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bettyfrommars · 29 days

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Squirrel (a Gutterballs story)

Eddie Munson x betty!Reader

A jump from modern day to the early 1990's when we meet a young, aspiring rockstar Eddie Munson at the heart of the Seattle grunge scene. I had the huge honor of being included in the Tattoo Cover-up Valentine's Day Special episode of Gutterballs by @dr-aculaaa and I'm still emotional about it, to be honest. This wee contribution is dedicated to Drac, as well as all of the Gutterballs friends I'm proud to know because of this fandom (coming for you, Daria.)

word count: 1.4k

18+, smoking weed, the term 'bitches' used affectionally, mention of heartbreak, allusions to mental illness, a supposed one-night stand that became more, mention of addiction, that one friend who can find anyone online, hurt/comfort. Reader (Betty) has a good friend named Shelby, which is actually my cat in real life.

------

You picked at the label of your beer, waiting impatiently for your friend to pull up something on her laptop.

It was the recent episode of Gutterballs that had spurred your Sherlock Holmes friend into action. You said something in passing about how it’d be impossible to find the rest of Eddie Munson’s lost loves that were mentioned on the infamous podcast, and then she’d lost sleep wanting to prove you wrong.

“So. Here’s Abi and Chelsea,” Shelby motioned for you to come and look over her shoulder. She clicked on search tabs one at a time, including one for Ashley, causing a melancholy smile to quiver at the side of your mouth. “Pretty,” you nodded. “Eddie always knew how to pick ‘em.”

“This one looks dangerous,” she pointed to Jo, adjusting her glasses. “They all seem totally cool, actually.”

You scanned the various results from her internet sleuthing. “Which one is that?”

“Oh, that’s Meg,” Shelby clicked on a social media profile, and then pulled up a video of a chef with purple hair preparing something on the morning show.

“Fuckin, Meg,” you said under your breath in your best Eddie voice.

“Doesn’t she own that restaurant in Chicago we couldn’t afford to go to?” Shelby pinched her joint from the ashtray and took a drag, enlarging photos from their menu, concentrating. “I wonder if they accept Groupon.”

You stealthily followed Abby on social media from your private account and planned to buy some of her watercolor paintings. Funny enough, you already knew Emily. The two of you had been part of a mutual friend group for years, and so when Eddie mentioned them being a bitch you had to snort a laugh because…yeah.

“Nice work, Columbo,” you patted Shelby’s shoulder. “You found all of them in under 24 hours. I shall make you a commemorative plaque out of dry macaroni.”

Checking her phone, your sleuth friend mumbled to herself as she went down a rabbit hole of social media comments.

“Not all,” she slipped her bottom lip through her teeth a few times. “Took me a while to find Rose, they go by a different name on social media. The drawings they do are badass, and they like that same actor you do, the one with the Minecraft head.”

“So, I’m the only one out of all of them who didn’t do anything with my life? Nice.”

“Hey,” she said in mock scorn. “I bet none of these bitches can say they’ve had absolutely every career that’s ever existed. It takes a special kind of ingenuity to change jobs every 6 months. Plus, you wrote and published a whole-ass novel.”

“It only sold 37 copies,” you muttered. “Ten of which were to you and mom.”

You held your breath after that, watching the screen, waiting for the one name you hadn’t been able to connect a face to yet, but instead, Shelby slumped on the barstool with a defeated sigh. “Daria might be the one that got away. Haven’t found even a crumb for who or where they might be.”

“Damn,” you said softly. …where are you, Strigoi?

“How does Eddie even pull partners this hot?” Shelby asked, turning to dig for her Visine. “Wasn’t he the one who bragged about being able to burp the alphabet?”

Laughter bubbled in your throat at the memory; the type of laugh that immediately made tears burst from your eyes. You wiped your face in a way that was more of a slap and turned to stare at the gloom settling into the pines outside the window.

“He has a way about him I suppose.”

“I think you should call him,” she blurted, offering you a hit off the purple kush, but you waved her off. “If only to figure out the Daria mystery.”

“Oh yeah? Just call him? Just like that? Oh, hey Eddie I know it’s been almost three decades, but what’s new?”

“I mean, sounds legit to me.”

Remember those rainy days, Squirrel? Remember…

You tossed and turned early the next morning, reaching for your phone to scroll and help push away intrusive thoughts. How many things you’d fucked up, how many friends you’d lost to time and death and sloppy choices.

Maybe not all was lost…

Seattle, early 1990’s

“My lady is here with us tonight,” Eddie rumbled into the mic, gesturing to you from where he stood on that rickety old stage in front of a rowdy crowd at The Crocodile Cafe. Alice in Chains had played there, as well as Mother Love Bone and Mudhoney, back before they were household names. “This next one's for her.”

From your seat at the bar, you locked eyes with him, beaming with pride, but also shaking your head. “I hate you,” mouthing the words made his dimpled grin grow wider.

“Betty Spaghetti…. My beautiful Aquarius twin.”

The ink on your matching Aquarius glyph tattoos were still covered in Aquaphor that night. You’d spent the past two weeks trying to figure out how this chatty Indiana boy had managed to become a permanent fixture in your life.

“I don’t want anything serious,” you’d said into his mouth while your hands were all over each other in the dive bar bathroom the first time you met. Bonding over booze, blow, and the shared trauma of losing a parent, you recognized that emptiness mirrored in each other and wanted to fill it.

“Cool, neither do I,” he mumbled, shoving his jeans down his hips.

But he’d been lying through his teeth, and he confessed that to you a month later down on the wharf, handing over a little squirrel made of shells from the pocket of his leather jacket. He’d been sneaky and bought it at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, a place the two of you liked to go to visit the mummified remains of a dude named Sylvester.

There was no major foundation for giving him the nickname Squirrel, one day it just happened. He was on the couch in his boxers, stoned out of his gourd, shoveling pretzels into his mouth at such a manic rate that his cheeks looked like they were about to burst.

“So, you knew I was the one back then? In a dark bar after 8 shots?”

He looped his arm with yours as you walked. “Uh-huh, still do,” he leaned in closer. “Still do.”

At that moment, during those days, you worried that you wouldn’t be able to breathe without him. You were both so young, too young to fully comprehend the impact of that time in your life in later years, or what a trauma bond even was.

But then the day came that you’d come to realize would always arrive for you eventually, and that was the time to move on: to other experiences, other people.

You didn’t know at the time that it could be done any other way, and so you made a real mess of things.

He made several attempts to get in touch with you, including the time years later when he found out from your mom that you were in rehab. He wrote to you, but you never wrote back, never returned his calls.

He wasn’t trying to stir up the old flames or get back together; by then, that ship had sailed, and the Eddie Munson you knew never stayed single for long. But he did want you to know that you weren’t alone, that you would always have a friend in him. That he’d meant it when he said he’d always care about you.

Returning to the current reality, you chewed at your thumbnail, staring at the phone number Shelby had written down for you on a yellow legal pad. How she’d managed to get a hold of Eddie Munson’s private cell number, you’d never know.

You were about to end the call after the second ring, flustered, thinking it would be better to send a text, when just then—- he answered.

Eddie recognized the area code, but never thought in a million years that it would be…

“H-hey Squirrel, it’s me.”

Dead silence made your heart flop. Maybe you should say it’s a wrong number, maybe this was a mistake. What if he considered you a lost love, but he no longer wanted anything to do with you? He did cover up the tattoo, after all.

“Well, well, if it isn’t my Betty Fuckin’ Spaghetti,” you could hear the joy in his voice, could hear his wide smile cracking into seasoned laugh lines. “I’ve missed the shit outta you.”

#Eddie Munson #Eddie Munson fanfic #Gutterballs

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midknightwritings · 1 year

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I LOVE the knights shimeji hc you did!! it’s so cute and now I’m smad that it doesn’t exist irl 😞 could I request you do the same concept but for Valkyrie? thank you in advance!!!! ❤️❤️

Valkyrie as shimeji buddies !!

Synopsis : What would the members of Valkyrie be like as your little shimeji buddies ??

Era : N / A

Warning/s : N / A

Mentioned Character/s : G/N!Reader / Mika / Shu

A/N : Hi Anon !! Thank you so much for your kind words !! I’m so glad you liked it 🥺❤️ and honestly same here~ Goddd the things I’d do for them to be real 😭

Also~ thank you so so much for being my first request !! 💕 I hope you enjoy !!

•❅───✧❅✦❅✧───❅•

Mika Kagehira :

He’s the sweetest, most thoughtful little guy to ever grace your screen. He always greets you with a wave and a big smile when you boot up your system and wishes you a great day or a good night when you log off~ He’s always so excited to see you and just be around you as a whole !!

He’s genuinely so soft for your affection, it’s honestly really surprising that he doesn’t turn into a little Mika puddle every time you give him some !! Head pats, a heart path with your cursor, or even just words of affirmation such as “You’re amazing Mika !!” gets him all blushy and flustered. He even giggles a bit as he tries to hide the growing blush on his cheeks with his little hands.

Oftentimes, when you’re logged off, he would organize your desktop and files so that everything is neat and tidy when you log back on. He sees your desktop as a shared working space and gets super happy when he sees your bright smile and appreciation when it's cleaned :)

Mika will gladly help you with your work as best as he can !! Not only that but, if there’s something you both don’t understand, he’ll help you find sources too !! Mika will make sure that they’re all reliable and would try to stop you from using unreliable sources if he notices you on those type of sites.

Mika’s hardworking nature causes him to sometimes go into very deep rabbit holes when he’s helping you. Sometimes, you gotta fish him out of the 10th page of Google. [ The fact that he went to the 2nd page in the first place is already telling on how serious he is when it comes to helping you~ ]

When it comes to feedback as a whole, Mika will tell you the things he loved and what you did well, and the things you can improve on~ Not only that, but he’ll even try to help guide you through the steps so that you don't get confused. He doesn’t want to see you struggle or get frustrated over something that wasn't worth fussing over to begin with~

Even with his habit of overworking himself, Mika refuses to let you overwork yourself. He doesn’t want you to get burnt out so he always reminds you to take breaks and relax in between working sessions !! You would often remind him to take breaks himself and, depending on the severity, you sometimes have to physically pick him up and move him to the other side of your screen to get him to actually stop and relax for a bit~

Now you’re both trapped in a perpetual state of making sure that the other takes a break but you both came to a compromise where you’d take breaks together !! You and Mika would often just relax and watch videos, play games or scroll through social media for a bit. Mika’s more of an observer than an active participant but he’s still super happy to talk to you while you’re doing those things~

Sometimes he would sew an outfit for you and would show you when he’s done !! He gets all giddy and excited seeing how happy you get and how much you loved the outfit. He knows that you can’t physically wear the exact outfit he made, but if you took his design to a tailor and got it made [ or you sewed it yourself ] and then showed it to him… His heart would beat so fast that he thinks he’d accidentally mess up one of your settings from how strong it’s beating !!

There are times where the two of you wouldn’t talk as much due to working on your own projects, but Mika still loves being in your presence so he would often sit in a corner on your screen to avoid bothering you but, at the same time, still be there if you ever needed him.

•❅───✧❅✦❅✧───❅•

Shu Itsuki :

Shu’s the type to make sure that you'd get your work done in one go and this is because he doesn’t want you to do everything the night before. After all, how can you perfect your craft in just one night alone? Perfection takes time so start your project now !! Who cares if it’s due in 2 weeks, better now than later !!

