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mint-yooxgi · 5 months

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Promises - Yandere!Kraken!Felix

Yandere AU & Kraken AU - First Person POV

Genre: Mature, Smutty Themes, Internal Monologue

Pairing: Felix X Implied Chubby!Fem!Reader

Words: 1,958

Warnings: Implied violence and shipwreck, kidnapping, Felix is a type of Sea God in this, mentions of past sexual relations. Tentacles. This is a Yandere story, it will contain themes such as stalking, violence, obsession, possessive natures, and just general overall creepiness and swearing. You have been warned.

A/n: Did I base the start of this drabble on the ending scene in Dead Man's Chest? Perhaps. Is this a bit tamer than the others. Maybe. Either way, I still hope you like it! I've been slowly easing myself back into writing, so I'm happy with what I've been able to do. Plus, I just fucking love the banner I made for this hehehe... Anyways, Feedback is greatly appreciated! Enjoy!~

The Thirteenth of The Feral Drabbles

They thought they could keep you away from me.

They really thought they could keep you away from me.

It’s laughable. I thought it was a known rule for sailors not to anger the sea, but alas. Here we are.

The frantic screams and shouts don’t deter me for one second. I know what I came here for, and I’m not leaving without you. You’re mine. I warned them what the consequences would be, yet still they refused to give you to me. Even after we promised ourselves to each other! Can you believe that?

Oh, that sounds so harsh. It’s not like you didn’t also choose me. It’s these… these… things keeping us apart. They don’t understand our love. Think I’m corrupting you, or something.

Such bullshit. The only thing I’m corrupting is their ability to live.

They hid you on the third level, thinking you’d be safe within the deepest confines of the ship. Little do they know it’s the worst place you could be. It’s like they want you to get hurt, like they want me to kill you. Such things I would never do.

Still, despite my anger as I tear this floating piece of wood apart, I’m careful. Your safety is my top priority, and I’ve already ensured that. Right now, you rest, cocooned inside a few of my tentacles. Magic surrounds you, ensuring none of their attacks have any effect on me or you. Like hell I’ll allow them to disturb you now. Besides, you passed out shortly after my assault started on the ship, but you don’t have to worry. I’ve got you.

I can still remember when we first met, how you told me you didn’t fare well with sea travel. Yet another offence they’ve made against you. I’ll never forgive them for their transgressions. Sinners need to pay, and I am here to pass my divine judgement on those that would call themselves ‘heroes’.

Do not fear, My Beloved. Once I finish smashing apart this pathetic excuse of driftwood, I’ll take you home.

Where you’ve always belonged.

With me.

These planks are so brittle, it’s almost laughable. Your captor’s pathetic attempts to defend themselves are cute, in a way. If not for the fact that every time I start to pull you out of the wreckage, more of them show up to try and hinder me. I don’t know why they’re so obsessed with protecting you now when they’ve never done so before.

I’m the one who always saves you. I’m the one who ensures you no harm. Not them.

No matter. They haven’t seen everything that I can do. My capabilities far surpass what their puny, closed off minds can comprehend. I’ve got magic beyond the darkest depths of the ocean, strength greater than the harshest of tides. There is no being, save myself, that could keep me away from you.

I don’t even know why they try.

Finally, I’m able to pull you out of that godforsaken wreckage and unleash my full wrath upon these wretches. The boat snaps like a twig as I pull the debris and all remaining survivors below the surface.

None will survive. They don’t get to. I won’t let them.

Honestly, it’s kind of fun tearing stuff apart. I’ve always enjoyed making a mess of things. I only wish you could be awake to see just how strong your lover can be. After all, I’m doing this for you. I warned them about what would happen should they lay their filthy, traitorous hands all over you. I’m simply staying true to my word!

You know firsthand that I’m a very truthful guy. I would never lie to you, My Pearl. I would rather be slow roasted over an open fire than even think to deceive you.

Aren’t I so loyal?

Oh. Right. You aren’t awake to hear my teasing. Teasing which you seem quite fond of whenever I’m with you.

I think you just like hearing my voice…

That’s okay, Beloved. I will speak for as long as you desire me to. Besides, the feeling is quite mutual.

Gods- I can’t wait to see your face when you wake up in our home, and I get to tell you everything that I’ve done for you. Finally, we can be together, free of oppressive opinions and suppressive stares. Where I’m taking you, we can be ourselves, and the magic of my ocean will keep you safe. Eventually, when you’re ready, you’ll even become like me, too.

Won’t that be incredible? Just thinking about it makes my whole body tingle.

Or maybe that’s just the change in depth.

I promise my home isn’t too much further out, and it’s in a safe area. You’ll be able to live here with me free of any restraints. I’ll be your comfort. I’ll be your guide. I will provide for you everything you will ever need.

There is nothing stopping our love now.

I’ll even make sure that no sliver of the wreckage I just caused gets to you. The currents listen to me. They’re my friends, and soon they will be yours, too.

Either way, I’m glad that’s over, because now I can focus on you! I know that you’d be celebrating with me if you were awake, but for now, I’ll simply revel in this sweet victory alone. Having you safe in my arms is enough reward, and when you wake, the true celebration will begin.

Hmm, I wonder what we should do first? Should I take you to the reefs so you can see all of the colourful coral that I’ve grown just for you? Should I present you to the schools of fish that always seek refuge around my house? Get them to revel in your beauty? Or maybe I’ll worship you in the den of our own personal sanctuary, where nothing - no one - will be able to interrupt.

My Beauty.

My Beautiful, Beloved Pearl.

I’ll admit, there’s a certain ring to those names that I enjoy. It calls to me like the cavernous songs of the sirens. An enchantment I can never seem to escape: you.

Not that I want to.

No. Never. Not since the very first time I laid eyes on you.

You’re addictive, you know that? One glance caught my attention. One melodic note of a spoken word, and I was hooked. Your eyes are deeper than the darkest sea, and I could swim in them forever. You hold me, transfixed, with your gaze whenever you look at me, and I never want it to stop.

Honestly, I can never grow tired of you looking at me. I want you to look at me, and only me. I want to be the first thing you see in the morning when you blink those glorious eyes open, and the last thing you see when you go to sleep at night. I want to wrap you in my arms and hold you close, whispering the sweetest words of all the worlds in your ears, and hear you do the same for me in return.

There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Beloved, and I will never hesitate to prove that to you. With me, you will never have to settle for less than what you deserve, for I will always give you every single thing your heart could ever desire.

Fuck- I can still remember the way your body trembled from the very first touch. The more I trailed my arms over your body, letting the tips of my tendrils caress your skin, the more your whole being warmed. You fit so perfectly in my hold, that I long to always touch you - to always be near you, and obey your every whim.

I am but your loyal servant, sent to worship the very depths of your soul. Your entire being calls to me, and I could bathe in your warmth for all eternity. Right now, it’s that warmth that I crave more than anything. That glorious nectar that seeps from between your legs beckons to me. One taste isn’t enough. I need to feel you flooding my every sense once more.

Sweet.

Addictive.

I could spend ages defining it, but nothing could ever truly put into words just how ethereal you are to me.

People always thought my existence was mere myth itself. Rumours and legends only meant to scare those away from pursuing adventure on the high seas. Nothing more than a fable to tell their children at night to ensure they don’t go off swimming in the bay alone.

They have always been, and will always be, wrong.

I’m as real at the tide, as sure as the sand that resides against the ocean floor. There is nothing in these waters as deadly as I am, and all those that oppose us will face my wrath.

Well, where we’re going, we won’t have to worry about being disturbed at all. Plenty of room for the both of us. Plenty of privacy. No one dares disturb that which should be left undisturbed. At least, those smart enough to.

That is, of course, unless I use my magic to let those sirens get a taste of their own medicine. Water echoes even the smallest of sounds, and yours should be heard for miles around. I can still hear your glorious voice calling out my name as you bathed me in your own sacred waters, and I want all to know that you are mine, and I am yours. For all eternity.

I’ll admit… I’m addicted to you, and I can never get enough. Though, from the way I remember your hands clinging to me that night only days ago, I don’t think you can get enough, either.

Good thing we have forever to spend fully satisfying each other!

Ah… looks like we’re finally getting close to home. I can see the familiar drop off up ahead. Don’t worry, Beloved, there’ll be plenty of air for you to breathe inside. I won’t always have to keep you covered in a veil of magic. Though, I would always like to have an arm around you. Feeling your skin pressed against my own is a sensation unlike any other, and I long to never let you go.

Perhaps I should tidy up a little more before you wake. I always have way too much energy after destroying a ship. Something about adrenaline and all that.

Perhaps when you wake up you could even help me with it… You might be a bit tired and disoriented when you wake, but my magic can help with your exhaustion. You seemed to like that that last time I used it on you.

How else could we have gone as many rounds as we did?

Oh, you flatter me by pulling yourself in closer to me subconsciously when I shift into such a basic form. It easier to move around like a human within my home when it’s drained like this, and besides, I haven’t exactly shown you my entire true form yet. The last thing I want to do is scare you as soon as you wake up. You’ve already suffered the trauma of being stolen away from me today. I don’t want to make things worse.

There. All you need to do is rest now.

In my arms? Well, who am I to pull away from My Pearl when you’re clinging onto me so tightly in your sleep?

I truly can never say no to you…

Just rest, Beloved. This creature shall keep you safe, tucked away deeply in his heart for all eternity. Once you open those glorious eyes of yours, our own adventure will start.

Just you and me, forever.

I promise.

#cultofdionysusnet #mfu-net #yandere felix #yandere stray kids #yandere skz #yandere kpop #felix smut #felix scenarios #skz smut #stray kids scenarios #skz imagines #stray kids imagines #kpop smut #kpop au #kpop scenarios #kraken au #chubby reader

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zedecksiew · 2 months

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(Don't) Incentivise Ethical Behaviour

In the ongoing project of rescuing useful thoughts off Xwitter, here's another hot take of mine, reheated:

"Being good for a reward isn’t being good---it’s just optimal play."

The quote comes from Luke Gearing and his excellent post "Against Incentive", to which I had been reacting.

My thread was mainly intended as a fulsome nodding along to one of Luke's points. It was posted in 2021, and extended in 2023 after Sidney Icarus posed a question to it. So it is two threads.

Here they are, properly paragraphed, hopefully more cleanly expressed:

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(Don't) Incentivise Ethical Behaviour

This is my main problem with mechanically rewarding pro-social play: a character's ethical choice is rendered mercenary.

As Luke Gearing puts it:

"Being good for a reward isn’t being good---it’s just optimal play."

Bear in mind that I'm not saying that pro-social play can't have rewarding outcomes for players. Any decision should have consequences in the fiction. It serves the ideal of portraying a living, world to have these consequences rendered diegetic:

The townsfolk are thankful; the goblins remember your mercy; pamphlets appear, quoting from your revolutionary speech.

What I am saying is that rewarding abstract mechanical benefits (XP tickets, metacurrency points, etc) for ethical decisions stinks.

A subtle but absolutely essential distinction, when it comes to portraying and exploring ethics / morality, in roleplaying games.

Say you reward bonus XP for sparing goblins.

Are your players making a decisions based on how much they value life / the personhood of goblins? Or are they making a decision based on how much they want XP?

Say you declare: "If you help the villagers, the party receives a +1 attitude modifier in this village."

Are your players assisting the community because it is the right thing to do, or are they playing optimally, for a +1 effect?

XP As Currency

XP is the ur-example of incentive in TTRPGs. It began with D&D's gold-for-XP, and has never strayed far from that logic.

XP is still currency. Do things the GM / game designer wants you to do? Get paid.

Players use XP to buy better mechanical tools (levels, skills, abilities)---which they can then in turn use to better perform the actions that will net them XP.

Like using gold you stole from goblins to buy a sword, so you can now rob orcs.

I genuinely feel that such systems are valuable. They are models that illuminate the drives fuelling amoral / unethical behaviour.

Material gain is the drive of land-grabbing and colonialism. Logger-barons and empires do get wealthier and more privileged, as a reward for their terrible actions.

If you want to present an ethical choice in play, congruent to our real-life dilemmas, there is value in asking:

"Hey, if you kill the goblins you can grab their treasure, and you will get richer. There's no reward for sparing their lives, except that they are thankful."

Which is another way of asking:

"Does your commitment to the ideal of preserving life outweigh the guaranteed material incentives for taking life?"

The ethical choice is the difficult choice, precisely because it involves---as it often does, in real life---sacrificing personal growth and gain. Doling out an XP bounty for doing the right thing makes the ethical choice moot.

"I as the player am making a mechanically optimal choice, but my character is making an ethical choice!"

A cop-out. Owning your cake and eating it too. The fictional fig-leaf of empathy over a calculated a decision to make profit.

Sidney Icarus asks a question which I will quote here:

"... those who hold to their beliefs of good behaviour don't feel rewarded, and therefore feel punished. And that's not a good feeling. It's an unpleasant experience to play a game where the righteous players are in rags, and the mercenary fucks have crowns and sceptres. So, what's the design opportunity? How do we make doing the right thing feel pleasant without making it mercenary? Or, like reality, do we acknowledge that ethical acts are valuable only intrinsically and philosophically? I have no idea how to reconcile this."

I would suggest that the above dichotomy---"righteous players in rags, mercs in crowns"---is true if property is recognised as the only true incentive.

Friends As Property

Modern games try to solve the righteous-players-in-rags "problem" in various ways. Virtue might not net you treasure or XP, but may give you:

Contact or ally slots, which you can fill in;

Relationship meters you can watch tick up;

Favour points you can cash in later;

etc.

How different are these mechanical incentives from treasure or XP, really?

Your relationships with supposedly living, breathing beings are transformed into abilities for your character: skills you can train; powers you can reliably proc. Pump your relationship score with the orc tribe until calling on them for reinforcements becomes a once-per-month ability.

Relationships become contracts. Regard becomes debt. Put your friend in an ally slot, so they become a tool.

If this is what you want play to be---totally fine! As stated previously, games say powerful things when they portray the engines of profit and property.

But I personally don't think game designers should design employer-employee relationships and disguise these as instances of mutual aid.

Friends As Friends

In the OSR campaigns I'm part of, I keep forgetting to record money. Which is usually a big deal in such games, seeing as they are in the grand tradition of gold-for-XP?

In both games, my characters are still 1st-Level pukes, though it's been months.

I'm having a blast, anyway.

My GMs, by virtue of running organic, reactive worlds, have made play rewarding for me. NPCs / geographies remember the party's previous actions, and respond accordingly.

I've been given gills from a river god, after constant prayer;

I've befriended a village of monsters, where we now live;

I've parleyed with the witch of a whole forest, where we may now tread;

I've a boon from the touch of wood wose, after answering his summons.

I cannot count on the wood wose showing up. He is a character in the world, not a power I control. Calling on the wood wose might become a whole adventure.

Little of this stuff is codified my stats or abilities or equipment list. They are mostly all under "misc notes".

Diegetic growth. Narrative change that spirals into more play.

This is the design opportunity, to me:

How do we shape TTRPG play culture in such a way that the "misc notes" gaps in our games are as fun as the systemised bits? What kinds of orientation tools must we provide? What should we say, in our advice sections?

A Note About Trust

The reason why it is so hard to imagine play beyond conventional incentive structures has a lot to do with trust.

Sidney again:

One of the core issues is the "low trust table". I'm not designing just for myself but for my audience. For a product. How much can I ask purchasers and their friends to codesign this part with me?

Nerds love numbers and things we can write down in inventories or slots because they are sureties. We've learned to fear fiat or player discretion, traumatised as we are by Problem GMs or That Guys.

The reason why the poverty in Sidney's hypothetical ("righteous players are in rags") sounds so bad is because in truth it represents risk at the game table. If you don't participate in the mechanics legible to your ruleset (the XP and gear to do more game things), you risk gradually being excluded from play.

You have no assurance your fellow players will know how hold space for you; be considerate; work together to portray a living world where NPCs react in meaningful ways---in ways that will be fun and rewarding for everybody playing.

You are giving up the guarantee of mechanical relevance for the possibility of fun interactions and creative social play.

The "low trust table" is learned behaviour--the cruft of gamer culture and trauma.

When I game with folks new to TTRPGs, they tend to be decent, considerate. I think there's enough anecdotal evidence from folks playing with school kids / newcomers / etc to suggest my experience is not unique.

If the "low trust table" is indeed learned behaviour, it can be unlearned.

Which rules conventions, now part of the hobby mainstream, were the result of designers designing defensively---shadowboxing against terrible players and the spectre of "unfairness"?

How can we "undesign" such conventions?

Lack of trust is a problem that we have to address in play culture, not rulesets. You cannot cook a dish so good it forces diners to have good table manners.

This is too long already. I'll end with an observation:

Elfgames are not praxis, but doesn't this specific dilemma in the microcosm of our silly elfgames ultimately mirror real-world ethics?

