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skeletonapricationday · 5 months

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Naughty girl

Warnings: Porn w/o plot, fem reader x nanami, deephthroating, face fucking, angry Kento, use if whore.

18+ minors dni

Nanami stared as you bent over the desk, looking for your lost pen. You had it five seconds ago, you kept swearing that up and down. It was frustrating because you were distracting him from his work.

Nanami wasn't a very sexual man. He lived to work and go home, that was it. Simple and sweet. Yet he was still a man at the end of the day. Seeing you bend over in that skirt, scrambling all around his office for your pen. It was troubling. He sighs and stands.

"If I promise to help you look will you leave my office?" He says in a gruff. His deep voice echoing off the walls.

"Yes sir-e!" You say excitedly and innocently. "I swear I used it yesterday to help you with that report. Now its missing, like missing missing." You say with a small pout. That cute quiver of your lip catching his vision. He tilts his head away, trying to ignore you.

"Why can't I just give you one of my pens?" He says exasperated.

"Because you also gave me this pen, so it's my favorite pen. No other pen will feel the same!" You shout confidently and annoyingly.

"If you like that one so much because I gave it to you, why not just let me give you a new one? You make no sense." He says logically, as always. Yet this wasn't about logic. He gave you this pen two years ago, when you finally cracked a thin layer of his hard shell. It was a sign of friendship and good faith, you were not going to give up on this.

"Because-because I want this specific pen okay." You say emrbassed. Not at all willing to admit the true reason to the logic king himself.

He nods slowly, like he wasn't going to bother arguing further. Simply scanning a bookshelf, seeing if you mistakenly placed it there. He swears to himself that the intelligent woman yesterday who helped him fill out that report is the same scatterbrain currently looking for her pen. Obliviously showing her body off in several interesting positions.

You slowly get onto your hands and knees, sticking a hand under the couch. Seeing if you can feel anything underneath. When you don't you arch your hips up further to keep yourself from slipping, as you peep your head underneath. "It's dark and dusty under here. I always thought you had too much OCD to not dust under the couch." You tease playfully. Just trying to joke with the serious man, like normal.

"Shut up and stop looking under there." You here the blank reply from behind you.

"No need to get so defensive. Of course this place isn't going to be sparkly clean, you work too much. Yknow I really respect that about-" You squeak as you're cut off. Your ankle being grapped, forcibly pulled from under the couch.

"Did you not hear me the first time?" He asks, using your ankle to flip you onto your back. "Or do I have to shout." The last half is also a question, yet he says it like a statement. His voice always cold and callous, despite his actual kind nature.

You blush at how strong he was. It was juxtaposition to your strength. Enough cursed energy to be a sorcerer compared to normal humans, but so weak you had to be an assistant. "Nanami...this position is a bit...interesting?" You say softly and confused.

"And your last position wasn't?" He drops your ankle. Giving you a chance to slowly rise up, sitting on your knees emrbassed. "If you're going to wear a skirt, please be self aware." He states simply.

Wait, what did he mean by that. Suddenly your whole face flushes, realizing you've been flaunting your ass. Basically putting yourself on display.

Nanami clears his throat, surprisingly loosening his tie a bit. Rubbing the side of his face annoyed and...flushed.

"Look I'm sorry...I just didn't think about it." You say shyly, biting your bottom lip. As much as you dreamed of Nanami lustfully gazing at your backside, you never meant to accidently do it. In your fantasy it was always purposful, taking advantage of his cold demeanor by turning him on. This was not a fantasy, you're right in front of him.

He stares down at you and sighs. "Come on, up off your knees." He says softly. That sentence makes you discretly clench your thighs. Imagining those words in a different scenario. You look at his offered hand and take it, slowly standing with his help.

"You didn't do it on purpose, it's okay." He's say in a coo, almost like he felt bad.

"What if I did?" You ask, surprising even yourself. You didn't do this on purpose, why did you say that? More importantly, why didn't you stop yourself?

"What?" You hear by your side. Looking at his stern face. Waiting for digust to roll in, hell maybe he'll even shout. Tell you to get out of his office, even worse maybe fire you.

Suddenly he laughs. Gripping onto the side of his desk...laughing. "You have alot of nerve." He says walking over to you. Raising a hand to your face. You expect the sting of a slap, but instead he squishes your cheeks together. "Cause then I'd call you an attention seeking whore." He tsks his tongue and smiles. An annoyed grin, faux politeness despite his harsh words.

"I-uhm- sorry I didn't really mean-" The pressure of his grip grows. Stopping you mid sentence.

"I won't hear any of your excuses." He pushes you against his desk, the table digging into the back of your thighs. A small patch of arousal staining your underwear. "In fact I'll reward you."

"What?" You say confused, knitting your brows. He lets out a small cold huff. Slipping his hand from your chin to down your throat. Softly rubbing the side of your neck.

"If your goal was to provoke me- it worked." His other free hand grabs yours. Pressing it against his thigh. You feel his hot throbbing length struggling not to reveal itself. "Do you know how hard it is trying to keep my dick tucked while helping you look around?" He coos to you. His fingers wrap around yours, causing you to the feel the entirety of his girth. "C'mon don't be shy now."

"Is that really...wow." You say breathlessly. The huge thing in your hand really was his cock. Straining against his professional trousers. "Why didn't you say anything?" You say softly. Gripping it curiously with your fingers, earning a soft groan from him.

"Its not exactly professional to hit on your assistant...also a tad too clichéd." He replies honestly. Running the hand on your neck down to your skirt. Flipping it up and letting out a soft pleased sigh. "I'm not one for business and pleasure but, this damned skirt." He chuckles softly. Rubbing your left thigh, watching it jiggle in response. "God it gets me rock hard."

You shiver at his touch. His hands warm against your thigh, but the heat of your aching cunt is hotter. "Nanami..." You whisper his name out softly.

He tsks his tongue in response. "I got my hand up your skirt, call me Kento." He leans in and kisses your neck softly, nibbling at the soft flesh. His hot breath sending goosebumps. "Kay'?" He whispers into your ear.

You nod softly. Letting out small sounds of pleasure as his lips travel across your throat. "Kento please your hand...it can go further than my thigh."You squeak out. Hoping the muscular man gets the message.

"Oh I know...but you've been naughty. Why would I give you what you want?" He coos backing away from you. Even pulling your hand away from his dick. "It be more punishing to leave you a dripping wet needy mess." He says with a smirk. A thing you never expected to see on his face. The pure unbridled joy he has in teasing you. Getting revenge for your two years of oblivious actions.

He smiles at you and sits back down in his desk chair. Going back to reviewing his documents despite your whines of protest. "Kento please.." You say walking behind his chair. Wrapping your arms around him, hands splayed across his chest. Rubbing the hard planes of muscle. "I don't even have to feel good, I just wanna feel you." You tempt into his ear. Kissing underneath it. He huff in response and expertly pulls your hands off his chest.

"I'd stop now. Bad girls get punished." He speaks sternly. Not at all humoring you. You don't listen and walk to the front of his chair, dropping to your knees, rubbing your face against his thigh. He finally lets go of his document. "Do you really want it that bad?" He coos softly. Like a false sense of security.

You nod against his thigh, looking up at him with a lust addled gaze. He gives you an evil smile, one that sends shivers down your spine. He undoes his belt buckle, tugging his pants and boxers to free himself. His huge length standing proudly at attention. "Go on pretty girl." He says brushing his thumb across your bottom lip. "Give it a taste." He says smiling.

You listen excitedly. Falling right into his trap as your lips curl around his cock. Slowly bobbing your head down after swirling your tongue around his tip. A pleasnt salty bead of precum meeting your tongue. You can only fit half of him in your mouth, even without a gag reflex the pure girth was already stretching your jaw. He throws his head back and groans. "Finally...a way to shut you up." He says happily, almost relaxed.

His hand curls into your hair, gripping it at the base. Successfully pulling your hair out of your way. A part of you was about to mention how sweet it was until. He grips hard and slams your head down, painfully making you take the rest of him down your throat. Your nose pressed against the soft curls of his pubes. A small surprised gag leaves your lips. "Oh darling don't you remember. You've been naughty, and naughty girls get what?" He asks you. He looks down at you amused for a second. Using his hand to pull you up and down on him. Small tears pricking the corners of your eyes. "I forgot, can't talk with your mouth full can you?" He laughs and groans. The two sounds like music to your ears.

This was gonna be a harsh night.

#x reader #nanami kento #jjk nanami #nanami x reader #nanami x you #no use of y/n #jjk #jjk x reader #jjk x reader smut #jjk smut #smut #fanfiction #fanfic #jjk fanfic #no plot whatsoever #no plot to be found #lime #lemon

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vulpixisananimal · 1 month

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"Did you tell Siffrin already?"

(You shouldn't be listening in like this, just go back to your room. Bonnie is ok, Bonnie is safe, even though they got hurt, they're safe. Listening in like this is just going to hurt your feelings.)

(Or at least tell you what they really think about you.)

"Not yet... Do you think they'll take it well?" (You heard Mira say.)

(Mira, Isa, and Odile were all talking in the common room they had at the Inn, Nille was making sure Bonnie was comfortable in their room after... All that.)

"Prrrrobably not... We should tell them anyways, though." (Isabeau was always looking out for you...)

"Indeed, talking goes both ways after all." (Odile.)

"True! Which I still would have liked you to do yesterday M'dame! I know Sif's been acting strange but..."

(You sigh internally. You were acting strange. You all were.)

(... It still felt weird.)

(There's three of you. Three Siffrins. Sometimes there's a gap of a few days you don't remember. You don't remember doing things you apparently did a few hours ago.)

(Sometimes the others were here, Loop, Mal Du Pays. Thoughts that weren't your own would bounce around your head, argue with you.)

(You weren't paying attention to what your family was saying anymore.)

(We need to tell them about, all this.)

(Now? Oh absolutely not Stardust, poor Bonbon just hit their head, they've got so much on their plate already~)

(You were the one who told me to be more open, Loop.)

(Yeeeeees, but there's a time and a place-)

"Hey Siffrin!"

(You snap back to reality, Nille was walking over.) "Feeling better?"

(You glance away, putting on a smile.) "Oh, yeah I'm feeling much better! How's Bonnie?"

"Oh lil Bonbon is resting up, Mira said they got a big booboo but they're great!"

(You relax your shoulders. As long as Bonnie was ok...)

(Nille raised an arm to put over your shoulder, pauses, then puts her arm back.)

"C'mon, we gotta figure out who that crabbing kidnapper was!" (Nille moved past Siffrin to join the others in the common room. You followed her. You still couldn't look her in the eye.)

(Odile, Isabeau, and Mirabelle were all seated and chatting, Nille joined them. Isa perked up seeing you walk in.)

"Sif!! You feeling alright? I got you fever medicine, and I wanted to maybe get you a gift because-"

"Gems alive Isa" (Odile pinched the bridge of her nose.)

(Nille made a half-laughing noise, and you sat down.) "I'm alright Isa, gift exchange can Wait," (You leaned in. Joke incoming.) "I just know any gift you get me will be my fever-ite."

(The mixture of laughter and pained groans was as sweet as always.)

"Thank you, Siffrin." (Odile said with a sigh) "Now, let's go over what happened."

(And so they started talking. Bonnie was grabbed in the farmers market while Nille was distracted, but was cut off by Mirabelle, who showed up soon after.)

"Thanks again for that, Mira." (Nille said with a smile.)

"O-oh! Well..." (She glanced your way- oh! Mira hadn't told anyone that it was a Loop, right... After some thought, you gave a nod.)

"Well! You should probably thank Siffrin actually!"

"Huh!?!?" (Wait that's not what you expected.)

"Hmm, yes why would you be thanking Siffrin" (Odile was looking at you.)

(You slump down in your seat, she probably already figured out what happened.)

(Just means you're all in now Stardust, unless you want to try going back again~)

(No. Absolutely not.)

"W-well, remember that story about, looping we told you about Nille?" (She nods.) "Well, this morning when I woke up screaming, That was because..."

(You pause for a moment, breath in, and out.)

"Because Bonnie was grabbed from the farmers market when I was there, instead of you. And, And I, I..."

(I told you. I told you not to tell them.)

(You keep breathing, it'll be ok, just keep breathing-)

"Hey, you did better than me." (Said Nille)

(... Huh?)

(she continued) "It it wasn't for Mirabelle I would have lost them too... So, I can't really blame you at all if you're worried about that."

( ... Oh.)

"And!! Since you were able to loop back, we got to try that again and Bonnie's ok!!" (Mirabelle interjected.)

"Although that is somewhat concerning you looped back even weeks since after we defeated the King." (Odile was thinking, it had been weeks after all. Defeat the King, party at Dormont, visit Bambouche and meet Nille, help things there...)

(You still failed though. We did. They wont forget that.)

(Can you just go away.)

"Who was that, anyway?"

(The conversation continues.)

"well, I didn't know! Their face was covered, but, but they must have been confident to try something like that here."

"Oh! What kinda craft did they use? Maybe that'll give us a clue."

"Protection craft, felt it when they tried to hit me, pretty crabbing bad at craft."

"If this was a professional I would have thought they'd target someone with Pierce craft. What were they wearing?"

"Hard to make it out, just a big old cloak and a nasty dagger..."

"Oh!! They did have some broche with a white star on it!! It looked familiar.."

"The Kings armor."

(The others turn to you as you speak up, you continue.)

"The Kings armor has stars on it, white stars." (Wishing stars.)

"I guess you would have seen it a lot..." (Thanks Mirabelle.)

"So this guy's related to the King somehow?" (said Isabeau, thinking.)

"Doubtful, but if they're related to the King, that would explain their choice of craft." (Odile continued,) "If they knew Siffrin was supposed to escort Bonnie then having a craft that beats his makes sense."

(The table fell silent, the King was frozen at the Pinnacle of the house of change. There was no way the King could still be an issue now. Not after all they had been through.)

(all you had been through.)

(What a wonderful joke, Universe! I'm laughing more than I have in a thousand loops! Ahahahahahhahahaha!!!)

(Gentler, please, we already have a headache.)

"We're trying to finish a house without all our nails," (Nille said, leaning back in her chair.) "Boniface is safe now, at least. We could at least go ask the Defenders about it."

"Tomorrow. Today's been headache inducing enough." (Odile said with authority. You opened your mouth to protest, but her look cut you off.)

"It could be nothing, too! Just some random accident, or something..." (Oh Mira...)

"I'm just too popular, naturally, my adoring fans wanted my attention." (You say cheekily.)

"Oh can I be your bouncer, Sif? Can't have your fanclub bothering you!" (Isa said with his big ol grin.)

"Of course! I would be honored-"

"Get a room you two!" (Nille said, obviously having fun with it. That made Isa very embarrassed and you turn away just a bit.)

"Is there anything else we should discuss while we're here?" (asked Odile, exasperated.)

"Nope! All good here!"

"I-I don't think So?"

"Nah, nothing to discuss."

"... Siffrin?"

(Odile was looking at you. You wanted to say you didn't have anything to add. You wanted to smile and say everything was ok.)

(Then why don't you.)

(Because they're our family, they deserve to know, right?)

(And if you are wrong about them.)

