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#it's temporary. and its fine. and they're.
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You're cornered, a blade held tight to your neck ready to slice and cut should you be anything but good and perfect and useful. Your teeth are bared, too sharp and trying desperately to bite the hand that feeds you - trying desperately to bite and kill something that will let you escape from this hell of repetition.
You're dangerous - yet you break so easily. You're a loyal soldier who does as they're told and asked - yet you're beginning to doubt the man you stand beside. You're loyal to a terrible, terrible fault - but having to kill your friends is one step too far over the edge you're teetering on. Maybe it was good, maybe it will get you the praise you desperately strive for, but standing atop your house sobbing and breaking down - trying so desperately to convince yourself this is temporary and good and *you're not a bad person*, doesn't really hold that same impression.
There's blood on your hands again - more permanent and literal than it was with Momboo, and deeper and darker and a harder stain to scrub than it was with Ocie. It seeps into your gloves like an infection slowly rotting away your bones - rotting away *you.* It stains them a deep, deep red; a color so deep that won't come clean from the canvas. It stains your hands pink, dyeing them red in a way that won't come clean - won't come *off* - no matter how hard you scrub.
You keep trying and trying and *trying* - and you just keep failing. There is no being good in this - there are other ways; pleasing the person holding your best friend above your head isn't going to get you anywhere - because there is no, there never has been, any friend to bring back. It's temporary, you tell yourself, and yet you can't even convince yourself of that.
There are asterisks upon asterisks attached to your words; so many unsaid "right?"s that attach themselves to the ends of your sentences. Worries and questions and fears you don't voice yet permeate your actions; moving your birds away from your bed to the safety of a tower because you're so so terrified the hands made to hurt and harm and *kill* will do so upon something so innocent. So terrified you'll hurt the only things still willing to try and help and protect you. You're worried, so terrified, that these hands that were made for killing - that were *made* to be stained with blood - will do so; that they will follow through with their intended purpose. The unsaid terror that your hands, the ones made with the distinct purpose to harm and bleed, will kill and rot and decay until there is nothing of your friends, and your family, and yourself.
You're terrified - bareing too sharp teeth at anyone who dares try to help. You're a cornered animal, not afraid to bite and harm - but only doing so out of fear. A raptorous bird they call you, your brother a drake cornered - but aren't you, too, cornered? Only raptorous out of necessity for survival, shoved much too far into a too-small corner with a too sharp blade held to your neck - prepared to take your life without much of a second thought.
Raptorous you are, Icarus, but too are you cornered and terrified. Your hands stained red with the blood of a friend and the blood of family. You can't scrub them clean, not anymore, not *like this* - but gods, how you will try. (And gods, how you will fail.) You will try so desperately to convince yourself; and fail and break and *shatter* because you can't. It's temporary, you tell yourself, but the cracks start to show and the doubt starts to creep and the tears start to *fall* - and suddenly there is no coming back from this.
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gender-trash · 1 month
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I would be very interested in hearing the museum design rant
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by popular demand: Guy That Took One (1) Museum Studies Class Focused On Science Museums Rants About Art Museums. thank u for coming please have a seat
so. background. the concept of the "science museum" grew out of 1) the wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities), also known as "hey check out all this weird cool shit i have", and 2) academic collections of natural history specimens (usually taxidermied) -- pre-photography these were super important for biological research (see also). early science museums usually grew out of university collections or bequests of some guy's Weird Shit Collection or both, and were focused on utility to researchers rather than educational value to the layperson (picture a room just, full of taxidermy birds with little labels on them and not a lot of curation outside that). eventually i guess they figured they could make more on admission by aiming for a mass audience? or maybe it was the cultural influence of all the world's fairs and shit (many of which also caused science museums to exist), which were aimed at a mass audience. or maybe it was because the research function became much more divorced from the museum function over time. i dunno. ANYWAY, science and technology museums nowadays have basically zero research function; the exhibits are designed more or less solely for educating the layperson (and very frequently the layperson is assumed to be a child, which does honestly irritate me, as an adult who likes to go to science museums). the collections are still there in case someone does need some DNA from one of the preserved bird skins, but items from the collections that are exhibited typically exist in service of the exhibit's conceptual message, rather than the other way around.
meanwhile at art museums they kind of haven't moved on from the "here is my pile of weird shit" paradigm, except it's "here is my pile of Fine Art". as far as i can tell, the thing that curators (and donors!) care about above all is The Collection. what artists are represented in The Collection? rich fucks derive personal prestige from donating their shit to The Collection. in big art museums usually something like 3-5% of the collection is ever on exhibit -- and sometimes they rotate stuff from the vault in and out, but let's be real, only a fraction of an art museum's square footage is temporary exhibits. they're not going to take the scream off display when it's like the only reason anyone who's not a giant nerd ever visits the norwegian national museum of art. most of the stuff in the vault just sits in the vault forever. like -- art museum curators, my dudes, do you think the general public gives a SINGLE FUCK what's in The Collection that isn't on display? no!! but i guarantee you it will never occur, ever, to an art museum curator that they could print-to-scale high-res images of artworks that are NOT in The Collection in order to contextualize the art in an exhibit, because items that are not in The Collection functionally do not exist to them. (and of course there's the deaccessioning discourse -- tumblr collectively has some level of awareness that repatriation is A Whole Kettle of Worms but even just garden-variety selling off parts of The Collection is a huge hairy fucking deal. check out deaccessioning and its discontents; it's a banger read if you're into This Kind Of Thing.)
with the contents of The Collection foregrounded like this, what you wind up with is art museum exhibits where the exhibit's message is kind of downstream of what shit you've got in the collection. often the message is just "here is some art from [century] [location]", or, if someone felt like doing a little exhibit design one fine morning, "here is some art from [century] [location] which is interesting for [reason]". the displays are SOOOOO bad by science museum standards -- if you're lucky you get a little explanatory placard in tiny font relating the art to an art movement or to its historical context or to the artist's career. if you're unlucky you get artist name, date, and medium. fucker most of the people who visit your museum know Jack Shit about art history why are you doing them dirty like this
(if you don't get it you're just not Cultured enough. fuck you, we're the art museum!)
i think i've talked about this before on this blog but the best-exhibited art exhibit i've ever been to was actually at the boston museum of science, in this traveling leonardo da vinci exhibit where they'd done a bunch of historical reconstructions of inventions out of his notebooks, and that was the main Thing, but also they had a whole little exhibit devoted to the mona lisa. obviously they didn't even have the real fucking mona lisa, but they went into a lot of detail on like -- here's some X-ray and UV photos of it, and here's how art experts interpret them. here's a (photo of a) contemporary study of the finished painting, which we've cleaned the yellowed varnish off of, so you can see what the colors looked like before the varnish yellowed. here's why we can't clean the varnish off the actual painting (da vinci used multiple varnish layers and thinned paints to translucency with varnish to create the illusion of depth, which means we now can't remove the yellowed varnish without stripping paint).
even if you don't go into that level of depth about every painting (and how could you? there absolutely wouldn't be space), you could at least talk a little about, like, pigment availability -- pigment availability is an INCREDIBLY useful lens for looking at historical paintings and, unbelievably, never once have i seen an art museum exhibit discuss it (and i've been to a lot of art museums). you know how medieval european religious paintings often have funky skin tones? THEY HADN'T INVENTED CADMIUM PIGMENTS YET. for red pigments you had like... red ochre (a muted earth-based pigment, like all ochres and umbers), vermilion (ESPENSIVE), alizarin crimson (aka madder -- this is one of my favorite reds, but it's cool-toned and NOT good for mixing most skintones), carmine/cochineal (ALSO ESPENSIVE, and purple-ish so you wouldn't want to use it for skintones anyway), red lead/minium (cheaper than vermilion), indian red/various other iron oxide reds, and apparently fucking realgar? sure. whatever. what the hell was i talking about.
oh yeah -- anyway, i'd kill for an art exhibit that's just, like, one or two oil paintings from each century for six centuries, with sample palettes of the pigments they used. but no! if an art museum curator has to put in any level of effort beyond writing up a little placard and maybe a room-level text block, they'll literally keel over and die. dude, every piece of art was made in a material context for a social purpose! it's completely deranged to divorce it from its material context and only mention the social purpose insofar as it matters to art history the field. for god's sake half the time the placard doesn't even tell you if the thing was a commission or not. there's a lot to be said about edo period woodblock prints and mass culture driven by the growing merchant class! the met has a fuckton of edo period prints; they could get a hell of an exhibit out of that!
or, tying back to an earlier thread -- the detroit institute of arts has got a solid like eight picasso paintings. when i went, they were kind of just... hanging out in a room. fuck it, let's make this an exhibit! picasso's an artist who pretty famously had Periods, right? why don't you group the paintings by period, and if you've only got one or two (or even zero!) from a particular period, pad it out with some decent life-size prints so i can compare them and get a better sense for the overarching similarities? and then arrange them all in a timeline, with little summaries of what each Period was ~about~? that'd teach me a hell of a lot more about picasso -- but you'd have to admit you don't have Every Cool Painting Ever in The Collection, which is illegalé.
also thinking about the mit museum temporary exhibit i saw briefly (sorry, i was only there for like 10 minutes because i arrived early for a meeting and didn't get a chance to go through it super thoroughly) of a bunch of ship technical drawings from the Hart nautical collection. if you handed this shit to an art museum curator they'd just stick it on the wall and tell you to stand around and look at it until you Understood. so anyway the mit museum had this enormous room-sized diorama of various hull shapes and how they sat in the water and their benefits and drawbacks, placed below the relevant technical drawings.
tbh i think the main problem is that art museum people and science museum people are completely different sets of people, trained in completely different curatorial traditions. it would not occur to an art museum curator to do anything like this because they're probably from the ~art world~ -- maybe they have experience working at an art gallery, or working as an art buyer for a rich collector, neither of which is in any way pedagogical. nobody thinks an exhibit of historical clothing should work like a clothing store but it's fine when it's art, i guess?
also the experience of going to an art museum is pretty user-hostile, i have to say. there's never enough benches, and if you want a backrest, fuck you. fuck you if going up stairs is painful; use our shitty elevator in the corner that we begrudgingly have for wheelchair accessibility, if you can find it. fuck you if you can't see very well, and need to be closer to the art. fuck you if you need to hydrate or eat food regularly; go to our stupid little overpriced cafeteria, and fuck you if we don't actually sell any food you can eat. (obviously you don't want someone accidentally spilling a smoothie on the art, but there's no reason you couldn't provide little Safe For Eating Rooms where people could just duck in and monch a protein bar, except that then you couldn't sell them a $30 salad at the cafe.) fuck you if you're overwhelmed by noise in echoing rooms with hard surfaces and a lot of people in them. fuck you if you are TOO SHORT and so our overhead illumination generates BRIGHT REFLECTIONS ON THE SHINY VARNISH. we're the art museum! we don't give a shit!!!
