#what if he’s all that total white but he’d make his team total black

[dailycaligura]

Day 47. Caporegime.

Waiting for another mission to get started.

#fear and hunger #caligura #lazy again but at least stylish in some sort #what if he’s all that total white but he’d make his team total black #like he’s the main man here and his team just part of the background #like people changing the scene in the theatre being in black to not be seen while doing job #that’s cool

[ddarker-dreams]

Calcified Cage.

Yan Bucciarati x F Reader x Yan Fugo.

A glimpse into a "bad end" from Scarlet Ribbons.

Warnings: Yandere themes, unhealthy relationships, implied power imbalance. Word count: 1.5k.

Pannacotta Fugo knew on an intrinsic level that nothing good was to come from this private meeting with Bucciarati. 

For someone who prefers to make judgments on empirical merit, this odd bout of premonition felt uncharacteristic, further adding to his unease. For all intents and purposes, it shouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary. Bucciarati often consulted him in private over various Passione concerns. 

In private, yes, but never in the total seclusion of his humble home along Napoli’s outskirts. 

Fugo can count the number of times he’s been here on one hand. Normally, if Bruno needed to discuss an issue with Fugo, he’d ask him to stay behind after the gang finished eating their meal at Libeccio. The mixing of business and home life is considered taboo in this profession. Although Bucciarati is a bachelor who lives by himself, Fugo figured that he adhered to this unspoken virtue on principle alone. 

When Fugo finishes reading the letter in his grasp, it’s no longer a mystery why his leader has taken these precautions. The paper trembles like a leaf in the wind, Fugo’s grasp on it weakening. 

“You understand what this means, don’t you?”

Bucciarati’s voice sounds far away, despite his position a few feet across the table. Ringing resounds in Fugo’s ears, quiet at first, yet building in an all-consuming crescendo. The melody it weaves is melancholic at its core. A tragedy cast by the indifferent divine, thrusting him into the spotlight, where he stumbles through his lines as a lead character. 

He has to tell himself to breathe. 

Inhale. 

For if what’s written crawls into reality— 

Exhale. 

—He’ll no longer have a reason to.

Fugo downs a glass of water his host generously had the forethought to provide. His fingers grip the rim tight enough that his knuckles nearly turn as white as his complexion. 

“Are you asking for my legal counsel?” he manages to get out. There’s a rasp in his voice that he can’t hide, regardless of his best efforts. He can feel his collected mask melting from his face like wax on a candle. There won’t be any welding it back into place once it’s gone. It’ll require time to mold one in its predecessor's likeness — time he most certainly doesn’t have.

“No,” Bucciarati gives an answer he somehow already expected. “I want to hear your personal opinion.” 

“My… personal opinion? Is that really necessary?”

“It is.” 

It shouldn’t be. This is about as black and white as a dilemma can get. Trying to mix the colors on a palette to form gray would be impossible; a fool’s wish. The shades are so diametrically opposed that he’d sooner find success in combining oil and water. 

His esophagus burns like he’d just drunk hard liquor instead of water. 

“This is… good,” he fights back a wince at the wooden delivery, “For— for her, I mean.” 

Something tells him that even if he had put on the performance of a lifetime, Bucciarati still wouldn’t have believed him. 

“For her,” Bucciarati echoes dryly.

Fugo inwardly curses his clumsy word choice. There’s no point in concealing his cards, he may as well have just laid them all out for Bucciarati’s viewing pleasure. He loosens his tie. The quiet intensity radiating from Bucciarati is suffocating. He’s reminded then that while he greatly cares for and respects the man sitting across from him, Bruno Bucciarati is, at his core, a mobster. 

And there’s nothing more dangerous than a mobster who feels his family is under threat. 

You are, in essence, the heart of Bucciarati’s ragtag team. 

This letter is proposing to transplant you into another body. An objectively healthier body. 

To do without you would be to live as a dead man walking. 

Fugo feels the phantom pain as if his chest cavity was being split in half by spectral hands. No anesthetic, no scalpel. Just raw, brutish force. Your nonsensical questions he pretends to find irritating are his veins. The blueberry pancakes dutifully arranged in a smiley face on his birthday, the arterioles; how you reach for his hand in crowded areas so as not to get lost, the capillaries. 

You are snowball fights and hot cocoa in the winter, beach trips and shared gelato in the summer. 

(“I can’t ever decide which flavor I want,” you’d lament, wilting all the while. It never took long for you to blossom again. “I know! Fugo, get this flavor, and I’ll get this one. That way I can try both!” 

He’d sigh and pretend to consider it as if he hadn’t made up his mind the second you smiled at him. “Fine. I’d rather not hear you complaining if you ordered something you don’t like, so… just this once.” 

“Just this once,” you repeated. 

He’s never turned down your request in the times you’ve asked since). 

Bucciarati leans back in his seat. He crosses his legs, folds his hands onto his lap, and smiles. Fugo is so put off by this shift in demeanor, the dissonance both perplexing and unsettling him. He sets the damning paper down for the temporary reprieve straightening it out provides. It points west, toward the window behind Bucciarati, where the sun’s final rays for the day crawl through. 

“You love her,” Bucciarati says it as casually as one describing the weather. 

Fugo’s entire body goes numb. 

“... I do.” 

“Do you love her enough to make her hate you?” 

He’s been on the defensive throughout this entire interaction. He’ll allow himself one retort, one provocation. 

“Do you?” 

The softening of Bucciarati’s expression says it all. 

“We shouldn’t be having this conversation if I didn’t.” 

Right. Fugo isn’t sure if this is a conversation so much as it is an interview, his most pivotal test since joining Passione’s ranks. For once, he didn’t need to study. Passing with flying colors isn’t the issue. It’s deciphering the purposefully cryptic manner that Bucciarati has been conducting himself that poses an obstacle. 

However, when he stares into Bucciarati’s resolute eyes, he thinks he might be starting to crack the code. 

The promise he made to himself to reprise his role of an obsequious soldato is broken as easily as it was made. 

“Forgive me for being blunt, Bucciarati,” he means it too, “But what exactly are you getting at here?” 

“I won’t be able to conceal this for long.” 

Nausea swirls inside him and bile claws its way up his throat. He swallows it down, despite how dry his mouth feels. 

“The way I see it, we have two choices,” Bucciarati takes a deep breath. Pausing like this must mean he doesn’t savor the flavor of what he’ll say next. “Her happiness or ours.” 

It’s debt that brought you into Passione and debt that’ll keep you here. Fugo considered how you were taken advantage of in such a desperate position truly unfortunate. Cruel, even. The offer of a loan that’d take considerable financial strain off your family. You didn’t know to look for jargon that’d increase the interest rate to something unholy, Passione was clever like that. 

The worst mistake of your life is what led you to be the best thing in his — and so many others would attest the same.  

However…

You are bright, but even the most radiant light is destined to flicker. 

Living under the same roof as you for two years has taught Fugo much. He sees it, how you hesitate to take the phone when he tells you your parents are on the line. He hears the telling hitch in your voice when you spin another falsehood about why you can’t come home for the holidays again this year. He feels the wetness on your pillowcase when he goes into your room to retrieve a book you borrowed from him. 

Your debt is what shackles you here and this letter is offering to break the chains. 

You've successfully won over many key individuals during your tenure. The would-be benefactor who penned this letter — Signore Conti — had deep influences and even deeper pockets. His wife had taken a particular liking to you during a bodyguard assignment. She must've caught wind of your predicament somehow and beseeched her husband to intervene.

Fugo sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "There's really no other way?"

"I'm open to suggestions, Fugo."

Questioning Bucciarati's resolve is just a weak attempt to stall for time. For Fugo to still be sitting here, even entertaining the possibility of snuffing out your future for the sake of maintaining his, he must've already made up his mind. The mere implication of Bucciarati's designs would've inspired righteous anger in most — not this internal weighing of pros and cons Fugo is neatly arranging on a scale.

"... We'll need to handle this delicately," Fugo says. His stomach feels like it's turning inside out. "We can't outright reject an offer like this from such an influential figure, it'd be considered an insult. Accept it on her behalf. Then... to ensure she can't go anywhere, I'll reach out to our contact in the bank and have her account frozen."

Bucciarati steeples his fingers. "It's a start."

That night, innumerable plans are formed, with you unknowingly starring as the centerpiece.

No matter how cruel, how unfair, it is silently agreed upon that you are their lifeblood, an organ essential to their survival.

And a heart cannot remain in place without the bones that make up its cage.

#bruno bucciarati x reader #bruno buccellati x reader #pannacotta fugo x reader #fugo x reader #jjba x reader #yandere jjba x reader #vento aureo x reader #part 5 x reader #yandere #yandere x reader #scarlet ribbons #my stuff

[or0ch1maru]

headcanons for playing just dance with the akatsuki members? 💃

This is honestly fucking hilarious and I’m the perfect amount of buzzed for this

I can’t stop laughing at imagining how this would actually go

Also, I haven’t played just dance in years so if I make a mistake in anything, let me know and I’ll edit it🫶🏻

•

Hidan:

•would be the type to forget to tighten the strap around his wrist, the remote going soaring when he swings his arm too hard. Bonus points if it hits another member or breaks something

•doesn’t play fair. AT ALL. Will knock into his opponent or shit talk to the point it distracts them

•I can see him being the type to play this game drunk, not buzzed, but drunk. His movements over exaggerated and sloppy. He thinks he’s doing amazing but in reality he looks like a fish out of water, flapping & flailing around

Kakuzu:

•he would rather give up all his money before playing something so ‘stupid’ and ‘childish’ and that says a lot lol

•would sit off to the side, watching as his comrades play and enjoy themselves. Just because he’s a grouch and doesn’t let loose like they do, doesn’t mean he’ll ruin their fun

•I can see him disappearing and hiding in his room to avoid Hidan’s constant begging and whining. He knows deep down Kakuzu would eventually give into him, even if it’s only to shut him up and Kakuzu doesn’t want to ‘stoop to that level’

Konan:

•omg, she’d be so good at it. Her movements smooth and languid. She doesn’t look out of place at all like Hidan does, moving as if she was a natural dancer

•ends up racking up the most points by the end of the game, beating everybody she plays against. Her focus controlled, even when up against Hidan, who tries to knock her knee out

•isn’t ashamed one bit, not even if the dance moves displayed come off corny to others, ignoring the chuckles of her mates as she copies the choreography

Pain:

•at the very beginning, he’d be shy. His movements stiff. His hands barely leaving the sides of his body as he copies what’s displayed on the screen

•would totally be flustered, cheeks red and an awkward smile plastered on his face as he feels all the eyes of his teammates on him as he dances

•it’s not until he’s like 5 drinks in, feeling a decent buzz when he finally lets go and dances like no tomorrow. Not giving a shit if he messes up

Kisame:

•the team cheerleader. Claps, cheers, and shouts as he encourages his mates to keep going.

•even though he’s skilled on the battlefield doesn’t entirely mean he’s a good dancer. With how big he is, his movements are erratic, taking up most of the space in front of the tv, and ends up knocking into his opponent a few times

•doesn’t care about points or winning as he’s simply enjoying bonding as friends and family. Knowing he’d cherish this moment forever

Itachi:

•just like Konan, his movements would be smooth, but also sharp and precise

•I also believe he’d be a little apprehensive at first, not because he feels like he’d embarrass himself or anything, but because he hasn’t been able to relax and have fun in a long time, having to grow up so early in life

•ends up having the time of his life, coming in second to Konan, and having a celebratory drink to commemorate his small victory

Tobi:

•would be an absolute clown about everything but truthfully, making everyone’s night even better

•I think he’d be shy, just like pain, but once he gets over it, would have a lot of fun. Focusing on the dance moves as much as possible even though he ends up missing a step time to time

•would take FOREVER trying to pick a song, I feel like he’d chose something by lady Gaga or Rihanna. Something fun and upbeat

Zetsu:

•honestly, I think he wouldn’t participate. Would linger and watch the others as they play. Taking post in his favorite spot in the wall or on the arm of the couch

•black and white Zetsu would be going back and forth between the two of them as white Zetsu wants to play but black Zetsu doesn’t. Ends up giving in and sitting aside the whole night

•would sneak back later once everyone has gone to bed or passed out drunk to play by himself

Sasori:

•would also think the game is ‘stupid’ but after a drink or two would be the first one with a remote in his hand, ready to dance

•once he gets in the zone, his mates all agreed he had a natural ‘talent’, not better than Konan or Itachi, but close to it. What his mates don’t know is that he comes into the living room to play time to time when nobody’s home

•when he’s not playing, he makes sure his friends have what they want or need. Snack, another beer, etc

Deidara:

•nervous baby for sure. At the beginning that is.

•When he wins his first match, beating Kisame in a landslide, that win, gets to his head. Ends up cocky and taunting everybody, only to lose his next match to Hidan.

•definitely flamboyant and extravagant with his moves. Almost hit Hidan in the face before his loss. Curses when he drops the remote. Completely forgot to even slide the strap on his wrist, which gave Hidan the chance to succeed

Orochimaru:

•at first, they’d simply enjoy watching and observing their team as they play and have fun. For some reason I can see them writing things down for their research. Something about how bonding is essential for security and happiness in a friend group

•orochimaru would be enjoying the drinks more than the game, drink after drink to help unwind, realizing how much they truly enjoy being around others compared to being stuck in the lab all day

•would play a round or two towards the end of the night for the hell of it. Using the excuse of ‘it’s for my research’ instead of coming clean about their real reason. They wanted to experience the fun but they’d never admit that

I had lady Gaga’s, heavy metal lover on repeat while writing this. I love her and I feel like a handful of the akatsuki would too🫶🏻

#akatsuki #akatsuki members #orochimaru #orochimaru stories #konan headcanons #zetsu x reader #kakuzu headcanons #orochimaru story #sasori akatsuki #hidan headcanon #itachi headcanons #kisame fluff #deidara headcanon #obito headcanons #tobi headcanon #zetsu #Zetsu headcanon #pain akatsuki

[chaotictiamat]

CONSUMPTION

Summary: You were reborn. Free from your urges. However, the job was not done yet until Astarion could taste the same freedom you now had. One more fight, what is the worst that could happen?

Pairing: Astarion x f!Reader/Dark Urge

Word Count: 1.7k

Warnings: Angst. There are no happy endings here. Grief.