(Then we'll just loop back! As the Universe has forced on us oh so many times~)

(That.. hardly makes it any better.)

(Sooo we're agreed~?)

(... We will regret this.)

(Maybe... But we made a promise.)

(You open your mouth....)

#aaaaaaaand cliffhanger #sorry this post was getting way too long #so #two parter #isat #isat au #isat art #isat fanart #isat siffrin #isat mirabelle #isat isabeau #isat odile #isat nille #isat loop #isat mal du pays #isat spoilers #siffrin system au #sifstem

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goldensunset · 2 months

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i'm curious, do you have any thoughts on whether its more narratively fitting for n to have zekrom in black or reshiram in white? its been a debate for ages, i'm personally on the zekrom side and dont really understand the reshiram argument

OOOOH ok i think i did overhear a snippet of that debate on your blog a while back but of course i didn't understand any of it yet. i have been thinking about that... my first instinct would be to agree and say zekrom the dragon of ideals is more fitting. buuuut i really do think you can argue both ways so i will do so here

so! truth and ideals. what he wants and what he thinks is true. what he wants, deep down, is undeniable- he wants pokémon to be happy. that's his ideal world no matter what. what he seems to want specifically is the separation of pokémon and humans. that's the ideal that he works toward, and it's because he holds a misguided view of reality. what he believes to be true is that keeping pokémon is abusive. because of this factoid, because he firmly believes the world is a certain way, he feels spurred to action to remedy that. he values that which he perceives as truth and wants to bring it to light. both truth and ideals are therefore thematically relevant to him because they line up- hold firm to the truth you know, not letting anyone else tell you otherwise, and let it drive you to make changes for the better in the world and seek your ideal.

BUT. does he really believe that idea about abuse to be true? at first, yes of course. but as he says- from the moment he begins traveling the world, and more specifically upon meeting the player- he begins to notice that pokémon seem happy with people. he doesn't understand. this goes against everything he had been told about the world. so, do these experiences make him change his mind about what the truth is? maybe bit by bit. does he admit the error of his ways and step down and step off? NOPE.

and that's the crucial bit. the real, actual truth is right there in front of him but he can't bring himself to acknowledge it. he has committed himself to a certain ideal and he's going to see it through or fall gloriously while trying. he's set his heart on conquering unova and making it perfect, bringing about the noble ideal of happiness for humans and pokémon alike- except by now he knows that's founded on a lie. would reshiram, the dragon of truth, really accept him as a hero with that sort of dissonance in his heart? or would it rather accept the hero who truly does understand and accept the way the world is, as a mixed bag of good and bad?

but on the other hand you could argue he's well aware of and in acknowledgement of the truth. he truly has witnessed the abuse of pokémon before. that isn't a lie- it's just a statistical minority that he's only just now finding out is a minority. but even if it is- for a guy who loves pokémon that much, that's completely intolerable. it doesn't matter how many trainers are good people- even one hurt pokémon is one too many. it's not worth the gamble of continuing to let it happen. so even if he has witnessed the truth of the majority of the world now, his truth isn't all wrong either. it's still very much significant to him. he has a fuller understanding of the world than most do, as someone who's seen both the good and bad of it. and he does admit something like this to the player at mistralton- he knows they're a good and kind trainer, but still says the separation needs to happen, even though that would bring about injustice to good trainers.

in this situation, he can probably recognize that there's both something to be gained and lost either way, whether trainerdom continues or not- and also that those two aren't necessarily equal. there will be pain for certain pokémon if it continues, and there will be pain for MANY people and MANY pokémon if it stops. maybe in that situation after having travelled the world he can understand by now which option is truly better. which is the real ideal world, the lesser of two evils. but that sad fact of pokémon abuse is so significant to him that he'd rather still forgo the world as it is now. he clings so stubbornly to a certain truth that he forgets to look at the big picture of things and consider what really is ideal.

in the end though the question is, i guess- which is more thematically fitting for him to fly off on and keep as his best friend? he's learned his lesson in the end that he was doing the wrong thing, and determined that the two dragons representing truth and ideals don't need to fight. but even so it's not like the two dragons reunite. he still stays with one. and he still lost the fight to the player with the other one. so the real question is, in the greater scheme of things, which one won the fight narratively? truth or ideals? what lesson did he learn? what lesson did we learn?

SIKE i think that's taking things too far lol. like i said it could go either way and also they don't need to fight. and the dragon isn't purely symbolic it's also like his bestie at that point of course he's gonna keep it even if he's a changed person lol. anyway hope you enjoyed my academic essay i only completed my degree in this particular field of study about 18 hours ago so i hope i'm qualified enough to talk about this

#mwah! i love getting way into stuff like this i'll write meta for days #i still think i lean towards him having zekrom but like i meant everything i said here #you can frame it both ways #pokémon #asks #claitea #bw

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ga-yuu · 2 months

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Where do you want a sweet kiss?

The meaning of that glossy lips....the only people who knows that, is you and your lover.

It happened while I was on a date with Yoshitsune-sama.

Yoshino: "Ah! Look out!!"

Yoshitsune: "Yoshino...!"

I reached out to the young girl who was about to fall into the river.

Although I succeeded in rescuing her, I suffered a small injury on my toe.

Yoshitsune: ".....It looks painful."

Yoshino: "It's fine. Its just a small cut."

I sat down on a rock as Yoshitsune-sama led me by the hand.

The expression on Yoshitsune-sama's face, who was kneeling in front of me and looking at my injury, was gloomy.

Yoshitsune: "What would you think if I said the same and neglected treating it?"

(Ah...)

Seeing the painful look in his eyes, I immediately regretted what I said.

Yoshino: ".....Sorry."

Yoshitsune: "If you understand, then fine."

Slightly softening the mood, Yoshitsune-sama turns to my injured leg.

With a serious face he started washing the wound with water and skillfully applied the medicine which I had brought with me, just in case.

(I made you worry)

I was torn between the apologetic feeling and the earnest kindness of Yoshitsune-sama.

After calmly finishing his treatment, he looks up.

Yoshitsune: "I don't want you to get hurt, but..."

Yoshitsune: "I am dazzled by your nobility to reach out to a little girl without hesitation."

Yoshitsune-sama's fingers starts to caress my toe while avoiding the injury.

Without any hesitation, with a gentle expression, Yoshitsune-sama's face moved closer and----

(Nn...Ah)

Before I could stop him, he reverently kissed my toe.

Yoshino: "Nn...D-Don't do that. It's dirty."

Yoshitsune: "Your body is beautiful everywhere."

(I can't argue back while looking at that face...)

Even though it was rinsed off with water, I was still so embarrassed that I tried to complain....

Yoshitsune: "It's true....you're really really beautiful."

Yoshino: *blushing so much*

I swallowed my words unable to resist the sweet loving gaze of Yoshitsune-sama.

Yoshitsune: "Does it hurt anymore?"

Yoshino: "No. I'm fine."

Yoshitsune: "....Thank god."

After he sighed relief, he lightly lifted my feet.

Yoshino: "W-Wait---"

Yoshitsune: "...Mm..."

(Ah...)

Once again, Yoshitsune-sama's lips touches my toe.

(This is so embarrassing, but...)

Even so, the faint feeling of pleasure runs down my spine and my heart fluttered.

Yoshitsune: "Did your toenails always looked like this?"

Yoshitsune: "Even this end of your body is build differently from mine....it's cute."

Yoshino: "Yo-Yoshitsune-sama..."

While wearing a calm expression, I feel like he's doing something evil.

And I cannot, just cannot stop blushing.

Yoshino: "If you want to kiss me, do it somewhere else."

When I muttered very very lightly, Yoshitsune-sama's eyes lit up.

Yoshitsune: "You're dazzling all the time. But there are times when you're just too precious."

Yoshitsune: "That's not all."

(Eh...?)

Yoshitsune-sama, who had been kneeling in front of me, suddenly stood up. His arms stretched out towards me.

Yoshitsune: "If you were only an object of worship, I wouldn't have such evil thoughts."

Yoshino: *blushing* "W-Wait.."

(Ah)

He hugged me tightly as I panicked.

Yoshitsune: "Like this."

Yoshino: "Yoshitsune-sama..."

(Ah, wait...)

While holding my back with one arm, his other hand goes easily under my thighs.

Yoshino: "No wait!! Someone will see us."

Yoshitsune: "Because you, dazzling as you are, can be so disturbed by a single kiss from me."

Yoshitsune: "I can't help but want to love you and....touch you."

Yoshino: "B-But...Mmm..."

His fingers caresses my thighs, easily sliding all the way between my legs....

Yoshitsune: "....I promise, I won't do anything you dislike. So please."

Although there was no one around, I was still embarrassed and ashamed about the fact that we're doing this in public.

(I trust Yoshitsune-sama, but.....I wonder how far he will go....)

The sweet anticipation that was faintly but surely lit made my heart pound again.

#ikemen series #ikemen genjiden #cybird ikemen #cybird otome #otome #ikegen #cybird #ikemen mc #ikemen genjiden yoshitsune

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starfirewildheart · 4 months

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Chapter 2

The Wolf and the Flame

Summary: Geralt had just found Ciri and was headed to Kaer Morhen when something drew him into the woods. He found a woman near death and things changed for them all. (I suck at summaries just read please!) Yennefer is bad in the start of this but she and Geralt work on their friendship. Eskel is a dick at first but there is a reason and it works out. Will have a happy ending. Ciri is younger here than in the netflix show. She is about 12.

Warnings: abuse history, injuries, hurt comfort, no one under 18 to be safe, will add when I need to

Words: 3,233

Naurel heard soft muted sounds around her. A crackling fire, water being dipped out of a bucket, the sound of something being placed on a hard surface. An astringent smell stung her nose and she absently wondered who’d been injured and if she was needed to help. She was on a hard surface but was warm with a soft pillow under her head. Then the pain registered in her mind and all the terror she’d experienced flooded back with a vengeance. She gasped a deep, wheezing breath and sat bolt upright. Searing pain shot through her body and her ribs protested both her breathing and movement so much that she nearly vomited.

Geralt had been crouched down adding more wood to the fire when he heard the gasping breath. As quick as he was, the woman had already sat up by the time he got to her. He gently pushed her back down. “You are safe here.”

Her eyes locked with the giant man’s again and she remembered seeing them before and some of the panic ebbed. “W..Where am I?” Her voice was scratchy and her throat hurt but nothing like it had before when she was awake.

“You are in the town of Lakeside, at the home of the healer,” he answered. “What is your name?”

“Naurel,” she answered. “How did I…? I was dying..” she trailed off, confused.

“You were nearly dead when I found you and brought you here,” he affirmed. “Triss worked for hours to bring you back from the brink.”

“Who are you?”

“Geralt of Riva,” he nodded to her. “We were traveling and saw your encampment. Were you traveling with the Nilfgaarians?”

A shiver ran through her. “No.” She was afraid to tell him she had been their prisoner. She didn’t know anything about him or where his loyalties lay.

He could sense her hesitation and didn’t push. She’d been through hell and he knew it would take time for her to trust him. Still, he felt drawn to her. There was something there that he didn’t understand. “What happened?”

“I..I’m not sure,” She hedged. It was partly true. She didn’t know exactly how things had happened in the end. “My dress?” she gasped and tried to set up again but his hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“It’s ruined. We will get you something else to wear.”

“But I need it!”

Her eyes were panicked and he could smell the stress coming from her. “I don’t think it can be saved but I will put it in my bag to be cleaned.”

“No,” she shook her head. “The skirt has a hidden pocket on the inside.” She watched Geralt go to the pile of rags that was formerly her dress and search the pieces until he found what he was searching for and returned it to her. She clutched the gold locket against her chest with trembling hands and relaxed against the pillow. “Thank you. It’s the only thing I have from my birth family. The only clue to who I was before I became nothing.”

“Where are you from?” He continued with the questions, keeping them simple so she didn’t feel threatened, although he wanted to argue with her about being nothing.

“I.. I don’t know where I was born,” she told him honestly. “I was sold as a slave in Centra when I was three. I remained there, though I was sold to a few different families over the years.”

A frown crossed his stone features. “I had no idea that Calanthe allowed slavery in her kingdom.” He knew she was not the great Queen some pretended her to be. While she wasn’t as prejudiced as Nilfgaard and its leaders she still did not like elves or anyone different in her eyes. She just wasn’t as open about it. “Is that who did this to you? The person who owned you?”

“No. I mean yes.” She sighed and tried again to explain, “some of it,” she corrected. “I was accused of taking something from the market but I didn’t,” she insisted. Panic was starting to bubble up in her chest. Why the hell was she telling him about her accused crime? What if he took her back there so they could punish her more? She would end up back in the hands of her torturer?

Geralt could hear her heart starting to race and her breath hitching. “Easy, you are safe. I will not let anyone else harm you Naurel. I promise you. Relax and slow your breathing. It will only aggravate your ribs.”

“You are a witcher.” It was a statement, not a question. Geralt nodded. “Why are you helping me? I have no coin to pay you or anything to give you in return.”

“I am not asking for anything.” He had to bite back a frustrated sigh at the damn witcher stereotypes. “I’m not the monster.”

“I.. I didn’t mean to imply that you were. I just.. I know witchers kill monsters for coin. It’s how you survive.” She stumbled over her words. “Thank you, for everything. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

He was about to speak when Triss and Ciri came barreling in from outside. “Good, you’re awake,” Triss sighed breathlessly. “The villagers have heard about what happened to the girl. How she was found among the dead and they think she's a death omen. They are coming here. You can’t stay here Geralt.”

“She can’t travel like this,” he growled. “I’ll talk to them.”

“They are in no talking mood. I tried. They are afraid that whatever killed all the soldiers is still after her. If she stays here then they think whoever or whatever it was will come looking for her.” Triss paused. “I can’t say I disagree with them either. She poses a threat to the village and Lakeside is a peaceful place.”

Naurel pulled herself to a sitting position, noticing for the first time that she was naked under the sheet as it pooled around her hips. Her face flamed red as she quickly covered herself. “I don’t want to cause trouble.”

Triss nodded at her and started gathering some herbs. She handed them to Geralt along with some other supplies and a jar with flowers and a white milky liquid inside. “This is milk of the poppy. A drop of this under her tongue for pain when she needs it. It’s fall and the herbs and flowers are getting hard to come by. I don't know if you will be able to find much on your journey. Traveling will not be easy on horseback but she would never survive a portal. Take her to Kaer Morhen. I will go ahead and let Vesimer know you are coming. We will prepare for your arrival.”

He didn’t like it at all but he knew Triss was right. He would have to kill the entire village if they stayed and he couldn’t risk exposing Ciri like that. By the time he packed the saddlebags and got the horses ready Triss had helped Naurel into a dress and some shoes. The poor girl was still so weak she was shaking like a leaf blowing in a windstorm. Scooping her up in his arms he placed her on Roach before climbing up behind her. The villagers were running toward them with pitchforks and torches as they rode out of town.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Geralt kept the pace as slow as he dared to try and lessen the strain on Naurel’s battered body. Even though Triss healed all she could there were still many injuries that remained. He could feel her start to lean against his chest, body exhausted but then she would quickly straighten up again and try to support her weight. He wrapped one of his arms around her waist and carefully pressed her back. “Rest, I’ll keep you steady.”

