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honestsycrets · 10 months

Text

dedication | young!miguel o'hara x reader

❛ pairing | young geneticist!miguel o'hara x scientist!reader

❛ type | oneshot, explicit.

❛ summary | alchemax is a dangerous place to work. miguel's new assistant may be over her head. maybe he can help her, though.

❛ tags | virgin reader, f!reader, shitty science, plot heavy, loose canon references, literary liberties, loss of virginity, overprotective Miguel o'hara, jealous miguel o'hara, some objectification, workplace politics, aftercare (as requested), corruption (is it tho?), bc what bc, Spanish is not translated, young!miguel, heel-foot fetish, somewhat romantic.

❛ fulfilled request | can we please have a miguel x virgin reader and he didn’t even know until he was already putting it in?? And then voila his corruption kink unexpectedly growS? @a--dedicated--fangirl

❛ sy’s notes | miguel sort of works on that whole corruption aspect throughout this fic, but i wanted to meld these two ideas together to create a reader who is entirely dedicated to Miguel. This piece was a bit long for me.

“Miguel, your new assistant is here.”

On paper, you’re an excellent candidate for the genetics program.

An excellent GPA, renowned company internships, decent publications, and a diverse upbringing. It was all good. Great, even. But as the head of the genetics program at Alchemax, he has a little thing called priorities. Interviewing everyone himself was low on the rung of shit he felt like he should be doing. There was, however, one little, itty bitty, tiny problem with bringing you on board.

“Dr. O’Hara? ¿Estas bien?”

That shirt-- is not meant to hold those-- His brain was left field, glimpsing at them. A slightly sheer button-up revealed the outline of your bustier and its inability to conceal your body. They should have been illegal. He was pretty sure they were illicit in the handbook on his table. He should really read that again. Maybe then he wouldn’t be salivating over something as simple as a co-worker-- He needed to get out of the lab. The bleached walls tightened around him, the space smaller than he remembered. He was going to get caught.

Realistically, the lab was full of witty people. Many of them were witty men with subpar looks and stupider dicks. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything about it. Not only because your lips were plump, painted petal-pink, and kissable or because the depth of your sultry eyes went straight in the dick. No, but because that would be improper of a man of his stature to tell one of the only women in his care that she was too gorgeous for the job you were clearly qualified for.

“Sí, coño,” He fixed his glasses, crooked on his broad nose. He stood up from his desk and grabbed his lab coat, swirling it around his broad shoulders. If he wasn’t mistaken, you tracked the movement with your eyes. “Do you want a cafecito? Miss…”

You told him your name. He mulled it over on his tongue, lathing it in a gentle acknowledgment. Cemented it in a place he wouldn't forget. You tinked your head to the side, your lashes fluttering when he cleared his throat. Great, just shocking--

“After you,” he headed for the door. He held it open for you, plastering his back to the wood. It didn't matter. You slid by closer than he’d prefer, your hand catching on his belt buckle with muttered apologies. This wasn’t going to end well.

Cafecito is an excellent excuse to pull his dumbass together.

It also calms his nerves, centers his mind, and allows him to compartmentalize. Whether or not you could hold your own wasn’t his issue, his issue was the necessity of someone he could trust. Ugly, beautiful-- so long as they were efficient, Miguel would make due. The cafeteria was a large and clean space. The many tables were crowded with wrap-around stations for poorly crafted, misery-inducing meals. Miguel paid and took a seat at a creaky table. One where he could see the door open, shut, and keep an eye on the comings and goings of meager scientists and annoying managers.

“You’ll be working with me.”

You pursed your lips around the warm cup of coffee, taking a ginger sip. He noted your lipstick stain that remained as you pushed the cup toward the middle of the table you shared with him. This damn suit vest was stifling. He gave you a long, slow look, tilting his head to the fact that you’d not drunk anything. It’d be rude to acknowledge.

“Delgado told me,” you smiled warmly. “He said you’re a genius. I don’t know that I believe in geniuses.”

Hmph. Delgado, things fell into place. That sycophant knew what he liked. He also knew that Miguel was better than him, always was, and always would be. Miguel offered you a slick smile, convinced he could assure you otherwise if he needed to. “Delgado says a lot of things. I’m surprised he gave you to me.”

“Why is that, O’Hara?” the way his name slipped off your tongue was a hot sin. If only he believed in a god. His eyelids shifted over his eyes, heavy-lidded and dark.

“You’re beautiful. He likes to collect beautiful things,” Miguel tried, curious. Your nails clicked in succession over the table. A repetitive click, click, click. He would be annoyed too if he were no more than a ploy. A distraction. Miguel wasn’t sure that it wasn’t working. His eyes flickered down, catching one of your palms curling into a tight fist, tension rolling through your fingers and up your arms. “He knows I do too.”

You leaned in, close enough that he could spot the unique freckles spread out in a crescent moon beneath a layer of makeup on your face. Beautiful. “I’m not here to belong to you, O’Hara. I hope you know that.”

He was off to a great, fantastic start.

“Understood.” Miguel leaned back in his chair, a smirk creeping up his lips. Or, believe that you believed that. You spared him any more mincing comments. Appeased by his suggestion, you brought your drink back to your lips.

“Good. What are we sequencing?”

“Me.”

You swallowed. “You? You can’t be--”

Mhm, he stared, lips pressed tightly together. “You’ll code my DNA. Then we’ll splice it.”

"With what?"

"You'll see."

“Is this your little,” you swirled your finger in a circle. “Pet project?”

Unfortunately not, he would have liked to say. That information was confidential, and though you worked on the project, there were levels to his willingness to involve you in the delicate flow of workplace politics. Still, you might make a healthy distraction from his work. Miguel took a swig of his cafecito, boring into the black substance.

“Something like that.”

Having a pretty assistant means things don’t always get done according to schedule. Not quickly enough, not by far. There is a time limit to everything at Alchemax. The quicker, the better. Thus this project demanded more hours of his time. The project was spliced between the work required of him by superiors and you, your quirks, and your preferences.

Miguel has learned a great many things about you in a short amount of time. You don’t appreciate misplaced pet names. You actually can’t handle coffee because of the caffeine or the sugar. He also learns things about himself. How little he likes when Delgado comes to check on progress because he isn’t actually checking on shit. He's checking you out.

He likes to weasel his nasty fingers around the door, peering in to try and find out what specimen he’s actually working on. Miguel was much too smart for that. His beady eyes caught Miguel over your shoulder, mumbling up to him about a new finding in tests you ran earlier that day. Your face mask twirled around your index finger, finally free and at a documentation workspace. Funny, because he clearly redacts information from your well-recorded notes on the daily. You refuse to include less.

“Hey Mike,” he said. “How are things… Oh hey, you. You settling in, honey? Mike treating you ok? I can discipline him for you.”

“As if you could,” Miguel huffed.

But Delgado spying on you, the way you record progress by pouting out your lips, shifting between paper and your lab reports, was intolerable. Because... well, he has sensitive information on there. Your nose scrunches in distaste, but you bow your head just slightly as a hello. He might be his supervisor, but Miguel doesn’t need one to know why this asshole is in his lab turning his smarmy brown eyes over the way you sit: one leg over the other. You seem to realize it too, trailing your eyes over his gaudy suit to Miguel’s sinewy hand on your shoulder.

“Stop being a creep,” Miguel complained, “She has actual work to do.”

“Actual work? As opposed to--“

“Yes, what you do.” Miguel spat out. You eschewed a giggle, turning your face over a pristine white lab jacket that thankfully, you had no qualms in wearing. Otherwise, he might not finish any work in the lab at all.

“I supervise--

“You’re still talking but we’re not listening,” Miguel waved him off, plucking up papers by your side. Your eyes snap up to Miguel’s deep chocolate eyes hidden behind the thin frame of his metal glasses, waiting for a proper response. “Goodbye, Aaron.”

Miguel walks to the door, locks it with a click, and returns to your side. You glance at his white lab coat, fluttering around his tapered waist. He loves the way your eyes look at him with a soft, inviting expression, beseeching him to come to sit by your side as he always did. “Not a fan of Delgado, I take it.”

“Are you?” Miguel sits with his legs spread, his fingers threading through his thick brown hair. You set your papers down, swiveled toward him. The wheels of your rolling chair squeak on either side of his thick, black boots. His eye catches your thick thighs, squashed between your midi skirt, its atrocious slip causing him discomfort. His hand leaves his thick hair, dropping in unison side by side.

“I can’t stand being called honey, Mike.”

“Shut up.”

The days proceed similarly. Days filled with brushing past him as he slides in samples and reagents. He might lose a sample, clattering on the floor, and you always rush to help him clean up. Lunch together, because no matter how late he eats, you’re there beside him. Then as night falls, you stay until he has finished whatever he needs to do.

“Time to eat something,” you slipped into his office. The clock ticked past midnight. Miguel flicked through handwritten pages of information that did not need to be recorded in computer files. You watched his eyes scan over the ink on the page, acknowledging you with a grumpy grunt. Not now, not when he was so close to finishing the last section of the project.

“Empanada,” you turned his palm over, placing the flaky pastry in his hand. Caramelized apple. He loved a good apple empanada. He watched as you walked over to the coffee maker, drawing him a warm cafecito just how he liked it. Miguel dropped his pen, stretching out his aching spine.

“Gracias. From where?”

“I made them,” you set down the cup a little harder than intended. The surface rippled, throwing hot coffee drips onto his pages. His eyes flickered up from the pages to your eyes. Without thinking, he blathers:

“That so?” A pause. “Don’t you have a man?”

“Miguel. With this sequencing project, you’re the only man in my life. Shut up and eat the empanada.”

“Huh. Good. I like that.” He swallowed the empanada with a bob of his head, his tongue lathing over his teeth for any more of the sweet sugar. He stood up, finding your expression soft, drawn out by a sense of longing that he couldn’t imagine he saw.

“You like my sad love life?”

Yes.

“No, we have a company event. A ball,” Miguel chided, his tone gentling as he slipped away from his desk, abandoning his steamy coffee on his desk. He backed out of the doorway, “It’s all Stone’s politics. You know how these things are. I have to go. Come with me.”

“Is that a request or an order?”

“A date.”

I’d love to. Your words were the only thing that made tonight bearable. Slinking his tanned skin into a dark blue suit that cinched everything too tight was… unbearable. It clung to his skin like a second skin and choked off his air. But it might be worth it to see your face-- just maybe. He tracked the fluttering tails of fish behind bulletproof glass, following them as they fluttered away into their rock. He wished he could too.

“Miguel?”

“You’re here,” he turned around, dropping the champagne he idly held in his hand. It went forgotten by his boot as you called his name again. His gaze fixed on yours, the slinky navy blue dress caused his heart to thrum through his chest, chasing the sight of your body at his feet, picking shards of glass up with the aid of a worker, apologizing profusely for the mess. A soft puff of breath slipped from his lips as you stood back up, gripping your purse a little harder in your hands. He ran his hand over his jaw, drawing himself back to his senses.

“Miggy,” he husked out. “Call me Miggy.”

“You look handsome, Miggy,” his name felt unreal on your lips until he felt the pressure on his elbow. Your soft hands slunk around his, cradling him for some security in the face of the large doors. He shook himself back to his senses. Right, there was a reason he was here. “But shouldn’t we go?”

He should have-- but did he want to? No, not really. He didn’t want to see Stone’s greasy face, let Aaron take a peek at how you looked dolled up, or any of the rest of these fuckers. What he wanted was something else entirely.

“Listen.” Miguel stopped, his other hand coming to the jeweled bracelet on your wrist. The doors to the ballroom lapsed, groups of older men filtering in and out with their pieces of the night: doting wives, longing husbands, and partners that their wives or husbands probably didn’t know about. “Don’t wander off from me. They’re all snakes. All of them.��

“Even you?”

“Hermosa,” you didn’t leer at him. “I’m the least of your worries.”

He wasn’t wrong. The ballroom was dolled up in lush fabrics, fine china, and a copious amount of food as it was every year. Miguel found the attempt to distract from what really went on behind closed doors at Alchemax a bit cloying. This year the music was at least tolerable. It filtered out into the ballroom in a syrupy melodies driven on by the soft, promises of rich men for the exchange of sex. For much of the night, he could stomach the various men poking and prodding at him about his impending research. So long as you were here.

“Miggy,” you breathed, a hot puff of air against his ear. He leaned down, his hand atop of yours. “Will you dance with me?”

Dance? Miguel had two left feet-- it’s why he was a geneticist. For all the work you did on his behalf in the lab, including this very night, he owed you the benefit of whatever you wanted. He searched out a quiet area, one where the only disruption could be the stream of moonlight in through a window. You preferred it over the wall of vivacious men and over-powdered women. He preferred it over the atrocity of his footwork.

“It’s not much of a date,” Miguel’s hand slid around yours. He encompassed your small palm with his large hand, the other gliding across the soft, exposed skin of your back. You swayed with him, side to side. He was an awful dancer, but there was something endearing about that. He saw it in your eyes, the glimmer of curiosity, gliding your dark heels against the inside of his foot. Damn, he still sucked.

“No,” you agreed, shifting to take the lead. He followed your steps. Right, back, left, up. Maybe he stepped on your long dress once or twice, too. Shock, he cursed again, stepping over your foot.

“You’re remarkably bad at this.” You settled your head on his chest, letting your box steps fade into little more than the shifting of your hips.

“I know. Let’s just-- sway?”

“Swaying is good.”

“O’Hara,” boomed Stone. But of course— peace couldn’t last forever. Like a bullet through the chest, a voice caused him to turn in startle. His tan cheeks flushed with warmth, feeling cut off from the cover of others. He was dressed in the most gaudy of clothes that almost seemed to match the crooked expression on his pale face. No matter how many times he tried to fix it, it always looked… wrong.

Stone’s hands came together, clapping multiple times to force the crowd of politicians, scientists, and bought-in participants to fade away. His voice caused Miguel to growl, a low rumbly noise that you soothed with your breasts pushing gingerly against his arm. He could do it. He could handle this pompous little shit-- “And who is this beauty? A new girlfriend, perhaps? Fiance? O’Hara could do with a wife. Settle him down, y’know.”

Miguel huffed out of his nostrils. “This is my lab partner,” he cleared his throat, leaning forward. “For… the project.”

“Her? A lab partner? Ha!”

Shock. He didn’t have to look at you to know you were insulted. Miguel pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing out the tension as you smiled through the interaction, taking over for Miguel. “We have measurable results.”

“That’s what I like to hear, sweet thing. Now, Miguel, Aaron has found a test subject…”

“I’ll interview them.”

“No need! I--”

“Excuse me, Mr. Stone. I’ll let you two talk,” you slipped away, your heels clicking off into the busy crowd. Stone was talking. Miguel knew he should listen closely. His half-formed plan to see what the future held for his research was wafting into the air, wisps of it in his ear. Tomorrow-- test-- can you? Panic blinded his senses. He could find you nowhere in the room, and even if he did, would he be too late?

“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine, it’s… excuse me.”

The issue with falling for someone was the scythe of his fear. His position was inherently risky. No matter how many groups of people he cut through trying to find you, you weren’t there. No tiny little appetizers of shrimp on half a skewer. No booze, because your head would swim. Not near the bathrooms, either. He rushed down the steps when he found you, just before the large iron gates, staring up at the stars peppering the sky.

At your feet, Aaron. His drunken fingers trying and failing to guide the strap off of your ankle. You, of course, sat there staring dumbly down at his failed attempts to do something as simple as fix your damn heel.

“I’ll take it from here.” Miguel booted Aaron out of the way. Who, with his sloppy sloshed curses, tried to win a fight with him. He eventually won out. Aaron slunk away, somewhere up the steps. Miguel wasn’t counting. “You didn’t listen.”