Song Recommendation: Poison & Wine by the Civil Wars

A/N: It has been literally ages since I've written anything, but I had this idea floating around in my head and had to get it out there.

_________

Everything had been so right, almost perfect. They were right their at the cusp of that perfection. That happy ending all the bard songs sung about. The crescendo building to a triumphant chorus. Until it was not. Until the notes broke and smashed together into a cacophony of sound that tore and sundered everything apart.

She had failed. Failed the one person in the world who needed her most. Failed the one person who had embraced her broken mind and dark urges. Failed the one person who fought so hard to free her. He witnessed her rebirth. He relished in her freedom. He basked in her light. When her heart beat once more and her eyes flashed open, they had sought his red ones immediately.

Relief. Joy. Longing.

They both knew, they had one more monster to fell before total freedom. Well, two really, but the netherbrain was a distant thought. A footnote in their story. In that silent stare, covered in her own blood on Bhaal’s temple floor, they promised each other they would bring him the same freedom she now had.

A promise broken.

It was such a stupid mistake. The fight with Cazador and his minions had been drawn out with her heart beating harder every time she caught Astarion suspended in that awful glow. They were one fighter short, but the remaining team members rallied around her with each arrow she loosed. One by one the enemies died. Bodies lining the platform. Some flung off haphazardly into the pit below. They could all see the fear creeping into Cazador’s eyes. The slight crack in his gloating facade. They were a pack of wolves nipping at their wounded prey and she howled her delight. Triumphant. She did not see the remaining werewolf lunge at her until she felt the weight of the creature crash into her small body.

The breath was knocked from her lungs. Her head cracking against one of the large stone pillars that seemed to echo throughout the room. The pillar was cradling her, saving her, and dooming her at the same time. There was shouting as the beast was shoved by Lae’zel into the chasm at the same time Shadowheart landed a bolt on Cazador. She saw the vampire lord vanish as her vision blurred. She saw Astarion freed, his crimson eyes locked on hers. There was a…desperation to that stare.

Then her world went black. When she woke up. He was gone.

It had taken her a little bit to piece together the tapestry of her folly. She had been knocked unconscious in one moment of hubris. After, in the confusion of Shadowheart running over to her and trying to halt the bleeding calling on her low magical reserves, Astarion had confronted Cazador. He had a choice to make and one Lae’zel had agreed to assist with as they both stared at her bloody form on the floor. Just like at Bhaal’s temple. Only this time there was no Withers to restore. There were only seven thousand souls to damn.

Oh, there was an Astarion there. He had the same piercing eyes, the same white hair that curled around his ears just so, and the same laugh lines that had endeared him to her so long ago. Yet, it was not him. It was a cruel and constant reminder of the person she lost. There was no warmth behind those eyes. His voice whispered promises of immortality and caressed her soul with words of love.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it? To be mine? Forever?” He’d say as he’d pull her closer, the same comforting warmth as before. Her nose bombarded with his soothing familiar scent. But those words were brittle. Hollow. Always covered in a poison that was waiting to claim her. His eyes which once held a promise only wanted to devour now. Her. The world.

Everything.

She had placated him with promises of after. Once the brain was defeated. Once the parasites were gone. Then she would be his. He could be patient after all. When everything he wanted was almost in his grasp. He never even questioned that you would eventually acquiesce. It was a foregone conclusion.

That day had come so soon. Cheers reached her now from the remnants of the Elfsong Tavern. Their rooms had been surprisingly spared and a large crowd gathered below. Laughter. Singing. The sounds of a proper celebration, but in their room there was only the sound of her breathing lost in her thoughts. Until he was there. Somehow he looked flawless with the moonlight streaming in from the window. All pale blues on marble, his eyes were dark in this light but so very hungry. Her voice was tired, a mere whisper, anyone else might have missed it. “One more night, Astarion. Let me celebrate one more night with our friends and the city. Then…then you can make me yours.” She had seen the triumph flash in his eyes at her consent. The smirk that formed at his words, “I can give you that, my Little Love. The waiting will just heighten our passion.” He had pulled her to him then, into a searing kiss and for one brief moment, she gave in to that temptation. Pliant against his body, she molded herself to him. Putting everything she had into that kiss and imagining it was her Astarion. Hers. Forever. The thought evaporated quickly as she crashed back into reality as he nipped her inner lip with his fangs. Small droplets of blood formed which he licked up greedily as she gasped and he clasped her closer. She was drowning in his fire and he wanted her to burn.

He saved her then, pulling back enough to pepper a soft kiss across the corner of her mouth. A seduction. A promise. “I will plan everything to perfection.” He curled his fingers under her chin, her lip still bleeding from his bite and the blood mingling with his fingers. “It will be a most exquisite death.” He whispered the words across her skin causing goosebumps to form as he lapped the remaining blood from her mouth and slowly his fingers one by one. His eyes never leaving hers. He watched her tremble. Watched her shake. Sure on his claim before slipping out leaving her in the dark. As she requested. He was so considerate after all.

Her body was in motion as soon as he was gone. She pulled her pack up and slung it over her shoulder. It’s familiar weight brought a comfort to her she did not even know she needed. She had to slip out quickly before her friends noted her absence. Right now, they would assume she was indulging with Astarion. She only had a little bit of time to make this work, but there was one more place she needed to go first.

A graveyard.

She had found it by chance one day on one of the treks through the city. It could have been when they were looking for the hag or a murder victim. So many things that seemed so mundane now. But she had seen it, the name clear as day even under the vines. So here she was now.

Astarion Ancunin.

“Hello, my love.”

She collapsed. The weight of the world on her shoulders. The reality of all she lost. All she had, carved into the stone in front of her. She clutched the grass in her hands, feeling the blades and the earth, smelling the rich loamy scent of nature, and she cried. She wailed into the night like so many others around the city. Her grief was no different from their own. A shared grief in this moment for those they lost. And by the gods did she need it. Her tears fell onto the grass and stone as she remembered the little moments they had shared. The cocky grin of his before a perfectly timed shot. The challenge in his eyes for her to do better. The memory of hugging him in the shadow lands and feeling his arms wrap around her, tentative at first before pulling her closer. The shared bottles of wine and brandy before a fire curled up with Scratch. Their story. Unfinished.

The tears eventually dried. Spent. She looked up then at the sky. Clear and beautiful. Full of stars and she smiled. The first real smile since before they had entered Cazador’s manor. She pulled out a dagger. Plain. Simple. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t save you like I promised.” The words were said in time to her own carving. Chipping at the stone. Crossing out one death year. “But I promise you this. I will not forget you.” Little by little a new death year added. 498 DR. She plucked a nearby flower. Just a wildflower that had grown in this place. It’s white petals soft to the touch. It was a silly thought but she could almost hear the ghost of his voice as she laid it down on his grave. “Goodbye.”

Determination flashed in her eyes as she straightened up and trekked to a nearby shop. The Devil’s Fee was always open to anyone who could pay the price.

In the morning, a vampire lord stared at a fresh flower on an old grave. The sounds of a sleeping city slowly waking up began to reach him. None of their “friends” had seen her. Oh no, they all had assumed she was with him. Why wouldn’t she be? Her scent was easy enough to follow, ingrained in his memory as it was. He bent down and slowly picked up the flower, noted the fresh carving on the gravestone, and her lingering perfume. Seconds passed by like an eternity. “Run all you want, my pet. I already have almost everything…except you at my side.” Vermilion eyes seemed to glow then with his need, his hunger for his possession. The flower was crushed within his grasp, crumbling and drifting down in fragmented bits of petals and plant parts onto the grave.

“I will have everything.”

Fangs flashed in the morning light, the taste of her blood still fresh on his tongue and coursing through his veins.

“After all the hunt makes everything more…satisfying.”

#bg3 fanfiction #astarion x dark urge #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #astarion #astarion fanfiction #astarion x tav

[spicykaraage]

Tenipuri Complete Character Profile - Masaharu Niou

[PROFILE]

Birthday: December 4th (Sagittarius)

Blood Type: AB

Relatives: Father, Mother, Older Sister, Younger Brother

Father’s Occupation: Company Employee (construction company)

Elementary School: Unknown (supposedly some school in southern Japan)

Middle School: Rikkai University Junior High School

Grade & Class: Third Year | Class 3-B | Seat 14

Club: Tennis Club - Regular

Committee: None

Strong Subjects: Math, Tube Language [TP]

Weak Subjects: Music

Frequently Visited Spot at School: Rooftop

World Cup Team: U-17 World Cup Japanese Representatives

Favorite Motto: “Riding a black and white horse, I backed up going forward.”

Daily Routines: Preparations and reviewing?

Hobbies: Darts, blackjack [23.5]

Favorite Color: Blue

Favorite Music: Jazz

Favorite Movie: 8½

Favorite Book: The Trickster’s Paradise ➜ To Have an Honest Heart [23.5]

Favorite Food: Yakiniku (beef tail soup [23.5])

Favorite Anniversary: The night of a New Moon

Preferred Type: A person who’s good at bargaining ➜ A person who shows their true face [23.5]

Ideal Date Spot: A beach ➜ Las Vegas [23.5]

His Gift for a Special Person: Puri-lliant moments filled with surprise and delight

Where He Wants to Travel: Casa Batlló

Thing He Wants Most Right Now: Screws and a screwdriver (it’s unknown what he wants them for) ➜ Glow-in-the-dark paint and balloons (it’s unknown what he wants them for) [23.5]

Dislikes: Heat, vegetables [23.5]

Skills Outside of Tennis: Hitting targets, gun-shooting games [removed], katanuki [23.5], coin toss prediction [23.5]

Spends Allowance On: Secret

Routine During the World Cup: Keeping his pockets filled with chocolate and candy

[DATA]

Height: 175cm ➜ 176cm [23.5]

Weight: 62kg ➜ 60kg [23.5]

Shoe Size: 27cm

Dominant Arm: Left

Vision: 2.0 Left & Right

Play Style: All-Rounder

Signature Moves: Trick Play, Illusion

Time He Wakes Up: 6:45am

Time He Goes to Sleep: 1:00am

Average Calorie Intake in a Day: 2000 calories

Favorite Brands:

Racquet: Prince MORE POWER 1150 S

Shoes: YONEX Power Cushion Wide 271 (SHT-271W)

Overall Rating: Speed: 3 / Power: 2 / Stamina: 3 / Mental: 5 / Technique: 5 / Total: 18

Kurobe Memo: “Rather than techinique or play style, he focuses on copying others. When he completely transforms into his opponent, he can make use of his target’s charisma. What a dangerous person he is.” [RB]

[POSSESSIONS]

What’s in His Bag:

Snapping prank gum // Most of his classmates have fell for it

Toy pistol // It’s unknown what he has it for

Bubble blower // People claim to have seen him blowing them on the rooftop

A bouncy ball

A box with something inside // No one knows what’s in it

Sanada’s calligraphy: “Be open-minded.”

What’s in His Locker at the U-17 Training Camp:

Snapping prank gum // He’s challenging himself to consecutively trick people with it

Screws

Bread // To feed stray cats with

Screwdriver

What’s in His Locker [C&S]:

A cube puzzle // Yanagi often plays with it

A snow globe

Oranges he received from an old lady // Given to him for helping an old lady find her lost item. He’d been asked where he got them multiple times, and he finally answered

#tenipuri #tenirabi #profile #my post

[piedpiperart]

It was an interesting read. :) I know very little of the full DC universe, but yeah, you're totally right about that superman and batman thing. it's why Batman is my favorite hero from there. He shows you don't really need a fancy power to be one.

Right?!

It’s one of the main reasons why I like batman so much. I used to really hate Superman growing up and I never really knew why until later. It was cuz it bugged me how he’d always act like he was the know it all on justice, and viewed people with powers or groups or certain actions that didn’t fit his worldview as the bad thing that meant that person was bad.

Superman didn’t really get the black and white, and much like All Might, a lot of that gray is about discrimination. For a lot of small time criminals, they get to where they are because lack of education, money, support, etc. Batman knows this, understands it, makes charities as Bruce Wayne to support people like that. Superman might know but not understand. He’s also not rich so sure he might not be able to solve it really, but he’s still a daylight/spotlight hero. No one would expect Batman to do a press conference on discrimination, but that’s something Superman has the power (and responsibility) to do. It’s what Bruce Wayne does.

This discrimination is a lot like in My Hero Academia. Bad quirks are seen as villainous. Take Hawks and Miruko versus Spinner for example. All three are mutant/body changing quirks based on animals. However the only difference is that Hawks and Mirukos quirks are able to be fetishized by the public/media. Spinners Lizard mutations are seen as gross and momsterous, leading him to a life of crime because of the discrimination he got from kids, adults, when looking for a job, etc.

Miruko being a bunny quirk also had the added stereotype of being weak, meek, shy, etc. She feared getting stuck with those labels and made herself work to be seen and act differently to become a strong powerful hero. But her costume still shows her femininity, people still underestimate her, she’s not overly valued as a hero because she’s not seen as stronger than most of the top ten men heroes, etc.

Same could be said for Shinsou. Evil-stereotyped quirks get certain treatments and can lead to less choices in life for jobs, friends, etc. Stuff like that All Might isn’t aware of and won’t think to advertise or fundraise for.

It’s also the same for people with ‘good’ quirks. How many people do you think were chosen for a job specifically for their quirk? Like lie detector Tsukauchi. Was he pressured into police work? Could you imagine him being a chef or something else? It’s the same with heroes and villains. Could you imagine someone with shigarakis quirk running a coffee shop? Probably not and that’s the problem. Quirks are valued and that makes people valued differently.

Bakugo too is seen as a heroic quirk, but could also easily be spun as a villainous one. Depending on how he was raised and how/where he grew up, he could have been a hero or a villain. It was speculated that bakugos parents are middle class, maybe a bit richer. What do you think would have happened if Bakugo was poor? If he went to a school district in a different area? If they saw him as a thug instead of a hero. You think he would have been able to keep his snappy personality? Or would he be forced to keep his head down so no one would feel threatened and call the police on him?