His keen eye for detail knows no bounds, he can spot an error from a mile away. Are you seriously going to submit your project with that pixel a shade lighter than the ones surrounding it? Go tidy it up, it won’t take long~

His nagging means no harm though. He wants you to succeed and knows that you can accomplish amazing things, that’s why he’s being overly critical. You can do better than this and he knows it !! He’s secretly rooting for you [ though, he’ll never say it out loud. ]

He’s super knowledgeable and would help you when it comes to subjects that you struggle with. If you need sources, he’ll give you the ones he used himself, so you know they’re reliable !! He’ll help you through your papers and would even counter some of your weaker arguments on purpose in order to help you strengthen your own claims with more evidence and explanations~

When it comes to online shopping, he tries to subtly steer you towards the right outfits but he’s not subtle. Like... At all… He would flat out refuse to let you swipe your card if you’re planning on buying anything he considers “atrocious”. In the end though, Shu’s judgment is always right and now, you rarely have to return anything because they all match your aesthetic and suit your features to a tea !!

He secretly adores your affection but will actively pretend that he hates it. He’s not as subtle about it as he thinks he is though. A lot of the time, it goes like;

[ Draws a heart with your cursor path. ] “Are you serious? Stop being so childish…” “Aww sorry Shu.” [ Doesn’t do it anymore. ] “The sheer disrespect for you to believe that I don't deserve an ounce of appreciation for all the things I do for you !! I’ll have you know tha-”

Shu would often redesign your desktop with your aesthetic in mind and, even though he’s complaining about having to clean up after you, this is his way of trying to ease your workload when you’re busy with assignments. He hopes that designing your desktop would make you feel better :) [ Don’t call him out on this though, because he will feverishly deny it. ]

When you and Shu get busy with your own projects, you’d both accidentally pull all-nighters together. Sometimes he’d notice that it’s getting late but when he looks at you, he deeply admires your sheer dedication to finish your work and believes that he shouldn’t bother you. Though, he’ll make a subtle, off-handed reminder and leave the choice to you. If you want to sleep now or pull an all-nighter, he’s ok with anything because, if you do decide to continue working, he’ll keep you company through the night.

If you ever wanna cook or bake something, Shu’s willing to help you find good recipes and would give you links to websites with the best ones. The 5 links with different croissant recipes is totally just a coincidence though !! So might as well make some now, right?

Shu would also design outfits for you and actually has a folder filled to the brim with different outfits he made for you and you alone. Even though he wants you to wear them, he doesn’t trust the tailors with his designs because they need to be perfect !! They’re for you after all~ But… If you know how to sew yourself, he wouldn’t mind letting you make them in his stead. He gets super proud when he sees you wearing the clothes he designed. If you’re quick enough, you might even catch him softly smiling at you before you finally click “shut down” to go out for the day.

#mika kagehira x reader #shu itsuki x reader #ensemble stars #enstars #valkyrie x reader #valkyrie x y/n #valkyrie x you #enstars x reader #ensemble stars x reader #enstars x y/n #ensemble stars x y/n #enstars x you #ensemble stars x you #gender neutral reader #enstars shimejis #ensemble stars shimejis #esworks #🍬 hansel's writing

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kiwi413 · 2 years

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Can I request a macaque x reader who’s insecure of themselves because she saw someone that was so pretty and has a perfect body and reader has a curvy thick body and is jealous of them because she doesn’t have that and macaque sees them perfect and Beautiful

also I was listening to jealousy jealousy of Olivia Rodrigo because I was thinking can you do like a similar version of the song I’m just asking if not then do as you please

A/N: hello! thank you for requesting! I did take inspiration from the song. I had fun, maybe got carried away a bit, anyhow I hope you enjoy it and that it's to your liking!

Genre: hurt/comfort, a bit of fluff towards the end

pairing: Macaque x Gn!Reader

word count: 1,2k

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☁︎⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☁︎⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☁︎⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☁︎⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☁︎⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾

You didn’t mean to go down that rabbit hole.

It was late when you got home, and you noticed rather quickly that your monkey companion, Macaque, has yet to arrive. It wasn’t a first for him to come back home in the dead of night, so you weren’t too worried about that.

What you were worried about, however, is how you’d pass the time while waiting for him. It was a habit of yours to stay awake until you saw him safe and sound inside your shared apartment.

So with a rather heavy sigh, you settled on the couch and pulled out your phone to mindlessly scroll on.

While at first, it was just the usual meme and cat video, your feed took a turn to the left when suddenly more and more pictures of people who seemed to be flawless flooded your screen.

Try as you might you couldn’t help the thoughts about your own physical appearance from running rampant through your mind. The more rational part of your brain knew that their existence didn’t mean you were any less, but at the same time, a part of you was jealous of those people.

This went on for a while, and soon you found yourself in your own bubble of self hatred that you didn’t know how to escape from.

In the midst of your train of thought you failed to hear a certain someone enter the apartment through the window (because he simply refused to use the door. you’ve tried to bribe him into it but quickly realised that the more you plead with him the smuger his smirk is when he enters through the window, so you gave up and let him do whatever he wanted)

“Plum! I’m home!” you hear Macaque before you see him enter the living room. “Oh, Hey,”

You greet back in a small voice, not quite having the mental energy to seem chipper. The sound of your voice makes the dark-furred monkey stop in his tracks and furrow his brows. That can’t be right, you’re usually much livelier when you see he’s returned come. It makes him wonder if he’s done something to upset you lately, but after racking his brain and not finding anything he gradually becomes more concerned, although he lets it pass as you possibly being tired and sits next to you.

You two talk about your day for a while, with you maintaining the same bummed-out tone the whole time. This and the fact that you kept avoiding his eyes put off Macaque a lot until he couldn’t take it anymore and decided to be direct about his concerns.

“Alright, what’s wrong?” this sudden interjection startled you a bit. “What? What do you mean?”

You ask, a bit unsure wether you should talk about this with him.

“You’ve been acting strange all night, is there something bothering you? Who do I need to beat up?” your eyes widen at his last question and you quickly try to clear up the situation, while you do appreciate the sentiment, you don’t want anyone landed in the hospital or worse because of you. “No! No beating anyone up! No one upset me!” he raises one eyebrow at your panicked look before asking in a slightly softer tone “Then what’s wrong, darling?”

You suck in a breath, “you’ll think it’s stupid,” you say while you avert your gaze to the side. Macaque huffs before he leans closer to gently pull your head to the side to make you look him in the eye for the first time that night. “Whatever it is, it’s bothering you, and if it’s bothering you it’s definitely not stupid,” his tone is firm but soft and he knows he got his point across when you give a defeated sigh.

“I just, I don’t like the way my body looks..” you explain. If one would look closely they could pinpoint the exact moment the simian’s brain short-circuited. He just couldn’t grasp the concept that you, the most amazing person in the world (at least in his eyes), didn’t like yourself. To be honest, he would have loved you no matter what form you might have taken, but this? It was an outrageous notion!

It seems that you took his stunned silence as a bad sign because you swiftly tried to back out. Standing up from the couch and beginning to make your way to your bedroom where you’d probably have a good cry you began talking “See? I knew you’d think it’s stupid, I shouldn’t have-” you’re interrupted by Macaque’s hand gripping your forearm and pulling you towards him.

Now facing him, his hands on either of your shoulders, you notice his intense stare. The usual expressions you see on your dear monkey are smug smirks, annoyance, the rare softness he reserves only for you, and sometimes sadness when he’s had a tough day and needed to vent. You’ve never seen him look so serious before, it makes you stop for a second.

“(Y/N), I’m going to need you to listen to me very carefully,” he says. The use of your actual name makes you nod slowly, he seems satisfied with your indirect response and continues on his speech,

“You are the best person I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in my long immortal life. You’re smart, sweet, patient, and caring, as for your appearance? to be quite frank with you, you look like you were handcrafted by the Gods specifically for me, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect partner.” he finished with a smile, although it was quick to drop when he saw a few tears rush down your cheek.

“Hey now, I know I’m not the best at this whole comforting thing, but was it that bad?” he tried to joke while he brought up a hand to wipe away your tears. You put a hand over his own to stop him from taking it away. “No, no, that’s not it silly. It’s just, you’re so sweet, thank you Mac,” you snuggle into his hand. you crack a smile through your tears, his words have overwhelmed you with such a sense of warmth that you couldn’t help but cry.

A shade of pink dusted Macaque’s cheeks at that, “Ah, well, it’s the truth, so don’t you forget it!”

You chuckle at his flustered form, already having forgotten your distress from a few minutes ago. A comfortable silence fell over the two of you until the shadow demon broke it.

“You know, all those who dare to disrespect my beloved Plum must face my wrath, so that includes you.” you suddenly feel nervous upon seeing the mischievous glint in his eyes.

“Is that so?” you said with a strained voice while you try to put a bit of a distance between the two of you. Macaque simply hummed in approval before he suddenly jumped on you and started to pepper kisses wherever he could reach, all over your face, shoulders, arms, even your stomach. Your giggles rang throughout the apartment, making Macaque’s heart squeeze with adoration.

The rest of the night was spent cuddling and with words of affirmation being directed towards both of you, each happy to have the other in their lives.

#macaque x reader #lego monkie kid x reader #lmk x reader #lmk macaque x reader

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vincent-sinclair-deserved-better · 1 year

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Let's Be Alone, Alone Together

You're having a weird day and feeling down, your secret admirer reaches out to try and comfort you

Characters: The Patron x Reader

Words: 3038

Content warnings: Loneliness, maybe allusions to a panic attack towards the end? I was just going with the flow, the reader-insert was just doing whatever they wanted.

divider by firefly-graphics

The screen of your laptop was emitting a dim, blue-ish light, the video frozen where you’d paused it some time ago. You’d noticed your attention drifting off, constantly losing track of what was going on, so you had decided to take a moment to finish your train of thought, which had since been forgotten. Muscle memory had you reach for the mouse and move it when the screen went dark, displaying the message that it was going to shut off due to inactivity. It wasn’t like you needed it, you weren’t even looking, but force of habit didn’t care.

With a sigh, you leaned back in your chair and started the video again, having to go back quite a bit in order to find something you remembered seeing. Yet it wasn’t long before you caught yourself staring off into space again, the video just indistinct background noise, incapable of pierce the fog in your head. Nothing seemed to get through to you, no matter what you tried. You hadn’t been able to remain focused on anything all day, instead being stuck in that weird space of mental dullness and exhaustion, with the faint sensation of some stinging emotion lingering beyond the surface.

As much as you loathed this emotional limbo you were in, you didn’t want to go down that road either. Before you’d realise what was happening, you’d find yourself falling down a rabbit hole you really did not wish to explore.

Pressing the spacebar to pause the video again happened with hardly a thought, and you absentmindedly reached for your phone as you stood up to get something to drink. You unlocked your phone and opened your go-to social media app on instinct, the action almost being a Pavlovian response to the feeling of your phone in your hand. And again, without you being consciously aware of it, your brain picked up on a small symbol in the notification bar. You’d received a text message.

For a moment you just stared at the screen in confusion. Who would send you a text? Pretty much everyone you knew used some kind of messaging app. It was most likely just some kind of spam, so you put your phone down and took a glass from the cupboard. Up until now, you hadn’t even noticed how thirsty you were, but as you were standing in the kitchen you drank a whole glass of water before getting your go-to comfort beverage.

Only when you were back at your desk you decided to check the message.

And almost drop your phone.

“Good evening, my dear muse,” the message started, immediately making apparent who had sent it. There was only one person who called you his muse. Your secret admirer. Or, “The Patron”, as he called himself. But you had no idea how he’d gotten your number. Then again, he frequently entered and left your home without leaving any traces, and seemed to know... pretty much everything there was to know about you.

You took a deep breath before looking down at your phone again, “I apologise for contacting you in such a direct manner without prior notice, but I couldn’t help noticing that you’ve appeared as if something was bothering you today. Since I care for you and your well-being, I simply wanted to inquire about how you are feeling and whether everything is alright. Yet, I am aware that I might not necessarily be your first choice of person to discuss such matters with, and will not be offended if you prefer not to respond. Respectfully, The Patron.”