“Hm?”

Miguel loosened both straps, sliding his open palm under your foot for one then the other. You gazed at him, sliding the black heels off your feet, tutting his tongue at the blistered back of your feet.

“I told you not to wander off.”

“I just wanted to see the stars. Besides, it was just Aaron.”

“It’s never just Aaron. It’s Aaron and Stone.” Miguel’s eyebrows pushed against one another, recording your failure to listen. You crossed one leg over the other, sliding your toes over his silk tie, kept beneath a vest. He knelt before you, searching your eyes for the right answer. “You don’t know… what you’re getting into. I’m trying to keep you safe.”

“I don’t need you to. I can take care of myself, Miguel. Please don’t--” you sighed. “Don’t be like them.”

He knew what you meant. Like Aaron, peeling off your shoes at the sign of discomfort because you were a pretty woman. Or Stone, who couldn’t comprehend your value as a scientist. Those who doubted you because of your color, gender, or a mixture of the two. His mouth twisted in frustration. He was in deep. Whatever you desired, he wanted to give. It came at a price.

“Are you mine,” the words came out stiff, “or theirs?”

“Miggy,” you turned the word over on your tongue, willing him to stand down. His dark eyes settled on yours, unmoving. “Why do I have to pick?”

“You can’t have both. You’ll have to choose. One day.”

Your mind worked. He knew from the way you pursed your lip out, then in, puncturing its pillowy surface with your teeth. You shifted your gaze to the water, the stream coursing down the unfeeling stone. Miguel's fingers ran across your inner thigh, causing you to gaze down at him. The steps of others on the other side of the fountain, fading into the depths of the night caused you to break his gaze. Miguel offered you his hand, fitting the shoes under his other arm as he walked toward the valet. You took his hand and interlaced your fingers.

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course,” you said, though the words felt thready and thin, nary a whisper. Something in the undercurrent of your voice concerned him. A thread that needed to be snipped, convinced of the vileness of the city-- of who you worked for.

He doesn’t make mistakes.

But he left the project code on his desk. It should have been there, yet, the corpse of a decrepit, awful creature withered on the lab floor proved otherwise. Someone had taken it because he was distracted. As a result, someone lost their life... even if it was Stone's doing.

Now, scouring through his papers, his hands tremored like a common drug addict. He supposed he was one, a druggie, tremoring like a shot hungry, Rapture crazed--

“Miggy?”

He snapped around. His gaze melded your figure into one beautiful blurb, even with the glasses on his broad nose. It was your voice, coded in something close to concern. Miguel ran his hands through his hair, long strands falling messily over his eyes and cheekbones. He flattened his hands out atop his head.

“What are you looking for?”

“The notes,” he weathered a breath. He doddered about the room, throwing a stack of paper onto the floor. They crumpled over the floor, mixed projects, notes on the specimen, but none were his. “Where are my notes?”

“You’re sick,” your voice broke gently, as if speaking them alone helped. A horrid crack of laughter slipped from his throat, drawing into a long lament as he repeated the words after you. Sick, you said, he was sick. If being sick was the least of his issues, he would have been a happy man. Your steps rang into his ear, heavier than before, painful and loud. He crumpled onto the couch in his office, his hands cupping them. Your soft hands coursed over his chest, unbuttoning his starched button-up and sliding it down his muscular upper arms. “This might hurt.”

No kidding, needles always hurt. But the instantaneous relief that flooded his system overrode the momentary pain. As your fuzzy figure came into focus, he recognized the drug that you set aside.

“You didn’t--”

“You were right, Miggy, about the-- Mr. Sims.” Miguel gazed at you, leafing through novels of notes with trembling hands. He cursed himself for subjecting you to seeing that. Not quite human, not quite... The twisted look on the poor man’s face. What months of research with one another had offered. He would fix it. He knew the research was on point. It was the application that was lacking.

“I have a copy of your notes,” you murmured as if someone could hear. They likely could. “¿Ay, puñeta, dónde está? Ah! Here, here it is. Your… profile.”

“You kept it,” he glanced down at the hastily scribbled note attached to the clip. ‘Miguel’s profile’ alongside a soft pink heart. He stopped your hands from thumbing through another leaflet. His eyes traced the dry ink of the heart. His thumb moved to stroke it, catching the sight of bubbling tears welling over in your eyes out of the corner of his eye. The tears slid down your full cheeks, triggering his discomfort to well up in his stomach. Miguel shifted closer, flicking fat droplets off your slight jaw.

“Hermosa,” Miguel shifted his head, cocking his eyebrow. “¿Que te pasa?”

“I should have listened to you Miggy,” you began, inhaling air forcefully through your nostrils. Breathe, you murmured. Miguel's soft hand cupped the back of your neck like a collar. You were happy to be collared by his hand, it felt safe.

His eyes narrowed, thumb caressing the loose strands of hair at your nape. “You should have. You know I'll take care of you."

You nodded.

"You have to be fully dedicated to me.”

“I am.”

“Show me.” You fluttered your eyes, the gears of your mind working to understand what he meant. His hand fell away to trace the bow of your black blouse. He tugged on the knot, slipping the bow loose and running his fingers over your exposed cleavage below. “Take off the blouse.”

Was it necessary? Some might have said no-- but sex, in its connective nature-- was the ultimate dedication. At the end of it all, that's what he craved: your eyes, your actions, all born with him in mind. With trembling fingers, you untucked your shirt from your black slacks. Miguel sat back, tracking the soft lace of your balconette bra teasing his eye. You loitered for a minute too long, enough for him to lift his thick eyebrow.

“Don’t stop now,” he said. Your knees knocked together, slipping the shirt over and off your torso before draping it on the arm of his couch. Your bra followed quickly after, slipping out of the twisted straps. You skimmed your hands over your breasts, holding them for comfort.

"No." Miguel flicked his fingers, motioning for your hands to move from your thick nipples. You pushed your breasts together, allowing him to marvel at them a second longer. “Que maravilla... You have no idea how long I’ve waited. Go on, take off the rest now.”

You suckled in breath, sliding the button of your pants loose. Then the zipper, its cloth scratching your thighs on its way to pool around your ankles. You stepped out of them, joining them too with your shirt. Miguel sat up, running his calloused fingers over the side of your hip and waist. His thumbs hooked in your panties, drawing them down over your pussy, a moist spot on your panties connecting a small string of wetness to your pussy. His palm slid between your thighs, pinned by your thighs pressed together, whether out of an innate need for more pressure or shyness to show him how wet you were. Hm. Miguel melded your ass, striking your skin with his large palm, it jiggled.

“Miggy,” you breathed, shy and intimidated. “I have to tell you something…”

“Lay down,” he told you.

“But Miggy, what if someone…” Your eyes darted away from his, chewing on his cheek as you slid back down beside him. You settled on the couch, your legs thrown over his thighs. The couch was stiff, hard against your neck. You stole a haughty glimpse at his face, focused entirely on coursing his palms over your calves and thighs, then back down to your slight toes. He ground your feet over his stiff cock, obscured by the fabric of his slacks. He felt big-- bigger than you could have imagined from the look on your face.

“¡Basta!” Miguel growled, “No one is going to come in. Let me see you.”

You flushed.

“You want me to…” you glanced down, your curls were soft to the touch.

“Touch yourself for me.”

With your heart strumming in your chest, you shifted your hand down, spreading your lips, soft and wet. You were so wonderfully shy to follow his orders, the pads of your fingers rubbing along your outer lips, massaging them warm and swollen. You buried your eyes into your other arm, dragging up and down, over and over. A delightful sigh greeted his ear, ensuring that though you were too embarrassed to look at him, you loved it. He allowed it for now-- because he was a gracious, forgiving man.

“Shock,” Miguel shuffled at the button and zipper of his pants, freeing himself from his slacks. He spat into his palm, stroking over his fleshy length, squishing his cock against your foot. Your toes curled over his cockhead, engrossed in Miguel’s rumbling pants, the soft pleasure that bloomed from his chest. Your eyes trained on his lips, the slight breath suckled between his teeth. Your fingers glazed over your stiff clit, pausing as though you needed his permission, just how he wanted it. Your sweet submission.

His eyebrow perked. “You can touch it.”

“Oh,” you glanced down, tracing the way Miguel fisted himself, swirling up to his cockhead, along fat veins and the bubble of salty fluid on his tip. His permission seemed to spur something else in you, flicking your swollen clit to the sound of his pleasured growling, your own pleasure growing in tandem with his.

“¡Ya!” he annunciated, watching as you failed to stop. All at once he stopped his ministrations. A sigh escaped his chest as he pushed himself up, smacking your hand away from your puffy cunt. His cock bobbed between your bodies. You wanted to touch it, but couldn’t.

"Wait," you cried out. His cock twitched as he lowered his hips down, drawing sweet lubricant on his cock, stroking your pussy. He leaned forward, capturing your mouth in a warm kiss. He dipped his hand down, his cockhead prodding and poking, dipping lower with the aid of his hand.

“MiggyI’mavirgin,” you said all at once, his cockhead nudged against your entrance. Miguel’s head about snapped as he looked up, eyes popped wide open in disbelief. Before he could quite form a coherent thought, your hands shot out to grip his suit vest, stopping him where he was.

“¿Qué dejiste? Say that again?”

“I haven’t… I haven't had sex,” you murmured. He hadn’t put it together. Your shyness, the awkward way you shuffled around, loosening your bra and hiding your perfect breasts from his eyes. The words were finally out in the open but didn't register.

"A..." Miguel fisted his cock, once, then twice, shifting back to kneel before you. Your eyes fell on his muscular thighs, the way his hand fisted his dick. “You’re a virgin?”

“I’m too old for this,” you mumbled, hiding your eyes with your palms. Miguel shifted to cast aside your hands from your eyes, his muscular body caging you underneath, looking for an explanation. “I just. Between school, work, I never had time.”

Not that he was complaining.

"No boyfriend?"

You shook your head. He couldn't believe his luck. Not only were you gorgeous, but you were untouched. His, completely and fully. He liked it better that way-- to be the first memory smeared in your head. So that when you looked back on this moment, right now, it would forever be marked by his face.

"It's mine," he blurted out all at once. "I want your first to be mine."

His hand dropped down to your cunt. The pad of his middle finger worked at your entrance as though he were exploring the truth of your statement, stretching you with the aid of his fingers. You were tight, it had to be true.

You nodded, face buried deep in your arm. It didn’t take but moments for him to draw his hand back, suckling the lubricant from his fingertips. You distantly registered his words, “Damn it, you... you don't know what you do to me.”

Before you could say a word more, Miguel positioned the head of his dick against your slippery virgin hole. You clenched, glancing down between your bodies again, as you had a dozen times, anxiously waiting. Miguel hushed you, the repetitive shushing of his lips soothing you into complacency, forcing your muscles to relax. “It might hurt. But the pain won’t last,” he assured you.

He rolled his hips forward. His sharp exhale shook with every centimeter that gave way. Your walls were forced apart, suffocating you on the shock of adjusting to having someone, no not someone, Miguel-- your Miguel, sinking into your tense body. He throbbed, twitching in your body. His hands fisted in the aged couch, catching the breath in his chest.

“Ay, Miggy,” your nails dug into his shirt, loose around his firm muscles. “Miggy, no puedo,”

“You can, you’re so good, eres tan buena,” Miguel swept your lips between his, taking the moment of your surprise to bury himself further, swallowed by your cunt that resisted his intrusion. Your lips fluttered in the kiss, keened out a cry. The pain of his dick, forcing its way through your passage is quelled by the knowledge that he’s here, with you, his girth forcing you apart, stretching you apart, seating himself flush against your womb. His voice was caramelized, sugared over, and so good. “Look at how well you’re taking me already.”

“Coño, that’s a tight pussy,” He slid his hips back, the warm sensation of his withdrawal pulling free before shoving back in, a cry shoving forth from your lips, filling his office and the connected lab with your cries. He might have heard someone draw the door open, his hips driving back in, centered on the magnificent groans that stuttered free from your chest with Miguel’s careful thrusts. You keened his name, a repetitious Miggy, Miggy, Miggy-- it was Aaron, probably. He recognized the way his feet drug on the floor.

He hoped he didn’t just hear it. He hoped he saw it too, the way his balls slapped against your ass, the mess of blood soaking the already unhygienic couch, the way his cock pulsed. You were blissed out, so full and well of him like no one else ever had-- because you were his, and his alone. It wasn’t just sex. It was more than that. From Aaron, whose shuffled steps fell out of his office, to any other little bitch in the office who had their own gain.

“Damn,” Miguel shifted back, hooking his hand around your thigh to drag you back onto his dick. He swirled his thumb against your stiff clit, whirling it around in one circle, then another, and by the third your knees knocked together, bearing down on his cock to hold him still. “I can’t--” you stuttered out, I can’t--”

“You’re going to,” he hissed. “You’re going to cum right here, right now, split open on my dick.”

With another circle, you croaked an ugly cry, a terrible, ugly cry that Miguel couldn’t find any more beautiful as your body buzzed around him, tightening and squeezing your already tight cunt around him. Blissful pleasure radiated there, riding his dick for the friction against your virgin walls, your thoughts fading into a realm of insistent pleasure, where thoughts were space mush.

Miguel withstood the pressure on his cock, clamping his hand down on your hip. His thrusts stuttered, filling your belly with whip after whip with his full hot cum. Your body twitched in the throes of his orgasm. He tracked his eyes down to your body, withdrawing with a bubbly pop of his dick from your abused hole, the intermingling of cum and virginal blood dribbling down your cheeks.

Your gaze tracked Miguel, pressing his lips toward yours one more time. You shifted on the couch, legs pathetically tremoring. Miguel chuckled and walked toward his electric kettle, papers crunching underneath his feet, “Don’t bother moving. Not that you could, anyway.”

He warmed a warm cloth with hot water, testing its temperature on his palm before sitting beside your crumpled legs, spreading your legs to clean his mess and sooth the abrasive way he took you. He spread your lips, ensuring you were clean before he would flip the cloth, dropping it on top of your vulva.

“You know you’re mine,” he asked, though it came out as a statement. With another cloth, Miguel cleaned his soft cock of the mess, exhaustion of the sex and what was to come returning to his gentle, deep voice.

“Sí,” you answered.

“And you’d do anything for me. Only me.”

The words were laced with something more than a suggestion, but an affirmation of your loyalty. Your love. You pushed yourself up, hanging off his arm after he tucked himself into his pants. “Para siempre.”

He leaned down, plucking the bundle with his sequenced DNA information. Your eyes coursed the information on the page, darting up to his tired eyes. You wanted to ask why or what he knew. Miguel knew it didn't matter. You were his now, from the top of your head to the bottom of your gorgeous toes. You trusted him fully. As you should. With the empty vial of Rapture sitting beside him, forgotten, he spared you a mincing smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes.

“Good. Let's fix our project.”

#miguel ohara oneshot #miguel o'hara oneshot #miguel o'hara x you #miguel x reader #miguel ohara x reader #spider 2099 imagine #across the spiderverse imagine #atsv imagines #atsv imagine #spider 2099 x reader #miguel o'hara/reader #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara smut #miguel ohara smut

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ioniansunsets · 3 months

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Hello yuno! As vday is coming i have an idea or scenario if every heartsteel kayn were to receive handmade chocolates from his f-crush how would he react to it or feel or whichever way you would like owo!!! Feeling like the young kayn in high school moment ♡♡please take your time and its ok you dont have to rush it

✖ Valentine’s Confession Highschool Kayn ✖

✖ Word Count: 1.2k Words

✖ Tags: Mutual Pinning! Awkward young love.

