#I’m just treating people like I would my friends

[caelum-in-the-avatarverse]

Fandom can do a little gatekeeping. As a treat.

So I finally decided to archive-lock my fics on AO3 last night. I’ve been considering it since the AI scrape last year, but the tipping point was this whole lore.fm debacle, coupled with some thoughts I’ve been thinking regarding Fandom These Days in general and Fandom As A Community in particular. So I wanna explain why I waited so long, why I locked my stuff up now, and why I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a-okay with making it harder for people to see my stories.

Lurkers really are great, tho

I’m a chronic lurker, and have been since I started hanging out on the internet as a teen in the 00s. These days it’s just cuz I don’t feel a need to socialize very often, but back then it was because I was shy and knew I was socially awkward. Even if I made an account, I’d spend months lurking on message boards or forums or Livejournals, watching other people interact and getting a feel for that particular community’s culture and etiquette before I finally started interacting myself. And y’know, that approach saved me a lot of embarrassment. Over the course of my lurking on any site, there was always some other person who’d clearly joined up five minutes after learning the place existed, barged in without a care for their behavior, and committed so many social faux pas that all the other users were immediately annoyed with them at best. I learned a lot observing those incidents. Lurk More is Rule 33 of the internet for very good reason.

Lurking isn’t bad or weird or creepy. It’s perfectly normal. I love lurking. It’s hard for me to not lurk - socializing takes a lot of energy out of me, even via text. (Heck it took 12 hours for me to write this post, I wish I was kidding--) Occasionally I’ll manage longer bouts of interaction - a few weeks posting here, almost a year chatting in a discord there - but I’m always gonna end up going radio silent for months at some point. I used to feel bad about it, but I’ve long since made peace with the fact that it’s just the way my brain works. I’m a chronic lurker, and in the long term nothing is going to change that.

The thing with being a chronic lurker is that you have to accept that you are not actually seen as part of the community you are lurking in. That’s not to say that lurkers are unimportant - lurkers actually are important, and they make up a large proportion of any online community - but it’s simple cause and effect. You may think of it as “your community”, but if you’ve never said a word, how is the community supposed to know you exist? If I lurked on someone’s LJ, and then that person suddenly friendslocked their blog, I knew that I had two choices: Either accept that I would never be able to read their posts again, or reach out to them and ask if I could be added to their friends list with the full understanding that I was a rando they might not decide to trust. I usually went with the first option, because my invisibility as a lurker was more important to me than talking to strangers on the internet.

Lurking is like sitting on a park bench, quietly people-watching and eavesdropping on the conversations other people are having around you. You’re in the park, but you’re not actively participating in anything happening there. You can see and hear things that you become very interested in! But if you don’t introduce yourself and become part of the conversation, you won’t be able to keep listening to it when those people walk away. When fandom migrated away from Livejournal, people moved to new platforms alongside their friends, but lurkers were often left behind. No one knew they existed, so they weren’t told where everyone else was going. To be seen as part of a fandom community, you need to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, etc. etc.

There’s nothing wrong with lurking. There can actually be benefits to lurking, both for the lurkers and the communities they lurk in. It’s just another way to be in a fandom. But if that is how you exist in fandom--and remember, I say this as someone who often does exist that way in fandom--you need to remember that you’re on the outside looking in, and the curtains can always close.

I’ve always been super sympathetic to lurkers, because I am one. I know there’s a lot of people like me who just don’t socialize often. I know there’s plenty of reasons why someone might not make an account on the internet - maybe they’re nervous, maybe they’re young and their parents don’t allow them to, maybe they’re in a bad situation where someone is monitoring their activity, maybe they can only access the internet from public computer terminals. Heck, I’ve never even logged into AO3 on my phone--if I’m away from my computer I just read what’s publicly available. 

I know I have people lurking on my fics. I know my fics probably mean a lot to someone I don’t even know exists. I know this because there are plenty of fics I love whose writers don’t know I exist.

I love my commenters personally; I love my lurkers as an abstract concept. I know they’re there and I wish them well, and if they ever de-lurk I love them all the more.

So up until last year I never considered archive-locking my fic, because I get it. The AI scraping was upsetting, but I still hesitated because I was thinking of lurkers and guests and remembering what it felt like to be 15 and wondering if it’d be worth letting a stranger on the internet know I existed and asking to be added to their friends list just so I could reread a funny post they made once.

But the internet has changed a lot since the 00s, and fandom has changed with it. I’ve read some things and been doing some thinking about fandom-as-community over the last few years, and reading through the lore.fm drama made me decide that it’s time for me to set some boundaries.

I still love my lurkers, and I feel bad about leaving any guest commenters behind, especially if they’re in a situation where they can’t make an account for some reason. But from here on out, even my lurkers are going to have to do the bare minimum to read my fics--make an AO3 account.

Should we gatekeep fandom?

I’ve seen a few people ask this question, usually rhetorically, sometimes as a joke, always with a bit of seriousness. And I think…yeah, maybe we should. Except wait, no, not like that--

A decade ago, when people talked about fandom gatekeeping and why it was bad to do, it intersected with a lot of other things, mainly feminism and classism. The prevalent image of fandom gatekeeping was, like, a man learning that a woman likes Star Wars and haughtily demanding, “Oh, yeah? Well if you’re REALLY a fan, name ten EU novels” to belittle and dismiss her, expecting that a “real fan” would have the money and time to be familiar with the EU, and ignoring the fact that male movie-only fans were still considered fans. The thing being gatekept was the very definition of “being a fan” and people’s right to describe themselves as one.

That’s not what I mean when I say maybe fandom should gatekeep more. Anyone can call themselves a fan if they like something, that’s fine. But when it comes to the ability to enjoy the fanworks produced by the fandom community…that might be something worth gatekeeping.

See, back in the 00s, it was perfectly common for people to just…not go on the internet. Surfing the web was a thing, but it was just, like, a fun pastime. Not everyone did it. It wasn’t until the rise of social media that going online became a thing everyone and their grandmother did every day. Back then, going on the internet was just…a hobby.

So one of the first gates online fandom ever had was the simple fact that the entire world wasn’t here yet.

The entire world is here now. That gate has been demolished.

And it’s a lot easier to find us now. Even scattered across platforms, fandom is so centralized these days. It isn’t a network of dedicated webshrines and forums that you can only find via webrings anymore, it’s right there on all the big social media sites. AO3 didn’t set out to be the main fanfic website, but that’s definitely what it’s become. It’s easy for people to find us--and that includes people who don’t care about the community, and just want “content.”

Transformative fandom doesn’t like it when people see our fanworks as “content”. “Content” is a pretty broad term, but when fandom uses it we’re usually referring to creative works that are churned out by content creators to be consumed by an audience as quickly as possible as often as possible so that the content creator can generate revenue. This not-so-new normal has caused a massive shift in how people who are new to fandom view fanworks--instead of seeing fic or art as something a fellow fan made and shared with you, they see fanworks as products to be consumed.

Transformative fandom has, in general, always been a gift economy. We put time and effort into creating fanworks that we share with our fellow fans for free. We do this so we don’t get sued, but fandom as a whole actually gets a lot out of the gift economy. Offer your community a story, and in return you can get comments, build friendships, or inspire other people to write things that you might want to read. Readers are given the gift of free stories to read and enjoy, and while lurking is fine, they have the choice to engage with the writer and other readers by leaving comments or making reclists to help build the community.

And look, don’t get me wrong. People have never engaged with fanfic as much as fan writers wish they would. There has always been “no one comments anymore” wank. There have always been people who only comment to say “MORE!” or otherwise demand or guilt trip writers into posting the next chapter. But fandom has always agreed that those commenters are rude and annoying, and as those commenters navigate fandom they have the chance to learn proper community etiquette.

However, now it seems that a lot of the people who are consuming fanworks aren’t actually in the community. 

I won’t say “they aren’t real fans” because that’s silly; there’s lots of ways to be a fan. But there seem to be a lot of fans now who have no interest in fandom as a community, or in adhering to community etiquette, or in respecting the gift economy. They consume our fics, but they don’t appreciate fan labor. They want our “content”, but they don’t respect our control over our creations.

And even worse--they see us as a resource. We share our work for free, as a gift, but all they see is an open-source content farm waiting to be tapped into. We shared it for free, so clearly they can do whatever they want with it. Why should we care if they feed our work into AI training datasets, or copy/paste our unfinished stories into ChatGPT to get an ending, or charge people for an unnecessary third-party AO3 app, or sell fanbindings on etsy for a profit without the author’s permission, or turn our stories into poor imitations of podfics to be posted on other platforms without giving us credit or asking our consent, while also using it to lure in people they can datascrape for their Forbes 30 Under 30 company? 

And sure, people have been doing shady things with other people’s fanworks since forever. Art theft and reposting has always been a big problem. Fanfic is harder to flat-out repost, but I’ve heard of unauthorized fic translations getting posted without crediting the original author. Once in…I think the 2010s? I read a post by a woman who had gone to some sort of local bookselling event, only to find that the man selling “his” novel had actually self-published her fanfic. (Wish I could find that one again, I don’t even remember where I read it.)

But aside from that third example, the thing is…as awful as fanart/writing theft is, back in the day, the main thing a thief would gain from it was clout. Clout that should rightfully go to the creators who gifted their work in the first place, yeah, but still. Just clout. People will do a lot of hurtful things for clout, but fandom clout means nothing outside of fandom. Fandom clout is not enough to incentivize the sort of wide-scale pillaging we’re seeing from community outsiders today.

Money, on the other hand… Well, fandom’s just a giant, untapped content farm, isn’t it? Think of how much revenue all that content could generate.

Lurkers are a normal and even beneficial part of any online community. Maybe one day they’ll de-lurk and easily slide into place beside their fellow fans because they already know the etiquette. Maybe they’re active in another community, and they can spread information from the community they lurk in to the community they’re active in. At the very least, they silently observe, and even if they’re not active community members, they understand the community.

Fans who see fanworks as “content” don’t belong in the same category as lurkers. They’re tourists. 

While reading through the initial Reddit thread on the lore.fm situation, I found this comment:

[ID: Reddit User Cabbitowo says: ... So in anime fandoms we have a word called tourist and essentially it means a fan of a few anime and doesn't care about anime tropes and actively criticizes them. This is kind of how fandoms on tiktok feel. They're touring fanfics and fanart and actively criticizes tropes that have been in the fandom since the 60s. They want to be in a fandom but they don't want to engage in fandom 

OP totallymandy responds: Just entered back into Reddit after a long day to see this most recent reply. And as a fellow anime fan this making me laugh so much since it’s true! But it sorta hurts too when the reality sets in. Modern fandom is so entitled and bratty and you’d think it’s the minors only but that’s not even true, my age-mates and older seem to be like that. They want to eat their cake and complain all whilst bringing nothing to the potluck… :/ END ID]

-

“Tourist” is an apt name for this sort of fan. They don’t want to be part of our community, and they don’t have to be in order to come into our spaces and consume our work. Even if they don’t steal our work themselves, they feel so entitled to it that they’re fine with ignoring our wishes and letting other people take it to make AI “podfics” for them to listen to (there are a lot of comments on lore.fm’s shutdown announcement video from people telling them to just ignore the writers and do it anyway). They’ll use AI to generate an ending to an unfinished fic because they don’t care about seeing “the ending this writer would have given to the story they were telling”, they just want “an ending”. For these tourist fans, the ends justify the means, and their end goal is content for them to consume, with no care for the community that created it for them in the first place.

I don’t think this is confined to a specific age group. This isn’t “13-year-olds on Wattpad” or “Zoomers on TikTok” or whatever pointless generation war we’re in now. This is coming from people who are new to fandom, whose main experience with creative works on the internet is this new content culture and who don’t understand fandom as a community. That description can be true of someone from any age group.