In spite of yourself and the strange headspace you’d been in all day, you found yourself smiling. His choice of words was unusual for sure, but it had something endearing. At first the anonymous notes and gifts had been unsettling to right-out terrifying, there was no way to just ignore the inherent sense of vulnerability that came with knowing someone had been in your home against your will. But aside from that, he had been nothing but a gentleman. Always respectful and kind, at least in his notes. And maybe you were being naïve, but you genuinely did not feel threatened by him.

He made you feel seen.

And not just in the literal sense, though the fact that he was most certainly watching you did probably help. If there was anyone you could talk to, why not the mysterious faceless stranger who already seemed to know more about you than anyone else? Plus, he’d asked. You wondered if texting his “muses” was something he did regularly or if you were special.

“Good evening yourself,” you began, the ability to form sentences disappearing right as you began typing. Was this appropriate? To be so casual? You certainly didn’t want to write like him, it would feel pretentious and for all you knew he might take it as you mocking him. Still, did he expect you to be more respectful? What exactly did his question entail? How much did he want to know? How long had he been watching you?

While you were trying to keep up with your thoughts, your phone buzzed. Another message.

“Apologies again, you appear agitated which wasn’t my intention. Please, feel free to just forget what I said.”

You deleted what little you had written and typed without thinking, “No no, it’s alright, really. I’m just overthinking.”

“My response, I mean,” you added, “Or, well, how to respond.”

You knew that you weren’t particularly eloquent at the best of times, but right now you felt like a bumbling fool, “I’m sorry, I’m just not good with words sometimes.”

“You have nothing to feel sorry about, my love, you are doing just fine.”

Oddly enough, his response actually managed to calm you. Alright. He didn’t think you were stupid. And apparently you cared about getting his approval. Which was something to think about... later. Maybe.

Staring down at the words on your phone, you realised that you’d probably gone through more actual emotions within the last ten minutes than the entire rest of the day, which made you snort.

“Well, that’s good to know. And to be honest, the same goes for you. Nothing to apologise for, you’re only being nice, checking in on me and all,” you typed, trying to just write what you were thinking, just like you normally did. These were text messages, not some extravagant letter or formal essay, “On that note, you’re right about something bothering me. Or having bothered me? Me being weird today.”

You were still attempting to decide what to write next when he replied, “Thank you for telling me this. Making you feel uncomfortable or stressed is the last thing I want. Am I correct to assume that you do not mind conversing with me in this fashion then?”

You snorted and felt another smile form on your face.

“Yeah, that’s right,” you wrote, and then took a moment to add, “Actually, and I know this will probably sound silly, but I think it’s kind of nice to... get to talk to you, I guess? As fun and intriguing as a mystery can be, having something more substantial and real is comforting too.”

Comforting?

There it was, that stinging feeling buried under all the nothingness that had occupied your head all day, the unwanted emotions you’d tried to banish into a corner where you didn’t have to face them.

Admitting that you appreciated the comfort your secret admirer’s attention brought had left a moment of vulnerability, just a split-second of acknowledging the fact that there was a desire to be comforted. The faint stinging had found a path through the fog and grown into a sharp pain in your chest, wiping the smile off your face and leaving you with the urge to cry.

The buzzing of your phone pulled you from the vortex of emotion that was threatening to drown you, your Patron saving you once again, “My love, are you alright? What is wrong?”

“I’m just. Lonely,” you typed and hit “Send” without another thought, “I haven’t felt anything all day because I didn’t want to deal with my negative emotions but-”

You let yourself fall back in your seat, trying to calm your breathing. He replied within seconds, seemingly fully focused on the conversation and, therefore, you. Yet, his words weren’t too reassuring, “Is there no one you can contact? Surely one of your friends would agree to talk or meet up with you.”

“Yeah, it’s just... they all got lives. Work. Uni. Hobbies. Everyone who lives close by is so busy I don’t want to bother them, the rest lives at the other side of the country or halfway across the world. I don’t even want to do anything, just, I don’t know, hang out. And I can’t really demand someone to take time out of their day to do nothing with me,” you wrote, fully aware that your friends would probably call you out on your bullshit but still unable to change your attitude.

“Well, now you have this number and my explicit permission to message me whenever you feel like it, although I can’t guarantee that I will always be able to respond right away. I promise that I will get back to you as soon as possible,” came his response and you wondered for a moment what kind of stuff he got up to when he wasn’t watching you. Beyond all the secrecy he most likely was just a normal man. But then again, you didn’t really care. To you, he was The Patron. Your secret admirer. Who reached out to you when he saw you having a bad day.

“So... do you have any plans for the night?” you sent, and immediately regretted it. Way to make things awkward and make yourself seem nosy. You didn’t want the conversation to die down, but you didn’t want to inconvenience him either, “I don’t want to keep you from doing stuff or something.”

You hoped that he didn’t have anything to do though. You didn’t want him to leave yet, to be left with only your thoughts to keep you company.

The screen lit up with his response, “As of now, I do not have any plans, nor did I intent to go anywhere. However, if you ask me to leave, I will.”

“Please don’t,” you wrote, once again faster than your brain could keep up with, sending the message without second thought, “I just... I don’t want to be alone.”

It was harder to admit than you’d expected, and the real issue wasn’t even letting him know – the difficult part was to really and fully admitting this vulnerability to yourself. Wanting, needing felt like a weakness. Being this affected by a simple emotion felt like something you should be ashamed of. The judgemental nature of society was ingrained in your very being, and self-acceptance was hard.

“In that case, I will stay,” he replied and you sighed in relief.

“Thank you,” you typed, “If I could I’d hug you. To be honest, you’re probably lucky that you got some distance from me, I’m so touch-starved I’d be sticking to like a limpet.”

Another painfully honest and awkward message that you hoped wouldn’t upset him or make him feel uncomfortable.

“Considering that, so far, I have been the one to watch and follow you, I do think it has become apparent that I feel somewhat... attached to you. Even if only on a mental level. Not because I don’t want to meet you, but because I cannot bear the thought of scaring you off by becoming too overbearing. Should you wish to see me in person though... that could be arranged. The choice is yours.”

He wanted to meet you. He cared about you and felt attached. He didn’t think your comments were weird or uncomfortable. He also was a stranger and technically stalker. Yet, he had never made you feel threatened. And you were feeling quite lonely.

“Okay, um, if you don’t mind me being kind of a mess right now... could you just maybe knock on the door or something? If you just appear somewhere I might have a heart attack,” you wrote before you could overthink your way out of it. If this was how you were gonna die, so be it. Death by loneliness. Dying for a hug.

“Of course, my dear. I would never want to risk that.”

You felt like, if he were the type to use emojis, this message would have some kind of smiling or laughing one behind it. It probably wouldn’t be long before he’d arrive so you rushed to at least brush your hair and wash your face, but that was all you managed. The knocking sounded firm and strong, but still measured. Taking one more calming breath, you reached for the door and opened it.

The person before you certainly was a sight to behold, and you couldn’t help but stare in amazement. The first thing you noticed was that he was tall enough to almost hit his head on the doorframe, which you then discovered was due to the quite unique boots he was wearing. Shiny, black leather reached past his knees, though you did not allow your gaze to linger too long, that matched his equally shiny gloves which went halfway up his upper arm. His white shirt was buttoned up all the way, and silky, waist-length black hair fell over a green coat.

“It’s really you,” you said, internally cringing at the profundity of the statement.

He chuckled in response, the sound alone making you want to squeal, and replied, “I would certainly hope so. I don’t know who else I would be.”

You realised that you couldn’t make out his face, it seemingly being covered by some kind of dark material, but you decided not to care, “Uh, well then, come in.”

The scent sandalwood lingered in the air as he walked past you, and every fibre of your being wanted to just throw yourself into his arms. As if it wasn’t enough for him to be kind and attentive, he also had to have a nice voice and smell good. Obviously.

Closing the door behind him took less time than you would have wanted it to because now you were faced with the decision of what to do. Sure, you’d “threatened” to hug him, but he probably did not actually want that to just happened. You’d at least have to ask. Which would be awkward. What were you even doing?

“My love, are you feeling okay? You seem tense. If you changed your mind-”, he began but you interrupted him before you could stop yourself, “No no, it’s okay I’m alright, just nervous because I guess I kind of didn’t expect this to even happen and I’m not good with people and I don’t know what to do because I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or regret having come here or get annoyed or end up feeling disappointed because I’m just. I’m just... me.”

You felt him look at you despite being unable to see his eyes and watched him slowly extend a hand towards you, like he was approaching a scared animal and trying not to scare it, “I think that it could help you to sit down for a moment, if that is alright with you?”

You just nodded, grabbing his hand like a lifeline, and let him lead you to the living room. Maybe it should have been disconcerting how well he knew the layout of your home, but at this moment you were relieved. Breathing was hard and your heart was racing while your mind refused to focus. The softness of the sofa cushions barely registered to your brain, and it was only when you felt the cool leather of his gloves clasping your hands that you were able to somewhat centre yourself.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what- I mean why, or-”, you started, voice shaky and rough, but the Patron – your Patron – stopped you, “There is nothing to apologise for, you just got a little overwhelmed, it happens. What matters is that you are back here now, alright? I’ve got you; you are safe.”

He handed you a glass filled with water and steadied your still shaking hand while you emptied the whole thing, but when he offered to refill it, you shook your head. Instead, you hesitantly reached for his hand and gently tugged, trying to get him to sit next to you. He watched you for a moment, seeming to be thinking, before lowering himself onto the sofa next to you. Without another thought you let yourself fall against him, clinging to his arm before he gently removed it to put it around you instead, allowing you to rest against his chest.

The fabric of his shirt was soft under your hand, and the heat of his body along with his steady heartbeat were slowly calming your nerves. His hair tickled your cheek but you didn’t mind, just closing your eyes and trying to focus on the different sensations. The weight of his arm holding you, the way his soft breath brushed over the hair on your head. The scent of sandalwood, more prominent on him than in the air, but also a hint of something citrusy, plus the smell and coffee and books. It was comforting on such a deep level, you wanted to just sink into the feeling, let his warmth envelope you, melt against him and don’t think anymore.

You felt yourself dozing off and sat up lightly and were about to apologise but the Patron was faster, “It’s alright, my sweet muse, you can sleep. You need rest.”

He was right, and you didn’t have the energy to argue, so you just returned to your previous position.

“Will you wake me so I can go to bed before you leave?” you managed to mumble, already half asleep.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you,” was his only response and you drifted off to the sound of his heartbeat, feeling a sense of safety and calm you hadn’t experienced in a long time.

The Patron is @solmints-messyocdiary's OC

taggedy tag-tag: @bluecoolr @ace-of-hearts-and-spades @visceravalentines @probably-a-plant-thing @rottent33th @the-pinstriped-hood @cyanide-latte @goldrose-star @myers-meadow @immortal-velociraptor @devil-doll13 @shonkgobonk @darklylucid

#cylas writes #me: oh yeah I'm just gonna finish this thing from yesterday #also me: writes another 1673 words #*inhumane screeching*#i am tired now so if the ending/last third or fourth sucks - that's why #almost 12 am is late for lil ol me #i am already the ripe age of 24 after all

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vinsmokewife · 7 months

Text

who is this person - chapter four

On a quest to find love on a dating website, Sanji falls head over heels for a woman with an interest in...alternative relationships that sends him down a rabbit hole of completing tasks for a seemingly sadistic mistress. But what happens when she turns out to be more than what she seems? or Zoro pretends to be a female on the internet to talk to Sanji and bad things happen.