✖ A/N: I wrote a mutual confession thing cause I thought it’ll be cute! I really put my whole IonianSunsussy into this please enjoy it. [Actually the idea of highschool sweethearts Kayn is also really cute. Like imagine the gap moe. He never talks about it and then during Paranoia’s debut he’s just like “ hey can I get an extra VIP ticket? My partner wants to watch.” and everyone is like ??????? and he’s like ??? “ Yeah I’ve been dating them since we were like 15. 6th year anniversary is this weekend.”]

✖ Wrote This Listening To: He just wants to be Somebody to You. I think the whole lone wolf that fell head over heels in love is cute for him hahahhaha

----

Kayn isn’t sure if he should be laughing or crying. Here he is, standing outside your club room at what, 5pm in the evening? Guitar strapped behind his back and a little gift in his hands. Ok, so he had liked you for a while now, so what, nothing wrong with love. Love was badass. So he decided to do something about those irritating feelings and bought you chocolates. So what! So, he decided it was just not hardcore enough, and went to melt and make his own fucking valentine’s chocolates for you. So What!

Maybe he baked cookies too huh? Is that so bad! Is it so bad that he got Akali to lend him some fancy stationery to write you some shitty fucking love letter! Its hardcore, its over the top! It’s how The Shieda Kayn should confess. Nothing subpar, none of that weak, half-assed work. Only the best. You only deserve everything and then some. You deserve the handmade chocolates. You deserve the expensive store bought ones he got too. You deserve that nicely wrapped box with the fancy hand cut crinkle paper in the pretty gift bag. You deserve the handmade cookies that he painstakingly made in your favorite flavor, with the cute icing of Rhaast and the matching handmade sprinkles (that Zed so kindly helped him with). You deserve the effort he took, the countless nights of planning to write down a very well written rap (confessional love poem) for you. You deserve the scented paper (his cologne) and the cool stickers on the envelope (its holographic hearts).

You deserve someone better than him.

He winces as he accidentally bit his lip too hard. Suddenly brought back to the reality of how long he has spent standing by this door. Another click of his tongue, he continues irritatingly tapping his foot while he reconsiders all he’s about to do. Was it creepy? Waiting for you after club activities? What? People should call it romantic right? It…it Was romantic…right? Waiting an extra hour or two after his own extra classes for Your own club activities to finish? I mean, he worked hard growing the balls to ask you to wait for him after school. You said yes earlier too! This is not creepy, this is just him living up to promises he made with you. This is. Normal. Yeah. Totally normal. Romance will die when he lets it. Kayn swallows hard, hand gripping tighter to the ribbon handles of the beautiful gift bag he spent his allowance on. The contents on the bag feeling heavier and heavier by the minute.

Knocking the door with his other hand, Kayn slowly peers into the club room. Slowly opening the door, he enters silently. The sickly blinding white fluorescent room lights mixing with the oranges of the late afternoon sun streaming in from the open windows. Kayn looks around, catching sight of you standing by the closet in the corner of the room packing up whatever it was that you did after school.

" Hey. I’m here like I said." " Kayn!"

He watches as you jump, fumbling as you try to hide whatever it is that was in the closet. Raising an eyebrow, he stands there, giving you an awkward smile as his eyes narrow to discern just what it is you were hiding from him.

“ Oh? Oh~ What is that huh?”

Kayn teases you, hiding his own gift behind his back as he walks over, trying to peer in and see what you’re so desperately hiding from him. As you look back at him with feigned irritation on your face, some quick maneuvers later you managed to hide whatever it is on the shelf behind your back.

“ You first. What’s that huh?”

As you ask him the question, a slow red blush creeps up his cheeks. Slowly you lean over to him, trying to see what is it that he’s holding behind His back. It can’t be right. No way life would treat someone like him this well. No way, no way. You were too close way too close. He swallows hard, leaning back to try and hide what he can behind his guitar case while also leaning away from you. So close to him that he could feel not only your presence in his personal space but the delectable warmth radiating off your skin. As your eyes meet his with that mischievous glint, he freezes. Stunned by both your beauty and the sudden realization that he should get this done and over with before he backs out. A shakily smug smile creeps onto his face as he tries his best to tamp down his anxiety with his Kayn branded cockiness. Was this something everyone went through? Were first loves and confessions this bad for everybody? God, he could feel his palms sweating again. Kayn coughs lightly to clear his throat before proudly thrusting the fancy bag in your face.

“ I…worked really hard on a little something for you. I hope you like it.”

Barely audible, Kayn whispers as he looks away shy. Contrary to his earlier actions, he gently lowers his hands and places the gift into your embrace. His eyes dart around the room, not able to meet your gaze, Kayn seemingly shrinks away from you with the realization of his past few days worth of effort all hitting him at once. The Valentine’s day gift was literally out of his hands now. A breathy laugh escapes him before he finally finds the meager courage to look at you again. And of course, he was instantly awestruck. How could he not be with you. Looking back at him with that tender look, the way your own lips slowly curl into a smile, the sparkle in your eyes as you look from him to the gift in your hands back at him.

“ Kayn…”

” No. Don’t say anything, just…go read the thing when you’re home alone. I don’t wanna hear it! I’m going!”

As he turns to leave, you quickly grab his arm, pulling him back with a quick jerk. Eyes closed, you press your lips against his. Kayn’s own eyes go wide as he looks, unblinking, back at you in shock. He was now suddenly very, very aware of what it felt like when people talked about time feeling like it's stopping.

“ And this is for you.”

You quickly return a similarly lovingly wrapped box into his hands. Kayn frozen in place, his heart working in overdrive, thumping so loudly he was sure he would get a heart attack right here right now. His face such a bright red that the blush reaches up to his ears and also spread down his chest. You could see it peaking through his unbuttoned collar when your gaze trailed down. Before his brain could even begin to regain function you quickly wave to him, scrambling to pick up your bag you run off. Leaving Kayn flustered and alone in the empty classroom as the sun begins to set. You too had to leave his presence before the embarrassment of what went down caught up to you too.

There would be a lot for you guys to talk about tomorrow at school.

Link to fanart for this!

#Shieda Kayn #Heartsteel!Kayn #Kayn x Reader #Kayn League #Kayn LoL #KaynLeague #SCENARIO #Van1shiro #HAPPY VALENTINES #I spent like a few hours on this LMFAO #feelings entirely drawn from my own romantic experiences #I LOVE ROMANCE #god this is so good i really outdid myself with this #im shy all aoishdaoihdoais reading my own work #I LOVE YOU SHIEDA KAYN!!!!!!!!!

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mdhwrites · 3 months

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Okay, don't you think you're being harsh to think Dana Terrace is incapable of creating anything good and dreading it when she creates something? Like, the idea Owl House never should have existed (based on what that one anon said) is way too harsh and insulting to Dana.

Like come on, Dana's a pretty nice person. Heck, a lot of the people and creators who work at Disney TVA like Alex Hirsch, Matt Braly, Frank Angones, Matt Youngberg, Daron Nefcy, Chris Houghton, and Shane Houghton have nothing but nice things to say about her. Ditto with the rest of the Owl House cast and crew (a ship is more than its captain after all) being saying nothing but nice things about Dana.

And it's not like Dana's the only Disney TVA creator who has caused people to go against Disney. Alex Hirsch has badmouthed Disney several times (even making a Twitter post on how much Disney meddled with Gravity Falls), Matt Braly was frustrated with the last minute True Colors delay and expressed frustration with them here ( https://twitter.com/Radrappy/status/1746706435080323397), and Bill Motz has made comments on how Disney treated Molly McGee that worsened the opinion of how Disney treats their animated shows.

So I had considered saying that the ask did go a bit far in how angry it was at Dana. I mentioned that being unprofessional does not make you a bad person. Some of the actions are frustrating to me but I am not trying to say Dana is wrong for having made a product in such a flawed way. I am at least trying not judging her as a person, just as a creative. I also don't think TOH simply shouldn't have existed. It had plenty of good ideas but at the end of the day, its captain should be the one who is in charge of those ideas and making sure that they're focused on telling the story and staying consistent. Dana wrote Reaching Out, one of the episodes of the show that most destroys both character potential and the believability of the world. It's also not by any means the only episode with a main writing credit for her like that, such as The First Day. As a writer, I genuinely just don't get the impression she has the attention span to be leading such a large project, especially if she is going to complain about not having full control over it while also lacking more concrete ideas to what it is. When I say I am not interested in the next work Dana is the director for, I just mean director because these flaws in her style make me think that unless it's an anthology series, anything she makes is going to have me get frustrated by the work over time.

NOW as for the stuff about her being unprofessional: Time and context is HUGE here. Matt getting upset about True Colors leaks? The COMPANY is also going to be upset by them and while it might berate Disney for lack of security, it is a genuine fuck up on their part to do with his show and him lambasting the leaks also pushes the audience not to spread them. There's nothing unprofessional about that nor that might harm the show. Alex Hirsch released that video about the censor board for Disney on Gravity Falls YEARS after the fact (this also goes for the tweet that you quote from Matt which is literally two weeks ago, well over a year past when Amphibia ended). The show was already a success and a video like that might make Disney look a little silly but it won't harm how people see the product or trying to get into it. In fact, with the current state of things, it might actually be seen as a PR bump.

Meanwhile, Dana was shit talking her own show and blaming it on the company she CHOSE to work with regarding literally half of the content that was out at the time. Worse yet, the first half. The half that theoretically needs to sell you on the show. What is a new viewer supposed to think of that if they haven't seen the show? "Well, even if it gets good, even the creator admits the first half is at least underwhelming. I don't want to have to put up with half a season of subpar work just to get to the good stuff."

And as I said with Hirsch: How people feel about Disney, and how clearly Disney actually does want the rep in TOH to be a selling point for them (they immediately were willing to do Lumity marathons or have them featured on Disney+ for Pride Month, as well as Lumity being the only t-shirt released by Disney that wasn't of just The Owl House members or the logo), means that Dana getting upset about them for the homophobic acts in Florida probably was seen as at worst neutral. Buuuuut that shifts when she starts trying to accuse the treatment of their programming onto their homophobic ideas because suddenly part of the company's selling point on the show is being actively damaged by the creator. Worse yet, she is doing it as speculation rather than sticking to the reasons given by Disney. Feeding into people's anger about the company while eschewing responsibility for why the show was shortened like it was. This is admittedly less of a strong argument, I do still support her lambasting their homophobic politics, but it's a moment that has stuck with me for something I'll get into later.

This is also without getting into the fact that one interview with her specifically mentions her first response to the shortening being to end S2 on a massive cliffhanger and then just GTFOing on them, a statement that is going to make ANY production company start sweating about you as a creative they want to work with. After all, the crew and other creatives may love Dana... But what do actually publishers and people she has to clear this stuff with think of her? You know, the people who decide funding on these matters because that is just a part of the majority of animated work currently unless you somehow manage to get enough patrons to be able to go independent like Vivziepop with Helluva Boss.

All of this also gives the impression of someone who would rather blame other forces than learn. Honestly, one of the best things I've heard her say is that the shortening did push her creatively. Force her to make decisions and try harder. That gives me hope... But she spent so much of TOH complaining about corporate oversight or riling up her fans against the company who shortened her that... I don't know if she'll take that to heart. If she's going to treat this as a learning experience or if she'll double down. Again, one of the biggest regrets she has is not getting to do more Raeda, despite their one episode already being almost entirely pointless.

Even if she is a wonderful person, from a publisher's standpoint, she seems like a high risk gamble for honestly that incredible of numbers. Someone who might turn on you if you ever force a decision she doesn't like or push her too hard. That's not something a big corporation is going to want. It makes it sound a lot more like she's someone who indeed should just go independent if she really found working for Disney so rough.

I would love to be wrong though. I would love for her next work to be a knock out of the park. I just know that I'm probably going to pick it up AFTER it's done and I know it actually knew where it was going instead of just scrambling to put the tracks in front of it.

======+++++======

I will probably try just not to talk more about Dana as a creative because I REALLY don't like talking about the creators themselves instead of just judging the quality of their work. I genuinely wish Dana the best but... Man, after I've had so many people dismiss everything I've ever said about this show because of the shortening, or because Disney was too restrictive on LGBTQIA+ elements or because they forced Hexside onto Dana, ruining her plans, excuses Dana has herself pushed for the fans to use by using them herself...

It made learning just how little of any sort of plan she ever had so exhausting and infuriating, amplified by just how much this fandom screeches about TOH's unfair treatment when I don't see any of them going to bat for Molly McGee right now the same way. Not in my corners at least. Edit: I have been corrected that people are pretty mad for Molly McGee which good. They should be.

#the owl house criticism #toh critical

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darkened-storm · 4 days

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Mayblade Day 4: Gender Swap

(I took liberty with my interpretation on this one. Since Kenny is the bladebreakers engineer, I wrote about a female engineer character instead…)

(The lovely Kiya belongs to @soclonely )

Whether it was the haphazardly organised appearance of her office or the way in which she glided through the room with single minded focus while chatting at a million words a minute, Steph could tell immediately that she liked Kiya.

“Once upon a time people made beyblades out of wood and plastic, but these days, with the development of three-d printing, you can make a beyblade out of almost anything if you put your mind to it.”

She tossed one of the beyblades in Steph’s direction, confident her reflexes would allow her to catch it - and they did, just … Turning the beyblade over in her hand, she inspected it closely.

“I’ve never seen a material like this.”

“You wouldn’t have,” Kiya told her. “I created it myself. That’s what Mr Dickenson hired me to do - design beyblades that can better withstand the demands of your bitbeast’s power. Do you have an idea of what kind of beyblade you want to make.”

Steph rifled through her bag. “I have some sketches…”

“Let me see,” Kiya said, snatching the sketchbook gently from Steph’s hands and beginning to rifle through it.

“You’ve switched out your weight disk?” Kiya mused, her words more of a statement than a question. “And in addition to a heavier weight disk you’ve gone for a winged attack ring - that’s good; the heavier weight disk will give the projections on the edge of your attack ring a higher impact.”

“That’s kinda what we’re going for,” Steph replied. She was amazed that Kiya had gotten all that information from a handful of, let’s face it, subpar sketches.

Kiya pondered this information, then snapped the notebook shit and walked over to the wall where she’d hung a periodic table of the elements.

“What element does your bitbeast wield?”

“Seraphina is a fire dragon.”

Kiya ran her finger over the elements on the table, hovering over the transitional elements until she settled on one in the middle of the table.

“Tungsten has the the highest melting point of any metal and low thermal expansion due to its strong metallic bonds,” she explained. “It should easily be able to withstand the heat of Seraphina’s attacks. But - tungsten is brittle, and quite frankly, difficult to work with.”

“Alloying small quantities of steel with it would counteract that,” Matt supplied. “And it won’t compromise its overall durability.”

Kiya frowned, looking annoyed at the interruption. “Ten points to captain obvious,” she muttered, reaching for the sketch book once again and a pen. She scribbled something into the margins of the page and handed it back to Steph.

“If you leave the designs with me, I can have the parts to you by the weekend.”

“That soon?” Steph exclaimed, unable to hide her surprise. “That’s only three days!” She was used to Kenny working fast, but even he couldn’t put an entire beyblade together in three days.

Kiya just shrugged. “Girl, find me some caffeine and I’ll have it done in two.”

#steph summers #beyblade #beyblade fanfiction #Mayblade 2024

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baobhanlore-art · 9 months

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So Vivzie just tweeted this and I have thoughts that won't fit well into tweets so here I am

For starters, the criticism of fanfiction isn't targeted towards the queer aspects. In fact I've found that some of the most extreme critics of fanfiction culture are also queer people. From the fujoshi fandom that causes an extreme rise in MlM shipping but largely for fem gazey smut, the unrecognised untagged unhealthy relationship tropes, to the misogyny often within these works, stories like these come with many issues.