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jesterwaves · 6 months
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this might be the one. i know you're not supposed to say that when you're doing good but im feeling confident.
dont look at how many hair meshes i have
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prokopetz · 11 months
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Unsure if you are aware of this update, but apparently someone got into the Twit api and believes that the "rate limiting" is actually a cover up by Elon bc they accidenlty pushed an update DDOSing their own site, which is why he says its "temporary" in his tweet. Not sure if Elon is actually trying to cover-up, or if the DDOS is an unintended side effect of the change
(With reference to this post here.)
As far as I can tell, the folks advancing that theory have it perfectly backwards. The rate limit isn't an effort to address the self-DDoS situation: the rate limit is causing the self-DDoS situation.
In a nutshell, when you load up Twitter in your browser, two things are happening:
In response to your initial request, Twitter's server sends your browser the information it needs to construct the website's user interface (UI).
Once the UI has been constructed within your browser, it instructs your browser to dispatch a separate request, via the Twitter API, requesting content (i.e., tweets and ads) to fill itself with.
(It's actually a little more complex than that, because the response to the initial request may come pre-filled with a portion of the required content in order to speed things up the first time you visit your dashboard, but that's the gist of it, anyway.)
So, what happens now that the rate limit is in place?
Well, the rate limit doesn't affect the first request – it's not using the API, so your browser is able to construct the Twitter UI just fine. The moment you try to scroll your Twitter dashboard, however, that triggers the Twitter UI that's been constructed within your browser to ask the Twitter API for more content so you can keep scrolling – and that request is subject to the rate limit.
If you happen already to have exceeded your rate limit, that request is going to receive a response along the lines of "Error 429 – Rate Limit Exceeded". Here's the trick: while Twitter did update the UI to reflect the addition of a rate limit (i.e., they're not complete idiots), it turns out they did an incomplete job, and certain dashboard widgets don't know what to do with an error 429.
Now, the fun part: apparently, what the affected Twitter dashboard widgets are coded to do when they receive a response they don't recognise is simply to ignore it and try again. Further, nobody thought to impose a delay between attempts, so they retry immediately upon receiving the unrecognised error 429. For users with snappy Internet service, this can result in their browser making multiple attempts per second to retrieve content for the affected Twitter dashboard widgets, receiving (and ignoring) the same error code each time.
And that's how Twitter ended up accidentally ordering its own users to DDoS its API.
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steddiehyperfixation · 6 months
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don't you forget about me (part two)
(part one)
Steve doesn’t know how long they sit there in silence, waiting. It’s making him insane. The seconds pass too slow; the seconds pass too fast. His mind is a storm; his mind is empty. He’s feeling too much; he’s not feeling at all. He paces the room; he sits catatonically against a wall. He needs to get out of here; he needs to stay. 
He’s been here before, just barely over a week ago, tense and anxious and despairing and waiting for news. But waiting to hear if Eddie will ever remember him again really should not feel this much worse than waiting to hear if Eddie will ever fucking breathe again. Steve thinks there must be something wrong with him. He’s being selfish and stupid. His pathological fucking need to be loved is not what’s important right now. Eddie is alive and awake and okay and that’s the only thing that really matters. That’s the only thing he should really care about.
Steve’s pacing again now, yanking his hands through his hair as he does laps around the room until Eddie finally appears in the doorway. 
Eddie must’ve just cracked a joke or something because the nurse is laughing as she pushes his bed into the room and he’s got this adorable grin on his face. Steve’s heart twists in his chest and he nearly bursts into tears all over again because god does he want nothing more than to press a kiss to those dimpled cheeks. 
“Good news, boys,” Eddie announces. “My brain is fully intact.”
“There’s no physical permanent damage to his brain,” the nurse elaborates. “His amnesia is likely a result of psychological trauma and the temporary disruption of brain function from blood loss and lack of oxygen that occurred at the time of his injury. But there is no obvious reason why he shouldn’t regain his full memory, given time.” 
So there’s hope. Steve breathes a sigh of relief. 
“That is good news,” Wayne agrees. 
Steve asks, “How much time?” 
The nurse gives an unhelpful shrug. “Impossible to say. It could be anywhere from days to months, or even years. I’m sorry, there’s no way for us to know.” 
Years. “Okay.” Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. He can keep it together. He can. “Thanks,” he tells the nurse. “I, uh-” He makes the mistake of looking at Eddie who looks right through him, and Steve can’t keep it together anymore actually. “I gotta update the kids,” he mutters, backing his way towards the door. Wayne nods in acknowledgment; no protests this time at Steve’s excuse to leave.
“See ya, Harrington,” Eddie calls after him, casual, impersonal, like they're nothing more than acquaintances passing by each other in a high school hallway.  
Steve can’t get out of that hospital fast enough. 
He makes it to his car in record time, slamming the door shut and sinking heavily into the driver’s seat. A ragged sob tries to claw its way up his throat now that he’s finally alone, but he forces it back, staving off his breakdown for just a little bit longer. As much as it was an excuse, he really does have to update the kids. 
Steve fishes his walkie out of the glove box. “Code - whatever, I don’t know. Code Eddie,” he says. He doesn’t remember the kids’ system of codes, nor would he be sure which one this news falls under even if he did. 
“Is he okay? Is he awake?” comes an immediate, eager response from Dustin. “Over.” 
“Yeah, he’s awake, and he’s fine, except he’s got pretty bad amnesia. The doctors say it should be temporary, but right now he doesn’t remember anything since May of ‘85,” Steve explains, trying his best to keep his voice even.
“Steve, come pick me up and take me to see him,” Dustin demands, “right now. Over.” 
“Me too. Over,” Mike chimes in before Steve can respond. 
“And us,” Erica adds as well. 
Steve pauses for a second, both to steady his own breath and to make sure no one else wants to jump in on this too, before he reminds them, “He won’t know you, any of you.” 
“I don’t care,” Dustin says, bossy as ever. “Just come get me. Over.” 
“Jesus Christ, kid,” Steve mutters to himself. He sucks in another breath; it wobbles dangerously. He’s just about reached his limit on how long he can keep himself from falling apart. “I- I need a minute, alright?” he manages through the walkie. “Can you just give me, like, an hour? And then I’ll take you guys to visit Eddie.” 
Steve doesn’t wait for a response before he slams the antenna closed, tosses the walkie aside, and finally, finally lets himself shatter. That sob rips free from his throat, followed by another and another and another. Tears flood from his eyes; his nose runs. It’s an ugly, gross, visceral cry that leaves him exhausted and raw and aching to be held by the time the last sob shudders out of him. Drained and hollow, he craves the embrace of someone who knows him, someone who loves him. 
He sweeps up his broken pieces, wipes the mess of tears and snot off his face, and drives to Robin’s house.
“Steve, oh my god.” Robin pulls him into a hug the second she opens the door and sees the look on his face. Steve clings to her. “What happened?” 
“Eddie’s awake,” he mutters dismally. 
“Oh! Not the tone I’d expect you to deliver that news in, but okay.” Robin pulls back, looking at him with narrow-eyed concern and confusion as she analyzes his puffy eyes and red nose and swollen lips. “And you look like you’ve just been crying because…?”
“Because he doesn’t remember me, Rob,” Steve sighs. “He doesn’t remember anything from the past 11 months.” 
Robin’s eyes go wide now. “Shit,” she says, so plainly it startles a short laugh out of Steve. 
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Shit.” 
She asks him more questions as she walks down the hallway so they can talk in her room. Steve once again reiterates what was said at the hospital. 
“So you didn’t tell him you two were a thing?” Robin asks, closing her door behind them. 
“Of course I didn’t.” Steve flops back onto her bed. “I didn’t want to spook him.” 
She sits beside him. “You didn’t want to spook him,” she repeats, looking down at him with raised eyebrows, “but you told him about Vecna.” 
“Well, yeah. I just-” He lifts his arms to gesture vaguely into the air as he tries to explain himself. “I mean, imagine how you would feel if you woke up in a hospital and some random guy you’ve spoken to maybe twice was by your bedside telling you you’ve been in a relationship with him for the past 9 months.” 
“Uh, I don’t know, dingus, probably about the same as I’d feel if said guy told me I’d nearly died fighting some evil twisted creature from a hell dimension,” Robin retorts.
Steve drops his hands onto his chest with a huff, shaking his head. “No, trust me. He seemed far less surprised by that than he did to hear that we were even just friends,” he says, a bit bitterly. Tears are pricking at his eyes again as he looks up at his best friend. “You didn’t see the way he looked at me, Robin. All he saw was King Steve.”
Robin softens, snark replaced with sympathy. “That sucks, Steve. I’m so sorry.” 
Steve sighs in agreement that yes this really fucking sucks. He sits up and scoots back so that he’s slumped against the wall, hitting the back of his head against it. “I think I’m a horrible person,” he admits, just venting now, “because of course I’m glad Eddie’s alive and all I really want is for him to be okay, and I know the nurse said he should remember eventually, but there’s still some sick part of me that thinks maybe it would’ve hurt less if he had just died.”
“I don’t think that makes you a horrible person,” Robin assures him as she settles next to him, shoulder to shoulder. “I think you’re just grieving, and grief is weird sometimes.”