Darkfic with themes of internalised homophobia, bad bdsm practices and lying about your identity to strangers on the internet. Please read with caution. This is NOT how BSDM should be practiced. Always practice Sane, Safe and Consensual practicesboarders on being considered dead dove do not eat material

read on ao3

authors note; I'm sorry again this took a while to update. I'm hoping that when kinktober is over, I can focus more on here. Good news is I have mostly planned out every chapter, so I just need to write it. But yeah, should see more updates in November when I'm not writing kinktober drabbles. Anyway, as you know it gets smutty from here on out and zoro and Sanji both suck so hold onto your hats <3

LOGGING ON: S POV

Sanji’s hands were shaking after he sent the video.

Never in his life had he ever sent something so...erotic in his life. He had never even sent a picture of his dick to anyone before; let alone a whole video where he’s jerking off. It was...wow. It was something else entirely. Sanji was currently sitting on his bed watching the app that they were chatting on. He knew that she had seen it as the app showed that with a little check mark. He knew she was watching and now he had to await her reaction.

He felt...strange after that but it wasn’t a bad kind of strange. He just felt...odd. It wasn’t something he had experienced before, and he was thinking about it too much. He was thinking too much into this. He had to relax and just be patient.

So currently, he was sitting in bed with longue pants back on and then a cigarette in one hand while his phone was in the other. He was scrolling through social media while eagerly waiting for the sound of the app to go off and... there it went.

Z: What a good boy you are.

Z: Thank you for following your first command.

Z: I am so lucky to have such a good boy.

And now his head was going a little fuzzy after being called a good boy. He couldn’t stop the flush that was on his cheeks. She...her calling him a good boy had a bigger effect on him than he thought. All the weird feelings that he had suddenly seemed to decreased. He didn’t feel as weird about it anymore if she enjoyed it.

S: Hah. Thank you <3

S: I’ve never done something like that. I am glad you enjoyed.

He shot back quickly. His emotions still felt all over the place. Not in a bad way now but he felt very.... giddy. Like kicking your feet and twirling your hair kind of giddy. God, it had been a while since he had felt that way about anyone. Not even Nami and Robin, who he adored with all of his heart made him feel this way.

Z: Oh, you are a natural!

Z: I’m going to let you take the rest of the night off. But I will be back with you tomorrow to talk about rules and a second command. We can also discuss things that might be fun to try.

Z: For now, I’m sending you to bed. I need to assure you get a good night's sleep.

How thoughtful! Oh, wasn’t she just absolutely perfect. Adventurous, dominating and was concerned about his health. Oh, Sanji felt like he was on cloud 9 with this girl. Well and truly in the honeymoon stage but he played it cool with her and shot an answer back.

S: Of course.

S: I hope you sleep well.

S: Wait, what do you want me to call you?

S: In these types of relationships, don’t they have names?

Z: Oh yes.

Z: I like being called master.

Z: I know it’s not very feminine, but I prefer it to mistress.

She was right. It wasn’t very feminine which Sanji noticed but he didn’t pay any mind to it. After all, that would suit him fine. She was in charge after all.

S: Master is fine.

S: I... don’t know what you want to call me. I don’t really have a preference.

Z: Hmmm.

Z: Let me sleep on it.

Z: Now you! Go to bed. Or else I’ll punish you.

Sanji couldn’t help but laugh out at that. Oh, how he laughed. In fact, his face was hurting from smiling. Oh, how could one person be so perfect and make him so happy already. He barely knew her and yet he was having so much fun with her. He was looking forward to seeing what kind of things she could come up with for him tomorrow.

All he knew now was that his dating life was not going to be boring. Not when he had her around.

S: Okay sorry!

S: Goodnight, master <3

Sanji is now offline.

Sanji felt his head reach the pillow of his head as he looked up to the celling. Sanji had never had a relationship with the intensity that this one had. He didn’t know how he could match to how knowledgeable she seemed to be. He didn’t know how things would go. But he felt...happy. He hadn’t stopped smiling since she had called him a good boy and that was saying something.

He retired his phone for the night, placing it to the side and finally shutting off. Tomorrow was a free day for him so he would have plenty of time to think about things tomorrow. As his eyes shut, he thought about the woman behind the mask and the possibility of what their relationship was going to turn out to be like.

LOGGING IN: Z’S POV

S: Goodnight, master <3

In all of his life, Zoro had never felt so fucked up in his life. How could this have happened and how could he keep digging his heels in like this? He could have stopped the conversation at any point, but he seemed incapable of doing so at this point. He left the bathroom of the club and walked out into the open. He looked around and noticed how dead everything still seemed. He looked around to see if he could still see Robin...but she was nowhere to be seen. Good, he was kind of hoping that he wouldn’t come across her again. After what had just happened... that would be kind of embarrassing. The last thing he needs is to come across someone he knows. He would just constantly feel like they knew something and that would not be any good at all.

He supposed that this was it then. He suddenly wasn’t in the mood to drink anymore so he made a quick turn to the exit and into the cool air of the night. The bar was in a hidden location in the middle of down so the outdoor stepped into an alleyway. More often than not, there were people getting a little bit too freaky in the alleyway. Right now, was absolutely no exception but Zoro was not interested in that at all. No, he was interested in his feet taking him home so he can wallow in this confusion some more in a space where he doesn’t feel like people will see.

His apartment wasn’t too far from here. Only a five minute walk. Once getting there, he took the lift to the top of the stairs and there he was back home.

His place was modest. Gym equipment seemed to litter the floor a little but on the whole, it was tidy. He walked across the space to get to his bedroom. There was a lack of any sort of decoration or personalisation...well, other than the rack of swords in the room. Zoro was a master swordsman on the side as well as being a personal trainer.

But that didn’t matter right now. Zoro went to his bed and went to lay down. As much as he wanted to think about anything else, his mind kept wandering back onto that video. Just how...pretty Sanji looked. Face all flushed, a more nervous expression on his face and a whining in his voice. Sounds that Zoro would only ever hear on the phone. A face he would only ever see on the phone. That vulnerability he didn’t know he craved from him that he would never see in real life.

And... he’s hard thinking about it again.

Well...it wouldn’t hurt watching it one last time, right? Then, it was off to bed.

If there was one thing that consisted in his day, it was that at some point of the day, he always ended up with Luffy. Always. The good thing about Luffy was that he didn’t ask questions about anything. Honestly, he didn’t know if he could even see Nami again. Nami would most likely not let the thing go until she’s sure Zoro is over it...and he doesn’t think he’ll be over this mess for a while.

Luffy has never once asked questions about anything in the time he’s known Luffy. Which is a comfort at least. It’s not that Luffy doesn’t like the conflict or anything. No, that’s not the case. Luffy trusts his friends a lot of the time...which is what makes this...tragic.

“Zoro...come on, tonight I think Sanji is working,” They were currently talking and walking down the street. Luffy feeling eager to get some lunch from somewhere good. Zoro is just happy to tag along.

“And you want to ransack the place of free food again,” Zoro played indifference off to Luffy as if he didn’t really care about what they did. Before the whole phone thing, Zoro hadn’t cared...not really anyway. He used to feel very indifferent towards Sanji anyway. Never really caring about what Sanji has to say for himself but recently he’s beginning to see him in a different light and... yeah, this was becoming a problem, “I don’t really care what you do. I wouldn’t go there by choice. I don’t like him anyway,”

“I never understood why you and Sanji don’t get along...Sanji’s great,” Luffy pouted, thinking about the food that he was going to receive later...and tonight...

“You just like him because he’s a chef,” Zoro said in response.

“What? No, Sanji’s cool! Don’t you think Sanji’s cool?”

“No,” Zoro responded rather bluntly, “I don’t think Sanji is cool at all,”

Luffy pouted and looked as if he had wanted to say something. Looked up and seen that they were at the café they wanted to be at and suddenly, Luffy forgot what he was saying as he directed Zoro inside. It was a sort of cosy like atmosphere inside and it was quiet, but not for long while Luffy and Zoro was there.

Just as Luffy was about to offer to pay for something, Zoro interrupted, “Let me...I’ll pay for it,”

“Thanks, big guy,” And maybe Luffy will forget about their conversation.

S: Morning Master. How is your morning? <3

A quiet lunch with his best friend was now ruined by Zoro’s inability to not dig his heels in about a situation. Now, Sanji seems to be awake, and it would just be rude of him not to respond. Not after last night anyway...Zoro can’t stop thinking about that one video. He wanted more. He wanted to see Sanji in different angles, different positions and hear those pretty moans coming from his mouth again. It was the awful truth, but Zoro could not get enough of this right now and wanted more content of Sanji to himself.

He wondered if he could up the ante.

“Luffy...” Zoro said getting Luffy’s attention from playing a game on his phone, “I’m going to the bathroom. I won’t be long,”

“Okay. Don’t expect the cake I bought for you to still be here though,”

“I had said I didn’t want it... you were just using me as an excuse to buy yourself an extra bit of cake,” Zoro waved him off before getting up and disappearing to the nearest bathroom where he locked himself inside of a cubical.

Z: Morning <3

Z: I hope you are ready for your next task? I’m excited to see if you manage.

Z: I know you will. Since you are such a good boy for me <3

Good boy. Now why did that work so well? Sanji really was behaving as he expected him to. Following orders as a good boy would. Zoro had yet to engage in the types of BDSM relationships that he saw at the clubs. The dominant and slave kind of relationships that he saw. Those kinds of relationships made him crave something more…something more. Something more typical than your normal relationship.

He liked to imagine what Sanji and himself would look like to outsiders. Zoro was a lot taller, a lot bulkier and a lot rougher around the edges. Zoro was not a clean cut person while when he saw Sanji, Sanji always looked his best. The clean cut suits, the perfect hair and trimmed facial hair. He didn’t know if it was purposeful but there was a certain perfectionism to the way Sanji looked at all times. It contrasted his own.

It was honestly recently he wanted to break that.

Thoughts aside, he felt the buzzing before he saw the message popped up.

S: I’m free all day.

S: So don’t worry about bothering me from anything.

S: What do you have in mind?

With a bated breath, in and out, Zoro typed out his next reply. It was weird how these conversations got him so…invigorated. The mere act of these conversations was confusingly exciting and so inappropriate.

Z: So, how far have you gone, sexually?

S: Well.

S: I’ve had sex if that’s what you’re asking.

S: Not like…all the time or anything…

S: And definitely not the things you’ve probably done!

Z: Hmmm

Z: … This might be a weird question but…

Z: Have you ever let a woman finger you?

And it begins

LOGGING IN: S POV

And that was not the question he was expecting to see.

Sanji wasn’t stupid when it came to stuff. He knew what she was talking about. He knew that this was something that couples experimented with, and it wasn’t…something he was opposed to. Men were supposed to have spots inside of them that made them feel good. It wasn’t…you know… to get yourself fingered by a woman.

So, he didn’t really know why it took him such a long time for him to reply to the message. He watched the screen trying to think of what he wanted to say in return because obviously the answer was no. Was…this what she wanted him to do next? It seemed like the natural conclusion for him to come to anyway. He’d already done a video of himself jerking off; he might as well go the extra mile and do that next.

S: No, I haven’t.

S: I’ve…been interested in it though.

Z: Good.

Z: Do you have lube?

S: I don’t.

Z: Well then. I want you to go and get some lube. Then I want a video like before… but this time I want you to finger yourself until you cum.

Z: Do you think you can do that?

S: Yes master.

Z: Good boy.

Z: I’ll give you have an hour from now to get lube.

Z: But then afterwards, you’ll have an hour.

Z: Go on.

Zoey is now offline.