It’s so easy to find fandom these days. It is, in fact, too easy. Newcomers face no hurdles or challenges that would encourage them to lurk and observe a bit before engaging, and it’s easy for people who would otherwise move on and leave us alone to start making trouble. From tourist fans to content entrepreneurs to random people who just want to gawk, it’s so easy for people who don’t care about the fandom community to reap all of its fruits. 

So when I say maybe fandom should start gatekeeping a bit, I’m referring to the fact that we barely even have a gate anymore. Everyone is on the internet now; the entire world can find us, and they don’t need to bother learning community etiquette when they do. Before, we were protected by the fact that fandom was considered weird and most people didn’t look at it twice. Now, fandom is pretty mainstream. People who never would’ve bothered with it before are now comfortable strolling in like they own the place. They have no regard for the fandom community, they don’t understand it, and they don’t want to. They want to treat it just like the rest of the content they consume online.

And then they’re surprised when those of us who understand fandom culture get upset. Fanworks have existed far longer than the algorithmic internet’s content. Fanworks existed long before the internet. We’ve lived like this for ages and we like it.

So if someone can’t be bothered to respect fandom as a community, I don’t see why I should give them easy access to my fics.

Think of it like a garden gate

When I interact with commenters on my fic, I have this sense of hospitality.

The comment section is my front porch. The fic is my garden. I created my garden because I really wanted to, and I’m proud of it, and I’m happy to share it with other people. 

Lots of people enjoy looking at my garden. Many walk through without saying anything. Some stop to leave kudos. Some recommend my garden to their friends. And some people take the time to stop by my front porch and let me know what a beautiful garden it is and how much they’ve enjoyed it. 

Any fic writer can tell you that getting comments is an incredible feeling. I always try to answer all my comments. I don’t always manage it, but my fics’ comment sections are the one place that I manage to consistently socialize in fandom. When I respond to a comment, it feels like I’m pouring out a glass of lemonade to share with this lovely commenter on my front porch, a thank you for their thank you. We take a moment to admire my garden together, and then I see them out. The next time they drop by, I recognize them and am happy to pour another glass of lemonade.

My garden has always been open and easy to access. No fences, no walls. You just have to know where to find it. Fandom in general was once protected by its own obscurity, an out-of-the-way town that showed up on maps but was usually ignored.

But now there’s a highway that makes it easy to get to, and we have all these out-of-towner tourists coming in to gawk and steal our lawn ornaments and wonder if they can use the place to make themselves some money.

I don’t care to have those types trampling over my garden and eating all my vegetables and digging up my flowers to repot and sell, so I’ve put up a wall. It has a gate that visitors can get through if they just take the time to open it.

Admittedly, it’s a small obstacle. But when I share my fics, I share them as a gift with my fellow fans, the ones who understand that fandom is a community, even if they’re lurkers. As for tourist fans and entrepreneurs who see fic as content, who have no qualms ignoring the writer’s wishes, who refuse to respect or understand the fandom community…well, they’re not the people I mean to share my fic with, so I have no issues locking them out. If they want access to my stories, they’ll have to do the bare minimum to become a community member and join the AO3 invite queue.

And y’know, I’ve said a lot about fandom and community here, and I just want to say, I hope it’s not intimidating. When I was younger, talk about The Fandom Community made me feel insecure, and I didn’t think I’d ever manage to be active enough in fandom spaces to be counted as A Member Of The Community. But you don’t have to be a social butterfly to participate in fandom. I’ll always and forever be a chronic lurker, I reblog more than I post, I rarely manage to comment on fic, and I go radio silent for months at a time--but I write and post fanfiction. That’s my contribution.

Do you write, draw, vid, gif, or otherwise create? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you leave comments? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you curate reclists? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you maintain a fandom blog or fuckyeah blog? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you provide a space for other fans to convene in? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you regularly send asks (off anon so people know who you are)? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you have fandom friends who you interact with? Congrats, you're a community member.

There’s lots of ways to be a fan. Just make sure to respect and appreciate your fellow fans and the work they put in for you to enjoy and the gift economy fandom culture that keeps this community going.

#ao3 #lore.fm #fanfiction #fandom history #gift economy #caelum rambles

[literallyspiderwoman]

“Dad are you really this afraid of me?!”

There were a LOT of lines in ATSV that stuck out to me, but this specific one hit me right in the feels.

First of all the way Gwen says it, her tone, the pain and emotion in her voice, her expression, EVERYTHING leading up to this one simple question is heartbreaking. Especially when you consider why she’s even asking this in the first place.

I want to point out that right after Gwen took her mask off, the background colors change from dark red to much less threatening colors, much softer if I might add. This basically signifies George’s POV.

Gwen had just revealed her identity as Spider-Woman to her dad, who’s now in complete shock. He believes Spider-Woman is a murderer, and now that his own daughter comes out and tells him that she is in fact Spider-Woman, he jumps to the conclusion that “Spider-Woman is a murderer who killed Peter so that must mean that’s all true about my daughter.” instead of “Ah, my daughter is sweet so there’s no way those things about Spider-Woman are true!”. Now when I first watched this scene, I was like “Huh?”, because Gwen could’ve said ANYTHING else to her dad. She could’ve been like “Why are you doing this?!”, or she could’ve gotten angry at him. Gwen is WAY stronger than George, if he decided to shoot her, she would have been able to easily dodge that bullet. She could seriously hurt George if she wanted to and she knows it, but when George started reading Gwen her Miranda Rights, Gwen wasn’t angry, she was heartbroken, and you can see the change in her expression.

At first, she looks upset, fearful, and worried. Then, she looks hopeful. Hopeful that her dad will hear what she has to say, hopeful that her dad will understand her and trust her when she tells him that she isn’t a murderer, but he doesn’t. THATS when Gwen’s expression shifts from hopefulness to disbelief and heartbreak. “You’re in this to help people right? Well so am I”, Gwen was trying to convince her dad that she was on his side, that she didn’t kill Peter, that she isn’t what he thinks she is, but George doesn’t listen. Gwen thought that by telling her dad “You’re all I have left”, that that’d make him listen, but it didn’t.

You can hear the utter shock and disbelief in Gwen’s voice when her dad actually starts reading her rights, and you can hear how scared and distraught George is too, but there’s a hint of remorse in his voice. He sounds like he doesn’t want to do this. He sounds like he’s in pain, and well- he is. He’s arresting his own daughter.

Just put yourself in Gwen’s position for a second. She just revealed her biggest secret to her dad, and the reason she hid it from him for so long was because she was terrified of the thought that he would attempt to arrest her, and he DOES. He chooses to be a ‘good’ cop over being a dad. Imagine your own father, your own flesh and blood, and the person who gave you life, is absolutely terrified of you to the point where he almost aims a gun at you out of pure fear. But George doesn’t see his own child, he sees a monster. The same monster that murdered his daughter’s best friend. He quite literally can’t see his daughter in front of him, he just sees Spider-Woman.

“How long have you been lying to me?” Is the only question George asks Gwen throughout this entire scene. He asked this as a father, not as a cop. He was absolutely distraught and the only thoughts going through his mind were “No, this can’t be true…” and “How could my girl, my sweet girl…” (Actual line from the script btw). Another line that sort of stood out to me was “Can you just not be a cop for a second and be my dad here?”, Gwen didn’t feel like she was speaking to her dad, she felt like she was facing down a cop. George has been treating Gwen like a criminal this whole interaction. “Do you really think I’m a murderer?” Gwen asked this because could not BELIEVE that her dad actually thought that of her. The whole reason Gwen removed her mask in the first place was out of fear that her dad would actually shoot her, he already fired a warning shot, so why wouldn’t he just go ahead and pull the trigger?

Something I noticed earlier is how Gwen’s spider senses went off when her dad approached her. Spider senses ONLY go off when there’s a threat nearby, so this pretty much means Gwen saw her dad as a threat to her life :(

Also taking note of the fact that Gwen is his daughter, 16 years old- and like 5’4, but George is STILL powerless against her. His only option is to get her to surrender. Gwen and George kinda switched places throughout this scene. At first, Gwen is terrified of George, and then by the end it’s the other way around.

Gwen tries her hardest to plead with George, she kept her arms up in a defenseless position the whole time to show her dad that she won’t hurt him, but he can’t even look at her. This is something I took note of when watching ATSV; While George is reading Gwen her Miranda Rights, he can’t bring himself to look at her. He just stares at the ground, with a disappointed expression on his face. A face of pain. There’s a clear difference when George first says “You have the right to remain silent”, and the second time he says it. It’s like he doesn’t want to do it.

Now, I do hate George and I think he did a LOT wrong in this movie, but just look at his face for a second. Does that look like the the face of a man who is happy with what he’s doing? No. That’s a face of regret and guilt. He isn’t doing this because he wants to, he’s doing this because he’s afraid. Afraid of what exactly? Well, that brings us to my next point.

So obviously Gwen is in shock right now, her own father is trying to arrest her because he believes she murdered her childhood friend. Not only is Gwen shocked but she’s also confused. She’s probably thinking “Why is he doing this?”, and she came to the conclusion that her dad was doing this out of fear. Fear of HER.

This is a major reason as to why Gwen didn’t reveal her identity to her dad for so long. She knew he wouldn’t accept her, she knew he’d be scared of her, and she was right. George isn’t doing this just because he wants to be a good cop, he’s standing in front of the ‘dangerous menace’ who killed Peter, and that dangerous menace is Gwen, his daughter. George’s immediate reaction is to arrest Gwen because like I said earlier- He can only see Spider-Woman.

Now onto what this whole analysis is about, the line Gwen utters next… Along with “You’re the best thing I’ve ever done”, and “I can’t lose one more friend”, this line BROKE me. Gwen assumed that George was doing this out of fear, which is the main reason she asked him this. She was so frustrated by the thought of her own father doing something like this to her. She hated being misunderstood to the point of being seen as a monster by the one person she considers a role model to follow, the ONE person she has left. You can hear the pain in Gwen’s voice as well as her dad’s.

You can actually hear a slight change in George’s tone after Gwen says that line. Because SHE’S RIGHT. He IS afraid of her. That’s the whole reason as to why he’s doing this. He doesn’t even respond to her, but you can definitely tell this is really hard for him. Hearing his own daughter straight up ask him if he’s really afraid of her probably felt like a punch in the gut, that’s a question neither of them thought they’d ever have to face.

George fears Gwen because she allegedly ‘killed’ Peter, but it’s also because of her abilities. George has seen what Spider-Woman is capable of. He’s seen what she can do. That’s the reason he backed away and raised his gun at Gwen when she took a step closer to him and yelled “DAD STOP!”, he was scared of her.

Gwen was heartbroken. She was trying her HARDEST to plead with her dad just for him to try and arrest her, aim a gun at her, and yell “DONT COME ANY CLOSER!” at her when she tried to approach him. Honestly I’m surprised Gwen didn’t snap after this, let alone forgive George at all. Imagine living with the mentality that your own dad didn’t hesitate to point a gun at you while yelling at you to not come any closer, poor Gwen.

I’ve always wondered what would’ve happened if Miguel and Jess hadn’t intervened. George actually had the intention of shooting Gwen, so if Miguel didn’t trap him in that box thing, George might’ve actually gone through with it, and that’s sickening to think about. The fact that he was even WILLING to aim a gun at Gwen is enough to fuck her up.

I don’t blame Gwen for wanting to join the Spider Society after this. I mean come on, her dad is terrified of her and thinks she’s a murderer, and she believes if she joins the Spider Society, she’ll finally find people who accept and understand her. No wonder she left Earth 65.