“It was one of the worst things I’ve ever felt,” he mutters, “when he looked at me without recognition. To see it on his face, just the- the absence of everything that we’d built. I’ve never felt so- so- I don’t know, it was like I couldn’t breathe. He just- he doesn’t know that I love him. He…he doesn’t know that he loved me...” 
Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? It’s not that he’s lost someone that he loves, it’s that he’s lost someone who loves him. Because Eddie’s not gone, just his love for Steve is, and that’s what’s tearing him apart. It’s the fact that there’s one less person in the world who loves him. It’s the fact that Steve’s got this big gaping hole inside of him that’s always made him so desperate to be loved, liked, wanted, needed; and his biggest fucking fear is becoming obsolete. He could probably trace it back to his parents, the first to forget him, the first to stop loving him, but the fact remains that now Eddie has fulfilled that fear too. Now Eddie has carved that pit a little deeper, a little darker, validating the voice that whispers within it and tells Steve that he is forgettable, unlovable, so easy to abandon and erase. 
“Well, I love you,” Robin tells him, like she can read his mind (which, at this point, she probably can). She slides an arm around his shoulders, hugs him close. “And I’m not going anywhere.” 
Fragile as he is right now, Steve falls apart again in her arms, and she holds him together. Because she knows him, because she loves him.
It’s a quieter cry this time, soft and sniffly. Whereas the last one wracked through his body and left him fatigued, this one flows from him almost gently, and when his tears finally subside and he lifts his head from where it had been buried in his friend’s shoulder, Steve actually feels a little bit better, a little bit stronger. Which is good, because he’s gonna have to face Eddie again soon. 
“Thank you,” he says quietly as he pulls away from Robin, wiping at his eyes and glancing at the clock on her nightstand. It’s definitely been an hour by now, probably more. He stands. “I have to go, I promised the kids I’d take them to see Eddie.” 
“Then I’m coming too.” Robin stands with him. “For moral support.” 
Steve gives her a grateful smile. “I love you so fucking much, you know that?” 
“Yeah.” She grins at him. “I know.” 
The nurses have changed his bandages and upped his morphine, so Eddie’s considerably hazy now but at least he can raise his headrest and prop himself up a bit without nearly blacking out from pain. He’s boredly flicking through channels on the shitty TV in front of him, alone since Wayne had to leave for work, when Harrington returns followed by a very unexpected group consisting of Robin Buckley and four strange children. 
“Sorry,” Harrington announces their presence with an apologetic shrug, “I know you don’t know them anymore, but they insisted.” 
“Eddie!” a pudgy, curly-haired kid shouts before Eddie can even react, coming barrelling towards him and trying to hug him. 
“Ow!” Eddie yelps, pain flaring even through the extra morphine. “Fucking Christ, kid! Be careful!” 
The kid jumps back immediately, eyes wide. “Shit. Sorry.” 
“S’fine,” Eddie grumbles.
The kid looks at him expectantly for a moment before seeming to realize, “Oh, right, you don’t remember me. I’m Dustin.” 
“Ah, so you’re the guy I sacrificed myself for,” Eddie mutters, and Dustin looks a little sheepish. That means these must be ‘the kids’ Harrington had been talking about earlier. He surveys the group for a second. “Actually, I think we have met before,” he tells Dustin. “And you too.” He glances at a pale, dark-haired kid. The other two - a Black boy with a flat-top and a younger Black girl - look less familiar, though. “There was this, uh, open day thing at the high school for next year’s incoming freshmen; I talked to you about Hellfire.”
“Yeah!” Dustin’s whole face lights up, so bright and infectious it makes Eddie grin too. “Yeah, you did!” 
“So you guys joined the club, then?” 
This sparks a very animated conversation about D&D, the rest of the kids (Mike, Lucas, and Erica, as they soon reintroduce themselves) gathering around his bed now too to join in. It makes him feel a bit more like himself again, familiar, normal. Except, of course, for the fact that they’re not only talking about how they defeated Vecna in Eddie’s “totally epic” and “sadistic” campaign (adjectives courtesy of Dustin and Mike respectively), but also filling in more pieces of the story of how they defeated him in real life too. Still, it’s nice, fun. He totally understands how he could’ve gotten attached to these kids.
At some point, Eddie glances over to find Harrington hanging back and just watching them talk, fondly, wistfully. Robin whispers something to him and he sort of smiles, just a trace, and whispers something back. They seem close, intimate. Eddie wonders if they’re dating, and then he wonders why that thought makes him feel a bit sick. He waves them over. Harrington looks like he’s about to protest, but Robin gives him a Look and he allows her to grab his hand and drag him to join the crowd around Eddie’s bed. 
“So, what’s your deal, Buckley?” Eddie asks her. He doesn’t know her very well, they’ve only crossed paths a few times in the bandroom, but right now that makes her the most familiar person in the room to him. “Are you and Harrington a thing now? Is that how you’re involved in all this?” 
Robin wrinkles her nose and drops Harrington’s hand. “Ew, no. Definitely not.” 
“She’s my best friend,” Harrington says. 
Eddie snorts, doesn’t know why he finds that so comical. (He’s starting to get tired and it’s making him loopy. Or maybe it’s just the morphine.) “You've got a funny choice of friends nowadays, don’t you? Me and band geek Buckley and a bunch of nerdy freshmen.” He looks at Harrington with incredulous amusement. “Who would've thought, huh? Steve Harrington, collector of geeks and freaks.” 
Harrington doesn’t seem to find it as funny. He shrugs. “Yeah, well, it’s better than King Steve, collector of asshole bullies and shallow one-night stands.” 
“Yeah, ‘course it is,” Eddie agrees through another huff of laughter that breaks off into a yawn. “Didn’t mean it as a bad thing, Stevie. Was a compliment.” 
“Alright.” The barest hint of a smile flickers across Harrington’s face now, but then he’s looking away and corralling the kids and saying, “We should head out, let you get some rest.” 
And Eddie kind of wishes he’d stay.
(part three!)
taglist: @romanticdestruction @daydreamsandcrashingwaves @paintsplatteredandimperfect @hallucinatedjosten @mugloversonly @estrellami-1 @alongcomesaspider @thatonebadideapanda @tell-me-a-secret-a-nice-one @dragonmama76 @wxrmland @nuggies4life @sirsnacksalot @myguiltyartpleasure @marklee-blackmore @vinteraltus @sebastiansstanswhore @0happyeverafter0 @scarlet-malfoy (only tagged people who explicitly asked to be tagged; if you would like to be added or removed from this list please lmk!)
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mayaree-darling · 7 months
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who's to say what's real or fake// Genshin SAGAU
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from aree: impostor au but you actually are the impostor? but ofcourse theres a twist. I think i'll call this FakeGrace!Reader. This was just going to be a headcannon post but ended up a whole fic plot
warnings: themes that all come with the sagau tag (yandere, lots of religious talk, cult, etc.)
word count: 2k~
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You end up on Teyvat and immediately the characters recognize you as their Creator; of course you're their Creator - you have the same face, name, and voice. You go through the ordeal of getting to know all the characters all over again and they in turn love you as the god they’ve been waiting for all this time.
You decide that well, this is the world and characters I spent blood, sweat, and tears building (even if it was behind a screen) so might as well help out and do what needs to be done. The people come to you for their problems and you find that they're not as difficult as when you were simply a player. Maybe a minor dispute here and there between the NPCs, but now the vision holders and the Archons ask for your thoughts on how to go about political matters concerning their nations. Even Snezhnaya has signed a peace treaty with the other nations as a show of good faith to the Creator (even if you know for a fact its a temporary one).
All has never been better.
Until another Creator appears in Teyvat, and this one bleeds gold the way their stories foretold. In a way you do not.
The vision holders are torn. Yes, you are an impostor, and they want to hate you for tricking them, but at the same time haven’t you only shown them love? Haven’t you been patient with them and understanding despite being thrown into a world you’re unfamiliar with?
But with careful coercion from the other god, they have to choose to follow their true Creator. You decide to take pity on them and step down from your position yourself, choosing to live with the Aranara who have gladly taken you under their wing (fake god you may be, you are still a friend of the forest, and the forest always remembers its friends).
The Archons tell their new Creator that you are no more. They pretend to not hear when the Creator says they should have brought your head with them, maybe just a bitter reaction for finding out that they have been serving an impostor all this time (the Archons are lying when they say they do not feel sickened at the idea of hurting you, and disgusted at this new God's words)
It soon becomes clear to the people of Teyvat that this new Creator is not you - none of the patience or kindness you had showed them. This new one thinks helping their people is below them, even laughs at some of their problems. They chuck their duties as a god to the vision holders and spend their days leisurely, wining and dining on the best food, expecting to be waited on hand and foot. And at first it was fine, the characters understood. Maybe their Creator was just enjoying the fruits of their labor for once (although in the back of their mind, they can't help but compare you - you who worked tirelessly to attend to everyone even when they’d almost beg you to take a break). The characters tell themselves that they just need to get used to this new god, their true Creator. It will all right itself in time. Even as the Creator acted more like a child by the day, calling for the punishment of characters for the simplest of things. It’s fine. It’s fine.
It didn't take long for their will to break.
The God of Wisdom is called as such for a reason. Nahida may be younger compared to the rest, but she is braver than most. She simply tried to impart a fraction of her wisdom, softly suggesting to the Creator to show mercy for their people who were gravely punished for things they did not do.
This Creator was not you. They did not have a drop of patience that you had, nor any love for their creations. Their god saw this as nothing but an act of treason. How dare a mere Archon tell them what to do? She dares to question who the Creator can and cannot punish?
The silence is deafening in the throne room as the Creator calls for the death of Lesser Lord Kusanali and the destruction of Sumeru. If it is mercy she asks for then it is the last thing she and her people will receive. The other Archons agree past gritted teeth, the sin of Khaenri’ah weighing heavy over their shoulders still.
Nahida had been banished to Sumeru before the order was given, so the Archons make their way to the Nation of Wisdom to tell her of her sentencing, hoping to beg her to ask the Creator for their forgiveness.