She sank back against him, no match for his strength. Hell, she was pretty sure a slight breeze could knock her over right now. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she argued even though she didn’t try to set back up.

He grinned at her. “I assure you that your weight is no burden.” It was like her body fit to his perfectly. It felt right. “How is your pain? Do you need something for it?”

She shook her head as she curled to his chest. His skin was so warm and she was so cold. One of the many experiments that the evil sorcerer had performed on her made her feel like her blood was ice. “So warm,” she sighed. Geralt pulled his cloak so that it was wrapped around her as well. There was barely a chill in the air and he wondered if an infection was starting to sit in on some of her wounds.

“Do you want some water?” Ciri wanted to talk to the woman, to find out more about her but she was unsure. In the back of her mind, she wondered if the woman was sent to kidnap her. She knew it didn’t make sense but still, she was leery of the newcomer.

Naurel forced her eyes open and smiled at Ciri. “No thank you, Princess.”

“You know who I am?”

“Yes,” she rested her head back against Geralt’s shoulder. “May I ask why the Lion Cub of Centra is traveling with a witcher and not the guard?”

Ciri bristled, “is that some sort of cruel joke? How do you know who I am?” she demanded.

“I meant no disrespect,” she said as she sat up straight. “I know who you are because I was a slave in your city. When I would go to the market I would often see you playing knucklebones. Members of the guard would always be lurking nearby to keep you safe.”

“Then you know well that all my family was slaughtered by the same soldiers you were found with! How dare you be so cruel!” Ciri shouted.

“Easy,” Geralt said as he held a calming hand out toward Ciri. “She was a captive not a member of their party.”

Ciri backed down slightly but was still angry. “Fine but why be so cruel to ask why I’m not with my dead family?” she demanded.

“Dead?” Naurel gasped. “How?”

Geralt was shocked that she didn’t know about the sacking of Centra. “How long were you held captive?”

“I.. I lost track. I was kept chained in the dark. No sun or moonlight ever filtered down to the depths of hell I was a part of.” A shiver ran through her at the memory. “I’m very sorry about your family princess.”

Ciri huffed and trotted her horse ahead a bit. She didn’t like this woman at all. Geralt was ready to stop Ciri when she rode ahead but she didn’t go far so he let her have some space. He could feel the anger coming off his young charge and the sadness and disappointment coming off of the woman in his arms. This was going to be a long trip.

“I didn’t mean to upset her,” Naurel said as she forced herself to set up again. She always seemed to say the wrong thing. “I don’t think I can walk very far but if you could find a place near the water to leave me. I will be fine.” She squirmed attempting to free herself.

“You think I am going to leave you alone in the woods, injured?” Geralt asked. He was angry that she even suggested it.

“If I’m close to the water I’ll likely survive.” She shrugged then flinched at the pain the simple movement caused her.

“And when something or someone attacks you?” he growled.

She shrugged again, hissing at the movement. She really had to stop doing that. “Then I die.”

Her answer was so blunt and matter of fact that it caught him off guard. “If I was willing to let that happen I would have left you in the woods where I found you. Ciri is in pain right now, just like you, only her’s is emotional pain.” He put his large hand on her stomach and pressed her back against him before wrapping her in his cloak again. “And you will listen to me when I tell you to do something. It is not up for debate.” Geralt didn’t know why he felt so possessive of her but he did. It was like she was meant to be a part of him.

A wave of desire ran through her and she wanted to bare her neck to him and submit but that wasn’t in her nature, ever. It’s like the words that came from Geralt went straight to her soul. Like he was meant to command her and she was built to be his to command. What the hell had that sorceress done to her? She’d never felt this way before. She let him push her back and settled in but gave him a grievous pout in return and she was sure she saw the corner of his mouth turn up in a grin. That was the last thing she remembered until they came to a stop a few hours later.

“We need to make camp for the night,” Geralt said. Ciri, who had fallen back to ride beside him again, pulled her horse to a stop and hopped down grateful to be out of the saddle for a bit. Geralt handed her his bedroll. “Put that down over there so I can put Naurel on it while I set up camp.”

“I can do it,” Naurel said from the crook of his neck. She felt him chuckle. “I can,” she huffed.

“Uh huh,” he agreed as he climbed off of Roach and pulled her into his arms. “I know you can.” She was fucking adorable.

“You know, I’m not going to be weak forever witcher.” Her growl was tiny and soft but a growl non the less.

“Oh I’m counting on that,” he smirked as he put her on the blanket. “Now do you think the two of you can stay out of trouble long enough for me to gather some wood for a fire?”

Naurel and Ciri both gave him indignant huffs as he walked away. Ciri sat down next to Naurel and offered her some water. “That’s the first time I’ve seen him smile,” she told the redhead.

Naurel took a sip of the water. “He isn’t anything like the stories I’ve heard of witchers. They are said to be feral, emotionless beasts whose only thoughts are to kill monsters, seek pleasure, and make coin. Geralt seems to be the opposite of that really.” She looked at Ciri, “I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s alright. I overreacted. It’s just still all so fresh in my mind that anything seems to cause a flood of memories and thoughts.”

She nodded in sympathy. “How long have you known Geralt?”

“Four days.” She smiled at the surprised look on Naurel’s face. “Before I was born the law of surprise was invoked. My grandmother told me to find him as she lay dying. That he was my destiny. I still have no idea what that means,” Ciri confessed.

“What does he have to say about it?” Naurel asked.

“I haven’t asked him,” Ciri confessed. “Since I found him people have been trying to take me or kill me and then he found you so there hasn’t been time to talk about it.”

“About what?” Geralt asked as he strode back to camp with his arms full of wood.

Ciri bit her lip. “What any of this means. What I am to you?”

He continued to set up the wood for a fire as they spoke but Naurel caught the tightness that flashed in his eyes momentarily. “It means that I will protect you with my life. We will find out why all of this is happening.”

“Why would my grandmother keep all of this from me?” She was hurt and angry to have been kept in the dark so long.

“I assume she thought she was somehow protecting you. We never realize our time is short until it’s too late.” He looked up at her with sympathetic eyes. “I don’t think she did it with malice. I think she wanted to hide you from the evils of the world and protect you but all she managed to do was to leave you unprepared for what was to happen. She left you with more questions than answers but I promise you, I will do all in my power to help you.”

Ciri nodded, happy with that answer. She was relieved that she wasn’t to be his wife. Gods Geralt was hot of course but he was far too old for her. Appeased for now she watched as Geralt flirted with Naurel. It was funny to watch, really. You could tell it was completely foreign to the witcher but still, he was so damn cute.

They all talked for a while before Ciri fell asleep near the fire. Geralt checked all Naurel’s bandages before bundling her in a blanket close to his side under the lean-to he’d built to block the wind. “You should rest,” he told her.

“No, you should rest. You have been going for at least forty-eight hours Geralt, you need sleep.”

“I will be fine,” he argued.

“When you sleep are you easy to wake?” she asked.

“Of course but I won’t fall asleep. I will keep you safe,” he reassured her.

“I know you will.” She gently pushed at his shoulder until he let her readjust his position and pull his head against her chest. “You sleep. If I hear anything I promise I will wake you. When I get sleepy I will tell you and you can take watch.” When he opened his mouth to protest she put her finger to his lips to stop him. “No arguing witcher,” she scolded. “It’s your turn to let me take care of you for a while.” She felt his shoulders slump in defeat and knew she’d won.

Geralt was going to continue to argue but he let her win this one. He would rest his eyes for a few minutes so that she felt like she had helped him some. He laid his head on her chest and sighed contentedly as she started carding her fingers through his hair. Her soft, pliant body against him, her fingers massaging his scalp and back, her sweet scent, and the warmth of the fire lulled him to sleep and for the first time in a long time, he didn’t have a nightmare.

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saltineofswing · 2 months

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Hello! I'm the person that made the rant post about my dislike on the lack of natural dichotomy of the Pyramids and Traveler since the introduction of the Veil that turned into a whole thing. You mentioned a lack of pulp in your reblog and it's stuck with me since then. I wasn't familiar with the term and did some research on it, but I still don't think I get what it is. I tried looking it up but a lot of articles and videos I could find explain the history of pulp and its influences in modern day sci-fi but not necessarily what it is, especially in a way that would give me context to better understand your reblog. If it's not too much trouble, can you explain a little more what the "pulp" is that destiny is lacking?

I’d be happy to try and give you a little more insight into what I feel are important tenets of pulp as a genre/concept! I decided this might be a good opportunity to talk a little about it generally because I am really feeling its absence generally in the past couple years, so I included some historical backing which you’re probably already familiar with – hope that’s OK.

I did a little digging personally, for some good places to familiarize oneself with the basics of pulp as a concept and/or genre. It was nice to re-affirm some info that I’ve felt secure in holding as true without a ton of evidentiary support, and I also learned some cool new stuff as well! I think a good place to start would be to link to the TV Tropes page about pulp magazines, which does a pretty good job of explaining the origins and foundational aspects of the concept in a way that is easy to digest. It also has a lot of examples available to peruse. I also found this cool article on the golden age of pulps, which is an interesting read.

This got long, so below the cut!

To reiterate, the original ‘pulp’ terminology and vibe comes from early/mid-20th century magazines, which were cheap and easy ways to access genre fiction and action/adventure stories before comics, paperback novels, and TV/movies were really on the scene. Pulp magazines spanned a very wide array of genres, but because of a lack of appreciation for the medium, a majority of pulp magazines and aspects of what I would consider to be pulp as a genre have been allowed to fall into obscurity. There are places where I feel it is particularly obvious, especially the superhero genre (don’t get me started we’ll be here all week) but also in fantasy and science fiction – a term which was, in fact, coined by Hugo Gernsback, an editor for pulp magazine Amazing Stories.

They were cheap to make, cheap to buy, and easy to serialize; they could be really schlocky, crass, and unpolished. They could also be fucking incredible! The Shadow is a good example of an early pulp property with screaming highs and frankly peat-bog lows. Lovecraft published a lot of what is considered to be his ‘best work’ in Weird Tales! Conan the Barbarian, too! They kind of came out of the gate with a somewhat negative connotation associated with ‘low-brow’ forms of literature like dime novels, but where other magazines of the time tended to incorporate non-fiction articles and photography, pulp mags tended to be fiction stories only – short stories, or longer stories split into serialized chapters. Early on, not many of them had art, though with the advent of comic books that changed (you could argue that books like Creepy and Eerie are direct offspring of early pulp mags). Similar to what Weekly Shonen Jump does with manga.

If you think of a genre as a toolbox, pulp is a box full of tools that function fine alone, but excel at assisting the function of other toolboxes. I would almost liken ‘pulp’ to the concept of ‘camp’, which are also two concepts that can and do overlap with a high degree of synergy. Pulp has its own foundational attributes that are distinct from camp – for example, camp is gay relies a lot more on its self-awareness, at being able to wink at the viewer or participant, and telling you ‘yeah, we know it, but isn’t it fun?’ Pulp, on the other hand, is the (no pun intended) straight man counterpart to this aesthetic sensibility; pulp is at its best when it is being completely earnest. The quippy lines and dramatic proclamations are meant to be taken on their face. Nowadays it’s the kind of stuff that memes are made of – ‘That Wizard Came From The Moon’, ‘I don’t have time to explain why I don’t have time to explain’, ‘Whether we wanted it or not, we’ve stepped into a war with the Cabal on Mars’. Saying shit that has no explanation with your whole chest. Trying to be cool on purpose, the ultimate cringe move.

Nowadays I think that this kind of thing has mostly died out of modern media, but the counter-motion is still prevalent in mainstream superhero movies. A good example is the ‘Would you have preferred ~YeLlOw SpAnDeX~’ line from the OG X-Men movie. Hey dickhead! The yellow spandex is cool if you, the guy making the movie, believes its cool! Crucially, while a lot of modern superhero stuff is quippy and irreverent, it often uses these tropes in a self-aware or cynical manner – afraid of being earnest, committing the aforementioned cardinal sin of trying to look cool on purpose.

(God damn it, I’m talking about superheroes again. Sorry. Before I get back on task this is why I loved the recent Moon Knight run so much; Jed MacKay is NOT afraid to have the characters say some absolutely batshit thing but it comes off as so, so cool. And yes, a little cheesy.)

And then, where modern sci-fi typically has an ultra-detailed explanation on-hand, I think a lot of early pulp stuff just… didn’t. Ask a sci-fi property for an explanation on, oh I don’t know, ‘where did these super-humanoid sapient machine warriors come from’ and it will likely have a molecule-deep explanation of how those unnamed machine people were created. Ask a fantasy property for an explanation on the same and it might say, ‘no’. It’s not that a pulp-leaning property won’t give you the answer to that question… it just might not have it. The ‘why is it/how is it’ is not as important as the ‘what is it’ and ‘how is it relevant’; a writer had a limited amount of page real estate, as multiple features were typically crammed into a single magazine. Even if a feature was serialized, much like television episodes (before the binge trend), one had to keep information digestible, and not too reliant on a prior or later edition that a reader might never see.

Explanations tended to be in service of an emotional beat, or to a theme, versus as a grounding agent to immerse a reader in the world. For the record I don’t necessarily think of either method as being better or worse, and heavy worldbuilding can still utilize pulp as a veneer or filter to engage audience expectations in different ways. Pulp stuff relies a lot on suspension of disbelief without utilizing a rigid lore-based framework to – though, you know, your story/setting still has to have its own internal logical consistency.

(I feel that it is important to note, as a partial consequence of the time period in which these magazines were being made, and when pulp fiction was most heavily consumed, xenophobia and racism are also heavily present in pulp works. I think everybody knows at this point about how much Lovecraft sucked but it’s a valuable example of how a lot of ‘fear of the unknown’ in that time was transliterated into ‘fear of the different’, in general but especially relating to genre fiction. If you decide to explore material in this genre, in this time period, be forewarned! Some of it was pretty glaring!)

So, let me tie some of this stuff to my previous statements about Destiny. I think that Destiny is an excellent example of how pulp tropes, aesthetic, and genre conventions can be used to enhance and streamline a setting… and how stripping too much pulp away can have a detrimental impact on the depth of a narrative.

The original narrative and worldbuilding of Destiny drew very heavily on pulp aesthetics to create a foundation, both in its appearance and its lore. The ‘Golden Age of Science Fiction’ was a period of time in the mid-20th century that sort of transitioned sci-fi out of pulp magazines and into its own thing, but the foundational structure of science fiction at this time was still heavily pulp-influenced. I think this is very well-represented by the portrayal of Venus as a ‘garden’ (jungle) world, very lush and with sulfurous and sometimes acidic rains. Before advancements in astronomical technology went and fucked everything up for us writers, Venus’s opaque cloud-covered atmosphere was impenetrable enough that there could be anything under there – and a popular portrayal of Venus was a muggy, humid, rain-heavy world that sometimes also included lush jungles. In Bradbury’s short story The Long Rain (WHICH ran in Planet Stories, a pulp mag, by the way!) this portrayal is a central obstacle to the narrative; it’s also used in Heinlein’s novel Space Cadet.