There’s so many different layers to quirks and quirk discrimination that All Might and Superman type heroes are generally unaware of. You can see this with Iron man and the xmen. Iron man in the mcu wants the Accords, that have restrictions on mutants and want mutants to be documented. He, as a person without powers, doesn’t understand how this would affect the lives of people like Peter or Wanda (which is one big arguement I would have for having peter on team iron man but he’s also a gullible kid here so I’ll let it slide) and often in xmen comics the accords screw over many many mutants. (Prime example is Cloud 9) Xmen also have issues though. Take a look at Charles Xavier, who, in many comics and even shows like xmen evolution, puts much more time and effort into helping the mutants who could pass as normal humans or come from good backgrounds or have useful powers.

Take xmen evolution, where Charles doesnt put effort into helping the brotherhood as much as he could have. He doesn’t spend time helping the kids with problems that parents would, instead focusing on training and etc. Many xmen leave because they’re not receiving the help they need. Mutants like nightcrawler, beast, toad, etc. are often overlooked because they don’t have ‘cool’ powers. This can also be said for hulk. These type of powers are seen as less or worse or evil, etc.

In one spiderman cartoon, peter starts mutating uncontrollably into a giant spider. Xmen who look perfectly normal are like you should accept yourself for who you are, sorry we can’t help you. Meanwhile Beast knows exactly what Peter is going through and helps him in a way that actually matters, in a way that he needs. So. It shows that even within marginalized groups there’s different groups or levels within that can be at odds.

It also shows a lot of parallels to real life struggles with poc, lgbt, disabled, neurodivergent, and women’s rights,etc. in the LGBT community there’s many parallels to xmen and the TYPE of sexuality/gender you are. Gay people are discriminated against yes but they can and do often exclude trans people or people of more specific (or less marketable, etc) sexualities or people of color or disabled people within that community. Just like Xmen and certain good or bad powers. Or quirks and the discrimination surrounding that.

I think mutants or quirks in general that have a visible outward appearance are particularly interesting in this case. Media and society play a huge part in whether or not certain people are socially acceptable/good/bad. Back to the point about Spinner versus Hawks. Hawks and Miruko are fetishized by the media, hero society, etc. You don’t see Ryuku(I forgot her name but the dragon lady in MHA) who can turn into a full on dragon, being marketed the same way. Spinner and Gang Orca (I’m talking about in the anime not in real life, shush) are not being fetishized by the media or heroes, were bullied in much the same ways and are seen as scary. Ectoplasm too. You also don’t see them closer to the top ten heroes rank. You don’t see them much in the show either.

Even in Class 1-A, you see clearly what is being valued when you look at the main characters. What are their quirks? Ah yeah strong ones, right. But do they have anything that would allude to them not having a normal physical appearance? Nope. Tsuyu occasionally because while she is frog she can be marketed as sexy and cute to the public. Mina is harder to do than Tsuyu but still can be marketed as cute ‘despite’ her eyes, skin, horns, etc. You know who won’t be marketed like that? Tokoyami and Shoji and Kouda. You hardly ever see them in the anime either. Not main character material. Not classified as cute, etc. harder for business students to market them as heroes, seen as not as strong, etc. I guarantee the writers coulda made tokoyami a powerhouse, could have done so much with Mina’s acid or Kouda controlling animals.

So not only is it shown in anime, it’s also marketed that way to the viewers who prefer the cute boys, etc., it’s not as popular a show if the mcs aren’t cute. Same with MCU and DC movies. Justice league movie? Great but let’s take out hawkwoman and Martian manhunter. Only sexy men and one woman allowed. Avengers? Great but let’s focus on the ones without discrimination and limit parts with Bruce Banner and get villains that are aliens and very clearly ‘other’.

One movie that was great with this was guardians of the galaxy in that they had clear differences physically and not in a sexy alien fetish way. I liked that, that they were a ragtag group of very very different people and still made a family. (Leaving out the latest love and thunder movie tho) But in that show it was clear to see that the main characters were not all the stereotypical white men and women with cool and a useful powers. Sure they still had one white dude but I think it’s great he doesn’t have any actual powers.

Deadpool also does an awesome job with this!! Having disabilities, plus size characters, key women characters (domino) other than the one girl who was a plot device (Vanessa) and poc (russel and domino), etc. and a lesbian couple! Love it. And I love the found family aspects and the diversity! It makes me happy to see.

Even deadpool in deadpool 2 shows that xmen has issues within them. In that conference room most were white men tbh. They value certain kinds of people and often the rest of the mutants with unfavorable powers go with Magneto, just to be accepted even if he’s got evil and bad intentions. To me, Charles and Erik have bad intentions and don’t actually care about helping the mutants have a safe space, they’re mostly focused on how the rest of society will accept them. Charles wants to do it peacefully and magneto wants to do it forcefully. They don’t actually set up any kind of contingencies or start petitions and laws and policies that will actually help these poor kids. (Ex. Morlocks)

In the justice league too, you can see the characters with more physical differences like Martian manhunter, lagoon boy, beast boy, etc. aren’t many. They’re not seen as main character material, not able to be marketable in the same sexy way that Hawkwoman could be, etc. they’re underutilized in the league and underrepresented. Take killer croc or the killer shark guy. There’s literally so few of them around in DC comics and movies and aren’t marketed to the general audience. Like, there’s a reason why Marvel focuses on certain characters over others. Reason why they focus on avengers over xmen. But it’s changing and more diverse characters are being represented so that’s good. Hope they keep it up👍

Anyways this is getting super long so I’ll leave it here, sorry if it doesn’t make sense? But I just love talking about stuff like this

[mushiemellows]

So Usopp’s this really fascinating character in the lineup because you learn to love him so much and in doing that you gotta learn to love yourself? Like, okay so the Luffy Zoro Sanji and Nami clearly hold character tradition in Lupin, Goemon, Jigen, and Fujiko. Not perfectly 1-1 but they obv don’t mess too much with the winning formula.

And then usopp gets to come on the journey. Why does usopp get to come? Because we get to. He serves as this really great outstretched hand to everyone else, to see themselves in any strawhat. He’s audience proxy. Now, I’m going to say something that may be a little inflammatory to some (controversial yet undeniably true) but I think it’s so vital to understanding his journey. Usopp, from an initial character design perspective, hails from the historical repercussions of minstrelsy. The racism is inherently baked into his character. I think I didn’t realize just how deeply ingrained it was (like the totality of bad traits, you don’t need to look hard to identify visuals) until watching opla and seeing how Jacob’s Usopp pulled back on a few traits that are historically linked to that racist tradition (I think having Matt Owens, a black man, leading the writing staff was an absolutely influential part of reframing the character as well) but I also think that’s why he felt almost overly sanitized (in a similar fashion to how I fear they will treat Bon Clay in s2). Nuance- two things can be true at once, usopp can both be a racist caricature with negative traits associated negatively with black men AND I can love him for his flaws and see myself in him and empathize with him. He can be a coward and a liar, two traits that are definitely applied with racist intention when he Looks Like That, and I can independently like that a coward and an liar gets to be on the protag team. That’s kind of the point!

So by like, 2003, as Oda is deciding he’s not actually going to end with Skypia and is going to keep going for 100 more years, it makes sense that Usopp is the first loose thread to need development. So, then, what defines Usopp’s identity? What’s he bring to the team?

And then they double down by making his arc foil Franky. A man. A man’s man. A man’s man’s man. A caricature the same visual American Export Animation Tradition (early 20th century minstrelsy’s big brother: ww2 racist propaganda), but not racialized in the way Usopp is (he’s not a racist depiction of white men is what I mean). So visually, they’re already at odds. And then in terms of character Franky fills like, 75% of what Usopp’s been bringing to the team, and generally he does it better. He fixes things better, he makes better inventions, he’s a good shot (but vitally NOT a BETTER shot), and he takes on some of the the load of temporary comedic relief.

Of course usopp takes the rejection of Merry personally. He’s having this deep crisis of what he is able to uniquely provide, and the answer he keeps coming up with is that, well, he brought the ship to the table. And without his ship, he’s……. Uh oh. He’s jealous and he’s bitter and he doesn’t know how he fits in and the anxieties get the better of him. He’d rather self sabotage than be rejected down the line and abandoned who knows where. Or worse- he thinks he’ll let everyone down if the pressure falls on his shoulders . And that’s what makes him so wonderful and heart breaking and lovable and relatable. I get it, I see his insecurities when they’re all laid out and it pulls you in to empathize with your own insecurities.

I think humbleness, the ability to say you’re sorry and grow and then PROVE that you’ve learned and grown, is so key to both Usopp and Oda. I don’t think the (at most charitably, ‘unintentional’) anti-black rhetoric fully ever leaves the franchise. I think the work is too old and will never be able to scrub it off. But I think Oda can learn. I think he has. Each time he takes a swing at a racism allegory, he learns more and more. Same with uhhhhhh gay and trans people, while he’s at it.

Ussop’s getting (re: fights, not shipping, tho I’m shocked it isn’t more rare pair) paired off with Perona is cool and I wish people talked about the arrangement more because I think he’s ‘pessimism as strength’ trait is the first time he gets a good independent moment after rejoining. Everyone else is down!!! And when they all rely on him, he DOES have skills no one else does. He DOESN’T let the team down at their most vulnerable. He out-illusions a GHOST.

I think that’s where a lot of love for post-ts Usopp comes from. He gets to finally stand on his own. To survive! And thrive! And figure out what makes him him. Not a caricature, not a filler position defined by how others need/utilize/manipulate him. But who he wants to be. Flaws and all. And comedically, he is the best and funniest as the “straight man” and everyone else get’s to be the punchline (he still gets to be funny, but by being the one to point out ironies he gets to step back from his roots).

I think One Piece as a work of Gender Propaganda (the purpose of shounen manga is to teach young boys what “man shit” is- that’s not a spicy take) does it’s best when it gets to define the nuances of masculinity by a million different proxies (that’s what fights are). The function of the timeskip is to “make a man” out of the main team’s boys (and allies) (I can elaborate on this in another post if there’s interest). And post-ts Usopp is unequivocally A. Man. Maybe not a man’s man’s man’s man. But a man regardless. That’s not even in question. He gets to find his own unique identity and grow in front of our eyes. And if he’s the audience proxy, that means we can too.

#I love my boy so much I just want him to be happy #uh oh I might delete soon because I’m afraid I’m too out of my lane #I’m not tagging I don’t want this post breaching contamination #racism mention #oh my god please don’t yell at me over this I’ll simply wilt away #I meant containment not contamination fucking auto correct I’m not going back to fix it

[mummyofgoonpigs]

Part two

The four caged men all looked at Scott, he seemed quite pleased with the outcome so far, his enormous cock stood proudly already dripping precum.

“Ok boys, all face the wall and stick your butts out, it injection time” Jacquline ordered

They all did as they were told and the nurses proceeded to stick a needle in each man’s butt one at a time.

“Tom, Jason, Chris and Sean, you have all received your first of what will be a daily dose of testosterone blockers, this will make you more docile and help with your training, it will also, over time shrink your balls and make you permanently limp and impotent, we will continue to take measurements and fit new cages as required”

The four men stood in shocked silence, dealing with the gravity of what they had just been told

“Scott, you have been given a large dose of viagra, that should keep that big boy ready for whenever it’s needed”

Scott stifled a grin, he was happy he wasn’t one of the other four

“From now on when you address me you will all call me Goddess Jacquline, any other female will be called Mistress followed by their name is that understood”

“Yes Goddess Jacquline” they all murmured together

“Excellent, now we’ll return to the office to introduce you back to you ex colleagues”

Jacquline marched out of the white room towards the lift with the five men following, all mesmerised by her round leather clad butt.

As they entered the office the four remaining women were all hard at work, typing and answering phones.

“Ladies” Jacquline said “finish your calls and then can I have your attention. The four women all finished what they were doing and then turned to face their new boss, they couldn’t help but notice the 5 naked men stood behind her, their heads lowered and cheeks flushing red with embarrassment.

“Ok ladies, here we have Tom, Jason, Chris and Sean, these will be your office dogsbody’s, they are here to service your every need, bring fetch and carry drinks, photocopies etc, also if you require foot worship and you shoes cleaning as you work that’s totally acceptable”

Jacquline then pulled Scott to the front by his cock and said

“Scott here is the new office stress reliever, you’ll all be permitted 30mins a day with him to make use of his rather large penis, I’m sure he’ll prove very popular”

Scott grinned then slowly he realised the office today only had the 4 women but Goddess has said all vacant positions were to be filled by women, that would be 20 women at 30 minutes each. Scott’s faced dropped as he worked out he’d be fucking 10 hours a day.

Jacquline gestured to her two assistants “take Scott here to the stress room and get him prepared” they grabbed an arm each and took him away.

She turned back to the women and said

“As there is only four of you today you get your own personal slave but as I fill the positions you’ll have to share, pick which one you want for the remainder of the day and don’t forget you’re all allowed an hour with sextoy Scott” with that she smiled and left for her office.

Kim, the youngest member of the team went to inspect the slaves, she looked them all up and down and chose Chris “with me boy” she said and returned to her desk. Chris followed, Kim kicked her heels off and pointed at her feet “worship them” she ordered. Kim was pleasantly plump and her feet were the same, Chris looked down but didn’t move. Kim took a small remote from her desk,pointed it at Chris’s collar and pressed a button, the small black box sent a mighty shock through the collar and Chris, crying out in pain dropped to his knees “oh didn’t Goddess mention that” Kim giggled “now get licking or you’ll get another one. Immediately Chris crawled to her feet and started licking and sucking while Kim went back to work.

Hayley went over and grabbed Sean by the balls and dragged him back to her desk. She had spent months putting up with his unwelcome glances as she moved around the office and now it was payback time.

She cupped his balls and looked him in the eye and said “oh dear, not much there is there, Sean felt himself flushing again, he knew he wasn’t very big but the cage he wore made it virtually invisible. She reached for remote and before Sean could protest he found himself on the floor. The pain was sharp but passed quickly

“Just so you know what it’s like” Hayley said sternly “now clean my boots” Hayley was wearing knee length flat leather boots, as Sean crawled toward them she turned the soles toward him “bottom first” and he started licking the dirty soles of her boots as ordered.

Tracy by now had chosen Jason as her slave for the remainder of the day and not wanting to feel the shock collar as he’d seen the others do he dropped to his knees as she approached him “good boy” she said “ now crawl to the kitchen, make a a cup of tea, milk with no sugar and crawl back her with it, then you can worship my feet. Tracy was over 60 but very smart and still in good shape.