To be moral is to trust in a better world; to be amoral / immoral is to hedge against the guarantee of a worse one.

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Further Reading

Some words from around the TTRPG community about incentive and advancement in games:

However, the reason there is a big debate about this is that behavioural incentives in games clearly do work, either entirely or at various levels. This applies outside gaming, as well. Why do advertising companies and retail business use "rewards" structures to convince people to buy more of their products? Why do people chase after "Likes" on social media?

A comment by Paul_T to "A Hypothesis on Behavioral Incentives" from a discussion on Story-Games.com

the structure and symbolism of the D&D game align with certain structures and values of patriarchy. The game is designed to last infinitely by shifting goalposts of character experience in terms of increasing amounts of gold pieces acquired; this resembles the modus operandi of phallic desire which seeks out object after object (most typically, women) in order to quench a lack which always reasserts itself.

D&D's Obsession With Phallic Desire from Traverse Fantasy

In short, my feeling is that rewarding players with character improvement in return for achieving goals in a specific way impedes some of the key strengths of TTRPGs for little or no benefit in return.

Incentives from Bastionland

When good deeds arise naturally out of the players choices, especially when players rejected other options that were more beneficial to them, it is immensely satisfying. Far more than if players are just assumed to be heroic by default. It gives agency and meaning to player choice.

Make Players Choose To Be Kind from Cosmic Orrery

Much has been made about 1 GP = 1 XP as the core gameplay loop driver of TSR D+D. But XP for gold retrieved also winds up being something of a de facto capitalistic outlook as well. Success is driven by accumulation of individual wealth -- by an adventuring company, even! So what's a new framework that can be used for underpinning a leftist OSR campaign?

A Spectre (7+3 HD) Is Haunting the Flaeness: Towards a Leftist OSR from Legacy of the Bieth

Growth should be tied to a specific experience occurring in the fiction. It is more important for a PC to grow more interesting than more skilled or capable. PCs experience growth not necessarily because they’ve gotten more skill and experience, but because they are changed in a significant way.

Cairn FAQ from Cairn RPG / Yochai Gal

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Thank you Ram for the Story-Games.com deep cut!

( Image sources: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/neuron-activation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majesty:_The_Fantasy_Kingdom_Sim https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/special-reports-pdfs/10490978.pdf https://varnam.my/34311/untold-tales-of-indian-labourers-from-rubber-plantations-during-pre-independence-malaya/ https://nobonzo.com/ )

PS: used with permission from Sandro, art by Maxa', a reminder to self:

#theory #ttrpgs #d&d #politics #ethics

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fazedlight · 4 months

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Asynchronous (Rift era, pre-Crisis, not nearly as much sc angst as the gif implies)

Where am I?, Kara thought, her body shaking as she pushed herself off the floor she had apparently crashed into, trying to stand. How long was I unconscious?

Her head was killing her. Pain was a rarity under a yellow sun, and in this case the feeling was hard to shake - it was just all too reminiscent of not long ago, when she was trapped in kryptonite, fighting burning lungs and a blinding headache while fighting heartbreak at the same time.

But she needed to not think about Lena right now.

Kara searched her mind for the last thing she remembered, Brainy’s words transmitted to her ears, telling her about the capabilities of the alien creature she was fighting. The creature was generally docile enough - but in a panic, it would thrash and quake, and it had the unique ability to…

Where… When am I?, Kara thought, looking around at the building whose ceiling she had fallen into. The creature could send her anywhere in time and space - forward or back in time, across the planet or galaxy, it didn’t matter. The good news is that the effect would be temporary in nature, lasting a day at most, before she snapped back into place, something about attenuated vibrations. “Time is like a rubber band,” Brainy had said, though Kara was certain she could hear pain in his attempt to simplify the explanation.

Kara heard the buzz of a portal behind her, the quick cock of a gun. “Don’t move,” came the familiar voice. “These aren’t ordinary bullets.”

Kara turned slowly, deflating under the hard eyes of her ex-best-friend. Lena was tense and angry, her finger resting on the trigger, her other hand on a tracking device. My heat signature, Kara thought, Guess she has kryptonite bullets now.

Lena’s eyes narrowed as she reached to her belt, before tossing vibrant green cuffs in Kara’s direction. “Put those on.”

Kara lowered herself to the floor, taking the cuffs, feeling the burn in her hands. She couldn’t really fathom Lena trying to kill her. But after the disruption of Lena’s Myriad plan, and now being held at gunpoint… “Lena, what are - what are you going to do?”

“How do you know my name?” Lena growled.

Kara’s eyes widened. Anywhere in time and space… “Who do you think I am?” Kara asked.

“Is that a joke?” Lena asked, as Kara’s mind revved into overdrive. “You think you can come back, with cartoonish S on your chest, and we’ll forget the Third Reich?”

Fear sank into Kara’s stomach. Earth X. “Lena, I know this looks like-”

“Through the portal. Now.”

-----------

Kara found herself sitting in an interrogation room.

Her mind was scrambling for what Barry had said had become of Earth X - she remembered that, in the aftermath, the Third Reich had fallen to the Resistance, which was trying to rebuild a non-fascist society. But she knew the balance had to be fragile. The Reich had its proponents.

But Kara didn’t have long to think, before another familiar face walked into the room. “Winn!” Kara said, jumping up.

“Sit down,” Winn growled back.

Kara tensed, shaking off her confusion as she slowly sank to her chair, as Winn gave Lena a skeptical look. Right, he’s not the Winn I know either…

Lena shrugged. “She knew my name, too.”

“You’re both my friends,” Kara said softly, “On my Earth.”

Winn ignored her words, stepping around the table to take a seat at its corner. “We need to know if the Führer is still alive.”

“He’s dead,” Kara said, meeting Winn’s eyes. “As is his wife.”

Winn’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“I was sent here by accident,” Kara answered. “At some point in the next day or so, I’ll snap back to my own Earth.” If you don’t kill me first, she thought.

“And how do I know you’re from another Earth?” Winn demanded.

“You met my sister,” Kara whispered, thinking back to Alex’s stories when they were separated on Earth X, years ago. “Alex Danvers. On my Earth, she’s your friend too.”

“You,” Winn said skeptically. “I’m friends with you.”

“I’m not from your Earth,” Kara said. “I’m not asking you to trust me. Just let me live long enough to go back to my own time.”

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Kara fidgeted as she sat alone in the room again - watching, waiting, itching against the bounds of her kryptonite cuffs.

She was certain that Winn and Lena - possibly others - were debating what to do with her. Hopefully they don't just kill me, Kara thought, searching her mind for how she might prove she’s not from their Earth.

But the door opened again.

Lena stepped in quietly, eyes on Kara. But the anger was subdued from before. She was curious. “Lena,” Kara whispered.

The wariness wasn’t gone from Lena’s stance, but she sat across from Kara. “What’s it like, on your Earth?”

Kara smiled. My Lena would be curious about the other Earths too, she thought. “The Third Reich ended in 1945. We’re… far from a perfect world. But we haven’t had the struggle that you’ve had.”

“And you and I are friends?”

Kara’s expression faltered, as she glanced down at her hands. “We used to be. We used to be best friends.”

“What happened?”

Kara bit at her lip, unable to look Lena in the eye. “I betrayed you. You hate me now.”

Lena’s brows furrowed. “That doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that would help your cause.”

“I’m not going to lie to you again,” Kara said. “I’ve done too much of that. The other you, I mean.”

Lena frowned, and Kara could see some of the tension in her body rise again. “What happened to my Earth’s Kara? How did she die?”

“Her heart was dying from too much solar exposure,” Kara said. “I took her up into the atmosphere before her body… it started a nuclear reaction.”

“And the Führer?”

“Oliver from another Earth killed him.”

Lena’s eyebrows briefly raised. “Winn met him, apparently.”

“Yeah. My sister was there too.”

-----------

Kara itched at her bonds again, wishing there was a clock she could check. I don’t know how much time would be left anyway, she thought to herself. But at least I’d know…

She was surprised to hear the door open again. Lena walked through with a cup and some bread, placing both in front of Kara on the table. “You must be hungry,” she said.

“Thank you,” Kara murmured, leaning forward and beginning to eat.

“What did you lie to me about?” Lena asked. “On your Earth?”

Kara swallowed harshly. “I- I kept my kryptonian identity from you. Kryptonians and Luthors don’t get along.”

“Luthors?”

Kara’s brow crinkled. “Are you a Walsh, here?”

Lena nodded slowly.

“Your mother…” Kara asked. “She’s alive?”

Lena’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

Kara smiled. She got to be raised by Elizabeth, she thought. “Are the Luthors alive? On this Earth?”

“No,” Lena said. “Alexander Luthor was the last Führer, before Oliver Queen. There was a power struggle.”

Kara nodded. “You were raised by the Luthors. On my Earth. So when I hid my identity, and became friends with you… you didn’t take it well when you found out.”

Lena looked on curiously. “The secret? Drove me to hate you?”

Kara shook her head. “There were other mistakes I made. In the aftermath. I… hurt you pretty badly.”

“So what did I do next?”

“You tried to brainwash the world.”

Lena’s eyes widened. “Why?”

“To make everyone kind.”

Lena’s brow raised. I guess that resonates, Kara thought. In a world full of fascists…

“I can see the appeal,” Lena said.

-----------

Kara was fascinated. And bored.

Her only company was Lena, on and off. She was grateful when Lena came in with food, and over the moon when Lena came in to exchange Kara’s kryptonite cuffs with far less painful power cuffs.

But her moments with Lena were few and far between given her apparent other responsibilities, leaving Kara staring up at the ceiling for long stretches of time.

She found herself torn, thoughts of “When will I be able to go home?” warring with “I hope my Lena looks at me like that again someday.”

-----------

“Are you happy here?” Kara asked. “Are you- are you with anyone?” Lena smiled. “I met him a year ago,” she said. “We butted heads on technical projects. Trying to rebuild our society’s infrastructure. But something more came of it.”

Kara smiled. “Jack?”

Lena’s eyes widened, and she nodded. “Jack.”

Kara nodded too. “I’m glad you have someone.”

Lena tilted her head curiously. “Were we more than friends?”

“You and Jack? Yeah, on my Earth-”

“No,” Lena clarified. “You and I. What were we to each other?”

Oh. “No,” Kara said, shifting uncomfortably. “We were only ever friends.”

“Is that all you wanted?”

“I just- don’t think it’s relevant to you-”

“I don’t know what I’m like on your Earth,” Lena said, leaning forward on her arms. “But if someone hurt me so badly that I try to brainwash the world about it, I think that person must’ve meant something to me.”

Kara bit her lip.

Lena’s brow quirked. “If your plan is to never lie to me again, that seems like the sort of thing you should tell me. Other me.”

Kara laughed, her heart twinging with joy and pain. “If we ever get along again, I’ll tell you.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

-----------

“Why are you trusting me?” Kara asked curiously.

“What do you mean?” Lena asked, in a tone that was more coy than confused.

“You just seem less suspicious of me than before,” Kara shrugged. “In the beginning.”

Lena’s lips quirked, taking a moment to consider Kara. She then raised her hand, twisting it slightly, causing a small yellow glow to appear. Kara noted in shock that there seemed to be a glow passing over her own body, too. “What’s happen- what are you doing?”

“Just making your temporal shift visible,” Lena said. “I scanned you after our first meeting. I can’t prove you’re not from this Earth, but I can prove that you’re not where the universe expects you to be right now.”

“I’m sorry, but-” Kara sputtered. “But are you using magic?”

“Lena doesn’t have magic on your Earth?” Lena said.

“I can’t even get my Lena to believe in magic,” Kara said with a laugh. “Rao, this is amazing.”

Kara glanced up, and found Lena smiling.

-----------

“How long have I been here?” Kara asked.

“About 12 hours,” Lena said. “Honestly, I’d let you go. But Winn said it might cause a panic anyway, if too many people see you walking around.”

Kara sat back for a moment. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

-----------

It was at the 17 hour mark - just after Lena had brought in more food - that Kara’s hands began to glow. “What are you doing now?” Kara asked.

“Nothing,” Lena said, leaning forward to eye the glow. “I think you’re being pulled back.”

“Oh,” Kara said, glancing up at the alternate Lena. What should I say? “Thank you,” Kara murmured. “Thanks for being good company.”

“Give me time,” Lena said gently.

“Time?”

“I’ll come to my senses,” Lena said, thinking to herself, nodding. “I- I know there’s baggage. But at some point, I will come to my senses. I’ll come back to you.”

Kara smiled. “I hope so.”

“Good luck, Kara Zor-El.”

-----------

Kara found herself falling. No longer cuffed, no longer in a dark dusty room - but bathed in sunlight and breathing fresh air. Earth-38, she thought gratefully.

She blinked, shooting upwards in the sky again, hearing shouting in her ear. “Kara?” came Brainy’s panicked voice. “Kara, are you still there?”

“I’m here,” Kara gasped, looking over National City.

“Must’ve lost you for a minute,” Brainy said. “The creature is by the arboretum. We’ve finished making the power net, J’onn is flying it over.”

Kara glanced to the north, but her ears were fixating somewhere southeast, locating a familiar heartbeat. We’ll figure it out, Kara thought, clinging to Earth X Lena’s words.

We’ll get there, in the end. “I’m on my way.”

#I wrote this while extremely sleep deprived so I'm sorry if it doesn't make sense #haven't done a ficlet in a while so it feels good to stretch my legs??#supercorp #mel writes ficlets

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roseykat · 2 months

Text

TITLE: Venom Eater

SUMMARY: Moving on proves its challenges. Not everyone has the ability to accept that what happened, happened - and what was, was. So as you try to lead a new life, single and trying to heal, the journey proves to be far from easy. It’s worse than difficult and more painful than what you could’ve imagined. The only comforting source is that what will be, will be. And there’s no changing that.

WARNING: minors DNI with this post or my blog. I create NSFW SKZ related content and I know I won’t be able to regulate/monitor every potential interaction with those posts so please do not engage with me, my work, or page whatsoever.

TAGS: mentions of breakups, exes, angst, arguments, swearing, smut, slices of life here and there, alcohol (Jisung is drunk but there isn’t much detail on it), confrontation.

WC: 6K+

TAGLIST: @emikisses @linos-kitten @chansbabygirlsstuff @lixiespick @frogieeheart @/fuckthinking @nimx9 @/shishou1687 @inniescandy-01 @konstanceee @/rose13255 @queenmea604

Venom Biter (Part 1) | MASTERLIST

A/N: the long-awaited part 2 to Venom Biter! This was originally meant to be longer but I decided that I wanted to flesh out the plot a little bit more so things will get worse and or better who knows…

There’s never a grey area about what people do after a terrible breakup. It’s always black and white. Whether someone cuts their hair, dyes it, alters their aesthetic, or goes on holiday to escape the reality.

The gym can make for the perfect best friend to subtly take revenge on someone a person once had.

But your new best friend was Tinder. A platform of opportunities to explore and select at your perusal. Providing you with gorgeous men who were looking to fuck and nothing more than that. If Tinder wasn’t the buzz for you that night, it would be going out with friends - friends that didn’t include ones that you made through Minho.

These ones’ you would only see about once every three months then band together again as if nothing has changed in the space between. It’s not awkward when you’re around them and so far, it has taken your mind off the past two months. Since then, your connection with Minho has been one of which where-

“God fuck I’m cumming!”

Minho knows he is too when his eyes screwed shut, laying back as he lets you use his cock, “shit, so am I,” he breathes out, watching you roll your hips in a frantic craze to get yourself over the edge. You miss this.

The way that you squeeze around him is the final straw that breaks the camel's back. Minho swears towards the ceiling, back arching as his dick glides in deeper. Within a couple of seconds, his vision flashes just as white as your insides that he fills.

The top half of your body flops forward onto his chest, spent from the past fifteen minutes that you’ve been riding him non-stop. Now it’s almost possible to hear the rapid thumping of his heartbeat that violently bashes from within. Not wanting to stay in that position for any longer, you peel yourself back, hopping off his body.

“I need you out by seven,” you declare, picking up his sweatpants and t-shirt from the floor and then throwing them right at him.

Minho grumbles but doesn’t flinch, “seven? Fucking hell.”

“Well, I have to go to work so you’re not staying.”

“I figured that,” he fusses before sitting up. “At least let me use your gym here.”

You pause for a second to look at him, wondering where he gets his audacity from sometimes, “fine.”

“Thank you,” he replies then starts donning his clothes as you make your way to the bathroom for a hot shower.

This is what it’s been like for a while now - a pernicious seesaw effect of meeting up with Minho, sleeping with him (usually in the mornings), and going about your day as if he wasn’t in your guts twenty minutes ago.

