category as Iñupiaq, which is a bit like lumping together Spain and Norway.

So, not to pontificate, but this is one of the reasons ChatGPT is so potentially dangerous. It can generate text which seems quite a bit like an answer while being completely gibberish, and it could certainly fool people. Deep-learning algorithms, as of right now, are not capable of fact-checking. You should never rely on them for answers.

Besides that, though, there are actual human responses. Most of them are, as you may expect of Quora, total dreck. But sandwiched in between someone who seemed to be under the impression that it's ambiguous if Chester was from Kotzebue or Nome and someone who appeared to believe the term 'prop' didn't encompass turboprops was an answer given by Keith Holmes, whose qualifications are 'knows Dutch'.

That doesn't sound promising, but he actually came with evidence. I'm going to give you the short version, but you should read his answer. Here is his method:

He took the original image of the logo, then flipped it horizontally to match the image of Oliver Amouack from the It's Alaska! poster.

Then he overlaid them and very slowly lowered the opacity. Like, it's torturously slow, so I'll just show some 'keyframes', but that slowness means that even I, faceblind as I am, could clearly see that they line up nearly perfectly.

In the 1970s, this process would have been done with physical paint. But nowadays it's incredibly easy to just up the contrast and lower the saturation on an image. So Holmes (aptly named) did precisely this.

...yeah. I mean, there he is. I think we found him.

AN IDENTITY UNCOVERED

So, there it is. People's opinions vary about who this man is and whether he should be on the tails at all, but I think it's Oliver Amouack. But I want to finish off this post, which has had its ups and downs, on a somewhat open-ended yet positive note.

No matter who this face is, there are people who love him. And I'm not talking about people who love making money off him, or about senators. I mean regular Alaskans. Even Annie Wenstrup, in the original text of her petition, acknowledged that there is a warm fuzzy feeling that people have about him. Though its inclusion is definitely potentially a bit sinister, the Alaska Airlines page discussing the history of the logo released concurrently with the rebrand touches on it.

“When I see that face, I feel proud. I feel like I’m home,” says Sallee Baltierra, a concierge in Alaska’s Anchorage Board Room airport lounge. “I love to see that Eskimo on the tail in other cities that we fly to, from Liberia, Costa Rica to Nashville, Tennessee. It makes me feel like there’s a little piece of home there waiting for me.”

The ethics of how it is done in this particular case are worth discussing, and whether the logo as it stands now should be retired is not something I am in a position to weigh in on. For better or worse the happy face is part of Alaska Airlines' history. The mystery has been put out there for people to solve, and it won't go away if they take him off the planes.

And while there are good reasons, reasons I agree with, that people scoff at the idea of representation being the same thing as justice, particularly when those with no skin in the game are making millions off it, Alaskan Natives are most of the history of Alaska, and they have propped up Alaska Airlines from its earliest days. They have been pilots, cabin crew, ground crew, maintenance, customer service, passengers, and, yes, tour guides. They have been there from the earliest days of McGee Airways, and when Alaska Airlines finally goes under they will be there on its very last flight. There is a difference between acknowledgment and objectification, and that line is not one for me to draw, but it is at least good that the question of who this man is can lead people to the stories of the real people who are so often forgotten.

The fact that I believe the happy face is Oliver doesn't make that reality. It could well be Chester. It could be someone else. It could be your grandfather. It definitely isn't my grandfather, but I showed my mother a picture and she did say that he looks very much like my grandfather...we are not Alaskan Native, I think it goes without saying. I don't think anyone I'm related to has ever even been to Alaska.

But I think there's something positive to be taken from his anonymity to most of the world. There are certainly negatives, the sticking points of profit and objectification, but were it not for the fact that there was a mystery here to dive down I would have never known Chester Seveck existed, never mind read his memoir. I wouldn't have known Oliver Amouack existed either, and I hope I can read his memoir too. If there is any reason for me to 'well, actually' someone who says the face is definitely Chester - and I'm not sure there is - it wouldn't be because it isn't him, but because I want to give Oliver the same recognition.

And I hope other people wonder who the face is, and look for the answer online. My blog isn't very large, and I'm entirely happy with that. I love writing my incredibly niche posts about airlines, and I'm not doing this with any expectation or hope of fame. But given the small amount of articles on the topic I hope that my blog shows up in the search engine results, maybe on the second or third page, and that maybe it can direct someone to Chester's story. I am overjoyed to have read it and I want other people to read it too. His life was a unique and meaningful one and I am grateful that he chose to share it with the world. I am excited to pass it on to all of you.