Fiona was 70 and had been at the company as long as anyone could remember, she had enormous breasts and was well filled out everywhere else. Tom was already down on all fours as she looked down at him, “come on boy, I’m going for stress relief, you can hold my clothes for me, she walked off in the direction Scott had been taken with Tom crawling behind her.

When the door opened and Tom crawled in behind Fiona he was met by something he wasn’t expecting.

Scott had been strapped to a bench about 2 feet off the floor, his hands we in leather fist mits that had been secured to the side of the bench and protruding from his mouth was a penis gag around 6-7” long. His own cock was still fully stood to attention, fully engorged and dripping precum. Scott moved his head towards the door as it opened and realised his first ‘customer’ was the 70yo granny, this wasn’t what he was anticipating when he first found out his new roll in the company.

Fiona pulled Tom to within 3 feet on the bench and level with Scott’s cock, he could only look in awe as it really was massive. Fiona started undressing and neatly folding her clothes, passed them to the kneeling Tom, when she took off her bra they we both surprised to see both her nipples were pierced, finally she removed her knickers and said “open wide” Tom opened his mouth and she pushed them into his waiting mouth. Fiona walked around the bench dragging her nails over the immobile Scott, sending tingles through his bound body. She leaned over his head and said “now let me show you what a real woman can do” she positioned herself over his face and slowly lowered herself onto the dildo, all the way down until her ample arse was completely covering his face. Scott started to panic as he realised he couldn’t breathe and tried to move his head “oh yes, that’s a good boy, fuck my pussy with your face” Fiona groaned, Scott was tensing and buckling the best he could when she finally rose up off his face and he took a huge breath through his nose, she moved around the table and said “don’t worry I won’t kill you, all the other girls want a go, now let’s see if this feels as good as it looks” she straddled the bench, grabbed hold of his cock, positioned it with her pussy and lowered herself onto it. Tom watched in amazement as her wet pussy swallowed his whole cock until she was sat on him.

“I’ve got a dildo this big at home Hun, but this feels much nicer” she smirked as she started grinding herself on him.

Scott had been fully erect for over 2 hours now and the feel of her pussy grinding him soon had him on the edge, he was mmmppphhhhing into his gag and his eyes were rolling, Fiona started ridding him harder as she knew what was coming, she rubbed her clit and brought herself off for the first time as the immobile Scott released his first load into her 70 year old cunt……

[geminibrekker]

The complexity of Lysandre

A lot of people didn’t like pokemon X Y, and I get why : the game is way too easy, some of the characters are just annoying, the villains are a joke... Are they really tho? Cause while I understand a lot of the arguments against the game, the villains didn’t bother me or seem shallow. I’ve just finished replaying the game and the team Flare is 100% a cult. Here is my analysis (read : autism rant):

Japan has a real cult invasion. There are a lot of cults over there, to the point where it’s almost normalized. It is logic to think that it was a topic the creators of the game wanted to include.

From the start, it is obvious to the player that Lysandre is the bad guy; and while we have to keep in mind that it is a game accessible for children, it is also a real point in-game. Professor Sycamore tells you after the team Flare is defeated that he always kinda knew that Lysandre had dangerous ideas, and that he hoped he’d used his charisma for good. So a charismatic person, really at ease with his words and who talks about his ideals out loud... Doesn’t that sound like a cult leader ?

Let’s put Lysandre aside for a sec and look at the team Flare. Even if they wear red suits and not cliché white robes, they still all have the same outfit and they proudly talk about it. A LOT. Lysandre has promised them, the chosen ones, eternity, whereas the common people will die. They all believe in his ideology, because they are the survivors in his scenario. They are special. Chosen. This is how cult leaders make cult members feel to better manipulate them.

This is already more interesting than just buffoons in red costumes, isn’t it ? But let’s dig a little deeper.

What does Lysandre want? It is not a cult to his person, at least not mainly. He actually wants to save the world, in his own twisted way. He says in one of his (many) monologues that he tried to help people with all the money he had, but that they had started to feel entitled to his help and he didn’t like it. So his answer to overpopulation and lack of resources was... to kill 99% of the population ? Ok Thanos. Furthermore, he asks the player multiple times to join him, saying that we, as chosens of the Professor Sycamore, deserve to survive. He actually believes in the idea he’s spreading. Some cult leaders don’t, and that’s the weird twist of Lysandre; he isn’t wrong. Well of course he’s wrong for wanting to kill everyone, but he’s right about consumerism and the lack of resources. Welcome to pokemon, here we straight up tell children that if we don’t change our way of living we will all be poor and hungry. Even in-game, your rival says Lysandre wasn’t totally wrong; he was just using the wrong method (which, in this case, is genocide).

Finally, let’s talk about Lysandre’s contradictions. The main one you may be thinking about is his love for pokemons. When you confront him in his second lair, he starts crying when your rival brings up the fate of all the pokemons he’s gonna kill. A really shocking moment that shows us how determined he is to “save” the world. He says that pokemons are bound to disappear, used by humans for too long. And even if it is way lighter than in pokemon black and white, the question of “are pokemons our friends or our slaves?” is still present. Also, in the Lysandre labs, he gives you -the chosen one- the choice to stop or start the apocalypse. He really believes you should be the one to decide the fate of the world. Lysandre never stops you when you follow him in his lairs; only his subordinates do so. He only tries to stop you at the very end, when he is so close to achieving his goal. He always gives you a fair fight. Because he sees himself as righteous and noble. And despite that, an eleven year old stops his plans to rule the world.

I think I’ve said everything I wanted to say, this has just been on my mind since I re-played the game recently. Idk if a lot of ppl will read this, thank you if you do, love y’all !

#pokemon #team flare #pokemon xy #lysandre pokemon

[mewintheflesh-2]

Small amount of Team Nightsky headcanons and a one shot fanfic I spent like 4 hours on

Just before Nikey was about to travel back in time (and before he fucked it up so badly he went to another reality altogether) Winona came to visit above the smog (She is one of the only people from The Sun’s Children allowed up there) to sort of see him off.

Of course, she had other intentions as well. She wanted to at least attempt to try and change his mind last minute. And it almost worked, she was starting to break through to him, but Nikey was feeling too vulnerable for his own comfort and just— left without saying goodbye.

Neither of them knew it would be the last time they ever saw eachother.

So this was just supposed to be a headcanon post but then I ended up spending 4 hours writing out a one shot fanfic :)

Summary: Winona and Mikey have a little chat before he time travels back to this past and everything is perfectly totally fine (it is not)

(For the sake of writing I will not be using the nickname “Nikey” for Nightsky Mikey in this.)

It’s decently long, tumblr won’t let me easily copy the entire thing so I am not aware what the word count adds up to. Also I didn’t really read back on it either sooooo

<><><>

Mikey stared up at the black mechanical arms sprawling out high above the Time Machine. It was almost time. His heart raced with a sickening feeling. The crystal walls glistened and glimmered as he stood in silence, the only noise was a mechanic making last minute preparations.

The doors behind him produces mechanical whirring as they slid open and close.

A higher ranking employee nervously walked into the room. “Mikey, sir, you appear to have a last minute visitor.”

Mikey sighed, frustrated. “Tell them I don’t have time for visits right now.” He spoke sternly.

“But- sir I think you’d want to see this person.” The employee spoke, careful with their words.

“…Really now.” He quirked an eyebrow and turned around to face the employee.

The employee nodded , not making eye contact with him, and instead looking at the floor.

“Well then. Why don’t you bring them in.” He spoke, expression unchanged.

“Yes sir.” They turned around and made their way to the doors out of the room.

Mikey turned around to look at the lower ranking employee tinkering with the Time Machine. “You. Are you almost done?” He called out to them

They perked up their head from their work “Ah, uh, there’s just one last thing I need to do!”

“Is it that important?”

They thought for a second. “I-I’m not sure, but when it comes to ti—“

“Then leave.” Mikey cut them off, clearly stating his disinterest in what they had to say.

“But-!”

Mikey glared at them intensely, and suddenly the lower ranking employee never had anything else to say. They swiftly got up and headed towards the door, along with the higher ranking employee, the doors closing behind them.

Mikey tapped his foot on the floor impatiently and stared at the wall while he waited for the visitor to come in. The doors slid open again, the higher ranking employee guiding somebody in the room before leaving.

Out of the corner of Mikey’s eye, he caught a glimpse of some familiar, white, long hair. His eyes widened as he quickly looked at who walked into the room. “Winona—“ Mikey stared for a minute, he couldn’t deny that his heart simultaneously soared and shattered at the sight of her.

Winona continued walking into the crystal walled room, arms crossed close to her chest, not even looking at him.

Mikey quickly attempted to regain his composure before speaking. He closed his eyes and sighed, struggling to think of anything he could say.

“Why have you come to see me.” He looked at at her with the best blank expression he could, repeating the same question he’d ask any old visitor.

“You don’t need to have your guard up around me. Even if I do hate what you've become.” She had a hard time even meeting his gaze, after all, it’d been at least two years since they’d even spoken indirectly.

Mikey looked away from her. He’d known she had to have hated him by now, there was no way she didn’t, but hearing it from her directly just did something to him.

He sighed, and paused for a second “Please, answer my question.”

“Why do you think. I came to… see you off.” The tension in her body loosened a little as she was finally able to meet his eyes. A soreness in her heart had began to surface.

He furrowed his brow. “… That can’t be the only reason you’re here. Be honest with me, ‘nona”

“Don't—“ She tensed up yet again hearing the old nickname she’d use to be called so endearingly. “…call me that.”

“Ah- right. I’m sorry.” He looked away from her again out of embarrassment.

She sighed. “You should be. But if honesty is what you want, then I will give it to you.”

Winona’s arms tightened around themselves. “I remember, the day you came back from Paldea all those years ago. You told me what happened in Area Zero, I couldn’t imagine what you were feeling.” Mikey’s blood ran cold at even the small mention of that day.

“All I could do was be there for you, promise to be by your side through whatever was thrown your way. I’d been so hopeful you’d find a way to defy him. But as the years passed by I’d realized you’d become him.” The words were harsh on Winona’s tongue. She swallowed her nerves and began to walk towards him.

“You said you were fine with it, you said it was for the better, but I knew you were hurting. And I couldn’t do anything to help. And in the end, I had to leave you in your most vulnerable moments. I still regret not trying hard enough to save you. But I know, there is still something to be saved. If you would just listen to me for a moment, please.”

Mikey just stared at her, unresponsive. Winona walked even closer to him, causing his body to become almost entirely stiff. She closed the gap between them to only a foot. She took his hand and looked at him with pleading eyes.

“Do you really want to do this to yourself. I know you don’t really want to inflict that pain and suffering onto yourself again, you can’t want to. I know the person I fell in love with is still in there somewhere, if you’d just let yourself free from this cycle. We can fix everything, all that you’ve done. There’s still time.”

Mikey stared into her eyes, his body started to tremble slightly. He couldn’t find any words to say. Winona was looking at him so sweetly… they hadn’t even been this physically close in years. Winona closed the gap between then with a swift hug, burying her head into his shoulder. Mikey almost couldn’t comprehend what was happening. What was she doing to him..? He hadn’t felt so vulnerable in ages.

“Please. If not for your own sake, then for mine.” She whispered shakily.

The strings tugging at his heart were too much to bear. She was being completely genuine about everything she had said. After all this time, after all the things he had caused, she was still willing to give him a second chance if he’d just try.

He couldn’t handle this sudden surge of emotional vulnerability that had taken over him.

“Winona…” He could feel tears sting his eyes. “I’m so sorry…”

He pulled away from her embrace and took a few steps backward, as painful as it was for him to do. Winona looked at up at him confused, arms still held in the same position from when the hug was broken.

Mikey stared at her for a moment with heartbroken eyes. Was he really about to do this? Throw away his one chance to fix everything? He better not think about it too much. He needs to do this, no matter what. He took a deep breath, and turned towards the Time Machine, that sickening feeling of adrenaline pumping through his heart resurfacing.

Winona’s eyes widened. “No, no wait, please—“ She called out to him.

Mikey turned around one last time sorrowfully before walking towards the Time Machine.

Mechanical whirring sounded as the floor around the machine began to rise up into the air. Mechanical arms began to spin above the raised floors, and a blindingly bright white light began to form in the center of the machine.

Mikey closed his eyes and began to walk into the light

“Please—!” Winona yelled as she ran closer to the raised floors, reaching an arm out in vain.

But he had already left.

The light dissipated as the spinning mechanical arms closed in on each other in a flower bud formation. The mechanical whirring began to slow to a stop. All Winona could do was just watch.

She stared where Mikey once stood in the room just a moment ago, arm still reaching out for him.

“—I love you…” She whispered to nobody.

Mikey felt his body become light and almost weightless as he was carried across time, though only for a brief moment before he reached his destination.

His body was once again weighted as he was anchored to the time he’d arrived in. He stepped onto the black crystal floors and collapsed onto them, covering his mouth with his hand, just staring at nothing through the tears clouding his vision.

He had his chance and he took it for granted. All because of his stupid ego.

If he was going to have one regret though, it was going to be that he didn’t even hug her back.

<><><>

FUCKING OW.

#mandjtv #team sky #team nightsky #sky mikeys #nightsky winona #Nightsky mikey #team nightsky headcanons #Clearskiesshipping #Cloudyskiesshipping #That’s their ship name btw because yeah <3 for Team Sky and Nightsky respectively

[random-imagines-blog]

Stunner {Bilquis x Reader Oneshot}

Requested by: Anonymous Wordcount: 4314 Summary: You, a smart, tough and suave female detective, are on the case of a series of missing men. Through your investigation you find ... her. Warnings: Obviously with Bilquis, there will be a bit of smut. Also sexist cops because fuck em.

Being a detective wasn’t an easy job. Nor was being a female detective. It was an all-boys club, even if they tried their best to make it seem like it wasn’t anymore. They might have taken down the ‘No Girls Allowed’ sign from their door but when you had stepped in, oh, there had been some looks. Guffaws. Disbelieving comments. Two of them had even went to the Chief to ask if there was a mistake in the paperwork. This new detective that they heard so much about, that was an expert in missing persons cases, couldn’t be a female. You couldn’t interview suspects, what if you were on your period and you got emotional? You couldn’t pick up clues, you might break a nail! You’ve heard it all. It was so boring, so blase. Making comments back didn’t garner any respect. Taking part in the banter. Even dressing totally professional in a male’s suit didn’t earn you anything other than  a couple sniggers. It was your work that would do the only kind of talking that they would listen to.