It’s always a good feeling in the moment but after, there’s a lingering icky weight that you’re tirelessly towing along with you wherever you go. You’re not sure if Minho feels the same because even though you’ve talked to him a few times, there’s no talk of each other's feelings anymore. It’s not that neither of you are ready for that looming and tender conversation. It’s just as if there’s no point.

By the time you were out of the shower, Minho was still on the edge of your bed, fully clothed and ready to leave.

“I’m not making you breakfast,” you say to him, wrapping the towel around your body a little tighter.

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t expecting you to,” he responds. “I need to talk to you about something.”

“Can it wait until the end of the day, because I need to get ready for work.”

He groans, getting fed up, “surely you can get ready and listen at the same time.”

You rustle through your drawers for a pair of underwear and bra, “to other people maybe.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If you want to use the gym, go now,” you instruct sternly, hoping that he’ll just disappear.

When he detects that he can’t get through to you right now, he gives up. It’s too early to argue, so places his hand on the door handle, opening it for himself to leave and head down to the first floor, leaving you to prepare for another day’s work in peace.

After a quick breakfast, getting dressed and decent, you grab your bags and depart. On your way out, you spot Minho using the weights while you dart past the foyer, briefly thinking about how the time to cut him off is fast approaching.

You can’t keep doing this. There’s no way to move on if you’re both still latched onto each other's ankles like how kids are with their parents. That need for one another is still present.

“Who even am I when I’m not with you?” Minho asked you two weeks into sleeping with him again after breaking up. His comment sums up the reason of ‘why you decide to keep running back to each other’.

It’s not a hard statement to understand. You’ve been with Minho for a long time, you’re both still young and haven’t dated anyone else except between yourselves. It’s like being a dog that was never socialised as a puppy, unable to interact with others because it’s not sure how.

Suppose it’s the fear and anxiety that comes with separating from your favourite person.

The world and society have become scarier than it previously was and life is not as secure when you’re not with the person who can shield you from those things. There’s no comfort, only pure vulnerability, and what better way to feel protected than to return to a lover even when there’s nothing but a feeble spark that’s left over from what was once a blazing forest fire.

Seungmin challenges that particular view of yours at dinner with Felix as well after a long day at work. He wanted to see where you were coming from but also because he’s there to force feed you the icy, sobering truth when you don’t want to hear it.

“If there’s no romance, what’s the point of going back to each other?” he asks.

“They were dating for years Seungmin, you don’t just get over someone that quickly,” Felix responds instead like he was the one being offended.

Dissimilar to Seungmin, Lix will let you down gently and is afraid to hurt you with the sharp use of words that can be sometimes.

“Supposedly,” you mutter to yourself knowing full well how fast it was for Minho to just go ahead and fuck someone else after you had broken up.

“Do you still love him?” Seungmin questions swiftly.

“No,” you respond promptly.

“If there was an opportunity to get back together with him, would you go for it?”

“No,” you answer again. “I couldn’t.”

Felix blinks, not expecting that answer, “well…then…”

“Then stop seeing him if you know what’s good for you,” Seungmin continues. “Those icky feelings that you get after sleeping with him - not good. That’s the regret you’re experiencing and it’ll never feel any better.”

There’s no crack or fault in his advice. Had you not dished out the truth about the details of your messy breakup before and after, you would’ve still been glued to the same spot. It’s important to have someone humble you, and there’s no better person to do that than Seungmin.

“Just keep thinking about it, okay? On another note, Hyunjin’s coming back from France next week so we’re having a dinner and drinks,” Seungmin mentions.

Your mind briefly departs from the subject of your ex, “is he? Has it really been that long?”

“Yeah,” Felix replies, also surprised. “You’re coming right? We’re going to have a few drinks too, and catch up.”

“What time?” You ask.

“Around six,” Seungmin answers. “Does Minho know?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” you shrug, the thought of him returning to your mind once again. “I don’t know if he’d have any interest in going since they’re not friends anymore.”

Felix recalls that factor, “that’s right. But, if the rest of us are going to be there, we should invite him too, no? Unless it’s too difficult for y-”

“It won’t be difficult,” you reply, punctuating the rest of Felix’s sentence a little too quickly. “He and I can get along for about…ten minutes before things go sour. Plus, I don’t mind not going if he wants to. I can always catch up with Hyunjin another day.”

“You’re our friend too, remember? Don’t let your asshole of an ex-boyfriend stop you from seeing us. You broke up with him, not us,” Seungmin sends you a powerful reminder. “I’ll have a chat with him so that you don’t have to.”

He has a full understanding that if you and Minho were to attempt another civil conversation, it’ll go haywire and lead to more regret that you don’t need to be feeling right now. It just goes to prove that he’s beyond correct to even assume that fact.

The minute you both try to convey how or what it is that you’re both feeling, tensions boil over. For some reason that tension is only resolved by being bent over the nearest surface and fucking it out together.

It’s not healthy.

You go to remind Minho of what he did to you which he hates hearing, not because he denies it but because he does truly feel guilty. His only saving grace to that argument was that you had both technically broken up, meaning there were no ties to one another afterwards. Still, he missed the point of the fact that he hurt you as a result of those actions. It was too fresh to have done that to you.

Even when he recognised that factor, it was hard for him to accept that he actually caused you some form of irreversible emotional harm

However, Seungmin was right in the fact that you broke up with Minho and not your friend which enabled you to leave that dinner feeling a bit better and with a clearer judgement about going forward with a decision to cut all ties with Minho. It wasn’t something to look forward to.

But what was, is the dinner in the upcoming week. It’s the prime opportunity to see everyone again for the first time in over a month.

Despite your collection of text messages and calls from the likes of Chan, Jisung, Changbin and others, it was hard to associate yourselves with them in fear that all they’ll do is unintentionally remind you of Minho. It was the same way he felt when he was clearing out his house - not wanting to be around anyone or anything that would refresh his memory of you.

Now, all you want to do is move on.

Work had a helping hand in that process. Having been so busy with things piling up, your mind was free from Minho during the day. You were able to focus on tasks instead of wallowing and thinking about whether or not to give him a second chance

If it weren’t for Seungmin texting you the details of the upcoming dinner, work-life would’ve swallowed you up whole and made you forget.

From Minnie: 6 pm we’re meeting up, Also, just a heads up, Minho said he’s coming. Take it with a grain of salt though bc he might change his mind.

To Minnie: Thank you :)

You inhale a breath of fresh air. Going to this dinner was necessary whether it was going to be difficult or not. The presence of Minho wasn’t going to stop you from seeing your friends, and with that, you decide to get ready and head straight to the venue.

The restaurant has a separate open area for functions and tables people can book out. The dim golden lighting brings a warm and cosy vibe to the venue, coupled with a beautiful earthy aroma from reed diffusers distributed around the place and the smell of promised good food. It’s a relatively fancy setting, but not to a degree where you would be denied entry if you didn’t meet a dress code.

As you walk further down, you can already see Chan and Jisung chatting up a storm in the corner while they wait for the others. It’s a relief that not many people have made it so far in order to keep as low of a profile as possible and to not draw attention to yourself. However, little by little, they will definitely notice you’re there.

Jisung is the first to spot you, his jaw becomes unhinged as he drags himself out of the booth, speeds over with his face lit up, and throws his arms around you in a bone crushing hug. He nearly squeezes and shifts all of your organs out of place.

“Do you know how much I’ve missed you?” he exclaims loudly in your ear.

Chan laughs in the distance at his best friend's behaviour, “let her breathe Jisung.”

He releases your body for a rush of oxygen to surge back to your brain, “sorry, I just can’t help the fact that I haven’t seen you in a month!”

“You Facetimed me Jisung,” reminding him of that one and only time you accepted him reaching out to you to see if you were okay.

“That’s completely different, anyway sit down,” he offers. “I’ll get you a drink.”

Without wanting to hear any protest from you, Jisung darts off to the bar nearby, ordering a beverage or two. Chan then waves out, ushering you to come and sit before you walk towards the booth.

“If I had gone another week without seeing you, I’d probably start to forget what you look like,” Chan jokes, patting his hand down on the space of cushion beside him for you to sit.

“That wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” you respond.

The second you’re seated, you can already feel Chan’s mind trying to intrude yours. There’s no point in lying to him when he’s akin to one of those Occlumens from Harry Potter, an all knowing person who can hear every one of your thoughts at will. Regardless of the fact that he’s not, it’s his parental nature which exudes that.

“Going okay?” He asks you.

You take a deep breath in and sigh out, “I could be worse.”

“You’re still here though,” he responds wisely. “And so are we.”

Chan never wanted to ask why you never told them or came to them when you first broke up with Minho. They all had to find out through one another then needed to text or ring you to confirm that it was actually real. However, they all knew that you must’ve had your reasons. Naturally, it would’ve been tough to accept let alone leaning on your close friends for support.

“Thank you,” you respond.

“Here we go,” Jisung calls out, carefully returning with two different types of cocktails. “They’re both strong as hell so don’t try to choose.”

“Not that you’d have it any other way right?” you reply, helping him with the glasses as he sits down beside you.

He pats your head as he goes to sit down and slings his arm around your shoulder, “you know me too well. Anyway, Changbin and Hyunjin are here. He just texted me before.”

Chan sulks, “what? No! he was supposed to wait until everyone else was here.”

“To be fair, they were meant to be here twenty minutes ago so Changbin is actually on time,” Jisung responds. “Anyway, how are you missy?”

“Better now that I’m with you guys,” you answer, giving him a bit of a friendly nudge before leaning into him.

Jisung grins, genuinely relieved on the inside to hear that you are. Not that you have been able to notice, but they were all worried for you at one point. The lack of information regarding your whereabouts or even the state of your well-being was concerning. It was almost like you had dropped off the face of the earth at one point, right up until you finally made the decision to start accepting people trying to contact you.

Unfortunately for your friends, they had to learn about what you were up to through Minho, and even today, you’re not sure if what he said to them was the truth. Nonetheless, they all knew at the end of the day, if they were ever unsure or suspicious of what he was feeding to them, they were mature enough to come to you to double check. If they were able to get through to you.

“Good. Now come back and hang out with me because these guys are boring.”

Chan goes to lift a finger and point across at Jisung to object his statement before Changbin rounds the corner with Hyunjin trailing at his side.

The last you saw him was some five years ago, just before he went away to an arts’ school in France to study. Now he returns taller with much more cut and distinct features and a head of light brown hair that’s visibly eclipsed his natural jet-black colour. Despite that, he also seems softer or shy when he gives everyone at the table a half smile.

“Who’d you say was boring?” Changbin prods into the conversation.

Jisung points up with his beverage in hand, “you and Hyunjin!”

Hyunjin’s eyebrows knit together with worry, “is he drunk already?”

A bright smile fashions on Changbin’s face when he notices you, “Y//N! Now it’s two welcome home parties!”

Hyunjin turns to look down at you in surprise, “have you been away as well?”

His question serves as a reminder that he has been relatively out of the loop since he’s been gone – not that you expected him to be fully aware of everything since he probably had better things to do. Hyunjin was still active in the group chat, but none of you prefer to communicate that way when hanging out is the better option. Whilst he’s missed out on a lot of stuff that’s happened, he hasn’t been so oblivious to other things.

“Not exactly,” you respond awkwardly. “But welcome back by the way.”

He smiles softly, “thank you.”

The get-together officially kicked off when Jeongin, Seungmin, and Felix arrived just before the second round of drinks was ordered. Everyone was happy to have Hyunjin back. Even for you, it was nice to see him again after so long – it was nice to see everyone in general. The setting was reminiscent of old times when everyone banded together. Whether it was at karaoke, dinner, a bar, someone’s house, or at some event, it’s always a good feeling when you’re around them.

It leads you to feel slightly upset that you haven’t seen them in so long. You’ve missed hearing their laughs, their jokes, and the safety that you feel too. But for a very painfully obvious reason, none of it seems to be the same without Minho.

“Didn’t show up did he?” Seungmin, who had been chatting up a storm with someone at the bar, walks over and takes a seat opposite you at the cornered booth. Just about all of them were alternating from the table to the bar, and a space they’d found to stand up to talk, or in Jisung’s case, dance by himself.

“Mm,” you mumble. “Which I’m sure is a good thing.”

He shrugs carelessly but with a small grin, “for your benefit. Not that I’m an expert in relationship problems but I can speak from personal experience.”

“That’s true,” you respond, remembering that he has in fact had his heart broken a few times by the same person.

Luckily for him, he’s ceased the chase and gave an account the other day at dinner of how freeing it was to be his own individual. It’s something you can only hope to achieve at this point – to be liberated from that sticky dependency you have on Minho.

It’s not love that you feel for him anymore, you’re sure of it. But it’s similar to a violent craving. His skin, voice – oh his voice. Everything about his body has you itching under the surface to have him by your side even though things end in a fiery argument, which is usually how it goes.

It wasn’t love anymore. It was dependency. A type of separation anxiety that fills you up with this icy cold feeling that won’t go away until you specifically have Minho near you. Still, deep down, you knew you didn’t love him anymore.

“Is Jisung okay?” Hyunjin ticks his head towards his friends’ direction.

Judging by the fact that Chan was holding a barely conscious Jisung up was a clear indicator that he definitely wasn’t okay. Never has he been able to handle his alcohol well and it was evident by the lack of control over his own body.

Seungmin looks over concernedly then looks down at his phone to check the time, “shit, I have to take him home too.”

He abandons you briefly to help out Chan. Both of them collectively agree that Jisung needs to go home or at the very least be removed from the bar to sober up. They take him to an empty table nearby and ask the bartender for some water. Meanwhile, Hyunjin turns a blind eye to the chaos and talks to you instead.

“How have you been Y/N?” He asks.

“Yeah, good. You? How was France?”

By the look on his face, it was as if your question brought back a whole heap of good memories to the forefront of his mind, “I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.”

“That’s good to hear,” you reply. “So have you graduated already?”

“Three months from now I will be,” he answers. “Why? You wanna come watch me walk across the stage over there?”

You consider his offer, “what if I said ‘yes’ to that?”

“Then I’d be over the moon,” Hyunjin emphasises then offers a brilliant suggestion that springs into his mind. “In turn, maybe I can show you around France and all the places I went to.”

“Is that a deal then?”

“Sounds like a solid deal to me,” he responds and whether he was joking or not, either way, it seemed a pleasant idea.

During the last hour of the dinner, you spent having an in-depth conversation with Hyunjin. From what he got up to in France, what he wants to do in the future, then covered what you’ve been doing as well

The topic of your ex-boyfriend was difficult to navigate, but you managed it well by diverting to another subject. The last thing you wanted to talk about was Minho for fear that the more you think about him, the more you’d want him.

Then again, you’re reminded once more of the fact that Hyunjin and Minho aren’t friends. He may not have any interest in him whatsoever. But it’s not like they left each other on horrendous terms. Not like how you and Minho did. Plus, it’s hard to see this fresh shade of Hyunjin in front of you, hating anyone he doesn’t like or doesn’t know.

The Hyunjin from five years ago would’ve held a grudge, but now you can see by his shift in personality, that he’s let it go.

When it came down to having to leave, everyone seemed to have their own plans. Seungmin would have the misfortune of taking care of Jisung. Felix, Jeongin, Hyunjin, and Changbin decided to go bar hopping while they were still stable on their feet and even encouraged you to come with them. It took a lot of convincing to tell them ‘no’ after you were set on heading home to the comfort of your own space.

Seungmin assured Chan that he was fine to handle Jisung, then thought it would be a polite gesture to accompany your side when you decided to walk home, regardless if it was only a minute's commute from the restaurant.

“How are you holding up?” Chan addresses the elephant in the room.

His question could be seen a mile away. It made you wonder if that was the reason he chose to walk you home since his place is in the opposite direction. Although he wasn’t confronting you, that’s exactly what it felt like.

“Somewhat okay, I suppose,” you answer.

“No, how are you really? We see Minho all the time. In fact, he won’t leave us alone. But we haven’t seen you,” he responds. “You can still hang out with us you know?”

“I know that,” you almost whine, especially after offering your ear to Jisung just for him to repeat the same words for over two hours. “I’ve been busy.”

“I guess being busy is a positive.”

“It’s when there’s nothing to do or I don’t feel good and I don’t have anyone around,” you respond and both come to a halt when you reach the entrance to your apartment building. “That’s the hardest.”

“That’s when you call us,” Chan says strictly. “I know you know this too, but all of us would drop whatever it is that we’re doing to come and help you. Not just Minho, even though I had some reservations about seeing him after what he did.”

The last parts of his words surprised you. Chan actually thought about cutting Minho off too when he found out what happened…

“So he did tell you everything.”

“Everything,” he confirms. “Including everything that you’ve both been up to now. Like how you still see each other now and then – and not for the reasons I had hoped. So why do you keep seeing him when you want to move on?”