I set out to find the identity of the man on Alaska Airlines' livery. What I found was the story of a man who touched far more than Alaska Airlines. The happy face could be anyone. He could be your grandfather. He could be (and probably is) Brenda Ritchey's grandfather. In a sense I think, although his literal family should be compensated for use of his likeness, he is your grandfather - not because he is literally your grandfather, but because he carries that poised warmth that so many grandfathers have. I think there is a real benefit to leaving this open-ended - at least enough to keep that mystique that drives people to make that Google search and learn about the overlooked and thought-to-be-nameless indigenous men who make Alaska what it is. Maybe the real happy face was the grandfathers we thought he resembled along the way.

And Alaska Airlines be damned, Chester Seveck herded reindeer for 46 years and had his dream of stars and sky beneath him come true. That's more valuable, to me, than having a famous picture based on you. Pictures reflect reality, but Chester was real, and it is accounts like his which make history human.

#double sunrise #alaska airlines #era: 1970s #jellybeans #region: north america #region: united states

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ofbreathandflame · 5 months

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I think the best argument against "He didnt have a choice" ( i think this is why choice is rhysands favorite word 🥴) is you're right, he didn't. The AUTHOR did. Sjm had a choice and still she went for the worst and more illogical one. She still decides to put the women in her series under awful situations without further consequences. I really dislike phrases like "my characters wanted me to write them that way" or "my characters lead the story". Im always yes this is a romantic way to see the writing process but ill never forget this author who said "my characters do whatever the hell I want them to do".

hi anon!!!! (sorry this is a super old anon that i actually finished writing a while ago sorry nonny💙. can’t think of anything to say so im just posting old stuff in my drafts today 🫶🏾)

i agree! its a problem on multiple different levels. for one, sjm often relies on telling the audience what we should get out of a scene, instead of what allowing us to form our own takeaways. its a very hand-holding type of storytelling; in consequence, the 'evidence' being derived is often contradictory to actual events. like the story can argue that "change is slow," and thats why illyria and the con persist, but that statement is consistently proven to be incorrect.

lets look at how invalid the idea of 'change is slow is'

in one year - feyre is able to become high lady, effectively creating an entirely new governing system, in which, a high lord can give a person absolute power of the court (remember - what feyre and rhysand say is 'law'). there is no process, no objection, or any fear of reprimand. rhys doesn't even have to consult his second-in-command. not only that - but feyre is also allowed power over the court of nightmares, which politically, is supposedly an entirely different governing state. again - keir and devlon are not consulted about this.

it took six months to produce to first illyrian female warrior to complete the rite in history. in the span of six months - emerie completes the rite. thats more illyrian women than rhys, az, and cass's entire 300-400 year reign.

it takes feyre less than a month to completely cause an entire court to fall - yet regimes such as tam's father, beron, and amarantha somehow persisted as long as they despite them being canonically worse rulers. even - and i mean even - if tamlin was the worst leader to have ever walked this earth, it would still take more than three to four weeks. and factoring in that this is a population of immortal, canonically 'slow-to-change' individuals.......

like - how slow can the change actually be? how can the book possibly explain how such drastic changes happen from book to book but not in 400 years? how come there have been no illyrian women in the army or in the rite if cassian and rhys have earnestly been working with the females in illyria? even the few moments we see them at illyria, they still seem to be at a rudimentary level; there's no established female training areas, no veteran trainees, no consequences for breaking the law in regards to the females...there's nothing that suggests any actual measures have been taken.

that's just one example of 'canon' statements acting in contradiction the previously established pieces of information. more - its a consistent pattern of contradiction in regards to certain characters. its their natural characterization acting against the forced narrative voice.

and this makes it problem on mulitiple fronts.

and even more, off the point you made about the women in her stories - i think there needs to be a larger conversation had about the patterns of female violence in these books; specifically the role that female violence plays in establishing sexual tension and relationships in general. or...the amount of times the female protagonist has to undergo some extreme form of humiliation at the behest of future love interest; there's an utter lack of this with the men.

sjm is a very intentional author - these problems exist because of how intentional she is as a writer. i know exactly the function of each scene, exactly what emotion the she wants me to feel. this is not because these characters are written well, but because we are often just told it. feyre can 'express' disdain for rhysand'a actions, but she often undermines her own inner thoughts about the issue. feyre’s inner thoughts are often abuse apologist 101 and in retrospect it’s kind of painful the way she consistently makes excuses for rhys, even when it’s her well-being being threatened and undermined. and that’s honestly bc sjm’s narrative voice supersedes the natural characterization of her characters. sjm doesn’t know how to organically create conflict between characters she actually likes bc she doesn’t know how to write conflict. it’s a consistent pattern in her series and it’s why all the villains suck and all battles ultimately fall flat.