This entire scene was so heartbreaking dude I wanna cry time I watch it ☹️ The watercolors in the background as well as the voice acting from both Gwen and her dad were amazing and SO emotional, along with their expressions and the soundtrack- Ahh I could talk about this movie forever 😭 But anyways, thanks for reading my little analysis and FUCK GEORGE STACY ALL MY HOMIES HATE GEORGE STACY!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🗣️🗣️🗣️💥💥💥💥💥🙅🏼‍♀️🙅🏼‍♀️🙅🏼‍♀️

#george stacy keep your fucking doors locked. #KYS GEORGE STACY #LEAVE GWENNY ALONE #atsv #across the spiderverse #spiderman #gwen stacy #spiderverse #ghost spider #spider gwen

[riacte]

Re: popularity and clout gap, this thought has been lurking at the back of my mind but it didn’t hit me until a friend pointed out it was like how some parts of the audience used to treat hermits in MCC. As in: the hermits could achieve something technically amazing but were ignored simply because they weren’t popular (see False’s back to back win being ignored post MCC12) when the exact same achievement would cause them to lose their minds if it was done by someone who was more “popular”.

Post Demise 2, I joked this was like Blue Bats over again in which False (and Ren) won with the power of friendship in a wholesome storyline yet some parts of the audience chose to be salty their fave didn’t win instead. Sometimes you can see such a severe cognitive dissonance because people watch different hermits. Like that post on Reddit innocuously asking about Perry when I’d seen him around for weeks now and people pointed out Perry had been featured in the Neighbourhood’s videos for a while. (Nothing wrong with the post but it shows how vastly different the viewing experience is.)

It’s kind of like we’re back to 2020/21 era esque “hermit erasure” but it’s (unintentionally) done by some hermit fans. Okay, actually I’ll erase the unintentionally. Plenty of people only watch a few hermits and I emphasise that is fine and you can do anything you want forever. Enjoy HC in any way you like. Be free. The problem only surfaces when people pretend their corner is the only corner that exists and everyone else are the side characters. Like, it’s really fine to admit you don’t know everything. Someone on the MCC Reddit tried making teams and admitted they didn’t know the hermits well but somehow their teams ended up being more hermit accurate than most teams I’ve seen.

This situating done by some parts of the audience of some hermits as “main” and some hermits as “side” to the whole production of Hermitcraft makes me think of 2020/21 MCC again. In which people were discussing protagonists and villains and cannon fodder. Which was why I wrote Battle Scars, a parody / satire / sincere piece of work / whatever, to show that my faves (Blue Bats) could be the protagonists too. And it feels like I’m back. Scrambling to script my faves as characters worthy to have their stories told. Why are we back again.

And why does it lowkey feel worse because this is happening within the same fandom.

… And now I realise that’s also part of why I wrote Feel It Still, another crack treated seriously fic. Because it’s a Superhero AU proudly situating my faves in the lead roles based on canon stuff, while the typical protagonists of Superhero AUs in this fandom are delegated to side characters and are the trainees under a main hero. It’s this sort of twisting of canon that I keep on (subconsciously) doing, attempting to give some sort of spotlight to my faves by mimicking / parodying fandom trends and tropes, trying to make them more palatable and spread propaganda or whatever.

Tldr: it feels like we’re back to “hermit erasure” era and there’s a lot of fanon attention on a few. And you just know certain events would receive significant more attention if they were done by the popular hermits instead of the less popular ones. But it’s mostly crickets outside my circle and the people that I know of. Like hey yeah this is someone I know from chat and someone I know from Twitter. And I know about “being the change you want to see” and “make stuff you want to see” and “promote your faves”. I know. We all know.

It just gets tiring sometimes.

In the end, a number’s game is a number’s game.

#salt #this is me bitching #ria.txt

[allforrafe]

hii luv<3

so I was thinking about a request, I don't have a lot, but something with Rafe, where she's like super shy and sensitive, very introverted, and doesn't really like being around other people, like she always says how much she hates everyone else, and only likes Rafe. and everyone thinks it's weird cause he's like an asshole to everyone else, lol. but she's like always on him, on his arm or his leg, very clingy, and she gets all teary and sad when he tries to leave.

just a little thought :)

Hi ml! This is such a cute concept like rafe would def be so sweet to u, unlike how he usually treats others!!

Pairing: bf!rafe and antisocial!reader

Word count: 436 words !!

Warnings: use of nicknames, ignorant reader idk

Pulling up to the house, you step out the car, displeased with your boyfriends antics. Its safe to say you weren’t a ‘people-person’, but you’d go anywhere as long as rafe was by your side. walking through the houseparty, you slide your way through the crowd, head down, fiddling with your rings to distract yourself from the overwhelming amount of socialising taking place around you.

You look around in search for him. Across the kitchen, a familiar head can be seen slightly above the majority of the crowd, your tall boyfriend talking to his friends.

“Rafey?” You say, just checking it was him and not some stanger you didnt want to do so much as look at. His head turns to you, “my sweet baby”, his soft voice being a familiar sound, a comfort sound if you will. You rush forward, your arms latching around his waist faster than he could tell you to do so, as his arm rests comfortably across your shoulders.

“Im sorry i didnt come earlier, i saw the amount of people and winced” you admit, rafes sympathetic smile looking back down at you, “its okay sweetheart, im sorry i made you come”. You shake your head dismissively. “It’s all good, just don’t leave me alone, ‘kay?”

He nods, turning you around to face the group. They all greet you, your response being a subtle smile in an attempt to steer clear of any social interactions.

Throughout the night, you stay glued to rafe, clinging onto his arm, waist, neck, anything you could grab hold of really.

Once he finishes his neat whiskey, he looks down to you, his gaze tracing every inch of your skin, “I gotta go use the bathroom m’love” his soft lips graze yours briefly.

“But-“, you say, a frown growing ever so quickly on your face, “I’m coming with you.”

Rafe chuckles, shaking his head, “you can’t just walk into the bathroom with me baby”

After your petty back and forth arguing, you sit on the kitchen side, the overwhelming crowd filling the room. Your boyfriend’s buddies attempting to make conversation, “yo y/n?”. You glare at the boy, folding you arms, eyes on the bathroom, waiting as patiently as you possibly could for rafe to get back.

After a long 5 minutes, the door unlocks and you slide off the counter. “That was mean” you pout as rafe walks over. You sling your arms around his neck and nuzzle your face in his chest. His arms snake around your neck, holding you close to him, his body heat warming you.

“Just can’t live without me m’love, can you?”

i really hope this is good bc im like 100% sleep deprived writing this :)

please send in more requests i love writing these!!!

#allforrafe #rafe cameron #anon ⋆ ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ #outerbanks rafe #rafe cameron fanfiction #rafe fic #rafe smut #rafe cameron smut #drew starkey

[whatswrongwithblue]

The Fire in the Sin

Chapter 7 - Ashes in My Wake

Word count: 7,622. Read on AO3. Series Masterlist. <- Previous Chapter.

Summary: Alastor meets the woman he will someday marry, but instead of recognizing that he is smitten, his first instinct is to try and take her soul.

Series Summary:

Present Day chapters – Alastor has been missing 7 years. No one knows what happened or where he went – not even his wife Mina, who has been searching for him. One day he shows back up and seems to expect a happy reunion with her but he won’t say where he has been. With the promise of eventually giving her both answers and revenge for the last 7 years, she decides to play along with his games, but she can’t pretend to be happy about any of it.

Prequel chapters – Mina, an Irish immigrant to America, dies a violent death in 1917. She spends the first decades in Hell making a life for herself, working as a torturer for Abaddon, enforcing the one major law of Hell; Sinners can’t leave. And then she meets and falls for Alastor. They live blissfully together for decades, until one day, he just vanishes.

Chapter 7 - Ashes in My Wake

Pride Ring

1952

Alastor just loved Cannibal Town.

It was such a charming little village and the people here were so cheery and well mannered. They would have eaten him alive and raw had he not been a powerful Overlord and good friends with Rosie, but since he wasn’t on the menu, he was always treated like an honored guest.

He was at one of the outdoor cafes, enjoying a dinner of rare venison steak, cooked in butter and human marrow. Rosie still refused to tell even him how she supplied her town with real human flesh - he was certain she was breaking several of laws that kept Sinners stuck there in Pride Ring  - but it was one of the few things he couldn’t get himself here in Hell. He had always wondered, if he had ventured into the world of cannibalism while he was alive if he would have had an appetite for it then, or if was just a feature of his demon form. It was one of his greatest regrets from his killing years and the worst part of it, he simply had not thought of it. Rosie had truly broadened his horizons . . . once they had stopped trying to kill each other.

Alastor was a man of detail; he noticed everything. His mother had loved that about him for it meant he kept a straight room and always complimented her on a new piece of clothing or hairstyle. His father had no patience for it and would often beat him as a small child when Alastor would quickly get overwhelmed in a new place with too many new things for his young mind to process. But here in Hell, it was his most valuable talent. Nothing slipped past him, and it always gave him an upper hand in a game of wits.

All this meaning, he noticed the black-haired feline beauty walk past him on the sidewalk right away.

She was clearly not one of Rosie’s contracted souls; everything about her dress and style stood out from the other cannibals, and yet she walked among them as if she belonged. The stranger even stopped and hugged a couple women who approached her on the sidewalk, greeting them like old friends, and the trio walked into the small bar and lounge that was across the street.

That bar was one of Alastor’s most frequented locations and he had never seen that woman before. She wasn’t an Overlord, and she wasn’t a Cannibal, so how the hell was she walking around these streets and not being torn to pieces?

He kept an eye on the entrance of the lounge to make sure she hadn’t made an exit as he finished his meal and then made his way across the street, suddenly in the mood for some top shelf scotch.

“Alastor!” Rosie greeted him from her place at the bar. She pulled him in for a hug before he took a seat next to her, “Ugh, I’m so glad I bumped into you here. You wouldn’t believe the week I had. So many more souls are showing up around here these days. I guess cannibalism became a bit of a fad in Japan during that last great war ‘up top’ and some of these guys don’t even speak English! I think they wound up in the wrong afterlife and what’s a girl to do?!”

She tossed back the last of her cocktail and waved the bartender down for more. It was a bit out of character to see Rosie so ruffled in public, but Alastor supposed they all had their bad days.

“Have you tried shipping them off to the Doomsday District? They haven’t had a cult massacre send souls their way in quite a while and language barriers aren’t such an issue down there. The imagery . . . speaks for itself,” Alastor said with a chuckle.

The bartender set their drinks down and Rosie lifted hers in a cheer.

“You, my friend, are priceless. What a splendid idea!” Rosie took a more ladylike sip of her martini this time but then immediately became animated again when something caught her eye from the far side of the lounge.

The cat demon dressed in black and orange was sitting down at a table with the two women she had met on the street, deeply engrossed in an apparently hilarious conversation.

“Mina! Is that you, dear?!” Rosie said, and waved when she immediately caught the woman’s attention.

The woman smiled and excused herself from her group and came over to the bar to get immediately crushed into one of Rosie’s vice-like hugs.

“I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to stop by lately. Work's just been unbelievable,” the woman said, the slightest bit of an accent coming through in her speech.

“Oh, trust me, I know the life of a working woman. Put in an all-day shift and you still gotta go home and cook and clean, can you believe it! Ah, where are my manners?!” Rosie said, and turned in her barstool so she no longer had her back turned to Alastor.

“Mina, meet Alastor, one of my dearest friends. Most people know him as the Radio Demon, but around here, we just call him by his first name. Alastor, this is Mina. She’s just about my most loyal customer. She’s got a wicked appetite for men’s hearts, the little minx, and she knows which shop has the freshest ones,” Rosie said with a wink at Mina.

“The Radio Demon?” Mina asked, and her eyes darted back and forth between Alastor and Rosie. She smiled well, but he could see how nervous she suddenly was.

“So, you’ve heard of me?” he asked.

“Who hasn’t?” she said simply, no longer smiling.