Your eyes narrow at him, “how do you even know that I want to move on?”

“The fact that you still sleep with him but won’t pursue any sort of communication to get back with him romantically, says a lot Y/N. And I know that because he’s told me,” Chan answers bitterly, but not in a nasty way. “Your body might miss him, but I know your mind doesn’t.”

He’s bitten through the truth which you can’t seem to, his elderly brother-type personality forces you to see reason. You’d be offended if Minho tried to initiate a conversation about wanting to get back together, knowing that he’s not in any position to be making requests after what he did.

“Why are you telling me all of this?” You ask tiredly.

“I want what’s best for you,” he says. “Yes, Minho too in some way, but I told him he needed to figure out what he did on his own because I can’t help him with that. That’s his punishment.”

You supress a laugh, “thank you.”

Your short talk with Chan made you realise how empty your cup had been since you last saw him – since you last saw all of your friends under one roof. It was rewarding and it felt like home to be near them. However, his words weren’t there for you to just defer from. You had to listen to him. He was right in saying that your body misses Minho but your mind doesn’t because the next time he came around, you swore to yourself that it was going to be the last time you saw him.

But it needed a conversation, one that you weren’t even sure if you were ready to have, too scared to rip that band aid off.

As you don your bra back on and shimmy on your underwear that Minho almost tore off, you think of all the possible ways to approach this situation, bearing in mind that it does have the potential to blow up.

“W-We need to talk,” you stammer, wondering if that’s a good way to start. It’s a start, that’s all that matters.

Minho stares at you from the other side of your bed, halfway through putting on his t-shirt, “okay, what about?”

Without any warning, you blurted out what needed to - what must be said, “we should stop seeing each other.”

Heavy silence drapes over the room, except for the cogs working overtime in Minho’s brain, trying to decode your words could almost be heard. You can most definitely see it on his deadpan face. It illuminates the seriousness of the situation compared to what it was five minutes ago.

“Can you give me some more detail about that?” He requests.

“I just don’t think it’s healthy that we continue to sleep with each other when we’re not going to get back together,” you inform him.

“You don’t want to get back together?” Minho poses the long awaited question that hurts to even conjure an answer.

“Be honest, we’d be together right now if you knew that I was serious about it,” you say truthfully. “I’ll never not love you, but I can’t love you in the way that I used to.”

The sheer surprise of the conversation made Minho realise that he’s been consuming too much of a good thing. That he actually wasn’t prepared to talk to you about this. It’s been creeping around the back of his mind since you both started seeing each other casually but ignored it so as to spend as much time with you as he could even though you weren’t with him anymore.

“Right.”

“Look, just…don’t go cold on me, because I do want to talk to you about these things,” you plead with him.

“Such as?”

“Such as our friends,” you start off. “All of us hang out a lot, but I didn’t want our…breakup to stop either one of us from seeing them. They’re your friends and mine too. I’d hate for us to be driven away from them because we can’t coexist anymore.”

“Fair enough.”

You can sense that he’s already starting to shut down. An obvious coping mechanism that’s triggered by something he wasn’t prepared to hear. But while the final shreds of his rationality are still with you in the room, you make haste, and dish out the important points he needs to know.

“We might not ever be friends again even though that’s not what I’m hoping for-“

Minho stands up from the edge of your bed, cutting the rest of your sentence off in the process, “if you’re serious about everything that you just said, then I don’t want to see you text or call me first asking me to come over. This isn’t a one-sided deal that only applies to me, you have to stick to it as well.”

“This isn’t even a deal Minho. I am telling you not to.”

“What? Telling me ‘not to’ because you can’t control yourself around me? Fine. I don’t know if you realise this, but the majority of the texts between the both of us, are mainly sent from you - you asking for me, telling me how lonely you are, or how much you miss my body. So don’t start handing out instructions when you’re not going to adhere to them as well.”

There’s a viper-like sting to his words that keeps piercing your resolve. A truthful sting that seeps poison into your blood, making you feel sick and cold. He’s torn you off your high horse for a moment, bringing you back down to earth to realise that it’s not just him who needs to see reason as well.

He had a very strong argument.

Minho sighs and tails more information to his tangent, “look I will do whatever it is that you want me to do. But, if this is what you want, then you can’t deny that it will only work one way.”

There’s an efflorescence of achiness in your chest. A familiar one that you felt in the early days after breaking up with Minho. It was the same one you would feel whenever you’d have to lock the door to the spare bedroom in his house whenever he bought someone else over.

Heartbreak.

It lingers when he finally leaves with the promise of never reaching out to you again, at least for sex because there was no way of avoiding him in the future. That fact was impossible to refute. But this is what breakups consist of. Not one hairline shy off of being messy. It could, though, be much worse. That’s as much you had to be grateful for when you have to start from square one all over again.

Changing things up was necessary. You had already moved out from Minho’s, which there was no choice behind, but that meant new scenery. Different places to peruse in your own time that you hadn’t yet ever since you had moved out

It opened up new opportunities to visit some local things, especially on your way back home from work as you decide to call into a small cafe.

Soft bossa nova plays calmly in the background as you stand and deliberate on something sweet to take home with you for after dinner. If it weren’t for the many niche options to select from, you would’ve almost missed the voice talking from beside you.

“I heard the matcha bread is nice here.”

Your surprise gets the better of you, almost forgetting how to speak for a split second when you see a familiar tall figure you met once more from the other week.

“Hyunjin?”

“Hey,” he smiles. “Wanna sit down together?”

You end up ordering yourself a warm drink and a sweet pastry to go while Hyunjin found a small table right in the crook of the cafe. His sudden appearance was rather pleasant, allowing you to divert from your own thoughts for a bit. Plus, it’s always nice to sit and chat with a friend.

“I thought you might’ve been here to meet up with one of the others,” you say to him.

Hyunjin nods, putting his coffee down, “I just spent the last couple of hours helping Changbin buy clothes just down the road at one of the shopping centres, so that’s where I came from.”

You smile, “well he trusts you more than the others in that department.”

“As he should,” Hyunjin grins softly. “How are you?”

“I’m well, I just finished work and was heading home,” you respond.

“I’m not keeping you from going am I?” He asks politely.

“No, not at all,” You quickly exclaim. “The longer I stay, the more of an excuse I have not to do the mountain of things I need to for work.”

Hyunjin chuckles, “well, as long as it doesn’t get you into trouble with your colleagues.”

“I should be fine,” you hope.

“You know, when I think about it, you and I never really spoke that much back then,” he points out. “I only just realised that from last week when I saw you again.”

His comment makes you think back too

Hyunjin was definitely part of your friend group, but not one who you would hang out with individually or with another person. He was just there, almost like he was known to you by association. Aside from the fact that he’s well-mannered and kind, the only aspect of his personality that seemed to have changed is how boisterous he used to be.

Although, that’s to be expected when people mature and cross the bridge from adolescence to adulthood.

“True enough,” you reply and start snickering when you remember something funny. “But I have good memories of you though. Like when you threw that bottle at Jisung.”

Hyunjin’s eyes nearly pop out of his head, “I remember that. I could’ve killed him with that too.”

“Or when Chan had to pull you up from the train tracks because you fell off the platform and got stuck,” you add on.

“Most of those memories seem to have some type of mortal peril attached to it,” Hyunjin discovers.

“You were young,” you remind him tenderly. “They make for the best memories anyway.”

He agrees, staring into a space on the table as he reminisces, “true. So much has changed since I got back. I feel like I’ve missed out on growing up with you all even though we were just teenagers back then and adults now.”

“Maybe, but we’re still young though and some have more growing up to do than others,” you hint very cryptically at one person who automatically springs to mind. “So don’t feel sad that you’ve missed out when there’s still a lot for us out there.”

Hyunjin sits a bit more comfortably knowing that. As you both continue to talk, he realises how much you’ve changed yet somehow remained the same. You grew into your features, enhancing what was already there to a finer degree. Your looks were Hyunjin’s first impression of you when you first met as devious young teenagers.

That was before he discovered that you are as kind and cool as you come across. But you were just distant friends back then. Now, Hyunjin detected a space for that to potentially change. He wanted to get to know the friend he hung out with here and there.

Even though time threatened to cut the starting opportunity short, it was still a start nonetheless, and Hyunjin was confident that there would be other times to arrive as well. So as the baristas begin cleaning up behind the counter and around the cafe, both you and Hyunjin took it as a sign that it was probably time to head off. You both take your belongings, thank the staff on your way out and head into the night.

“Y/N,” Hyunjin says to you. “We should get coffee again sometime.”

You nod, “I’d love that. I still have your number.”

“So do I,” he replies. “What way are you heading?”

“I’m just literally around the corner, not even a minute away,” you answer.

“Okay, I’ll look forward to your text then,” he says.

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prettieinpink · 5 months

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hii!! <3

I wanted to ask u if u know how to deal with a bad grade? I always get good grades and am a straight A student, but recently I got a bad grade and it's effecting my self esteem and I keep worrying and stressing about it :((

i'm not sure if u already posted something about this, if so, I'm sorry and u can just ignore this >.<

tysm and no pressure 💞

(btw I love ur blog smm!! it's so helpful! 💗🫶)

DEALING WITH A BAD GRADE

1: SELF CARE

Dealing with a grade that was unexpected for you, or above your standards can be a huge hit to our academic confidence. So, make sure not to treat yourself harshly because of one grade.

DON’T BE HARD ON YOURSELF. I know it may not seem like it now, but receiving one below-average grade is not the end of the world or your academic career, nor does it represent your abilities as a student.

That being said, do not ‘punish’ yourself for a bad grade. I see that it's from a point of wanting to improve, but it’s more harmful to believe that overworking yourself will improve your grade.

VENT OR RANT. Whether you’re talking to a classmate, friend, or family or doing some way to document your feelings, just let it all out. It can be frustrating or stressful for us if we receive a bad grade, especially if we spend so long studying for it or it has a huge weighting.

DETACH FROM THE GRADE, just temporarily. I’m not saying forget about it, but just put it on the back of the burner and focus on the present moment. If needed, do some things you enjoy to relax and relieve your stress.

2: IMPROVING

Everything that you want to do after having a bad grade, to prevent that in the future and to reconcile your mistakes. Remember that improvement is only there if you commit.

LOOK FOR ERRORS. Were your study methods effective? Did you have instrumental understanding or rational understanding of the topic? Did you use your class time effectively?

If you do receive your assessment/assignment back, look for the mistakes you made on it. Write it down and practice those later, even if you aren’t getting assessed on it shortly. It is better to understand now than to be confused later.

ASK YOUR TEACHER. Ask them for feedback on the assessment, where you went wrong and how you can improve in the future. Listen to them, and apply what they say.

Or, if you’re someone who doesn’t want to talk to their teacher, ask your peers who have a good understanding of that topic or got a high grade.

REFLECT. Do you believe that this was the best grade you could’ve got, or were you able to work hard but just didn’t? Were there any externalities that affected your grade? How will you improve for next time?

3: FOR THE FUTURE

To make up for the bad grade, so it doesn’t affect your final one and to implement ways to make studying more effective.

BUILD GOOD STUDY HABITS. Flashcards before you sleep and when you wake, making your environment rid of all distractions and knowing what to do if you do not understand something etc.

CREATE A STUDY SCHELDULE/ROUTINE. This is so you know what to study, when to study, for how long and how to study for that topic. You do not want to go into study sessions unprepared, as you’re just gonna waste time.

SEEK EXTRA CREDIT. Participating in class and doing extra assignments are ways to recover your final grade from your last one. Ask your teacher about this.

4: MOVE ON. That grade is in the past, and you are in the present. Use that present time wisely, so you can celebrate all of that hard work once you get your success. Do not waste your time dwelling on it and forgive yourself.

Thank you for your support anonnie, it means so much to me.

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a-d-nox · 4 months

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hi! would like to ask for advice on how i can deal and overcome the challenges of Saturn in Pisces transits in my 9H? I was always the overachiever and competitive student because of my stellium in 3H (all the beneficial planets) and mars & uranus in 9H but now that i am already in college, the situation turned upside down and i find it hard to keep up now on my studies which i think the Saturn transit in my 9H has great negative effect on this. Thank you in advance!

how to survive the pisces saturn transit throughout the houses

needing to figure out abstract self, being challenged by personality traits, struggling with outlook on life, feeling the physical body age, appearing older/maturer, detachment from beauty, struggling with false confidence, delayed or limited beginnings especially in terms of spirituality and creative pursuits, struggling with taking initiative, struggling with ambition, false mannerisms, needing emotional discipline, feeling physically weak, and/or creative passion

recommendations: try to separate your self from a situation. notice how you are no your situation. learn to better control reactions that originate in from your personality. try to see situations from all sides - practice objectivity. learn to act your age - better to be mature than immature. learn that beauty is to be separated from who you are - you are more than your body. practice self-love - do mantra work or positive self-talk. take breaks - let yourself know it is okay to do so. do things only when you have the energy and inspiration to do so. try one new thing a week. don't let yourself be kept back from experiencing new things. understand that you are very capable. keep emotions in check - learn to better manage them. sleep more. exercise and get movement more. create something new.

needing more discipline when spending resources (spiritual and monetary), hard spiritual work, short-term turned long-term work and discipline, the need for a mature work ethic, immaterial possessions, the illusion of possessions, limitations to self worth, illusions about the self's value, detachment from personal values, emotional insecurity - the need for empathy and less apathy, lack of stability, struggling to meet financial obligations, and/or needing practical giving and receiving abilities

recommendations: keep a budget book or invest in a budget coloring book. track your mood. don't over extend yourself. make sure that you you are practicing shielding and protecting your energy. dig deep and do shadow work. deep dive into spiritual practices. be open into making a side hustle into a job. do research about your field of interest. practice being the bigger person. not everything you have is physical - take stock of what you have (health, happiness, emotional understanding/depth, etc). practice self-love - do mantra work or positive self-talk. make a list of what matters most to you. evaluate your ethics - figure out your ethics. reconnect with what matters most to you. be more willing to hear others - their problems aren't yours however they are no less important. finding stability and consistency where you can - not everything is forever so appreciate it while you can. make calendar reminders for your due dates for bills. do not give more than what is asked for. learn to be more appreciative of what you are given - practice gratitude.

seemingly chaotic communication, deceitful information, a need for empathic communication, needing healthy/consistent communication, needing to stabilize the speaking voice, feeling anxious when talking with others, needing to be more aware of others social boundary requirements and needs, challenges of the mind, delay realizations, overthinking, false thought and ideas, curbing false perceptive of an event, needing more practical opinions, making the subconscious mind conscious, needing to be more in control of thoughts and speech, spiritual interests, being more wary of gossip, being more compassionate about other's ideas and the information they share, needing to read more spiritual literature, a lack of transportation, not always trusting local media or social media, needing to step away from phone use, not being as fearful about making that phone call, visiting estranged fathers, and/or not letting the illusions of a social activity stop you from attending

recommendations: try to cut to the chase - less fluff, more facts. be careful - don't believe everything you hear. be more willing to hear others - their problems aren't yours however they are no less important. take a breath before talking - no one is judging you like you think they are. when someone sets a boundary respect it - don't be afraid to express your boundaries either. do mental / brain exercises. reflect on your day. try not to spend your day re-thinking everything you have done, everything you have said, everything people have done to you, and everything that people have said around you. reflect on whether or not you might be biased in a situation or if you are letting your mood color your opinion. keep a dream journal and interpret your dreams. think before you speak. curbing and rewriting your thoughts - opinions and perspectives are not facts. avoid participating in gossip. read more spiritual books. take a walk. don't trust everything you read or hear. know that nothing is as scary as it seems; the idea is often worse than reality.

how home feels - do you feel trapped? can you escape into your home? etc, investigating family roots, setting mature boundaries with parents (particularly the maternal figures), supporting the inner child using maturity and wisdom, doing shadow work, being responsible/empathetic/mature in emotional situations, making more solid foundations, creating enduring traditions, and/or spiritual self-care

recommendations: re-evaluate your home life. smoke/noise cleanse your space. do some nesting. ask parents and relatives about their life and their family. set boundaries with your family - don't be afraid to reinforce them either. nurture you inner child - let them know that you can protect them now. do shadow work. take responsibility for your emotions both the mature and immature response you have/had. take things slower - no one is in a rush (slow and steady wins the race). re-invent familial traditions to be more modern and to better serve you and your needs.