And so, Sanji got up to go get his shoes on. He knew that most convenience stores had lube. Usually, you could find it right next to the condoms. There was one maybe ten minutes away. He was quick to put his shoes on and then race downstairs to leave through the door. As he thought, it was only ten minutes away and he went right in and knew exactly what he was looking for so headed to that section right away.

And of course. He had to choose from flavours, smells and textures too. Just when he was trying to make up his mind about what he wanted, he heard a voice.

“Sanji?”

Turning his head to the side, he wouldn’t have mistaken that blue hair anywhere else. It was Vivi. Another one of his friends, although not as close as Nami or Robin was to him, but Vivi was still a pretty good friend. She was Nami’s girlfriend now which was a fact he was still getting adjusted to. A shame because he has a crush on her for the longest time but… regardless, he was happy for Nami and Vivi.

Not so happy right now because Vivi has now caught him with a strawberry scented lube in his hand. It’s caught her eye and Sanji could only laugh at the awkwardness.

“I…uh, have a date?” Sanji seemed unsure as he tried to hold it in a more discreet sort of way. Vivi gestured to the snacks and alcohol in her arms.

“So do it!” She laughed, trying to brush away the awkwardness too. She then seemed to remember something by the looks on her face, “Nami did say you were trying to get a girlfriend. Is this like something similar?”

“Aha, yes. I’m trying…think it might be getting serious though,” Why was he so nervous? He lowkey didn’t want Nami getting involved. He knew that she had…disapproved of Zoey for some reason. He had no idea why. She’d never even seen the messages. Was it about the ghosting? He honestly had no idea, but Nami seemed pretty dead set against their relationship.

“Oh! That sounds fun. I’m glad…” Vivi seemed genuine with her words. She then gestured to her snacks and food, “I’ll let you get back to your big date then. Have fun!”

Oh, I will.

“Thanks. Tell Nami I said hi!” He said before turning away to go to check out. It was maybe the most awkward check out experience in his life when he only buying one item…which was lube by the way. It was just incredibly awkward but as soon as it was over, he was marching back to his place with 5 minutes to spare. It was time for him to get set up.

It was a similar set up as it had been before. He tried to balance his phone on quilts and pillows as he had no real stand to put this on. That was the most awkward part about this whole thing; having to figure out how to lay things out so that she could see everything. He wasn’t much of a cinematographer in that regard but as long as she could see everything...

Which was a little harder when it was a video of you fingering yourself. Masturbating was easy. It was easier to get everything in the frame, but he had to try and figure things out a bit better for this one. God, it was becoming more of an exercise of trying to look good in the camera. He didn’t want to be one of those guys who just send a dick pic and that was all there was to it. But he would have to make do with sitting with his legs spread open.

Last night, it had taken him the full hour mainly because he felt incredibly anxious about the whole thing. He felt a little strange sending a video like that. He felt vulnerable but now he felt a new found confidence although he wished he could just masturbate as he normally would as he’d never fingered himself before.

Either way, he pressed record and went to begin. He looked at the camera and tried to muster up some sort of sexy bravado while he was trying to cover his fingers in lube. He tried to get himself in a position where she could see what he was doing and then his face. Which he could imagine didn’t look as great as he was trying to concentrate on this here right now.

Sanji wasn’t wearing any pants. When he was setting up, he removed his bottom half and unbuttoned his shirt but left it on. He leaned himself back so she could get a good look at everything. Despite him being nervous about this, his cock was hard. He stroked it a few times to get himself going before he dipped his fingers further down. Sanji’s fingers were thin, but they were rather long. He had quite long fingers. He didn’t know what he would have preferred... probably not his own hand. He had thought about a woman fingering him before and he would have preferred the feel to a ladies delicate fingers rather than his own but beggars cannot be choosers in this moment. So, he dipped his finger down, so it was brushing against his hole. That felt strange...having the cold pad of his finger pressing against his tight puckered hole. He stroked his finger across to get him used to the sensation before he decided to bite the bullet and just...

“Ah-!”

It wasn’t painful...not overly painful anyway. What got him was how uncomfortable it was at first. Even though his fingers weren’t that long, the one finger felt like he was really stretching his hole. He let his finger slip in slowly as he hissed from the uncomfortable nature of it. He began to wonder if those truly was supposed to be nice or if it was just one of those things that only looked good in porn.

He let his finger sit there for a moment. It was an uncomfortable moment, and he was struggling to relax. He felt it was hard having his finger there like a partially welcomed guest. Sanji knew he just had to wait. He could feel that his face was bright red. It wasn’t just the uncomfortable feeling of having a finger in his ass; it was the feeling of being so vulnerable to Zoey. She was going to see every part of him. Sanji must have been wearing the rose tinted glasses not to see how strange this whole thing was...how he didn’t understand why Nami was so concerned... he just didn't’ seem to get it.

Either way, Sanji started to feel not so bad. He relaxed a little more and he dared to start moving his finger. It... began to feel good. He didn’t think it would, but it was hard to deny the little breathless moans that began to leave him. Especially when he touched that spot. He was well aware that men had a spot inside of them that brought tons of pleasure and Sanji’s pad found that spot and it was obvious because his head leaned a back and...

“Ah! ~ Fuck...”

He decided it was perhaps time to add another finger. With his free hand, he got some lube and poured it where his fingers were and slipped a second finger inside. It felt much more pleasurable than putting one finger in and this caused Sanji to start thrusting his fingers in and out pressing against that sensitive spot. The vulnerability started to fade away and Sanji became more confident, and more moans left his mouth. It felt so good...better than anything he’d ever experienced in his life. It felt too good. He was getting into it now and with a flushed face, his fingers moved faster and faster inside of him each time hitting that spot inside of him that was driving him insane.

Once he felt okay with his balance, he managed to use his free hand to wrap his fingers around his cock and furiously fist his cock in time with his thrusting. His head felt fuzzy. He didn’t know how to describe it but he was completely taken over by his pleasure. His tongue was peeping out and his expression looked absolutely needy for what was happening right now. He couldn’t help it, not when he was so close to cumming and it felt like it was going to be one hell of an orgasm.

“Fuck...Fuck,” His fingers were almost frantic at this point. He was thrusting in and out of himself at such a desperate pace wanting to make himself cum. He was desperate for it. He wanted nothing else more that to...

“Fuck!”

And what an orgasm it was. Almost blinding as his hips nearly came off the bed rutting against his hand as he clenched tight against his hand. His cum shot across his chest in what felt like one of the most powerful orgasms he had for a while... and all that from fingering himself. He pulled his fingers out and fell back on his elbows and continued to stroke his cock until he was completely milked of cum. It was only a few seconds later he suddenly remembered what he was doing... he was making a video.

His head whipped back to see himself in the camera. His face was all red and his chest was rising and falling quickly...he was a mess. He stared for a second before reaching for his phone to stop recording. He trimmed the start and the end where he was messing around with the camera and then skimmed it. It was weird seeing himself act like this and he couldn’t watch it for too long without feeling embarrassed so he just...sent it. Now, he had to wait to see what she thinks.

Or not...because he gets the fear of his life put into him when he gets a text but it’s not from Zoey...it’s Nami.

N: Hey Sanji!

N: Vivi said she saw you today.

N: I heard you had a date. That’s exciting! Is it someone new?”

Sanji felt bad about lying to Nami but for some reason, Nami seemed so against this relationship for reasons he didn’t understand so he shot back.

S: Yes. It’s a new relationship.

S: Met her on that dating website. It’s just a small date. Nothing big 😊

N: It didn’t sound like it was just a small date...if Vivi is correct about that she said ahah!

Great. Vivi mentioned the lube. Wonderful.

S: Ahaha!

S: You got me XD

S: Anyway, I better get back to my date.

N: I hope you are having a fun date too.

S: You too, Nami.

To which Sanji then laid on his bed. A sinking feeling all because he lied to Nami. He felt awful but

#one piece zosan #zoro x sanji #zosan fanfic #roronoa zoro #vinsmoke sanji #zosan #kinktober 2023

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asteria7fics · 1 month

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I've got a few questions for ya! Where did you learn to write like you do? I read through your newest fic and I'm blown away from how could you write!

And the other question I have, do you ever get worried? I hurt my brain and went down the SP confession rabbit hole, and now I'm worried about my writing now. I'm afraid of falling into tropes and writing these characters to be one dimensioned. How do you get past that?

First of all, thank you!! I never really know how to react when people compliment my writing as a whole, because truthfully I’m still very insecure about the way I write! It really does help to hear that people enjoy my writing style! (,,> ᴗ <,,)

I have a couple of answers to your first question. Learning to write has been a weird process for me if I’m being honest. I’ve always been told that reading is the best way to learn, and while I think reading lots of different things is a huge factor in being able to write confidently, there’s really no substitute for actually doing the thing.

I’ve always loved storytelling, but only really began writing stories down in middle school. Then I started finding RP partners online, and spent several years writing all kinds of stories and absorbing tons of skills from those people.

I’ve also spent an embarrassing amount of time listening to people talk about writing. Story structure, character development, all that jazz. There are several really great YouTube channels that discuss different writing techniques that I’ve taken bits and pieces from throughout the years.

Writing style is a very personal thing though, and while I’ve learned a lot from the way other people write, I’ve also spent a lot of time experimenting with my own voice. I’ve drafted tons of unfinished projects just to see what perspectives I enjoy writing from the most, or what sort of narrative voice I prefer to have. As you may glean from both TSOB and EWILY, I tend to take on a sort of sarcastic tone as a narrator, and for the most part I do that because that’s just kind of how I talk! I’m a smart ass by nature I’m afraid, though I think it also works well in the context of the sillier stories I tend to tell with my SP inspired works.

To answer your second question, yes! I’m always worried that my interpretations of certain characters won’t be enjoyed by the greater fandom, especially as someone who tends to not really vibe with a lot of really popular head canons. My solution to that? I pretend not to care!

Seriously though, I have spent a truly, horribly embarrassing amount of time studying these characters. Between watching the show, playing the games, listening to the episode commentaries, watching character analysis videos on YouTube (I’m a Johnny2Cellos girly myself), and reading some really, really good fan fiction I have put in the time to feel at least a little bit confident in my characterization of the main four boys, and sometimes Butters.

The fun thing about SP is that even Those Bastards play pretty fast and loose with their characterization, though.

Characters like Cartman who tend to have very consistent traits are usually the easiest for me to write. When I ask myself the question “how would Cartman respond to this?” the answer is usually whatever the worst possible response I can think of would be. Then I dial it back a little bit because I’m not trying to get cancelled.

But characters like Stan or Kyle are a lot more fluid. Sometimes they care very deeply about things, sometimes they don’t give a single shit. Sometimes they support one another through everything, sometimes they’re very quick to part ways. Characters like this can be really challenging, especially when you have them alongside characters who are often so cartoonishly villainous like Cartman.

My best advice for writing any characters, but especially for these particular characters, is to lean into their positive traits and flaws equally.

Cartman is actually a great example of this. He’s bigoted, crass and quite frankly kind of terrifying if you think about the things he’s done for more than thirty seconds. But he’s also extremely creative, pretty smart when he wants to be and, in many instances, is shown to actually care about his friends. Balancing all of these traits can be challenging, but it can also result in a more fleshed out, well rounded character.

Another character I see a lot of discourse about is Butters. To avoid making him too ‘uwu sweet baby’, as I often see it said, I balance a few things with him. Yes, Butters is generally very kind and sensitive to others’ feelings, but he’s also extremely gullible and can be a real asshole when he’s around the wrong people for long enough.

Of course, you don’t need to take my advice as gospel. I’m someone who has tried to keep the characters pretty close to canon (less so in EWILY than I did in TSOB, truthfully), but I’ve seen many incredibly written, extremely interesting SP fics that throw much of canon in the trash. Do what feels right for you and helps you to express the kinds of stories you want to tell!