This can't be how it ends. Are they to spend their lives in fear of the god they so revered?
They enter a forest emitting divine energy in search of their friend, hearts heavy, but they found something else.
They found you. They found the Creator they loved once upon a time.
They seemed to have caught you mid-conversation with Nahida, and to their surprise (and resentment) the Tsaritsa; they can only assume that the god of Snezhnaya has informed you first of Nahida's fate. The Wanderer catches sight of them and stands in front of you in protection. You don't even bat an eye. You swallow hard and stand, Nahida's hand enveloped in yours, and the other gods would be lying if they say they did not feel jealousy strangling their lungs.
With a steady voice, you tell them that should they take one step against Nahida, you will meet them halfway. If they decide to send Sumeru to hell, they will have to go through you first. You will do everything you can to stop them, and if Sumeru falls then you fall with them.
They don't have to look at the others to make up their mind. There's a beat of silence but first it's Morax, and Beelzebul and Barbatos and then Focalor, and they are on their knees, heads bowed low.
It is only right to show respect to their god, after all. How could they be so blind?
Validation of their actions comes soon after as you let go of Nahida's hand and tell the Wanderer to stand aside. You do something that tyrant of a Creator that sits on a glass throne would never - you kneel before them and hold out your hand.
"Why are you all kneeling? Stand up. I am no longer your god. But I hope you will have me as a friend. Will that be alright?"
There are tears in their eyes as they let out stuttering laughter. Yes, this is their god. Their god with so much love and compassion and a heart that does nothing but bleed for them. A heart that does not ask for them to bleed.
You are their god. You are their true Creator. Golden blood be damned. All that gold has done nothing but blind them.
Eventually, you all end up on the forest floor. You accept the role of a friend as promised, and catch up with them. The Archons are almost in tears as you listen to their stories earnestly, squeezing their hands in sympathy as you listen to the pain they've been through under the rule of their so called Creator (they really should find a new title for you, the god that sits on your throne has sullied your rightful name). At one point they stop telling you stories of their mistreatment, unable to see your face be any sadder than it already was. They take to retelling your stories together, reminiscing better days - because is that not what they have done all this time? Think about the lovely you for every wrongdoing the other god had done in your name?
As you laugh and smile with them and their stories and their company, the idea burrows through their mind without your knowledge, taking root, and they refuse to let it go. Wouldn't it be so much better if it was always like this? Seeing your smiling face with them, a person that deserves to be called a god even more so than all of them combined. Knowing you were safe from harm, not having to defend yourself, especially from them under orders from a tyrant. Knowing you loved them the way they loved you.
It was all better with you.
When you weren't looking, the Archons gave each other knowing looks and curt nods in understanding.
You are their beloved Creator.
As a peaceful silence falls over you, they watch as you smile sadly, their hearts breaking to see such an expression on your face. In a soft voice, you apologize for not being able to do much to help them. When you lift your head, golden resolute eyes meet yours.
"You’ve done enough, Your Grace. Let us handle the rest."
You may have laughed at the old title, but the Archons are hell bent in returning it to you. Although it hurts them to say goodbye, they know it’s only for the moment. Soon, you will be with them. Back in your rightful throne, as you have always deserved.
Nahida is the youngest, and so they decide to spare her the carnage. The rest know she is no fool, they don't need to tell her what they had planned for her to know what happens next. She does not fully agree in the others' decision, yet she stays in Sumeru, promising to make sure you do not find out. Word travels fast to the other vision holders in the form of a breeze from Barbatos. Barely anyone had disagreed with the notion of removing the rejected god from the throne, and those who were hesitant at first changed their mind after hearing how you were ready to go down with Sumeru. Morax and the Tsaritsa lead the rebellion.
A god is only as powerful as the people who worship them. By the time the Archons arrived in the throne room, the Creator had no one to hide behind.
They made it a spectacle. They spin a tale for the people that the god they so worshiped was an impostor who had switched bodies with their rightful god, which explains the gold blood that should be yours. They say you were patiently waiting for them all to come back to you, to remove this impostor from your throne. You were ready to accept them all, they just needed to get rid of this filth that dared destroy your name. The Creator - no, the Impostor - is horrified when the people accept this story so easily, but they only have themselves to blame. Who cares what they have to say to defend themselves, although it’s not like they can anyway - how can they when their tongue was cut off?
Teyvat was silent as gold painted the streets of Liyue Harbor. Teyvat no longer cares for golden blood, not after all the blood and tears it had taken from its people. After all, a golden soul stands ready to take back their rightful place.
Your followers thought it had all been worth it - the pain, the hardships, the blood - to see you smile the first time you set foot outside Sumeru after what felt like years to them. And yet, despite the joyous occasion, you hesitantly turn to them and ask a question not even Irminsul would answer you.
"What happened to the Creator?"
You would be lying if you said the soft smiles each of them gave did not unnerve you as they all said the same thing, like a joke everyone knew all except you.
"We simply removed the Impostor from Your Grace's presence."
They are thankful that you are blinded by your love for them to see the gold shine on their hands. You do not ask about the shimmering streets either. Liyue was the city of gold after all, was it not?
For now, their biggest concern is your acceptance that they are your equal, but that can easily be fixed. You are their friend now, but someday you’ll be their god again. Slowly but surely. They will sit you back in your throne. They will kneel before you again. They will give you the reverence you so deserved.
It will all be yours.
You're their wonderful Creator, after all. Maybe not to you right now. But you always have been for them.
They’ll start from calling you Your Grace. You’d be too kind to tell them off over and over.
You always had been good at adapting.
You had gotten used to it then, you’ll get used to it again.
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✨ Masterlist ✨ 
Taglist: 💛@anime-allover  💛@faeriessky  💛 @prksolon 💛 @dai-tsukki-desu
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine and belong to their respective creators. Their portrayal is merely my own interpretation of them and may not be accurate to their intended characterization. I stake no claim to the original works, only to the ideas and plot of the fictitious stories I’ve written them into.
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a-dinosaur-a-day · 9 months
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Opinions on owning pet parrots? I'm doing a degree in animal welfare and have pretty much come to the conclusion that the smaller species are fine if you can provide what they need but the larger birds like the greys, outside of being rescues, shouldn't be pets at all.
Okaaaaaaaay so time to make everyone mad at me again I guess
parrots have been human companion animals for longer than Judaism has been around, so, I don't think we can just say "it's wrong" and force everyone to stop doing a thing that's been done for that long. Like, this isn't a human randomly taking home a tiger, this is a long going process with many species of parrots now being near-domesticated in the strictest sense of the term
Parrot ownership is in fact ancient in many "tropical" areas and the idea that it's a new thing is... white supremacy! what a shock!
in the United States (I am not talking about other countries, just my own), literally no companion parrots are wild caught anymore. They're bred. Bred as companions. If we were to outlaw larger parrot ownership, many birds would be without a home, and that's morally reprehensible
in fact, the kind of backlash against parrot ownership that's risen up in the past decade has directly led to a shelter crisis. most shelters are overfilled and overstressed, which is a *lot* worse for the birds in many cases than home ownership
parrots are pets that have extraordinarily high care needs. They are not good pets for everyone. but no pet is! Every single companion animal has its pluses and downsides, and many of them have many more downsides than pluses. Doesn't mean they shouldn't have a home.
There are some people who are actually able to take care of companion parrots, adequately, in their homes. First of all, we've learned a lot in the past few decades. Second of all, there are lifestyles that work well with even larger parrots and their needs.
So, while the number of human beings on this planet who can adequately take care of large parrots is extremely small, it is not zero. Which means if someone thinks they can take care of a bird well, and has the space and resources and time, then they should be allowed to, if that's what they wish
Because birds in the USA are bred as companions, the vast majority of said parrots would be unhappy in any situation that doesn't involve close contact with humans. Admittedly, all my parrots are "small" (whatever that means), but I know for a fact that if you took them away from our home they would be significantly worse off, because they're bonded to us. That's how this whole flocking thing works
Also, our most recent rescues, who had been stuck in a shelter for 15 years, are definitely happier now getting more individual attention and space. Shelters are supposed to be temporary places for most birds, not permanent homes, because they can't get the adequate level of care and attention that they need.
also, I'll point out that being pets has allowed many parrot species to have thriving populations that are not threatened by climate change, which is something to their benefit. given. you know. climate change. not that pet ownership is conservation, but, it's not that far removed from it - the axolotl population owes a lot to both pet ownership and zoo captivity, for example.
like, it's a spectrum, right? And it doesn't really go along with size, at the end of the day. There are tons of extremely neurotic and high needs small parrots, and many larger ones that are exceptionally chill. So while the vast majority of humans on this planet should not have a parrot, that's not all of them; and while the number that can handle higher maintenance ones is even smaller, its not zero. And I think, given the fact that we have all of these captive bred birds in the states at least, it's not a good idea to tell people that there is no way to ethically practice husbandry with them.
and I'm not the kind of person who assumes I know everything about someone's life in order to tell them "no you shouldn't bring home that cockatoo", so I'm not going to. In fact, I give everyone on the internet the benefit of the doubt if they have a parrot unless a) that parrot shows signs of distress (like plucking) or b) there is clearly something wrong going on (like someone's smoking weed around their bird)
so, no, there's no commonly kept (and thus domestically captive bred) bird I think is a bad pet for every single human on the planet. And it's not my business whether a particular individual should or should not have a particular bird.
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AITA for not outing myself at my internship?
(some quoted things are paraphrased because my native language isnt english and i had to translate the things im quoting first.)
I (20+, trans nb) recently got a four week internship at a local radio station. I dont take any HRT yet and dont own a binder, so while i do try to dress in a way that feels comfortable to me, i dont really consider myself to be passing. So I applied to the internship as my deadname (which is also still my legal name) and introduced myself as a girl and with that name too. I was going in with the mindset that its kinda my own personal thing to consider, and since its only temporary and involves 'official' stuff (documents, articles being credited etc) + i never know how people would react to it/treat me, i dont necessarily have to tell everyone i meet. the internship went over kinda fast and everyone there was really nice and i had a feeling they'd also be accepting and use my right pronouns and name if i told them, but at that part i didnt have much time left and didnt want them to suddenly treat me differently and make a big thing out of it.