The criticism of writing feeling like fanfiction, especially towards Helluva Boss, is that the elements of the stories people heavily critique feel unnecessary, tropey, and derailing from consistency.

In The Circus, I do not fault the idea of a queer character having a childhood crush on a same sex friend. The problem is more to do with how it stunts the desperation Blitz has to keep his business alive, since he's no longer just sleeping with some rich guy but an old friend, and the sudden unexpectedness of their situation. It's also a common trope where the live interests actually knew each other as kids so it feels overdone and generic.

In Exes and Oohs, the mafia setting feels completely bizarre considering the intense bigotry and classism within the world. Not only that but the daddy issues, fridged mum, forced marriage and overall unrealistic depiction of the mafia is very common in fanfiction written by teens who do no research and just want the aesthetics.

Secondly, there are plenty of straight works that have a similar label attached to them. ACOTAR and TOH both have writers who originally wrote fanfiction and they didn't develop out of the negative habits within fanfiction writing. Therefore their original work feels like fanfiction. Riverdales "I'm weird, I'm a weirdo" speech was heavily critiqued for sounding like a fanfiction line.

Thirdly, a big reason for being compared to fanfiction is the unfinished feeling of the scripts. I've already pointed out in a previous post that some of the dialogue in Western Energy felt like it needed to be cut down by an editor. And most people agree that the situations and logic aren't often very well thought through, such as how the aging machine could have just been reversed or how DORKS should have been killed off. The scripts feel like loose first drafts that could use additional edits. Fanfiction usually doesn't have an editor or even a beta reader, I've seen more "no beta we die like *insert character*" tags in many of the fandoms I read for than "beta" tags.

If people critiqued the owl house for feeling fanficcy because it had a diverse cast in a highschool setting with a quirky MC, I'd agree it's a bad descriptor because it's directly the queer and neurodivergent stories that are being attacked. Or if Murder Drones was labelled as fanficcy because it has an edgy teen female MC I'd say it's unfair because a lot of girls genuinely act like that and deserve to be represented and have our stories told. But most of the criticism about Helluva Boss to do with its LGBT rep is less to do with its inclusion and more to do with people feeling it's falling into yaoi tropes. Not the fact it includes queer stories.

This is something We Are Not Alive said recently that such with me, but just because it's an indie project doesn't mean we have to settle for subpar writing. There are loads of indie productions you can support! Murder Drones, Lackadaisy, the animated Anne Frank movie, and these are just some of the more popular ones!

And I wish people would stop weaponising every single argument to try and defend issues in Helluva Boss. The fandom says "of course it has issues" then cries when we point that out.

#helluva boss blitzo #loona hellhound #octavia helluva boss #helluva boss drama #helluva spoilers #helluva boss #helluva boss millie #helluva blitzo #helluva stolas #helluva critical #helluva boss critique #helluva boss critical #helluva boss criticism #vivziepop #vivzieverse #vivienne medrano #vivziepop critical #vivziepop criticism

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nanjokei · 11 months

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i think the spread of character ai usage (and ai art generation usage also) is definitely an issue with people wanting instant gratification which actual rp usually is just not sustainably built for unless you're doing chat rp, even then your friends aren't awake 24/7 waiting at beck and call to entertain you. it's not literally entitlement, but it 100% stems from entitlement to be entertained constantly and passively instead of actually going out and finding something to do.

god this sounds like such boomer shit but the creation of endless scrolling like on tiktok with specifically tailored algorithms has made people so PASSIVE. ai can never come close to human creators but if people, especially the younger generation, are getting too cozy with choosing it over seeking out other human beings (whether it be indirectly via consuming fanmade work or directly via actual collaborative stuff like online roleplay), then how different is it from the ai "winning"? i don't think any of the excuses are valid. it's a subpar product in every way. it's almost never im character, it breaks if you propose anything too left field, and it's ultimately empty wish fulfilment and i have no idea how anyone past the age of 16 AT BEST gets any gratification from it. is it just the spread of a lack of reading comprehension? OPEN THE SCHOOLS!!

i do think it's an issue of people not being comfortable with boredom, always needing instant gratification, not wanting to sit down and hone a craft, or give the people who hone a craft themselves the time of day because they can't crank out """content""" for you 24/7. in a way, i'm thinking right now, when i'm bored i just channel surf on tv even if i don't do it as much anymore. but most people don't have tv anymore (personally we pirate iptv so LOL). i don't blame it on that necessarily, but i think with the rise of streaming, you just sit there on a media library staring at a bunch of thumbnails and posters, having to make a decision on how to invest your time. in this case, i get why people are so passive. tiktok is easier, character ai is easier. because i never ended up watching anything whenever i opened netflix (when we had it years ago). one could argue that watching tv is passive, but there's still a choice. you check the tv guide or google it and you know a certain show is on tv a certain channel at a certain time so you keep that in mind. what do you do in the meanwhile? i remember when that was an actual routine for me. i'd be slacking and not doing my homework, so maybe i'd draw a bit, maybe i play on my ds for a while, maybe i go make myself a snack or bake some pastries if i have all day, maybe i continue a book or even surf the web a bit.

the instinct of "aight, im gonna do something else on my own while i wait" is kind of dying. yes i'm on my phone! the difference is my use case. these days i'm not on social media aside from here so i don't use it as much aside from talking to friends on messaging clients and playing games (rarely tho). i say this as someone who stares at the ceiling not doing anything for a good bit each day, but at least i feel like i still have retained some ability to sometimes go, ok time to learn about a new hobby! i don't have to even pick it up. just entertaining it is gratifying on its own. i'm not a writer, but sometimes i'll write a little bit for fun then go "yeah i get why i don't jive with this". lately, i've been interested in competitive pokemon (with not much interest before) because i've been replaying platinum. i research a bit, watch videos, i even got a little brave and tested some sample teams on showdown. it was a fun time killer! i might keep doing it. i might even do it later today. i started reading pokespe too to scratch the pokemon itch too. and it's not like i don't suffer from crazy hard executive dysfunction but hey, this is a product of my effort. lately i've been thinking i wanna pick a character in guilty gear and learn at least one combo! trying new things is fun!!!

i'm sure this post sounds self important, self impressed, self absorbed (c-c-c-combo breaker) and boomer ish as fuck but honestly i don't care anymore. if someone who struggles with simple tasks on the daily like me can find shit to do that isn't just instantly caving to endless scrolling and resorting to chatting up an AI then i'm sure most people can too. it is so much more gratifying actively seeking out fun than to be passive about it.

#rambles #long post

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smoments · 4 months

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✧ part 11: memories of a stranger // a satosugu reincarnation au

chapter 11: one single thread of gold

“Yes, and I think I should have received this point as well…”

Shoko generally excels at keeping her emotions out of academic situations, primarily because she doesn’t actually care much about school. She works hard, sure, but sometimes, when she’s sitting in class and listening to her third professor that day drone on and on about neuroanatomy and its various perspectives and all the too-complicated labels for every little nuance of what should really just be collectively gathered into the brain, she thinks that she wouldn’t be particularly upset if her school spontaneously combusted, preferably with her inside it. If not the entire school (this, after all, would be asking for a lot), then just her classroom would more than suffice. Unfortunately, the remaining fragment of self-preservation she possesses prevents her from advocating for such a thing, and perhaps also her morals (if slightly less so).

Even so, morals are currently taking a backseat to the annoyance bubbling up inside her at the insufferability of her teacher. Actually, maybe it isn’t the teacher’s fault, but she has better things to do than argue for a few points on a test, even if her grade is hanging on for dear life.

God, it was stressful dealing with idiots.

After successfully debating (arguing) her way into a better grade, Shoko gets Satoru’s text on her way to her community service club - this is unfortunately located across campus and consists of less community service and more socializing while discussing the importance of community service, the latter of which suits her just fine - and wrinkles her nose in confusion.

“Wouldn’t him fumbling be bad enough without the additional beating?” She mutters dryly, wondering who Satoru thinks he’s fooling with the world platonic. How do you platonically fumble someone?

dw you won’t.

Shoko pauses, unsure as to whether she’s giving him too much credit, and decides to throw in something to cushion her fall in case Satoru does screw things up and then tries to blame it on her.

probably. idk tho

She tilts her head curiously when a call from Utahime comes in, stepping aside to answer and nearly bumping into four different people. Campus is rather crowded at this time of day, even with her slight holdup after class - of course, Satoru was lucky enough to be off all afternoon. Hopefully he’s making the most of their time together, especially because she’s pretty sure Suguru did have somewhere to be today.

“Shoko! A… friend and I booked appointments at this spa nearby, but they cancelled on me last minute, and it’s a nonrefundable reservation!”

“Oh? Who?”

“...my friend! You don’t know them.”

Shoko stifles a giggle. Utahime has always been a subpar liar.

“You don’t have any other friends. Unless you asked one of the guys to go to a spa with you? I’m sure Nanami would very much appreciate it.”

“Ugh, Shoko, you sound just like them right now! Don’t do this. Just meet me there in an hour.”

“Fine. But I’m paying you back. And you know, if you’d just asked me, I would’ve come along peacefully.”

“Like hell you would’ve! Anyways, hurry up and- Ahh! They have mini jade rollers, Shoko! How cute!”

On second thought, Shoko hadn’t really wanted to go to her club anyway.

Besides, her being in a good mood is practically community service all on its own.

Satoru shifts slightly from where he’s lounging on the couch, wondering vaguely what’s taking Suguru so long in the bathroom. He wouldn’t blame him if he’d grown tired after hours of stagnancy; sitting in one spot for so long took quite the mental toll on a person, which was a concept that the school system did not seem to understand.

He knows that he, for one, is completely exhausted. His scant few hours of sleep is finally catching up to him, and though it’s nearly time for lunch by now - his mind travels to potential meal ideas when he realizes this, and he wrinkles his nose at the idea of trying to scrape something edible together from the few items he currently has in his fridge - he wants nothing more than to sprawl out on his admittedly average bed and have a good, long sleep to make up for his early rising.

But he doesn’t let himself entertain this idea for too long, since he doesn’t want to waste any time with Suguru in his dorm.

That sounds bad. His intentions are innocent, though!

Regardless, if Suguru really is taking a breather in the bathroom, he feels a pang of guilt at the idea that he wouldn’t have thought to simply ask him for a break. Surely he knows that Satoru wouldn’t care! Does he really think him that insensitive? He might be rude sometimes, but he’s not heartless.

When did Satoru start worrying so much about what other people did or thought, anyway? Wasn’t he the type to take everything in stride, letting everyone else act freely in the hopes that they’d step back and allow him to do the same?

He grumbles as his eyelids grow heavy and he rolls over once again, his cheek pressing into the plush cushion that rests beneath his skin.

Has his couch always been this comfortable?

He’s sure it hasn’t. Isn’t. But he feels so warm suddenly, a sense of comfort encircling him like a down blanket. He’s barely hanging on to consciousness, haven given up fighting sleep and instead letting it brush over his eyelids, easing them shut.

It won’t be for long; just a couple minutes of rest, and then he’ll be full of renewed energy that he’ll be able to throw into his art.

He’s a light enough sleeper that any movement will probably awaken him, anyways.

And Suguru might still be a while.

This is the last coherent thought that Satoru recalls putting together before he slips fully into unconsciousness.

He wishes it had ended there. Unconsciousness was not such an unpleasant place to exist. It turned out that dreams could be far, far worse.

He’d thought he was over it.

He’d thought that horribly gut-wrenching dream from last night was finished and done with, that he would never have to recall its exact occurrences in such a high level of detail again. He didn’t imagine for a second when he shut his eyes that it would all come back to him while he was in his most vulnerable state, or he would have forced himself to stay awake until it killed him.

The last thing Satoru expects to see when he finally tears himself from sleep is Suguru standing over him, something like worry creasing the smooth surface of his face. He’s still mid-panic, still in a state of attempting to gather his bearings. Horror seizes him as he zeroes in on a specific detail that would have been minute at any other time, in any other place.

It’s Suguru’s long, dark hair - down around his shoulders.

Down like it was when Satoru killed him.

And is Suguru’s silhouette swimming in his vision now, or is he just imagining it? Is the red armchair directly behind him blending into Suguru’s face and painting half of it bloody, or are his eyes playing tricks on him? That look on his face- does he suddenly appear so incredibly hurt, like Satoru has somehow wounded him beyond belief without meaning to, or is it just him? Is he moving, even, or is he just standing there silently? Standing at all? Is he a corpse? An apparition?

Satoru tries to pull himself together. He does his best to twist his expression into one of calm, despite the fact that he hasn’t yet caught his breath and he’s growing dizzier with every second he stares into Suguru’s eyes and attempts to discern whether he’s still breathing. When he finally manages to speak, it comes out strangled, forced.

“Y-your hair is down.”

Suguru’s face flushes. And maybe Satoru should be wondering what he could possibly be so embarrassed about, but he’s so busy admiring the indisputable sign of life coloring his cheeks that he cannot bring himself to consider what seems like an insignificant detail in comparison.

“Yeah. It wasn’t cooperating too well today. Look, Satoru, I shouldn’t have-“

The sound of liquid bubbling over from the kitchen cuts Suguru off, and his head snaps toward the entrance, the guilty look in his eyes fading temporarily in favor of confusion.

He hurries into the adjacent room while Satoru sits up and rubs his eyes, his heart rate slowly settling.

He must be losing it.

He’s never been this unstable in his life. It’s easy to make such a criticism now, of course, when he’s in a calmer state of mind.

When he can think clearly.

Still, given this second of reprieve, the remaining shred of his sanity manages to come up with a single, perfectly formed decision:

He will not tell Suguru about this.

He’d been lucky to get a neutral response from him the first time around, given that a random person somehow possessing a sketchbook full of painstakingly crafted images of him would have thrown him off at best, and creeped him out at worst. But this? ‘Hey, I had a dream where I killed you, but I don’t know if it was a dream so much as a premonition? Or maybe it’s happened already, but in a different reality? Well, we better hope it wasn’t foreshadowing anything, huh? Haha.’

Absolutely not.

“Satoru! Did you put milk in this!?”

An exasperated voice snaps him out of his thoughts. He glances towards the entrance and nearly laughs when he sees Suguru standing there with a hand on his waist, brandishing what looks like his (broken) tea kettle threateningly.

“Yeah. What, was I supposed to drink the coffee black?”

“I practically do this for a living, you know! You could’ve just asked me. What will we do now? And when you’re so tired, too. Coffee would have been the perfect pick-me-up...”

Suguru purses his lips disapprovingly, which only heightens Satoru’s amusement. Perhaps they’re both a little unstable, if Suguru’s having a breakdown over a kitchen appliance. He feels his shoulders relaxing, and his mouth curls into a grin.

“I can’t have my guests working, Suguru! Don’t worry about it. I never used that thing anyway.”

“That isn’t really the issue here…”

A shadow passes over his face as he speaks, and his expression drops once again, as though he’s just recalled something important. Satoru eases himself off the couch, planting a reassuring hand on Suguru’s shoulder as he strolls past him and into the kitchen to survey the extent of the mess. He thinks he feels Suguru flinch at his touch, and the crease in his brow deepens. Is he truly that worried about the coffee? Perhaps it was expensive.

The counter is surprisingly impeccable; he’d expected much worse, in all honesty, given Suguru’s slightly disproportionate reaction, and he brushes his hands off casually after disposing of the napkins he used to wipe up the spill.

“See? Don’t worry so much, Suguru.”

Suguru gives him a tight smile, one that doesn’t reach his eyes - Satoru would know, because he’s spent what feels like years taking in every smile. He frowns.