inner children work, childlike escapism, talent, creative disciplines, escapism via creativity, creative limitations, creative efforts, childish drama, escapism via drama, karmic drama, false accusations, risk-taking after a long time of being stable, romantic drama, escapism via romance, romantic boundaries, escapism via hobbies, and/or pleasures you find when pushing off responsibilities

recommendations: do shadow work. do things that your inner child would like. embrace your creative side. take an art, dance, or acting class. watch a comfort movie or show. know that all effort made is good effort. don't participate in drama. watch reality tv. don't listen to other people's accusations - be the bigger person and simply say 'i'm sorry that you feel that way and that is your perception on the matter." take a risk - playing it safe doesn't always lead to the gains you dream about. date for fun and create boundaries when dating - if you are just dating for fun, make sure that you are transparent from the beginning that you don't want something serious. deep dive into your hobbies. have some fun - not everything has to be serious and all about responsibilities.

creative routines, lacking a routine, spiritual routines, the limitations of a routine, mental health, vitamins and minerals, karmic duties, self improvement via shadow work, lack of consistency, delusions surrounding hygiene (don't fall for fads), spiritual innocence, good karmic, showing maturity in karmic situations, and/or spiritual analytical

recommendations: journal, draw, sing, dance, etc per a routine - practice your interests consistently. a lack of routine will be a given but follow one when you can - an off day is not the end of the line, just because you missed one day doesn't mean you give up. take better care of you mental health (get a talk therapist, journal, etc). start taking you vitamins (make sure you talk with a doctor as needed about doing so as well). take care for the debts you are left with in the physical sense. do shadow work. now is not the time to switch up everything in your hygiene routine - slowly introduce new products into your routine don't do it all at once. lead with being ignorant in the situation and show your willingness to learn. be as mature as you can be in a rough situation.

accountability in long-term relationships, the limits of relationships, sensitivity in relationships, emotional boundaries in a relationship, a show of empathy, spiritual attraction, spiritual charm, chaotic/challenging/karmic conflicts, karmic partnerships, deceptive contracts, hidden enemies becoming open enemies, false negotiations, compassionate equality, spiritual harmony, sharing wisdom, sharing dreams, and/or sharing feel in a healthy manner

recommendations: take accountability for things that go wrong in your present relationships. know that happiness is an inside job and not something that you can depend on others for. so empathy and understanding in your situations. share your boundaries with your partners. be empathetic to others because you will never truly know what is happening or what has happened in their life. lead with love and light to attract the same in return. be wary of conflicts and reflect on whether or not you have been in a similar on previously. read the fine print. share your wisdom with others. treat people as you wish to be treated. be vulnerable with others.

long-term spiritual transformation, emotional sex, spiritual death, facing long-term challenges, chaotic changes, clever shared financial documents, spiritual investments, creative investments, spiritual rebirth, merging creative ideas, karmic taboos, secrets, mystery, shadow work, and/or empathy/compassion towards trauma

recommendations: prepare for a long-term change. let go of old beliefs that no longer serve you. don't try to order the chaos - just go with the flow. invest in yourself spiritually. buy yourself an art piece or fancy music player. invest in a creative pursuit. let yourself be reborn spiritually. don't be afraid to combine two of your ideas. explore the unknown. be empathetic to toward your and others trauma.

spiritual wisdom, limitations of law, chaotic values/beliefs, a jobian test of belief, spiritual discipline, needing to be more kind to yourself where higher education is involved, chaotic/false/limited viewpoints, needing to use language to express boundaries, needing responsible ethics, long spiritual journey, and/or learning about spirituality/boundaries/discipline/karma/empathy

recommendations: share spiritual wisdom with others. know that not all set laws feel just or deserved. embrace having a mixture of beliefs. it is okay to question your beliefs. if you feel tested, it is for a good reason so just stay strong and keep believing. just because you fail at something doesn't mean you fail at everything - be okay with trying new things. verbally express your boundaries. be ethical in your day-to-day life and recognize your ethics aren't going to be universally accepted. be open to hearing/learning new things.

10h

chaos legacy, limitations / perceived restrictions in legacy or career, spiritual task, sensitivity in career, chaotic public image, falsities about status/image, spiritual reputation, test of popularity, needing patience for long-term goals to manifest, the perceived effort/challenges in one's mission, and/or spiritual responsibilities

recommendations: uncertain direction in life - figure out what you enjoy and how it can make it your life. don't let your ideas about a career stop you from pursuing it. work on your spiritual journey/tasks. be sensitive towards others at work. know that you can always turn your image/reputation around. don't belief everything you hear about someone. evaluate your need to be known. practice meditation. evaluate in the "juice is worth the squeeze" when it comes to your mission/task.

11h

karmic friends, boundaries made between friends, spiritual gains, what is gained from hard work / effort, spiritual desires, abstract/ non-material desires, unique/rare challenges, social awareness of boundaries and the need for compassion, influence over personal karma, limitations to manifestations, limitations to one hopes and wishes, false ideals, and/or spiritual debut

recommendations: beware of karmic friends. enforce boundaries in a friendship - just because you are making a boundary doesn't mean you don't want to be their friend. put in the work to gain. do the spirit work to improve. evaluate your non-material desires. be more aware of other people's boundaries. evaluate whether or not you are in your own way. figure out if your expectations are too high.

12h

spiritual healing, hidden emotions/boundaries, karma lessons, needing to be wise and graceful with age, insufficient sleep, avoiding mental health, needing to take responsibility for mental health, spiritual solitude, lack of or strange/unclear dreams, illusions about spirituality/age, fearing karma, karmic losses/endings, escapism from responsibilities, limiting beliefs that slow progress, the subconscious mind's needs, karmic self-undoing, how the past is coming to affect the present/future, and/or spiritual delays in ability

recommendations: practice spiritual healing. investing in crystals. embrace grace and wisdom when dealing with others. take naps and reset your sleep schedule. take accountability for your mental health/wellbeing. take care of yourself - it is okay to take time away from others too. keep a dream journal and interpret your dreams - to better understand your subconscious. debunk your beliefs regarding spirituality.

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asgardian--angels · 2 months

Text

Talking on the phone with my mom I finally broke down and cried thoroughly about the cancellation. I think I'd been holding it in for the last two days, or two months. And honestly I've been wondering all along why this show means so much to me. I am not queer, I am not neurodivergent, I am not POC or disabled or any of the groups that this show has been so important for in terms of representation and being treated with respect and dignity. I understand and completely empathize with all of you, and fight for this show and your rights worldwide alongside you, but it still left me wondering why I myself have latched onto Our Flag Means Death. I suppose part of it is that despite being white and cishet and the privileges that have always come with that, I have been treated like an outsider and ostracized my entire childhood and teenage years, for being ugly and having "disgusting" interests (primarily liking insects, reptiles, other creepy-crawlies - aka the thing I literally do for my career now). I was bullied relentlessly from preschool through early college and became a very lonely introverted person - I still am. Undoubtedly Our Flag Means Death gave me renewed hope that I haven't missed some key window for finding love or relationships of any kind that matter, as I sit here typing this at age 28 having never dated anyone.

But it had to be more than that. And with everything that's happened the past couple of months, and the last few days, I think it finally clicked for me.

Followers of my blog may or may not know that I am a conservation biologist, or pollinator ecologist, whichever hat fits best on a given day, they're quite close. I don't make many original posts like this anymore on here because my job is so busy. Basically, I do a variety of things - academic research, habitat management & restoration, and public outreach - to try and preserve biodiversity and ecosystems on our planet. I'm just going to say it: it's a thankless job. Nothing we do ever feels like it's enough, and burnout is common in our field because we sit with the guilt of feeling like we are the only thing between survival and utter destruction of planet Earth, and work ourselves to exhaustion. It's one of those jobs where your work is your life, and your passion is your work, and it's inseparable from who you are on a molecular level. We are often faced, on a large scale, with hostility, from people that don't believe in science and are more than happy to pull a shotgun on us, or rich old men in power who are content to watch the world burn for another penny in their bank account. There are days when sometimes it sinks in just how bad things are, and it's terrifying, and I feel like we will never be able to do enough, to change enough, before it gets catastrophic. It's paralyzing.

My ability to do my job is dependent on hope. Unwavering, unrelenting hope. Hope beyond hope. We have to believe what we're doing matters, otherwise we'd fall down and never get back up again. I'm no big-shot, I give talks to a few hundred people at a time, and make urban pollinator habitat on a local scale. Is any of that going to make a difference compared to the ramifications of a single oil mogul deciding to cut corners and cause an oil spill that kills millions of seabirds and damages ocean food chains for decades to come? If people in my field let thoughts like that linger, we'd be paralyzed to inaction. I have to hope that the people I teach choose to do something good with that knowledge, and go on to inspire others, or that the patch of habitat I make allows a declining species to maintain a foothold instead of going locally extinct. You just have to keep going.

And Our Flag Means Death got wrapped up in that for me. The Stede Bonnet effect, if you will. He set out to do pirating differently, treating his crew with respect and helping them grow. In return, they internalized that mindset, and it spread to how they interacted with others. It changed the trajectory of individual lives, and also at least began to change how the society of pirates operated as a whole. It was a beacon of hope that choosing small acts of kindness did matter, even if you yourself could not see the ripples it made. It renewed my faith that love persevered and would win. That we could all make life a little better for each other and ourselves through kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and mutual support. I think a good chunk of that is from Taika - these are running themes in his projects, and his films move me deeply for that. This show became in some, perhaps subconscious way, a source of strength for me to keep putting myself out there in my line of work to do whatever I was capable of to help the cause.

The cancellation was devastating, but the second cancellation (turbohell cancelation?) was even more so. Because now it's so clear that this is largely the work of David Zaslav and the regime he's built. It's petty, it's greedy, and more than anything, it's cruel. Indifferently, indiscriminately cruel, when one person at the top can have such power to make or break the lives of thousands, millions, beneath them, and though it would have been barely a drop in the bucket, a hand wave, to renew our show or let it pass to another streamer, he actively chose to shackle it to this sinking Titanic of a company WBD has become. I have always operated on the belief that you can do anything if you work hard enough at it, and believed deep down that there was some order, some justice in the universe, atheist though I be. We as a fandom did everything we possibly could, we loved this show harder than anything. The numbers were there, the awards nominations were there, the critic praise was there, and we were loud and loyal every single day. I felt like we could do this - how could we not win when we've done so much, and the show deserves it so much? Surely cause and effect will prevail.

This fight seemed small, though really it wasn't; we fought for the right of artists and creators to make quality, original stories and have them told to their natural end, we fought for diversity representation to be more than a token character - OFMD raised the bar so much higher on all fronts, we fought to shed light on the chaos and impending collapse of this industry silencing art and exploiting writers, actors, and all manner of production workers. It was a small fight from the outside, one that I really felt we could win. And I put my heart and soul into it, because if we could win this, if we could save this simple, kind love story about two guys on a boat, then maybe there was hope for the bigger, badder stuff too. It shouldn't seem an insurmountable task for several thousand fans to convince a streaming service that they'd turn a tidy profit to give our show one more season.

Yet we lost - through no fault of our own. I am so proud of us. But that really struck deep for me. If one peabrained CEO of a media company wouldn't budge on greenlighting a show that was in his every best interest business-wise - perhaps enough to even save Max from going under in the not-too-distant future - my god, what hope was there for changing anything bigger? The 'real' problems of the world? When no amount of ethos, logos, or pathos can penetrate these men at the top, where's that hope to fight? Lately the world seems like it's just going belly up all over. If we gave everything we could, and it still wasn't enough - if it could never be enough - what hope is there? It's like chaining yourself to a tree and the bulldozer plowing right on ahead. And I think that broke something in me. It shook me to my foundations because it broke my rules of how things are supposed to work. We believed hard enough, we worked tirelessly, and we deserved it for how important this show was to so many people. And it didn't matter. Our best wasn't enough. And that caused an avalanche of all of the horrible, scary things piled on my shoulders - we're losing the Amazon rainforest too fast to save, climate change is going to turn the corn belt into a dustbowl by mid-century, a border wall is going to devastate imperiled wildlife in Texas, deforestation and hurricanes on songbird wintering grounds could lead to entire species extinctions, saltmarshes are our lifeline and they're shrinking and we're still building stupid concrete stormwalls, invasive diseases will completely alter the composition of our forests to be unrecognizable to our children, and if you don't make every slide of this powerpoint utterly perfect and you fail to convince every single person in attendance to get rid of their lawn then you've failed and the world is doomed.

I've struggled with being a perfectionist my whole life. This didn't help.

That's where I was a couple hours ago. But I took some deep breaths. I know the world isn't fair. But I really thought if we could win this one battle, then we could win the war.

But here's what I realized. Everything we did mattered. It mattered so much. Because there's the show, and then there's everything that was birthed out of that show. The community, so many of us around the world who have been uplifted by Our Flag Means Death in a real and lasting way that we will take with us and spread to affect those around us. The Stede Bonnet effect goes global. We raised thousands and thousands of dollars for charities around the world, real people whose lives have been improved, or maybe even saved, because of us and this silly pirate show. We brought a hell of a lot of attention to WBD and their shitty practices, keeping the momentum going in a way that I think is only going to build - and I sure hope it leads to Zaslav getting deposed. We have demanded more queer stories, more BIPOC stories, more disabled and autistic and middle-aged stories, stories with exquisite costumes and award-worthy wigs, dear lord, and we are being heard. We have expressed such love and support for the cast and crew, showing them that we appreciate their hard work and that we will be behind them in their future projects. So many of them have told us how the show and its fans have changed their lives. We convinced Rhys that his career isn't winding down but winding up, and to be unapologetic about his wonderful weirdness - we've proven to everyone through this show that your weirdness is what someone out there is going to love you for, not in spite of. We rallied to help writers and actors during the strikes in a way that was taken to heart and remembered. We have been out here talking it through as a crew, and turning poison into positivity, for over two years now, and that impact is permanent. They can cancel our show, they can try and slap copyright notices on our fan merch, and spew bullshit excuses about the numbers not being there. But Our Flag Means Death sparked a movement, the biggest pirate crew the world has ever seen, using our power for good.

We may not have any more new material for our show for a while, or ever. But I maintain hope that when the dust has settled and streaming has entered its 'new era' that they'll remember us and throw us a lifeline. Because hope is a part of my genetic makeup, and even in cancellation my hope has been renewed that the fight is worth fighting, that our individual choices of kindness are having an effect, and making the world a little easier to live in bit by bit. No one can take from us what we have built out of this show. And thanks to pirating, they can't take the actual show from us either. Despite this, no matter the outcome, I am so happy we got two seasons of this wonderful series. That was more than almost anyone expected. The story belongs to all of us, and it will always live on. We did not truly lose this battle, because in the process we gained more than we could have ever imagined. And I know there's still so much more to come. That gives me the strength to keep doing what I do, every day.

To me, Our Flag Means Hope.

#our flag means death #ofmd #this is a very long post but I need to write it for me #seeing the outpouring of love on twitter today has really been so needed #also realizing after i finish this that my blog name is literally 'There is always hope'#so i mean. this really has been my brand since i started here #personal

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tanith-rhea · 1 year

Note

Hey! i have a smuty request hehe

you're Larissa's roommate and one day when she entered your shared room she finds you masturbating moaning her name... and well I leave it in your hand how this develops

if you're not comfortable writing this or simply don't want to is absolutely okey!

Unexpected Finds

Author's note: I'm horrendously sorry for the amount of time this took me. If you stook around, you'll see your request is the first thing I wrote in a loooooong while. Word count: 2.9k

“You are horrible at this,” Riss murmured with a teasing smile.

“To be fair, I told you I was, and you doubted it,” her nails were longer than yours; it wasn’t difficult to keep yours manicured but Larissa had long, nicely shaped nails and you had no practice with those. “Why are you complaining anyway? You can simply make them look however you want!”

“Did I complain? I think I simply made a remark on your disastrous attempt at painting them, that’s all.”

“Ok, shush!” her rumbling chuckle quickly had you both laughing even though you tried your very best to look pissed and not charmed.

Larissa had the ability to make everything she did look incredibly alluring or adorable. Not just textbook hot things or her cute nose scrunches and fond smiles. But hearing her yawn at eleven pm while studying for an exam you knew she could give a lecture about; her rambling and muttering under her breath at how insufferable some people were; her rare fits of anger which she would try not to show but would turn her knuckles white and make her respond to every comment pissily. It was all endearing when it was her who did it.

“I’m just trying to support you in learning new skills,” she shrugged like it was the simplest of truths, and she wasn’t at all very amused by the entire situation.

“Thank you so much for sponsoring my personal growth,” you rolled your eyes but smiled. Her own smiling features turned softer, the slight mocking turning fond like it so often did lately. She had no idea the effect it had on you.

“Sadly, although I appreciate your interest in my learnings, I think we should sleep. I know you’ll blame me if you wake up late tomorrow and it’s almost midnight.”