“You must have quite an interesting tale to tell yourself if you’re around these parts, but it’s funny because I’ve never heard of you.”

“Oh, well, lucky me then,” she said, holding his narrowing gaze. Irish, the accent was definitely Irish.

“Oh, Alastor, stop it,” Rosie said, and playfully smacked his chest with the back of her hand, “she pays my Emporium quite a lot of money, don’t chase her away. And she’s one of Abaddon’s, and even you don’t want them breathing down your neck, they’re awfully protective of their own.”

Mina raised an eyebrow, looking a bit more confident then.

“My apologies,” Alastor said, “I didn’t mean to come across as anything but a gentleman. I was simply curious, it’s not every day I see an unfamiliar face around here.”

“I come here quite often,” she said, and it almost sounded like a challenge.

“So do I.”

“Then I suppose I won’t be unfamiliar for long.”

“I wouldn’t want your luck to run out.”

“Oh Mylanta!” Rosie interjected, standing up between them, “I should have known better than to put the two of you boneheads in a room together. Mina, I’ve had just the shittiest week, would you be a dear and play one of your songs for us?” Alastor almost laughed into his glass when he saw how uncomfortable that question made this Mina character suddenly seem. “Not to worry, one of your regular songs will do just fine. Honestly, honey, this place could just use a bit of extra liveliness tonight.”

Neither of them knew it at the time, but Mina’s decision to give in to Rosie’s request, smile an almost flirtatious smile at Alastor, and adjust her attitude, was a major turning point in both of their lives. Had she continued to mouth off, or worse, refuse Rosie and return to her group of friends, Alastor would have eventually lost interest in her.

“That would be alright, I suppose. And I hear the gentleman in our presence prefers jazz?”

“Oh ho! You really have heard of me!” he said pleasantly.

“Just enough to know to play it safe around you,” Mina said and turned away, heading for the piano in the corner of the lounge.

Well, Alastor couldn’t help but smile a little wider when his ego was stroked like that.

___

Her song had been . . . entrancing, to say the least. When prompted as to what Rosie had meant by one of Mina’s “regular” songs, the leader of Cannibal Town had informed him of the secret talent Mina possessed of controlling others with her singing but assured him, that was not what had happened that night.

“You’ll know it if you ever hear it. But no, I’m afraid that was just her normal singing voice. Why?”

“No reason,” he had quickly replied.

“You’re interested in her!” Rosie gasped in over dramatic surprise.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he huffed.  

“Oh not like that,” Rose said, “you want her power for yourself. And of course you do, who wouldn’t! But believe me, Alastor, it’ll be a waste of your time. You offer that girl a deal and it’ll just offend her.”

“Then I’ll just have to figure out a brilliant plan to convince her,” he said, eyes flashing to radio dials as he turned away.

He studied her for weeks during his down time, figuring out where her usual hang outs were and lingering in the shadows, trying to gather as much information about her as possible while going unnoticed. The kind of deals that were irrefusable were always the most personal, so he had to figure out what made this woman tick.

It was infuriating how little she left The Pit; Abaddon’s little protected neighborhood of Pride Ring where no one, not even Overlords like himself, could even get into without an invitation. Mina also seemed to make a point of being as inconspicuous as possible. She was beautiful but only if one took the time to really look at her; otherwise, she seemed completely average. Nothing about her features was striking enough to catch a casual onlooker and she clearly used that to her advantage.

He purposefully sent one of his leashed pets after her one night on her walk back home. She had been alone and looking as vulnerable as any soul in Hell possibly could. Alastor felt ridiculous but from the rooftop above where he could see the whole show, he held his large ears down flat just in case she used her voice as a defense. He didn’t doubt Rosie’s description of how powerful this girl was for an average Sinner and didn’t want to find himself jumping from the rooftop against his will.

The monstrous remains of the soul he owned launched itself at Mina’s back and she jumped out of the way with impressively quick reflexes and then morphed into a very large, grotesque beast that vaguely resembled a jaguar, ripped the soul in half with a bite and well placed dig of her massive claws, and then left it on the sidewalk still squirming as she turned back into her more human-like form and continued walking.

Alastor dropped his hands from his ears in shock; a feeling he hadn’t felt in more years than he could recall.

Whatever he used to convince Mina to sell her soul to him, it wouldn’t likely be for his protection.

It seemed to him that he would have to get much closer to this girl if he was to figure her out.

After several more visits to the lounge in Cannibal Town, he finally saw her there again. Not that he was going there specifically to find her, it was already his favorite place for a drink, but it did give him another reason to go there at the end of the day.

To his great advantage, she was sitting at a table alone, reading.

Honestly, who brought a book to a bar?

He didn’t go to her right away, instead taking the time to order a glass of whiskey neat for himself and then asked the bartender for Mina’s usual, which turned out to be a nauseously sweet effervescent red blend wine.

When he set it down in front of her and took his seat across the small table from her, she frowned at him.

“I’m waiting for someone.”

“Is it a date?” he asked, already suspecting the answer. He had been stalking her for weeks and knew there was no one special in her life and figured it was a sore subject for her as it was with most single women.

“Would you leave me alone if I said that it was?”

He smiled. “No.”

She slammed her book shut.  “What do you want?”

“You are defensive. Have I done something to offend you?”

“You mean other than simply being who you are?” she asked and when he simply continued to smile instead of responding, she sighed. “No.”

“And what is wrong with being who I am?” he asked.

“Do you think I’m stupid? You’re literally the most powerful Overlord I can name, and you expect me to think you’re talking to me because you want to be friends?”

“That is quite the compliment and backhanded insult all in one sentence. I’ll have you know; I am perfectly capable of having friends.”

“Anyone you don’t make deals with?” she asked.

“You know, you were being much more pleasant with me when we last parted.”

“Answer the question.”

“Of course, there are people I don’t make deals with. Although, you shouldn’t say ‘make deals with’ as if it’s some unsavory dirty business. Deals can be quite beneficial to both parties,” he paused, taking a sip of his whiskey, “take Rosie for example. We have been friends for years and I’ve never made a deal with her, but I would be honored to if the situation ever required it. “

Mina pondered his words for a moment, running a nail up and down her wine stem.

“I’ve spent my years here in Hell avoiding people like you.”

Alastor leaned forward. “Again, what’s so bad about me?”

Mina looked at him like he’d just made the worst joke she’d ever heard. “You have a radio station with nothing but screams of the souls you’re tearing to pieces.”

He smiled and tilted his head. “I find it funny that offends you, seeing as how you get paid to torture. Tell me, what’s the longest number of years someone has been flayed across your rack? Five? Ten? What’s the record for how many times someone has had to completely respawn because you took things a little too far? And then you come here, laugh with friends, sing your songs, and otherwise live a normal, enjoyable life. So maybe, you’re not afraid of what I’ll do to you. Maybe you’re just afraid of how much you and I have in common.”

Mina looked shocked, even a bit angry, but her pupils had practically turned to saucers and the fair skin around her neck had flushed a little and not from her wine. He had struck a nerve, but he suddenly realized she was also very attracted to him, which would give him a wonderful advantage over her going forward.

“Do you usually ask women out with such bizarre speeches?”

Alastor’s smile turned into a wicked grin. “How about we start with me asking you for a dance?”

“How about a deal first?” she said, and he raised his brows in obvious interest. “I’ll ask you one question and if I like the answer, then I’ll dance with you.”

“Ha! You’ll have to try harder than that to scare me off. Ask away,” he said, leaning back in his seat.

“Dickens or Austen?”

He frowned in confusion.

“Charles Dickens or Jane Austen,” she clarified, “who do you prefer?”

Alastor thought silently for a moment before standing up. His eyes flashed a brighter red as he offered her his hand.

“Mary Shelley.”

Mina smiled in satisfaction and took his hand, following him to the dance floor.

___

After a few outings with him, Mina had to admit, she was really starting to like Alastor. It wasn’t clear yet if he was romantically pursuing her or if they were just friends; everything between them had been platonic so far, but secretly Mina began to hope for more. There weren’t many in her circle of friends that had crossed his path, but no one could remember a time when The Radio Demon had a companion on his arm; but it did appear that Alastor was telling the truth when he said he had friends.

Rosie seemed to be the Overlord that he was closest to, but she had been witness to a cordial conversation between him and Zestial. He spoke fondly of a few of the souls he owned, as if they were more his wards under his protection than they were his slaves to do his bidding. Wherever they went, Alastor was courteous to all of their servers and was a generous tipper. He shared her rather macabre sense of humor, was charismatic, chivalrous, and just plain sweet to her.

And he was so good looking. Mina had desired plenty of men before but had spent her time in Hell purposefully single after a lifetime of being repeatedly sexually dissatisfied and put off by all of her suitors rather bad behavior. Even during the few times of year when her feline body went through its hormonal cycle and sent her into heat, she got through it by pleasuring herself and taking out her frustration through her work. But being around Alastor made that little coil inside her heat up in ways it hadn’t in decades. Everything about him, from the static effect of his voice, to his odd perpetual smile, his smell, the way he dressed, his strange haircut and two-toned locked, the little antlers and red ears atop his head . . .

When he had lost his temper on a crass demon on the street who said something lewd to Mina, those antlers had grown, his eyes had glowed green, and Alastor had ripped the demon apart with shadow tentacles that suddenly came out of nowhere . . . Mina didn’t stand a chance. That man fulfilled all her fantasies, even ones she wasn’t aware she had until she met him.

Beyond her physical attraction to him, they really did seem to have a lot in common. And where they weren’t the same, their differences complimented each other well. They both enjoyed drinking but never pushed themselves past a good buzz, and where she enjoyed a sweet wine, he like straight liquor. Their palette for meat was exactly the same, but she liked her savory paired with something sweet when Alastor enjoyed something spicier. They spoke often of how they abhorred violence just for the sake of violence but reveled in it when used with purpose.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said on one of her rare mornings off work, and they had decided to meet up for coffee, “But I’m fairly certain that ‘Mina’ is not a common name in Ireland.”

She gave him a beaming smile then, very pleased with his observation. “You are the first person to ever call me out on that. Even people who knew my birth name never questioned it.”

“What was so wrong with your given name?”

“Margarette,” she said with disgust, “It’s an English name. A colonizer’s name. You have to understand, I was born just in time to see the last bit of my ancestors’ culture nearly wiped out. They were starving us and wiping out our language. You couldn’t be citizens without being baptized and no priest would baptize a child in Ireland if they had a name like Saoirse or Aine. And then ironically, when I came to America, they wanted me to be more Irish. More ‘exotic.’ My manager asked me to come up with a new name for myself and it’s been my own little private joke ever since because I just thought Mina sounded pretty, and I’m pretty sure it’s German. Not that anyone in America knew the difference.”

Alastor laughed, seemingly taking a lot of enjoyment in the perverse beauty of her chosen name. From that day forward, he used her name as much as possible, and stopped calling her by his usual terms of endearment like “dear” or “darling” as often.

Their life stories were another thing that they had in common. Not identical but they gave them a better understanding of each other.

He had grown up in a world immersed in Creole culture and the inevitable racism from the upper class that appropriated it while also condemning it. Once he was an adult, he had to stick to his roots in secret, and used his white-passing privilege to make his way in the world of entertainment. He simultaneously had felt like he was getting away with a sick joke while also ashamed, as if he were betraying his mother somehow. He had tried to make up for it all by using his nuevo riche money to dote on her until her sudden death. When the Great Depression hit, and life for his and his mother’s people only got harder as those left on top continued to exploit them, he had stopped bothering to hold back his darker desires and instead focused his blood lust on the upper-class white demographic he hated the most.

“My favorite part, besides the actual killing of course, was reporting on myself. I had come up with the name ‘The Bayou Killer,’ I thought it had a nice ring to it,” he had said as he told his life story, “but other media sources also started calling me the ‘Equal Opportunity Killer.’ I guess it sounded better than pointing out that being wealthy and of the right color didn’t save you from being hacked to pieces.”