At the end of the day, if you write for you and you enjoy the content you’re creating, then it shouldn’t matter what anyone else thinks of the interpretations you make. I especially don’t take anything on confession blogs personally, because if one of my head canons really offends someone they can talk to me about it. (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

Thank you so much for this ask! I had a lot of fun thinking about my own journey with writing these fics, and I hope some of my advice will be helpful for you! Much love, anon! ♡⸜(˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)⸝♡

#ask Asteria #Asteria lore drop #my early writing was all very bad #it takes time and practice to get good at anything #and writing is VERY HARD please remember that #be kind to yourself #take your time and write what brings you joy #lovely anons make my day <3

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seirclys · 2 years

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Estimation of og!Penelope's Regressions

Spoiler territory btw, if you haven't seen it from the title.

Part 2 here

This is why you shouldn't leave me alone with my thoughts.

This crack rabbit hole has been refined a bit more than the initial word vomit on the VADD Discord, so congrats! It's readable for you guys :)

It started off as a random thought, and oh god og!Penelope's life is basically a horror novel at this point—

This is based on my theory that every game round played in South Korea was an actual loop that Penelope went through. After all, you have to have regressed a particularly horrifying number of times for your soul to shatter into irreparable pieces.

We're starting off by approximating the number of people who played "Daughter of the Duke - Love Project". In total, the SK gamer population is approximately 35 million, with 73.4% to 75% of the players being female. A bit of early multiplication shows that the number of female SK gamers is approximately 26.25 million.

I wasn't able to find a percentage for the number of South Koreans that play popular otome games, but I'm going to hazard a guess. In South Korea, 31.7% of the population are single households.

That means at least that percentage of people play romance genre games. I'm gonna be generous and move it up to 60%, just because you're in a relationship doesn't mean you can't play video games. Also, we have to keep in mind the teenagers who play these types of games.

Now, for more speculative calculations.

The clock in chapter 1, when Siyeon starts hard mode, is shown to be at 1:10 AM. The clock shown at the end, when Siyeon falls asleep, also the fact that she said "dawn was approaching", means that she stopped at approximately 6:34 AM. The time elapsed in total was 5.4 hours, also 324 minutes. 324 divided by Siyeon's number of attempts, 76, has an average of 4.263 minutes per attempt.

Seeing as Siyeon beat normal mode on all five routes on her first day, especially considering she's not much of a gamer type, we can surmise that people started playing Hard Mode on the first few days after release.

I will be basing "Daughter of the Duke - Love Project" on Mystic Messenger, one of the most popular otome games. Looking at the game on Google Trends and narrowing it down to South Korea, the game's popularity peaked two months after its release.

Using this comparison, we can speculate that "Daughter of the Duke - Love Project" has come out for approximately 2 months at the time of the first few chapters, especially since Siyeon's friend said that "It's the game that's all the rage now", and that it had been in all the ads.

Digging a little bit, some people online say that they play visual novels(which "Daughter of the Duke - Love Project" can be classified into) for 2-5 hours per day. I'm going to give an average estimate of 3.5 hours.

In summary. Multiply the number of female SK gamers by the estimated percentage of otome game players. Then, multiply them by 3.5 hours, which is 210 minutes. That's the daily average. Multiply that by two months, give or take, for the amount of estimated time for "Daughter of the Duke - Love Project" to reach peak popularity.

Take that number, and divide it by the average number of minutes played for each loop. In the end, add 76 for Siyeon's attempts. Round that up to a whole number. 4779304.

If we were to calculate, og!Penelope would've gone through 4.779304 million loops. Round that up to 4.8 million.

My two original, random-generated numbers(500 - 50 million) were 4.2 million and 5.6 million. I would say that it(the calculated number) is a pretty conservative number in between the generated ones.

#lysia's posts #lysia's narratives #villains are destined to die #vadd #death is the only ending for a villainess #death is the only ending for the villainess #ditoeftv #penelope eckhart #original penelope eckhart #og penelope eckhart #og! penelope eckhart #og penelope

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xplrvibes · 4 months

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Wait people think it was staged? Don’t do this to me bc I will 100% fall down the rabbit hole as well 😂

What about when they see the new car and apparently there’s no scratches or dints anymore? Sam gets in the passenger and says “this definitely isn’t colbys car.”

oh god now my brain is spinning, bc colbys has also referred to this ‘new’ car as the same one he’s had for years. he never clarifies that it’s a seperate car… but i guess that could just get annoying so it’s easier to be like yeah i’ve had this red corolla since graduation…

- aussie anon

Oh yea, we went down a whole rabbit hole ourselves a few years ago, lol. We came out with the conclusion that in our opinion, Elton actually did move Colby's car and maybe even took it to get the dents popped out, and removed the "Colby" sticker, but bought an exact replica Corolla in Texas to smash instead cause it was a lot easier and cheaper to do than shipping a 2007 Toyota to Texas and getting Colby's parents (of all people) on board with signing the reg and insurance over to him so he could do all this.

We don't think Colby was in on it at first, but figured it out by the time they got down there and just went along with it for the video.

I'll have to go look through all the old asks and stuff on my blog to see if I can find all the posts about it, cause it was quite the event figuring that one out lmao.

#asks #aussie anon

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vasyas-tie-clip · 1 year

Text

Arestovych's government work before the full-scale invasion: a writeup

See my previous writeup on Arestovych's military resume here. I was originally hoping to cover the entirety of Arestovych's time in government in one post, but there's really so many layers, and so much more info you can find from him and others about this era, that 2/24 makes for a natural stopping point.

Disclaimer that I don't know Russian and I only know the tiniest bit of Ukrainian, so I'm getting almost all my info through MTL. I probably got overzealous with censoring user names this time, but since I already went to the effort I'll keep it that way. I'm going to try to cover this period in more detail than I did the military period, which also probably means running into more of my limitations regarding knowledge of Ukrainian politics and governance. As usual, corrections and additions welcome!

A note to start

Recently, this interview with Arestovych came out, containing one particular passage that I promptly added to the writeup on his military career:

One of my military specialties is an information counteraction officer. There is even an educational task there: to bring public opinion to certain indicators on a certain issue in a particular region. This is a task for novice lieutenants. A separate town is taken, and you must, on a separate issue, bring it to certain indicators in one or two months.

With the caveat that I can't access most of his video material, since his speaking style doesn't work well with auto-subs, this is the most direct confirmation I recall from him of what seemed likely the case: he was trained in his intel officer days in not just analyzing information, but putting it out, public-influencing work that sounds an awful lot like what he's doing now. This fits in with the 2015 interview where he mentioned he was a type of military specialist that couldn't normally be called to the front involuntarily, and Budanov's striking decision to interview with him in the wake of Wagnergate back when he was ostensibly just a glorified milblogger.

I think that gets at a larger point when it comes to trying to figure out Arestovych--I hadn't initially wanted to dig into his pre-OP military career, because I knew I'd be falling into a deep rabbit hole, but you're going to get a very different impression of him if all you know about those years is the accusations by his haters that he's just a talking head making up his military cred for the sake of his ego. (Really, with maybe one early exception, I'm not sure he's publicly gone into any of his personal heroic deeds unless someone else made it public or raised a fuss first. The "33 combat outings" meme was from a conversation he thought was off-camera, people were spreading nasty rumors about the minefield incident, and it's actually one of his former enemies who first revealed his role in the defense of Kyiv.) He might not resemble most people's idea of a soldier (then again intel spooks have a whole different set of stereotypes), but his military background is an important part of him. Even as he's ostensibly just a hot Youtuber and (ex-)official in civilian government these days, he's in fact still using a lot of the skills he got from the GUR, he has a lot of military ties, and I really do think that a sizeable part of his self-conception (and self-romanticization) is that he's an officer sworn to Ukraine, with a duty to the state as a whole, above any personal comfort or political faction. You can argue over his interpretation of that duty, but not that he's put his life on the line for it. It's relevant context to this part of his life even as he, uh, proceeds to thoroughly torch his reputation in military/volunteer circles for god and country I guess.

Backstory

The start of this writeup overlaps chronologically with the end of the previous one--Arestovych was serving in the army through Zelenskyy's presidential campaign, election, and first months in office in 2019. While some people now claim he used to be a full-on Poroshenkobot, that's something of an overstatement. He said a lot of rude things about Zelenskyy and his supporters, and pushed various narratives against him during the election, but he still generally gave credit where credit was due; meanwhile, he had considerable criticism for Poroshenko, freely admitted Poroshenko was corrupt, and considered Poroshenko's own policy failures to blame for Zelenskyy's rise. But he considered Poroshenko the only viable candidate in terms of national security, and lost friends over the names he called anyone who'd vote for anyone else (including Yuriy Romanenko, the journalist he's currently doing his Alpha and Omega roundtables with, whom he only made up with years later). In his words, a surgeon has a cemetery behind his back, until he learns, and a commander-in-chief has ten. He fully expected a Russian escalation within the next president's term, they didn't have the time to train up a new president, and corruption wasn't going to matter if they got overrun.

That year and a half between early 2019 and mid 2020 swings between measured analysis, snarking at Zelenskyy's early blunders, cautious optimism, and profanity-laden personal attacks on Zelenskyy and everyone who voted for him. He maintained from the start that Zelenskyy had personal virtues and the potential to learn, but he was clueless and squeamish, and his original team was a mix of similarly clueless idealists and cynical players in the pockets of oligarchs who'd rapidly turn on each other once in power. He consistently pushed back against narratives that Zelenskyy personally was a Russian agent, in a somewhat "don't attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence" way, but considered him beholden to Kolomoisky, and suspected pro-Russian and "anti-Maidan" elements in the team.

You can definitely look for ulterior motives in Arestovych's takes (certainly, people joked he'd been paid off by the other side in the comments every time he wrote something kind of nice about Zelenskyy or vice versa), but at the same time...this is basically the reaction you'd expect for someone who's interested in deeds over politicians, but also genuinely believes the leader society chose might get people killed and just has to live with it. Regardless, after commenters went "instead of bashing Zelenskyy for what he did wrong, how about you do something about it," he openly announced early on, in July 2019, that he'd work for the Ze team if they had the willingness to take on a vocal critic. And apparently, for some time that summer, he actually got in touch with them and tried to offer them advice. The arrangement was likely informal, I don't think he ever met Zelenskyy himself at this point (based on things he later said), and it's unclear whom among the team he met--at that point, Bohdan was still head of the OP, Yermak was only a presidential aide, his old GUR friend Mashovets wasn't yet in, and the OP would suffer heavy turnover between then and his actual appointment as advisor over a year later. But by October 2019, he'd apparently given up on cooperation after seeing all his advice go ignored. By June 2020, he'd been banned by Zelenskyy's Facebook page, probably because he kept tagging Zelenskyy in his snarky posts (he later said that the OP read everything he wrote about them, and seemed quite impressed that they had the fortitude to invite him anyway.)

August 2020 appears to have been a turning point for him. He sounded genuinely happy at Budanov getting appointed to head the GUR in the aftermath of Wagnergate; while it's unclear how much of his initial attempts to clean up the scandal was to help him and how much he would've done regardless out of principle, that experience, combined with other dramas around the same time, seemed to leave him increasingly disgusted by the willingness of some "patriots" to spread dubious narratives beneficial to the Russians just out of hatred for the Zelenskyy government. While he continued to criticize the government for perceived missteps, he acknowledged that it was making actual strides in national defense issues, while the opposition was growing increasingly toxic and delusional. But it seems like few people expected that Zelenskyy's team would offer him actual positions, or that he'd accept.