Despite your tender feelings towards Larissa, you couldn’t help but be a little annoyed at the changes she helped you mature into. Two months ago, you’d have kept her awake and laughing until three AM, trying to make her forget tomorrow you had class and spend more time with you. Now, you knew how important Larissa’s routine was for her and just wanted to be good for her, even if it meant giving up on pitiful attempts at doing her make-up or being teased for looking “so cute” with puppy-eye eyeliner.

She hummed, moving the notebooks, nail polish and other miscellaneous mess from the bed to the floor.

“If you say so,” she smiled again, still fond, but there was something in her eyes like puzzlement and you had no idea what it meant. “Care to make space?”

You bit your lip to avoid smiling too much, before putting your hair over one shoulder and laying down so Larissa could make herself comfortable on your chest. It had become a habit ever since your first “girl’s night” when you woke up like this and found you both liked it well enough.

Of course, you had the suspicion you liked it far more than she did, being so hopelessly attracted to her, but that hardly changed anything. If she didn’t mind waking up nuzzling your neck, with her limbs all over you like an octopus, you wouldn’t be the one to complain.

“Sweet dreams, Riss,” you whispered, subconsciously turning off the light.

“Will have,” was all she mumbled, knowing not to wish you any dreams at all, and your heart skipped a beat at that like it always did.

You woke up feeling warm. The pleasant smell of the shared covers blossomed comfort and familiarity in your chest as you inhaled deeply.

Larissa’s warm soft skin was all around you. Her nose was buried in your neck, her parted lips ghosting over where it met your shoulder and breathing heat softly against it.

As usual, her limbs encased you in a trap you didn’t mind not escaping from. Her arm was slung over you, hand so close to your face that a turn of your head would have your cheek pressed on her elegant fingers. But one thing was different.

You didn’t sleep together often. In the trimester you’d been roommates, you had only five slumber parties, and only on the last four of them did you share a bed on purpose. And, as you weren’t one to move a lot while sleeping, the likelihood of you cuddling her was relatively small compared to the other way around. But this time, it appeared your body wanted closer proximity, and your leg had welcomed hers between yours, as your hand rested on the exposed skin of her lower back. Larissa seemed to be blessedly content to continue sleeping, but you couldn’t know if she’d wake up when you tried to disentangle yourself. You partially didn’t want to, but it would be horribly awkward if she came to feeling warm wetness on her knee.

You were robbed of a choice by her stirring awake with a long, content intake of breath. Panic ran through your veins while her muscles tensed in that particular way while she stretched, leg going stiff and tortuously pressing against you while she hummed in your neck.

“G’mornin,” she grumbled, laying on her stomach almost completely on top of you.

“Good morning, person who’s trying to turn me into a pancake,” you joked to diverge her attention. Did she not notice? Was this the universe having mercy on you?

Her rumbling laugh immediately against your chest hurt as if your lungs were filled with more air than they were capable of managing and you wished you could hug her, press her onto the bed and drown her in kisses.

“Hardly my fault when you’re more comfortable than the bed.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

She chuckled, “You’ll have to trust my impeccable taste, I guess,” her still hoarse voice felt almost like velvet as she half-whispered, and you could feel the warmth of her breath on your neck, lingering for a second.

With her there, in that fraction of a moment, still, as if waiting, you wondered if you should do something. Was she expecting you to? You wanted to feel the warm skin underneath her pyjamas, hold her against you with purpose, splay your palm and fist her hair, and bring her up to you. You wanted to press your leg between hers as well, see if she’d have the same reaction, if she’d make a sound-

With a sharp inhale, Larissa got up on her elbow, looking at the pillow beside your head instead of your face and smiled sheepishly.

“Unfortunately, some of us chose lycanthrope history over vampiric, so I’ll have to leave my personal mattress and get ready,” she tilted her eyebrow, but still avoided eye contact, and you couldn’t help but frown.

“Not my fault they like to wake up early, maybe next semester you should consider joining me in night classes,” you winked, deciding to let it go and at least make Larissa laugh a little before leaving.

“I don’t think I’d be able to concentrate,” she smiled, though, and put some books in her backpack without really looking at them, “But I’ll consider astronomy for the sake of staying in bed longer.”

You could see her in astronomy class. For all Larissa’s attempts to look practical and cynical, you’ve learned just how much of a dreamer she was, an idealist, she’d fit right in with the precise wonder of it.

“…with me?” you half-joked, trying your best at an impish, non-expectant, smile.

“You wish,” was all she said, and disappeared behind her folding screen to change into her uniform. You watched as her pyjamas were draped over the division, the rattling of fabric gentle and allusive, making your mind wander until you almost didn’t notice her saying bye.

Being her roommate was the best thing to happen to you in Nevermore. It was also the most tortuous experience one could put you through. You were still aching from moments ago, the memory of Larissa’s clothes coming off behind the screen, the pressure of her body on yours. She must have known, it was near impossible she wouldn’t notice your dilated pupils and flushed skin. Maybe that was why she left without even doing her hair.

Fuck, her hair. She was out there with long waves down, possibly for the first time in her three years at Nevermore. How would it look in the wind? You knew how it looked over her shoulders, whiter than her skin but just as soft.

Your thigh muscles tightened. You could feel an all too incriminating pulsing between them. She wasn’t here to see… it wouldn’t hurt her. You had done it before with her in your mind, but never after moments like this, they felt so familiar that all you could feel when she left was the heartache of not having her. Today was different. Today she left and you felt the ache of not having her against you, not having trapped her underneath you and sought what you needed.

Your pathetic moan when you finally slid your fingers into your panties could have made you laugh, however, all you could feel were tears of relief running down your temple. Your fingers were immediately soaked, you couldn’t remember being this slick in a long time and would be impressed if it wasn’t so maddeningly frustrating.

You pictured her on top of you, her fingers instead of yours massaging your clit and teasing you under her breath. Planting kisses on your shoulders and neck, skirting around your breasts with a sharp smile and making you squirm in anticipation.

It hadn’t been five minutes and you could already feel your orgasm building. Hell if she’d stayed just a few seconds longer, if she had pressed just a little more, you were certain it would have happened then; with her breath on your neck and her warmth and her smell. You were so close just thinking about it- Larissa…

“Oh my-” The loud sound of your bedroom door being shut should have been an ice bucket, instead it only triggered desperation. You knew her voice, even in that high pitch you seldom heard. If she ran out or stayed in you had no idea, but you needed to finish.

The adrenaline of fear only pushing you through more insistently.

You were panting, whining, arching on your back and squirming as new tears escaped your closed eyelids. It was over, she’d never look at your face again and it made you desperate.

A sob almost choked you as you finally came with Larissa’s name pleadingly on your lips. Though what really did make you choke was a soft hand on your shaking knee.

You opened your eyes to see her standing right beside the bed. She had an unreadable expression on her face, but her firm touch was grounding while you came down from your high. She sat close to your waist, moving her hand to rest on your stomach while she examined you with a purposefully controlled demeanour.

“Larissa…” you whispered, squeezing your legs together as if you could hide what you’d been doing, what she saw you do.

Her eyes shot up to yours, gleaming but not bright as they normally were. You hovered your hand atop hers, wondering if she’d let you hold it; she reached up and interwove your fingers without a word, bringing them to her lips ad kissing each knuckle.

You squeezed your legs harder, torn between fear and hope. Why wasn’t she saying anything?

“Why are you back?”

That, at least, got a small huff and a smile out of her, “I packed your books instead of mine,” she said with a voice hoarser than when she woke up. “That’s what you get for leaving in a hurry,” her eyes travelled down from yours, taking in your rattled state once more.

With your hand still in hers, she pressed it on the side of your head and gracefully straddled your stomach.

What was she doing? It didn’t make any sense. You would have known if… if she-

"You tied your hair,” was all your short-circuiting brain could come up with.

You got the pleasure of hearing her chuckle with fond amusement in her eyes, which was unfair and ridiculous on many levels considering the warm spot currently pressed against your underbelly.

“Is this relevant?”

”It could be-” you gasped as Larissa let out a small whimpering sound, eyes closed while grinding down on your hip bone.

Your free hand grabbed her thigh in an instant, the uniform’s skirt being a practical clothing item for the first time, and moved your hip to help her along. She let out a strangled noise and you could see her belly coil under her shirt. That was unacceptable; here you were, in thin pyjamas, dishevelled and undone while she got to look like a school prefect.

You sat up, Larissa settling on your left thigh as you did so, and let go of her hand to grab her collar.

“Are you sure of what you’re doing?” you looked her seriously in the eyes, hoping you were masking your plea well enough.

“Does it look like I’m not?” she breathed.

You had to breathe deeply and close your eyes to avoid her smug smile. You bit your lip to conceal your own tugging at the corners of your mouth, then it occurred to you, there are other ways one can hide. Larissa’s half-choked surprise at your lips and teeth on her neck made not smiling quite difficult.

While you helped Larissa ride your thigh with a steady hand on her hip, your other hand unbuttoned her shirt. She had a death grip on your right shoulder while her other arm rested around them, trapping you close to her. When you dealt with all the buttons, her unhappy whine from having to let you go made your heart race. Did she have any idea what she was doing to you?

“Shh, love, you’ll like it better like this,” you whispered, taking off your own top as she held your knees for support.

You made quick work of her bra, but once it came off you had to take a moment to appreciate how astonishingly beautiful she was. White, creamy skin, so hot it could melt all your thoughts away, beautiful full breasts with the rosiest, most charming nipples you’d ever seen. You wanted to look at her for the rest of your life.

Fuck, she’s gonna kill me.

Your hands splayed on her back and shoulder blades as you buried your face in her chest, kissing and sucking a bruise at the base of her sternum. You could feel her goosebumps under your tongue as you kissed your way to her left nipple, warm soft skin smelling of fancy lotion.

Larissa’s fingers wove into your hair and closed into a fist, locking your right where she wanted you to be.

The sounds she was making were becoming more and more breathless as her grinding grew erratic against you. She pulled you up into a searing and messy kiss that should have felt horrible but only made you burn with need, and when she gasped, muscles incredibly tight under your palms, you wanted nothing but to swallow every broken little guff of air as your pyjamas got impossibly wetter.

When her shoulders slumped and her weight fell on you, you could only hug her.

Pyjamas be damned, you could deal with it later. She breathed slowly and deeply on the crook of your neck as you traced soothingly up and down her back.

“I know you have class soon but I just want to stay in bed,” her voice had the quality of midnight half-sleepy rants and you hugged her tight.

“You also have class.”

She stayed silent for a beat, ”We have thirty minutes til the next one.”

You couldn’t help but chuckle. “I take longer to look presentable, not everyone is magically perfect-”

“Not magic,” she interrupted, “…and you pull off the ‘I didn’t even try’ look annoyingly well.”

”Oh, do I?” she left your shoulder as you laughed lightly.

She looked exasperated — almost hurt, not looking at your face — and you wanted to change that immediately “If you don’t want to stay, fine-”

“I was just teasing you,” you hushed to say and tentatively touched her chin, making her face you, “I want nothing more than to stay the entire day in this bed with you. I could spend a week if we lived in a perfect world,” you kissed her chastely, hand cupping her cheek, and as you parted her eyebrow were knit together.

“So this isn’t just a…” she paused, looking down between you and back up, eyes gleaming with the stubborn determination you loved so much, “This isn’t just a product of decisions took in ‘the heat of the moment’?”

You gave pause for a second as well. If she was asking, maybe… “Is it to you?”

“No,” she said emphatically.

“Then no. I’d like to be your girlfriend if you’d like that. She only nodded and gave you a timid half-smile, you smiled back and laid down, dragging her with you. You could spend some more minutes like this.

I guess this one turned out ok, I'm sorry if it didn't, just very sparse minded lately <3

#larissa weems #student!larissa #student!reader #larissa weems x reader #female reader #fluff #fluff and smut #smutty smut #caught masterbating #answered request

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worshippingbones · 3 months

Text

Meditation

A friendly starter guide from your local hippie ✿

So, you want to learn meditation, but have generally no idea where to start? Glad ya found me.

Meditation is one of the simplest practices to fall into, and likely one of the most beneficial ones for overall health. There are thousands of different ways, reasons, methods of meditation, which is why I will be sharing what helped me most to begin my journey.

(In this post, I will keep things very basic. Very straightforward, so that anyone beginning can understand.)

What is meditation?

Meditation is the practice of mindfulness, or focusing your mind on a particular object, activity, sound, or thought. It carries the benefits of training your attention span, seeking deeper within yourself, achieving mental/emotional stability, heightening creativity, etc. And, even better, it’s easy!

What do people get wrong about meditation?

Many believe the only way to achieve meditation is through sitting and chanting (the classic lotus position). When in reality, it’s just as easy to meditate even while walking! However, to keep things simple, I’m only going to be discussing the method of laying/sitting. Laying works best for me, so that will be my personal step-by-step guide detailed.

So…how do you do it?

What works best for me may be different than what works for you, but this is the method I go about.

First, I set an intention. (Eg: What do I want to achieve with this session? Am I going for clarity, creativity, etc.?)

I ensure I’m in a comfortable position. (I find it easiest to be lying or sitting, however you can relax!)

Focus my attention on one repetitive sound. (It’s possible to achieve meditation through repetitive chants, audio, activity, or even just staring at an object; I just happen to use audio.)

I begin breathing slowly through my nose (Some like to exhale out of their mouths for calming effects, whichever relaxes you).

With each breath, I begin relaxing further and going limp from my toes to my head. (Eg: One breath relaxes the tips of my toes, one breath relaxes my foot. One breath relaxes my ankles, one breath relaxes my calves. All the way up the legs, abdomen, up the arms, ending at the head. Include the face.) At this point, I typically reach mental clarity. But it may take a few times to feel completely clear. You should feel yourself sink deep into whatever you are laying/sitting on. Allow the absorption of your body.

Focus on that one repetitive thing you’ve been (in my case) listening to the whole time. Let it consume your thoughts and be the only thing in your mind.

Congrats, you’re meditating! Now, from here, you contain your relaxed state and slowly let your mind “wander.” I only allow my brain to process one thought at a time in this state, that way it doesn’t cloud up and I lose focus.

That’s it?

That was the absolute bare basics that I could come up with for any beginner. My mother, who has integrated meditation in her lifestyle for over twenty years now, also provided some of the tips. Where did you think I got it from? Lol.

Anyway, that was a very quick step-by-step from my own personal experience. I tried my hardest to keep it simple but informative, and use laymen’s terms to the best of my ability. Thanks for reading, and best of luck in all that you do. Love to you all. ✿

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pet-pet-peet · 11 months

Note

Can I’m have the dorm leaders x male reader who have a rare sickness that let him only eat desserts nothing else vegetables meat fruits nothing if he eat will appear strange stain on his skin and start to spill blood over his mouth headcanons

Omg I wish I could eat desserts all the time..

Also, I casually involve Sam because honestly he’s a cutie and no one gives him attention

I am trying to go through my drafts and post the ones I had done, this will not be inspired by canon!

Tw: Description of prior mentioned food sickness/allergic reaction like symptoms

Pairing(s): Riddle, Leona, Azul, Kalim, Vil, Idia, Malleus x male reader who can only eat desserts (separate)

𝕽𝖎𝖉𝖉𝖑𝖊

He thinks it’s a bit odd that you eat so many sweets all the time, surely it isn’t good for you!

He holds an intervention over dinner, where he serves you a healthy dinner for any other human

You look at it, then deny it while you listen to his concerns, which makes him sigh and keep explaining his concern

You tell him about the illness you have, that there’s no way for you to eat anything else, and he seems to understand..kind of?

He definitely asks a lot of questions, since he’s never heard of the such before; but when he’s satisfied, he’ll make sure you have a healthy amount of sweets at your disposal

𝕷𝖊𝖔𝖓𝖆

He’s very confused, but he doesn’t mention it at all; not until he notices that you deny any other food

He’ll ask Ruggie to bring some for you every now and then, and you end up just giving it away to someone else all the time

He’ll ask you why you deny literally everything that doesn’t have a sugar content, and you tell him pretty plainly that you can’t eat anything other than sweets

He doesn’t really do anything about it after, figuring that if you were lying about it you would cause it to backfire on you eventually

Accepts it more once he notices you don’t have any long-term effects, and you seem to be very healthy so he doesn’t care

𝕬𝖟𝖚𝖑

He’s been through a lot in regards to his weight, so he’s a bit cautious about calories and the kind of food he eats

He’ll probably think you weren’t being very honest with him..so he blended a bunch of stuff together that had nutrients and proteins he thought you needed

The poor thing was so scared when you started coughing blood, and when your skin started swelling and turning red-

Desperate, he takes you to Sam in hopes that he has some sort of cure or remedy in stock; luckily, he did

He apologizes profusely and promises he won’t do anything like that again, getting you all of the sweets you can eat to make it up to you

𝕶𝖆𝖑𝖎𝖒

He never questions you and accepts it at face value, he trusts you completely!