Mina mentally added being violently opposed to xenophobia and racism to her quickly expanding list of things that made Alastor perfect for her. It excited her, but also filled her with trepidation.

She had lost herself and her freewill to relationships before and had to kill to get out of them. And Alastor would always be more powerful and dangerous than she was, so she still had to tread carefully around her feelings for him. But damn, if she wasn’t falling hard and fast.

After several meet ups for drinks or food, Alastor finally asked her to accompany him to a far more intimate location.

They were on a walk together through the park she had come to on her first night in Hell. The black lake still smelled as awful as it did then, but Mina had returned here several times since that first evening and had grown accustomed to it. She still loved the strange and dark plants and the demonic wildlife that was never in short supply here.

Alastor carried his cane behind his back as they walked, not offering Mina a hand or arm to hold onto, but he did make a point of walking close to her side.

He had steered the conversation in a different direction than usual, filling her in on some of the current political ongoings in Hell. She tried to act interested, nodding along at what seemed to be appropriate moments, but the topic had a hard time keeping her attention. Mina was just beginning to tune it out completely when the name Goetia caught her attention.

She was fascinated by the tales of their magic and knowledge of the universe but with her misgivings about the more powerful figures in Hell, had never had the opportunity to get to know one of them before.

“You know some of the Goetia family?” she asked.

“And I’ve killed some of them, too,” he laughed. “Most of them are pompous fools but a couple of them aren’t terrible to converse with. Get them on the subject of their magic and they can’t help but show off. It can be very informative. One of the lower ranking ones resides here in Pride Ring and is throwing a party next week, but I’m not sure if it’s worth going.”

“I would love to go,” Mina said quickly and then felt a little embarrassed. She sounded like a desperate schoolgirl. “I just mean, if I ever could. You know how I feel about politicians, but they just seem so fascinating. And they know so much, I mean, they were there for the building of the pyramids, the Library of Alexandria, the fall of Rome . . . It would just be . . . sorry,” she trailed off with a sigh, “I’m rambling.”

“Don’t apologize, Mina, I adore how passionate you are about your interests. In fact, I suppose the party wouldn’t be so drab if I had company as wonderful as your own.”

“Really?” she asked, no longer trying to hold back her excitement.

“Of course! I’d be happy to have you as my plus one. Would it be presumptuous of me to ask for a small favor in return?”

Blinded by her joy and affection for him, Mina happily asked him what he had in mind.

“Would you sing for me, if I ever needed you to?”

“You don’t mean a normal song, do you?” she asked.

“No, though those are truly wonderful. No, I do mean use your power to help me out, if I ever found myself in a bind,” he clarified and suddenly the mood had shifted, ever so subtly.

Mina paused, carefully considering her next words. “Alastor, if you really ever needed me, you know I’d do my best to be there for you.”

His smile widened, going unnaturally from one end of his face to the other. He held out his hand as if to shake hers, and a halo of green light surrounded it. “Care to make it a deal, then?”  

Mina stepped back as if slapped. Suddenly all her attraction to this man was replaced by alarm and dread.

Alastor caught the distressed look on her face and closed his hand, the green light around him extinguishing as he quickly took on his usual appearance.

“It’s just a little thing, Mina, no need to get upset.”

“Sorry, I tend to get upset when I’ve realized just how stupid I’ve been,” she snapped back.

“Oh darling, don’t be dramatic. I wasn’t asking for your soul,” he said, and she hated the way he was brushing off her concern.

“Not this time, but eventually you would, wouldn’t you?” she said, and Alastor stood straighter at her words as if she had caught him in the act of something nefarious and Mina’s heart broke as she realized that’s exactly what had happened. “So, this whole thing between us was just a plan to get me to trust you?”

God, it was embarrassing how sad she sounded.

Alastor tilted his head in his usual display of uncertainty. “I’m not sure what you mean, I thought we’ve had quite a lovely time of it lately.”

“And it was all just an act, wasn’t it? You’ve been exactly what I’ve wanted so that when the time came, you thought I’d be dumb enough to make a deal with you. Well, congratulations, you really were convincing there for a while, I really believed you cared for me. But this isn’t happening, Alastor. There’s nothing you could ever do to make me accept a deal.”

He walked around her, his hands once again behind him. “Don’t be so certain of that, Mina. Everyone wants something eventually. Even I do. And I do care for you. Those are the reasons why I’m making the deal with you. I could benefit from your abilities, and I trust you enough to keep your end of the bargain.”

“Then why make a binding deal if you trust me? I would have helped you, even if you hadn’t offered me something in return.”

“That’s just the way I work, darling,” he said with a sneer, “I thought you knew that.”

“I should have,” she said, “I really should have. But this is over now, Alastor. I’m going home.”

Mina hadn’t earned her right to portals yet, so she had a long way to go before she got home. She had to walk for a while to get out of the park and constantly checked over her shoulder to make sure Alastor wasn’t following her. Even still, she knew about his ability to hide in the shadows and didn’t feel certain she was actually safe and alone until she was out of the park and able to get a cab.

Once home, she pulled off her clothes and wrapped herself under the covers, doing her best to ignore the silent tears that dampened the pillow beneath her.

___

Alastor fumed on his way out of the park. He was not used to being denied what he was after, and he was definitely not used to making mistakes. The degree in which he had underestimated Mina’s desire for freedom was embarrassing. He had been so certain that he had his claws in her. She had been so clearly infatuated with him that he assumed he could get away with even more than what he had presented her with; he had been playing it safe and it still backfired on him.

It was just a simple deal and she had acted like he’d killed her puppy in front of her.

He lashed out at another demon who was out for an evening stroll. The man was behind him, keeping an awkward pace with him, his shoes were squeaking, and he was just too close to Alastor. Without turning to look, his shadows sprung out from his back and grabbed hold of the oblivious walker, wrapping him up in tentacles, and throwing him into a thick group of trees. Alastor heard the scream and then the squelch of the man’s body being impaled and sighed in satisfaction. Now he could think clearly without distraction.

He had been playing nice with Mina. She was enjoyable to be around; honestly everything about her he had found to be quite pleasant. Over the weeks they had spent together, he had really come to care a bit for her. And despite her initial misgivings about the darker side of his nature, Alastor hadn’t missed how she looked at him when he displayed his power. She liked it. So he never had any intention of allowing harm to come to her, he just wanted to own her power for himself. He could have done far worse to her, and she didn’t appreciate that.

Normally he enjoyed causing fear in people; especially if it was an overdramatic display. If some poor soul recognized him on the street and took off running and screaming, even if Alastor had no malicious intentions towards them in that moment, he usually found some enjoyment in it. Even when they had first met, he had enjoyed the little glimpses of fear in Mina’s eyes whenever his attention was on her.

That night, however, it deeply bothered Alastor how much Mina had been repulsed by his offer. She had looked at him like he had betrayed her.

He couldn’t understand why it had upset her so much and he really didn’t understand why it upset him that she was upset.

Once he was back in his tower and calmed down, he began to formulate a plan. Convincing Mina was not going to happen, so he was going to have to trick her. Force her. But once he had the deal made and her soul was his, she would see that it wasn’t as awful as she believed. He wanted her power at his disposal which meant keeping her alive and well. It was just getting them to that point that would be tricky, but he now realized he was going to have to be cruel to be kind.

___

After a couple weeks of setting things into motion, the opportunity presented itself while Mina was out shopping with a couple of her friends from work. Alastor kept an eye on them as they had dinner, stopped in a little boutique, then a bookstore, and then finally settled into the right outdoor lounge patio and ordered drinks.

Though they had never been there together before, Mina had mentioned it as one of her friend’s favorite places, and since she had been making a point to avoid Cannibal Town since his mishap with her, Alastor figured she would come here sooner or later. So, he had made sure to plant someone who owed him a favor as a server there, with the express intent of that demon slipping something into the drinks there.

He thought date rape drugs were sleezy and desperate, but he wasn’t above cheating to get his way in a deal, and he needed not only Mina, but her friends, and everyone else in that bar to be a lot more helpless than usual if things were to go his way. No one would feel the effects until they tried to use their power.

Then he needed the chaos to begin.

A fight, very much orchestrated by himself, broke out on the inside of the lounge. At first, Mina and her friends only watched in mild amusement as the brawl got larger. Before long though, it got out of hand, because Alastor’s shadow had slunk behind the bar and set the entire shelves of liquor on fire.

There were a few unlucky souls that got trampled inside and burned, but most of them were able to escape, and the sudden surge of people coming out from within the bar pushed everyone from the patio and onto the street, and separated Mina from her friends.

It was complete disorder and even when the crowd was able to break up a bit, Mina couldn’t relocate her companions. They were living in an age before cell phones, which are so handy in emergency situations. Also, coincidentally, Alastor had his shadow grab them and transport them into a couple of locked rooms in buildings nearby. They would get out, eventually. Once the drugs wore off and they were able to use their powers again.

Mina seemed cool and collected in contrast to what was left of the crowd still running about in the streets, though she was obviously looking around for the women she had arrived with. Alastor watched in amusement as she became more irritated with the demons that were losing themselves in their panic. With the distance between them and the noise of the crowd, he couldn’t hear her voice, but at one point she had pulled herself against the wall of the building across the street from the bar, and it was evident in the movement of her mouth that she was singing, likely trying to calm the crowd into order. Even from his high vantage point, Alastor could see the growing look of concern on Mina’s face as realization dawned on her. Her power bound; she was suddenly as vulnerable as she was when she was alive.

His wicked smile broadened, as the green glow of his own magic poured from his mouth and eyes, and he sent the burst of energy towards the flames of the building. They burst forth from what was left of the windows and doorways, crawling along the street below and licking up the walls of the adjacent buildings.

From the green flames came his little army; the tiny remains of the souls of Overlords past. They were small and weak without his command, but when directed they could tear a body apart like demonic puranas. This perfect hell storm of fire and demons spread through the street, devouring dozens as it went, and then chased the fleeing form of Mina into a dead end.

To her credit, she had made it quite a way away before she ran out of the options. She had tried every outlet there was to get to a more open area, but the flames had always gotten there before her, blocking her way.

He had her caught in a narrow alleyway, surrounded on three sides by several stories of tall brick that she couldn’t scale without access to her full demon form. Flames consumed her only exit. She looked skeptically at the wall of fire that paused just there, caging her in.

Alastor formed from shadow behind her, watching as she stared into the flames, her body backlit by the unnatural green glow. He was impressed at how in control of her feelings she seemed to be, even in this dire situation he had built around her.

“I can hold it back for a little while, but eventually,” he said, as the flames moved forward another couple feet, “those flames will make their way in here.”

Mina didn’t jump at the sound of his voice, nor did she show any signs of fear. Instead, her shoulders slumped, and when she turned to face him, she just looked tired. It was once again not the reaction Alastor had been expecting.

“What did you do to me?” she asked in a small voice.

“Why, I did nothing! But, it would seem as if someone slipped something into the drinks at that bar. How unfortunate for the patrons there tonight.”

Mina reached out to slash at him, but he turned to shadow just as her claws made contact with his arm. He reappeared a few feet away from her, a tear in his jacket sleeve. He admired the damage with a grin.

“My, you are fast.”

“Fuck you, Alastor.”

“Now is that anyway to speak to someone who is offering to save your life?”

The flames jumped closer again and Alastor could feel the blistering heat of them, but Mina kept her back turned to the fire, keeping an eye on him instead.

“Make your offer,” Mina challenged.

“Had you accepted my offer the other night, I would have been satisfied with just having access to your powers. For a while, at least,” he winked at her but then his smile grew far more sinister, “but I’m afraid you’ve insulted me and I can’t stand for that. So now the stakes are higher. Give me your soul and you’ll come to no harm. Refuse, and well . . .”