During the last few days of the internship, i got sick and couldn't go to work, which in itself was fine. But what happened was that my grandpa, who sometimes does volunteering at the same radio station, had an appointment to record something on one of the days i was sick and thought it'd be nice to surprise visit me. I, being sick and at home, obviously wasn't there but when he tried to find me he called out my new name and not my deadname, and when they got confused and asked him who he meant he apparently kind of laughed at them for not knowing that that name is me.
The next day, when i called in again to tell them I'd have to stay home for the next two days (till weekend) too, i immediately got asked why he was calling me [new name] instead of [deadname]. I got kinda uncomfortable since its like, either forcing me to lie or to out myself. I ended up telling them the truth, that im actually trans and prefer that name and that my family & friends use it for me, but that i didnt feel like outing myself at their workplace since it was only a short term official thing. The woman on the phone then went along the lines of "ah, i figured it was that already. you wouldnt have been the first trans intern we had, we would have been happy to use your new name for you. I also didn't like/appreciate your grandfather laughing at me for not knowing about it". I didnt really comment on that more than saying 'thanks' because i didnt want to have to defend me not outing myself? And we had a few other official things to discuss regarding the internship ending anyway.
A few days later i got mail from them, which had the documents i needed to prove i was an intern there (and they were nice and sent two copies, one with my deadname and she/her and one with my new name and he/him). There was another smaller piece of paper in the envelope which read "kind regards from everyone in the team. and sorry we weren't sensitive/understanding/empathetic enough for you to tell us".
And it sounds nice, but to me the message + the conversation i had where i was kind of forced to out myself earlier reads kind of passive aggressive. or as indirectly telling me i should have just outed myself and they're hurt by me not trusting them enough to tell them and making them look dumb to my grandfather for not knowing.
AITA?
What are these acronyms?
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There is godly sorrow that leads to repentance. Make sure that in your effort to encourage others and build them up you don't "validate" them so much that you actually invalidate godly sorrow over doing sin, or call the conviction of the Holy Spirit some kind of cultural oppression or mental illness. Its good to feel bad about being a sinner and doing things that are bad as long as that turns you to God and repentance. This sorrow is only ever meant to be temporary by the way, as it is replaced with joy when we find forgiveness in Christ, so I am not saying Christians should be depressed and self-loathing, but when someone from the world comes to you and says, "I feel bad about my sin," the correct thing to say is to tell them how to be forgiven, not to tell them they're fine.
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wannabegwenstacy · 1 year
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Eden's Favorite Scoups Tumblr Fics
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updated: 5/2/2023
A/N: check out the full svt fic recs masterlist for some of the other members. warning i'm a baby carat so its not super full yet and i currently have only some members posts created currently. will be updating with more fic recs periodically. :)
A/N: Also, I don't have a lot of fics linked yet. :( Will continue reading and updating periodically.
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Terrifyingly Innocent by @twogyuu
Pairing: Seungcheol x fem!reader
Genre: Fluff, angst, fake dating, slowburn, older brother’s best friend!Seungcheol, badboy!Seungcheol, innocent!reader, older brother!Jihoon, non-idol!au, university!au, low-key Crazy Rich Asians!au (Seungcheol is RICH - implied chaebol lifestyle, Jihoon and reader's family aren't chaebols and are commoners but well-off)
Warnings: PG-13, specific warnings will be listed per chapter.
Summary: Fearful of losing her, yet unwilling to leave; this agreement between Seungcheol and his best friend’s little sister was meant to be casual and temporary, yet he finds himself growing more attached to her day by day.
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push it down (sooner or later it all comes out) by @dontflailmenow
Pairing: Seungcheol x fem!reader
word count: 50,301
genre: smut (18+), enemies to lovers, camboy au, angst (with a happy ending)
Warnings: adult language, excessive use of petnames, copious amounts of banter, e2l antagonism/shenanigans, camboy!cheol, strength kink, size kink, blink and you miss it sir kink, reader likes being a brat and cheol is into it, brief discussion about/hints of potential sexual power dynamics (but they're pretty tame imo), two instances of ass-swatting, mutually consensual possessiveness, semi-public touching, explicit sexual content: masturbation (m. and f.), manual stimulation (m. and f. receive), oral sex (m. and f. receive), protected and unprotected sex + creampie.
Summary: thirsting over your ex’s best friend in general is a bad idea. given that you and seungcheol have never gotten along, it’s even worse. when you accidentally stumble across his stream, though, and he finds out? all bets are off.
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baguette by @bwinnies
Pairing: choi seungcheol x reader
Wordcount: 1.2k
Warnings: FLUFF , some cursing , food is mentioned (they’re in a grocery store) , seungcheol may make u kinda weak ngl
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FINE DINING 101: STEP ONE (s.c) by @ncteez
Pairing: seungcheol x afab reader 
Wordcount: 3.6k
Warnings: pussy eating (he gets in there), masturbation in the form of humping the mattress and then into his hand, finger fucking, there isn’t any penetration or anything but like– maybe in a part two they can actually do more??? idk it depends on if y’all want a part two.
Summary: Is it weird that no man has ever given you some good head and your best friend is a bit annoyed by that? Probably not. Is it weird that he offers to eat you out after a particularly bad date? Oh yeah, for sure. You’re still gonna let him though. 
or the one where seungcheol proves to you just how good he is at giving head.
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Remind Me by @milfgyuu
Pairing: Choi Seungcheol x Fem!Reader
Wordcount: 2.7k
Genre: fluff, humor
Warnings: mc gets drunk, cheol sleeps in underwear only (u can fight me on this), like one (1) unintentional innuendo.
Summary: You’ve had a little too much to drink at your sister’s wedding and can’t understand how or why Choi Seungcheol of all people is assigned to babysit you.
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ice cold, cabin fever by @smileysuh
Pairing: Seungcheol & Mingyu x afab!Reader
Rating: 18+ explicit
Wordcount: 25.9k
AU's: e2l, s2l, step brothers Jihan, non idol, ski resort, roomies, etc...
Warnings: threesome, daddy issues, mean/tsundere cheol, wet dreams, spanking, marking, dirty talk, choking, unprotected sex, pain kink, dacryphilia, breast play, praise, degradation, fingering, oral, hand job, blow job, multiple orgasms, overstim, edging, orgasm denial, manhandling, size kink, cumplay, finger sucking, spit roasting, hair pulling, voyeurism, | petnames: (hers) princess, bitch, whore, baby (s.coups) cheol, douche, dick, daddy (mingyu) gyu.
Summary/Preview: "come on, let’s just go back to snakes and ladders and you can pretend we’re not snowed in with no firewood and a dude you hate locked in the bathroom."
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inflection point series by @lovelyhan
Pairing: jeonghan x reader x seungcheol
Wordcount: 6.3k + 8.3k + 7.6k
Tags: unresolved emotional tension, friends to lovers on the hannie side of things, lovers to exes to enemies to lovers again on the cheol side of things, established relationship, angst, smut
Warnings: | pt.2 : implied alcohol consumption, graphic sexual content (minors dni!!) | pt.3 : graphic sexual content (minors dni!!)
Summary: you love yoon jeonghan. no, scratch that. you fucking adore yoon jeonghan; so much that the moment he asks you to be in an exclusive set-up with his current partner, you accept the offer in a heartbeat. what you fail to consider, however, is who your boss’ boyfriend actually is.
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Bite That Lip | One-Shot (Seungcheol) by @beahae
Pairings: Seungcheol/S.Coups x Reader(f)
Rating/genre: M18+, friends-with-benefits to ???; smut 💖, mild angst/fluff
Word Count: 6.3k
Warnings: Explicit smut, unprotected vaginal penetration, spanking, dom!Cheol and sub!reader, finger sucking, Cheol and Mingyu both lift and carry reader, reader wears workout clothes (sports bra, leggings), sorta sweaty sex, creampie, degradation, kind of breeding kink (depends what you consider a breeding kink to be), reader is referred to as ‘brat’ and ‘a hole’, pet name ‘baby’, begging, possessiveness/jealousy but it’s like hot and not crazy in my opinion, reader is a tease and brat but only before the smut lol
Summary: Seungcheol knows you're really close with his whole friend group. But now that things have... quietly been developing between the two of you, he would love it if you'd cool it with the heavy flirting with the other guys.
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in the eye of the beholder by @cheolism
Pairing: choi seungcheol x fem!reader
Wordcount: 6.2k
Tags: boyfriend!cheol, dom!cheol, possessive cheol. wall sex, fingering, oral; unprotected sex. worshipful sex. cheol's crude mouth, dirty talk. crying during sex from pleasure, mating press, spitting, hair pulling, consensual choking (just a little). pet names (princess, baby, sweetheart, angel, pretty girl, beautiful). simp seungcheol, his real spending addiction. he's going to tell you you're beautiful until you believe it.
Warnings: MDNI. fat/chubby!reader, insecurity, internalized fatphobia, anxiety. mentions of fatness, stretchmarks, love handles.
Summary: when you don't like how you look in the mirror, your boyfriend decides to take it upon himself to worship you.
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F*ck, Marry, Kill: With the Experienced by @bitchlessdino
Pairing: fem!reader x ex!mingyu x seungcheol x wonwoo
Genre: smut
Wordcount: 5.6k
Tags: poly, exhibitionism, voyeurism, degradation, pet names (princess), unprotected sex (except cheol), praise kink, spanking, clit slapping, fingering, oral (rec. and giving), u, pussy slapping, ass play, triple penetration
Summary: one dumb party game makes a comeback.
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pathfinderunlocked · 3 months
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Healthy Boss Template (CR +3)
Wait, why did a giant health bar just appear in the sky?
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Artwork by Jeff_Chee_471 on Reddit.