The color scheme that Destiny uses for Venus also matches a common color scheme for Venus in this era – see this cover for Fantastic Adventures. Visually, I think that this comparison between the postcard that went out with the D1 limited/collector’s edition and this Planet Stories cover for The Golden Amazons of Venus demonstrates the influence, at least regarding terrain and biome.

In fact, I think that you can see from this Eververse postcard – which could have been peeled off of any era-appropriate paperback novel – that the influence goes bone-deep. Destiny even refers to humanity’s halcyon age as ‘The Golden Age’.

(Below: Is this image from Destiny dev, or a science fiction paperback from the 60s? Who knows! I know. It’s Destiny.)

In the modern era of Destiny storytelling, though the visual elements of the universe remain largely rigid relative to this early framework, the pulp underpinning of the narrative has been largely left behind. The original game’s story, and the stories of subsequent DLCs, felt very pulp-inspired – this ranged from ‘sort of effective’, like in House of Wolves, to ‘game-savingly effective’, like in The Taken King. Pulp lends itself to straightforward conceptual executions, and brisk narratives, because of its roots as short-form literature. The narrative of D1 was simple and to the point; Light good, Dark bad, humanity is in the shit, think you can kill a god? The surrounding world scaffold was rich but not deep. As I like to say, sometimes a river can be wide but shallow. This is not a commentary on its quality – something can be good but not complex, and IMO, sophistication is not necessarily synonymous with complexity. Destiny managed to pull off a trick that many high-quality pulp stories employ: it made the river look deeper than it was. This is the whole reason that Lovecraft’s oeuvre has the staying power it has: other writers got to play in the space because it felt very deep, even though the stories themselves were fairly straightforward.

I also don’t mean to say or accidentally imply that ‘morally grey storytelling cannot exist within pulp stories’, because that would probably get me torn apart; that’s just not the kind of straightforward foundation that the original Destiny was built on. ‘It is what you see, but what you see could be anything’, you know? The problem that began to muddy the waters in the Destiny narrative is that they started to say, ‘You know, actually, it ISN’T what you see’.

Tentpole narrative additions to the Destiny 2 game employ varying levels of pulp. As I said in the other post, the Hive have a potent pulp influence built into their foundational coding, and so subsequent portrayals of the Hive as a main antagonist have higher degrees of pulp genre naturally present in the narrative – it’s hard to separate the two of them. Shadowkeep and The Dark Below draw strongly on the ‘sword and sorcery’ convention, a subgenre of fantasy that is a heavy (perhaps 1:1) blend of fantasy and pulp; think Conan, or Elric of Melniboné (who, hey! Showed up in a novella feature, in an issue of Science Fantasy magazine, named… THE DREAMING CITY). The Witch Queen leaned away from pure sword and sorcery and more towards noir/detective pulp – though, I think, TWQ is a good example of the pulp slippage in its narrative, resulting in some more bland moments and things that feel ham-fisted in a bad way. Part of it, I think, is the need to make these expansions ‘long’ and complicated without making the player feel like they’re slogging; in a more pulp-forward TWQ narrative, the reveal that Savathûn is actually NOT evil-aligned and is a potential ally would come much earlier in the story, and the central mystery would be MORE about ‘what the fuck is she trying to do/prevent’, leading to the Witness reveal as the centerpiece of the finale and the ‘solution’ to the central mystery.

The decision to start retroactively appending more complex connections between disparate pieces of content naturally leads to a reduction of pulp prominence, in my opinion. If you imagine Destiny as a vessel that is mainly full of three component liquids – Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Pulp – you can say that adding more of one genre pushes out another to make room. You can always pour more of one genre in to re-balance, but in response to increasing levels of sci-fi the narrative seems reticent to reintroduce pulp back into the mix, instead favoring fantasy. But another problem is that once you take it out, Pulp is really hard to put back; once you solidify and unionize world-lore, every subsequent retcon risks diluting and destabilizing that world-lore until a) nobody cares about it anymore and b) it stops being mutable at all, and becomes sludge.

The lore behind the existence of the Exo was originally very pulp, with no real explanations given for exactly what they were and where they came from, and how they attained sapience. Early hints that Cayde and a few other Exo having once been human didn’t preclude other Exo from having other origins – for example, implications that Exo war-frames eventually achieved sapience as a result of the ‘Deep Stone Crypt’, and that they were originally simple AI-equipped warriors designed and overseen by Rasputin to minimize human casualties. This early mystique around the origins of the Exo is classically pulp: we don’t need to know how the hyper-advanced robots were made, we just need to know what they are, why they are relevant to the story. It allows You, The Player, to engage with it at whatever level you want. In a game where You, The Player, are also being asked to step into the role of You, The Protagonist, this is beneficial to engagement for people (like me!) who like to think too much about the backstory of the your-name-here protagonist on-screen. It is also beneficial to not distracting the player with conflicting information, or accidentally contradicting previously-established lore.

Enter Big-Head Bray. The Beyond Light-era explanation of why Exo were created and how they were made is a retroactive nuclear strike on the Exo lore; it strips away a lot of flexibility and thematic richness from the concept of the Exo, shoehorns them into a single narrow use case, and directly conflicts with early-game Exo lore implying their connections to Rasputin (which they then had to go back and hastily shoehorn back in later) or existence as war machines for the Collapse. If D1 lore is wide but shallow, the D2 lore is narrow but deep. Just because something has a lot of ‘depth’, I.E. many layers to traverse before you reach foundational bedrock, it doesn’t make it good.

Same thing with the Fallen. Season of Plunder felt to me like an attempt to reintroduce pulp genre back into the setting, but it fell flat because of two reasons: it didn’t really want to be pulp, and it was more concerned with its tethers to the science-fantasy exterior world than it was with creating its own cohesive narrative. Why was Mithrax doing evil pirate shit when he was young? Because he comes from a race of fucking evil space pirates! It Does Not Need To Be More Complex Than That! But the exculpation of pulp from the D2 narrative means that if Mithrax doesn’t have a good enough reason, WRT the larger narrative, it would be a glaringly obvious plot hole. By Plunder, Destiny had already undertaken the task of filling out the Eliksni lore with sympathetic science-fantasy excuses for why they were trying to exterminate humankind – the more earnest, pulp-forward explanation would just be that desperate, hurt, suffering people will do desperate things, hurt people, and may perpetuate the cycle of suffering.

Oy. There’s a lot you COULD get into. How the Destiny macro-narrative seems to be decaying the rigidity of good and evil in its original lore vs. how the micro-narrative is obsessed with trying to recapture that good/evil dichotomy in order to give players a reason to like the main characters. How the determination to connect and explain everything has resulted in a general flattening of the background lore, and the subsequent trivialization of many things the game included in earlier iterations of the narrative/lore. How the narrative has basically nothing to do with the Vex because they wrote themselves into a corner by trying to explain them too much while simultaneously not altering the foundational lore of the race, meaning there were too many things they can no longer do without retconning again.

Overall, I guess I will just end by saying that many of the things that Destiny is CURRENTLY doing, feels like the game is straining to rip the part of it out which proudly asks its audience not to think too hard about sweeping, dramatic statements that built a lot of the things people love about the game’s setting and narrative… and in doing so, is just ripping itself to pieces.

#More lore! MORE LORE!#dinklebot sitcom #northbot sitcom #destiny 2 #Pulp genre #Genre discussion #Sorry this got so long! I’m not used to writing this kind of big essay #it may not be super coherent but whaddya gonna do

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thepenultimateword · 1 year

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Ok, so since my first response to this post kinda went its own direction, I decided to give this prompt a second try. The prompt is originally by @gingerly-writing (I will write it in purple to separate it from the rest of the text).

"Oh," said the supervillain. Quietly. Too quietly. "I see. Kissing me was just a distraction."

"No! Well, yes, but...it's not like that!"

"Oh? So explain how it is. Quickly."

"Well...you see..." The supervillain's assistant fumbled for the right words. Which proved rather difficult when there seemed to be no right words to come by. How did one even begin to explain this dangerous, messy, swell of feeling expanding in their chest right now? A feeling that they still weren't sure should be encouraged or stamped out.

They'd never thought so much of themselves to imagine a relationship with the city's greatest criminal. They had been perfectly content standing on the sidelines, taking notes and fetching coffee with cream. They probably would have kept doing such, an important but unnoticed cog that kept their superior's life going smoothly. That is if it weren't for their stupid, idiot, ditz of a brother.

Their sibling had never been the brightest, sacrificing their own needs for others and putting silly morals ahead of good sense. Unlike the protagonist, who knew when to bluff and when to sell out, their brother was always so desperate to be right. As if there was even a true right in this crooked world.

And of course, they just had to go into hero work. Just had to go up against their boss of all people and put the protagonist's neck on the line. It wasn't like they were going to let the supervillain see them. Thinking back, there were probably a thousand less compromising things the assistant could have done for a distraction. Maybe that was a sign they'd been interested long before that messy, tooth-clashing first kiss. Could they sell that to the supervillain?

"Well...I did enjoy it."

The supervillain sighed, raising a crooked finger to the ever-present guards against the back wall.

"W-wait!" the protagonist cried. "I lied one time! One! As if you've never done the same!"

"My lies usually don't include so much tongue."

Their assistant blushed. "I was going for alluring. If it helps, the second kiss was more my style."

A sweet, soft thing that tasted of vanilla creamer, so much sweeter because it was alone and after hours. A coffee order that usually wouldn't have happened if the supervillain hadn't been intent on getting them on their own.

"A half-truth meant to appease me," the supervillain said with bitter-tipped nonchalance.

Maybe. The protagonist had walked into that trap willingly to keep up the pretenses of the first kiss, but they'd never planned any further than that. They certainly hadn't planned on the supervillain's clumsy small talk, or the way they held them so gently. Criminal overlords weren't supposed to be like that, were they? They were supposed to beat nobodies like them senseless for their audacity. Or use them up until they were a hollowed husk of their old self. They weren't supposed to be...cute.

"But still true," the protagonist argued. "I didn't know you would actually start to like me."

Not just cute. Soft. It was apparent within the first month that they were far more vulnerable then their villainous persona let on.

Were they hurting a lot right now? Did the protagonist actually mean that much to them? Or was it simply the humiliation of having an employee play their feelings so effortlessly for an advantage? Had to be hard to face up to with the entire organization staring at them. They'd probably have to deal their assistant an especially hard hand to patch all the open wounds in their reputation.

"I was just trying to save someone close to me," the protagonist said, not certain whether the explanation made the situation any better. "After that, I was just trying to survive.''

"The hero."

Ah, so they did know. Probably shouldn't be a surprise seeing how they'd come to the truth in some way or another. The tone was a little strange though. They weren't quite certain whether it was jealousy or general disdain.

"How--"

"Security cameras," Supervillain said coldly. "You might have kept me from seeing them with my own eyes, but you didn't keep them off film. I didn't notice for a while; I was...otherwise diverted, but yesterday... But perhaps that was your plan all along."

The assistant couldn't hold back their scoff. "You really think I'm the type of person who can cling onto someone for literal months to hide a little recording?"

"Well, I think we've established that we don't really know each other. Apparently, you think I'm the type of person who wouldn't have taken a simple, 'I'm not interested' for an answer. You could have done it right at the start. You still would have been caught, but you would have benefited from me not feeling like this."

"How do you feel?"

Stupid. Stupid. Was that really important when the protagonist was simply trying to walk out of here alive? Why should they even care? Like the supervillain said, it wasn't like any of it was real enough to stake feelings on anyway.

They felt the the two suited security guards hovering at their back, looming and dicomfortingly close. They had paused uncertainly as the back-and-forth got started, maybe not quite sure if the signal to take the assistant away still stood. Now, finally, the supervillain gave them an unquestionably clear order.

"Go." Their voice dripped with a venom not intended for them. "I'll call if I need you."

The guards seemed almost relieved to comply, letting out held breaths and moving quickly but crisply toward the exit.

For some reason, as the door clacked gently shut behind them, the assistant felt more nervous. Especially with the criminal's eyes burning into them like hot coals.

“You want to know how I feel?” the supervillain said.

The protagonist shifted uncomfortably. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me…”

"I'm angry.”

"Understandable." The assistant flinched back a step from the furvor, though it proved pointless as the supervillain mirrored their retreat with a stalking step forward.

"And confused."

"Of course."

"I want to tear my heart out of my chest. And yours."

The assistant blinked. That was...a reaction.

They tried shoving down some the sharp regret stabbing up through lungs, making it suddenly painful and hard to breath. So the supervillain had liked them that much. That was sort of a shame. Under other circumstances perhaps...well, it didn't matter now. They'd messed it all up. Actually, they hadn’t even really began. So they really shouldn’tbe worrying about the supervillain, they should just be worrying about themself.

"I don't know if I'm worth all that. We could just end this like two mature adults, starting with you letting me out of the building."

The supervillain narrowed their eyes. "You still haven't said it."

"What?"

"I don't know why I expected any different. You always give me everything but a clear answer."

"I wasn't aware you asked me a question?" the assistant said, glancing over their shoulder and estimating just how quickly they could make a run for the door.

The supervillain stepped forward, bringing their shiny black Derbys toe to toe with the assistant's ragged loafers. Nimble fingers took them by the chin, turning their face from escape to their burning carbon eyes. "Do you like me or not?"

The assistant could only stare.

"You say it was just one lie, and the way you talk doesn't close any doors, but then there's your hero and the infuriating fact that you can't come up with an ardent, overdramatic speech to salvage the relationship. I can't figure you out. Do you want out or not?"

"Wait..." the assistant held up their hands in front of them. "Wait, wait, wait. Are you not trying to kill me?"

The supervillain spluttered incredulously. "Kill you?"

"What?" the assistant cried, thoroughly confused by this point. What were the security guards and the ominous call to their office in the middle of the workday if it wasn't their life on the line?

"We kissed! I still have feelings for you! I can't kill you now. Maybe later up the road, but not anytime soon."

"You’re throwing me in secret prison then?"

"I'm only firing you."

"Oh." The protagonist took that in for a moment. "I suppose that's fair."

"Yes. The question that remains is do we continue seeing each other after I fire you? So please be explicitly clear. You like me. Yes or no?"

The protagonist hesitated, wetting their lips a moment before hesitantly wrapping their arm's around the supervillain's neck. "I thought that much was obvious."

"Clearer."

The protagonist pressed their lips softly to the supervillain's mouth.

"Clearer," the supervillain murmured, breath tickling sweet against their lips.

"I like you an extremely dangerous amount. To a point I'm afraid to say out loud. If you never say it, it never happened, right?"

The supervillain sighed. "You're the most infuriating, noncommittal... Your hero?"

"My brother."

"Your..." A burst of spontaneous laughter escaped the master criminal's previously tight lips. "I think that's the best news I've heard all day. Well, aside from that first bit."

Their hands settled warm and familiar against the small of the assistant's back, holding them firmly, yet carefully in place.

Was it really over that fast? Could ugly, terrifying things like this actually happen and turn out ok? Hero would probably say yes. They believed in forgiveness and conquering love and all that nonsense. That wasn't what the protagonist chose when they joined this side. They chose cold, hard truth.

They pressed their palms against the supervillain's shoulders, pushing slightly back from them. "I hurt you."

It wasn't a real question, but nevertheless, the supervillain seemed to understand.