The flames roared up above the height of the buildings surrounding them and the moving hoard of hungry demons could be seen dancing within the fire, waiting to tear their next victim apart.

“That’s not angelic fire,” she said after studying it for a moment, implying it wouldn’t permanently kill her.

“No,” Alastor agreed, anger showing through his features, making his smile look even more crazed than before, “but it burns slower than most. And when it’s done consuming you, you’ll end up like one of those-“ he gestured to the small black and white figures and their gnashing teeth, “-hardly anything left of you but a hungry, insatiable shell. I’d rather keep you just the way you are now, but it’s your choice, my dear.”

Mina said nothing, just stared at him for moment, making eye contact in a way that made Alastor feel completely stripped and bare beneath her gaze. He hated it, and nearly ended it there. His antlers grew heavy on his head, and he felt his shadow expand around him, ready to reach forward and tear her apart.

Instead, he reached out his hand.

“Choose me, Mina. It’ll be far less painful.”

He knew he looked every bit the monster he was in that moment, but he was over playing the gracious gentleman with her. Let her see what her choices really were and the position she had put them both in.

“I’d rather die,” Mina said and turned, walking directly towards the fire.

Alastor froze, eyes widening in surprise. Surely, she was trying to call his bluff, no one was that crazy, not even here in Hell. Mina had heard enough tales of his to know he wasn’t kidding, had spent more than thirty years perfecting her own craft with torture, she had to know what kind of torment she was choosing.

And then the flames touched her skirt and Alastor realized almost too late, that she had meant every word she had ever said to him. She would rather die, be burned, have her soul torn to pieces, and have nothing left of her identity, than to knowingly give up her free will.

He also realized all this at the same moment he figured out that he would never be able to let anything like that happen to her.

The flames touched her at the same moment his shadow grabbed her from behind, snuffing out the fire before it could hurt her, and the two of them disappeared from the alleyway a second before it became completely engulfed in burning green.

__

Alastor had never traveled so far in his shadow form and had never moved another soul by it for more than second, but it took several minutes for them to reach the park and the entire time he could feel her soul against his. Trying to scratch at him, claw at him, push him away, desperate to break free by any means. But she had no power, especially not in this form, where he always had complete control.

He deposited them on a vacant grassy lawn, purposefully dropping her on her backside while he stood towering above her, still in his full-antlered fury.

“You’re insane!” he spat out at her and was alarmed to find he was panting for air. The trip across the city carrying her by shadow had utterly exhausted him and he had to pause to catch his breath, feeling his body return to its normal height and shape as he did so.

Mina stood and every ounce of outrage she had been holding back in that alleyway broke free.

“I’m insane?! You just set fire to an entire city block and burned dozens of people alive because I hurt your feelings by saying ‘no?!’”

She once again tried to leap at him and he once again dodged her attack by dissolving into shadow, but only just barely.

Mina screamed and growled in frustration at her helplessness as she watched him reappear several yards away.

“Fucking men! You’re all the fucking same!”

 That struck a nerve, but Alastor remained silent, smiling all the while Mina continued with her rampage.

She picked up a sizeable rock and hurled it at him, missing him by a few feet.

“Misogynistic piece of shit! You think you’re a better man than others because you don’t use women the same way they do, but you still use us! You can’t appreciate anything unless you own it!” She picked up another stone and threw it, this time getting a little closer to her mark. Mina took a deep sigh and steadied herself. “Well it stops with me. You can hurt me, kill me, threaten my friends, throw everything you’ve got at me, Radio Demon. You’ll. Never. Own. Me.”

Alastor continued to observe her, meeting her eyes, completely and utterly at a loss at what to do next.

“Oh, you fucker, do something!”  she screamed, “don’t just stare at me! Hurt me, tear to me pieces, c’mon! You’re the big, bad Overlord, so fucking act like it! Get it over with!”

“Are you crying?” he asked, not as a jab at her, but in honest confusion.

Mina wiped her face with a sharp motion of her sleeved arm, having been too distracted by her tantrum to notice.

“Fuck you,” she spat, “I’ve never been so fucking angry in my life, of course I’m crying!”

She turned away from him to hide her face and for a second, he felt the need to go to her. He took a step forward before he caught himself.

This was not what he had wanted. He thought he had been so willing to punish her for turning him down but when push came to shove, he hadn’t been able to follow through. Now she was hurt, if only emotionally, and it was all his fault and he hated it.

He started laughing.

Mina turned back around, looking at him like he had grown a second head.

“Stop it,” she said, and it made him laugh harder. She thought he was laughing at her and it made the whole situation even funnier.

“Stop it!” she repeated and marched towards him.

He sat down in the grass, elbows on his knees, and put a hand to his head as he continued to lose his mind.

He was so fucked.

Mina pulled up short, put off from her approach by how completely insane he looked.

“Jaysus, you have completely lost it,” she whispered, and took a couple tentative steps away from the Overlord having a mental breakdown in front of her.

“Oh,” Alastor sighed as he began to regain control of himself. Still chuckling, but no longer lost in his laughing fit, he stood, dusting off the front of his pants and straightened his bow tie. “What an entertaining evening we have had.”

Mina remained silent.

“You are free to go, my dear.”

“Am I supposed to believe that?” she asked.

“I don’t really care if you ‘believe’ me or not, but please . . . leave,” he huffed.

He no longer felt like laughing or smiling, though the latter he couldn’t stop. What he wanted most of all was to put as much distance between himself and this sudden source of weakness of his as possible.

“You’re just going to let me go? After all that? Why?” she demanded.

Alastor sighed.

“It seems I’ve changed my mind. And I never want to see you again.”

@saccharine-nectarine, @inuhalfdemon

#hazbin hotel #hazbin alastor #alastor fanfiction #alastor #alastor x oc #alastor hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel fanfiction #alastor fic #alastor fanfic #alastor x reader #alastor the radio demon #the radio demon #alastor hazbin #hazbin hotel alastor #the fire in the sin

[rubyuji]

Bounce Back (Lee Chan) ₊˚ʚ 🌱 ₊˚✧ ﾟ.

Genre: Angst (full on because I’m depressed as shit)

Warnings: None

Synopsis: Seeing you with his best friend suddenly made him want to bounce back to the night you confessed your love.

Note: Trying out a new layout for blurbs / drabbles because these are shorter and lazier works I guess? Anyways, I’m working on a lot but I’m trying to find things to fill up the gaps between long ass works of mine. Don’t forget to like + reblog as a way of showing my work support! Happy reading!

WC: 477

His heart ached for you endlessly. He’s witnessed you being turned down by everyone you liked more than once, and Chan felt the guilt eating up at him, knowing he was now part of the lineup of people who hurt you.

Only now he could only watch as someone else sweeps you off your feet, knowing he’ll treat you better than he ever will.

“Will I ever be worthy of love Chan?” You cried softly. The night he turned you down was one he would never forget, your tear-stained face leaving a permanent scar in his heart and the back of his mind.

“I don’t understand what the problem is, I’m just so tired of being rejected all the damn time. Is there something wrong with me? What can I do to be better? I feel like I’m lacking in every way,” The words you uttered haunt him every day, knowing he had grown feelings for you too late now.

Chan watches as you laugh along with his best friend, Seokmin. The man had pursued you not too long after Chan had rejected you and he tried his very best to win your heart over, which he managed to do successfully.

“Chan, listen, I like Y/n and I heard that she’s always been turned down by the ones she liked. Do you think she’d still let me in her heart?” Seokmin frantically asked Chan.

The younger could only nod while watching him Facetime you in the kitchen and hearing you say yes to him asking if he could take you out. At least someone was willing to put in the effort to win you over before jumping into a relationship, and you both knew Seokmin well enough, so it was a lot on his part.

The first few days were bittersweet, he would see Seokmin on the phone with you and see how he dressed up for a date. It got to the point where Mingyu, Minghao, and Seungkwan would constantly ask why he was in and out of the dorms so often with a happy grin on his face while his eyes sparkled.

Chan gradually noticed that despite you still staying friends with him and not letting anything awkward get in between you, you were also starting to become more distant after his best friend had slowly but surely started to win your heart over.

He would see your stories on social media being filled with flowers, dates, or small gifts, all from Seokmin whom you’ve tagged in every single one. Chan was happy for you, and he knew you deserved to be happy, but a part of him had also wished that he wasn’t an idiot that night and tried to work things out between you two.

Now he’s watching Seokmin getting down on one knee and proposing to you whilst tears stream down your face. You deserved all the love his friend gave you, but to him, he turned you down at what cost?

© rubyuji 2024’ -. no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any manner without the permission from the publisher.

#kpop #kpop ff #kpop one shot #kpop oneshots #kpop au #kpop angst #kpop fluff #kpop drabbles #kpop blurbs #kpop fic #kpop imagines #seventeen #seventeen ff #seventeen oneshot #seventeen oneshots #seventeen au #seventeen angst #seventeen fluff #seventeen blurbs #seventeen drabbles #seventeen imagines #dino imagines #dino ff #seventeen fic #dino angst #dino fluff #dino oneshots #dino au #dino drabbles #dino blurbs

[marksbear2]

DENJI X OLDER MALE READER

Headcanons- Platonic!

Hello!! Today I’m trying to work on expanding my writing by writing for characters that I never wrote for!! So I’m doing Denji from CSM! Feel free to request!!

⚠️Warnings!!- Basically fluff, death mentioned at the end, killing, comforting and etc. Could be read as Gn.⚠️

— You was his gay awakening. Instead of falling for Makima he fell for you. He was attracted to your maturity and seriousness. Not really in the romantic way but he quickly moved on from Makima.

— He always tries to impress you by trying to kill devil’s in front of you and acting all high and mighty and unfazed whenever he just got his ass kicked. 

— Spending all of his free time following you like some lost puppy. 

— His love language is acts of service so whenever your in need of something he will get it done. You need a pencil? He’s there with all sorts of pens and pencils. 

— He’s willing to do anything for you. He puts you first before anyone else.

— The first time he saw you fight a devil, he was starstruck in awe as you fought the devil. He was amazed by your movements and skills.

— Whenever your back from a mission he always asks you how it went, are you okay, did you get hurt, asking about how dangerous or big the devil was. Like some little kid.

— He thinks your totally badass if you defat a devil with ease. Becomes some childlike fanboy whenever you do it.

— Your one of the few who treats him like an actual kid, and not some object who they can use him for. You treat him like his age. 

— Only really listens to you. Whenever the other hunters try to boss him around he ignores them but if you say something he’ll do it.

— You kinda became his father figure.

— He waits inside your office waiting for you too be done with whatever paperwork or assignments.

— He secretly hates the fact that your close friends with Kishibe. He’s confused as to how you two are friends, but he just guesses since your two are around the same age and maturity level.

— He hates getting lectured by you, and always storms off whenever your doing it just to come back a hour later.

— Whenever he turns back from his chainsaw form he leans on you support and mumbles an apology for getting your clothes dirty from the blood.

— You taking him out to eat and such so he can experience things without the others. 

— You calling out Makima out for her manipulative and evil behavior. You always took Denji away from her and try to keep him away from her.

— You and Kishibe teamed up to train him and power together.

— He would sit by your desk and tell you all his biggest and all the way to his smallest fears. 

— You being one of the few people he actually trust and comfortable around you. Always smiling around you.

— He hates seeing you hurt, it kills him to see you injured, he would drop the whole mission to move you to safety.

— If you ever die, say from getting killed by a devil he wouldn’t rest until the devil pats for it. He would slowly be consumed by anger and revenge to the point he would be willing to die for your revenge.

— Denji wouldn’t move on from your death. He would sit in your office just staring at the your chair.