“Uh… Should I make more coffee?” He offers in a voice that admittedly sounded more enticing in his head.

“Please don’t.”

Suguru cracks a small grin, then, and the warmth of it makes Satoru almost dizzy with relief.

Because although he can’t deny the inexplicable hold that these visions - these dreams - have over him, there is little to support that they are anything besides horrific amalgamations of his worst fears.

He’d wanted, at first, to believe that he and Suguru had known each other in another lifetime - it was such a pretty concept, an invisible string to tie them together regardless of the circumstances. It no longer mattered what difficulties might befall them, because they were simply fated, and so life would bring them back together.

But when innocent emotions and a soft, hazy sense of familiarity sharpened into memories that Satoru was sure he wouldn’t have wanted to live out in the first place, let alone recall, it lowered his inclination to place faith in what suddenly seemed so incomplete, so groundless. He began to balk at the thought that his mind knew something he didn’t, and that once-comforting notion quickly turned into one that terrified him.

And the string became something like a tightrope, a sequence of events into which they were fated to fall over and over.

It became something with the potential to pull them apart.

The portrait is finished in nine days: it’s practically a record for Satoru, not that he’s counted until now. Even so, it’s plain to see that it’s one of his best works. That isn’t just him being self-obsessed; everyone’s told him so, including his teacher, who was initially reluctant to grant him an extension but immediately changed her tune when he submitted the final project.

It’s Suguru, of course - he’s cast in bright, morning sunlight and stood in front of a tranquil lake that glitters in streaks; places where it’s blanketed in beams of light. His expression is soft, his gaze directed towards the surface of the water, which reflects his surroundings - the treetops, their leaves pale and hazy, the little yellow and blue forget-me-nots that dot the shoreline, and his own silhouette. Gentle ripples tug at the edges of his figure, blending all of his colors together and turning them into barely defined puddles of paint. Beyond the scenery but also reflected in the lake, so translucent they’re barely visible, lay frozen scenes taken from Satoru’s memory (scenes that are meant to represent the course of a person’s life, he’ll explain to anyone who asks) - Suguru laughing, his expression open and free, a golden tint to his face - him facing dead forward, face cold and unreadable - (this one is placed farther away from the silhouette itself, on the outskirts of the water) - Suguru against a brick wall, his face bloodied. This was a smile that he would have preferred to exclude, but it haunted him persistently until he put it down on paper. To make up for it, he’d painted in another - a genuine, attentive beam that made him blush every time he laid his eyes on it. And, of course, one self-indulgent image of the two of them together on a bicycle, the bright blue of the sky barely distinguishable from the water itself.

It was a painting that would have been beautiful even if the subject was not. Even if the subject were somebody entirely different. But to Satoru, Suguru was the painting. It was why he needed him there, solid and moving and directly in front of him, when he began. It wasn’t like he needed to see Suguru’s face to remember what it looked like; it was simply that his presence was the inspiration Satoru needed to understand what he wanted to convey. To him, this painting was not a shallow depiction of a face. He wanted to capture the essence of the person in it, to encompass all of Suguru’s various sides and sharper corners and breathtaking smiles in a single image.

And he thinks he has succeeded, because when he looks at it, he can almost catch a glimmer of movement from the corner of his eye in the ripples at the lake’s surface; he can almost feel the wind in the trees, can almost get so lost staring that a wave of indescribable loss and longing surges through his windpipe, threatening to swallow him completely. Longing for what, he has no idea; Suguru is right by his side, after all.

He doesn’t know whether it’s the kind of thing that others can see, too, if his execution was a success. Even if it was, even if it does procure the same kind of emotion in others as it does within him, he can’t imagine anyone else feeling so strongly about it - about Suguru. Not because he doesn’t think him lovable, but because to Satoru, he is overwhelmingly, incredibly so.

He turns to him now. They are standing side by side in front of the finished artwork - Suguru’s first look. Satoru feels like he could die, he’s so nervous, and he’s not even entirely sure why. It’s been silent for many seconds too long.

He’s just taking it in. Stop being so impatient. Did you expect him to jump for joy the second he saw himself? Even you wouldn’t do that.

Finally, when he thinks he can’t take another second of quiet, Suguru speaks, his voice soft.

Has he been wearing his hair differently these days? Something looks off about it. There is something out of place in his movements as he turns halfway to face Satoru, a sense of transience that Satoru cannot quite pinpoint.

“It’s… beautiful, Satoru. Absolutely stunning. You’ve outdone yourself, as usual.”

#satosugu #jjk #geto suguru #gojo satoru #ao3 fanfic #crying screaming throwing up #archive of our own #alternate universe #coffee shop au #fanfiction #jujutsu kaisen au #jujutsu kaisen

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prettyboykatsuki · 1 year

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Zero... would you mind talking about possessive Sae...? Only if you want to <3

im laid up in my bed so i can only give my raw unfiltered thoughts rn ahshfn sorry if its incoherent

but like… the thing about sae is that he’s always been smart and detached. ever since he was a kid - he’s had a very.. weird world view and he’s always viewed his desires as objective truth. the idea of dating had always been so subpar to him. even if he has to socialize, he doesn’t have to work for attention and appraisal. he didn’t want it so he didn’t ever care.

it changes when he meets you but winning someone’s affection isn’t something that’s easily attained. especially because he’s never had to try. his name literally means blessed. when sae falls for you, i think he gets so deeply frustrated at how hard it is to attain you. the only thing that rin has over sae is some semblance of natural sensitivity (even if rin tries to suppress its there).

sae has never ever had to try in this way before. for anyone. hes never had to win approval because it didn’t matter in his career. he’s never had to sway someone’s emotions. there’s like a brief moment suspended in time where he’s grappling with it. the extent of those feelings fucking bother him. where i think rin is possessive out of like natural affection, sae is possessive because he’s always a little frustrated.

one of the flaws he thinks of himself is that he doesn’t understand anything aside from soccer. that includes love. he doesn’t have a normal idea of it. he’s dominated and overwritten his own emotions through this lens of logic thats in reality so subjective.

sae is possessive because his emotions towards you are like a little unstable. he uses that instability as justification. him having feelings for you is just such a point of contention for him and the lengths that he went through to effectively become someone you want, cant be overstated.

(but he can’t verbalize that either because he’s prideful.)

so, when it comes to dating you - it was something that he had to work for. and your obliviousness to the depth of his emotions only convinces him that he’s rightful owner of your sweetness.

of course he’s possessive. how could he be anything but when you’re so clueless to all the things he had to do to get here. it’s annoying for him, that other people can see what he can. that they can covet something he worked for. sae wants to be best in the world. he’s smart and rational about it. he wants to walk that path as the single center focus and he puts everything into getting there.

what he saw, desired, adored in you - was something he was entitled to alone. that’s justified. it was him who sought it, who chased it, who wanted it most. who examined you the closest and gave you whatever you wanted.

some things belonged to him. it’s only inevitable people are going to want you. but thats all they’re allowed to do. they can dream of you if they’re so desperate

but just like he decided that he had different dreams one day (always after experiencing some great emotion), he also just decided that you were his. that you always would be. that nothing would ever get in the way of that. to him its a universal truth, a fundamental reality that he accepts as objective reason. the reality is thats love. that he loves you so that means you’re his and no one elses. you can’t ever be anyone elses

#return to sender #a.sae #a.bllk

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pooptiesquat · 11 months

Text

CHAINSAW MAN DEVILGRADE IS DEAD, LONG LIVE CHAINSAW MAN

Yeah.

I started work on the game back in 2022, and truth is I wanted it to be a hit. That was why i started working on the game in the first place, as I originally believed that it was super difficult for indie fighting games to sell on original ideas. I also really liked chainsaw-man and I think at the time I started work on it, the manga itself was genuinely profound in its themes and I also thought international assassin's arc would be a really cool setting for a chainsaw man fighting game. even though i made denji and power and people were positively receptive towards the game, I ended up shelving it for a few reasons.

code was difficult to manage (wasn't made to be generic enough)

first time doing 3d modeling, but had no idea how to apply textures/model heads+faces. I had to spend more time editing spritesheets for things to look right, with subpar results :c

it felt like i was putting in a lot of work in making a subpar game. blocking was still in the game but I didn't animate throws; game has a Rock Paper Scissor priority combo breaker thing but it didnt reset to neutral. The designs scope was too large.

If there was one thing that lead me to scrap this game, was that I was programming another project called "IriDescent". It was a student game and i had so much fun working on it. it was a simple 4 player shmup versus game and I learned ALOT about working on something simple as that compared to devilgrade's complexity.

That game's simple mechanic (shooting bullets but a "time stop" phase occurs every 10 seconds) allowed for a complexity that occurs during multiplayer gameplay. when we showed it in person, people were coming up with strategies around the mechanics and i felt really good about it.

from that point on, i decided that if i ever make another game, it's best to go about it simply.

#game design #chainsaw man

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everydaydg · 3 months

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Ketsui Death Label has an impresive download play feature!

while I did make the joke earlier today that its really silly being able to share the hardest mode of the entire thing through download play, I do want to talk about something quite impresive about it!

The fact that it has replay support.

Im not janking your chain, this isnt a joke.

For a demo of the game thats entirely running off ram, thats incredibly impressive

heres some poorly recorded footage of it!

excuse the incredibly shaky video and my subpar play, my ds lite dpad aint the best

Btw the replay feature has three slots... Why did they do that for the demo mode- I have no god damm idea.

you cant even share it with people that have the full version of the game

despite that... my god if isnt amazing and an incredibly fun oddity for download play!

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detransdamnation · 1 year

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Maybe i am in a bit of a blind spot now but stumbling upon your blog and a few of your last answers made me question - if gender roles were nonexistent in society so the sex a person has wouldnt dictate how they are treated - how could someone develop an unease about something truly neutral? I know there are sex differences in humans and thats what we talk about when we speak of transsexual people - the desire to change sex based on a terrifyingly strong discomfort with the one one has. But i am at a loss when it comes to understanding where would that discomfort even start/be influenced by (again as long as the sex you are would make everything neutral) because i always assumed that its that dichotomy of how society views females and males is what later translates into the literal base of where it comes from which is one’s sex. Then - Would the dysphoria grow out of purely desiring something that one doesnt have along the lines the grass is greener on the other side? Getting to experience sex the way it feels like as the other sex (especially in case of not heterosexual people)? Or only An aesthetic pursue? If the only thing that differentiated us in society would be the biological abilities of our bodies and the appearance of it…why do you think would someone still come up with an idea of desiring the other?

After reading especially the last answer it made me think that after all there must be some truly transsexual people who are just born being transsexual. Thats why i decided to send it because i think you established somewhere that you believe there are no trans people who are trans ”just because”, just because they have a brain of the opposite sex trapped in the wrong body etc.

I hope this makes some sense, its not an attack on anything you said more of a big wonder and desire to understand better and i really hope it comes off this way.

You make total sense. Your message doesn't come off as an attack at all.

Anon, I'll be real with you. I reread my answer on whether or not I believe gender abolition would also abolish dysphoria. I did rush in writing that response, greatly so, so the way I phrased my thoughts was particularly subpar; however, as I was trying to tie everything together in this response to you, I realized that the viewpoint I argued didn't really make sense when I held it up to my other beliefs. So, this is a humble admittance that I was, frankly, talking out of my ass. I'm going to use this as an opportunity to reassess my beliefs on this topic and will be re-answering that question once I have done so.

In the meantime, one of the best ways to assess your beliefs is to argue something you disagree with or are unsure of, so I'm going to double down and continue the argument as if I'm completely confident that it's the truth, if only to hopefully better explain where I was coming from when I wrote my previous response. So, proposed argument: Gender abolition will not necessarily abolish sex dysphoria.

First of all, what causes dysphoria and how does gender fit into that framework? I talked about this at length here [AL] and here [AL]. I specifically want to zero in on something I said in the former link:

I [...] do not personally believe that there is a “main reason” on as to why dysphoria may develop in a young person in all cases. I suppose my own “main reason” would be that I fell into the trans community because I never thought seriously about transitioning prior to that time—but the thing is, even if I hadn’t, I would still be dealing with everything else that influenced my getting to this point. [...] If I were to take the trans community out of that equation, it would just be the influence of the trans community missing.

Let’s replace the influence of the trans community with the construct of gender and let’s fast forward to this hypothetical dream society where gender is not an existent thing. We can apply what I said above. We’ve taken away gender and its influences—but we still have everything else. There are numerous factors that could cause a person to develop sex dysphoria; in a genderless society, we have only taken away one. In order to shut down any possibility of dysphoria developing, we would need to get rid of every single possible factor and influence and that is just not a possible feat. Homophobia is a significant factor in many cases of dysphoria and will remain so in a genderless society unless efforts have been previously made to abolish it. No amount of social change will ever eradicate abuse, which can be a trigger in dysphoria in that (especially long-term) abuse victims are prone to redirecting emotional pain to certain aspects of themselves, especially in an effort to regain control, even though they may not “make sense.” It is also impossible for us to eradicate, for instance, natural aspects of our biology that are just plain inconvenient or uncomfortable, which may become objects of fixation (especially in puberty) and cause a person to develop sex dysphoria thereafter. These are just a few examples off of the top of the head—but they and more may all continue on as potential factors because these things, in and of themselves, do not have anything to do with what we have abolished. They do not cease to be potential precursors to mental illness, such as dysphoria, just because we have taken one precursor away.

But why dysphoria? Why would someone develop sex dysphoria in a genderless society if sexes were seen as entirely neutral? Well, let’s turn our attention to another mental illness that is perhaps most reflective of dysphoria (so reflective, in fact, that some people believe them to be one and the same): body dysmorphic disorder. Body dysmorphia is “a mental disorder characterized by the obsessive idea that some aspect of one's own body part or appearance is severely flawed and therefore warrants exceptional measures to hide or fix it.” One’s “flaws” cause significant distress, even to the point of seeking out cosmetic procedures in an aim to “fix” them. Anything can be a trigger in body dysmorphia, although some of the most common include facial features, hair, skin complexion, and coincidentally, sex characteristics such as breasts, facial hair, or genitals—which are all inherently neutral features. No physical feature is objectively “wrong” or “bad,” “good” or “right,” “pretty” or “ugly.” They just are.

So, then, we could ask the same question: Why would people with this disorder fixate on these features and develop an unease with them if they are truly neutral? We could argue the societal pressure of beauty ideals, and certainly, that is a factor in a lot of cases—but if body dysmorphia were truly an issue of how certain features are seen and treated, exclusively, then by all means and purposes, people who are considered to be conventionally attractive should not also be seen developing the disorder. Marilyn Monroe could be an example of this: considered one of the most beautiful women in the world in her time and years after and yet (was believed to have) struggled with body dysmorphia until the day that she died.

Things don’t have to be “not neutral” in order for someone to not like them. Things can be neutral and still cause one discomfort. Things can be seen and treated as indifferent by the collective and yet still be hated by the individual. Why do non-dysphoric people have insecurities at all? A lot of the time, they don’t have specific reasons. I don’t feel they need to have reasons. Just like I don’t feel dysphoric people need to have an ultimate reason on as to why we would develop sex dysphoria when we could have fixated on any other physical trait.

I think where people tend to get tripped up in these discussions is, they try to apply what they know to be reasonable to mental illnesses and how they present in order to rationalize, to themselves, what we are feeling and experiencing—but in doing so, I feel we easily lose sight of the fact that, even without mental illness, the brain does not need a logical reason to fixate on something, to hate something, to want to get rid of something. Marilyn Monroe having been an icon of beauty did not change the fact that she didn’t like her face—and my not believing in gender does not change the fact that I don’t like my sex and desire to be the opposite. Marilyn continued to feel the way she did because she had body dysmorphic disorder. I continue to feel the way I do because I have dysphoria. Both disorders alter how we perceive reality and cause us to believe things about ourselves that are not objectively true. We desire what we do not have because that is a symptom of the inherently nonsensical disorders that we have. That is all there is to it. That is our “why.”