but the problem becomes a bit broader (i.e. this is a larger issue in publishing and literary crit). some of the arguments that i see often, and that i referenced in my last post are these:

"why read this this book if you don't like the characters?" "why continue to read the book if you don't like it?" "this is a book about fairy porn - why are you analyzing it." "i read for fun." (this is not a bad statement, but it becomes troublesome in the context i will explain)

the commonality between these statements is that they are avoidant. often, they are employed when people can't explain away the amounting problems in the series, so they avoid the conversation.

because for one, you should never (and I means NEVER) say that a piece of literature should not be analyzed. or that fantasy negates interrogation into harmful themes. that’s just anti intellectual nonsense. second, if we’re arguing about real world issues bc of the book; of if your argument is that tamlin is abusive bc he did abusive things, then you literally can’t make this argument. the whole point of moving from tam is bc he was…abusive. abuse is not a fantasy. regardless of what the author intends, if a character is abusive or does absuive things, we should be looking at that.

look…if you are defending rhys using the logic the book establishes please have it. but the moment you implicate real-world values into this story, you’ve got to see it to the end. the same goes for the series as a whole: the second maf decided to integrate a ‘domestic violence plot lines’ specifically referring to behaviors as ‘red flags’ it immediately kind of gave up the kind of distance the fantasy romance genre usually gives to such issues.

#anti sjm #anti rhysand #anti tamlin #anti acosf #anti feysand #anti anti intellectualism #anti feyre

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tossawary · 1 year

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Hey! You've mentioned female!SQH in passing a while ago and that concept has been living rent-free in my brain ever since. I'd love to read your thoughts on it if you have more/are interested in sharing. Hope you're having a nice trip! :)

Thank you! I don't have many concrete thoughts on Fem!SQH (or Fem!MBJ or F/F!Moshang for that matter) besides the fact that I would try my best to make it a hot fucking mess. I would probably write it as a cracky one shot and I would want Fem!SQH to cause constant secondhand embarrassment on multiple levels. Not that Airplane Bro as Fem!SQH would be especially oblivious, no, she knows what she's doing and it's hugging thighs, committing crimes, and making other sect leaders walk out of conferences asking themselves if women should really be allowed to cultivate.

I'm exaggerating a little, but also not really. Airplane Bro is wily and genre-savvy and an apathetic bastard, at the same time that he's a clingy idiot who needs to pay more attention to what he's saying, and I resent assumptions that a female character is automatically the one "carrying the braincell". I would want to write something outrageously funny in which Airplane Bro transmigrating into Fem!SQH causes some chaos and gives MBJ even more issues than MBJ already had.

(I'm talking about a Male Airplane Bro transmigrating into a Fem!SQH here because I think a Female Airplane Bro transmigrating into a Fem!SQH sounds a little too OC for me to write that, though a woman writing an incredibly successful stallion novel like PIDW is very fun to think about. Even Airplane Bro growing up as Fem!SQH would inherently shift his character at least slightly, but that would be a firmer base for me to start on and I'm growing more comfortable with the idea. There's lots of room to explore Airplane Bro's relationship to gender and women by having him transmigrate into a female character in his stallion novel world.)

As for the idea of a Fem!SQH in PIDW... the details all depend on what kind of story you want to write. Only changing SQH's gender inherently has very different vibes to doing a full genderbend on the entire cast of PIDW/SVSSS. In a full cast genderbend, I personally don't really see the plot beats of the original SQH changing much. In a SQH-only genderbend, things could stay the same still, but if you wanted to switch it up, I suppose that in PIDW, the premise could instead have been an ambitious Fem!SQH trying to (maybe successfully?) blackmail MBJ into marrying her, but also resenting the necessity of having to marry for power, especially to a demon, and so hating MBJ's guts. Which would be mutual.

Lots of potential themes for a Fem!SQH's storyline in PIDW about how power can be given and taken away, the pros and cons of the legal situation of marriage, the intersection of sex/gender and class, and all sorts of interesting things.

Okay, now that I'm thinking about it, I kind of like the concept of PIDW Fem!SQH blackmailing MBJ into marrying her or something and then PIDW MBJ later on murdering his own wife. That seems sufficiently dark for PIDW. It would also be a stark contrast for PIDW MBJ to be a murderous widower when Luo Bing-Ge has so many wives. Putting Airplane Bro into that particular Fem!SQH situation for the SVSSS version of those events has strong Bluebeard fairy tale vibes. But that's also probably a slightly more serious story than the cracky vibe I was originally envisioning.