Trilateral Contact Group (TCG)

There seems to be a lot of confusion around Arestovych's precise government titles in general. Articles often refer to him as spokesperson of the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG, but in fact, in the words of the official document, on October 28, 2020, he was appointed advisor of information policy by Leonid Kravchuk, first president and head of the Ukrainian delegation. While his role resembled that of a spokesperson from the outside, this seems another one of those advisor positions that's more influential than the title suggests.

The background info as I understand it: The Trilateral Contact Group was the main venue of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine (mediated by the OSCE) over the Minsk-2 agreements, which had established a ceasefire and laid out a series of steps toward peace. Signed effectively at gunpoint by Poroshenko, while Ukrainian troops were in danger of encirclement, Minsk-2 was unfavorable, hastily written, and had ambiguities that needed further negotiation; an interpretation acceptable to Russia would require concessions unacceptable to most Ukrainians, but perceived unwillingness to work with the agreements would discredit Ukraine on the world stage, and meanwhile other subgroups within the TCG could accomplish smaller-scale results like prisoner exchanges and opening checkpoints.

So the meetings and negotiations went on, even as progress was stymied and the TCG was suspected domestically of being a platform for selling out Ukrainian interests. Earlier in the year, Yermak's attempt to push negotiations forward had sparked a scandal (that may have resulted in Podolyak joining the OP, incidentally--Podolyak wrote a snarky op-ed about how Yermak's respectable motives couldn't salvage his clumsy handling of the situation, the public now considers him a "dark demon" who tried to betray the state to Russia, that's what happens when you don't have any good media speakers but your opponents do...and three weeks later Podolyak was made an Advisor to the Head of the OP.) September 2020 ended with another scandal, as Vitold Fokin (who'd been Prime Minister under Kravchuk and was now the first deputy head of the Ukrainian TCG delegation) capped off a string of concerningly Russia-friendly statements at odds with the official Ukrainian position by saying that he didn't see a war between Russia and Ukraine in the Donbas. Even before Fokin's firing, Reznikov (who was deputy head of the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG, before getting appointed Minister of Defense in November 2021) had announced the need for a spokesperson to express a unified position to mass media (which might account for some of the confusion around Arestovych's precise title.)

Around that time, from the sound of Arestovych's account, he'd warmed up enough to the current government, and experienced enough secondhand embarrassment at the Fokin scandal, to offer himself up to prevent a repeat. He was invited to observe at several TCG meetings, alongside other candidates, where he provided enough worthy advice to eventually receive a formal position.

The appointment sparked outrage on the internet. There were those who thought the position was too good for Arestovych, the self-declared lying propagandist who'd said spectacularly rude things about the current government and its supporters. And then there were the ones who'd thought that Arestovych was too good for the position, who now saw him as a treacherous sellout for joining a suspect organization within a suspect government that he'd previously criticized harshly.

Responding to the first group, Kravchuk stated that the decision was made after a month of evaluation, and no one in the delegation objected to Arestovych ultimately being chosen; he had military experience and proven ability to "provide in-depth informational communication of everything related to the war in Donbass," and Kravchuk considered his ability to hold and defend distinctive opinions a feature rather than a bug.

Responding to the second group, Arestovych said that he expected he'd be considered a traitor just for being involved with the TCG, but this work was too important not to do for the sake of the country. He freely admitted that before he joined the TCG delegation, he'd misunderstood about 70% of its aims and policies; if he'd misunderstood so badly despite being a military-trained analyst, what chance did the average person have? Even if Minsk-2 might be fundamentally unworkable, perception management was critical. He needed to show Ukrainians that the negotiations were necessary and not going to betray their interests, while showing the world that Ukraine was working in good faith toward peace, and it was the Russians being unreasonable and obstructive, while the Russians schemed to show the opposite.

So he did the expected work of a press secretary or spokesperson, putting up social media pages for the delegation, making the framework documents available to the public, writing updates, giving interviews and comments, explaining what the TCG was doing (or not doing), debunking Russian claims, defending the need for even a flawed ceasefire. Arestovych's work in the TCG seems to have been somewhat forgotten these days, given the full-scale invasion made it obsolete, but it actually made up a sizeable portion of his media output in those days.

But in addition to that, he personally attended negotiations, he's mentioned something about Kozak reacting to what he said that might mean he could speak at them, and he helped develop the unified position he voiced. Before his appointment, the delegation already seemed to regret its old policy of commenting on events only after the OSCE's statement--this was the initial agreement, but the Russian side had started breaking it, so that their version of events got out first and hijacked the discussion--but Arestovych implemented his new policy with particular aggressiveness. In his words, "in the information space, there is only one mistake - not to be in time. And then, whether they praise you or criticize you, people are already simply serving your narrative, if you managed to voice it. And if you didn’t have time, you “trudge” behind someone else’s narrative." He framed it in military terms, going on the offensive and getting inside the enemy's OODA loop, and reported with pride that by the fifth day of his tenure as advisor, their speed and quality of presentation had forced Putin's press secretary Peskov to personally intervene, and that, where Russian narratives around the TCG had previously dominated the Ukrainian media space, his constructions were starting to show up in Russian statements.

The strategy seemed to also have its hazards. In one incident that might sound familiar, in December 2020, the delegation's Facebook page initially incorrectly reported that a Ukrainian soldier had wandered across enemy lines while intoxicated and died from alcohol or drug intoxication, when it turned out the soldier had in fact been strangled. Arestovych apologized personally the next day, saying that in a technical error, he'd mixed up the version of events from the Russian side and the version to be given to media.

But his work was overall such that Podolyak defended him in the scandal, confirming that it was a technical error and calling him "absolutely competent in what he does." In a later interview, he sharply disagreed with a claim that Arestovych was only good for scandal and hype, crediting him with successfully "imposing his agenda" and rattling his opponents in a field where Russian propagandists had once "absolutely dominated." Importantly, his skills also caught the eye of Yermak.

Office of the President

There's also a lot of confusion over Arestovych's position in the OP. A September 2022 document lists Arestovych as an unpaid freelance adviser to the Office of the President, and Podolyak has stated that this has been his position from the start, and it's a technical error that official sources have called him adviser to the Head of the Office of the President.

Arestovych says he first met Yermak briefly upon his appointment to the TCG (and met Podolyak two weeks later--as the head of the OP's information policy, Podolyak was also in charge of the TCG's, but gave Arestovych basically free rein there). A month later, on December 1, 2020, Yermak appointed him an advisor on "strategic communications in the field of national security and defense".

Yermak's made his attitude toward people who insult the president quite clear, so one imagines that he must've seen considerable need for Arestovych's skills--in his words (according to Arestovych) "Well, you're such an expert on fakes, you've bred so many of them, that no one but you would know how to deal with them." He was Arestovych's direct superior and task-setter in the OP, whom Arestovych worked with daily (in comparison, before the full-scale invasion, Arestovych says he met with Zelenskyy about once a month,) while he worked with Podolyak, a fellow advisor, as more of an equal. While Arestovych has said he kept to a strictly work relationship with his bosses, he quickly made genuine friends with Podolyak--interestingly, a later comment of his suggests that he didn't like him at first, but somehow that turned into meming about them destroying patriotic consciousness together a week into his time at the OP, and let's just say that you have to be really good friends with someone before posting a picture of yourself with a gun and joking about shooting them. He also seemed to work with his old GUR friend Roman Mashovets (deputy head of the OP, in charge of national security and defense as a whole).

Arestovych's communications work encompassed coordinating between the OP and other groups, including the TCG; and between departments in his field on behalf of the OP--he cites helping mediate a conflict between the head of Ukrboronprom and the Minister of Strategic Industries. But naturally it's the public-facing work that people remember. The mysterious friend-of-a-friend Ukrainian officer from that military forum gave an uneasy assessment of Arestovych's new position--take with as many grains of salt as you think you need, but it's certainly intriguing:

Arestovich, perhaps in good faith, found himself in very bad company, and in the most unfortunate place, on public relations. Now whatever he says will be used against him. And any punctures destroy the reputation he has built up over the years. A position that is not to be envied. Time will tell if his decision to go there, albeit at the invitation of people he trusts personally, was justified. P.S.: I do not agree with his assessment of the situation and some personalities so I look at his attempt skeptically.

Because the immediate reaction to Arestovych blogging for the government was a wall of insults, accusations, shaming, threats, and memes of Lyusya the political whore. While everyone from the OP inevitably met with a wave of internet hate, Arestovych happened to have previously been a prominent member of military/volunteer circles alienated by the Zelenskyy administration's early actions (and heavily courted by Poroshenko.) There was an element of personal betrayal to the reaction. A volunteer friend replied to one of his anti-Poroshenko posts with "Lyosh, if you've been kidnapped and tortured, reply in capslock"; a good chunk of his existing following was...considerably less charitable.

The poster observed TV appearances where (in their opinion) Arestovych combined 90% of perfectly sound explaining and analysis with 10% thinly-supported attacks on the opposition. They generally seemed to think that he was destroying his reputation in his circles for the sake of unworthy leadership:

No, everything is fine with him with the level of knowledge and skills, IMHO, they just cut unsolvable tasks for him, and even change them once a week for opposite ones …

(It's worth saying, since this write-up is for English speakers who may only know his content from his obnoxious shitposting, that he comes across quite differently if you actually watch his military/political long-format videos. He is in fact capable of being professional and laying out topics in a clear engaging way and providing measured analysis in his fields of specialty and more subtly steering an argument or provoking thought. This is most of what he does! But people remember the rest of what he does a lot better!)

In countless panels, programs, and interviews, Arestovych informed about--and defended--basically everything the Zelenskyy administration did within quite a broad interpretation of "national security and defense", encompassing everything from international politics to COVID response, sometimes contradicting or downplaying things he'd said before his advisorship. And while he'd had harsh words for political figures in the past, it was never to the extent to which he went Poroshenko delenda est as an advisor. (For what it's worth, Podolyak's blogging was similar--he'd despised Poroshenko from the start, even if he was initially unimpressed by Zelenskyy, but there's a major difference in the consistency and forcefulness of his anti-Poroshenko posts pre- and post-OP.) Arestovych has talked about how he'll subsume his interests to a team's, he would've gained new information in the OP, and he said, recently, that he received some piece of information about Poroshenko before the public did, and "drew conclusions very quickly"--but regardless, it looked rather like selling out to many.

(Interestingly, he actually seemed to go on the attack against the OP's enemies in November 2020, after he was appointed to the TCG but before he was appointed to the OP, to a notably greater extent than his usual level of criticism, for example against Poroshenko and Butusov. One wonders if it was his initiative, or a trial period.)

He didn't help his reputation with his frequent scandalous statements on TV and profanity-filled arguments on social media. He said that the country should be renamed to Rus'-Ukraine, and defended accepting Afghan refugees by saying they were better educated than Ukrainians anyway. His telling a commenter who asked him to write in Ukrainian instead of Russian to go fuck himself (though he says the user was actually a troll that had been hanging around his Facebook for some time wishing death on his family) rose to the level of a parliament vote. He challenged another commenter to fight him at Bankova, only to postpone it indefinitely because it was beneath the dignity of a representative of the country on an international platform, wait until he got kicked out of the government in disgrace first.

The thing is--he's trolling. We know he's trolling. People know he's trolling. A popular theory is that he deliberately made himself into a hate lightning rod, so that enemies waste their media efforts attacking him instead of the rest of the OP. Every time he says something outrageous, social media users joke about the OP needing a diversion; one interviewer remarked to his face that people wound up discussing his statements instead of serious politics, though he denied that he was trying to distract from serious issues. Podolyak offers a slightly more dignified explanation in one of his own interviews:

Yes, Oleksiy often goes for deliberate provocations, draws out the negative, and then calmly, carefully, and subtly works with it. It may sound paradoxical, but I believe that it is Arestovych who cures our society of traditional media hysteria, giving it the opportunity to talk through difficult things like in a psychotherapist's office. And it's very difficult to take on a lot of public hype, to personally conflict with a big machine of the same "powderbots." If we fairly assess Arestovych's work in the medium term, he is definitely a positive character.