"And I'm still mad. Doesn't mean I can't enjoy the moment." Their smile faltered and their voice quieted again. "You...are telling the truth, right? Honestly?"

The protagonist's insides twisted uncomfortably, a mixture of guilt and aversion to such unfamiliar openness.

"Yes."

The supervillain nodded, enfolding them back in their arms. "I might check in with you every once in a while. Just to be sure.”

“Yeah,” they agreed, still dazed. They pressed their face into the criminal’s shirt, breathing in the scent of fresh linen to assure themselves this was all real. “You’re really letting this go? How can you do that? How are you ever going to trust me again?”

Supervillain kissed the top of their head, a little more aggressively than normal, but still probably kinder than they deserved. “With time.”

Maybe in time they could learn to trust too.

Master Taglist:

@moss-tombstone @crazytwentythrees @just-1-lonely-person @the-vagabond-nun @willow-trees-are-beautiful @cocoasprite @insanedreamer7905 @valiantlytransparentwhispers @whovian378 @watercolorfreckles @thebluepolarbear @yulanlavender @kitsunesakii @deflated-bouncingball @lem-hhn @office-plant-in-a-trenchcoat @ghostfacepepper @pigeonwhumps @demonictumble @inkbirdie @vuvulia @bouncyartist @lunatic-moss-studio @breilobrealdi @freefallingup13 @i-am-a-story-goblin @ryunniez @rainy-knights-of-villany @distractedlydistracted @saspas-corner @echoednonny @perilous-dreamer @blood-enthusiast @randomfixation @alexkolax @pksnowie @blessupblessup @wolfeyedwitch @thedeepvoidinmyheart @cornflower-cowboy

#villain x villain #supervillain x assistant #supervillain x employee #creative writing #hero x villain #heroes and villains #heroes and villains community #writing snippet #writblr #writeblr #writers of tumblr

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jimblejamblewritings · 2 years

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heart has his heart | part 9.

Summary: (Y/N) Heart is chosen alongside her friends to attend Auradon Prep. Of course her friend Mal’s mom, Maleficent, has a much more sinister plan than the kids just attending Auradon. Will they be able to pull of stealing the wand or will (Y/N) find herself liking Auradon a bit too much?

Pairing: Ben x reader

Word Count: 1.4k

Warnings: none

Previous Part | (Series Masterlist)

Fairy Godmother stood in front of you and the other VKs. You were back in Goodness 101 at Auradon Prep. True to his word, Ben was able to get the Bandersnatch into Auradon. Everyone now knew the scary yet harmless beast in the forest was your Bandersnatch.

What they didn’t know about was the Jabberwocky hidden in the forest as well. The Jabberwocky preferred to spend its time around the Enchanted Lake when no one else but you were there.

“Since we can’t exactly bring your parents here, we set up a little surprise for you!” Fairy Godmother chirped enthusiastically.

You watched Fairy Godmother turn on the TV and saw all the VKs parents, but yours. Everyone else ran towards the television and you calmly walked.

“Hi, mom.” Mal spoke first.

“Oh, Mal. I m-miss you,” Maleficent struggled to get the words out.

“You children are never far from our thoughts.” Jafar chimed in.

Typical villain parents, didn’t really care. It was hard for VKs to always love their parents when sometimes it doesn’t feel like the love is there.

“Have you started without us? Oh no, no, (Y/N)? (Y/N) dear, we’re here darling.”

Your parents plopped down in front of you on the TV screen. Somehow, it was more embarrassing the way they showed up than if they hadn’t shown up at all.

“Hi mommy. Hi daddy. How are you guys?”

“Just great darling, you showing those Auradon peasants how a true royal is?”

“You know it. Oh we went to Wonderland the other day, I found your—”

“How long must mommy wait to see you, Mal?” Maleficent cut you and your parents’ conversation short. Typical Maleficent, it’s honestly a miracle Mal wasn’t all sorts of messed up with her as a mother.

“Well Ben’s coronation is coming up so probably not till some time after that. It’s really busy around here right now, you know.”

“You sure we can’t see you before that. I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get my hands on that little magic w— you! Little magic you.”

“I’m positive, mom.”

The villains started arguing amongst themselves, completely ignoring their children. Your parents took this chance to continue talking to you.

“Wonderland? Oh sweetie that’s amazing. It was everything we said it was right?”

“Yeah dad. Mom! I found Aunty’s Bandersnatch.”

“The Bandersnatch? Wow I haven’t… Cruella! Jafar! Shut up! The Bandersnatch, dear that’s incredible… push me again Grimhilde and I’ll throw you over the couch.”

“Sorry, I’m not aiming for you. If Miss Horns over here would stop…”

“Anyway dear, did you enjoy yourself?”

“Yeah, I… JAY!”

Jay made a move to end the video call, all the villains were getting too out of hand.

“Sorry, (Y/N). They were just too much.”

“Whatever, it’s fine.”

“Thanks Fairy Godmother for trying, but I think we’re done here.”

“Sorry, children.”

“It’s fine,” you reassured Fairy Godmother. “Pretty used to it. Our parents can’t be with each other for more than five minutes without arguing.”

The VKs walked off.

“Hey M. What do you think our parents are going to do if we don’t pull this off?” Evie asked.

“Oh we’re so dead.”

The VKs camped out in Jay and Carlos’ room trying to come up with a good plan to snatch the wand. They had a time and place but they still needed a plan.

“So, I grab the wand, hand it to Mal. And then we try to get the hell outta dodge…”

“Easier said than done.”

“Evie.” Mal handed her perfume bottle. “You’ll spray the limo driver with this, knock him out. Then you and Carlos swing by to get Jay, (Y/N), and I.”

The VKs were silent.

“We can do this guys! ‘Cause we’re rotten…” Mal said very unsure.

“To the core.” You all echoed.

“Hey, M!” you called the girl before you went into your room. “About what we talked about…”

“Yeah, I’m on it. Are you sure you want to do this (Y/N)?”