Mmm, I don't have any specific thoughts besides that at the moment. It's all fun to think about, though. ❤

#rainhalydia #ask tossawary #tossawary svsss #fic ideas #shang qinghua #mobei jun #moshang #female shang qinghua #moshang bluebeard au #pidw mobei jun #pidw shang qinghua

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rayshippouuchiha · 28 days

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Great! You watched it so that means I don’t have to hold back! Mwahahaha you activated my hidden trapcard 😈

Jk jk but anyway LUCIFER MORNINGSTAR RIGHT??

Like, first they HAD to reinvent the whole Bible Genesis story to make him as freaking sympathetic as possible. I mean, a little dreamer whose ideas were dismissed? Who falls in love with a woman because he admired her “fierce independence”, then freaking gifts humanity in general and Eve in particular with FREE WILL? (I have so many headcanons about them btw; Adam being the way he is I think he and Lilith wanted Eve to have the chance to make decisions regarding her own body, relationship, and future that a life under Adam’s thumb as heaven had inteded would’ve denied her. I think they were very good friends once upon a time., and it kills me that we never see Eve again. Did she blame them for being kicked out of Eden? Or was she grateful to them? I’d love to know, I hope we see her next time). That’s all so freaking good already as a backstory, but then they add this:

At this moment my mind just, imploded with the implications. He gifted humanity with free will presumably because, as a joyous dreamer, he had firmly believed that they would create wonderful things and bring about a better world if they were allowed to think for themselves, but gradually over hundreds and thousands of years seeing only the absolute worst that humanity had to offer he seems to think that it was a mistake, and that’s so sad 🥺 He never got to see the good that came from his actions and became depressed as a consequence, probably blaming himself a bit for every ill-action and sin committed.

I was already primed to love him after that backstory right? But then they imply that he’s a neglectful, distant father to Charlie and she is such a good, pure girl that I started thinking maybe I was wrong to start liking him, maybe there was something off about him that the intro had left out since it was Charlie telling her parent’s story. But then we meet him and he’s just:

A cute, awkward little man? One who clearly loves his family to death if the ring still on his finger (after SEVEN FREAKING YEARS OF ABSCENCE, dear god) and the multiple, gigantic family portraits strewn about his room say anything?

Also, he seems like 2 steps away from an anxiety attack at any given time, especially when asked to speak over the phone. He just like me fr fr

And that, along with the fact that he says “this is the first time she’s called you in YEARS”, and that he seems so freaking happy and excited at even the insinuation that she wants to spend time with him,

Leads me to believe that his absence from Charlie’s life was caused by a mutual misunderstanding born of a similar thought process (namely “what if I’m bothering them? What if they think I’m annoying by calling when I don’t need anything? I should wait until I have a good reason to call, or until they call me”) or willfully by someone (Lilith does seem to take Charlie away from her father awfully quick during that one flashback, right? It’s not just me?). I mean, ^that’s not the face of a father who wants to stay away from his daughter because she reminds him of her mom, or even the face of a father who stayed away on purpose for some time and is now willing to reconnect. That looks more to me like the face of someone who has been eagerly awaiting even a single hint that he’s wanted before daring to appear before his daughter, and has now finally been given that chance after a long time and is ECSTATIC. And even then, it seems that even through his self-deprecation and depression he does do his best to reach out, at least more frequently than Charlie does (he called her 5 months ago, she hadn’t called in years, etc etc).

And then he gets to the hotel and he’s so small and cute and awkward and good with animals and I thought I couldn’t love him any more than I already did but I COULD. HOW DID THEY MAKE A CHARACTER SO APPEALING TO ME SPECIFICALLY THIS IS UNFAIR

Which leads me to my other big headcanon: I firmly believe Lucifer tried to get to know sinners in the beginning, and that he tried some kind of “redeem sinners” effort at some point, just like Charlie’s doing - Perhaps for hundreds of years. But he failed, time and time again, until his dreams were absolutely crushed and he ended up giving up on them for good. I mean, those lines:

“You invite people in and offer them everything and they just bring violence and chaos to your doorstep. It doesn’t matter how well-intentioned you are. They’re always gonna disappoint you!”

“Sinners are violent psychopaths hellbent on causing as much pain and destruction as they can. There’s really no point in trying”

^They all sound not like something he’s saying to rub it in Charlie’s face that he was right (which would be cruel and out of character for someone who seems to love his daughter so much), but more like a cautionary tale coming from a deeply ingrained experience, or like things he’s repeatedly told himself before.

And then during More Than Anything he says this:

“You didn’t know that when I tried this all before *gestures around him with his arms as if gesturing towards the hotel as a whole* my dreams were too hard to defend”

That just cemented that belief for me.