He makes sure the kitchen has all the ingredients necessary to make you whatever dessert or sweet you want to try or that you like

Makes you new desserts to try that he grew up with in the land of Scalding Sands, he likes being able to see how you react to them

Always has a dessert table just for you during his parties

Fine tunes his ability to sniff out poison for anything you can’t eat, too, as an extra precaution

𝖁𝖎𝖑

He’s very sus, but he’ll roll with it if it makes you happy and as long as you don’t seem to be crumbling in front of him

He does at one point do an oopsie, as he’s under the assumption that anything with sugar is okay for you to eat

So he decides to make an extra amount of his morning smoothie, just so he can share it with you!

He also panics, drops his smoothie all over everything when you cough out blood and swell up

Sam coming in clutch again to help a dying boyfriend due to his poor, distraught boyfriend’s mistake

𝕴𝖉𝖎𝖆

He doesn’t question you, either, just shrugs and says he’s fine with it since it’s how it is

He’ll try to do research on it when he can, though; it’s hard to find a lot because of how rare the disease is

He makes sure to keep snacks for you stored in his room when you pull all-nighters together

Might do some research into different desserts you’ve been wanting to try, then asks Trey if he can make them for you

Very supportive, especially since it gives him an excuse to stock up on candy

𝕸𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖊𝖚𝖘

He’s actually surprised; it’s very rare for him to meet someone with a condition he’s never heard of!

Might ask Lilia if he knows anything about it, but that’s an accidental curse as it influences the old fae to start cooking for you-

He likes to eat ice cream with you! It’s his favorite food, and it’s something you can indulge in together

Likes trying your favorite foods, some of them he’s new to since they’re not in the Valley of Thorns

His highlight is always when he’s able to sit under the stars with you, some sort of dessert in both of your hands; it lets him feel like a kid again

#twisted wonderland #twst #riddle rosehearts #riddle rosehearts x reader #leona kingscholar #leona kingscholar x reader #azul ashengrotto #azul ashengrotto x reader #kalim al asim #kalim al asim x reader #vil schoenheit #vil schoenheit x reader #malleus draconia #malleus draconia x reader

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tobiasdrake · 5 months

Text

Rating Rain Code Characters on the Fight Me Bruh Scale

Here we go. We're ranking all of the major characters in Rain Code based on how confident I am that I can beat them in a fight.

Swank Catsonell

I want you all to know that despite what the rumors may suggest, I absolutely did not pay him to take a dive. This was a fight I won fair and square, because I am very principled and masculine.

<.< >.>

Seth Burroughs

For all his bluster, Seth is the least threatening man in Kanai Ward. The only thing threatening about him is his control over the Peacekeepers. He does nothing for himself, even needing one of his men to carry a megaphone around for him.

Seth feels like he'd go down so fast, I'd almost feel bad for him. But then I'd remind myself that he's a fucking fascist and hit him harder.

Yakou Furio

Despite his name, Yakou's not very tough. He gets routinely floored in every fight he's in. He did manage to shank Huesca with the element of incredible surprise, but that was more a product of crafty premeditation than formidable brawling. Even when he jumped his wife's would-be assassin, we next see him beaten to hell so clearly that fight took a turn after she (and we) bailed on it.

His file says he weighs 165 lbs but I have no idea where he puts it because his body type is skeletal. A stiff breeze would knock him over.

Yomi Hellsmile

Yomi reeks of paper tiger to me. As much as he loves throwing his weight around, he's too chickenshit to throw down himself. Even with guns in both hands and people he wanted dead right in front of him, he inexplicably returned the guns to his soldiers and ordered them to shoot everyone instead.

Yomi's fighting style is to run for his life and try to find someone else to fight in his place. But those other people who would fight for him, would already be fighting instead if a fight was happening. By definition, if I'm fighting Yomi, then there's nobody around to stop me from fighting Yomi. If this fight takes place then I win it. There is no version of the fight where Yomi fights and doesn't lose.

Desuhiko Thunderbolt

When he was faking the Master Detectives' deaths, Makoto figured that Desuhiko would barely even make it out of the starting gate. He judged correctly. Desuhiko is not a fighter. He's scared of blood and sticks to undercover intelligence.

His best shot at victory would be to show up to the fight Disguised as someone tougher than him. But it's not super clear whether that would actually help him.

Vivia Twilight

From what little we see of him in action, Vivia's incredibly quick on his feet and holds his own next to Halara. He moves blindingly fast and shitstomps cops with the best of him. But that's when people he cares about are in danger.

If we're just duking it out in the street, there's a strong chance Vivia goes down with the first punch and then mutters something to the effect of, "Oh well, you got me. Guess I'll just lay here now. Maybe the small bruise from your fist will kill me. Wouldn't that be nice?"

I only win this fight if Vivia isn't motivated enough to snap my neck before I know what hit me. But I don't plan to do anything that would motivate him to do that, so this is the most likely scenario when Vivia and I throw down. I'm not proud of it but I'll take the win.

Yuma Kokohead

With a Truth Sword in hand, Yuma is incredibly formidable. He's outfought countless Mystery Phantoms and even outmatched Makoto in a swordfight. However, it's not super clear how transferrable those skills are outside of the Labyrinth setting. Most of the time when Yuma's cornered, he's powerless; However, most of the time when Yuma's cornered, guns are involved, so that's not a fair comparison.

What it amounts to is that Yuma's ability to hold his own in a street brawl is difficult to gauge. That said, his stature is intimidating in and of itself. I'm always leery of fighting someone whose height easily allows for a full-body haymaker to the junk. Short people have no chill.

Kurumi Wendy

Kurumi doesn't get many opportunities for action but given what we know of her, I don't envy my chances. She's had to evade pursuing Peacekeepers in the past, which implies she's pretty scrappy and quick on her feet. She also managed to get in and out of Dohya District while it was under a counter-terrorist lockdown, skirting through Guillaume and Dominic's police state with so little effort that it put Yuma and Fubuki's attempt to do the same to shame.

So even though she never gets to throw a punch in the entire story, she fucking scares me. I start shit, she is going to sucker-punch me in ways I couldn't possibly see coming. There is a feral beast inside of her waiting for an excuse, and I'm not talking about her homunculus biology.

Martina Electro

This woman scares me. She's Yomi's right-hand, which means she does all the physically-intensive things that he doesn't. She's in the field leading from the front and, unlike Seth, we see that she's entirely willing to take matters into her own hands.

I have no basis for saying she could probably fold me in half and feed me my own spine, and has likely done exactly that to people in the past. But I believe it.

Dominic Fulltank

Are you joking? This man is 500 lbs of solid murder.

Let me paint you a word picture. I throw a punch. I break my fist on his rock-hard abs. Then he picks me up and rips me in half with his bare hands.

Guillaume Hall

Are you joking? This girl is 150 lbs sopping wet.

Let me paint you a word picture. I throw a punch. I hit her right in the fucking face because she's not a fighter. Then goddamn Dominic appears out of nowhere, picks me up, and rips me in half with his bare hands. But with extreme prejudice this time; Before, he was just defending himself, but now he's defending his boss.

Makoto Kagutsuchi

If I could define Makoto in one word, it would be cunning. Makoto has no reservations about doing whatever it takes to win, and his ultra-genius intellect is constantly plotting and scheming. He's so physically unimpressive that he looks like he'll collapse with a rough shove, but by the time fists start flying, he's already figured out 11 different ways to kill me.

Even if he might seem to be on the backfoot at the moment, Makoto is always in control of every situation he's in. He chose the place, he chose how we fight, he chose what happens to be on hand to use in the fight, and he chose who wins. He merely let me think that I chose those things.

Fubuki Clockford

We see precious little of what Fubuki's capable of in a fight. But she's no stranger to it. When Yuma first asked her to clear out the coffee shop patrons, her kneejerk go-to was to try violence. He had to talk her into a distraction instead. So she's clearly been in fights before.

Her biggest asset is her ability to save scum, though that has its limitations. It takes a lot out of her every time she turns back time, often leaving her winded and gasping for breath by the second reset. The stamina cost offsets the advantage of temporal prescience, especially in a street brawl.

But that advantage is powerful nonetheless. Do I feel confident that I could take Fubuki in a fight? Sure. Do I feel confident I could take her in five out of five fights? That's much more intimidating. Fubuki only has to win once. She decides which match "counts".

Halara Nightmare

Halara can take Fubuki in five out of five fights. Halara can take anyone in five out of five fights. Consecutively. Simultaneously. However you want to go, you'll regret it fast. We see them in action plenty and it's always the same: Halara Nightmare is violence incarnate.

Some fighters hit like a sledgehammer. Some hit like a truck. Halara hits like hospital anaesthetic; You blink and then wake up seven hours later with your kidney removed and no idea where the time went. They put me down so fast that I spend the rest of the day trying to figure out what even happened. Like a Hangover movie but instead of being drunk I got my ass kicked.

They are, and shall remain, the reigning champion of violence in Kanai Ward.

Real Yuma

I want you all to know that despite what the rumors may suggest, he absolutely did not offer me free ramen in exchange for taking a dive. This was a fight I lost fair and square, because we are both very principled and masculine.

<.< >.>

*slurp*

#master detective archives: rain code #drake plays rain code #fight me bruh #yuma kokohead #halara nightmare #yakou furio #desuhiko thunderbolt #vivia twilight #fubuki clockford #yomi hellsmile #guillaume hall #dominic fulltank #makoto kagutsuchi #seth burroughs #swank catsonell #kurumi wendy #martina electro

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flanaganfilm · 1 year

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Hey Mike! I'm really sorry to hear about your experience on Hill House. I do a lot of work in VFX in pre/prod/post and I know that sort of production that feels like a sinking ship day in and day out. I do hope you have found some catharsis now that it's over.

The show shook me. Changed me. Made me reckon with myself as a storyteller and as a person. All for the better, I assure you.

I hope to one day tell such an impactful story of my own, either through one of my short films, or through the novel series I'm writing/illustrating. Which brings me to my question: How do you navigate the complexities of having authored a work that did so much harm to yourself but also did a lot of good for others? What lessons do you hope aspiring storytellers like myself take from your difficult experience? Thanks :)

Thank you for saying this.

It's true, HILL HOUSE was a very negative experience to make - but I will always be profoundly proud of the finished product. It's some of my favorite work. I may never again face down something as challenging as episode 6, and I love the impact it has on a lot of its viewers.

There's a weird thing that happens when you finish a project - it really ceases to be yours in any way at all. It belongs immediately to the audience, and they're given an experience that you will never have. When HILL HOUSE came out, I didn't watch it - I'd seen it hundreds of times by that point, but at the same time, I've NEVER seen it.

Every frame of it is informed by my experience making it, or my intentions, or the compromises we made here, or the line we cut there that I wish we'd kept, or a bad day on set, or a problematic actor, or a visual effect we never quite got right (there are a LOT of those in HILL HOUSE, some of them still make me wince.) So I'm never able to WATCH the show. It's a tradeoff we make all the time - if you're lucky enough to make a movie, or a TV show, that's the price of it - you'll never be able to watch it.

But, I get to see how it affects other people. More than anything else I've made, HILL HOUSE seems to have the largest and most passionate fanbase. (BLY is a close second, though that's a whole other blog entry - I could write a book about the complicated, fascinating experience of the BLY fandom).

But with HILL HOUSE, I'd hear a lot from people who lost loved ones, who navigate complicated family dynamics, and who have wrestled with depression or grief. It means the world to me. It's a strange divide, as I'll never see the show that they saw - but I am so grateful that it touched them the way it did.

I'm just about at the point where I think I'm capable of sitting down and truly watching HILL HOUSE. It takes years sometimes. I've watched a lot of my early work, like HUSH or GERALD'S GAME, and finally had the experience of really SEEING it. But HILL HOUSE has always felt a little too raw, and my memories still overpower my ability to separate myself from it. Maybe that's changed. Maybe I'll give it a shot this year. Half a decade seems like enough time.

But yes, it is complicated and strange with all of them. I so badly want to watch MIDNIGHT MASS, the project that was the most personal to me - but it flew off into the world just like they all do. I spent a decade working on it, and felt it flowing through me every day - like it was a part of me. But the moment the show was done and released into the world, it wasn't mine anymore, just like all the others. I remember feeling almost knocked over when it departed, for some reason I thought that one would always feel like a part of me... but no. They're like children, they all have to go live their own lives, and they don't belong to you. Not really.

#the haunting of hill house #the haunting of bly manor #midnight mass

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ewingstan · 26 days

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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9-11 for whatever Worm characters come to mind! (Or Sophia/Calvert/Taylor/Krouse if you have any thoughts!)

Fuck it. All of em for all of em.

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?

Sophia: I'll be real I don't feel super strongly about her. She's written to be hateable in an effective way, but she's less of a full character than Emma despite being in much more of the story. And her shit kinda gets bogged down by racist writing (a lot of the worst of it happening right before Aisha's introduction, which is also pretty racist). She's involved in a lot of cool and interesting moments but they're rarely interesting because of her.

Coil: Works really well as the first overarching villain in Taylor's story. He's able to sell the "I'm a bad guy but in an excusable way that's not really too bad" well enough, but also has a lot of obvious red flags even before the Dinah reveal. So you can understand perfectly well why Taylor, a kid who really wanted to continue hanging out with the undersiders and do things that made her feel like she had any control, would go along with him. But you can also take a step back and say Jesus, only a kid who really wanted to continue hanging out with the undersiders and do things that made her feel like she had any control would go along with him.

Taylor: Wildbow has a reoccurring tendency to focus on characters who are both incredibly smart and can get an incredible amount of info quickly, but only in specific limited ways. Its true of Taylor, Lisa, Sylvester, Kenzie, Mia—a lot of my favorites. But the interesting thing is that they're never smart in the same ways, never collect the same sort of info. Lisa has general super-induction but no great skill at making plans. Sylvester can read and manipulate people to a superhuman level but is constantly getting blinded by his own resentments and desires. Taylor's hyper-vigilance gave her the ability to see and react to everything external around her, but no means or real incentive to know whats going on internally with people around her. And it makes sense! She's incredibly afraid of letting people in who'll end up hurting her; people who've genuinely been kind to her in the past have used their previous closeness to hurt her later! Knowing that someone doesn't mean her harm now isn't gonna reassure her, so its safer to assume everyone's a threat and not worry too much about what they're actually thinking.

And then there's Rachel, who she not only connects with emotionally, but is the only person who's able to make an emotional connection with her! And since you understand why its not the norm, its all the more incredible to see!

Krouse: oh I'm glad you asked

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

Sophia: I like that she and Lung both get wrapped back up in the end for Skitter's Gold Morning missions. I wish she got to do more in those, but I do like it as a story beat.

Coil: How high he got and how far he fell.

Taylor: Man the escape from Coil's trap is a fucking great chapter. She's a one-woman horror movie. Single-handedly sells her as a villain who'd get national attention, and its not even a moment the public knows about. And its in such a great place in the story too, where all the tricks she's using have been established so its not feeling like a weird escalation in her abilities, but she hasn't all employed them at once or to such incredible effect yet. It’s the real culmination of her taking “lessons” from Bakuda about being scary.

Krouse: One of the moments that really sold me on him was when he was getting attacked by Case 53s, and immediately started thinking about how he could take them down, before he interrupts his own thoughts to go "wait, what am I doing, I should just run away." It just sells so much of his whole deal. He's a great on-his-feat thinker, he can be an incredible strategist when he's on his own, but he also doesn't share Taylor's suicidal urge to face any problem head-on. Its kind of the inverse of one of Taylor's early establishing moments: after getting attacked by Rachel, she reaches for a reason to calm down, realizes she doesn't have one, and immediately retaliates hard enough to get blood on her boots. God they're such good foils, its weird that the extent of their relationship is mutually disliking each other. Not even intense dislike in either case.

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

Sophia: That the black member of the trio is the one that consistently gets physically violent, is characterized as the athletic one compared to the others in general (instead of "the cute one" or "the prep" she's "the track star"), gets described as being savage multiple times, doesn't have much of a character outside of sucking despite being in a work that's otherwise really good at giving internality to people who act shitty, all that jazz.

Coil: How little sense we got of what Calvert's dominion would really look like. That we didn't get much of his takeover without other disasters interfering actually works—it fits the themes of constant conflict interfering with stability and safety. But I still want more of a sense of what Calvert wanted.

Taylor: I didn't care about her reunification with her mom. I say a lot that the ending of Worm is one of the best endings of any story I've read, and that's true of Gold Morning as a whole, but I don't actually care much about the last epilogue. The Brian reveal certainly doesn't help there.

Krouse: Do you know how much it sucks that when people ask me who my favorite worm character is, the tumblr sexyman is in contention?

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

Sophia: any story that takes her basic parts, gets rid of the obviously shitty stuff, and develops her into a real character.