“Yeah, after our parents take over the world something about Ben still being forced to be in love with me seems… extra cruel. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, (Y/N/N).”

~~~~~~~~~

Family Day was the most overly cheesy display you’d ever seen in your life. And you had the pleasure of attending the Mad Hatter’s unbirthday party a few days ago. This had to be corny even by Auradon Prep standards. Ben and the student choir opened the day with a hip-hop rendition of his mom’s favorite song, “Be Our Guest”.

You and the other VKs watched from around the corner. You watched as Jay and Carlos went off to go stick their face in the chocolate fountain.

“Do I know you dear?” An old lady turned to you.

“Mmm? Oh no, I’m a new student here. Transfer of sorts.”

“Oh, really? Well I hope you like it here.”

“Yeah, you could say it’s really growing on me.”

“Isn’t that nice to hear.”

“Grandmother I don’t think you want to be talking to these people.” Audrey came up behind the old woman.

“Grandma?”

Mal ran up to you. “(Y/N), you’ve got to try these strawberries! Soo good!”

“YOU!” The old woman yelled at Mal.

This is about to be a big problem, you thought. Mal stood next to you confused.

“Audrey’s grandmother,” you whispered to your friend.

“How did you escape? And how did you manage to stay so young?!”

Ben quickly ran onto the scene.

“Queen Leah, it’s okay. Maleficent is still on the Isle. This is her daughter, Mal. And that’s (Y/N) Heart. She’s Mary Elizabeth’s, I mean, The Queen of Heart’s daughter. Remember the proclamation about bringing the Isle kids over. Give the new generation a chance.”

“To do what, Ben? Wreak havoc and destroy us?”

“They aren’t trying to do anything. They’re just like us.”

You were ready to say something and try to garner peace but good old Chad Charming had to show up and make everything worse.

“I mean you stole another girl’s boyfriend, I don’t know if that’s exactly like us.”

“That’s enough, Chad!” Ben said to his friend.

“And you,” Chad said to Evie, “are nothing but a gold digging cheater.”

“Magic mirror in my hand, who’s the biggest jerk in the land?”

Evie shoved the mirror in Chad’s face. He knocked the mirror out of her hand, making Jay and Carlos jump in.

“Hey, don’t touch her!”

Ben was caught in the middle trying to hold back both Chad and Jay. Chad was all up in Evie’s face so you panicked grabbed the perfume bottle from her purse and sprayed him with it.

“What did she do?!” Audrey yelled drawing even more attention. At this point, all the families on the grass were staring at you and the VKs.

“Come on guys, let’s get out of here. Let’s go!”

“I was worried something like this would happen.” You heard Beast say as you guys ran off. “Do something, son.”

You and the others were moping outside on one of the picnic tables. You didn’t want to talk to anybody about just happened. You thought things were getting better and in one hour you guys managed to ruin everything.

“Evie,” Doug approached. “Are you alri—”

“Doug!” Jane called him over.

“One second.”

“Doug!”

You watched Mal pull out her spellbook. “Beware forswear, undo Jane’s hair.”

You could hear Jane scream along with the other Auradon girls laughing and didn’t have to look to know her old bob was back. She deserved it honestly, as far as you were concerned.

Ben came up behind you resting his hands on your shoulders. He placed his chin on your head.

“Hey guys, how are you? I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay. You know forget about it. Everything will be fine after coronation tomorrow. I have to go do preparations, but it’ll be fine. I promise.”

“Ben’s delusional.”

You and the VKs could hear Audrey from the table behind you.

“Does he really think it’ll be fine. A villain will always be a villain, no matter how much Ben tries to doll them up. Evil has a stench and it doesn’t smell like roses.”

“It’s just the bad girl infatuation, Audrey. Don’t worry it won’t last. Ben will never make a villain a queen.” You heard someone else say from the table.

“He doesn’t have to cause I already am one, bitch.”

You didn’t miss a beat. You tried being nice but some of these kids just didn’t want to give you VKs a chance.

“Has the Hearts reign over Wonderland actually been reinstated? Because I don’t think so.”

“You know what!” You stood up from the table. “What did we ever do to you! We’ve done nothing but try to be nice since we got here!”

“You really think you guys are good here?”

The Auradon kids started laughing.

“I’ll call the Bandersnatch,” you threatened angrily. The others went wide-eyed and ran.

Mal grabbed your arm. “That’s it. Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

You walked off, pissed.

(end)...

#ben florian x reader #ben descendants #descendants fic

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class1akids · 1 year

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I know the anime adds angry bakugou scenes but how much of angry gag bakugou is there in the manga? Is it like it's just not there as often or that he never acts like that anymore?

The way I picture bakugou is that he's mellowed out a lot especially with the way he interacts with classmates + deku. But I think there's also the perception that he's still rude or 'classic bakugou' to them and hasn't really mellowed out in terms of his interactions as much as you'd expect him to with all the internal growth, even now.

Idk if I just created a different image of him in my head or if he is canonically like what I think him to be. (Tho either way, I think it has been a yr and as time goes on he'll probably mellow out even more 👀 Also, not trying to start any bkg discourse, just genuinely wanna hear/be signposted to your thoughts on this)

Bakugou absolutely did mellow out in the manga, but yeah, he still does have outbursts too. I don't think it's contradictory - it's not like he's undergone a total personality-change. A certain amount barking is integral to his character, but I think the important thing is the underlying emotion, reason and intent to his expression.

Early Bakugou was cruel or thoughtless because he didn't understand his own insecurities or true heroism and lashed out at others (especially at Izuku) to release whatever internal tension he was feeling.

But as Bakugou changes - the nature of his anger changes too. It's not like he stops altogether, but the manga shows this change the way it portrays the anger / its purpose.

For example, take the scene in Ch 257 when they talk about Deku's new quirks with All Might. A lot of fandom was up in arms at the time that Bakugou is a gremlin who has no reason to sit in the OFA meetings:

while even back then some of us argued that it was not just Bakugou being conceited, but that it was his response to this earlier part of the conversation where it got really dark and serious for a moment.

Bakugou used his anger / his Bakugou-ness on purpose, as a camouflage to change the mood / give himself time to figure out whether / when to confront All Might about the cross-out lines. But this comes back only in Ch 284 - in manga-time a year later.

But Bakugou's discussion with All Might contextualizes Bakugou's "angry gremlin" behaviour 30 chapters ago. So this is one example of a "Bakugou gag" in the manga having an actual narrative purpose and revealing something about his growth and maturity, despite continued gremlin behaviour.

If you don't mind manga spoilers, another scene that's coming in a 2-3 episodes is Bakugou's post-war outburst in the hospital, which is absolutely used as a gag and comic relief in the manga, where the class has to restrain him so he won't tear up his stitches trying to get to Deku.

Again, we have to wait several chapters / months to get confirmation that Bakugou's outburst here is driven by a genuine urge to say to Deku everything he wanted to say and not wait for another moment (that may or may not come). He wanted to desperately get to Izuku, because he "had more to say" and knew that it was important to say it.

Also, in the manga I love how the "you haven't changed" becomes a gag in itself between Bakugou and his class who has started to see through his "tsundere anger" ages ago. So it is very endearing how they find ways of channelling Bakugou's bombastic disposition into cute interactions, like Bakugou yelling about the cleanliness of the bath tub, his class-mates calling him the "same", and then the whole thing devolving into a playful, but intense splashing.

Bakugou's anger / the response to it is clearly a well-worn game, which helps everyone process post-apology, and trying to find a new "normal" for their interactions.

So to me it feels like that in the manga most "angry Bakugou" gags have a story-purpose, help characterize him and his shifting dynamics with other characters and rarely feel ooc.

This is not the case with anime!bakugou, where it often seems that the writers of those scenes have no understanding of Bakugou's growth or character. E.g. this season when he starts yelling about having to do evacuation completely ignore Bakugou's growing understanding of the importance of rescue, or how he's been working with Endeavor for 3 months at that point, being a good team-player and someone who takes his internship duties seriously. Anime!Bakugou angry-gags don't help with characterisation - rather, often they regress him so much that it makes almost difficult to understand how he gets from A to B.

#bnha meta #bnha manga spoilers #c1a asks #bakugou katsuki #anime!bakugou #manga!bakugou #manga vs anime

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fightabear · 3 months

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so screaming about a game you've been obsessed w for like. a decade with someone new is always fun and watching the cutscenes with the 4k texture pack for the first time suddenly made a bunch of shit click where it never did.

like for a really really really long time arachnero never made much sense to me? but it does if i consider what nero is so strongly implied to be.

like... he's derived from chaos. whose a weapon. there are a ton of parallels between chaos!vincent's design, regular vincent, and nero.

which makes this form have a lot more significance to me.

nero's eyes are now gold, not red. he no longer mirrors vincent in the ways he did, his skin is closer to chaos' ghastly pallor. the weapons are shown to have golden eyes. nero's given all a human can possibly give. he's just exhausted himself and wants nothing more than to die, and to merge with weiss so they can't be ripped apart again.

or if they are, he doesn't have to be the lonely survivor this time.

( i have a theory that the reason nero remained after weiss died is simply that he couldn't follow him. either because his corrupted essence will never filter into the lifestream, or nero himself is literally incapable of true death. chaos' fate is to say behind with the remnants of the dead world - nero doesn't want that. )

so this form right here i think is the remnants of nero as a person making the choice not to reform a human body, but to give in to the other side of his nature.

see, archnero is a spindly, half-formed creature. like it... looks larval. a freshly hatched spiderling before a molt. still figuring out its legs. the thing is also an absurdly easy boss battle - this is nero suddenly scratching powers he's kept hismelf away from.

because we know nero willingly wears his restraints. he could ahve taken them off at any point in the last three years to maximize his strength - he didn't.

he stayed bound up and restricted for as long as he could.

omega weiss? less so. i'd argue that this thing is neither omega nor weiss - this is nero's approximation of chaos. chaos if chaos was bold enough to try to flee its lonely fate with omega.

maybe it's what chaos might have been if it hadn't been manifesting in vincent. the color scheme is the exact same as nero's deepground uniform. the bit folded across its chest resembles his arms locked over his chest, but it also converts to be the throne weiss sits on. like... directly over where its heart would be if it were a living thing.

not to mention that many of its attacks mirror nero's attacks across his boss fights.

the fact that it ejects weiss once it's defeated feels very deliberate. weiss doesn't fall strapped into it, he falls before it. and as we know weiss falls through the darkness and down, down, down into the caverns of deepground and survives. there's no sign of this thing at all. and no sign of nero. weiss in dffoo also confirms he's no longer fused with nero - so i think them being fused into this boss battle was the closest they could managed. it also suggests this is how they intended to control omega - nero a fully realized weapon, and weiss the human heart steering it.

the entity's eyes are still open and lit until it also sinks down into the darkness, much slower than he does, and then they go dark. and i want to view that as nero either finally finding peace in death, or entering dormancy like the other weapons. i think it was implied that chaos returned to the planet, so maybe that's - nero's own reunion. becoming unified with the entity he was derived from and inheriting that dark fate. i'm not sure which is better or worse, but.

saving nero from that fate? would make a lot of sense as to why weiss would leap onboard with any of genesis' plans, which i really think he does.

in the very least it makes me want to draw them in a role reversal. weiss as the host for omega, trying to keep the planet alive and thriving for as long as he can so nero gets the peace that was denied to him in life. and they're reunited on the day nero is called to reclaim the planet.

#nero the sable #final fantasy dirge of cerberus #final fantasy vii remake #ff7r #if nothing else it makes excellent fanfiction material

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sarahowritesostucky · 4 months

Text

Rated: Explicit

Pairing: Steve x Bucky

Tags: ptsd, trauma recovery, kink negotiations, fetishes, fantasies, body modification, objectification, degradation, self-harm, destructive sexual urges, heavy bdsm, bondage, 24/7 D/s, dom Steve, sub Bucky, sadism, masochism, castration fantasy, dark comedy, oddly sweet relationship dynamics (idiots in love)

Summary: Bucky explains his darkest fantasies to Steve

🖤Disclaimer: Nobody gets castrated or otherwise body-modified in this fic, okay? It's Steve and Bucky, kink negotiating and sceneing w/ regards to Bucky's very strange fantasies.

Wait! I haven't read Part 1 Part 2 yet!

Part 3 - That Morning a Few Months Ago, When Steve Found Out About The Castration Issue, cont'd

By the time all the clothespins are on, Bucky is a sweaty, twitching mess. “Shhh,” Steve soothes—somewhat hypocritically, since he’s the one doing all the pinching. “You’re okay.”

“Mmhm,” Bucky nods, trembling. “Oh, god, Steve.”

“Shh, I know. I know.” Steve very much does not know. He’s never had a clothespin anywhere near his junk, and he never intends to.

These ones are teeny tiny and pastel-colored, maybe an inch long - like clothespins made for dolls. If that's true, then they’re certainly being put to off-brand use. Steve would laugh about it, but he’s tested the things on the skin between his thumb and forefinger, and they pinch like a motherfucker.

Bucky’s got them all around his groin and thighs, his taint and foreskin, all the way down the shaft to where the cock ring/stretcher hugs his cock at the base. The sensitive skin of his balls would have them too, only they’re still being pushed and weighed down by the stretcher, too taught to hold onto anything. Everywhere else is covered in the sweet looking clips, each one applied with tender, sadistic care.

Steve would argue that it’s not really sadism, if you’re only enjoying it because you know your masochistic partner is. That’s just love. But he can’t deny that he’s enjoyed watching Bucky react to the intimate hurts, because Bucky’s beautiful in anything he does. Even suffering.

Every time his breath has hitched, every time his muscles have tensed and his body jerked, has been in response to Steve applying a new clip. His skin is flushed purply-pink from it, getting darker by the minute from all the blood flow between his legs; his breath coming in desperate, shaky inhales. His eyes are wet with tears but he’s not crying. Steve would assume that he hates this, if not for the fact that his hips keep jumping into it, if not for the fact that Steve hasn’t stroked him off once since he first slid the ring on and started hurting him, and Bucky’s still hard as a fucking rock.

Steve gets a bunch more oil on his hands and touches him delicately, careful not to knock the clips around too much. He gently, gently holds the head of Bucky’s dick and rubs in wet little circles, pressing against the softness of the glans, digging the tip of his thumb into the slit, gathering the precum that beads out and swirling it around.

Bucky grunts softly when Steve reaches back with his other hand and starts pressing against the base of the plug that's in his ass. At the same time, he keeps working the pad of his finger back and forth under the head of Bucky's dick, and glances up. Bucky’s brow is pinched, his expression one of distress.

Steve keeps pulsing the plug, keeps rubbing that sensitive spot under the head of his dick. “This feel good?” he asks quietly, not surprised when Bucky nods and whines unhappily.

“Steve … p-please …”

“Shhh. It sounds real pretty, honey, but you shouldn’t beg. I’m not gonna listen.”

Bucky shivers and nods. “Yes Sir.”

“Steve,” he corrects.

“S-steve.”

Steve had thought he’d like it, being called ‘Sir’, but he’s come to find that it’s not his favorite. It usually feels so inauthentic, stripping what they do together of its real intimacy and making it into a production instead.

Only when he’s doing the most outlandish, demeaning, perverted things to Bucky, does ‘Sir’ ever feel right. Only then, or else when Bucky’s in subspace (Bucky still denies that’s what it is, but Steve can tell when it happens, and if that helpless, non-verbal, pink-flushed and muzzy-eyed condition isn’t subspace, then Steve doesn’t know what the hell is). Bucky doesn’t seem to be very able to call him anything but ‘Sir’, when he’s in that state.

“Are you gonna?” Bucky asks in a nervous whisper. Steve is still rubbing under the head of his dick with one hand, still pulsing the plug with the other. “Are you going to turn it on?”

He’s not, but he doesn’t need Bucky to know that. “I might,” he says instead. “If I decide I want to.” He tilts his head and surveys Bucky’s expression. “What’s the word you say if you can’t do it?” he prompts, and Bucky breathes out a laboured,

“Yellow.”

“Good.” Steve acts like he never even asked the question, still gliding his finger around that one, sensitive spot. Bucky doesn’t say yellow, and Steve moves on, makes a ring with his thumb and forefinger and jerks him below the head in gentle motions that tug his foreskin and just barely jostle all the clips along his shaft.

Bucky hisses at the combined pain and pleasure. “Hunh-ah! Ohn … sh-hit.”

Steve trails fingers down the center of his sac, smearing oil, tracing the seam from front to back, delighting in how he can see the twitching as Bucky’s balls keep trying and failing to pull up close to his body. “S’it a lot?” he murmurs, glancing up and catching the end of Bucky’s throat bobbing in a heavy swallow.

“Uh huh,” he gasps. “Ss-steve … I’m so—oh … I’m s-sso …”

“Close?” Steve whispers, but Bucky shakes his head and whines a pathetic little ‘no’. Steve tuts. “Oh, Sweetheart, I think you’re lying to me. I think you’re real close.” A stifled whimper cuts off in a gasp as Steve curls his fingers against his balls, over and over, stroking and then patting in an almost-but-not-quite rough enough way to be what Bucky wants. Everything is filthily, luxuriously slick. “I mean, you can cum just from me wailing on your ass a little, and I’ve got fucking clothespins all over your junk, pal. So I think you must be feelin’ real wound up.” He closes his oiled fist over his cock for a single, loose stroke and slaps his balls at the very end of it.

“Ohn ... fuck,” Bucky says, and it’s Steve’s favorite kind of ‘fuck’: the kind that’s whimpered, high and tight and hushed, half in the throat and half behind the nose; the kind that works its way through clenched teeth, turns guttural at the end, and barely makes it past the vocal cords. And Steve is a bad man, because he would pay a lot of money to hear nothing but those sorts of desperate, not-quite-sure-I-want-it, ‘fuck’s from Bucky’s lips for all time.

He takes a break when he sees Bucky’s cock throb dangerously hard. Even with the ring and stretcher on, Steve’s been teasing him for a while now, relentless, slipping and sliding and pinching and clipping the little clips in places that hurt Bucky just the way he craves. And despite his enduring aversion to it, Bucky is still a healthy, grown adult male who’ll come if you touch his cock enough—and Steve has been touching. Not to mention the plug up his ass, currently inflated to press unerringly against his prostate. So Steve pulls his hands away and stands up from the chair.

Bucky’s eyes follow him, heated, a little pinch of unhappiness between his eyebrows the longer he looks. “Steve,” he says softly, asking and complaining all in one. Steve smiles, fond, because Bucky’s always had a talent for packing a lot of shit into the single syllable of his name. Bucky’s complaining because he doesn’t like that Steve’s still fully dressed.

