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plaguedocboi · 7 months

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Waterfalls! These gorgeous, powerful features of nature have been oddly lacking in my past lists, I think in part because their danger has always seemed more “obvious” to me. But doing the research for this list has reawakened my phobia of the water. Some of the later entries (numbers 9 and 10 especially) brought back anxieties that I thought I had gotten over long ago, but it was kind of thrilling. Like watching a particularly scary horror movie. Let’s get into it!

1. Underwater Waterfall, Mauritius

No, it’s not really a waterfall. It’s just an optical illusion caused by sand falling off the island’s slope down into the deeper water below. But it looks cool and scary, and the drop-off is 2.5 miles deep so that’s pretty impressive and I think it deserves at least a mention.

2. Blood Falls, Antarctica

There’s nothing particularly dangerous about this one, it just looks incredibly creepy. Obviously, it’s not actually blood, it’s just water that’s very rich in iron. But the really fascinating part of this waterfall is that its source seems to be a subglacial lake that contains a unique microbial ecosystem which has been isolated for two million years! These microbes are like nothing else we’ve ever observed in nature before. They live in an incredibly cold and extremely saline lake, and metabolize sulfur and iron ions with no oxygen present. They are being used as a model to study what life on ice-covered alien planets could be like.

3. Khone Falls, Laos

This waterfall is not nearly as famous as some of the others on this list, which is surprising because it’s the widest waterfall in the world, with an average width of six miles! Although not particularly tall, it is the second most powerful waterfall in the world, more than double the power of Niagara Falls! The Khone falls divide the Upper and Lower Mekong river, making travel by boat between the north and south impossible. What makes it kind of unsettling to me is that during the rainy seasons the falls are basically swallowed up by the river, turning them from a spectacular waterfall to a series of massive rapids.

4. Huntington Gorge, Vermont

When water levels are low, this river is a popular and scenic swimming spot, and the canyon has an almost otherworldly quality with its unique bends and overhangs. Unfortunately, these very features are what makes it so dangerous. Much like the infamous Strid, the gorge is full of holes, steep drop-offs, and powerful currents hidden beneath the water, which can suck people in and trap them against the cliff walls. Over fifty people have died here since the 1950s, and many more have been injured. With proper precautions, one can safely explore the gorge and swim in the river, but don’t forget that this water has swallowed up many people before you.

5. Victoria Falls, Zambia

I’m sure most of you already know about Mosi-oa-Tunya, more widely called Victoria Falls, as the largest waterfall in the world. Formed as the Zambezi river pours into a series of massive gorges, this curtain of water spans nearly a mile and falls 300 feet with such force that columns of rising spray can be seen for miles around. Despite this, the pools around the lip of the falls can be relatively tame, and locals have fished while balancing on the edge of the cliff for generations. The safest and most famous of these fishing holes is the Devils Pool, which allows you to literally swim right up to the edge of the world’s biggest waterfall. The pool is actually very safe when the correct precautions are taken, and I can only find one death attributed to the pool specifically, when a tour guide in 2009 fell while trying to help a man who had slipped and was dangling off the edge (and, honestly, I was expecting a lot more deaths given the amount of clickbait articles advertising it as the most deadly swimming hole in the world). Although that was the only death from the Devils Pool, there have been many other deaths at Victoria Falls, mostly tourists who underestimate the power of the river or get too close to the edge. So if you ever visit this spectacular waterfall, please observe it from a safe distance and follow all the rules.

6. Huka Falls, New Zealand

This is not a traditional waterfall, but rather a series of small waterfalls along a narrow stretch of the Waikato river, creating an incredibly turbulent chasm that ends in a whirlpool. The 300-foot wide river is funneled into a 50-foot wide stream, causing a torrent of water that flows at a rate of 58,000 gallons per second. Obviously, this is not an area that you should get in the water, but not everyone takes that advice. There have been multiple deaths at this waterfall, and a few narrow escapes, including two swimmers who, incredibly, survived after trying to raft down the falls on pool toys. Please, for the love of god, don’t do that.

7. Niagara Falls, US/Canada

These falls are the only place on this list that I’ve visited, and I can tell you they are certainly an incredible sight, but also rather intimidating due to their sheer size and power. These three massive waterfalls are fed by the Great Lakes and, combined, have nearly 700,000 gallons of water thundering down every second. There is also a permanent whirlpool in the river that has existed for over 4,000 years and reaches depths of 125 feet! Besides being huge and awe-inspiring, these waterfalls are known for their appeal to daredevils who have gone over the edge in barrels or, in one case, a giant rubber ball. But these famous success stories are punctuated with tragedy. Roughly 20-30 people die at Niagara Falls every year. Most of these, sadly, are suicides, but others are failed attempts to replicate the successful daredevils of the past, and others are accidental. An estimated 5,000 bodies were recovered at the bottom of the falls between 1850 and 2011.