On another note, MORE THAN ANYTHING IS SO FREAKING GOOD?? I CRY EVERY TIME GODDAMMIT AFTER THAT SONG I WENT FROM “AW I LOVE THIS LITTLE MAN” TO “I’D DIE FOR HIM, IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO HIM I’LL KILL EVERYONE IN THE ROOM AND THEN MYSELF”. HE’S JUST So- asfgctrdhfdg

AND I HAVEN!T EVEN TALKED ABOUT HOW BADASS HE IS FIGHTING ADAM OR HOW CUTE AND SWEET HE WAS COMFORTING CHARLIE DURING THE FINALE LOOK AT HIMMM

Or about Radioapple (aka DuckieDeer lol), the ship that has had me in a fucking chokehold since I watched episode 5. There are so many things I love about it that I’d need like 3 whole pages to explain but for now have all this absolutely fantastic fanart instead ❤️

Once again thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. Btw any thoughts on Radioapple?

Oh oh Lucifer is such an interesting character and he absolutely makes me eager to see and learn more about the verse and the finer points of what is/has happened in it.

Personally, RadioDust grabbed me by the heart more than anything, since Alastor is my favorite with Angel Dust as a close second, but I do hands down see the appeal of Radioapple.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin lucifer #RayRambles

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98chao · 2 months

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Sonic Prime thing

so basically after i watched Sonic Prime S3 (on the day it came out) i was left pretty unsatisfied with the weird storytelling, plot holes and loose ends and decided to start brainstorming a re-imagining for it and drew some designs...

so this is gonna be long but i wanna preface this by saying i'm not a writer or even that good at character design 😭!!!! and also the majority of this is like from almost 2 months ago and it's very incomplete so i haven't done much thought on it i just had some ideas and ran with it Tbh. so if stuff doesn't make much sense Lmk bc a multiverse story is a very big thing to tackle, you really have to pay attention to the little stuff for everything to be complete.

also i like stuff with darker themes so if a lot of this is like "a Sonic show wouldn't do that" well. Yeah. this isn't a pitch to SEGA it's just my own thing LOL

(also also we're just gonna throw out the whole "Prime is canon to the games" here, i use the games as a basis but i wouldn't say this is in the realms of canon for multiple reasons)

~ The Main Stuff ~

so pretty much i went into this mostly thinking about changing the shatterverses while still keeping the base ideas that Prime had, and also a bit about how the shatterverse works in the first place. so i have some bullet points that i wrote down. i haven't watched s1&2 in a long time so i don't remember too much of the lore they already established, so if some of this is just reiterating what they said in the show then that's my bad

i wasn't exactly sure how it made sense that a single rock in some random cave conveniently in green hills had control of the entire universe so i want the explanation for why breaking the prism had this kind of effect to be something else (or to just change the prism to be something different) but i'm not sure exactly what. definitely not like "it was an illusion like the phantom ruby" or some stupid shit but it felt off that something completely world (universe) ending was so easily accessible. anyway.

Sonic explicitly doesn't exist in each alternate universe because he was the one who broke the prism. Sonic being the final piece that brings the universe together should probably have bigger lore implications as well

i think this is already what's in canon but Shadow used chaos control as the prism got shattered, causing himself to get fragmented across time and space as well.

unlike in the show, Shadow still has alternate versions of himself in each of the universes, but he has to kinda do an EEAAO and swap into their consciousness for him to be able to enter their respective universes (which takes a lot of energy bc its literally dimension travel so he can't do it a lot). his actual body is stuck in the void which means its at risk of erosion and also any hazard in the void like asteroids n stuff. it also explains why he's greatly weakened in the show (because his ass should not have been handed to him that easily in s3) cuz bits of his . being. is split across each universe, and can only be completed by the prism.

the void decays life which adds a higher stake to Sonic needing to complete the prism asap and also why Shadow is so hellbent on getting him to do it quickly. his actual, original self is slowly dying. (adds a bit of a character flaw too like the zombot arc, because you'd think the ultimate lifeform would be resistant to erosion. maybe at first he thinks he'll be fine and does the dimension travelling for fun until he starts feeling Really drained)

before i get to the individual universes, i'll talk a bout Sonic's character real quick because hoo boy, was it BAD in Prime. no shade to anyone who enjoyed his character in Prime, but as a show that claims to be "canon to the games", he was embarrassingly out of character. if it were just another version of him like movie Sonic i wouldn't really be so weirded out by it. so i wanna just say right off the bat that i'm using my own favourite iteration of Sonic as a reference for his character, which is the characterization from Sonic X.