Your first case was on the desk the morning that you arrived. You had assisted on a couple of other missing persons but this was the initial one that you were leading since moving to this city. You sat down at your desk with your hot cup of coffee, and read through it thoroughly. Four similar disappearances. Mr. Paunch, Mr. Murray, Mr. Earl and Mr. Hart. Two white men, one black, and one middle-eastern. One of the white-men was married with two children, the other one divorced, the black man was a widow and the middle-eastern one a young bachelor. Two of the men, the divorced and the widow, had spoken to people about having a date that night. That was the only connection that you could find between two of them. Nothing else was similar, apart from the city that they lived in. This large city, where it was easy to fall off of the radar, unfortunately. Since there were four reported, you assumed that there were many that weren’t - people who didn’t have those that were missing them.

They didn’t work anywhere near each other. They didn’t even work in the same sector. They weren’t members of any clubs, or legions. They didn’t even support the same sports teams! This whole date thing was the only thing that you had to go on. Unfortunately, the dating profiles were taken down around the time of death. There was no way to log in and see who they were talking to. Who they might have set up a date with. Like the technology just wiped them out of existence. Every call to get in contact with the company gave you the run around, and you ended up with absolutely nothing. It was a frustrating first couple of hours. You looked at the pictures of the men again - mostly on Mr. Murray, smiling with his arm around his wife. There’s a lot of things that you learn in this job. And one of them is that marriage doesn’t mean shit to people. The kind of grotesque things that a man will do without his wife knowing, only to then crawl back into bed with her, kiss her cheek and enjoy breakfast with his kids in the morning. The date angle was still speaking to you. Some sort of black widow. Murderesses were uncommon but not entirely unheard of.

You sent some documents from your computer to your cellphone. It was time to get out there in the field. There wasn’t anything in the files that was going to help you find these men. And you needed to get away from the smell of your colleagues, who were too busy blowing smoke up each other’s asses so smugly, they barely got any work done.

--

The last known location of Mr. Earl. The widower. It was a rather grim looking bar, but one where he spent his weekends, drinking with some buddies. He’d come in on a Thursday, the day before his date. That wasn’t common for him, no sir. It had struck the bartender as being out of the ordinary. She had talked to him that night. It was she who had learned that he was going on a date. And he was rather nervous about it. You sat on a bar stool, sipping on a ginger-ale from a straw since you didn’t want your lips to touch the glass, and interviewed her casually about it. She wasn’t seen as a suspect. She had an alibi for the whole weekend, working. But some folks just didn’t take kindly to be talked to by a detective.

“Did he go on dates often?” You asked, your phone recording the conversation on your lap. It was unlikely that this was ever going to come up in court as evidence, but you wanted it for your own documentation. To transcribe later into a word document and make notes about the tones of the voice, or any body language that the bartender, Heather, had while answering the questions.

“No, not since his wife died,” Heather shook her head. “I thought I’d be seeing him the night of, just to hear how it went but he never showed up.”

“So as far as you know, this was the first first date in months.”

“At least a year,” Heather corrected. “He and his wife used to come here too. Back before the new management turned it into such a dive. I remember him and Mary well, always sitting in that booth over there. I was happy for ‘im when he said he was seeing someone new. Someone he met on one of them dating apps.”

The dating apps. The ones that you had found evidence of left you at a dead end. Still no telling if the bachelor was on them, there was no trace anywhere. Which pointed to one inexplicable thing, another piece in the puzzle though you didn’t know where to put it. That someone very technologically gifted was hacking into these websites and deleting every trace of these men after they went missing. They were bound to screw up eventually. Everybody did. You just had to hope you’d find it before you had another missing person on your hands. Or worse, before you started to find bodies.

“Did he talk about who this woman was?” You asked. “Her name or - show you a picture of her?”

“It was some - African name. She was an immigrant or something. Her spelling sucked, he told me that. He used to be a teacher, you know, he caught onto that kinda thing,” Heather said, hands on the bar, thinking. You gave her a moment. She tried to remember but then shook her head. “The name’s not coming to me. It was somethin’ out there though, I know that much. He did show me a picture, but it was real quick. He couldn’t stop looking at it. Haven’t seen him so enamored since Mary.”

Finally. A couple of tidbits. It wasn’t that much help, but if it was a name that stuck out, that could come in handy. If this woman was hiding her identity, she would have gone with something common. Sarah, or Elizabeth, something that was everywhere and nondescript. You jotted down a note in your notepad. African name. Immigrant. Check into newcomers into the city. “That helps a lot actually, thank you. What do you remember of the picture? What did she look like? Do you remember anything in the background?”

“Like I said, it was real quick,” Heather said, watching as you wrote stuff down. She looked suspicious of you, but continued on. “She was real dark. That’s the only thing that I was able to really see. The background was uhh - it was ... red or something. Maybe pink. One of them colors. Made her skin stand out. And you know what I mean by dark, right?”

“I’m assuming you mean African American?”

“I mean further than that,” Heather said, picking up her cloth and made herself look busy. “Don’t take me as one of them racists just because I noticed her skin color. I ain’t one of them, people of every color is allowed to sit at my bar and have a drink, only the green of their money matters. But I noticed that she was dark. A lot of these African Americans that come in these days usually looked mixed with something. Hispanic. White. But this girl - she looked pure, right outta Africa. Other than that, I can’t tell you anything, it was only a quick glimpse.”

“I understand you perfectly,” You nodded. “Those details are going to help a lot in my investigation, thank you Heather.”

You asked a couple more questions. Did he say where he was going? Unfortunately not. She was going to text him the place before the date. Another note - she was dominating.

“She picked the place. Guess it’s near hers. But I didn’t catch onto the name of it. Somethin’ fancy, upscale, cause I guess she’s too good for this place,” Heather snorted. “Downtown or something. I don’t know. And she picked the time too, she picked everything. He was catching a lot of flack from the guys around here for that. Said he wasn’t bein’ the man.”

Heather did end up being a lot of help. You got quite a few notes from her, at least  more so than you did with anybody else. Mr. Murray did mention something about a date, but not who or where, which could lead back to the dark-skinned woman.

--

Now here is where things got complicated. You were not at all prepared to put your own face on a dating app in the hopes that you would end up finding her. Or at the very least, making a list of women that might be the one that Heather had seen in the picture. Do you know how many dark skinned women there were in the city? Many. It would take a lot of sorting out, and that’s even if they had a bisexual profile. The missing men were all exactly that. Men.

And you certainly were not prepared to go asking one of the men on the force for a favor. To use their face for catfishing. The teasing would be horrible. And their egos. Just - no. No. And if this woman was somehow involved in the missing men, you didn’t want to get any of your friends in the city involved, lest they run into each other. You sighed and rubbed your temples, looking at the sign up screen on your phone. If only you could shapeshift, you thought with a laugh.

You put the phone down and opened up your laptop. You were running facial recognition software on the victims through the CCTV footage of the major streets in the downtown area from the night that Mr. Earl went missing, hoping you could at least find out what restaurant he had gone into. No results as of yet. You checked your email and saw the usual bullcrap filling up your spam. Newsletters from stores you shopped at once, the best food for your brain, the secret that dermatologists don’t want you to know, yadda yadda. Delete all. But as you went to close the tab, an advertisement for the very dating site that you were going to sign up for was on the side of the screen. Smiling faces of a couple that met on it, apparently. But they looked like people who would never need to go into a dating service. They were too good looking, almost like they were hired to....

The police database held photos of millions of people. A lot of them were mugshots. But there were quite a few that were just of people that could be thrown into a photo line up. Additional faces for a victim to go through and point out the suspect. If they could be used for that, then perhaps...

You went through the database. Put in the parameters of a man in his late forties, which seemed to be about the age of the four missing men. Too handsome, unbelievable as someone on a dating website. This one lived in the city, that didn’t feel right. Same thing as using a friend or another cop’s photo. They could run into each other. No, that one looked like he was too hopped up on drugs .... You found the perfect one. It looked like a identification photo, a bit bleak which made him look a little less handsome than he was, but he wasn’t too good looking either. A workplace sort of hot, in your opinion. Well, hopefully you and this woman had the same taste in men because this profile was the best way to lure her in and get her for questioning.

The best part was that this man, according to the short file, lived on the other side of the country. So you downloaded the photo, came up with the simplest but most realistic name that you could come up with, and created the dating profile. God, you hoped something came out of this. Your co-workers would never let you hear the end of it if they knew that you were using a dating app to try to find witnesses and suspects.

The last thing that you wanted was some call from Nev Schulman, so you only swiped right on the women that matched who you were looking for. There were a couple that fit the description, with beautiful names like Kamari, Hadiza and Onika. You swiped right on them, jotting down what details were in their profile while might help you to contact them later on. Restaurants that their pictures were taken in, things like that. But you stopped when you saw the most stunning woman that you had ever seen.

Bilquis.

Her picture was simple and yet - profound. Lit from one side, her chocolate skin took on a blue-black appearance in the shadow. Dark eyes that peered through the lens. Lips painted a purple that went so well with her skin tone. Long, glossy black waves that descended down her chest, and a bright red dress on that she somehow outshone. The background behind her seemed to be a wallpaper of some sort. Leafy. She stole the picture. You had a feeling just by looking at her that she was the one that you wanted to talk to. No, needed to talk to. Her profile was simple. Two words. Worship me.

Ethnic name, dark skin, dominating. Check check and check.

You swiped right as quickly as you could. And to your surprise, there was instantly a heart reaction and it took you to chat. She liked the look of your profile. Of the man whose face you were hiding behind. Three dots, Bilquis is typing, would decide your fate.

--

Bilquis had chosen the restaurant. It was upscale. It was expensive. You had gone in there earlier during the day, requesting the footage from their security cameras. The owner was a little stubborn, but you pushed right back, claiming that he was interfering in the investigation against four missing persons. And you would gladly stand outside of his business and let everyone walking in there know that.  He gave in pretty quickly after that. And you had just enough time to go through footage from the night that Mr Earl had disappeared. He had been there. With Bilquis. Your hunch was right.

You only had just enough time because you had to get prepared. Undercover work. This was your first time, and it was at a place that was way too pretentious for your usual wardrobe, so you actually had to go shopping and buy a new dress. It cost a pretty penny. You’d be billing the department for that. Claim it a work expense. They owed you that much at least.

Wearing this new gown, you went to the location. You were seated at a fancy table. You made sure to say loudly that you were waiting for someone, just in case anyone was listening in. You weren’t. There was no way you were going to try to get anyone of those dolts that you called co-workers to act as a date. You ordered a glass of water, and perused the menu, trying not to choke at the prices of some of these meals. Thirty-five dollars for a salad. A single salad. Yeah, there was a bit of a lettuce shortage but that just seemed impractical.

Bilquis commanded attention. The scarlet dress that she wore wrapped around her body perfectly, accentuating the waist, the breasts, those hips. Her hair glided down like a waterfall. Her lips matched, plump and glossy. She was classy, and yet, she was oozing such sexuality. Your mouth went dry despite the water, despite having seen the pictures that she had posted, despite knowing that she might be a suspect in the case of four missing men. If it was because of her, you couldn’t blame them. Look at her. She was ethereal, not in an angel sort of sense but in something .... physical. Powerful. A forgotten Goddess of some kind.

She was seated down at a table near yours. She didn’t look happy. Her eyebrows were knitted together on her forehead when she saw that who she was here to meet had not yet come. She ordered herself a glass of wine. A rich, red wine. You looked up the name on the wine-list that had come with your menu. An expensive bottle. Of course, she looked like she would accept nothing but the best.

Eyes slowly went back to their tables once the spectacle was over. You though, you couldn’t help glancing her way over and over. The minutes were ticking by. Plates were brought out for other patrons, the smells arousing your senses. Your waitress returned, asking if you would like to order something while you wait. You asked for another water with lemon. That seemed to catch the beautiful woman’s attention. Her dark eyes looked over to you, before her entire face turned and you were caught by the stunning appearance of her features. The way that her skin caught the low lights. She seemed to glow.

“Bring her a glass of wine,” Bilquis said to the waitress before she was able to leave your table. “Bring it to my table. Come. Join me. It seems that men are fools tonight.”

“Aren’t they always?” You asked, thinking of your fellow detectives. But you obeyed. You got up from your table, feeling like you were entranced by her. You could not fight it, even if you wanted to. You were beginning to forget about the investigation, which only grew worse as you caught onto the deep, earthy, almost spicy smell of her perfume when you got in closer. Men were indeed fools, but this woman somehow had the ability to turn anyone into a fool. Including you.

You shouldn’t have been drinking. You were on the clock. But the wine went down smoothly. You could taste the sunshine that the grapes had grown under. It was intoxicating. Bilquis was asking you details about who you were meeting tonight, and it was tough not to come out with the truth. Details as vague as they could be. It played off well, like you were annoyed that you had been stood up. Refusing to waste anymore time on the man who couldn’t be bothered to show up. You asked the same questions. She gave the same vague answers.

“To women,” She said, raising her recently refilled glass.

She ordered a meal, and then ordered one for you too. She told you that she knew what you would like, and she was completely correct. Not only was she holding your fork to your lips, but she also had you metaphorically eating out of the palm of her hand. More drinks were had. You were fighting against yourself. You didn’t want to like her. You didn’t want to get any sort of involved in the case. You’d meant to bump into her at the restaurant. Relate about being stood up. Introduce yourself as a detective and ask a couple of questions but strangely - the topic just never came up. It was all about her, her, her. And there wasn’t any complaint about that, at least not from you. It was so natural. She was so interesting, so fascinating, telling you about some nightclub that she had been at, a disco club, though she hardly looked old enough for such a thing. You were an attentive listener. You couldn’t help but be captured on each and every word.