D&D and Pathfinder have a really unusual idea of what a "boss" is compared to, like, any video game ever made. They often tend to just take an enemy that would be part of a group of normal enemies if you were about six levels higher. When they do something more unique, it still tends to be balanced like that. Tons of offense, not that many hit points, but often extremely hard to hit. Adventure designers often try to make up for this design by making a boss weaker but giving it minions, but that doesn't change the fact that there's really no concept of a creature that's inherently a "boss creature" in this game.
And sometimes that's fine. But sometimes you just want a big chunky fight that's balanced more like how a video game boss is balanced: only a little more damage than other creatures, but way more health, and the ability to recover if you do nasty stuff like stun it. Something that lets the players go all-out using their abilities, and rewards them for doing so, instead of having to spend most of the fight just focusing on not getting attacked, because they know one attack can take them out.
This template isn't a global solution. It'll get old, and if you reuse it too much, players will find strategies that bypass it. That's why I design so many different boss monsters that each work differently. But if you want to convert an existing monster into a boss, this is one way to do so without a lot of effort, and without just giving it the advanced template and several fighter levels to max out its offense.
Some of the options for different abilities are there to deal with different kinds of player strategies, rather than because they're appropriate for different kinds of bosses. If your PCs use vital strike, give it vital negation. If they use combat maneuvers, give it reset stance. If they cast a bunch of spells on the terrain, give it undo. If they rely on hungry pit, give it escape to nowhere. Don't feel bad about using this template specifically to counter them, since the inflated HP and the limited uses of these special abilities mean that the players' strategies will still be useful, they just won't instantly win the fight.
Healthy Boss
Healthy boss is an inherited template that can be applied to any creature.
Challenge Rating: Same as the base creature + 3.
Hit Points: A healthy boss's hit points are three times as high as the base creature's.
Initiative: A healthy boss gains a +10 bonus to its initiative.
Defensive Abilities: A healthy boss can never be surprised, and is not considered flat-footed before it has acted in combat.
Special Abilities: A healthy boss gains 1 of the following special abilities:
Bolstering Cry (Ex) Twice per day as a move action, a healthy boss can grant all allies within 60 ft. a number of temporary hit points equal to its new challenge rating. When it does so, it also suppresses the following conditions on affected allies other than itself for 1 round: blinded, confused, entangled, fatigued, exhausted, nauseated, paralyzed, shaken, sickened, staggered, stunned. The healthy boss does not need line of effect to these allies, but they must be able to either see or hear it. Second Wind (Ex) Five times per day as a free action at the start of its turn, a healthy boss can gain a number of temporary hit points equal to its new challenge rating. These temporary hit points last for 10 minutes. It can only use this ability only once per round. Vital Negation (Ex) Once per round, a healthy boss can halve the damage of a single incoming source of damage. It can choose to use this ability after hearing the amount of damage that it would take. This does not require an action.
Additionally, a healthy boss gains 2 of the following other special abilities:
Aura of Recovery (Su) The healthy boss gains a 40-ft. aura. At the end of each of the healthy boss's turns, one of the healthy boss's allies within this aura (including itself) gains a new saving throw against any one ongoing harmful effect that initially allowed for a saving throw. Escape to Nowhere (Su) Once per day, at the end of an enemy's turn, a healthy boss can escape to the ethereal plane, as if using ethereal jaunt. This does not require an action. It remains in the ethereal plane during its next turn. At the start of its second turn after using this ability, the healthy boss returns to the plane it was on, but is staggered during that turn. Legendary Resistance (Ex) Once per day, when a healthy boss fails a saving throw, or when an enemy succeeds on a check against the healthy boss's spell resistance, the healthy boss can expend its legendary resistance to treat the roll as if the healthy boss had succeeded on the saving throw or the enemy had failed on the check against spell resistance. A healthy boss with a total challenge rating of at least 9 gains a second use of Legendary Resistance per day, and a healthy boss with a total challenge rating of at least 18 gains a third use of legendary resistance per day. This does not require an action. Reset Concentration (Ex) Once per day, when a healthy boss fails a concentration check, it can steel its mind against future distractions, gaining a +10 bonus on concentration checks for the next 10 minutes. This does not require an action. Reset Stance (Ex) Once per day, when a healthy boss starts its turn prone or grappled, at the start of its next turn after being successfully subjected to a combat maneuver other than trip or grapple, it can spend a move action to stand up, free itself from any grapples, pick up a single item within its reach, end the effect of a dirty trick maneuver, and move up to its move speed without provoking attacks of opportunity. Upon using this ability, the healthy boss also gains a +5 bonus to its CMD and a +10 bonus to Acrobatics, Climb, Ride, Swim, and Fly checks for the next 10 minutes. Undo (Su) As a standard action, once every 3 rounds, a healthy boss can revert the effects of any number of ongoing or instantaneous magic spells that are affecting itself, other creatures, or the surrounding environment. Each spell effect it attempts to undo must be within 60 ft. of the healthy boss, and must have been applied during the last 10 minutes. Even instantaneous spells can be reverted with Undo, but damage is not reverted. To attempt to undo a spell, a healthy boss makes a caster level check against a DC of 6 + the effect's caster level, using its hit dice as its caster level. If successful, the ongoing spell ends, or the effects of the instantaneous spell are reverted.
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thecreaturecodex · 4 months
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Scalescribe
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Image © Paizo Publishing
[I quite like the scalescribe, as I always appreciate it when aberrations aren't just tentacled horrors. Sometimes they're funny little guys. The caster bond/transcribe scroll is a neat mechanical effect that's in the PF2e original, but it really works best if the spellcaster goes out adventuring while the scalescribe stays behind and reads and writes. Which I think suits the scalescribes just fine.]
Scalescribe CR 3 N Aberration This strange creature resembles a snake with eight spindly arms, each ending in a delicate, human-like hand. It has five eyes arranged in a cross on its face, a fleshy hood growing over its face. Its jaws are wide, but nearly toothless. Its body is decorated with scraps of text, some single letters, others entire paragraphs in a dense hand.
Scalescribes are strange magical creatures that are obsessed with words and language. They tend to live in libraries, temples to gods of knowledge, and other places where there are lots of books. The words on their bodies are extracts from what they have read, and shift over the weeks as they encounter new writings. Scalescribes may be sought out as sages, or by spellcasters who want to use their abilities to manipulate magic writing.
A scalescribe would rather not fight if it can help it, and their bodies are not much suited for combat. Their most powerful attack is the ability to charge a written character with magical force and fire it like an arrow. They cannot do this at will, however, and usually bolster these attacks with spells cast from scrolls or jabbing with the quills they always carry. Such jabs deal little damage, but carry a creeping stain of magical ink. If they are targeted with a spell they haven’t seen before, or one that the scalescribe thinks might be tactically useful, they will attempt to copy it onto a temporary scroll so they can use it themselves.
This ability to copy and reuse spells is what makes scalescribes so valuable to spellcasters. If the scalescribe chooses, it can allow another creature to cast that spell, even crossing spell lists in order to do so. A scalescribe is most likely to use this ability if it judges the other creature “clever”, which it determines by playing word games and quizzing vocabulary. A creature that can teach a scalescribe a word it doesn’t know is likely to make a fast friend.
Scalescribe      CR 3 XP 800 N Tiny aberration Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft., Perception +11
Defense AC 17, touch 11, flat-footed 13 (+2 size, +3 Dex, +1 dodge, +1 natural) hp 27 (5d8+5) Fort +2, Ref +4, Will +8 Defensive Abilities lettered
Offense Speed 20 ft. Melee quill +8 (1d3-2/18-20 plus inkstain) Ranged morpheme glyph +8 (3d6 force) Space 2 ½ ft.; Reach 0 ft.
Spell-like Abilities CL 5th, concentration +6 At will—arcane mark, detect magic, read magic 3/day—comprehend languages (self only) 1/day—dispel magic, secret page
Statistics Str 6, Dex 17, Con 12, Int 19, Wis18, Cha 13 Base Atk +3; CMB +4; CMD 13 (cannot be tripped) Feats Dodge, Magical Aptitude, Scribe Scroll (B), Weapon Finesse Skills Climb +10,Craft (calligraphy) +8, Knowledge (arcana, history) +11, Linguistics +11, Perception +11, Sense Motive +11, Spellcraft +13, Stealth +18, Use Magic Device +7 Languages Aklo, Common, Draconic, 4 others SQ caster bond, intellectual, scroll use, transcribe spell
Ecology Environment urban Organization solitary or scriptorium (2-5) Treasure standard
Special Abilities Caster Bond (Su) A scalescribe can form a bond with any creature with spellcasting levels by performing a ritual that requires 1 hour of concentration, usually done while the other creature is preparing spells. A prepared caster can prepare the spell carried on that scalescribe’s transcribed scroll, and a spontaneous caster can treat that spell as if they knew it for that day. This can allow a caster to cast a spell that is not on their spell list, as long as it belongs to the same tradition of magic (arcane, divine or occult). This lasts for 24 hours, or until the scalescribe uses its transcribed scroll or transcribes a new scroll. If a prepared caster loses access to a spell in this way, the spell slots that had this spell become open. Inkstain (Su) A creature struck by a scalescribe’s quill takes 1d4 points of damage per round for the next 10 rounds. This can be removed by any healing spell with a successful DC 13 caster level check, or by any effect that removes or delays poison without a check. An erase spell removes the inkstain without a caster level check. This is a poison effect, and is an ability of the scalescribe, not the quill. Intellectual (Ex) A scalescribe treats all Knowledge checks and Linguistics as if they were class skills. Lettered (Ex) A scalescribe gains a +4 racial bonus on all saving throws against glyphs, symbol spells and spells and effects with the language descriptor. Morpheme Glyph (Su) As a standard action, a scalescribe can draw a magical syllable in the air and fire it at an opponent. Treat this as a ranged attack with a range of 40 feet and no range increment. A creature struck takes 3d6 points of force damage. A scalescribe can use this ability once every 1d4 rounds. Quill (Ex) A scalescribe treats any quill it carries as if it were a rapier it was proficient with. Scroll Use (Ex) A scalescribe can use spells from scrolls as if the spell was on its spell list. Transcribe Spell (Su) As an immediate action when targeted by a spell with verbal components, a scalescribe can attempt to copy down the spell into a variant scroll. The scalescribe must succeed a Spellcraft check (DC 15 + twice the spell’s level) to successfully copy the spell, and is still affected by the spell whether it succeeds or fails at this check. If it succeeds, the scalescribe creates a scroll of that spell that only it can use. A scalescribe can only have one transcribed scroll at a time.