Coil: Disney Channel sitcom

Taylor: Well I already tried expy-ing Khepri into my tabletop campaign, and that got mixed results, so I'll take TTRPGs off the list. I'd be interested in her getting put in a medium where you'd have to be creative with how to represent the bug cloud, like live theater.

Krouse: I was gonna say Mob Psycho but then I remembered that they already had a guy who teleported around being a jackass. But I would like too see a well-animated version of his fighting style.

5. What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

Sophia: I'll Make You Sorry by Screaming Females

Coil: For some reason I get an Everything Everything vibe from him? Maybe Photoshop Handsome or Breadwinner.

Taylor: I don't actually read her as trans but Dysphoria Hoodie is what immediately came to mind. I'm at least theoretically still making a Cicada Days animatic about her. I think portions of BCNR's Sunglasses fits with whats going on internally with her in the Mannequin fight

Krouse: Want to make a Prowl Great Cain AMV for him one day. Lyrics fit perfectly, and the way its sung gets the same otherwise inexpressable intensity of how I feel about him. Darnielle said “This is a song about betrayal. A lot of songs about betrayal are about betrayal and redemption. Not this one.” And yeah, that's Krouse!

9. Could you be roommates with this character?

Sophia: Oh, no

Coil: It would prolly be fine except for how he'd torture a branch of my psychological continuity and then effectively kill it by destroying that reality whenever I leave the dishes out too long. Don't correct me on how his powers work

Taylor: Uhhh probably not. Even if I wasn't much older, I don't really talk to my roommates unless they're the talkative sort. She's been stuck living with clamshells before, it wasn't good for her.

Krouse: I'd have to kill him

10 and 11: alright these are "could you be best friends with" and "would you date" and in both cases the fact that I'm 23 means no. I don't have Blake's ability to form rich friendships with people much younger than me. And I'm not interested in Calvert as a friend or a lover.

#sophia hess #thomas calvert #taylor hebert #francis krouse #wildbow #parahumans #wormblr #mals reads worm #mals says #ask game

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cherthegoddess · 9 months

Text

His Sunshine

Summary: Who knew a girl with such bright waves could catch the storminess of Bucky's eyes.

Pairing: BuckyxSuperhero!Reader

Warnings: This was written with a black reader in mind, but anyone can read it.

Word Count: 3.1k

Join the taglist here!

A/N: Heyyy everyone and welcome to my very first One-Shot! I really hope you enjoy it. I'm super excited for everyone to read it! Thank you so much to @novanitee for the dividers!

His Sunshine

Bucky was already exhausted from the day and it was barely 11. He did his early morning run with Steve and Sam. He tried to avoid Tony to the best of his ability. Got unfortunately caught, with that one Parker kid. And now some alien losers decided that today was a fantastic day to try to invade the Earth for whatever reason. He just wanted to return to his bed, read some books, and be away from everyone, but luck was not on his side. He dodged the punches being thrown his way landing a few with his metal one. There just seemed to be too many. He watched as Steve killed one with a few more coming behind him. Bucky ran to help him swiftly getting away from the debris of the battle. He pulled a gun out of his holster when he knew he wouldn’t get there in time, killing two and alarming Steve of their presence. He fought back-to-back with Steve. This battle wouldn’t be over for hours. Every time they killed one another popped up and every Avenger they could gather was there.

Not long after the brush of defeat was starting to come into the air, a few of the aliens were screaming in pain from suddenly being lit on fire, others having branches growing out of their noses. The UFO that was in the air was being broken down piece by piece. The Avengers searched for their unknown hero. “Heyy guys sorry I’m late” Their heads quickly turned to the sky looking at the woman in the air wearing all blue, her identity hidden with a mask. The woman salutes before finishing off the rest of the aliens with bursts of fire, winds, and poor plants that have seen the back and front ends of the aliens. Bucky watched in awe with the others at her speed and effectiveness, all while not even lifting a finger. The others gathered in a small huddle and the woman began to finally hit the ground in front of them. “Whew! Those aliens were really something huh?” Their eyes train behind her as the city begins to rebuild itself. The woman looks behind her to see what they are staring at. “How in the…” She laughs. Waving her hand. “Oh, that’s me! Just doing a little cleanup!” Bucky looks at Steve confused, Steve shrugs his shoulders in response before stepping up. “Ma’am, who are you and where did you come from?” The woman grins. “Oh, my god. The Captain America is talking to me! Sorry, who am I, was your first question right? I’m Y/n. I don’t exactly have a cool superhero name yet. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to pick one, especially with two powers, you gotta honor both. Sorry, I’m rambling! Second question, I’m from Harlem born and bred. I was actually building up the courage to come to tell you guys about me and hopefully become an Avenger, but then you know aliens! Now I’m here!” The woman, who long-windedly, explained her name to be Y/n finally finished with a proud grin on her face. “Okay, Scrappy doo, how did you do all of this?” Tony motions to the buildings that were freshly repaired. “I would love to explain, but repairing buildings and fighting aliens is kind of a draining task, is it possible we could go to the tower? I can explain everything there especially if you want to test me to see all the cool things I can do as well?” They eyed each other, Bucky more weary of Y/n. She was too… nice. Too happy even after being in the face of danger. And even more worrisome, she was powerful. “Fine, kid, but you have to stay by Barnes’ side until we get there, we don’t trust you quite yet,” Bucky’s eyes shoot to Tony glaring harshly even after Steve places a hand on him so he doesn’t say anything. Y/n’s eyes for the first time since her appearance, meet his, she grins and waves. She makes her way over to him. He rolls his eyes at her cheeriness. Tony tells F.R.I.D.A.Y to send a quadjet.

“I’ve never seen anything like this! An Elementalist and you’re telekinetic! People should definitely be scared of you, Scrapy!” Tony exclaimed after running a physical on Y/n. Bucky, Steve, and Nat were watching from a window, while Peter, Tony, and Bruce were in the room with her. “Yeah! How did you get your powers, Y/n?” As she began explaining her story about how she got her powers, (which she got after almost drowning in a lake full of alien artifacts) Bucky still had a sour look on his face. “What’s wrong pal?” Steve asked. “I don’t know, man. I just don’t trust her. She comes out of nowhere with all these powers. And her happiness and all that positivity. No one‘s that good.” Bucky grumbles out. “Bucky, not everyone is after us. She literally saved us all,” Bucky watched as Nat rolled her eyes at him. He shook his head. It was just something about her that he couldn’t put his finger on. She was just pure sunshine but he could see clouds behind her eyes.

It had been 4 weeks since Y/n had moved into the tower. 4 weeks of everyone saying how much they loved her, 4 weeks of her constant humming and singing, 4 weeks of Bucky avoiding her as much as possible. Every room that she was in he left, and every word spoken to him by her was ignored. He watched from afar as everyone enjoyed her company as he isolated himself even more from her. No matter how much he enjoyed looking at her he couldn’t find himself to get close to her.

“Peter! I will not shoot ice at you to see if you could dodge it! You will not have Tony or Aunt May breathing down my neck if you get hurt!” Peter and Y/n got close when she arrived. She was about 4-5 years older than him and she treated him like a little brother. Bucky, however, teased Peter (even more than usual) about him flirting with Y/n. “Y/n/n, I promiseee, I’ll be okay! Plus I heal fast!” Peter exclaimed. Bucky sighed as he realized that he had to walk past the two in the living room to get to his destination of Steve’s room. Bucky begins to walk swiftly. Peter notices realization hitting his eyes. “I train with Bucky all the time! You can just ask him!” Bucky groans internally the two looking at him for confirmation. “Kid leave me out of your drama” The storm in Y/n’s eyes began to brew in disappointment. An urge to make that sunshine come back. He sighs, “Don’t throw ice at the kid, he bruises easily,” He turns and continues on his journey, not before hearing her whisper. “Peter, I can’t believe he actually talked to me! Maybe he’d finally give me a chance!” He rolls his eyes and knocks on Steve’s door.

Fury finally let Y/n go on missions 5 months into her stay. It was her fourth mission and of course, Bucky was the one who was a part of the team that would go with her. He had successfully avoided joining her until now. Luckily everything was going well, for the most part, a simple infiltration of one of Hydra’s bases by getting information from their computers. They had all split up and somehow Y/n ended up paired with Bucky. He guessed it was some sort of plan from Steve to get the two closer. Y/n was surprisingly very tech-savvy and was placed in charge of hacking the first computer to make it easier for Nat and Steve to get access to the others. It was easy until it wasn’t. Everything happened so fast and she was distracted and Bucky so stupidly wanted to keep as much distance as possible from her rays. So before he could get to her a shot ran out hitting her side and making her fall to the ground. Bucky ran quickly the Hydra agents getting wrapped in vines in response to Y/n’s pain. Bucky called into his comms for help, his hands on the wound. “Y/n, Sunshine can you get up?” His voice was soft surprising even himself. “Yeah, yeah, I just need to- grow some vines to keep myself alive. I think that’s all I can get my powers to do right now.” her voice is breathy and light. “Okay Sunshine, I got you.” Bucky watched as Y/n begin to grow vines around her body protecting it from any harm she may face. Her light eyes began to close, Bucky picking her vine-covered body when he saw Steve and Nat rushing their way. “Is she okay? What’s going on?” Bucky held her close. “She covered herself in vines to protect herself. I should’ve been protecting her” Bucky said with a whisper. Nat and Steve look at Bucky and then at each other. “She’s going to be okay Bucky. This isn’t your fault. We need to get to the quadjet before more come.” Bucky didn’t say a word but made his way to the door.

Bucky didn’t leave her side not once since they got back to the tower. He watched closely as they took her out of his arms and into surgery. He was there every step of the way. Something clicked for him. All of his distrust dissipated the second the bullet pierced her skin. He promised himself from that day forward he would always protect her. It had been a week since he saw the sunshine that was slightly covered by storm clouds. He would sit as everyone came to check on her, bringing her favorite flowers and teddy bears. The shot was almost fatal but luckily Y/n’s vines did some of the healing for her. Chamomile and echinacea grew around her wound. The doctors promised that she would wake up soon but even with that promise Bucky stayed.

Bucky squeezed her soft hand. “Sunshine you gotta wake up for me. I miss your eyes. Everyone misses you. Please come back to us, to me.” He whispers to her. He sighs when she doesn’t move. He gets comfortable in his chair again and begins to hum You Are the Sunshine of My Life by Stevie Wonder, a song that he heard Sam and Y/n singing the other week. He didn’t tell anyone but he had the song on repeat for weeks and it reminded him of her. “I didn’t know, you like Stevie Wonder,” Bucky’s closed eyes popped open at the sign of her voice. He took over to her laying form to see Y/n’s smile and bright eyes. “Hey Bucky,” He had to hold himself back from hugging. “Hey. Are you alright? Do you need some water? I’ll go-” An angelic laugh broke his rambling. “I’m okay, Buck. I promise.” Before he could say anything else Dr. Chen entered. “I knew I heard a familiar voice in here. How are you Y/n?” She gave the same response she told Bucky. “That’s good, hopefully now that you’re up, Bucky will leave and go take a shower for the first time in a week.” Dr. Chen laughed. Bucky’s eyes downcasted. “I’ll leave you guys to it. I’ll be back after your check-up,” He left the room swiftly, heading to take a shower. He was so relieved that she was up. He had never seen her eyes shine so bright.

Ever since Y/n woke up his and her relationship had taken a complete 180. They hung out all the time, had *platonic* reading dates, and watched all the movies that Bucky had yet to see. Everyone was shocked to see Bucky’s complete change in mood. It had been 3 months since Y/n fully recovered, and it was almost time for Tony’s annual Christmas pajama party. He had never seen Y/n more excited in his life. She loved Christmas. She explained that it was because she lost all of her family, and Bucky found out why all the clouds were there. There was also something else that he learned while being with her, that he was slowly falling in love with her. Steve tried many times to get him to tell her. But Bucky convinced himself that no one that bright could possibly like him back let alone love him. Little did he know she did.

He was waiting on the couch with Tony, Steve, Vision, Peter, Thor, Clint, Sam, and Pepper when he heard a series of giggles come rushing into the room. There was his Sunshine burning brighter than ever. Y/n was adorable in a bright yellow bear onesie which she somehow convinced everyone else to participate in. He ended up being a cloudy one which got some teasing from Sam, but he didn’t care because it got her to smile. Y/n plopped herself right next to Bucky where he had a cup of hot cocoa with extra marshmallows waiting for her. “Thanks, Buck!” She said with a kiss on his cheek. Over time it became a habit of her that Bucky couldn’t complain about. Tony stood up when everyone sat down. “Now that everyone is here, let the fun and festivities begin,” Tony said with a clap and everyone cheered. “Our first activity is a gingerbread building contest. Get into pairs and may the best team win,” Bucky and Y/n of course paired up, and they almost won the contest but Vision and Wanda cheated by using their powers.

They also did hide and seek which Y/n won, they decorated the tree, did some Christmas karaoke and now finally they were doing some drinking and talking well until Tony spoke up. “I have a game for us to play… 7 minutes in Heaven!” A few people groaned. “Tony isn’t that a bit childish,” Steve asked. Tony winked at him. “Yes it is but it’s also fun. So everyone writes their name on a piece of paper and then you’ll pick a name, and then heaven!” Tony exclaimed. Everyone sighed but did it anyways. Tony took two of his old helmets (one for boys and one for girls) and moved them around the room as they placed their papers in. Tony shook the helmets to mix the names. Everyone grabbed a name except Clint and Sam. Bucky’s widened in shock when he saw his person. Y/n, his sunshine. He looked at Y/n to see her reaction and there was a smile on her face. Disappointment crossed his mind, she liked someone else. Who could it be? Probably that Spiderkid. He thought. The first to go was Thor who picked Nat. They were both slightly disheveled after they left the room. Nat got Steve, Steve got Wanda, Wanda got Vision, Vision got Pepper who did absolutely nothing with a threat from Tony, Pepper got Tony, Tony got Carol Tony got threatened by Pepper, and Carol got Peter who was shaking and nervous before he entered.

Bucky and Y/n were the only ones to not get anything. “Since Peter also got Carol that means, Bucky and Y/n got each other,” Nat said excitedly. Everyone had a knowing grin on their face as Y/n pulled him up into the closet. Before Bucky could fully close the door, Steve mouthed ‘Tell her’. He shook his head. Some string lights were hanging around the room so each person could have some light. Tony yelled that he started the timer. “So,” They said at the same time after a moment of silence. They both laugh quietly. “You go first,” Bucky said. He could tell that she was nervous as she played with a loose string of her onesie. “Bucky, I-” Bucky began to worry. “We don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to Sunshine.” She sighed finally looking him in the eyes. “Bucky it’s not that. I just have something to tell you.” Bucky nodded his head hope slightly filling him. “Bucky, I like you. And I have since I’ve shown up here, but you avoided me when I first got here, so I figured there was no way that you could possibly like me back, but then the whole me getting shot thing happened. And you actually started showing interest in me, but I thought it was just because I was hurt, no matter how much Nat, Wanda, and Peter tried to convince me. There’s no way someone as wonderful as you could like me. You’re literally perfect, Buck. I-” Her words fell flat when Bucky covered her lips with hers. He could feel her shock before she settled into the kiss. She pulled back slightly “I guess I was completely wrong huh?” she said teasingly, her lips now slightly bruised from the kiss. “You couldn’t have been more wrong Sunshine. I’m not the perfect one it’s you. I didn’t think you could ever love someone like me. I’ve literally killed people, Sunshine.” Bucky shook his head before she could protest. “Y/n I’m so sorry for how I treated you when you got here. I’ve never met someone who brought so much light before and I was scared. I like you too, Y/n and you’ll never have to doubt that ever again, Sunshine.” She grinned before kissing him again deeper and longer this time. After a while, they were interrupted by a knock. “Okay lovebirds, time to get out! We even gave you guys an extra minute” They pulled away quickly when they heard the door begin to open. A few whoops and cheers followed when they saw their warm faces. “So who made the first move?” Tony asked. Y/n hid in Bucky’s shoulder as a few people groaned. “Y/n/n, you were supposed to let the old man tell you first ‘cause he’s old fashioned,” Nat said with a groan sliding Tony, Steve, and Wanda $100. Sam and Clint doing the same. “You guys did not bet on us!” Y/n exclaimed. Tony shrugged, “What can I say? I believe in you, Y/n.” The group laughed as Y/n playfully shot water at them all. Bucky kissed her head.

The group turned on Home Alone after a while of teasing Bucky and Y/n and drinking spiked hot cocoa. Y/n was cuddled up on his side giggling as one of the bad guys got hit with an iron. He wasn’t watching the movie at all he was watching her. He kissed her forehead, snuggling closer to her. “My Sunshine”

Fin

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