“Why don’t we take this conversation back to my room?” She said, her tone so breathy. You’ve never heard such sexy words in your life. You nodded meekly, a slave to her every whim. At her suggestion, you pulled out your own personal credit card. This was going to be impossible to claim as an expense. The food had been expensive. The wine even more so. You signed the slip with remorse, though you didn’t show it, nor did you feel it too much. It was like you were screaming at yourself behind a wall, but you couldn’t hear. Your thoughts were clouded and muddled, and you were getting in far too deep. You walked out with her, a valet shielding the two of you from the rain with an umbrella while another went to go and get your car.

Ir was hardly glamorous. Being a detective didn’t actually make good money. Your car worked, and it didn’t have too many rust stains and the interior was clean enough, but it was hardly a Rolls Royce. Bilquis gave it a glance over, her face not showing excitement anymore, but she rushed you into it either way, giving you directions to her apartment.

--

Her lips crashed upon yours as soon as you were inside of the door. You had never kissed a woman - at least, not like this before. Frenzied, flushed, sweaty, manic. All you wanted to do was make her feel good. Make her feel worshiped. The case was so far out of your mind by this time. You couldn’t remember the names of the victims. If they felt at all like this before, had they even been victims?

There was no talk about who was going to do what as she lead you into the red room. And oh, was it red. That was the only thing that you had time to notice before you were down on your knees in front of her. The walls were red, the ceiling was red, the floor was red, the fireplace was red, the shelves were red, the bed and all of it’s coverings were red, red, red. It was almost enough to snap you out of the trance, until you saw another color.

The yellow flicker of candles. The officer in you felt ready to lecture on the dangers of her having unattended candles. You weren’t a firefighter, but you would have hated for her to lose everything. But the candles were having an effect on the room too. It felt warmer, a penetrative heat that went through the skin. You felt slick, sweaty and - sexy. You hardly noticed how she was getting naked for you right there, on the bed, legs spread, laying back against the thin blanket.

Oh god.

Oh goddess.

You’ve never seen anything so beautiful, so appetizing. You were drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Like a dehydrated man to water. She was commanding you to worship her, you could now hear her both inside and outside of your head. Echoing. Vibrating.

You went in for the taste. Sweet. But musky. A real earthy aroma. Sweat-tinged. You moaned against her as you did what she asked, and worshiped. Why were you here again? Did it matter? Your colleagues would get angry that you fooled around on the case. No, jealous. They would be jealous that you were the one here with this beautiful, amazing woman who couldn’t ever have done anything wrong. Who could be in no way responsible for anything bad happening. Even if she held those men in cages, they were better off for just being near her.

You moved in deeper. She didn’t seem to be pulling away. You tasted and you licked and you sucked and you kissed, every motion that your mouth wanted to do, you let it. You’ve entirely lost control. Deeper. How could you go any deeper? She wasn’t moving. But you were. Your body was feeling confined in the space between her thighs. You were realizing this slowly, like waking up from a heavy sleep. From a real thick dream. But by then it was too late. Her voice was reverberating through the room.

“Worship me.”

You started to wonder what you were doing, why you had lost control of your body. It was beginning to spasm. Orgasmic. It had been a long time since you felt this good. But your logical mind, your detective mind, was wondering - why? How? This feeling of crawling. How could you be crawling? There was nowhere to go. An immense pressure pulling you in. But pulling you in ... where? Why did it feel so good?

The walls were closing in. Tightening around you. How could they be? How - they were warm, and dark, and wet. You weren’t in the city anymore. You could tell that much. An unending tunnel. How did you get here again? It felt foggy. Your memory - all you could remember was a sense of love, of power, of something bigger than you. There was no other choice but to keep going. And going. And going.

#Bilquis #Bilquis x reader #Bilquis oneshot #American Gods #American Gods oneshot #x reader #oneshot #oneshots #request

[grandhotelabyss]

—Emmet Penney, “Why Climate Nihilists Target Beloved Art”

Penney must be reading my mind. He uses art theorist Boris Groys’s gloss on Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square to show how avant-garde utopianism has come to serve corporatist degrowth nihilism, as evidenced by the iconoclasm of deranged youth, who serve as the ignorant foot soldiers of their wealthy, misanthropic elders, the very ones who run our society.

Except that, unlike Penney, I don’t think Malevich’s dream could have gone any other way than toward this revolution-from-above. Trust the tale, not the teller: the tale, in this case, is pure darkness and nothing, but gridded and rationalized—the truth of The Revolution, behind all its mawkish advertising. 

Anyway, Flaubert said that if the powers that be had read Sentimental Education, the Franco-Prussian War might have been avoided. Increasingly, I feel the same about my novel Portraits and Ashes, written in 2013 and published in 2017, with Malevich’s Black Square on the cover, vis-à-vis the catastrophes awaiting us now.

The novel—which has an almost supernal connection to Groys’s thesis on the avant-garde, as I explain in my essay on the theorist’s Total Art of Stalinism—is about the convergence of a nihilistic death-cult, likely state-sponsored, with avant-garde art. Here is an excerpt about the novel’s resident nihilist-iconoclast-artist and his tie to the regnant powers:

Frank Jobe, then all of thirty-one years old, had crossed the planet on his mission to save art by destroying it as such, as an object that could be held as property or viewed from a distance and appreciated as merely beautiful. He wanted to make art instead a tangible force in the lives of those who encountered it. From behind his mirrored shades, his prematurely white hair waving across his tall forehead in the dry winds of the Hindu Kush, he’d told an interviewer, “They say it’s all just signifiers, man, but what’s the signification of this?” Then, infamously, he’d put his cigarette out in the interviewer’s palm. Behind and above them flickered the anamorphic diagonal of holographic fire that Jobe and his team had projected on the steep slope of a mountain on the Afghan border, an opus commissioned by and assembled under the auspices of several non-governmental organizations for the sake of its “searing commentary on the horrors of international conflict.” Jobe would later boast of his piece’s effects. Warlords of various factions, in crossing the mountain pass, rounded with wide and suspicious eyes the illusionist’s slanted flame until they saw the fifty-foot image of a human skull lambent within it; then they crashed their Jeeps or caravans and ordered their men to open fire on the high flame, momentarily suspending their own hostilities. It was this ambitious work of artistic anti-art, entitled The New Ambassador, that brought Jobe his global notoriety. 

His inscrutable intentions helped his cause as well. He was a man of bombastic rhetoric without being very articulate. “Bourgeois art,” he’d said, “is about something, it’s supposed to remind you of something, and you’re supposed to laugh or cry. Which is bullshit, man. I don’t want to remind you of something, I want to be the thing. I want to be the thing you cry when you remember.” 

Was there any moral or political aspect to this or was it a creed of pure sensation? Surely, said Marxist critics, the purpose of protesting “bourgeois art” was to prepare for the utopic and egalitarian relations among a redeemed humanity that would flourish when the reign of the bourgeoisie was brought to an end by the revolution. Failing that, the purpose of his vital and tangible artwork must have been, as another of Jobe’s critics put it, “to recall the subject to the materiality of existence and its attendant ethical responsibilities to the Other.” Jobe wouldn’t say; sometimes he said contradictory or incoherent things, leaving it to the critics and the curators and the professors and the graduate students to decide. 

“What critical and cultural theories inform your praxis?” an interviewer had asked him in Germany during the opening of his piece, The Marriage of Arbor and Rhizome. For this installation he had planted parallel lines of oak trees at regular intervals in square dirt patches on the ground floor of a gleaming new white and glass gallery in Berlin. In fifty years, the oaks in stately colonnade would overtake the gallery. The branches’ gentle force would lift and prise loose the glass roof until it would fall in a sparkling explosion among the acorns. The roots would ever so slowly swell under the white walls hung with their blank Suprematist canvases until they listed and fell in their turn. Eventually, no one would ever be able to tell that a gallery had been there at all. 

“There are no theories,” Jobe said. “Just praxis. People who write theory are undertaking the praxis of jacking off, which is cool if that’s what you’re into, but I’m into the real thing.”

#emmet penney #art #aesthetics #art theory #boris groys #fiction #creative writing #kazmir malevich #avant-garde

[heich0e]

a piece of you with me kageyama tobio/reader (haikyuu!) word count: 1.5k tags: soft boyf tobio, domestic bliss, long distance relationship woes, mans has never worn an ankle sock and you cannot change my mind

Kageyama Tobio has only ever owned two kinds of socks.

White ones, and black ones.

Same brand.

Same style.

He receives a new 5-pack of each colour for every birthday from his mother and father, retiring the oldest 5 pairs of each shade to replace with the new ones each time.

He owns 30 pairs total, which may seem like a lot, but he’s a strong proponent of a midday sock change, and his training schedule as a professional athlete necessitates more than one pair per day between training and morning runs and practices — plus he’s bad at remembering to do his laundry.

You know a lot of things about Kageyama, that’s a normal part of dating someone. But you learn new things about him all the time, like how when he was a kid he had a reoccurring dream about being a magician’s assistant, or that he sometimes gets hives if he eats too many strawberries but eats them anyway in the summer time.

Or how he only owns two kids of socks.

It’s still relatively early in your relationship when you figure this out, less than a year in — you’re at Tobio’s apartment, having let yourself in with the key he’d given you after only a few weeks of dating, much to your own surprise, and you decide to put in a load of laundry when you get a text letting you know he’s running a bit later than expected and you spot the overflowing hamper in his room.

You’re sitting cross-legged on the floor sorting the clean laundry to fold when you notice that the socks are easily divided into two practically identical piles, save for the shade of the cotton.

You blink down at the two masses of fabric.

“I’m home,” Tobio’s voice cuts across the apartment, pulling you from your stupor. He calls your name, and his head pops through his bedroom door before you can reply, only to find you staring at the socks in your hand - white in left, black in right.

“Did you do my laundry?” he asks. It might have sounded cold to anyone else, but you’ve learned to decipher the nuance in his tone well enough to detect appreciation, if not a little bit of incredulity in his words. “You didn’t need to do-“

“Do you only own two kinds of socks?” you can’t hold the question back any longer.

He looks at you strangely for a moment.

“Technically it’s one kind. Just two colours,” he explains.

Like that’s any better.

But this is just another part of him that makes him who he is — and like the childhood dreams and occasional hives, you accept it and move on.

Until the next Christmas rolls around.

Call it divine intervention, but in the midst of some last minute gift shopping on your way home from work one day, you spot them: a pair of bright blue socks with little white volleyballs printed on them. You make your way home with them tucked safely in your bag — to your shared apartment, now that half of the things in Tobio’s apartment are yours.

When Tobio opens the little gift on Christmas morning it takes him a moment to even figure out what they are.

"What am I supposed to do with these?” he asks you with a furrow in his brow.

"Wear them?” you laugh, sipping your steaming cup of coffee.

And so Kageyama suddenly finds himself the owner three kinds of socks, but he only wears two — the third remaining tucked safely in his otherwise monochromatic sock drawer, unworn.

Something else you learn about Kageyama relatively early on in your relationship is that he’s pretty good at goodbyes. A necessity, you gather, from a professional athlete who is constantly travelling for away games and training and various other opportunities.

What you learn about yourself is that you are not good at goodbyes at all.

Tobio is exceedingly patient as you gather with the rest of the Adlers players and their families outside the arena to say your final goodbyes before the group of men boards their team bus for the airport, to catch a flight to Europe where they’ll be playing for six weeks.

Six weeks.

It feels like a lifetime to you, but Tobio thinks otherwise. He tells you as much as you hold him tightly outside the arena, your puffy face buried into his chest, eyes red and watery from the tears you’ve been shedding from the moment the alarm on your bedside table went off at 5AM.

“That’s not even two menstrual cycles,” your boyfriend reminds you, in what you’re sure he thinks is a helpful way, patting your head gently.

“Tobio, don’t talk to me about menstrual cycles when we’re saying goodbye,” you whine, your words lightly muffled by his coat. While you appreciate that he’s been trying to learn more about you lately, you didn’t expect him to absorb the information he’d found on the female reproductive system quite so readily.

“Okay,” he says, and you can’t see his face but you think he might be smiling a little bit.

When he's unpacking his bags in his hotel room a million miles away he finds them, the bright blue socks with volleyballs on them that you’d secretly tucked into his suitcase when you were helping him back the night before he left.

And he wears them when he misses you while he’s gone (i.e. a lot.)

Five weeks and six days later, it’s like the middle of the night when you feel Tobio’s side of the bed dip, and a familiar warmth wrap itself around your half sleeping form.

“You’re home early,” you croak out wiping at your eyes so you can see him better in the dim light of your bedroom.

He hums, his eyes already closed as he rests his head on his pillow next to yours.

“You should change out of your travelling clothes,” you point out to him after a moment.

He simply kicks off his sweatpants and pulls off his sweatshirt, hardly rising from his horizontal position on the bed. You catch a peek of bright blue on his feet and you pause, looking over at him.

“Nice socks,” you say, smiling, as he slips under the covers with you.

He simply grunts, pulling you down to rest your head on his chest, right over his heart.

“I think they might be lucky,” Tobio says sleepily, already halfway to unconsciousness after his long day of travelling, and weeks apart from you.

“Is that so?” you ask with a quiet laugh.

“Yeah, when I was wearing them I always won,” he replies, and your heart flutters in your chest when you realize his choice of hosiery was not due to simply running out of other clean pairs. “Maybe it’s cause I missed you less because i had a piece of you with me.”

Your breath hitches in your throat as he presses a soft kiss to the crown of your hair, and you know he has no idea how sweet what he just said is.

So you start buying socks for him all the time, in every fun colour, pattern and texture you can find.

And he always wears them.

No one understands the sudden fashion change, because he's Kageyama — Shoyo even sends you a frantic text when the two of them are at lunch one afternoon asking why your boyfriend is wearing socks with blueberries printed on them.

But you’re the only one who knows it’s because they remind him of you.

Years later, one of the pairs of socks gets a hole in them, and Tobio is devastated. It’s the first pair you ever bought for him — the pair he wore to his first olympics, the pair he wore when he asked you to marry him, and the pair he was wearing when you met him at the altar.

“Can you fix them?” he asks you, his eyes wide and desperate as he cradles the precious pair of socks in his hands.

“Tobi, I only paid 100 yen for these — it’s a miracle they lasted as long as they did,” you wince, examining the way that the toe of one of the socks has ripped almost entirely off, and the other is only faring marginally better.

“Please,” he asks, earnest and resolved, “can you try?”

You smile softly and nod.