And I am content just leaving it at that. It is my own personal stance that we cannot chase the logistics behind something that is not logical to begin with. At the end of the day, there is no ultimate reason for mental illness. Mental illness does not need to make sense. Mental illness only needs humanity. It will continue to exist no matter how humanity progresses.

So, under this argument, there are a few different points to be had, main ones being that gender abolition will not necessarily abolish sex dysphoria because gender and sex are not one and the same; to take away gender is to take away only one possible factor in one’s dysphoria; and although outside factors can (and do) influence dysphoria and would continue to do so in a genderless society on account of the previous two points, there’s ultimately no “reason” on as to why dysphoric people would continue to cling on to their sex in this society where the two sexes are seen and treated as the exact same—simply because dysphoria, being a mental illness, does not exist on a plane that is rational.

Considering these viewpoints and assuming that they all coexist in this genderless society, then, it may be easy to conclude, like you did, that some people are just born transgender. I do understand how you may have come to that conclusion after reading my response and even I, looking back, feel like that is what I insinuated, even though I did not mean to and was not coming from that position. To clarify, as I have stated before, I do not believe in the idea of “true trans,” and seeing as this is a belief that I actually hold very true to and have for a long time, I’d like to explain why. This is no longer me proposing an argument that I am merely “considering.” This is me demonstrating what I believe.

There are a few different things to consider in the statement, “People are born transgender,” starting with the implications of what it means to be transgender and specifically the dysphoric aspect of it. To suggest that someone could be born transgender is also to insinuate that someone could be born dysphoric, that someone could be born already set to hate their bodies as they grow older.

Of course, we could be less technical here. You may not be born with mental illness in the literal sense—but you can develop mental illness extremely early on in life. So, under the argument that dysphoria is a mental illness, dysphoria can develop from a very young age, and therefore the child, express (what may be interpreted as) a transgender identity. Okay, fair enough. What I have never received closure on is, if a young child exhibits hatred of any other part of their body for any other reason, it is universally considered abnormal, a red flag, something to treat—but as soon as gender or sex comes into the picture, this self-hatred becomes something to validate.

Let’s say that a young child tells you that they do not like their body. Without any other context, what would your first reaction be? Chances are, you would assume that someone or something in this child’s life has taught or influenced them to think this way, even if only inadvertently, and hopefully, you would rush to tell this child that there is nothing wrong with their body, that they are perfect just the way they are. But let’s say, after probing a little further, this young child tells you that they don’t “feel like” their sex, or that they want to be the opposite (in little kid terms). Would you then change your tune and decide that they were “born that way,” that they hate their body because they were just meant to be the opposite sex instead? If your answer is yes, or your no follows hesitancy, I have to wonder what, specifically, would change your mind. What is it about dysphoria that is so different from any other form of self-hatred? Moreover, what implications do you think there are in a child telling someone they presumably trust that they are uncomfortable in their body—and that trusted adult telling them that they are uncomfortable in their body because they were, indeed, born “wrong?”

This leads to an essential question that we, ironically, so often overlook. We have a dysphoric child in front of us. What would make them transgender? The most likely definition of a trans person that everyone could agree on would be someone who is dysphoric, likely someone who has been dysphoric since early childhood—but even that is not a perfect or even accurate definition because not all people with dysphoria go on to transition, not even people with long-term or “treatment-resistant” dysphoria. If dysphoria does not make a transgender person, what does?

Let’s say we have one-thousand dysphoric people in front of us and one person in the group—say, the young child in this analogy, now an adult—is transgender. The only thing that distinguishes this person from the rest of the group is the very act of transition. If this person had never transitioned, there would be no difference between them and the rest of the group. We would have a solid group of cisgender dysphoric people. The transgender person is distinguished only through action, self-identity and personal experience in attempts to accommodate that self-identity. “Brain sex” has been proven to be a myth, so we know there are no biological differences to point to them having “needed” to transition—and even under the possibility that there do exist biological markers in dysphoria that we have not discovered yet, that does not prove that people can be born transgender. At most, these markers could stand as predispositions, similar to how people can be carriers for certain diseases or have “bad genes” that make them more likely to suffer from certain ailments—but none of these things equate to destiny, and in fact, in the case of dysphoria, would only prove that a supportive environment could prevent it—and transgender identity—from coming into the picture at all.

The suggestion that some people are just “made” to go through with any action, including transition, is an insinuation of fate—and I do not believe in fate. I believe in free will to some extent, although that would open us up to the more philosophical question of whether free will is truly free, seeing as we are reflections of our environment and cannot completely separate ourselves from it. In either case, we have seen and established that we can both influence one to develop dysphoria, as well as prevent one from developing dysphoria, all depending on how we, as a society, treat them—and if the people around us can help to prevent dysphoria from becoming an issue entirely, thereby circumventing the desire to transition at all, it is impossible for transgender identity to be truly innate to any one person.

In summary and in closing, mental illness, including dysphoria, is encouraged by—and sometimes even brought on by—our surrounding environment in almost all cases. Environments naturally change overtime, and in the process, certain factors in mental illness may become less common or even disappear entirely; however, just because one goes away does not mean all others disappear. One of many of our possible futures as a society is one without gender, and unsurprisingly, this would get rid of gender as a trigger in dysphoria—but so long as no other factors have been dismantled in the process, they will continue on as potential influences in its development, even in this genderless society. It then may be easy to conclude that some people are just “born” transgender, especially seeing as how the development of sex dysphoria in a genderless society would be even more random (comparatively to that of a gendered one)—but that conclusion, that “Some people are just born that way,” would not be reached with any other mental illness, and beyond that, does not give us, the society, enough credit or responsibility. The fact that there are trans people who barely even remember not being trans, such as myself, stand not as proof that we are “true transsexuals” but as proof that we live in a society that is hostile to multiple vulnerable populations and it is up to us to change that. Gender abolition will not solve all of these problems and it may not even get rid of sex dysphoria entirely—but it is essential and a great place to start, which is why I continue to stand for it, even despite it not being a perfect fix.

I hope this gave you a little more to think on.

#i hope this didn't come off too accusatory or preachy #i tend to argue with myself when i write and i can never tell if i'd come off as harsh to someone else #because for all i'm concerned i'm looking at my normal train of thought lmao #anyway anon in the time i left you waiting for a response i have done a lot of thinking #and i have so many more thoughts on this topic than even i previously assumed #my beliefs have already actually rather significantly changed since my previous post #at least in that i am now looking at the situation with a lot more nuance that i had neglected to consider at the time #but hopefully the argument i proposed here paints a bit of a better picture on where i was coming from when i had originally written it #it's far from perfect but then again nothing is perfect to me so i'll just aim for... good enough.#and on another completely unrelated note i have no idea which anon this is because all of mine type the same #someone needs to take on a more distinctive typing style so i can tell who's who lmao #submission #answered #gender critical #writing #text #my post

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fairytalearista · 8 months

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Hot take from someone who grew up on a non-Disney animated version of Snow White, so while I respect what Disney's Snow White did for the company and for animation as a whole, I don't have quite the same loyalty to it that some of us here do. What I do have is a large love of retellings.

Changing Snow White's ethnicity is not the problem. Evidence A. Evidence B. Evidence C. Evidence D. Evidence E.

Making Snow White into a power struggle between Snow White and the Stepmother isn't the problem. Evidence A. Evidence B. Evidence C. Evidence D. Evidence E. Evidence F.

It's not even the fact that they've chosen to tell the same story a second time. Evidence A. Evidence B. Evidence C. Evidence D.

The problem, 100% is that Disney has lost viewer trust, but we as a society feel some form of morbid allegiance to company and most people who care are going to still watch the movie, even as they complain about every little change that Disney made from the story they made 85 years ago.

The problem is that the company will only accuse viewers of being backward and prejudiced when they do make those complaints.

Disney has stagnated. Their storytelling is reactive, not proactive. They make changes not for what they add to story, but for what they take away. They made one good remake in Cinderella, and then have ever since failed to understand what made that one succeed. They certainly don't understand what made Snow White succeed 85 years ago.

When I retell a fairy tale, even a fairy tale I don't like, I crack it open looking for its nuggets of gold and I celebrate those nuggets. Lovers of fairy tales want to have their favorite stories told a dozen different ways, but they want to have those fairy tales respected. They want to fall in love again all over with their favorites, and they want to find out why their lesser favorites have stood the test of time.

As a reader, I'll forgive subpar writing an execution if the retelling presents a new idea. But what Disney is doing isn't providing anything new. (Except maybe the twist on the "fairest" which I do find a little stubid in concept, but it's the sort of stupid that makes me excited 'cause it makes me think. Can someone be "fair" and be evil? Can justice be taken too far?)

Right now, Disney is sitting atop a crumbling empire trying to glue boards to the sides without replacing the rotten supports. Could they prove us wrong with the Snow White movie? I welcome their attempt, but for now, I'm going to hang out with the dozens of Snow White retellings that hit Amazon each year, written by authors I know love and respect the fairy tale, and who I trust to twist it in brilliant but effective ways.

#Snow white #retellings #Disney #hot take

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animebw · 2 years

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Short Reflection: RWBY Ice Queendom

Can we just stop for a moment and appreciate how fucking insane it is that RWBY is an actual anime now?

It’s hard to remember a decade out from its premiere, but when RWBY first arrived on the scene, it was a very weird, very niche property. It was a an amateur passion project from the guys who made the funny Halo webseries, many of whom had little to no experience on a full-fledged original animated series like that. The writing was subpar, the actors were all pretty inexperienced, even the animation was pretty ramshackle outside the incredible fight scenes. But not only did RWBY persist, it grew. It improved on itself every season with better production values and storytelling, accomplishing things that never seemed possible in its early, rudimentary days. And as it grew in quality, it likewise grew in popularity, blossoming from a niche web property into one of the defining series of the modern animation landscape. And after ten years, it’s become so goddamn huge that it’s managed to snag an honest-to-god anime spinoff with some of the biggest names in the business working on it. Really, stop and think about that: Monty Oum’s love letter to anime has become such a huge success that it’s now being worked on by Gen fucking Urobuchi. Okay, yeah, Urobuchi just came up with the story concept, but still. Imagine telling anyone back in 2012 that the guy who wrote Fate/Zero, Madoka Magica, and Psycho-Pass would someday put his hands on RWBY. Wherever Monty is now, I hope he’s proud of how far his baby has come.

And to Ice Queendom’s credit, it starts from a very strong premise: what if we took one of the worst, most half-baked parts of early RWBY- namely, Weiss’ two-episode dalliance with racism- and flesh it so it actually works? The Faunus racism subplot has never been the show’s strongest aspect, something that even its creators have acknowledged. So if you’re gonna do a semi-canonical spinoff, choosing to go back and do that subplot’s initiation over is about as good an idea as I can come up with. The main issue with volume 1′s finale is how rushed the introduction and resolution of Weiss’ racism is. It’s brought up with no build-up, it’s so hilariously over-the-top that it’s impossible to take seriously, and in one of the single stupidest writing decisions I’ve ever seen, she just gets over it off-screen and it’s never brought up again. It’s not the worst RWBY has ever been (*glares menacingly at Jaunedine*), but it’s definitely up there, and it sets the stage for how awkward the whole Faunus plotline is doomed to remain going forward. If you’re gonna flesh out and re-work any part of RWBY, I can’t think of a better option than this.

So after a three-episode recap of volume 1, compressing events for time and sprinkling in new details that will form the basis of its plot, Ice Queendom launches into a good old-fashioned dream invasion arc. Weiss is attacked by a Grimm that traps her in a nightmare, and the rest of her team has to travel into that nightmare to set her free. But it’s easier said than done, because this nightmare preys on its victim’s worst impulses, bringing their darkest fears about themselves to the forefront until they consume them. And that means Dream Weiss isn’t just a passive prisoner of her own dream: she’s the dictator of it. She’s every bit the cold, ruthless authoritarian that her family wants her to be, indifferent to the suffering of her kingdom and closed off from the people she truly cares about. It’s all of Weiss’ worst qualities made manifest, exaggerated and twisted and very much not solved by an off-screen decision. Which is actually helped by that reader’s digest of volume 1 I mentioned: with just a few key details tweaked, it’s made powerfully clear that even after resolving things with Blake, Weiss is nowhere near free from his demons. And if those demons aren’t gonna let her go on their own, then her friends are just gonna have to beat them out of her with the power of friendship. Because if RWBY’s gonna go full anime, it might as well go full goddamn anime.

As a premise, this is everything I could want. Sure, the volume 1 recap isn’t perfect, and it’s far from a perfect way to start things off. It cuts too much out to be welcoming for newcomers, and this show is clearly not aiming to be anyone’s introduction to RWBY. But it also doesn’t really change enough to be interesting to established fans beyond seeing their favorite volume 1 moments realized in classic 2D animation (which, to be clear, is pretty fun on its own; the Nevermore fight is basically unimpeachable). Once Ice Queendom branches into its own story, though, it’s a damn good time. It’s clear how much love the creators of this show have for RWBY, and how well they understand Weiss’ character in particular. Even in the smaller details of the dream, like the different ways Weiss’ family members are portrayed, you can tell the people making this show are as much fans as anyone watching it. And if the only reason for IQ to exist at all was providing a more satisfying conflict and resolution to the Weiss Racism subplot, then I’d say mission accomplished. I won’t spoil how things play out, but while it isn’t perfect, it sticks the landing where it needs to and makes this part of RWBY stronger. That, if nothing else, is cause for celebration.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long before some pretty significant problems start to crop up.

The first, and most obvious, issue is the animation. Shaft’s glory days as a studio are well behind them (cries in Sangatsu season 3 never), and after a mostly solid opening stretch of episodes, the animation really starts coming apart at the seams. So many awkward, unfinished cuts, off-model characters, sloppy in-between frames, and that’s just the obvious stuff I could pick up on with a cursory glance. It does pick up again in the final stretch, but this show was clearly a production nightmare, and I shudder to think how bad things were behind the scenes. But perhaps even more distressing is that even when Ice Queendom looks good, it also looks... well, boring. The character designs somehow have even less personality than the early stiff-faced poser models, colors are clashing all over the place, and there’s just so little imagination put into how to visually depict this dream world. This is the goddamn Monogatari studio setting a story inside an abstract, symbolic mindscape. Why the fuck does so much of it look so flat and basic? Yeah, early RWBY certainly wasn’t a looker, but just take a look at its most recent seasons! RWBY looks incredible now! I’d argue it’s one of the leading pioneers for CG animation, certainly for anime-style CG animation if nothing else. And it’s a shame that an actual veteran anime studio falls so short of what Rooster Teeth has been able to accomplish.

And then there’s the writing. Or rather, the lack thereof. See, all that good stuff I talked about with Ice Queendom fleshing out the Weiss Racism subplot and giving it proper closure? That’s just the first and last few episodes of the dream. There’s a huge dead space right in the middle of this show that I can only describe as plot blocking. A problem arises, the characters solve it, another problem arises, they solve it again, and the pacing practically drags to a standstill through an endless series of obstacles that don’t move the plot forward and only seem to exist to drag out the show’s runtime. It’s glaringly obvious that writer Tow Ubukata didn’t have enough ideas for how to stretch this story across a full cours, so most of its midsection is just spinning its wheels waiting for an excuse to start the actually interesting stuff again. And it doesn’t help that this is also where the animation really starts to fall apart, so for a while you’ve got a plot that’s going nowhere and looking pretty ugly while doing it. Which may have been forgivable if just for the sake of watching our favorite characters spend more time together, but, well...