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wolfydoesstuff · 25 days
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I've got a lot to say about Dark, not gonna lie.
This whole thing is based on my interpretation of AvA, by the way! Everything is just what I, a random person on the internet, thinks about a little red stick figure.
Note: I'll be using he/him for Dark and they/them for Chosen. (In normal conversation, both would be he/they or he/they/it in Dark's case, but it's easier on my brain to stick with one set per character.)
The thing about Dark is that he's very un-fleshed out. And that's almost "fine," if he was a one-off antagonist in AvA 5, maybe I could let it slide, but here we are.
Like, sure, we got The Flashback, but that was all from Chosen's perspective. Dark is there when he's relevant, but no more than that. He's been shown as nothing but "raahhhhh stab stab murder destroy" in most of The Showdown when I feel like AvA 3 and The Flashback established him as being more than that.
He was completely chill before being programmed (something I'm going to revisit), was able to work with what was in front of him, and had actually interesting interactions with other characters for being as early in the series as it was.
Later, The Flashback gave us a little bit more, with him being actually proud of making the ViraBot and also seeming to expect Chosen to be as well. Also Chosen and Dark high-fiving. That was just cute.
And then we got The Showdown. Don't get me wrong, I love the episode so much, but I feel like they took the previously established Dark and picked what they wanted to use and just forgot about it, turning him into a crazed murderer with no real transition to that from just wanting to do shit with Chosen. Then he slaughtered RYGB in cold blood and was blasted into a cliff.
Now a lot of people are saying how they don't think he'll ever come back and honestly, if that's what ends up happening, that'd just be sad.
Because Dark has so much goddamn potential.
He's already got interesting things that can be revisited and expanded upon more. After his (possibly temporary) writing off, I still had unanswered questions about him and his character.
We don't really know how much his programming affects him and his 'normal' life. Does being with Chosen and not doing anything to destroy them like his programming says he should? Are there any other things that come with being programmed? Other pros and cons? We've got no fuckin' clue!
How does Dark feel about things in general? Life mindset, reactions to things going wrong outside of just murder, hell, even just an actual personality. Things that, for the most part, require a living, breathing Dark, whether to actually make sense or just not be as awkward.
And I've heard the arguments that not all the villains should have redemption arcs and Dark being dead is a reminder that there's other options, and I wholeheartedly agree.
I think that Dark could be brought back and be expanded upon while still being an antagonist. We can get to know him as a person, feel with him more.
And then it'll happen.
It'll seem like things are going well, he's going to turn around, but he doesn't. (This could also be a great opportunity to bring back to programming aspect.) And so, for one reason or another, Dark ends up actually dead, and people actually care for reasons other than its effect on Chosen.
And I feel like it's fitting.
The one who murders in cold blood for whatever reason is killed off at the end right as he tries to be different. (Or doesn't and just ends up being more sympathetic than we first thought.)
And that, my dear reader, is how to make the audience hurt and actually grieve a character, if only for the moments that they're dying.
Anyway, that turned from a rant-ish thing to what I'd do with a character, but I hope this whole thing made sense and you all have a good day.
Bye >:3
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cecedownbad · 11 months
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TOUCH
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Summary: Leon got a temporary partner, he wasn't keen on it yet why did you look at him like like that? Why did your touches leave him falling apart? [Leon X GN!reader]
Warning: No Y/N, slightly suggestive, this was self indulgent, I made Leon a softie but also not *wink*
Word count: 1.9k
I wrote this right after I got all the achievements for RE4R, I'm so down bad. Pictured ID Leon for this one. [Put the MDNI tag after editing, Listen kids don't be reading things you aren't supposed to.]
Enjoy
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A rare occurrence this was, where the independent agent would be assigned a partner to work with. He didn't welcome the idea but upon insistence from high authority, it was something that required no refusal. To the other however, you were not new to the concept but had other reasons for finding it difficult to work with another. Just this moment however, the idea didn't seem so bad, not when the man crouched before you had features meant to be carved on statues.
"Do you mind if I..." Admiring the soft strands that covered Leon's eye, you grazed a few to catch a glimpse of those baby blues, those eyes that seemed to shift at the softest contact with light. Oh what a dream they were but the other could only flinch at your touch. "—What do you think you're doing?" The question left his mouth hastily, the brush of your fingertips had him startled enough to sound like he could have raised the weapon in hand to your throat. But what should have scared you, only made you want to gaze further but the situation around had sent its own hints that were hard to avoid, so with hesitance, you retract your hand and place it by your side, "I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"
"It's fine, let's get this over with." This wasn't meant to be complicated. Leon had his own share of grueling missions, ones that he'd imagined that he'd never return from. So, why was it that information retrieval required a party of two, one of which already seemed distracted, by their partner no less. "They're moving out, I'll take this exit, you take the one on the east end. Go." He instructed, you truly were distracted. Following his orders was easy, but the way his voice sounded so rich, the gruff undertones left you waiting for what else he could say, a second look from him gave a clear idea that it was all you would hear.
With a nod, leaving the area, you'd trace every corner of the building, inspecting any unusual anomaly that laid before you, clearing hallways as you pass by. It wasn't any different on Leon's end, though there was one anomaly that couldn't seem to dissipate, it was the slight warm touch of your fingers by his cheek. He'd been entranced by that way your eyes would gaze at every bit of his face, all the indentations had been marked. His awareness of this wasn't something outlandish, he knew that few found him attractive but the stare that you'd left him with screamed something so raw.
Taking his thoughts, he rubbed away your phantom touch and dragged on with his mission at hand, the one thing he should be focused on. "Helios coming in, I have spotted hostiles at the exit gates, waiting for your approach Condor one." The static grated through Leon's comms, leaving any hesitation behind, he answered, "Copy, keep eyes on the hostiles."
Leon made it by your side shortly after, with total silence weighing over you, this was the opportune moment to take down the guards. Taking a final look at your gear and checking your handgun, the time to slip away had arrived and with the help of your support operative, a vehicle with an armed driver was provided. The question still rested, why was it that two agents were required for this mission, either one of you could have retrieved the information. And with that still lurking at the corner of your mind, subtle glances at Leon were made.
Curiosity took ahold of the question that popped up, along the way the question was lost to the farthest reaches. The car had been silent along the way, not even the radio could overtake the hold it had but the silence opened the gates of your fleeting observations to run wild and with that, so did your senseless curiosity. The man next to you had been gazing out the window, his hand rested on the side of his neck, with his elbow placed on the car door. The light from the window had blanketed him with such vivid beauty, almost as if it embraced him. The clothes that he wore were simple, dawning nothing more than a jacket and a dark shirt on the inside.
Unlike before, you'd try and make your glances more discreet but really, how could that be possible when his very frame looked as though it was meant to be painted, as if he was the only source to study. Your eyes were caught by his, Leon didn't make do with ignorance this time, "Do you enjoy staring at people that much?" His tone was not contempt, in fact his question was rather genuine with its details and all he wanted was an answer from his temporary 'aid'. "I'm sorry, I just—I really did not mean to make you—"
"You keep looking like I'm the last thing alive, I'm...curious, why?" His back turned away from the window, the rays now outlining his figure gently. The answer to that question was so obvious, it almost poured out a second later. So you answer, an ounce of hesitation now whisked away, "Because, I find you...beautiful." it slipped out with ease that it caught you off guard at the departure.
"Beautiful? Listen, I'm not up for insults."
"No, I find you beautiful, I can't help but stare." He'd never seen someone face him with such words in conviction, as if nothing could phase the fact. You raise your hand to his face, the action - slow but you never felt so light, "May I?" A question that sounded so desperate, he responded by shutting his eyes, accepting your touch.
Tenderly your palm rested on his face, soothing his skin with your thumb. He didn't seem to mind, no, he didn't mind at all. He once refused the touch of any other, after all, the pain knew nothing more than the soft warm touch of another now. Leon didn't refuse, he couldn't turn away, your hand caressed his cheek, slowly parting his hair from his eyes like before.
The sensation no longer makes him flinch but want. That scared him, he couldn't believe that he'd crave the touch of another in such a way he could've lost himself. No, he shouldn't want any more but oh, the way you'd gaze at him, the way your eyes followed all his indentations, he lost himself in your hands.
It didn't go past you, you noticed it as well. You retracted your hand, it hurt you but the sudden loss had Leon peering at you. All you did was caress his face yet he seemed to have wanted more but that led to the two recording their surroundings. The vehicle had reached its destination, you thanked the driver and hoped to all the constellations that the glass divider between the driver and passenger seat gave away little of what was exchanged before.
As such came your formalities, this was where you'd expected to part ways with Leon, the two of you report to different authorities afterall. You contact your support operative and file in the report at your desk.
"It went well I assume, no slip ups?" The woman sat before in the desk eyed your files. Her glasses rode all the way down to her nose. "Yes, working with Leon Kennedy made it a much smoother retrieval. I do have a question though." You needed to ask, that one recurring question, "Since you did well and I have some time, go on." She accepted the query.
"Why were both Leon and I assigned to this? When we got there, the place could have been easily swept by either me or Leon alone." It wasn't daunting in any way, a simple query but the woman furrowed her brow and peered at you with rather tense eyes. "It was an order from someone else, we had expected the location to be more guarded, it was good that it wasn't."
It barely answered anything, but you accepted it, walking out the office and returning to your very own. When you would have expected to be alone with your thoughts, you see a surprising figure at your desk, it was Leon. "Hey, I'm guessing you just finished with your report?" He asked.