— Accidentally calls people by your name. He doesn’t really catch himself doing it but the others noticed.

— He always freezes up whenever someone would say something that reminded him of you. Hearing a line you would usually say causes him to stop whatever he’s doing and his heart pounding in his chest.

— Denji hates it whenever would someone would use the brand of cologne you used before dying. He would kinda get angry and say “That’s Y/n’s cologne your using you know!?”

— If you had a devil contract he would ask about how you got it, what type of devil it is and if you got any cool powers from it.

— Accidentally called you dad one time and his face went red from embarrassment as he tried to clear up the accident.

— He isn’t ashamed to show his childish side around you. He feels safe and comfortable around you so he doesn’t feel judged.

THE END

#Denji #csm denji #chainsaw man #chainsaw man x reader #csm x reader #csm x male reader #denji x male reader #Denji chainsaw man x male reader #denji x reader #x male reader #x reader #x gn reader #x male y/n #anime #anime x male reader

[idontplaytrack]

I Dare You(to love me)

Jos Cleary-Lopez x physically disabled fem! reader

Warnings: MDNI, smut— oral, fingering, kissing, marking, slight overstimulation, first time(reader receiving), fluff, some angst, mentions to surgery & scars.

Reader’s first time reveals some truths about herself to Jos.

Bit of self-insert, sorry not sorry🫢

(Pictures used a from Tumblr & Pinterest)

“y/n, it is the middle of summer. You’re already sweating.” Jos says quietly, “Why are you still wearing long pants?”

You looked back at her, swallowing harshly as you began to panic. You couldn’t let her know, you could never. She’d hate you and be disgusted with you just like anyone else, then. The more you thought about it, the more you felt like crying. You feel the painful lump in your throat and the racing of your heart. Fiddling with your thumbs, you looked down and your crossed legs.

Jos doesn’t back down. She asks again, “Baby, what’s the matter? You can tell me anything, you know that.”

Your fists balled together trying to divert the tears that were pricking your eyes, away. “Look at me, y/n.” She says, moving closer to you. You shook your head, still avoiding her gaze. “Baby, please.” She repeated, hand reaching for your chin and tilting it up so she could see your face. The card game on the floor was long forgotten.

“You’ll just be disgusted by me like everyone else.” You croaked.

Her eyes narrowed, puzzled. But her gaze was soft and filled with obvious concern. “y/n, I don’t— I promise you, nothing about you could make me feel that way.”

“I don’t know how to tell you.” You admit. “I’m scared.” A tear slips from your eye. “I like you so much, Jos. And every time our make-outs almost turn into more and I just— I know I say no to it but it’s not because I don’t want to do it.”

She looks at you, still concerned but listening attentively.

For the lack of better words, you rolled up jeans to show her. “I…have cerebral palsy.” You revealed fearfully, “I had to get surgery twice when I was a kid to make sure I would stop tiptoeing and actually walk because my muscles and tendons were so tight. So by the end of twelve years, two surgeries and four long and very obvious, ugly scars…after many of my friends saw these and got terrified a disgusted by them…I don’t ever show them. Because I know better than to do that.”

She looked at them, then looked at you. You got self-conscious and looked away again. “Baby, they’re not ugly. Okay? And as cheesy as it sounds, they got you to where you are today. It improved your life, you could do more of what you wanted. Kids are assholes sometimes, they didn’t know better. But I do, I know you and those scars and your condition don’t define you. What does define you, however, is how you treat others with so much respect no matter how nasty some people can get with you. You’re kind, you cherish your friends, your family, me. You love me for who I am. y/n, you are perfect the way you are. You are my girlfriend- you’re perfect for me.”

You told yourself not to cry, but of course she still managed to make you cry. You shook your head, desperately rejecting what she was telling you. Your mind didn’t want to accept it even though it was the sort of response you’ve always wanted. You couldn’t believe your ears, and not in a good way. But damn, your eyes watching Jos…how that tank top perfectly hugged her figure? It was making you feel some things. You exhaled harshly, avoiding her eyes again while swiping the tears away, “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for? Don’t ever apologise for things that aren’t your fault.” Jos sat closer to you, tilting your chin again so she could see your face. “I’m just happy you trust me enough and told me so I know what to look out for and help you.”

“I’m not used to such a reaction so I just— I can’t believe it, literally.” You admit, “But thank you, Jos. For not ditching me like everyone else has.”

She doesn’t say anything but smile at you, cupping your cheek and leaning in. Her eyes silently asking for permission to kiss you. You were feeling so many emotions at once, but desire won. You nodded, allowing her to crash her lips onto your own.

“Ever done this before?”

“No.” You mumbled.

“That’s okay, I got you. We'll figure it out together." She assured, "You can show me how you like me to do it."

Fuck. You whined into the kiss as she deepens it, then telling you to sit in her lap. You pulled away, looking at her right in the eye. “Yeah, sit in my lap.” She confirms. “Okay…” You agreed hesitantly and let her pull you onto her lap. Her fingers hooked on the hem of your underwear and your jeans, “Take ‘em off, baby.” You gulped, lifting your hips and allowing her to pull both pieces of fabric down. You laugh, it was a bit of struggle but somehow neither of you thought of standing up to remove them first. Once the pieces of clothing were abandoned, you were sat comfortably in her lap. She tilts your face to kiss you, hand cupping and caressing your cheek. Once she started to kiss you, you’d forgotten about your worries. Her free hand was tentatively on your thigh but it soon started inching closer and closer to the juncture between your thighs.

“I’ll take it slow, okay?” She broke away, lips separating unwillingly. Jos looks at you, searching your eyes for the answer since you didn’t open your mouth to talk. “Yeah, yeah.” You finally managed to say, “Okay.” Jos starts kissing you again once she gets a confirmation from you, her fingers ghost your clit and you flinch. A second later, her fingertips were on your clit, rubbing slow circles on it to let your arousal grow for a while. You fought a whine that was caught in your throat, painfully swallowing it when you felt her slide a finger down towards your entrance. Your clit throbs, causing an ache and she’s definitely felt that little movement. Jos chuckles into the kiss, finger teasing your entrance for a little too long. Right before you could complain, she started pushing her finger in slowly. A whimper falls from your lips, muffled by the unending kiss. Jos takes this as her cue to pick up her pace, her hand’s also left your face and was now on one of your thighs to keep them open for her.

Jos laughs lowly, sending a shock down your spine, “You’re so wet, baby…” You whined at that, and the fact that she’s slid a second finger in. “Oh, shit.” She groans at your tightness, fingers staying still so you could get used to the feeling. “Does it hurt?” She asks quickly, gaze studying your face for any signs of discomfort. You mumbled incoherently and shook your head, “Keep going?”

“Okay.” She grins, moving her lips down to your neck while her fingers got back to work. Jos kisses a trail down the side of your neck, and when you let out a yelp at a certain spot, she went back to it and started to kiss it over and over, sucking and then biting down on it lightly. Shit.

You moaned, squirming in your position. Jos chuckles right into your ear, proud that she figured it out so easily. It only made you even whinier. “Baby~ are you close?” She teases.

Your breathing hitches.

“Tell me.” Jos said gently, handing caressing your thigh.

You breathed in then exhaled harshly, painfully admitting, “Yes.”

She smiles then pressed a kiss to your shoulder. Retracting her fingers as much as she could without leaving you, they were then forcefully jammed into you so she could hit your sensitive spot and push you over the edge. Jos did this a few times over before you started to clench erratically around her fingers.

“Shit.” You panted, “Oh, my God.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” She cajoled, “That’s good, just let it happen. I’ve got you.” Jos’ voice was so sweet, but her actions were so sinful— it drove you crazy. Your heart was beating in your ears, breathing coming out in short gasps, you were whining and whimpering…all because of Jos.

“Go on, baby. Come for me.” She whispers, “Come on.”

With a final push of her fingers poking at the spongy part deep inside you, you felt yourself unravel. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” You mumbled, leaning fully onto her while your head fell back onto her shoulder lazily. Jos keeps going though, until you let out particularly high-pitched cry and lifted yourself of her. She quickly removes her fingers from you and eased you back down into her lap while she whispered sweet words into your ears and caressed your thigh, “You’re okay, baby. You’re okay. Breathe, beautiful. You’re alright, I promise.”

————

Next thing you know, Jos lifts you off the ground and places you on her mattress. You locked eyes with her. She asks, “You…wanna go again?”

“Again?” You asked, a little bit winded while you leaned against the headboard, legs still apart while she knelt in between them.

She nodded, biting back an excited grin.

“So—”

“I’ll use my mouth if you’d like.” Jos continues.

“Oh.” You said back, the same giddy smile forms on your face again. Nodding your head, she moves, face to face with your dripping cunt, her ass tilted in the air. Dear God.

Jos was incredibly gentle, seeing that you’d just came once. Yet, you were still so sensitive and kept flinching. So, she went slower, and softer. You let out a ragged breath, she holds onto your inner thighs causing your hand to fall off your knee and limply onto your side. “Mm— fuck—” You murmured shakily, “Fuck— Jos— feels so good.”

Satisfied, Jos laughs, breath fanning against your heat and eliciting a whine and a string of profanities to spew from your lips. Jos fully attaches her mouth onto you, like she was trying to suck you dry. The sudden increase in intensity numbed your mind, causing your clit to throb harshly in her mouth and your wetness to leak out more and more every time she did it. You cried out, “Fuck!” You gripped the sheets beneath you, unsure of what the hell you could do with them other than that.

A long string of ‘oh, my god’ and ‘fuck’ coupled with her name comes from you without an end as she ruthlessly ate you out, helping reach your second high with ease. Your hips bucked right before you came, making Jos grip onto your thighs harder so you stayed put like this— closer to her face than ever. Your knees were giving way, though and she knew so she just let that happen too after a little bit. You fall back on the mattress, a whiny mess following her ministrations. Trembling as you came down from your climax, you were also breathless.

“Fuck, that was so hot.” Jos knelt again then sat down. Your gaze falls onto her face, and you were dumbfounded. Using her hand to clean off her face and chin that was dripping with your cum, she leans forward to capture your lips into her own. “Are you okay, baby?”

“Mhm.” You hummed, “I’m okay.”

Her hand strokes your cheek, “Good. You did so good, baby.”

You smiled blissfully, catching her gaze for a beat, “Fuck.”

“So beautiful, baby.” A similar smile creeps onto her face as she attacks you with kiss after kiss all over your face making you giggle.

“I love you.” You told her, arm resting on her shoulder as she sits before you and between your legs.

“I love you more, baby.” She seals the promise with yet another kiss, “I love you— so, so fucking much.”

————

🏷️ Tag list:

@ashecampos @auliisflower @cheesysoup-arlo @frogs00 @reneeswif3 @ludoesartnstuffs @pda128

#auli’i cravalho #jos cleary-lopez #the power(2023) #the power amazon #wlw fanfiction #fanfiction #queer #lgbtqia #smut #wlw smut #mdni #x reader #reader insert #female reader

[shikakunaras]

I’m getting real tired of my family telling me that “you just haven’t met the one that makes you feel in love like we did.” (which is a joke in itself bc they are divorced) Bc I don’t think I’ll ever feel that with anyone. I’m not pissed abt it. I am p content never being in a relationship with anyone ever again. Like s*x means/feels absolutely nothing to me and I hate having to mask and hide who I am bc I know I get Intense. My Audhd can be a lot for people and I understand that I won’t ever feel comfortable enough to truly be me. I also hate sharing my space and get overstimulated so fast. I know ur supposed to be best friends with your partner but, I can get the same feelings with my friends. So why bother. I only got into relationships bc that’s what everyone else was doing so I wanted to be normal. It could be the trauma talking, or being the Oldest Daughter (ick) syndrome or a secret third reason on why I feel like this. I know I’m missing something that everyone else seems to have but for once I’m not mad abt it.