i think when the prism gets properly explained, Sonic would kind of put 2 and 2 together and realize completing the prism would erase the other universes. and rather than being all ambiguous about it like Prime was, here it very explicitly would be that restoring the prism will erase the shatterverse. so Sonic get's really stuck between a rock and a hard place, because restoring the prism brings his friends and world back, but then he's effectively killing thousands of people, many of them who look exactly like his friends, all for the sake of his own world.

i think this is the kind of dilemma that would be really good for a character like Sonic, who's carefree and always does what he believes to be the right thing regardless of what other people say. his conflict with Nine isn't even all that different from his conflict with Merlina. but would he be okay with being enemies with someone who's literally just his little brother? i don't think Sonic would have tried to reason with Nine as much as he did in Prime, attachment be damned, but i still think it would still be hard for him to come to terms with the fact that Nine is his enemy and that in the end he would have to erase him too.

this is all i wanna say about Sonic rn because truth be told i'm not exactly sure how different the decisions he made in Prime would be here since i haven't thought too much on it, i would have to rewatch the show (god forbid) to figure that out lol.

~New Yolk City~

so i actually have designs for this, some of them have went through changes but they're all pretty "initial concepts". i wanna say that first off, i wanted this to be explicitly an alternate timeline and not just an alternate universe. one where Sonic doesn't exist in the main timeline so nobody really does anything to stop Eggman and he takes over the world. the designs are deliberately edgy so i call it sonic underfell in my notes lol

also, because a dystopian Sonic premise already exists in the form of SatAM... we got Sally Acorn back :D i didn't include all the Freedom Fighters for fear of the cast getting too big, but Nicole is here too because i love Sonic comic's robo assistants like Nicole and Kintobor. Sonia and Manic were also considered as added characters since Sonic Underground also has a dystopian premise, but i think it would be weird to add Sonic's siblings in a world where he doesn't exist, so it's not like they'd have a little 'OMG he's my long lost brother' moment. like no they don't even know who he is LOL.

alright so for character info i'll start with Nine because he's like the 3rd most important character in the show. i have a few different sketches of him, most incomplete... and for the third one my friend wanted him to look more emo. i wanted to add a bit more to that design but i wasn't sure what to do. if anyone has suggestions lmk

just like in the show, bc Sonic never meets Tails, Tails doesn't get saved from bullying and becomes very jaded. as for the robot face and tails, i think in the show they really drive it home how Nine values robots over people very much, going as far as to make robot clones of his friends in order to replace them. so... robot body parts doesn't seem too out of the realm for what he'd do! it's a very good parallel to what i have planned for Eggman/the Chaos Council it's also very fucking gruesome and sad esp because hes like 8 years old..

also, i'd really love it if he wasn't just weirdly evil the way he was in Prime S3. because no the hell he is not evil, it felt like a cheap way to get you to stop sympathizing with him until the very last moment where he had a change of heart. he's just a small, traumatized kid who was shown friendship for the first time only to realize that Sonic only cared about him because he was a Tails and actually pretty much wanted him dead (even if this all wasn't exactly true, i can genuinely see why he felt this way).

next i'll talk about who the main extra characters in this universe will be, which is Sally and Nicole.

so obv the resistance is called the Freedom Fighters, and Sally is the commander (like she should've been in Sonic Forces/IDW, but alas, she is dead to SEGA). she'd have a much more serious personality compared to her Archie/SatAM counterpart. where she'd usually banter with Sonic in Archie, here she would straight up tell him to gtfo. the aim of the Freedom Fighters in current time isn't really to fight to get their world back, just to survive and preserve what they still have.

just like in other media, Nicole is Sally's AI assistant slash potential love interest who does all the tech-y stuff, like scanning the area for threats, hacking things, etc. which gives them a bit of more power against the enemy without needing Nine's help.

next we got Amy aka Rusty Rose, this time she's fully a robot instead of being only half of one, and i'll expand on why. (also to note i didn't look at other Metal Amy fan designs when making this just to try and keep this a bit more original lol)

so, obviously being inspired by SatAM and Archie, roboticization is a concept that would be reintroduced here through Rusty Rose. she was previously a freedom fighter who got a bit reckless and was captured, and was roboticized before her allies could save her. she's kind of used as a cautionary tale among the Freedom Fighters as a way to hammer in don't be reckless and don't get caught.

i remember in Sonic Prime they tried to use the flicky 'powering' her as a way to keep her connection with humanity, which was great except for the fact that she still had half a mobian face so she wasn't even fully robot. in this case, i decided to make her fully robot and keep the flicky, except this time it is genuinely powering her lifeforce unlike whatever they did in the show. obviously taking it out for a bit just to showcase the fact she does have a flicky won't insta-kill her, but she will slowly die without the flicky inside of her. not sure why the Chaos Council didnt just slap a chaos drive in there but whatever lol, it's nice symbolism anyway.