"Yeah, did you...want to ask me something?" You eyed the way he'd been leaning on your desk, had he been waiting here a while? That rested on your mind and the thought didn't bring any discomfort. He looked down from where he stood, but his eyes met you just as fast,
"Back there, I..."
".....back there you? Hm?"
"I didn't—I didn't hate what happened, I have something to ask you, how long have you been, watching?"
"Huh? oh no, I never tailed you or anything, I just looked from afar. Believe me, I wasn't stalking you or—" His question caught you off balance, this time it did bother you, causing profuse apologies slipping out but he caught you from spewing any further. As your eyes darted away, trying your best to focus on anything but him. Though that went all up in flames since he placed his hand at the back of your head, making you look directly at him, "Look at me, I'm right in front of you." Leon wasn't harsh with any of his movements, that tilt was only meant to make you look at him in your fluster but this had gotten you to go quiet.
It was his turn to mark your every feature, he could never miss a thing at this set up. "You really know how to get to me." He pressed his thumb to your lips, running over them both, parting them softly. His eyes were trained on you, as though you were the only one there. Leon's eyes fell from your eyes to your mouth and landed on your hands, which he grabbed, taking it up to eye level. He placed your hands over his lips, grazing them softly against it. Your stomach rolled for miles at this point, his actions were captivating and it made you scream all sorts of profanities that your mind could make up.
"Look at you, I shouldn't make you wait any longer." Oh he knew what he was doing. How could that very man who looked as though he could have fallen apart by touch alone be standing before you, locked in place, holding both your hands together, like a cuff. "O-okay, uhm, I need to get back to work, I'm guessing so do you, can I go now? Please?" Your plea was practically begging, you didn't hate any of this but it didn't make your heart grow any quieter. He let out a small laugh, as though he'd triumphed, won an achievement no one said he could. He let go of your hands, relieving you of the hold.
You seated yourself right after, clearing your throat to dissipate any other unwanted thoughts. Expecting to see him walk out of your office, you waited but he didn't, instead he turned your chair to face him, your eyes landing on his chest before looking up at him.
"I'll see you later."
The words were so simple yet he left you by grazing your face. The soft touch similar to the one you both exchanged.
He left you wanting more.
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nanaminokanojo · 6 days
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ACCIDENTALLY IN LOVE | part 19
-meet cute? a cheesy musical number? forget it! love makes itself known to you through a minor car accident, a broken arm, and a treacherously charming temporary chauffeur
CHARACTERS: sukuna x you/reader | jjk characters
GENRE: full-length smau + prose | bad boy x good girl | college au | a lot of firsts | aged-up characters | strangers to lovers | smut | fluff | angst | ooc depictions - soft sukuna ftw
TW/CW: strong/mature language | adult content so mdni on some parts | mentions of alcohol and/or smoking | mentions of injury, promiscuity and bullying | pet names because they're cute with 2D men | toxic behavior | will add more if something arises
MASTERLIST | CHAPTER INDEX
<<prev part 19 next>>
A/N: Contains prose with panels in between paragraphs.
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Sukuna stayed rooted on the spot. The room went silent as all eyes shifted from Uraume to you, their look of concern morphing to that of horrified looks when they finally turned their line of vision to the pink-haired male. However, his attention was on you and the apologetic look you had as you regarded him.
“Ryomen told me how you kept telling everyone about that for his sake,” Uraume began, “You don’t have to do that here, Y/N. It’s not like we’ll like him any less or otherwise, so it’s okay.”
“Still…” Suguru glared at Sukuna. “The fuck were you thinking, man?”
You started waving your hands in front of you, your ears and cheeks feeling hot from embarrassment. “I-it was an accident. Please don’t fight.”
"We're not," Sukuna assured you, arching a brow at Suguru who had a protective arm in front of you.
Satoru, who had been silently listening to the conversation, also chimed in. “Bet he had a girl with him when that happened.”
Everyone burst out laughing and Sukuna could just roll his eyes as he carelessly bumped against everyone on purpose until he was seated next to you on the couch, swatting Suguru away. He heard your apology the moment he was close enough. “It’s fine, Y/N. It’s the truth after all. I don't have to hide anything from them now.” He handed you the strawberry milk. “I didn’t think you should be taking alcohol with your constant intake of painkillers.”
“I didn’t think that was a good idea either,” you agreed thoughtfully but you still looked at him anxiously. “Thank you.”
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“So, how come you’re not chasing him to hell?” Nobara asked you. “Is there some bizarre love story we don’t know about here?”
“L-love story?” If you were blushing earlier, your face was beet red from your neck to your scalp as you shook your head, but you still smiled graciously, not missing a beat when you said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s very convincing, Y/N.”
You just bit your lower lip.
“Hey, stop it!” Sukuna growled, causing everyone to shut up, but he didn’t miss the way you flinched, too. It was endearing, but he felt annoyed with himself at the same time. “Sorry.”
Your familiar mega-watt smile immediately made itself evident and he couldn’t help but return the gesture. As per usual, everyone liked you, watching as how you take every snack the boys were offering, engaging the other girls in the room in friendly conversation, being fast friends with them. Your attention may not have been solely on him like all those times he accompanied you to functions, but he still felt happy watching you interact with people he trusted. As always, you attracted them, and this time, he hoped you will be real friends with them, too.
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TAG LIST: @catobsessedlady @kyo-kyo1 @junehasnotbeenfound @lavender-hvze @guacam011y @eyered @hellomeow12 @its-princessmara @light-yagami-l @domainofmarie @mythoscalliope @noble-17 @pheonix-eclipses @weebbuscuit @sukunasbudussy @lu-c1na @vinnieswife @the-haitani-baton @iaminyourfloors @needtoloveoutloud @r-ryuko09 @somestardeww @swirlingcurses @stayyyyyyyyyyyy21 @bronze-metal @iluv-ace
© ORIGINAL WORK BY nanaminokanojo. CHARACTERS ARE INSPIRED BY GEGE AKUTAMI’S “JUJUTSU KAISEN”. [20240520]
PHOTOS/IMAGES/GIF/FANART/ANY MEDIA CREDITS GO TO THE RESPECTIVE OWNERS.
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spotlightlowlife · 4 months
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Blitzø vs. Charlie
why the little guy comes out on top.
We have two stories set in the same universe with two different leading characters who have both not long started up their own business.
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Yet they're so different.
Blitzø is highly animated, obnoxious and aggressive with little regard for personal space, combative and sarcastic but dismissive too. It's easy to see him as mean spirited, annoying and an attention seeker, but for many attention seekers, attention is attention, good or bad, question is why are they like this?
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What makes him arguably so likeable is that he's allowed to be annoying and make mistakes, as overbearing as he is its undeniable how much he wants his team and found family around him, his examples of compassion, support, good leadership and how hard he works to make thing work even at his own expense are clear. Then there's the major trauma that continues to unfold. He's also comical.
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Blitzø has numerous connections and can place himself anywhere he doesn't belong. He has history in many places and gets around.
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Blitzø and fellow lead Moxxie have the classic buddy cop setup. They're two very different people, Blitzø being the overbearing torment leader and Moxxie being the nervous, shadowed and more professional one, what elevates this common dynamic is knowing more about the characters, both are working hard at this new business, they take lives and enable angry sinners, Moxxie is doing what he knows dispite feelings often being mixed and Blitzø is in a position where this idea has to work, nothing tells us that this is his dream job, he gives off the impression of self employment seeming the only way forward at this point, something many may relate to.
We didn't need to know Blitzø's backstory to see that his desperation is a driving force. His business is entirely dependent on a reluctant exchange of sex for a temporary key to the door, an arrangement that was awkwardly made because what was the alternative? Blitzø placed himself between a rock and a hard place.
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Though the plot digresses it has leeway to as Blitzø has to pull stings in order to run his business, he has little power but he does have a clue and knows how to shortcut his way up, however how far is up when sitting at the bottom of the social pyramid?
Charlie is nice. She's is friendly, quirky, isn't 'bossy' and she has the resources to be accommodating, she's a princess who believes there's good in everyone, they just need a break? That's why she set up her business? That or she wants to deal with injustice? Both work yet she seems to lack a clue, work ethic or fighting spirit. There has been no tough decision making and Charlie shoots down her own attempts at being assertive then moves on as if nothing happened, so if she did step up to someone, everyone's a dbag and she isn't so good for her, she can't go wrong. She is shallow but not to a fault, it's just a bit of dizziness, but she's not particularly naive.
Neutral doesn't equal grounded.
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Charlie and Vaggie lack chemistry, they also lack content. They could be flatmates or coworkers because there's little to tell us that they're even friends other than Vaggie playing the role of the sensible one in the group, a role needed since Charlie is far from that. Little tells us that they're girlfriends, we don't see any leisure time between the two of them, intimate or wholesome, no casual chat, no known shared interest. The backstory given to Vaggie and her first meeting with Charlie offer a kind landlord and greatful resident dynamic.
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Charlie doesn't appear to have any connections, it's like she, like the sinners, manifested one day, though we know this not to be true down to her having parents. The relationship with her parents is fine as much as the series has tried to place angst there and we have yet to meet anyone from her past, she seems like an adult (her and Vaggie go back years) and she's nice a d outgoing enough, where are her friends and what was she doing prior to the hotel?
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Charlie having what may seems a pipedream and being able to set it up without challenge or sacrifice because she's privilege takes away from any progressive journey, though privilege doesn't have to be a take away, it is in Charlie's case because everything is layed out already, she sets out to rehabilitation sinners, yet she barely interacts with her targets.
Again with the landlord dynamic, there's barely any reason for any of these apparent acquaintances to hang out, had she been seen working to try to rehabilitate those in her hotel, good, but no.
The plot digression is immediate and there is a lot going on, so much so that it renders Charlie's work a sidenote. The leading challenges she faces are her own cluelessness and 'stubborn old people' disagreeing with her, rather than the countless less fortunate she could and frankly, taking into account the plot, should be helping.
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Different is good, yet both of these seen to stir in a matching direction
Both attempted to set up an underdog and sympathetic protagonist
one is achieving this pretty well.
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