So basically: he's trolling, but in a constructive way, with the OP's blessings.

Much of the time, it's hard to figure out exactly what game he's playing. It's been long enough since the original scandals that the context and reactions are tricky to investigate (if the necessary context is even publicly known), but he's made fun of actual "insider" "expert" "analytics" Telegram channels and their abysmal success rate at guessing the OP's motives and strategy, so I won't feel too bad about throwing up my hands here instead of trying to evaluate individual incidents in earnest. On the one hand--he's talked in an older post about deliberately swearing at an interlocutor to test their reaction. He's joked about all the engagement and views he was getting from the porobots. Gordon's called him a swindler to his face live without getting a rise out of him. I don't believe that he was actually getting that mad at all those internet randos. On the other hand--his old post history on a certain august forum demonstrates that he's fully capable of getting that mad at some internet randos. Exactly when and why he started fake scandals, and when he got into real scandals, will probably remain between him and the OP for the foreseeable future. It's just clear that he's playing 5D chess, but also sometimes he eats a piece.

On the other end of the respectability spectrum, as an advisor, he did in fact give actual advice! He's talked about how, while the OP strictly observed "functional zones" when it came to what areas he could discuss, he had some say in the OP's information policy, and could advise on national security and defense, including directly to the president--and some of those meetings belied the claims that Zelenskyy was surrounded by a "warm bath". However, he said in late 2022 that "maybe only 2 or 3 or 5" items of his advice were ever accepted.

First resignation

Arestovych and Yuriy Romanenko, with whom he'd had a falling-out during the 2019 elections due to their support of opposing candidates, seemed to gradually reconcile over the course of 2021. On January 15, 2022, with the threat of Russian military escalation hanging in the air, they streamed together for the first time in years...upon which Arestovych went on an epic rant about his frustrations with the OP--they weren't accomplishing enough, the people meant to change the system were becoming part of it, he feared the country was sleepwalking into disaster. His worst fear was that Russia would invade just the Donbas, so that the rest of the country would be torn between continued apathy and finger-pointing instead of uniting, the world would continue to turn a blind eye, and Ukraine would end up like the proverbial boiled frog.

A commenter later speculated he'd get into trouble over the rant, but Arestovych answered that funnily, some people in the OP actually liked it. Instead, on January 19th, he posted to Facebook that he'd quit. Opening a treason case against Poroshenko, yet failing to detain him when he returned to Ukraine, had been the final straw for him: "I can forgive many things including personal meanness towards me (that's politics, we're all Machiavelli, cynicism, cold-settling and so on). But I can't forgive weakness."

There's a lot of theorizing over whether he had some unstated motive for leaving, and to what extent he actually left. He definitely stopped participating in the TCG; one of his former coworkers was asked about him in an interview, and lamented the fallen standards and loss of communication channel with the OP in his absence. But an anonymous OP source claimed on the day of the resignation that Arestovych didn't actually tell the OP directly or sign the corresponding documents in his ragequit, and he'd since agreed to meet with Yermak. However that meeting went, Arestovych has said he remained in active communication with the OP the whole time after he quit, and certainly, regardless of what he personally believed, he continued the OP policy of downplaying the military threat to the public all the way up to the evening of February 23rd.

But he didn't seem to plan to return to the OP. He'd pledged to go to the front himself if anything happened, and in fact made arrangements with friends before the full-scale invasion. On the morning of February 24th, he was en route to the military commisariat when a call from Yermak came, telling him the OP needed him.

In his words, there were 2000 majors in the AFU, but only one Arestovych. "Chasing a Russian tank is a pleasure, but conducting information policy and fulfilling certain assignments is a duty. And as an officer, I chose duty."

People have naturally called bullshit on that story, but one of the friends he invited actually wrote a post about their plans very early on. He ribbed Arestovych for leaving the others "orphaned", but acknowledged he was in the right place at the OP.

The next (hopefully last) post will get into that wild second advisorship stint and beyond.

#oleksiy arestovych

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arabellaflynn · 1 year

Text

I went down a few rabbit holes while researching the Advent Calendar last year, that didn't make it into the queue because they got too long or went too far afield. Here's one of them!

One thing you notice when you watch a bazillion videos about old games consoles is how the design of circuitry has evolved. If someone says 'circuit board' today, you think a light piece of leafy green board, filled with parallel lines of copper at 45° and 90° angles, dotted with lots of tiny inscrutable plastic and metal doodads. But it took a long, long time for them to get that way.

If you look at really old circuit boards -- and I mean really, really old circuit boards, like from the beginning of the transistor era, they look completely different. They're brownish, for one thing. And kind of... wiggly?

youtube

Apologies for the transfer quality. It's not your connection, it just sucks. This piece appears to be some sort of promo-tainment thing from Tektronix themselves, from 1969. The rounded corners and bluish fuzz at the edges is an effect called 'vignetting', and it means this is originally from a 16mm film reel. There's no earthly reason for film to look this terrible. The uncentered picture means someone copied it by pointing a camera at a projection screen instead of bothering to get a proper kinescope setup, and the fact that it only goes up to 240p makes me feel like it was originally transferred over two decades ago for RealPlayer and nobody bothered to fix it for YouTube. VHS is about 240 lines, but if this were a crap transfer from a VHS tape you'd also see scanlines. It's possible there's a better copy at VintageTek, a museum dedicated to the history of Tektronix; they are an all-volunteer institution, and they probably have more important things to funnel funding to than updating their YouTube channel.

Point being, it looks like porridge and I'm sorry, but at least the content is interesting.

The brownish color, which is actually from an evolutionary stage earlier than what's covered here, is because many early boards were milled of bakelite rather than electrodeposited onto a glass or fiberglas backplane. If you want to see some of what that might have been like, you can hop over to Usagi Electric. He uses CAD to mill boards, rather than the photochemical process described by Tektronix, but it's pretty much the same idea. He does a lot of it in pursuit of his mad obsession with building a vacuum tube computer here. (If you're curious, his logo says うさぎ電気, "Usagi Denki". "Usagi" is Japanese for rabbit or bunny -- there is one who appears at the end of some videos -- and the spelling of "denki" here specifically means electrics, as opposed to 電機, which is usually rendered electronics. It still pops up in the names of some engineering or technology firms, but generally only the really old ones.)

The wiggly nature of early boards is neatly explained by watching the drafting process, starting about three minutes into the video. It was originally done by hand. The rest of the half-hour video goes through the whole multi-stage process, but the gist is that when you lay out the board, you draw dark lines where you want the conductive traces to be on the final product. To get a consistent size, tape is used for "holes" and tape lines are uses for the traces. If you've ever used stripe tape in nail art, it was apparently something like that -- vinyl tape with a bit of stretch, so you could curve it around. It was a methodical sort of art form. Ever solved one of those "connect the same-color dots without crossing lines" puzzles? It's basically that. If you can't find a topologically-appropriate solution on a single plane, you can produce boards with traces on both the front and the back, as Tektronix does here, and these days you can actually bury traces in internal layers as well. It's just a pain and makes the cost go up exponentially.

The mention of "holes" is interesting. Early circuit boards were nothing but holes. Everything had legs and was soldered on from the underside. Today these are known as "through-hole mounted" components; the alternatives are "surface-mount" components, which are generally smaller and fiddlier to solder on by hand, but considerably easier to lay down and solder in place by machine. Surface-mount technology has been around since before this Tektronix piece, but remained NASA-grade esoterica until the automated assembly process became cost-effective in the 1990s. Today the conductive holes are referred to as "vias" and the little medal dots surface-mount things are soldered to are "pads".

I'll also note that they show the automatic soldering process for these boards late in the video. It involves skimming the boards across the surface of a pool of molten solder. Solder in the 1960s contained a lot of lead. I would not personally like to be in that room. Today a machine places little surface-mount doojiggers in place along with solder beads, and then melts it all very gently in a very hot oven until it all melds together, not unlike a pan of slightly too-runny cookies. If you do it right, the surface tension of the solder keeps it on the pads and out of the traces. This is particularly useful for placing CPUs, whose myriad tiny pins in a tight grid would be far too difficult to solder by hand, and the origin of "reflow" repairs for electronics that are exhibiting symptoms of flaky solder joints.

The "silkscreening" process here does not use silk, but originally it did -- it was invented in Asia, logically enough. The gist of it is that you take a piece of finely woven mesh, traditionally light silk but in modern times also metal or synthetic fiber, and you plug up all of the little holes in it in the areas where you don't want ink to get through it, usually with some sort of water-repellent substance. In the days of yore, you painted on some kind of sap or wax, but nowadays it's usually a light-sensitive plastic that's scraped across the whole mesh, topped with a stencil that is opaque where you want ink to flow, and exposed to UV light that sets the substance. The unset areas that were in shadow are rinsed clean, leaving the mesh permeable in those places. The ink emulsion is then applied to the printing surface beneath in the reverse process: Ink is spread across the mesh, then squeegeed through with enough force to push it through the holes in the weave and onto the surface beneath. The dots of ink bleed just enough to flow into one another, producing a solid area of pigment. The circuit board designs were originally drafted in black on a white background, then photographed and reduced to 1/4 their original size, and the film used as the stencil for the silkscreen.

Holes are drilled mostly by hand(!) in this clip, which is an error-prone process, as you can see from the Usagi Electrics guy. The worker uses what's called a pantograph drill. A pantograph is a device that translates motion from one place to another, often with a change in scale. Typically pantographs are mechanical in nature, based on the complimentary motion of opposite corners of a parallelogram, but you could make a pretty good argument that modern systems that accept movement inputs from a user and translate them elsewhere by computer are also members of the class. Robot-assisted surgery comes to mind. If you cared to have an even longer argument, you could also consider systems that scan items with laser photons in order to reproduce them on a lathe or CNC machine pantographs in spirit, if not in fact.

A visual or optical comparator is just a device that projects a magnified view of something up on a screen, along with a point, grid, or profile it needs to match, not unlike a microfiche viewer with a targeting reticule. They're still used in some areas, although software image processing is steadily gaining ground.

You'd be amazed at how many things still need a look-over by a human with a brain. The lack of human brains is how we got the sharply-angled board traces we have today, in fact. Computer-aided drafting was developed to a usable level in the 1980s, and predictably the people using it were mostly engineers. The kind of route-finding you do in those connect-the-dots puzzles, and that the electronics engineers did when drafting the boards, is one of those very slippery human things. You want to find the shortest path, to save on the precious metals you use as conductors, but the absolute shortest path (with reasonable tolerances) is often a very snaky curve that would require a large number of points to define. It's much simpler to work on a grid, hence the 45° and 90° angles -- this ensures that all trace paths can be defined exclusively by where their corners lie on a square coordinate system, and is much less calculation-intensive. This was a lot of what early graphics tablets (or digitizers) were used for, and some light pen systems.

Having watched my father do a lot of this as a kid, I gather that at least in modern CAD software, you can just pick things up and put them wherever you want, but that the autopathing gets very confused if you do it too much -- mostly it's better to let the computer figure out where the traces go and tell you if you want something impossible in 3D space. And if you screw up anyway, there's always blue wire.

Circuit boards don't have to be the ubiquitous green, either. That's just the color of the solder mask, a lacquer painted all over the parts of the board you don't want solder to stick to. It's mostly tradition at this point, but you can get boards in pretty much any color you like -- the second most common I've see is a dark navy blue, probably because copper traces and white silkscreening stand out best on those two colors. You're welcome to get neon purple, if you can find anyone offering it.

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