also just a note, she can shoot bullets out of her fingers if you were wondering why her hands looked like that. yes its an Aigis Persona 3 reference. but also she no longer uses her hammer because as a robot she's stripped of her personality and autonomy, and the Piko-Piko hammer was like an Amy signature weapon, who Rusty Rose no longer is at this point. but mostly it's an Aigis Persona 3 reference. We ball

next is Rouge, who's no longer a leader of the Freedom Fighters, but just a spy/intelligence agent who still has an eye for shiny things.

in the inital art i drew of her i named her Agent Rebel, but honestly Agent Rouge works just fine because yknow. Rouge is just the word for red in french. if they really have to all have different names then Agent Red also works too, but it might be a bit on the nose. anyway she's apart of the Freedom Fighters as their spy, something they desperately need because of the constant surveillance around new yolk. of course she's still the morally gray bastard she usually is, so she always desires compensation for her efforts, especially on the more dangerous missions.

the reason why i demoted her from leader is because Rouge is really not the leader type, maybe you could give her a leading role if it were a smaller group like Team Dark, but when its a whole resistance she's genuinely not cut out for it, especially because she's not particularly selfless and definitely doesn't give too much of a shit about the well being of others. here she understands very well that her life is also at risk, so aiding the Freedom Fighters is pretty much her only choice.

next we got Knuckles who is definitely not having a good time. he never met Sonic so he's very distrusting towards everyone, even allies. he lived on Angel Island until it was attacked by Eggman and he lost the Master Emerald. unfortunately i didn't draw anything full body or coloured so i only have this sketch

being from a clan of warriors, i'd say its a no-brainer that he'd be co-commander of the Freedom Fighters. as for all the injuries, they're from a time where he was captured. to compensate for his... lack of knuckles... he now wears brass knuckles. he's definitely the most angry and vengeful of all the different versions of Knuckles, because he feels as if he's been disgraced in multiple ways, and he sees the Freedom Fighters as a means to an end. his pure, unadultered rage definitely helps with taking out enemies tho.

okay, i mentioned that Shadow would have alternate versions of himself and lucky for yall i did draw a design for New Yolk Shadow, who's named Terios and is inspired by that beta design.

Terios isn't apart of the Freedom Fighters, but he's not on the side of the Chaos Council. hes kind of an anti-hero vigilante, he's cordial with Rouge but not really interested in the Freedom Fighters. he kinda does his own shit. realistically, since New Yolk is an alternate timeline where Sonic doesn't exist, and it's implied that Gerald based Shadow off of Super Sonic then technically Shadow shouldn't exist but hey, this is the one plot hole i'm not gonna try to mend. We Ball. Shadow exists because he's goated like that.

anyway his backstory is the same but because everything is so Fucked Up he never really gets the chance to explode the world like he wanted. since he's not on the evil side i'll say that Eggman wasn't the one who woke him up tho and he got talked out of his homicidal urges. who woke him up? idk i'll think about it

now for another added character... Silver!!! but he goes by the alias "Venice"... because his beta design is called Venice LOL

before i explain Silver's deal, i'll talk abt how i imagine time works in the Sonic universe. basically, the future isn't something predestined and is actively changed by events in the present. this is in fact something that 06 contradicts since the future was messed up before Sonic even met Elise, but that in and of itself contradicts Sonic CD which does the whole "actions in the present affect the future" thing with the good future/bad future. so i went with CD's time mechanics because it makes more sense for this story. also 06 isn't canon so #WeBall

so Silver, being from the future, wakes up one day to find everything all fucked up again. except now he's in the present too. he tries to ask ppl if they know where Sonic is, assuming that of course Sonic would know what happened, but nobody seems to know who he's talking about. Silver eventually crosses paths with Shadow/Terios and asks him where Sonic is, but even Terios doesn't know who Sonic is (at this point, our Shadow hasn't linked his consciousness w/ Terios) so Silver is just really fucking lost and doesn't know what the hell is happening, why it's happening and why nobody seems to know who Sonic is.

he ends up following Terios around as sort of an apprentice type thing because he's the only familiar face so far and he really needs to understand what's going on. Terios isn't very happy about it but can tell Silver's a pretty strong person he would want as an ally, so he keeps him around. Silver wears a cloak and goes by the alias Venice as a way to protect his identity.

so obv when Sonic shows up he KNOWS Sonic fucked up real bad somehow. cue the 'it's no use! take this!' loop

(Blaze isn't here because she's relaxing and enjoying a cup of tea in her palace. also trying to tackle how the prism affects the Sol Dimension will make things way more convoluted)