Look, I feel like this is going to be a controversial take, but I have to say it anyway: Ice Queendom’s dialogue is terrible. The characters talk in the most generic anime aphorisms, there’s so little specificity to how they communicate, everyone feels like they’re Performing Anime Archetypes rather than actually embodying Ruby Rose, Yang Xiao Long, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, Jaune Arc, and so on. And whatever else you might say about OG RWBY, it has always had excellent dialogue. Even back in the first volume when Monty, Miles and Kerry were still finding their footing, they knew how to make a conversation flow with purpose. This, though? This just feels like fanfiction. Which, I mean, that’s essentially what Ice Queendom is, but it’s that awkward kind of fanfiction that understands how the characters are written but doesn’t really know how to portray their voice, so the dialogue is all weirdly off and impersonal and never quite sounds the way it’s supposed to. And I definitely put this on the writing more than the actors, because I recently watched the English dub trailer and it had all the same problems. Saori Hayami, Lindsay Jones, Yoko Hisaka, Kara Eberle, and all the other voice actors, JP and EN alike, are incredibly talented people, but they just cannot make this dialogue sound right.

You know, it’s funny. When Ice Queendom was first announced, the worst parts of the RWBY hatedom lauded it as Japan “taking custody of RWBY” away from evil Miles and Kerry who “ruined Monty’s vision” (by which they meant adding gay characters and not redeeming the evil male abuser). Finally, they crowed, based Nippon was going to do RWBY the way it was supposed to be done. And yet, not only is Ice Queendom a substantially weaker product than anything OG RWBY has put out in the past several years, it’s flaws are all a direct result of being an anime in the first place. The horrible production schedule leading to melty animation, the plot blocking that exists onto to perpetuate itself, the dialogue that makes the characters come off more like archetypes than characters... these are all problems that anime is very familiar with. They’re certainly problems familiar to anyone who’s kept up with Shaft’s recent output, particularly their horribly mangled Magia Record adaptation. Perhaps there’s a weird irony in that. RWBY may have started out as a love letter to anime, but it’s grown so far from those origins by now that it’s arguably better than most anime on the market. And when someone tries to turn it into anime, it only reveals just how much better off this show is for charting its own course away from the worst parts of the medium it was inspired by.

And yet... yeah, this is still really fucking cool. It’s a testament to how far this cute little indie project has come over the years. RWBY is a juggernaut now, something that’s so big it’s come around to influencing its own influences. And despite its many, many faults, I still came away from Ice Queendom feeling mostly positive (it doesn’t hurt that the last couple episodes really do kick a serious amount of ass). It’s as much a love letter to RWBY as RWBY is to anime, and seeing that mutual appreciation is just too damn inspiring to ignore. I hope this isn’t the last anime spinoff RWBY gets; I hope lots of different Japanese studios and creators get to try their hands at bringing the hidden pockets of Remnant to life. Maybe they could adapt all the tie-in novel I still haven’t read? That could be a really cool way of bringing those stories to life. But I’ll save my wish list for another day. For now, RWBY Ice Queendom was a deeply flawed, but deeply captivating experiment, and I hope it’s an experiment we see repeated- and improved upon- for quite some time to come. And I give it a score of:

5.5/10

And now we wait for volume 9 to drop next year. I swear to god, if this hiatus lasts much longer I’m going to unironically bring yorse back, and nobody wants that.

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #rwby #rwby ice queendom #rwby: hyousetsu teikoku #rwby: ice queendom #rwby hyousetsu teikoku #summer 2022 anime #rwby sr

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ninjagirlstar5 · 9 months

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Protag Teruya AU - Mikado Sannoji's FTE (Part 5)

WOOO, it's the finale! Word count is 5,709!

AO3 Version

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Disclaimer: While Sannotori is problematic, it’s a thing in this AU/fic and the dynamic is not the same as it is in canon.

The Protag Teruya AU was inspired by @/anotherprofessional’s post! Beware of Void spoilers though!

Fic is under read more!

“You know…when I said that you didn’t have to start your assignment last night, I really meant it.”

“H-Hey, I just wanted to complete it! So we can, you know, move on.”

“A half-assed answer like this is more likely to ruin lives. Or in our case, get people killed.”

Teruya winces and hunches over the table. Mikado was looking through the document he sent last night, detailing a scenario for the amnesiac to solve. However, he hadn’t fully recovered from his fatigue, and by the time he turned in for the night, he was emotionally and mentally exhausted. Teruya knew he should just sleep, but he didn’t want to disappoint Mikado by doing nothing that night. So he took a quick look at the case, which was very simple with its summary and evidence, and went with the first answer that made sense to him. He didn’t have the energy to think any harder on it and decided it was probably fine.

Now he was regretting the decision, as he couldn’t bring himself to even look at Mikado’s disappointed face. Er, mask.

“…Sorry.” Teruya muttered, sinking further in his shame. In his attempt to avoid disappointing Mikado, he only ended up giving him a subpar answer that disappointed him anyways. “I just…I thought it was…obvious.” He can feel the wizard’s gaze drilling itself into him before he sighs.

“It wasn’t, actually.” Mikado said, setting his handbook flat against the table. He risks looking up to see the wizard rubbing his forehead. “The assignment was meant to test your problem-solving skills. In other words, for you to identify the problems in the case and to ask yourself questions about the evidence. And when possible, come up with ideas and answers that could solve them. But because you rushed to the first conclusion you thought of, you’ve labeled a suspect as the culprit without questioning why you would think that.”

“But, I mean, the guy clearly had a motive.” Teruya tried to weakly defend himself. But Mikado’s mask only narrows its eye at him.

“Just because someone would have a reason to kill does not mean that they would. A motive only explains why the person would do so, which is what makes them a suspect. But it does not explain how they would do it.” Mikado taps his handbook. “The suspect you chose in your hasty bias had blinded you to other possibilities while ignoring the flaws in your logic. You even missed the obvious fact that the suspect had an airtight alibi during the hour of the victim being murdered.”

Teruya opens his mouth, closes it, and then opens up the document in his handbook. Checking over the summary and the witness testimonies, he feels himself grow even more embarrassed.

“Oh…You’re right.” Teruya said, slumping over. “Unless he set up a trap, he wouldn’t have the chance to go down to the parking garage and shoot the victim.”

“And even if there was a trap, is there any evidence of there being one?” Mikado asked, tilting his head at him. Teruya looks over the list of evidence before frowning and slowly shaking his head.

“No…I trust you would’ve added some evidence if that were the case.” Teruya lays his handbook flat against the table. He rubs his head. “I guess I failed this assignment, huh?”

“If I were an actual teacher, I would have to fail you, yes…” Mikado glances down at his own handbook. He sighs before rubbing his own head. “But…to be fair, we did change our plans yesterday at the last minute. If we had proceeded as planned, I would’ve tested you on your problem-solving skills and then adjusted my assignment accordingly.”

“Sorry. I was being a dumbass for rushing ahead.” Teruya looks away. His heart felt heavy with regret. Like he was instinctively admonishing himself for his mistake.

“Well…yes.” Mikado was blunt with one word. Teruya snaps his head back towards him with his mouth slightly agape. The wizard awkwardly clears his throat. “But…perhaps part of the fault lies with me.”

“What? Why? I mean, it’s my mistake…” Teruya presses his hand against his chest. It is his decision to start the assignment and give such a careless answer when he was so tired, so he should at least take responsibility for it.

“True, but I should’ve taken your headspace more into account. Pushing an assignment on you when you weren’t well was wrong of me.” Mikado sighs before setting his hand down on the table. Teruya opens his mouth to push back but he was already shaking his head. “The point of this is for you to learn and improve. While it’s only natural that you would make mistakes as you learn, it’s the teacher’s fault for dropping homework onto you when you’re hurting.”

“Mikado…” Teruya curls his eyebrows at him. Mikado’s real eye doesn’t meet his, stubbornly keeping his gaze on the table.

“...I…have never taught anyone before.” Mikado admits quietly, clasping his hands together and rubbing his thumbs over each other. “I’m so used to doing things on my own that I’ve never had to…tutor others. And I’ve always been the kind of person to push through my own pain to achieve a goal, even at the cost of myself. So sharing my knowledge to someone else but pushing them to do their work when they’re not okay was…a bad decision on my end.”

“Hey, you didn’t force me to do anything.” Teruya said, reaching over to grab Mikado’s hand. Mikado blinks at him but doesn’t pull away. “You offered me a suggestion after my, uh…my panic attack, I guess. And I agreed to it. You even said that I didn’t have to do it tonight. But I still chose to do the assignment anyway. That was my decision. And, frankly, I was happy with the compromise we came up with yesterday.”

“...Still, I do feel I should’ve given you a break last night. Or rather, a better one.” Mikado adjusts his hands, but again, he doesn’t pull away. Rather, he flips them over so he can hold Teruya’s palms up. He feels a bit of heat rise in his cheeks. “I’ll be honest, I…really don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just trying out some ideas and hoping they’ll stick for you.”

“Mikado…it’ll be okay. You said you’ll adjust the lessons accordingly if something isn’t working. That just means you’re learning as much as I am. And it’s only our third day doing this!” Teruya squeezed his hands as he kept his tone light and reassuring. “I’m sure we’ll figure out what works for us as time goes on.”

“...Alright.” Mikado slowly nods. “Yes, of course. You’re right. I am learning, just like you. The difference is that I am taking the role of a mentor for the first time in my life. Being a student is something you would be familiar with…disregarding the amnesia, of course.”

“I mean, you’re probably right. I just don’t remember it at all.” Teruya said with a smile. Mikado’s mask smiles back a little wider. “And honestly, I think you’re doing great so far. I really do feel like I’m learning and improving, even if…um…I feel a little ashamed to mess up like this.”

“Otori-san…” Mikado rubs his thumb against his hand. “It’s okay to make mistakes. Even when those mistakes have…dire consequences, it’s important to learn how to shoulder them…no matter how much they hurt. This is one that can easily be resolved with a bit of effort and time, so take it in stride.”

“O…Okay…” Teruya stares at their hands that were still interlocked. He lets those words sink in, feeling them resonate far deeper than he expected in his heart. However, the more he thinks, the more he starts to realize the tone of voice Mikado had. He hesitates, feeling his face start to frown. “...Thanks, Mikado. But, uh…excuse me if I’m wrong, but, well…” Teruya lets go of one of his hands to rub the back of his neck. “You…sound like you have experience with that.”

Almost in an instant, Mikado pulls his hand out of his.

Teruya blinks his wide eyes, bringing his gaze up to Mikado’s. He was staring at him but his real eye felt off somehow. Like he wasn’t necessarily making direct eye contact with him. Even his mask felt…weird. It wasn’t full on blank like the few times it did happen. But the mask had its large, genial smile. Unmoving and…ambiguous.

They just stare at each other. Mikado is almost intense with his gaze, while Teruya feels more awkward. He even breaks contact a few times, darting to the bookcases, Mikado’s eye, and then their handbooks and back again. The silence was nearly uncomfortable with how sudden the change was before it was finally broken.

“...Something like that.” Mikado said, his real eye sliding its gaze away. Teruya gulps.

“Do you, uh…” Teruya starts slowly, watching how Mikado reacts. He barely even moves as he talks. “Do you…want to talk about it?”

“No.” The answer was instant, almost shutting him out completely. Teruya feels his heart pound.

It feels as though the progress he’s been making over the last three days was starting to slip away from him.

Progress of him and Mikado growing closer, only for him to be pushed away once more.

Teruya grips his hands into fists.

“C-Can you…!” Teruya leans forward, almost abrupt with how his stool’s legs hit the floor from the movement. Mikado blinks at him and leans away. Almost as if he was trying to make himself smaller. Upon realizing how desperate he sounded, the amnesiac forcefully restrains himself in tone and body movement. He slides his fists across the table, closer to his torso and takes a deep breath. “Can you…at least give me an idea? Of what happened?”

“...Why would you want to know?” Mikado slowly tilts his head. His mask’s eye narrows even further into a small slit. “We should be focusing on the lesson, not my own personal life.”

“I-I know! I just…want to know because…” Teruya racks his brain for a reason. Sure, he wanted to know more about Mikado. He wanted to be close to him. He…didn’t want him to be alone. He didn’t want to be alone. But was it really any of his business on whether or not Mikado opened up to him? And yet…with how much distance Mikado puts between himself and the others, it always felt like he was…alone. Perhaps even lonely. Teruya felt his nails dig into the palm of skin and took another deep breath. “Because…I want to be your friend, Mikado.”

Mikado stares at him.

And then, he blinks.

The smile on his mask started to wane, but the eye was no longer thin.

“...You have been very persistent about that. Making friends with everyone, even though we are all nothing more than acquaintances in this killing game.” Mikado tilts his head at him. Teruya shifts in his seat awkwardly. He wants to say something but can feel himself holding back. “It’s not as if it isn’t a good idea. We must minimize any chances of anyone trying to murder each other, after all. Starting friendly relationships is one step to a cohesive group and gives incentive to help each other. Even when it can lead to a dangerous amount of trust…” The mask finally frowns. “Which is why…I am hesitant to say any more. Trust is very fragile, especially in a place like this. So why should I say any more about myself, when we have more important things to do?”

“Because you’re important to me.” Teruya counters without thinking. Mikado’s eyes go wide as he pauses briefly to think on his words. He then slowly nods his head. “Yeah, you are important to me. I might not know everything about you, and you don’t have to tell me everything right now. But I do want to understand you better. I want to be friends with you.”

Mikado blinks his eyes. He looks down at his handbook and then Teruya, and then back again. Teruya lets him process his words, letting the ball roll into his side of the court. To let him decide what he wants to do with the hand he’s reaching out with.

Eventually, he makes his decision.

“I…Okay.” Mikado pulls his stare up to Teruya, only to then tilt his head to look at something else. He stands from his seat, his mask’s expression flattening slightly. “Let’s talk in my room. I’d rather we didn’t have an audience.” Teruya blinks his eyes before realization hits him and he turns around.

Kokoro’s drone was there, following him like his shadow.

“...Right. Let’s go.” Teruya got up from his seat, putting his handbook away. The two of them leave the library and they try to ignore the drone that kept its eye on them. A reminder that no matter how much they try to ignore her, Kokoro was always there to watch them.

Or rather, she was there to watch him.

Teruya shudders at the thought of being a test subject. And the only comfort he had on his current predicament was that she was content to simply watch him. Nothing more. But even he knew that if they didn’t escape or stop Kokoro soon, this would only be temporary…

Teruya’s nails dig into the skin of his arms.

He won’t let that happen.

He won’t.

Teruya is snapped out of his thoughts when he hears the familiar beep of someone using their e-handbook+ to unlock their room. Pushing his door open, Mikado gestures for him to step in first, even giving him a dramatic bow in the process. The amnesiac chuckles before walking in.

Seeing Mikado’s room for the first time was certainly a treat to the eyes. Everything about it just screamed wizard. There was a collection of crystals on a bookcase with a couple of books, fairy lights hanging from the ceiling, and a few candles scattered about on the desk and tables. There was even a shelf full of scrolls, potion bottles with different strange liquids in them, and a giant astrological globe hanging in the corner. What surprised him more than anything was the computer on the desk and the monitors hanging on the walls. He didn’t expect Mikado to have much interest in technology as it felt like something that was the exact opposite of magic. And the TV screen where Monocrow would appear for the daily day time and night time announcements had a blanket covering it.

With a wave of Mikado’s hand, the candles are lit up in an instant, filling the room with a warm sweetness mixed with amber, citrus and fresh limes. Teruya sniffs the fragrance and feels himself relaxed, if only a tiny bit. It helped that this was probably the closest they’ll ever get to being alone. There were still surveillance cameras in their private rooms, but at least it didn’t feel like they were constantly being watched compared to the drones under Kokoro’s control.