And a few days later, you bring them back to him — and he looks up at you with wide, glistening eyes as he cradles the bright blue fabric with little white volleyballs printed on it that you had carefully cut and stitched back together.

Into a teeny tiny pair of baby socks.

#kageyama tobio x reader #kageyama tobio x you #kageyama fluff #kageyama drabble #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu drable #haikyuu x reader #writing #hq fic #hq drabble #hq writing

[messers-moony]

Moony Wants, Moony Gets | R.L

Paring: Young!Remus Lupin X Slytherin!Fem!Reader

Summary: Moony has a natural wanting for his mate making his possessiveness visible the closer it gets to the full moon. 

He was always jealous. Blame it on the wolf in him, if you will, but Remus Lupin was highly possessive. Especially over what’s his - maybe not even what’s his but what he wants. She was gorgeous and his perfect mate—long tuffs of h/c hair and gleaming e/c eyes that glittered in the limelight. There was one problem with her, though—one major flaw in her mess of perfection. 

Y/n L/n, cunning, ambitious, resourceful, and charismatic. 

That was the problem. Y/n was a Slytherin, and Remus was a half-blood Gryffindor. To make matters worse, her closest friend was Regulus Black - Sirius Blacks brother. Remus’ best friend's brother. But Remus couldn’t help it. Her voice was like a siren's call, and her beauty was a rival to Aphrodite, but she had the wisdom of Athena. Y/n was a perfect balance of everything. 

Closer to the full moon, his possessiveness became more of a problem. Sirius was noticing the low growl that would erupt from Remus whenever someone stepped close to Y/n. James saw the lingering glares left on any male within a six feet distance of her. Even Peter observed his green eyes turn a shade darker as if someone mixed black paint into his usually bright eyes. 

Y/n sat at the Slytherin table, a cup of coffee beside her as she spoke intently with Regulus. Meanwhile, a Gryffindor across the Great Hall was glaring daggers at the younger Black brother's head. Sirius nudged him, grabbing his attention. 

“Mate, you’re growling again.” Sirius whispered, and Remus’ cheeks turned pink, “Am not.”

James gave an unconvincing grin, “Mhm, totally.”

“I was not growling.”

“I think you were.” James replied, “Definitely was.” Sirius added. 

Remus sighed, pushing his plate away to lay his head on the table, “What’s got Moony all wound up?” James queried, Remus, deadpanned looking at the laughing girl across the room. 

“I think I know.” Sirius simpered, “Do you now? Don’t be a tosser.” James stated teasingly. 

“Turn around. Slytherin, talking with Reggie.” 

He turned and looked back at Remus with his jaw dropped, “No- fucking- way.”

“What?”

“She’s the captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team, you tosser!” 

“Oh…”

James snorted, “Yeah, oh.”

“Looks like Moony found his mate.” Sirius winked, and Remus groaned, “Shut up about it, will you?”

“Never.” 

It felt weird. James wouldn’t shut up about how brilliant Y/n was, how the Slytherin’s Quidditch team was able to make plays that no one else would’ve even thought about. Sirius wouldn’t stop offering to talk to Regulus to see if maybe he had any intel on her. Strangely enough, Peter was silent but had a guilty look on his face. Guilty sufficient for Remus to comment. 

“Why do you look guilty, Wormtail?” Remus inquired, and Peter's cheeks flushed pink, “She- Y/n isn’t- um….” 

“What do you know that we don’t, Peter?” Sirius queried, his voice harsh, “She isn’t what you think. That’s all I’m saying.” Peter stammered out nervously. 

James tilted his head at the blue-eyed boy, “And you know this how?” 

“She’s my ex-girlfriend.”

“Woah! Hold on a second!” Sirius exclaimed in shock, “When did this happen?!”

“Back in fourth year.” Peter informed, “She seemed nice enough until you start to get serious with her. Y/n’s sharp-tongued and extremely ill-tempered.” 

Sirius sniggered, “Sounds like Moony.”

“Oi!”

“Sorry!”

“So, what does this mean for Remus?” James questioned further, “It doesn’t mean anything. Just be careful. I don’t care if you date her. Means nothing to me.” Peter replied, putting his hands up in innocent. 

Remus stared at Peter with curiosity swirling. How much did he truly know about Y/n? How did he manage to date her? Nonetheless, it didn’t mean anything to Remus because Moony wanted her. What Moony wants is what Moony gets. Later that evening, after prefect patrol, he padded into the library to dismiss any working students. But there were only two students inside. They sat in a secluded corner of the library. Regulus Black and Y/n L/n. 

Was it envy? Was it jealousy? He didn’t have time to ponder. Y/n had her head laid on Regulus’ shoulder and both her arms wrapped around his one arm. Regulus had leaned his head on top of hers, wavy black hair intertwined with her h/c hair. Both their eyes were closed, apparent they were asleep—potion and Transfiguration books placed on top of the wooden table along with an open sketchbook. 

What was he supposed to do in this situation? Wake them up? If it was just Y/n, perhaps he could’ve, but Regulus was with her, and Regulus wasn’t too fond of Remus for being friends with his older brother. Madam Pince had already left for the night, either choosing not to disturb them or didn’t notice them. Remus saw the inkpot beside the Potions book, almost empty. It was Y/n’s inkpot because the ink wasn’t black. It was a deep grape color. 

Remus sighed and grabbed the ink from his bag, charming it the same color. Discretely he took hers and swapped it out with his. Leaving a piece of parchment on top. Remus left the library without another word. Waking them up was a risk he’d rather not take. But now, he laid in his bed wondering how she’d feel about the new ink on the table. 

The sun began to rise, and Y/n’s body felt stiff. Carefully she began to stir awake after noticing a body beside her. Opening her eyes, everything seemed blurry, but after blinking a few times, she recognized the library books and the person's scent beside her. Regulus, her best friend. Y/n yawned and pulled away from him, about to begin packing their belongings, but she noticed a piece of parchment that lay on top of her ink. 

“Noticed you were out. You can have mine.“ 

Y/n hummed appreciatively. She didn’t know who gave her their ink, but she was eternally grateful for them saving her a trip to Hogsmeade. Y/n poked at Regulus’ right side, and he eventually stirred awake. His curls disheveled and his body just as stiff as she was. Regulus opened his eyes and met her e/c ones. 

“Did we fall asleep?” He groaned, and Y/n scoffed, “What do you think, dingus?”

“No need to be mean this early in the morning, Merlin.” 

“Someone saw us last night, though.” Y/n stated, and Regulus noticeably jumped, “Who?”

She shrugged, “Not sure, but they left me a new pot of ink.”

“Lucky you.”

“Lucky me.”

Both best friends cleared their table. Y/n put her Potions books away, and Regulus put his Transfiguration books away. Y/n stared at the writing on the parchment she had received earlier that day. The handwriting was almost unrecognizable. It was messy and sprawled. Whoever this was did not have good handwriting or was in a rush. But the day carried on. In Potions, Y/n sat in the front while the Marauders sat in the back. Remus stared holes in the back of Y/n’s head. 

“She’s gonna notice if you keep staring at her like that.” Sirius muttered. 

Remus sighed and continued to write his notes. If he tried hard enough, he could make out her elegant purple ink from here. It always baffled him why she chose purple over traditional black - suppose it wasn’t really any of his business, but he couldn’t help but wonder. The familiar sketchbook sat on top of the desk as well; he could see doodles in the same deep purple color. Occasionally Regulus - who sat beside her - would nudge her to pay attention, gaining an annoyed groan. 

Potions class always smelt weird. It was a mixture of glue, seaweed, and salt. It was also constantly humid. It brought shivers down Remus’ spine. He noticed it doing the same to the Slytherin girl at the front. Remus craved nothing more than to wrap his robe around her, but he was too late. Regulus was already doing the action, which earned him one of her jaw-dropping smiles. Unconsciously he began growling again. This time, James smacked his arm. 

“Mate!” 

“Sorry…” 

Dinner was even worse. Y/n had yet to remove Regulus’ robes leaving him in a button-down white shirt and the usual uniform. Sirius was surprised at his younger brother's chivalry but didn’t speak much. The full moon was that night, and as dinner progressed, Remus only gained more possessive. James and Sirius gave up on trying to scold him. It was apparent Moony wanted - no - needed her. Slytherin captain be damned, Y/n was going to be Moonys. 

A dry winter night. As usual, Remus walked to the Whomping Willow with his three friends following him. Tonight was normal in the sense of his friends turning into their animagus,’ but the odd thing was letting him out of the shack. The werewolf and the dog ran around the forest together. The rat and stag lagging behind, allowing the two animals to play together. But a stick-breaking brought the attention of the werewolves to the new person. 

He could smell them. Hear their blood running through their veins. Their heart pounding at a standard rate. The dogs barking could be heard, trying to distract the werewolf. The scent was female, and she wasn’t scared. Instead, the girl approached with confidence sticking out her hand to the wolf. Padfoot barked loudly. Prongs backed down, looking nervous. Wormtail squeaked loudly. But she came with confidence and assurance. 

Moony growled, “Shh, shh, it’s okay.” She cooed, “You’re safe with me.”

The h/c haired girl knelt on the grass, “No need to be scared, I’m not going to hurt you.”

Moony hesitantly put his snout in the girl's palm, making her grin. His fur was soft to the touch, and his eyes turned soft. Her smile was beautiful, and Moony nuzzled his hand into her soft palm. She chuckled and patted him more. Padfoot barked excitedly and ran to her, but the werewolf started to bare his teeth again. 

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m yours.” 

The wolf seemed to calm down at her words allowing Padfoot to approach her. Smiling brightly, she pet both animals, “It’s okay, love.”

“My name’s Y/n. I didn’t know that there was a werewolf here.” Y/n greeted as Moony curled up beside her, his head on her thigh, Padfoot doing the same on the other side.

She caught sight of the other two animals and whistled for their attention, “C’mere.”

Prongs and Wormtail approached nervously, but Moony gave no sense of protectiveness. Y/n’s words resonated in his head over and over again, “I’m yours.” The wolf fell asleep beside her, Padfoot doing the same. Prongs approached, and Y/n patted the top of his head. Wormtail sat in front of her knee. They seemed at peace. It was the first time Moony ever felt at ease. They’d be lying if it didn’t make them happy. 

Y/n stayed up all night with the animals. Despite the animals not knowing, Y/n knew that the stag, rat, and dog were animagus’. The werewolf was unknown to her. The following morning when the stag turning into James, rat into Peter, dog into Sirius. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to find out who the werewolf was. When he turned back into a human with his clothes tattered. Y/n continued to run her fingers through his hair as he slept. 

“Morning, Marauders,” Y/n commented. 

“You’re- you-“ James stuttered.

She laughed, “Apparently, your moony really likes me.”

“Would you mind petting me again?” Sirius teased, “Maybe.” Y/n retorted, winking. 

Sirius laid down on her other thigh that Remus wasn’t laying on, smiling; she ran her fingers through their hair, “You’re a godsend, lemme tell you.”

James and Peter sat in front of Y/n, “What made you want to take a walk in the forbidden forest last night?”

“Just wanted some air.” Y/n answered. 

Remus groaned and began pushing his head onto Y/n’s hand, “Morning, Remus.”

The Marauders and Y/n had never seen him jump up that fast, “What- you- I- uh-“

“Didn’t know you were a werewolf.”

“I- uh…”

“Sirius, for the love of God, get off her lap.” James interject, slapping the boy on the head playfully, “But it feels so good.” Sirius drawled. 

James grabbed his arm and pulled him onto the grass. In the process, Sirius got a mouthful of dirt and grass, “You wanker.”

“Did I- erm- hurt you?” Remus questioned shyly, “Nope, I'm completely unscathed.” Y/n smiled reassuringly. 

Remus turned to his friends, “Nope! Y/n saved us all.”

“Are you hurt?” Y/n inquired to Remus, who took a quick look at himself, “I- I don’t believe so….”

Sirius blew a raspberry, “Thank Merlin! Dragging you to the hospital wing is bloody exhausting.”

Silence filled the forest until Sirius smirked, “You know, mate when you were talking about Moony wanting her. I thought you were joking. Turns out you weren’t.”

“Oi!”

“Oh, Merlin…”

Y/n chuckled, “Well, Moony is rather cute if I’m honest.”

Remus’ cheeks blasted with pink, and Sirius laughed. James shook his head with a big grin, and Peter looked amused with Y/n’s confession. Without hesitation, Y/n leaned over to kiss Remus’ cheek, making him hide his face flustered. She stood up and ruffled Sirius’ hand, gently rubbing her nails across his scalp, making Sirius try to lean into her palm. They all stared at her except for Remus, who was equally embarrassed and flustered. 

“If you’re looking for a fifth Marauder, I know the Slytherin common room password.” Y/n winked as she walked to the castle. 

#remus x y/n #remus x you #remus x reader #remus lupin x reader smut #remus lupin x reader #remus lupin smut #remus lupin fluff #remus fluff #remus lupin #remus lupin imagine #Remus John Lupin #marauders x reader #marauders smut #marauders imagine #marauders fluff #marauders #sirius black x you #sirius black x y/n #sirius orion black #sirius imagine #sirius x reader #sirius black x reader smut #sirius black x reader #sirius black smut #sirius black imagine #Sirius black #james potter fluff #james fluff #james potter x y/n #james potter x you

[earlgreydream]

another minute.

| James potter x reader | fluff | smut |

subby james, because I can’t get enough

Your book rested against one bent knee, propped up so you could view the white pages. The story sucked you in, consuming hours of your time, making you forget you were lounged on James’ bed, instead of lost in a mythical world. Worlds of ethereal angels sucked you into a far-away reality, creating visions in your mind that distracted you from the looming anxiety of O.W.L.S. and James’ stress.

You were broken out of your trance when the door opened, the exhausted boy returning from quidditch practice. You frowned when you noticed how defeated his expression was, exhaustion making him weary. Your boyfriend rarely looked sullen, and the sight made you sad.

“James, how was it, love?” you dared to ask.

“It was a total shitshow.”

His voice had a distinct whine to it, alerting you of his disappointment and neediness. You sighed, reaching out your hand, squeezing his, deciding to let his profanity slide instead of scolding him. 

“Go shower, James, and I’ll help make it up to you,” you instructed softly, knowing what James wanted from you.