~ New Yolk City: The Chaos Council ~

okay... NOW we talk about Eggman. so maybe you've noticed i kept switching between saying Eggman and the Chaos Council, and i will explain.

the Chaos Council do still exist in this reimagining, but Eggman also exists. Kind of.

basically my idea for the Chaos Council was that it was originally just Eggman ruling the world (btw his name would be Robotnik because nobody was there to call him Eggman), but here comes the inspiration from Archie again, and now he's split himself into 5 robots to help rule over New Yolk City. and i say it's inspired from Archie because i very vividly remember that Robotnik fucking died in Archie and then uploaded his consciousness into a robot or some shit, and then when it came time for his modern design to be incorporated into the comic he literally switched robot bodies to become modern Eggman. So Yeah.

multiple facets of himself get uploaded into robot bodies, because what's the point of living a mortal fleshy life when you can be a sick ass immortal shiny robot (throwback to how i said it would be a parallel to Nine) and these different "facets" of Eggman would just be different parts of his personality, these are what i had in mind but it's still a WIP:

intelligence (cunning, manipulative, thinks logically and lacks empathy)

childishness (interest in juvenile things like themeparks, acts. well. childish)

vain (self-absorbed, uncooperative, gets upset by criticism, interest in flashy things/theatrics)

emotional (prone to outbursts--typically rage, empathetic)

dramatic (placeholder until i think of a better one because this is just grouped in with vanity tbh)

bad news is that i never drew designs for these. because if im not good at designing characters, im ESPECIALLY not good at designing robots. Rusty Rose was already a challenge. but ill figure it out lol.

ANYWAY now we're done with New Yolk. if this seemed long, don't worry because it was pretty much the only one i did brainstorming on. i have one more design and a few notes but nothing else for the rest of the shatterverses.

~ No Place ~

there's not much about No Place i would change other than the character roster and basic premise. it's still pirate-y, and Dread is DEFINITELY staying the same because i Love him.

pretty much my idea is that instead of there only being one crew which is Dread's, there are two. one with Dread, Amy and Tails, and another crew with Rouge, Shadow and whoever else i think to add. basically they're rival crews that compete to get treasure, and the prism shard is just another one they set their eyes on. Marine is also gonna be there probably on Dread's crew.

Sonic initially takes Dread's side because hes a Knuckles, Knuckles is his friend and Rouge usually means trouble, but when Dread starts being yknow. batshit crazy and manipulative. Sonic realizes that he picked wrong and hes kinda on his own to get that shard.

the only thing i drew for this is a design of Rouge

i imagine Shadow would just be the one pirate design from that Sonic mobile game that everyone likes to draw. his name would also be Blackheart because of the lyrics "black-hearted evil / brave-hearted hero" from I Am... All Of Me

that's all i have for No Place. in truth i didn't make much changes because i actually very much enjoyed No Place (mostly bc of Dread)

~ Boscage ~

so... this one i've done the least thinking about, and honestly it's because i don't really know what to do with this one. something about Boscage rubs me the wrong way, maybe just bc it's a jungle universe and the designs make me cringe a little bit. if anyone has any ideas on this then lmk. i don't think i want to get rid of it entirely but i just don't know how to go about this one.

all i have in terms of notes is that:

it should be a bit similar to Sonic Boom in setting, so an island with dense forests

Sticks should be a character, potentially taking Prim's role in the story

~ Extra Notes ~

more characters in the main cast like Cream and the Chaotix should appear

other characters robot copies should resemble canonical ones like Metal Sonic, Knuckles and Amy, however Nine's robot copies should look Fucked Up to emphasize the Wrongness in how he views his robot copies as true friends

^ this means Chaos Sonic should literally just be Metal Sonic. sorry Chaos Sonic fans i love him too but it made no sense to me that it wouldn't be Metal Sonic but lmk your thoughts on that

that's it for everything i think. i might have had more but i didn't write it down so it has just been forever lost in the dark depths of my brain. this is very unorganized and way too long but i hope it was interesting to read at least. ofc any feedback is welcome. i don't think i'll make any kind of story out of this but i'd like to complete it tbh

#when i say it's incomplete It Is Very Incomplete #it took 3 hours for me to write this post tho #a lot of this is just “well im not sure how this makes sense but this is how i would do it”#feel free to disagree on anything or give advice on how to improve it bc like i said i'm not a writer and i'm welcoming towards criticism #sonic the hedgehog #sth #sonic prime #sonic au #ugh should i even tag characters #maybe do that later #long post #txt #my art #2024 #tw body horror #<- just for that last nine design #and also roboticization ig

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