#I’m reflecting #and I’m noticing #I’m just tired of people saying they can date someone with audhd #and then freak out bc I unmasked a little #like a few of my exs #I’m just treating people like I would my friends #so I’m unbothered and in my own lane #I have a date next week and I’m kinda on te fence abt just not doing it #i dont know #just dumping some thoughts #personal

[deityofhearts]

cheerleaders 🤝 equestrians (but specifically horse girls): your sport not being taken seriously by other people and being treated like a joke

#deity dialogue #when I was in middle school my computer teacher was also a football coach and would have ‘banter’ with the cheer coach (who was also an #assistant teacher for my math class btw she was so sweet she helped me a lot in class and also made me a bow which was stolen from me :( ) #about how ‘football was a real sport and cheerleading wasn’t’ LIKE ARE YOU KIDDING ME #jsut because cheerleaders look cute and are peppy and more often than not girls and women you don’t take anything they do seriously #do you understand the strength and agility and flexibility needed to be a cheerleader do you see the shit they’re doing and you have the #gall not to respect what they do as a sport??? i wasn’t a cheerleader but a few of my friends were and I respect them so much that shit must #have taken so much of everything #obvs I’m not covering the full scale of what it takes to be a cheerleader cause again I wasn’t one but like I’m so pissed whenever people #have the audacity to act like it’s not a serious sport and I’m mad at the same for equestrians as well. #Also generally I hate people who think cheerleaders are inherently awful and bitches like y’all shouldn’t generalize just because some #people in a group are mean or popularly portrayed as mean doesn’t mean it’s true my friends from school were sweet to literally everyone so #can it. this isn’t me like dismissing anyone who’s been bullied by anyone but don’t like assume everyone is terrible thanks bye #it’s the misogyny and we all know it :/ it affects men in the sports as well because if you’re a male cheerleader you’re treated badly and #it’s the misogyny and we all know it

[jutsuuu]

girl help I’m experiencing

#weird addendum but pls don’t reblog my vent posts??? why would you even want to???? #everything has been So Much lately and I wasn’t gonna vent but then I remembered this is my blog and I can do what I want #one of my best friends left the country last week and he’ll be gone for like two years and I’m so sad without him around #I mean he’s been messaging me every day since he left but it’s still hard not having him here yknow? #and I’m moving into his place but it requires a lot of work before I can so I’m always exhausted #and my joints have all but given out on me completely so I’m always covered in KT tape and braces #which doesn’t gel very well with moving furniture and heavy boxes #and I have no money so I need to be job searching but I can’t do that until I move. BUT I NEED MONEY TO MOVE #on top of that my grandpa died and there’s so much family drama involving that it’s unreal #and weirdly the thing I’ve recently felt bad about is I’ve been neglecting my self imposed Fandom Duties #maybe not fandom specifically but like. creative duties #I want to write fic. I want to draw. I want to read and comment on other people’s stuff #I also really want to do more of my non fandom writing because I want to get something published this year. but i got no good idea aaack #or early next year #and I’ve just had like. no time at all to do any of it and the time I have had I’ve been too drained to do it #ughghghghghghggh #I think today I will drink and try to write something. as a treat. #after I go on a reblog spree to bury this because emotions are very embarrassing #anyway how are you?

[plumdale]

I was born and raised here in the states and still culture shock is so real likerjfjdkdj I’m always taken aback by v evident individualist attitudes/behaviors expressed by some non-Latinos like wdym pay you back for the single slice of pizza you offered me 😭😭😭

#one of the many things I really love ab being Mexican is the give > receive attitude many people adhere to #come one come all !!!! #We love sharing. and treating each other to meals #like acts of service is the love language for many Latinos I’m pretty sure lol #it always shocked me in school when my friends would hide food from their own siblings or refuse to share with anyone #at my house it’s pm everybody eats or no one does lmaoo #And familial love and affection is so real! #also the expectation of moving out at 18 and being completely self sufficient at that age isn’t rlly a thing for us #and I know a lot of this isn’t particular to just Latinos bc I have heard from ppl of other ethnic groups who share the same sentiments #nonsims #txt post

[arthur-r]

what’s really embarrassing is my roommate on the phone with his mom saying “yeah i’ve been getting really sloppy i haven’t cleaned in a week it’s terrible” and my side of the room is just like that. all of the time. and i feel guilty but he also hasn’t ever said anything to my face he moved my stuff some at the beginning of the year but has never talked to me about it and i’m also so fucking ill that i just cant really handle adding that to my list while trying to also not fail school. so here i am being a terrible person i guess. did i tell you guys about turtle-person. have i showed my bracelets. i’m gonna go to sleep but in the morning i need to show my bracelets

#help i have work tomorrow. i also feel sick and strange. wish me luck #the sun was around today which was incredible but also i think it gave me too much mental energy #cause for the first time in forever i had the brightness of spirit to go for a walk. but that’s not the same as having the blood flow for it #so i think i overexerted myself cause of being finally happy and mentally energized i forgot about being physically disabled #i also had to explain POTS to somebody today and she was literally like ‘oh is that the thing where you need to have salt’ and NO like #i do have a really high salt intake to cope with POTS. but that’s not the fucking thing yknow?? like no that’s not what the thing i have is #it has nothing to do with salt. salt is a fun little coincidence that it can help with water retention which in turn helps with POTS #and it raises blood pressure is i think the other reason? but anyway idk i would honestly rather she just not know about it than have like #that very particular tiktok version of it like i am so glad for internet knowledge being spread and stuff and i mean. i guess even the posts #that i’m about to complain about are good for making people feel like they’re not alone. so maybe it’s fine. but i was going to complain of #the videos that are like ‘‘that one POTS friend’’ and it’s just like. salty food. instead of like. having to sit down?? BEING FATIGUED?? #and like whatever. whatEVER but i wish it wasn’t getting conflated with one particular little way of treating it. even though i use that way #i don’t have needs-a-lot-of-salt-disease. like that’s not the point. that’s not the issue. it’s not a salt deficiency. salt just helps #and it doesn’t FIX it. it just helps. that’s all #ANYWAY EVERYTHING IS FINE. i feel sick though. but i’m gonna sleep and i’ll be fine #i miss before i had a job cause then i could sleep all day if i skipped class and it would be really nice. but now i have a job i would be #missing on my responsibilities for. and I don’t actually have accommodations. but im gonna sleep i’ll be fine #and library book cart is actually so rollator. like as far as being able to walk the library situation is such a win #anyway i’m gonna go to sleep now. but yeah idk i’m sick and a mess what else is new. but i have something whatever i’m good theres something #unrequited love for life or something like that. ok im gonna go to bed sorry for being weird and strange all the time!!!! #me. my post. mine. #delete later

[crowhyun]

Life Update:

I’ve just graduated from flight attendant training, and I’ve earned my wings yall! I have about a week before I start inflight training and that’ll last about four days, and then i have another two-day training course, but as of now, I’m pretty much a fully certified flight attendant!

I’ve also finally found a place to live once I get to my base, as I was worrying about that a lot lol but things are going great.

I’m just a bit sad, because even though I felt like shit most of the time getting up so early and going to school for 10-12 hours a day, it was really fun, and I already miss seeing my classmates and talking to them everyday. We started out with 22 and ended up with 17, but it was still a big class compared to a lot of other graduating classes lol. Some of my classmates have already went on to their scheduled inflight training, and I’ll be the last one to go lol bcs mine is scheduled for the 26th, and four ppl have left already so I’m sad. My roommate is leaving tomorrow, though, and tbh I’m not sad abt that, I’ll be along in the hotel room for 4 days before I leave lol.

But yeah, I just wanted to tell y’all what’s going on. I’m finally going to get back to writing a bit for the free time I have while here, but I’m not sure if i’m going to post any works yet.

#i’ve also been feeling a bit lonely #although i’ve become friends with my classmates we aren’t rlly friends #idk how to explain #but you know how there are ppl you can talk to when you see them and have a nice convo #but y’all aren’t that close #it’s smth like that #i want to be close but none of them ever invite me out or voluntarily talk to me like they do others #everyone has their ‘best friend’ but me #and a lot of the time i’m alone #i’ve tried rlly hard to be extroverted and happy and smiley #and just a person that is easily approachable #but i guess i have to try harder #when we’re we talking about first impressions #a lot of #people said that i seemed rlly standoffish and shy at first #and like damn #i put on a whole new persona coming here and it’s still not good enough lol #idk what to do abt that tbh #i just wish ppl would treat me like they treat everyone else #this got mad depressing lmao

[lesbiansanemi]

I need to Get Out of the Midwest. I think it’s draining me of all life and energy like some kind of regional soul-sucking vampire

#everything just constantly feels so miserable and ugly here #the landscape. the vibes. the people #idk. I used to not mind the Midwest that much #but in the past year I feel like I’m gnawing on the bars of a too small kennel #or some kind of enclosure not meant for me #idk maybe I’m being dramatic. but just. rah rah rah #I do not think I could live the majority of my life here I would go insane #I think part of it is also I just want/need to start over somewhere completely new #I’ve lost connections with literally everyone I’ve known my whole life #I am not close with my family and hate most of them and my friends…. #ugh. that’s a whole other post that essentially boils down to #I have lost the vast majority of my friends in the past year and honestly it’s a relief #because we were so incomparably different and I’ve realized a lot of them kinda didn’t treat me/others well #and once I had that realization there was no going back I could not comfortably be around them #there are only two ppl in this vague area that I still feel deeply connected to and care about in a fierce way #(Lee and Jordan you are the real ones) #and idk. I just. I hate where I live I hate my job I don’t feel truly connected to ANYTHING anymore #if I’m going to be so disconnected from everyone around me and feel like I’m constantly just wandering around #I feel I should at least do it somewhere I would enjoy the actual location of more #but I am stupid and resigned my lease #so I have to stay here for at least another year #unless I wanna be REAL dumb and irresponsible #but I’m too anxious for that kinda thing #as much as I daydream I could not uproot myself to move and massive distance without an insane amount of planning #and decent financing plans #so el oh el #kaz rambles

[forcedjuggalofication]

narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real narcissistic abuse isn’t real n

#vent/rant in tags #some people are JUST ABUSIVE. #i’m not gonna lie - it hurts so fucking bad to have done so much work all by myself - untreated - unmedicated - no resources - #just guesswork - just to have it not fucking matter because people discard me the SECOND they learn about my #TRAUMA BASED fucking disorder. #it’s not my fault. i was a CHILD. i was a CHILD who should have been cared for - not neglected - isolated - and abused. #i’m sorry that maybe some people take that and repeat the cycle - but everything about that told me that i HAVE to be BETTER - #i CANNOT repeat those same fucking behaviours that wounded me so deeply and ruined my fucking life #IT IS NOT MY FAULT. #and you know fucking what? my biggest abuser had NPD - and i rejected my diagnosis for YEARS. because of terms like narc abuse. #and because people demonized him on the basis of being a narcissist instead of on the basis of being an abuser. #rejecting my diagnosis only hurt me more - and hurt the people around me more. #i am so tired. i’m just a person. i am just a human being. i try so hard - i don’t even want recognition or praise for trying - #i’m just tired of being thrown away - i’m tired of being treated like my abuser just because of my diagnosis #he quite literally tried to murder me - believe me if you want - i don’t care - i was a child and he tried to murder me and i still think #that there is no excuse to demonize NPD just because he has it. #fuck all the way off - go die - i don’t care #none of my friends would ever know i have NPD because i’m not a fucking stereotype - i’m not an evil monster - i don’t want to hurt anyone- #the way i’ve been hurt - i NEED to be the best - i NEED to be as good as possible #stop demonizing my disorder - please - i am begging #screaming into the void #NPD #narc abuse #narcissistic abuse