However, it didn’t push away the sense of awkwardness that quickly made itself apparent between them. Especially since Mikado didn’t say a word and Teruya didn’t even know what to say now that they were here. He hesitates before walking up to the table sitting in the middle of the room and slowly sat down in a nearby armchair. He hears Mikado approach the table, stop, and then walk right past.

“I’m going to make us some tea.” Mikado said, barely looking at him.

“Uh, okay.” Teruya said, a little dumbly as he watched him head into the tiny personal kitchen every room apparently has. He sits there in silence, listening as Mikado works on their tea, the clattering and clangs being heard from here. Even when things quiet down again, neither of them said anything else. Eventually, he hears the teapot start to steam, which is cut off by Mikado presumably taking it off of the heat. The wizard then comes back with two steaming cups of tea.

“It’ll need a few minutes to set.” Mikado sets their cups down and Teruya thanks him. He sits down on the opposite chair across from him, quiet. The amnesiac picks up his cup and blows on it. “Don’t take a sip. Like I said, it needs time to set. And it’s hot.”

“I know!” Teruya huffs. He feels himself smile a little bit, like a bit of the ice between them had started to crack. The smile on Mikado’s mask twitches slightly.

“Good. I may be a wizard, but I'm not a very good healer.” Mikado then sets his hands in his lap. He was playing with the cuff of his sleeve, and Teruya notices the loose thread between his fingers. He can’t help but wonder if he could fix it for him. “...What do you think of me, Otori-san?”

“Huh?” Teruya blinks at him, surprised at the question. Mikado refused to look at him and was staring off into a wall. He couldn’t tell why the wizard would be asking him something like that, but he decides to answer the question anyway. “Well…First, I want to thank you for, um, indulging me. You didn’t have to do that, especially if you felt uncomfortable. But the fact that you brought me into your room means that you do want to open up to me and sought privacy for the both of us. So, thank you for that.”

“It’s not something to be thanked for. If anything…” Mikado rubs his thumb against his wrist. “...I…feel the most comfortable around you.”

“O-Oh…I see.” Teruya pushes down the blush that tried to make its way onto his face. This wasn’t the time to feel happy over something so trivial. It’s clear that what Mikado was going to tell him was something serious. “But, back to your question. I think…I think you’re very polite, but also kinda awkward. You’re calm when you understand what’s happening but you get flustered very easily when something goes wrong. It’s kinda…” Cute is what he wants to say. But he backs out at the last minute. “Nevermind.” Mikado glances at him, his mask shifting for the first time since they came here into a brief expression of disappointment. But it goes away before he could comment on it and he decides to ignore it entirely. “You’re also really smart and you’re not afraid to show it off. The fake trial clearly showed that. And you seem to enjoy teasing others a lot, especially when it comes to Nikei.”

“Oh, that’s only because he makes it so easy.” Mikado chuckles, probably remembering something he had done at some point when Teruya wasn’t around to see. He can only hope that Nikei wasn’t too pissed that time.

“You’re…also a bit mysterious. Like a guy that’s prone to secrecy.” Teruya picks up where he left off and yet, was also quick to clarify with a frantic wave of his hand. “But I know there are times when you don’t have to tell others about everything, especially not right away! So that’s okay that you’re keeping things to yourself.”

“Even if it’s something bad?”

“Uh…” Teruya pauses, completely caught off guard from the sudden question. Mikado gives him a slow tilt of his head, the mask’s giant smile boring into him.

“Even if it’s something so horrendous that it could destroy the cute little image you’ve come up with for me?” Mikado grips his wrist tightly. “An image that could be as fake as the mask I wear right now?”

“That’s…” Teruya trials off. It’s not like Mikado is a perfect human being. He’s just as flawed as anyone else. Secretive, perhaps a bit egotistical, and can snap at others if pushed enough. And when he snapped at Kokoro…

He was very willing to kill her, consequences be damned.

Teruya suppressed a shudder. No matter how justified it was, that show of power reminded him that if Mikado wasn’t on their side, he could’ve easily hurt everyone around him with just a snap of his fingers. And his willingness to kill meant that he had no qualms of murder as long as it was rational to do so.

It was…terrifying.

And yet…

“...I won’t pretend you’re a flawless person, Mikado. You have a pretty scary side to yourself. But, regardless of what kind of…’mask’ you’re wearing around me, you’re still someone I want to know more about.” Teruya shifts in his seat, steeling his nerves. “Even if it’s something bad, it’s still something I want to understand.”

“...Even if it’s something that has hurt innocent people?” Mikado looks away. “Even if innocent people were probably…killed through my actions?”

Teruya felt his blood go cold.

Killed?

People were killed?

Mikado…killed people?

It wasn’t like Teruya didn’t have an inkling of Mikado’s violent, perhaps even murderous resolve. The way he acted towards Kokoro after what happened to Rei Mekaru and that woman told him enough. Hell, he was even callous with how he mentioned his persecutors “no longer bothering him.”

But…innocent people?

Would Mikado really go out of his way to kill innocent people?

(He wanted to get up. He wanted to leave. He wanted to smack Mikado. He wanted to yell at him. He…He…)

He should stop.

He should think.

Really think.

Think about why Mikado was telling him this.

Think about how it led to this.

Think about the Mikado Sannoji he knows right now…and what he’s trying to tell him.

Teruya stares at the cup of tea in his hand, a faint flow of steam rising and fading into the air. His horrified face was reflected in the liquid, telling him – and Mikado – exactly how he felt about this news. And then, his face relaxes slowly and he takes a deep breath.

He lets it out, and remembers their time spent in the library minutes before they moved to Mikado’s room.

“...Yes, I do want to understand. Because…” Teruya breaks eye contact with his reflected self and looks at Mikado. Really look at him. “...it was a mistake, wasn’t it?”

Mikado snaps his gaze back to Teruya with his mask’s eye wider than ever.

Teruya takes another breath.

“The reason why you’re so…evasive about this is because you know what you did was wrong. That it was a mistake. But because the consequences were more…dire than you expected, you know you can’t tell anyone about it.” Teruya shifts in his seat in the hopes of feeling more comfortable. “I don’t know the context of what you did or why you did it. But…you clearly regret it now. I just…I don’t think I can imagine how much weight you must feel on your shoulders. It must hurt a lot, doesn’t it?”

Mikado stares at him.

He opens his mouth.

Closes it.

And clasps his hands together tightly.

“...Aren’t you horrified?” Mikado’s voice was flat. But Teruya wondered if the shakiness to it was real or just his imagination. “For all you know, I could be a twisted, manipulative murderer that is willing to hurt others. Perhaps not even for a goal I desire. And yet, you want to believe that it was simply a mistake?”

“Yes.” Teruya sets his cup down on the table and stands. Mikado watches him and he can see his shoulders rise in his tension. He hesitates but steels himself with determination before kneeling down and reaching over to touch Mikado’s hands. Upon touching his hands, he can now feel how much the wizard was shaking and he started to soften up a little. “...I believe in you, Mikado. And I want to believe that we’ll keep being good friends. And…when you’re ready to tell me the full details…Will you believe in me, too?”

Mikado stares at him.

He stares at their hands.

And then, he slowly turned his hands around so he could hold Teruya’s.

“Would you…really be willing to be my friend?” Mikado asked, his voice so tiny that it felt as though it could be swept away. Teruya gently smiles at him.

“Of course. You’ve really put yourself out there to protect us. And while you decided to take a more background role, I can tell through our talks that you’re taking this killing game seriously. You’re always trying to think of a plan to get us out, and for that, I truly believe you’re a good person. Even if you made a terrible mistake in the past.” Teruya said, rubbing his thumbs along Mikado’s. The wizard squirms from the touch and he can see his ears becoming redder with each passing second.

And then, his mask suddenly goes blank again.

Teruya gapes.

Every time that mask went blank, it’s usually not a good sign. His excitement over those books yesterday came off as more of an exception than anything else.

So…did he do something wrong–?

“...Thank you.”

Teruya blinks at the sudden expression of gratitude. He scans his face.

And then, he finally sees it.

Among the blank eyes of Mikado’s face…was a small smile.

“You have no idea how much that means to me, Otori-san.” Mikado looked up and squeezed their hands. “I will believe in you…just as you believe in me.”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh…” Teruya could tell from the rising heat on his cheeks that he was blushing profusely. All he could do was laugh to try and hide it, averting his gaze. “O-Of course, yeah! Although, I, uh, do wish you’d use my…first name. Haha…”

“You…want me to use your first name?” Mikado said, blinking his eye in surprise. Teruya slowly nods his head, pulling his hands out of his. The wizard shifts in his spot. “I…don’t know if I should…”

“I insist! You’re my friend, so it’s natural to use our first names for each other. I’ve, uh, already been calling you by your first name since the beginning anyways…” Teruya rubs the back of his neck. He resists the idea to mention Mikado’s nickname for him since the first day they woke up on Utsuroshima.

“...I…I will try. Eventually, Otori…kun?” Mikado looks away, his ears turning even brighter. “...This feels a little weird for me.”

“Take your time. I, uh, I can wait.” Teruya sat back down on his armchair and picked up his tea. He can tell that it had cooled down significantly and had enough time to set so he takes a sip. The fresh taste of lemons meets his tongue, sweet and citrusy. Teruya hums and feels his body relax. “Mm, this is good!”

“I’m glad you like it. I found it in the shop and wanted to try it out.” Mikado said, looking like he was starting to relax too. His ears were no longer as red and his mask even went back to normal with its big red smile. “...I’m happy. Happy that I brought you here instead of keeping quiet.”

“I…won’t pretend I wasn’t shocked. But, after thinking about it, I realized you’re not a bad person. Just someone that made bad decisions in the past. And who hasn’t done that?” Teruya leans back in the armchair. “I guess we’re putting our lessons on hold for today again?”

“Haaa, it seems like it. But I know better than to push it now. I wouldn’t be learning from my mistakes if I start repeating them.” Mikado sighs before taking a sip from his own tea. “At least I seemed to have got this right. Oh, I should update you on my idea.”

“Your idea?” Teruya raised an eyebrow. The mask’s smile grows wider, to the point that he can almost see some sharp teeth…somehow.

“Take a look for yourself!” Mikado waves his cape over the table and after a brief pause, pulls it off to reveal a bunch of transparent balls with what looks to be a strange device set inside of it. Teruya tilts his head and the wizard is quick to explain eagerly. “I made…some magical surveillance cameras!”

“Surveillance cameras?” Teruya sets his cup down and then picks it up. It was smooth and yet squishy, its form almost malleable in his hands. “Wow. I definitely never saw anything like this before. How do you use it?”

“It’s still a work in progress…especially with the amount I plan to make. But once I finish, I should be able to connect them to our e-handbooks+ and we can just stick them to any hard surface. And if I can turn them invisible, then no one will be able to see them either.” Mikado picks up one of the surveillance cameras, turning it about to examine it. “And after looking over the rules and talking with Monocrow, I can say with certainty that we’re allowed to put them up.”

“Wait, you talked to Monocrow about this?” Teruya asked, gaping at the camera in his hand. “Isn’t that…kinda risky?”

“Yes…but sometimes, in order to avoid the worst case scenario, you must reveal some of your cards sooner than you’d like.” Mikado then sets the camera back down on the table. “What do you think?”

“Um…I do think they’re a good idea.” Teruya squishes the camera one more time before frowning. “But, I don’t know. It sounds like you want to put these up behind everyone’s backs. Wouldn’t everyone get upset if…or when they find out about this?”

“It’s not like we’re putting these anywhere inappropriate. Just the stores on the Monocruise and the U-Mart. Besides, the mastermind herself has cameras to make sure this killing game is going as smoothly as possible. In order to make sure no one tries to murder anyone, we should make sure none of them are doing anything behind the group's backs. So, I say we play fire with fire.” Mikado pauses in his words. He then sets his cup down before picking up the cameras. “...They may get upset. I won’t deny it. But, they will eventually come to an understanding.”

Teruya pressed his lips tightly together.

While he can understand Mikado’s reasoning, Teruya just knew everyone wasn’t going to be happy about them doing this behind their backs. He can just feel it in his gut. But…he also knew that if he just leaves the stores alone, someone can get the materials they need to commit a murder. That’s something he can’t allow to happen. No matter what.

But…should he really be secretive about it and risk hurting everyone’s trust? Or should he be open about the cameras, and risk having someone plan their murder around it somehow?

Teruya takes a deep breath.

“We should…discuss the pros and cons of this idea later. Right now, I think we could use a moment to relax.” Teruya suggests and gives the camera away to Mikado. Thankfully, the wizard nods his head in agreement.

“Very well. I’ve become a bit exhausted as well.” The smile on the mask softens before he cheerfully speaks with a pointy expression and all. “So how about we instead play a game of chess?”

“Chess, huh…? I guess it’s better than spending brain power on the killing game or the lessons I’ll have to keep up with later…” Teruya watches as Mikado summons a black and blue transparent chess board, one that was clearly made out of magic. A feeling of restlessness settles in his gut. “...I think I know how to play, buuut I don’t think I’m good at chess.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll try to go easy on you. Fuhuhu…” Mikado said, seemingly plotting what he would do already. He then gestures to the board. “Would you like to go first or would you rather I start?”

“...Maybe it’s better if you go first…?” Teruya was sure this decision was going to bite him in the ass later. But maybe, just maybe, he’d have a better chance if he tries to plan around Mikado rather than to go in with a random pawn. Mikado chuckles as if he had sold his soul to the devil.

“Very well.” Mikado’s fingers brush along the top of the pawn pieces, considering his move. Teruya watches in anticipation, trying to figure out what kind of strategy he has cooking up in his mind. But his thoughts quickly come to a stop when Mikado speaks up. “...Otori-kun?”

“Yeah?” Teruya pulls his eyes off of the chessboard. The mask’s expression seems to have softened up again, but he feels like Mikado’s real face was also smiling. Like this was the most open he’s ever been to anyone in his life before.

It was a smile that Teruya wanted to see more of.

Not the one of the mask.

But the one of Mikado Sannoji, genuine and wholesome.

“...I always hoped to be friends with you, Otori-kun. So…thank you. For reaching out to me.” Mikado then moves his pawn piece forward. Teruya can’t help but smile at him.

“I’m glad to be your friend, Mikado.”

They spend the rest of their time playing chess with each other. Teruya tried his best to keep up, but it was obvious that he wasn’t very good at it, even with the wizard clearly holding back. Almost to the point that Mikado wondered if he should have him play chess against a computer as his assignment for tonight. If there wasn’t a risk of violating the no violence rule no matter how minor the act, Teruya would’ve leaned over and flicked Mikado’s forehead. Still, even though Teruya had lost horribly against his opponent, he still enjoyed himself. He even asked for another round, one that Mikado was happy to indulge in after Teruya had given him a bottle of rose-scented shampoo as a gift.

It was only a few days, but Teruya can feel it.

The strong bond that had formed between them.

And Teruya was determined to keep it that way.

After all, Mikado Sannoji, for all his secrecy and lone wolf attitude, was very much his friend.

You’ve completed Mikado Sannoji’s Free Time Events!

Mikado Sannoji’s information has been recorded in the e-Handbook’s profile page.

SKILL OBTAINED!

Clairvoyance: Shows the number of preference changes in social settings.

Being able to see how people will react to what you say and do is pretty useful, don’t you think?

#SDRA2 #Super Danganronpa Another 2 #Protag Teruya AU #Teruya Otori #Mikado Sannoji #SDRA2 Spoilers #Sannotori #Terukado

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