This started out as Steve panicking and needing to get his bizarrely traumatized boyfriend under control as fast as possible. Now that he has, his field of vision almost seems to expand. He becomes more aware of himself, of how his pants have become too tight, how his pulse is ticking in his veins and his cock is trapped and pressing against the zip of his jeans uncomfortably.

He gives himself some relief by flicking the button and pulling down the fly. It feels good, makes him realize how long he’d been ignoring himself in the first place. Steve shivers pleasantly and bites back the groan that wants to come, stepping back into the vee of Bucky’s legs.

He licks his lips and lets his eyes roam greedily over all of Bucky’s tanned skin. Fuck, he’s gorgeous like this: body held taught and trembling, skin flushed and just barely starting to sweat as he hangs there, suspended, wanting, helpless to Steve’s whims.

Steve’s dick gives a hearty pulse now that he’s made room for it, and he allows himself one good squeeze from over the the crotch of his jeans before ignoring it again. In his bonds, Bucky looses a tiny sound of frustration, holding back whatever it is he wants to say.

Steve smirks. “Oh yeah?” He rubs his hands all over Bucky’s shoulders and down his pecs, over the ladder of his ribs and the tight lines of his abdomen, fingers following the belt of muscle that slips from his waist down to his shuddering pelvis. He flicks at the clips closest to the cockring’s base and waits for Bucky to hiss in pain before closing his fist around the head of his dick. He squeezes in little, repetitive pulses. Over and over until he gets another overwhelmed cry out of Bucky,

“Ah! Ss-s-steve, please … I-I can’t …”

“Sure you can,” he murmurs. He steps close enough that their chests touch, and then leans in just another inch or two, pushing Bucky’s body with his, forcing him back in the ropes. Bucky’s bonds are all rigged from a single pivot point in the ceiling, so Steve knows that this is tightening the harness, making the ropes dig in cruelly at Bucky’s thighs and ass. He knows he doesn’t have to worry though—Bucky’s always griping that Steve might as well not even bother with shibari if he isn’t going to make it harsh enough to leave real marks.

He smooths his hands over the tops of Bucky’s thighs, groping the muscle, then sliding outwards to his butt. Bucky’s hands are both clenched into fists where they’re tied at his sides and Steve brushes over them with his fingers in a quiet little hello, before veering away to grab at his hips again. He uses that hold to rock them together, slow and dirty. It’s not really the right angle for Steve, but that’s not why he’s doing it. He wants to watch Bucky’s pupils dilate as he responds to Steve’s touch, wants to see him helplessly react to the pressure and the friction.

There’s no way the grinding doesn’t make every single one of the clothespins move and twinge painfully. Bucky keeps making little hurt sounds the more he’s pinched and stimulated, and Steve leans in and kisses him. It’s a sloppy, shallow kiss, stopping and restarting multiple times, Steve doing most of the work while he hums in mock sympathy and licks at Bucky’s slack mouth. “Yeah,” he breathes. “You are close, huh?”

Bucky shivers and nods, more tears leaking from his eyes. And these ones, Steve thinks, these ones might be real tears of distress. Steve’s heart pangs for him, even as his neglected dick throbs in his underwear from watching it all. He’s been hurting Bucky real nice, but he’s also been touching everything he wants to touch, in ways that aren’t always easy for Bucky. Feeling so much has Bucky’s breath hitching in barely-there sobs each time Steve pushes on the plug or dares to glance fingertips against the head of his cock.

“Buck,” he coos, looking down between their bodies. “It’s alright to feel good, baby. You know that. You’re allowed. It’s not a bad thing to let it feel good.” He glides his fingers into the crease of Bucky’s hip, down between his legs and back up to the base of his cock, over his pubic bone where, as far as Steve knows, hair hasn’t grown since 1945. Steve likes to watch the shine and trickle of the oil against all that bare, ruddy skin. He likes watching everything darken, likes the access it gives him. “I want to put my mouth on you so bad,” he confesses, not surprised when Bucky shudders against him.

“Please,” he breathes, begging for Steve to not do that. “Steve …”

Steve’s balls throb and his dick pulses in a strange but familiar counterpoint to the ache that always lodges in his chest whenever he hears Bucky fearing something that should only feel good. “Hang on, pal,” he soothes, stepping away to the rolling cart so that he can get the crop he’d set aside. “You’ve still got a lot of explaining left to do.” He curls his fingers over the crop’s handle. It’s a very small implement, less than two feet long, with a short and sturdy fold of leather at the tip—made just for the sort of precise, delicate swatting that Steve has in mind. Bucky’s throat clicks audibly in another nervous swallow as he watches Steve take hold of it. Steve uses the tip to touch Bucky’s chest. He pats the leather flange against his pec, nudging at the black metal barbell that beads out to either side of his nipple. “Are you ready to get talking?”

Bucky nods shakily. “What do you wanna know?”

“Well …” Steve keeps his tone conversational as he pats around at Bucky’s belly and groin with light, testing ‘thwaks’. He sits in the chair. “Knowing you, you’ve probably already researched it to hell and back, am I right?”

“... Yeah,” Bucky says distractedly, and Steve knows without looking up that he’s staring at the crop and where Steve might be taking it next. “I’m sorry.”

Steve swats him on the inner thigh. “I don’t want you to be sorry,” he corrects. “I want you to explain.”

“Steve …”

“Explain it to me,” he repeats, stern, fluttering the tip of the crop along the taut line of a hip flexor. “What is it about it that appeals, hm?” He lets his eyes drag back up to Bucky’s face. “Why do you like the idea of … of castrating yourself?” He hesitates for only a fraction of a second, but he knows that Bucky doesn’t miss it, doesn’t miss how it is hard for him to even say the word. Steve swallows and steels himself. He already has a pretty good guess of what Bucky’s answer is going to be, but he needs to hear it from him. He lets the crop trail lazily up and down Bucky’s inner thigh, stopping to nudge one of the clips along his taint. “Come on, pal. Explain it to me. I’m not gonna knock these off until you do.”

Bucky’s face is red, embarrassed, and it takes him a moment before he can manage to open his mouth and admit, “I like … that it makes you soft. I probably wouldn’t be able to get hard anymore. My body wouldn’t react the same.”

Steve frowns and touches the bouncing line of Bucky’s erection with the crop. Just the visual threat of it there is enough to make Bucky jerk with excitement. Steve tuts at the reaction, but it was an honest answer, so he swats him lightly on the head of his cock in reward.

Bucky makes a horrible, stifled sound; like he’s taken a gut punch but is trying to keep quiet. “So it’s about being impotent, then,” Steve says, heart sinking and trying not to show it. He’s always tried hard to make sure that what they do together is something good, something Bucky either wants, is ambivalent about, or can learn to want. Steve hates the idea that maybe he’s been pushing sex on Bucky when he doesn’t want it. He’s got his mouth open to say something to that effect, but Bucky’s already answering him,

“No. Not impotent. Just …” he flounders. “Just different.” Steve raises an eyebrow and makes a hand gesture to indicate that Bucky should keep on talking, because Steve sure as shit doesn’t understand yet. Bucky sighs. “I like the idea of just being there for you. Of my body not reacting. Not being able to use my cock to feel good.” His face colors even worse and he averts his eyes. “I’d never have to see it get hard.”

Steve presses his lips tightly together, hurt by that. He knows that it makes Bucky nervous to see his own body react that way. Steve’s never been brave enough to ask for the specifics of why. The generalities are plenty, and Steve’s not so stupid that he can’t infer. Bucky was tortured, horrifically, raped and traumatized until all the wires in his brain got crossed. They still are, these days, but Steve’s been trying his damned hardest to untangle at least a few of them. “So you never want to cum?” he asks in disbelief. “Ever again?” The thought makes him want to cry.

“No! I do. I mean, I still could,” Bucky says. “When you want me to. When I need it. But it would never happen by accident, only if you wanted it to, if you put real work into it. Otherwise, I—” He chokes on a breathy ‘ah!’ as Steve swats the head of his cock again, “I–I wouldn’t have to—ooh!—w-worry about it.”

“Mm. ‘Worry’,” Steve repeats unhappily. “What about the humiliation aspect of it? The emasculation?” Steve’s pretty sure that’s what it’s about for most of the freaky fetish internet people (but leave it to Bucky to find the fringe group of a fringe group). “Is that part of the fantasy?”

Bucky pauses guiltily. “I mean … yeah. It’d be a bonus, I guess.”

Steve scoffs. He really feels like he needs a lot more time to try and wrap his mind around the way that Bucky sees this, because God knows it’s not how Steve sees it. Just the concept of being voluntary neutered has him wanting to shield his own nuts with both hands. Still, he tries to do what he always does in situations like this. He flexes his mental strength and imagines how Bucky must feel about this new, fucked up thing he’s expressing. “So ... you like that your body would be under control?” he eventually guesses, taking his cues from Bucky’s expressions. He taps the shaft of the crop against where the plug is lodged in Bucky’s ass, watching him wince minutely. “Your body’s reactions, your sex drive?”

Bucky nods and croaks out, “Yeah. Yeah, under your control. Exactly. This would just control it a little bit. I like feeling under control.”

"I know you do.” Steve is in no way actually considering this, but he plays along, mapping out the shape of it in his mind. He winds up drawing an unpleasant comparison between Bucky getting his balls chopped off to control his sexuality, and female circumcision. “... Men who’ve had this done,” he asks slowly, “they don’t get erections?”

“Well … No. Not easily. Not strong ones.”

“Do they ejaculate?”

“Not as much.”

“Huh.” He trails the crop down Bucky’s cock, nudging at the clips along the way. He leans forward in the chair and watches intently as he rubs the leather flange over Bucky’s balls. They’re taut and shiny and dark, swollen from being bound so cruelly. He taps them once and Bucky flinches and gasps. “But they can still have orgasms?” Steve checks.

“Y-yeah. Dry. They can cum dry.”

Steve looks up. “Personally, I really like these,” he says, tapping. “I like seeing ‘em, touching ‘em, putting ‘em in my mouth. I don’t know what I’d do, if you—” he cuts off, swallowing down a slight wave of nausea at the image of Bucky, bleeding out on some guy’s basement’s tennis table. “You can’t get your balls chopped off, Buck,” he says, forcing levity into his voice. “It’d be such a waste.” He lifts Bucky’s balls up on the shaft of the crop and hefts their weight a few times. “Look at these gorgeous nuts, huh? Just think: what would I get to torture so nicely if you didn’t have these beauties?”

Bucky’s face is still flushed deep in embarrassment, but he isn’t looking away from Steve anymore. He starts chewing his lip, and Steve gives him a real swat behind his balls, getting a bare spot between the clips on his taint. Bucky moans and jerks, making the harness sway midair. Steve steadies him.

“You’d really take that away from me? Hm? Change your body like that?”

Bucky shakes his head, fast and desperate, and the obvious honesty in it is a huge relief. “No,” he gasps. “No not if you didn’t let me. I wouldn’t, I swear!”

“But if I let you?” Steve asks, waspish, striking out to knock one of the clips off from behind his balls. Bucky yelps. “You’d gladly do it then?”

“Oghn.” Bucky nods, recovering from the pain—cock dripping from the pain. He looks pleadingly down at him. “It’d be so simple,” he whispers. “I’d be so simple and compact and so … so useful for you.”

Steve averts his gaze back down so that Bucky can’t see the revulsion pass through his eyes. He doesn’t even know what the hell Bucky means by all that. It’s like they’re speaking in two different dialects of the same language: close, but no cigar. “You really think I want to have sex with someone who doesn’t enjoy it?” he asks, trying not to let his voice waver with the sorrow he feels.

“No,” Bucky insists. “I would enjoy it.”

“That makes no sense, you jerk. You wouldn’t have a sex drive!” Steve says angrily. “Your body wouldn’t have testosterone, and you wouldn’t have a sex drive.”

“I’d still be able to feel pleasure,” Bucky insists. “When you touch me. And I’d still want to be intimate with you. You could still make me cum. All of that, but it would just all be you.” He says it like he’s pleading with Steve to understand. “Don’t you see? I wouldn’t need it, but I could enjoy it when I got it anyway. Please! I just want to work right. I want to be under control.”

Steve nods, upset and trying to calm himself down. He doesn’t think they’re going to come to any kind of an understanding on this one. “Sometimes the wires won’t make sense,” he can just hear his therapist saying. “And they don’t need to. You can still be a supportive partner. Do your best to understand, tell him when you can’t, and don’t invalidate what he feels.”

“I’d be sexual with you,” Bucky’s still arguing, frustrating Steve by plowing ahead and just spitting more words out at him. “I wouldn’t be doing you a favor. I’d want it. You’ll make me want it. But when I’m by myself, it’d just be gone. Like turning off a vibrator when you’re not using it.”

“Christ.”

“… Is that really so bad to want?” he asks, looking hurt.

It’s messed up on seven fucking-levels to want, Steve thinks but doesn’t say. He knows he should try harder to talk this out—Bucky’s clearly not trying to hurt himself just for the sake of hurting himself—but right now Steve is still terrified of what might happen. He feels tired, brain overly taxed from trying to navigate the traumatized, fucked-up nooks and crannies of the brain of the man he loves and just wants to make love to, goddamnit. He sniffs and looks back up at him, features stern. “Well sorry to break it to you, pal, but no matter why you think you want to do it, I’m not letting you chop your balls off. You’re just gonna have to catalogue that one in the spank bank.”

“Steeve,”

Like a brittled rubber band, Steve’s tolerance snaps. In a flash, he starts hitting the clothespins with the crop, knocking them off suddenly and precisely, one by one by one. He’s aware of Bucky gasping and yelping and jerking from the sudden pain, but he doesn’t stop until he’s knocked every single one of the clips off. “I’m gonna cum,” Bucky gasps breathlessly, right on the edge. “I’m–I’m—”

Steve leans forward in the chair, hauls Bucky’s crotch to his face, and sucks his tortured balls straight into his mouth. Bucky keens and jerks, but Steve doesn’t let go. He brings a hand up to knuckle brutally into Bucky’s taint, and then—meanly but so goddamn carefully—he closes his teeth, biting down on Bucky’s balls hard enough to make it really hurt.

Bucky’s sharp cries don’t disappear so much as they go subvocal, cut off into a choking, strangled sound that tells Steve as good as any scream could, that he’s climaxing. The flesh in Steve’s mouth throbs and twitches, Bucky’s balls trying desperately to pull up tight to his body as he comes. Steve thinks that the pain of having them forced away like this must be dragging the orgasm out, making it more intense; and despite how fucked up it all is, Steve feels glad that he can give that to him.

He stops biting after a second or two and just sucks on them instead, feeling the shape against his tongue and the twitches of Bucky’s hips against his face. Distantly, he’s aware of the spurts of cum that’ve landed against his neck and shoulder, probably getting on his tee shirt in the back, too. He waits until Bucky is shivering with oversensitivity before he pulls his mouth away. Bucky’s erection has flagged, though his cock remains thickened because of the ring. Steve works it off him as gently as he can, grinding his teeth every time he hears Bucky hiss and whimper from the overstimulation. “Sorry, sorry.”

“I’m okay.”

He stands up again and pulls Bucky into a tight hug, not wanting him to see the wetness that’s in his eyes. Bucky’s arms both flex where they’re bound at his sides, telling Steve that if he had them free, he’d be hugging back right now. “I love you,” Steve whispers, thinking that he’s got to think of a way to satisfy this urge of Bucky’s. Preferably before the idiot goes and gets his nuts chopped off.

Steve’s therapist is no fucking help whatsoever. She doesn’t immediately freak out when he tells her about Bucky joining nutjob (literally) chat groups online. Steve doesn’t know why he’s surprised. She never says what he wants her to. He’s her client, goddammit. He’s the one paying her. She’s never even met Bucky and yet she still somehow always seems to take his side. So they talk a lot about Bucky and what sorts of things might help him to feel satisfied without amateur surgery in Mexico/Some Guy’s Basement.

“No. How can that possibly help? It can’t!”

“We don’t get to tell people how they should feel, or how they should heal, Steve. Reenacting in a safe space, with a safe person, that can be very cathartic.”

Steve manically researches cock cages and chastity play on the internet for a day and a half. He sits Bucky down for a Serious Conversation on possibilities other than literal castration.

So, ‘consensual non-consent’ is a thing— “CNC,” because everything has to have a goddamn acronym these days.

Steve’s pretty sure that what they’ve been doing can’t technically count as that, because Bucky never non-consents to begin with—he’s a 24/7 whore for being forced, used, and objectified. But yeah, it’s basically rape play. Because of course it would be.

Turns out, Steve’s sexual orientation really is double dog dare, because Bucky likes CNC a lot, and so they get into that, because Steve would never deny him anything that facilitates intimacy between them. Turns out that when he’s held and forced and used and put and made to, many of Bucky’s sexual problems don’t rear their ugly heads. And Steve can get used to an-ny-thing, if it’s something that helps Bucky accept pleasure.

So they make some changes in their daily life and habits. Because at this point, what’s a few more? Bucky starts wearing cock cages all the time, and only Steve is allowed to remove them, and sometimes Bucky just wants to bend over and take it and be a good object for Steve, which is what they do.

They order a bunch of stuff on Amazon. Silicon, plastic, metal, tiny, medium, solid, slotted, big, locking—all sorts get ordered and show up at their door not twenty four hours later, and Bucky tries them all and picks his favorites. Steve is tasked with disposing of the reject pile. As a child of the depression, it hurts a piece of his soul to throw anything away unused, even a handful of cock cages. Bucky tells him to stop being an idiot and chuck ‘em. Steve does.

Bucky wants one absolutely locked on himself that he cannot get hard in and he cannot remove. For safety reasons, Steve is wary of this. “What if you’re in a car accident or something, huh? Your dick’ll get crushed and the doctors won’t be able to get to it in time!”

Bucky’s blithe response of “All the better,” does not inspire confidence in Steve.

They come to the compromise of a heavy-duty metal cage, but with single-use plastic padlocks—they come in packs of a hundred and have serial numbers on each one, so that Steve will absolutely know if Bucky ever cuts one off without telling him. Bucky clearly has no intention of jerking one out on the sly, so he readily agrees to this. Effectively, they incapacitate Bucky’s dick in a sick sort of mockery of Bucky’s castration fantasy.

Steve learns all about castration fantasies, of course. He researches the hell out of it so that he can know all the right things to do and say to get Bucky off when they play. He learns all about the prostate and where it is and how to make Bucky come from that and only that. For the first time ever, with the help of a few handy bedroom accessories and a little practice (and Bucky spending a lot of quality time with his own therapist), Steve is actually able to initiate sexual touch without triggering him. Turns out, all you have to do is lock Bucky’s dick up and he’s just fine and dandy with being fucked, fingered, or toyed with to orgasm—only minimal dehumanization or knifeplay needed.

Steve absolutely cries some very manly tears when he’s finally able to hold the fucking love of his life in a soft bed and make love to him—with Bucky actually enjoying it.

Masterlist

Part 4

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baugojo · 2 years

Text

♡XIAO!YAKSHA argument w love

arguing with xiao is like arguing with a brick wall. your boyfriend, sometimes forgets that you, have a ton of human emotion. so right now, your hands are being thrown in the air every so often for dramatic affect; and he’s standing there, taking it.

you weren’t mad at him for an invalid reason. you actually had a good point as to what upset you so much.