“Yes, ma’am,” he whispered softly, disappearing into the bathroom.

You listened to the water run, setting your novel aside. You stripped down while you waited for him, residing yourself to lie naked on the bed. 

.

James was beyond frustrated with how the practice had gone. Tournaments were coming up, and Gryffindor was nowhere near prepared to beat Slytherin in the championship. He’d spent the entire semester coaching the team, but they weren’t as good as the cunning house, and the frustration was wearing on James.

He was tired of being in control, being responsible and ordering around the other students. It exhausted him, and all he wanted was to melt into a submissive headspace around you, and let you take care of him. You loved to do it, you adored your sweet, mostly well-behaved, subby boyfriend. 

James let the hot water and soap wash away the dirt, rain, and sweat, leaving him clean for you. He spent a little too long in the shower, enjoying the water until it ran cold. He appreciated your patience, thankful he wasn’t being rushed. 

When he walked out of the bathroom, he immediately started to harden at the sight of your nude form stretched out on crimson sheets. You looked divine, and he stood and stared at you for a moment, taking in the sight.

.

You smiled, running your fingers up his warm torso as he walked over to you. The towel fell from his waist, and he knelt over you on the bed.

“What do you need, my love?” You brushed black hair from his face, and he leaned into your touch. You gently tilted his face up, thick, dark lashes parting to reveal emerald green eyes.

“Need you,” he whined, sinking down to lay between your legs.

“You can have whatever you want,” you promised, willing to give the gorgeous boy anything.

A muscular arm hooked under your waist, and his lips wrapped around one of your nipples, sending a shudder through you. You allowed yourself to relax, dripping onto the sheets as his tongue swirled around the sensitive peak, sucking on it while his fingers toyed with the other.

James encouraged a sigh from you, gazing up with gentle green eyes. Your fingers combed through his hair, feeling the soft locks under your touch.

He rutted onto the bed innocently, and you wondered why he didn’t fuck you, only focusing on your chest. You were beginning to ache with need, and if he wasn’t going to fill you, you wanted to be eaten out.

“Jamesie, love, why don’t you touch my pussy?” You asked, your voice coming out in a slightly higher pitch.

“Wanna play with your tits,” James whined, smearing his lips over your skin as he spoke.

“I know, baby, but I need to be touched properly. Please, can you be sweet for me?” You pleaded, starting to regret your promise to let him do whatever he wanted.

Above all, James wanted to please you, and be your sweet boy. A small sigh escaped his lips, and he pried himself from your chest.

“Okay,” he relented, pecking your lips before sitting back on his heels.

He let himself admire you for a moment, your skin flushed from teasing, and the puffy red area between your legs glistening. He bit back a smile, amused by how aroused you got from having your tits played with, even though you complained.

“Will you ride me?”

You almost missed the question. James’ voice was so low and soft, it barely registered. You didn’t understand how he could possibly be shy, asking, but he still somehow surprised you.

You sat up and James grinned, falling onto his back on the red sheets, his waves fanning around his head in a dark halo. He was ethereal, with his warm, tanned skin, and bright eyes.

You moved to straddle his lap, kneeling over your boyfriend. James’ hands came to your hips, helping to guide your movements and take some of the pressure.

Your hand reached below you, gently wrapping around him. You jerked him off a couple times, preparing to ride him. James watched you silently as you sank down, his cock disappearing inside of you. Your eyes squeezed shut and one hand reached out to grab the headboard for balance.

“James, fuck!” You moaned as your hips met his, entirely filled with him.

Your head dropped forward, both hands gripping the oak headboard. James leaned up slightly, pulling your nipple into his mouth while you were bent over him. A cry left your lips from the stimulation, and you rolled your hips, beginning to build a rhythm of fucking yourself on James.

He was heavy and thick, enough to make you feel as though you were being split open every time your hips came down on his. The burn was delicious, spreading heat through your abdomen and slowly building pressure.

James loved the way you felt around him. You were so tight and warm, enveloping him and shocking him by how deep you could take it. He loved the way your tiny veins strained as you gripped the headboard, your face scrunched up in pleasure.

He snapped his hips up into yours, forcing himself against your cervix. A scream tumbled from your lips, your clit grinding against his pubic bone. The stimulation sent you over the edge, orgasming violently.

Your hands came down to his chest as you struggled to hold yourself up, hot fire burning through your veins as you pulsed around him. James pulled you down fully, spilling into you as he came. You squealed at the sensation, gripping his shoulders as the thick, white liquid leaked out of you.

“Oh my god, James,” you breathed, throwing your head back as he throbbed inside of you, continuing to paint your cunt with white ribbons.

He was loud. Moans fell from James’ gorgeous, full lips as he fucked up into you, drawing out both of your orgasms until you were so weak you nearly collapsed on him.

He caught you, arms snaking around your waist to hold you against his chest. James rested his chin on top of your head, letting you bury your face in his neck. Fingertips skimmed up and down your back, tracing delicate shapes on your skin.

You relaxed, not caring about the mess, settling down with him still sheathed inside of you. He hummed softly, soothing you with a familiar melody.

You pressed tiny kisses to his throat, making the boy smile.

“You trying to rile me, honey?” James teased, nudging your head.

“No, just loving on you.”

His heart softened, and he kissed the top of your head, tightening his arm around you.

“We gotta clean up soon.”

“I know, but let me have another minute.”

James obliged your wishes, never objecting to being warmed by you. When you began to squirm, he decided it was time to clean up, his hands going under your legs.

An apology was whispered as he eased out of you, earning a pathetic whimper. You felt raw and sleepy, and you detested the feeling of James pulling out and leaving you empty. He tilted your chin up, delivering a kiss to your lips, trying to distract you.

He waved his wand, cleaning you both— and the sheets. Your arms draped over his back as you were carried to a shower, hot water pouring over the two of you.

James carefully set you down, making sure you were steady on your feet. You gently pushed his shoulder, smiling as James knelt in front of you.

His forehead rested against your thigh as you massaged shampoo through his hair. He didn’t mind showering a second time, cherishing the intimacy with you. All the tension he held dissipated, relaxing as you showered together.

He washed your body gently, minding the tender areas. You giggled as he murmured a spell, making the bubbles change colors.

.

“Thank you,” James said, snuggled beside you in bed.

“For what?” You looked up, meeting a gentle emerald gaze.

“For helping me cheer up,” he answered, brushing his fingers over your cheek. Your face broke into a smile, leaning back into his chest.

You pulled your knees up, curling tighter into a ball against him.

“I’m happy to. I’m sorry that your day was hard, though.”

“You more than made up for it. I’m so lucky to be yours,” he kissed your cheek, earning a grin. You reached up, tangling your fingers into his hair.

“I’m the lucky one.”

He laughed and pulled you onto his lap, squeezing you and littering kisses all over your face.

#james potter #marauders #marauders era #marauders!james #marauders era james #james potter smut #james potter x reader #james potter x reader smut #sub!james potter #hogwarts #harry potter #james potter imagine #james potter blurb #james potter oneshot #female reader #sub james potter

[llamagoddessofficial]

@radpunch Thank you so much for commissioning me! I love orca siren Sans, was so fun to write him interacting with a siren Mc. Trying to act all cute while he KNOWS what he did. I hope you like it!

“if you can’t catch anything, i’ll get you something.”

Him.

You startled, veeeery nearly letting out a squeak but managing to suppress it at the last second, instinctively darting away from Sans in the water and forgetting the fish you’d been trying to grab. How did such a huge creature, twice your size and brightly monochromatic, always manage to somehow sneak up on you? He didn’t seem too surprised, smile remaining in place; you jumping and making various noises (that he always teased you for) was how you’d been reacting to him for the past week. 

But he did noticeably give you space- even raising his hands with his palms forward, like he was approaching a frightened wild animal.

... You pursed your lips, folding your arms and retreating a few more inches before stopping. The fish darted out of view.

...

You didn’t know how to feel about Sans, you really didn’t. On the one hand, a strong argument could be made that he was the source of all your problems- his incessant stalking of you while you were human had caused you no small amount of terror and torment, nightmares of his massive black and white body lurking under the ice haunting you way into the daytime. His obvious interest had led to your sudden ‘promotion’ from ice researcher to siren team member, and your colleagues’ obsession with placing you in dangerous situations, he’d downright murdered three of your fellow researchers. And even now, while living as a siren, he wouldn’t leave you alone no matter how far you travelled and how strongly you made your fear of him known.

But... well, on the other hand...

... You couldn’t deny that your ‘team’ of researchers wouldn’t have treated him very kindly had they caught him, either. You feared him hurting you but he hadn’t ever caused you harm, despite his myriad of chances every day. If you were getting technical about it he hadn’t even killed you, he’d saved you; your colleagues had been the ones vying for your end, attempting to engineer his murdering of you for research. They’d chased you onto thin ice, which you’d predictably fallen through... and rather than eat you alive, or let you freeze and drown, Sans had stepped in and turned you into a siren.

Sure, you disliked his incessant following of you through the ocean, how his presence and inescapability made you feel completely powerless during every encounter. But as you experienced your first few days of living underwater, you had to admit, his assistance and protection had been totally invaluable. He retrieved food for you while you got accustomed to moving with your new body, no doubt saving you from hunger- his light jokes and gentle teasing had been just enough to distract and consistently keep you from spiralling into total panic. The complete lack of other predators in the area was clue enough to you that he’d had a hand in keeping you safe. Despite your protests... you couldn’t deny you appreciated the company in such a confusing time.

(You were an umbrella ‘dumbo’ octopus, now. So many limbs was hard to get the hang of.)

You still thought about it- your death. The shock and agony of the icewater, the darkness closing in around you, the horrible searing sensation in your lungs and head as the feeling of betrayal overwhelmed you almost as much as the need for air. 

And then... warm, solid arms closing in; the sound of him whispering that you were going to be okay, that the pain would be over soon. Everything bleeding away as his song wove into your mind... 

... It felt so nice to curl into his chest and finally let go.

...

He still frightened you. He was still a massive predator, capable of outspeeding and overpowering you in pretty much every way, toothed and clawed and ready-made to tear apart little creatures like you.

He was still looking at you... with that constant smile.

... Your gaze drifted.

...

You hadn’t noticed while on land. While human. But across his sleek black and white body were deep, silvery scars, catching the dappled light in an eerie way- they were far too neat and even to be caused by another member of his species. They had to be...

... Well. He’d told you his family were killed by siren hunters- you were smart enough to put two and two together.

...

Your eyes skirted across the old injuries. For some reason, it suddenly struck you that he... was right there. Right there, in front of you. You were still a fascinated little human at heart, you couldn’t deny that some of the time you’d spent thinking about him while you were on the surface had been devoted to what you’d do if you had the chance to be near to him, up close, without the risk of death you’d been so certain was present.

...

He’s already had a lot of chances to kill me.

... You weren’t concentrating. The same curiosity that’d driven you into your career and pushed you to even take a job in the arctic had taken over you again. You reached out toward his back, and the scars...

...

You made contact with him before you thought you would. It was like blindly reaching toward something in pitch black and touching far earlier than you’d anticipated; the pads of your fingertips pausing against his skin, as if confused that it felt normal... you knew it sounded silly but for some reason, you’d subconsciously been expecting his skin to hurt you. Burn or bite or something. 

Instead... it just felt warm.

He didn’t move, which both increased your confidence and allowed the curious spell that’d settled over you to stay. For the first time since he’d held you while you were drowning, you touched him.

... His orca body was smooth and streamlined, but incredibly solid- shaped by years of beating against the ocean currents and fighting prey. Powerful muscles lay in wait just under the skin; the scars, almost pearlescent in the light, were tiny interruptions in the smoothness, surface-level cuts in strong canvas. You traced over it all like you were touching the coat of a sleeping lion.

... There was one particular scar that had caught your attention since the moment you noticed it. It was just beside his pectoral fin, and unlike the other long and thin ones, this was definitely a puncture wound. A fist sized circle, shimmering irregularly healed tissue...

The only weapon that could’ve caused an injury like this was a harpoon.

... You ghosted the wound with the flats of your fingers, a little pang twisting in your chest. How old was he when he lost his pod? When he lost everything? He seemed so joyful all the time when he followed you. Just how long had he been by himself for? He suddenly didn’t seem quite so big. Your hands raised up to his ribs... the bones were warm and littered with even more nicks, scrapes, things you hadn’t seen before because you were too focused on being terrified of his eyelights. His collarbone was at your eye level, for some reason the sight of it made your cheeks and stomach feel strange... your touch moved up, to his shoulders... 

... Did he always had that tiny scar on the corner of his jaw? A beautiful, soft sky blue colour was emerging from his cheekbones, like someone had taken an ultramarine powder on a big fluffy brush and lightly dusted it across the zygomatic arch. You cupped his cheekbone. It was really warm...

...

He put a hand over yours.

...

... It was as if you’d been leaning in so close to a painting that you only saw the colours and brush strokes. You weren’t looking at the whole picture, too focused on the tiny details, carried away in appreciating the small things. The sensation of his huge skeletal hand over yours brought you, alarmingly fast, back into reality- and when you took a second... taking a mental step back, retreating to observe the whole image... 

... 

He was gazing at you. Lovingly. It was an unmistakable expression. A wide and genuine smile, the lidding of his sockets could’ve been mistaken for sleepiness if it weren’t for how startlingly bright his eyelights were. The blue you saw was a blush, glowing faintly, spreading across his face and deepening with every passing moment. There were so many emotions on his face, it...

...

It was too much. Too much intensity directed your way. Your fear of him set in again like a flooding dam, and you pulled your hand back, internally berating yourself- even as you retreated his expression didn’t change. You could practically see love hearts coming off him.

“heh...” He purred, voice teasing, lilting, tilting his head. “if you wanna get touchy, i really don’t mind...”

... You made a tiny squawking sound of indignation, going almost as red and he was blue, ignoring his chuckling and turning away to swim from the lovestruck orca. Your head was an indecipherable flurry of confusion and embarrassment and regret...

(... and a weird feeling of happiness you were trying to suppress...)

... He followed you, of course. You knew he would. For some reason, this time... you didn’t mind quite as much.

#llama writes #arctic au #ORCA SAANS #we all love him #tw drowning #tw scars #he is merely Baby #commissions