when traveling all together on accident and colliding down at the bottom of the chasm, you and yanfei found a way to connect with xiao and bring him to you. but after figuring out the time-loop, and the true loss of his friend’s life; you found an exit.

yelan and xiao used the said compass to help you all get out of this mess; whilst then xiao had full control of it, and you, yelan and yanfei fought the darkness that swormed.

for some odd reason, this entire small trip of yours, with friends, and boyfriend, he was awfully admiring the thought of sacrifice. and so when the compass was breaking, he teleported all of you to the surface; allowing him to fall alone. in the dark. zhongli had a feeling this would occur, and so luckily he was there to save your boyfriend. but what if..

“xiao, you could’ve died!” your voice on the cusp of a screech, you continued. “what then huh?”

“you were safe. that is all that mattered to me.” he defended, “I am an adeptus, it is my venture to protect liyue and its people.”

“what about being my protector? I don’t care if I’m stuck with you for eternity down there! sacrificing yourself is never the answer xiao!”

“it is when it was the only option for your safety!”

“no it isn’t!”

this argument was pointless. you were getting nowhere. you couldn’t really understand why xiao spoke so much about sacrificing himself earlier in the chasm, because you thought you’d made him a little less miserable. the moment you felt yourself touch the air above, when your feet hit the ground, you were quick to try running back into the chasm. but yelan held you back.

“I’m going to bed.” you mumbled; because after a long and complicated discussion full of yelling, how could you not be tired? in fact, xiao should be resting much more than you. but you weren’t going to push him right now.

you slush yourself into the shared bedroom in the teyvat building, knowing well that the wangshu inn walls were top quality, and still, verr could probably hear you both. you weren’t going to hear the end of it tomorrow.

fluffing your pillow now, you got yourself ready for bed. you couldn’t fight him anymore. like said in the beginning, it was like arguing with a brick wall. not because xiao could care less about you, or your feelings, no. xiao loves you, and for that, he’d do literally anything. but more so because xiao cannot comprehend the way he makes people feel sometimes; how he makes you feel, making poor decisions such as this.

he worries you. you felt your heart pound out of your chest, reliving the moments where you really thought you’d lost the love of your life forever.

as if on cue to the small twinkle of water that melted off the side of your face, your boyfriend wiped the tear from your stained cheek. he felt bad, slightly coming to an understanding on how you felt. I mean, you are his world; what if you were to do the same? what really got to him, was the spoken liquid that laced your beautiful complexion.

“please don’t cry my love.” xiao could feel your discomfort, hurt, fear, causing him to wrap himself around you, enclosing you in his body, as your head measles it’s way into his soft abed chest. still wanting to hit him and fight him, for now, you’d except the comfortable aura that now served the room. “I’m sorry.” xiao’s voice whispered; whilst his chin rests upon your head of hair, comfortably. “though as an adeptus I swore to protect the people of liyue, as your partner I also swore to protect you.”

“I love you.” his hands drabbled along your sides, now resting his head in the crook of your neck; allowing you to swirl your pointer-finger around in circles with strands of the green-blue locks combed through. “I love you.” you replied, still wrapping his hair around your digits, falling asleep in what felt like seconds after; satisfying xiao. and now he, can also rest.

as you predicted, you didn’t hear the end of it when trying to leave wangshu inn discreetly, verr was just waiting for you to try and leave without her catching sight of you.

an: I cried playing the perilous quest lmao.

#genshin xiao #xiao x reader #xiao x you #xiao fluff #genshin imagines #genshin x reader #genshin impact #genshin fluff #xiao genshin impact #xiao gi #xiao thirst #genshin impact xiao #xiao imagines

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2myl0ver · 6 months

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☾ tatlong bilyon, ikaw lang ang aking gusto.. // choi yeonjun

genre : angst/ wc : 875 / tw : cursing / masterlist / song : ere

you and yeonjun rarely fight, since the beginning of your relationship you had never fought over something small or something that's not worth fighting over, which means once you and yeonjun do fight it's most likely over something serious.

for the past year, you have been dealing with yeonjun's busy schedule and just took it as it is, to you, it was all worth it. you loved him, he loved you. it felt heartwarming to genuinely love someone and to feel genuinely loved. however, it was hard.. for him, and for you.

he was always busy and so were you, but you always went out of the way to make plans with him, however with you it wasn't the same story. whenever you'd try to make plans with him he'd always have a reason to not go, but when he makes plans with you you push everything aside to spend time with him, whether that's sitting on a couch cuddled beside him or sitting in a fancy restaurant.

you took it as the sacrifices of dating an idol, like something that comes with the good, though you felt like the good was all gone.

this past month, you just couldn't take it anymore. you were stressed with school work and you decided to come over to the dorms when it was his day off, but once you arrived there yeonjun looked rather upset. now, you understood it wasn't good to show up unannounced but you have worked so hard and just needed a break. you two haven't seen each other in 2 months, if you hadn't come over would you have ever seen him again?

he grabbed you by the arm aggressively, walking you to the door. "what are you doing here?" he said quietly. "i need a break. i just wanted to see you, college has been a pain in the ass and i haven't seen you in 2 months." you said, looking up at him, "you can't just show up unannounced! you didn't tell me you wanted to see me. if you had told me, we could've scheduled it." he argued, still having a grip on your hand. "hey, let go of me," you squirmed your hands around "hey, i have been trying to make plans with you since forever you're always busy. i just wanted five minutes with you, i want to spend time with you, is that so much for me to ask?" you fought to say whilst tearing up. "you can't just fucking show up here whenever you want, just because it's my day off doesn't mean this isn't still my workplace. you're so fucking annoying." he said. "w-what..?" your lips tremble as tears threaten to pour. "y-you know what i'll just leave" you quickly started to move, searching for the door knob, "wait-" yeonjun chased after you, trying to get a hold of your hand, but you were too fast. a sigh left his lips and he walked back to the dorms, finding taehyun standing near the door once he went back in. "that was really shitty man." taehyun criticized, "i know.. i didn't mean it. i don't know what came over me. these schedules have me fucked man."

by now, it was already 11pm, he's been texting you non stop since you left. "you have to go to her place if you wanna keep your relationship with her, hyung. you know that she's been putting up with you since forever right? just do this one thing for her." soobin said who was on the bed beside him. yeonjun sighs, knowing everything soobin had said was true, if he wanted to keep you he needed to come to you.

yeonjun sat up and began reaching for his hoodie on his bed side table, "hyung, where are you going? its almost midnight and it's raining." soobin said, confused. "i'm doing what you said. i need to get over there." yeonjun says to which soobin sighs to, "okay. be safe, hyung." yeonjun heads out of their dorms, immediately running to the direction of your apartment.

once yeonjun arrives at your place, he attempts to knock on the door aggressively, however when that doesn't work he steps aside and starts to shout your name, looking up at your window in the rain.

you, who was studying before you heard your name being called outside by a familiar voice, yeonjun's.

you run to your window and looked down to see yeonjun, soaked in the rain calling for you. you quickly run downstairs and opened the door for him, he hugs you and you start crying into his shoulder the moment you smell his scent. "i'm sorry, i'm so sorry." he says, his palm placed on the back of your head and the other arm wrapped around your waist. "don't ever leave me like that again, please." he desperately says. "and you don't ever leave me alone like that again!" you say, banging on his chest. "i know. i'm sorry. i'll make more time for us, i promise."

the next day, he asks for a week with a clear schedule with nothing on it but you, and you spend the whole week with him making up for the days you two were apart. <3

#TXT imagines #tomorrow by together #tomorrow x together #TXT #tomorrow by together imagines #tomorrow x together imagines #choi yeonjun imagines

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menalez · 16 days

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https://www.tumblr.com/unabombastic/746727361545895936/httpswwwtumblrcomvvitchscvm-deactivated202306?source=share

thoughts

whew u gave me a lot to go thru and it was difficult going from link 1 to more links but. anyways

i didnt mind this article at first bc i did read a lot of research arguing lesbians were exposed to more testosterone in the womb etc and show some masculinised traits. as an example women with hyperandrogenism or PCOS are more likely to be lesbians iirc. but i started to take issue w the link at this point:

this just seems like a subtle way of saying gnc women are more male somehow. and it hasn’t been true for my experience. i can only think of one butch lesbian i’ve been with that had a more masculine voice & body than me. only one! the rest had bigger boobs, narrower shoulders, are shorter than me, have higher pitched voices, etc. they just had more masculine style & mannerisms compared to me. i’ve also come across bisexual women who are quite masculine, more masculine than many lesbians. soooo while i think there’s a link, i think it’s frankly offensive that this paper framed butch lesbians as somehow more male biologically. it seems like bias that they tried to confirm with research.

honestly i don’t fully disagree here. clearly some ppl are naturally quite gnc bc some people refuse to be masculine/feminine regardless of socialisation and pressure. many butch lesbians & feminine gay men will have stories about rejecting gender roles from a very young age. i don’t know what aspect of it is innate bc i doubt its as simple as liking dresses being innately feminine but perhaps more like, ur preferences from childhood are associated with which group you feel more kinship with somehow perhaps? idk. but to me it’s clear there’s something innate to gender non-conformity. not to say if a woman likes dresses & heels & shaving then she must be Innately Feminine or sth or that a woman liking suits must be Innately Masculine, but there’s sth beyond socialisation playing into certain preferences in gendered items at a young age.

i think intersex disorders are very broad & have a massive variation that making blanket statements about someone’s sexuality based on whether they could or could not be into someone who’s intersex but genetically male doesn’t make sense. someone who’s genetically male but assigned female at birth could very well look very much female in every sense & is socialised as female, or they could be visibly different from other women. so i don’t think it’s logical to argue someone has to be bi or can still be a lesbian bc we do not know specifics here. like the wife of caster semenya said she’s only ever been into men iirc.. in her case maybe she’s just straight or perhaps bi with strong preferences for men ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idk. seems like a weird thing to debate someone’s theoretical sexuality

i have no opinion on this.

i mean i also think if someone is genetically male but was raised & assigned female then calling them men & arguing they can’t possibly actually be a woman is weird? like they have a medical condition that made their bodies develop a certain way which resulted in them being assigned a sex that doesn’t match their genetic sex but it does match their phenotypic one, & they were raised the same as someone whos female so like… why argue they’re men? who does it benefit? who are they hurting for this to be a very important distinction to make & hill to die on?

btw why does it seem like ppl are trying to cancel vvitchscum rn? what got people so heated?

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egyptian-sun-god · 10 months

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Autistic Ppl of Tumblr

I beg of you please help me....

So I've been recently told by an autistic friend of mine, hey you reflect a lot of traits that got me diagnosed, maybe look into it. I have and I'm lowkey connecting with a lot of things so I need someone who's had similar experiences to objectively to look at this mess and tell me if anything resonates? I beg help.

Right so some things which to me feel like very clear traits are

I always feel like everyone is like me. Which makes me struggle with empathy because I don't fully get why someone would be mad about something that doesn't make me mad. I once teased a mutual about something that personally if they'd teased me about I would've been fine but was told ayo that's not cool. And I genuinely didn't fully understand why they'd not be cool with what i said.

I don't really get what's socially okay or not okay. Example would be I say stuff that other people say to each other but its okay for them and not okay for me because they're close so they can say that to each other and I'm not close w them so I shouldn't say that which didn't fully make sense but I accepted it. Also I tend to cut into conversations which is also rude.

I went 2 years being very severely bullied but I didn't realize it because I thought that's just how ppl were. Cause people in my old school also made fun of me but I made fun back so I just thought that's how kids are but apparently I was severely bullied; For context, I'm brown so when ppl touched me they used to mimic washing their hands or make a whole deal about sanitizing their hands. I got pushed down stairs, my stuff would get hidden, lunch getting tossed out, laughed at for my accent or like my demeanor in class.

I mimicked a lot of things other people say. Like someone around me would say something and I'd repeat it instantly. Didn't fully know why, it always just felt like an instinctual thing. Even now I mimic the way people speak instinctually as a way to connect and feel more natural in the conversation

Leading with that I also copied how other people acted in social situations as sort of a social script on how to be? Like I'd see my friends talk and try to mimic the way they spoke or like what they were interested in to connect with them.

I overthink the smallest things like oh is this person mad at me? Have I done something or said something? They haven't messaged me since day 1 of like highly specific moment maybe we aren't friends anymore. Like when I first made friends with someone very quickly that I didn't expect I literally analysed it to a science with a friend because I didn't know if we were actually friends or was I just dreaming it or something. And this happens with every single friendship till I get some obvious verbal confirmation that me and a person are friends.

I get very defensive or argumentative about what I think is right or fair or what should be the normal even when I shouldn't be arguing or it is pointless to argue. My father always says I argue for the sake of arguing which I don't think is really true, I'm just trying to prove my point which I think is right. I'm working on learning when to just shut up and apologize and move on tho.

I HATE HATE HATE having my stuff moved around without my knowledge. So my mum cleaning my desk or moving my stuff always sends me half into a fit. I'd much rather move things myself. I dislike other people touching my stuff with a passion. When my parents had to move houses and they had to open my drawers without me being there I was so paranoid and stressed on call even though I didn't have anything to hide. I just felt stressed, I suppressed it tho cause I felt like it wasn't the right thing to express? But I still remember how on edge I was.

I struggle with certain senses. Like what was fine 2 minutes ago in terms of noise and people and lighting can very quickly go into a stress or panic attack type feeling where everything just feels dialled on 200% and I need to leave ASAP. Sensory overload may be the term for this.

I had a very strong aversion to certain foods and textures growing up. I think I have somewhat grown out of this or have learned to firm it and move on, but as a child it was terrible. I still get very nervous when my friends are like oh you should try new foods because I'm always scared I'll hate them and I will waste it or I just don't know how it's going to taste like so I don't really want to take any risks.

I talk a lot and I talk for hours on end about my interest and it doesn't really affect me when the people around me don't actively listen to me. I just continue rambling and go on tangents here and there

I can't sit still and I always feel very understimulated. I feel like my brain needs more things to work. There's a running joke I need to be at a 90% stress level for optimal studying

I'm very time-blind. I'm perpetually late to everything in life. Like I look at the time and I'm like oh yes showering and eating will only take me half an hour surely ill make it by 2.30. sike, i only leave my house at 3.45. That sort of vibe.

I struggle a lot with remembering overall things but certain things I can recall down to a science. I can't remember where I kept my phone last but I can remember my friend's bubble tea order from years ago.

There's a lot of times people have to tell me to be quieter because I'm too loud for the setting. I can't really control my volume well, I try but it slowly just goes back to default

This is a hyper-specific memory but someone was like asking yo do you know what rizz means to the general group and i automatically chimed that it meant charisma and everyone was disappointed cause apparently I wasn't supposed to answer that question but i didn't actually know and I felt bad after.

I bite the skin of my fingers all the time to the point fingerprinting me is a bit of a pain. I can't fully stop it even when I actively try to. its a very automatic thing when I'm just in any situation.

I don't get arbitrary social rules. Like I always bother people for the why in everything

I have to usually confirm when people are joking.

I weirdly am very social though. I love meeting new people, I'm a big extrovert I LITERALLY cannot survive without talking to people. Talking to people is a big source of stimulation and energy for me. I get very depressed if I haven't had one good conversation with someone in a day.

I'm also a social butterfly and I'm kinda good with small talk and casual conversation and keeping the flow in a conversation going naturally (though this is a fairly recent development from like high school only)

I'm told I'm a very honest and direct person and I have no problems being open about my problems and issues and deep shit to people in the first conversation we have. I thought this was normal...apparently its weird

I feel all of my emotions very deeply and getting lied to or having promises be broken is a very deep hurt for me. Like even the smallest things can lead to full sadness cry and the tiniest W can be like the cause of singing joy.

I don't think I stim.....but sometimes I'll just move my hands or feet randomly because I feel unstimulated and I need to just feel something so I move around. And when I'm on a panic attack I rock back and forth and sing to myself. But I think thats normal

I used to get very stressed over talking on a phone call to make orders or like ask for anything on phone and even today sometimes I'll need to rehearse what I'm gonna say to the person on call. Its gotten better though, I no longer dread calling customer service.

I don't really have a set routine for the day either. I'm quite spontaneous but certain things I feel weird without. Like if I shower at night I hate it. I need to shower before I start my day. I need a cup of milo/tea or else I just feel weird the whole day. Or something that is a routine is that I have a wet drying rack for my dishes and a dry drying rack and I cannot put wet dishes on the dry drying rack at all costs even after my flatmates have said no one follows that rule.

I struggle with paying attention in class but I take good notes and I study well and I'm overall a fairly academically strong student. But like sometimes class is just boring and I just need more energy. And I can't sit still to save my life.

So yh that was a rant. Is any of the relatable?

#being autistic #autistic spectrum #autistic experiences #autsim #???? i guess #help #autistic adult #maybe idk yet #relatable content

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