8. Murchison Falls, Uganda

Also known as Kabalega Falls, this is the worlds most powerful waterfall. Formed as the Nile River flows from Lake Kyoga to Lake Albert, this waterfall is so strong it literally causes the ground to shake around it. Here, the Nile is constricted from a river nearly 400 ft wide to a passage only 20 ft wide, creating an incredibly turbulent and violent tunnel of water that tears its way into the pool below at 79,000 gallons per second. And this is no ordinary pool. Waiting below the falls is the highest concentration of large crocodiles observed anywhere in the world, waiting for any dead or stunned animals caught in the falls to wash into their lair. Although the waterfall and surrounding park are now a beautiful tourist attraction and wildlife refuge, the history of the falls includes tales of human and animal sacrifices, thrown in alive to appease the gods that some believed resided beneath the raging waters.

9. Bath Fountain, Jamaica

This is just a random little waterfall along a hiking trail, but the video triggered some intense bathophobia in me for the first time in a while. Like, I was scared to get in the shower after watching this. Proceed with caution:

youtube

10. Kipu Falls, Hawaii

This one scares me because, despite my research, I can’t actually figure out what the hell is happening here. Multiple people have died here; all tourists, all drownings, all of seemingly very unclear causes. Kipu Falls is a beautiful and popular swimming spot, and locals frequently dive off the top of the falls with seemingly no danger. However, five deaths over the course of five years from 2006-2011 challenged its reputation of being a safe swimming hole. All the articles I could find seem to repeat the same information; there is no current in the pool and the waterfalls are not especially powerful. Despite these established facts, all five deaths were the same. Someone jumped in, surfaced, and then were dragged back down to the bottom of the pool and held there until they died. This has resulted in a lot of speculation, including everything from a hidden whirlpool current to evil spirits. I’m just. Really unsettled by the lack of information on this one. Every article I found was published in 2011 and I couldn’t find any updates, which hopefully means people aren’t still dying here, but… what the fuck???? Was going on????? Sorry guys this one might not be as dangerous as some of the others but it freaks me out a lot so it’s getting a higher rating. I want to know what’s going on but I’m sure not going to investigate it myself.

#long post #water rating #bathophobia

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dreamii-krybaby · 2 months

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Hi, please let’s take appreciation for the smallest details that Murder Drones have

I love how despite having the same idea of somewhat decorating their lockers, they still show a bit of their different personalities

Nori has color in it, a lot of emotion too, with the exclamation marks and the little angry face, clearly not wanting people to mind in her business with her “STAY OUT!” message. The colors and the fact she has hearts and a dolphin (?) shows she does like cutesy stuff but enjoys edgy things thanks to the skull (?) drawing. Her hand writing is in bold and in all caps but is a rather round lettering

She is giving a bit of “that one girls who did the most decorated and messy-in-a-pretty-way school notes” vibes

Yeva on the other hand surprisingly does show a bit personality but not as much as Nori, its all in black, no color. Her lettering is much more sharper and even fancier in a way, and the words aren’t 100% in bold, her name isn’t in all caps, except for her “DO NOT DISTURB!!” Message. Which tbh is so silly she opted to words things like that. Has slightly poorly drawn stars and flowers doodles, a cutesy vibe in comparison to her sharp lettering.

I originally thought that her “do not disturb!!” message was misspelled, to show that she struggles writing in english, but then I realized it was written properly, its just the words where faded out and worded in a peculiar way. She makes it sounds that she uses the locker to sleep in it and she doesn’t want ppl to disturb her (if these are indeed lockers and not rooms). Or maybe she does struggle a lil when wording in English, who knows?

Its also interesting how the dolphin drawing, the stars and flower doodles are all from the outside world, from nature. Yeva and Nori probably know and have seen these things somewhere but I doubt they saw it in person or saw it daily while they lived on the labs/camps, its kinda cute and sad

And again is a bit sweet that despite their awful and dire conditions they still tried to have fun in some way.

But it’s so tragic at the same time bc they where probably women with interesting and cool personalities with aspirations but where forced in a horrible situation and livehood.

And then, whatever kinds of horrors it definitely changed them permanently as people, and not in a good way.

#murder drones

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wasyago · 15 days

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I'm so curious, but it's okay if you do not have an answer for me; did something happen to Etho in your recks au for him to need all of those robotic prosthetics, like an accident of sorts? Or did he, I guess, experiment on himself or something like that?

Wonderful design, by the way! I can't stop looking at it, I love it so much.

haha yeah something did happen :)c

so, as you may or may not know, the world of recks suffered from a catastrophe caused by the moon going off its orbit and almost crushing into earth; which caused the creation of many gravitational anomalies all over the planet; which caused most of the big cities to evolve downwards and move under the sea level; which created this odd phenomenon of many skyscrapers in the middle of the city being abandoned and staying vacant, even if the buildings are technically fully operational.

and so teen etho, our smart little boy, thought "Hey, i don't wanna live so low underground where the sun doesn't reach when there's perfectly good houses on the surface!" so he just kinda... left his home and moved to one of the abandoned buildings. which, i mean, good for him and all that. BUT.

see, the thing about run down buildings is that they don't have a good water supply. and the thing about water in recks au is that it has a ton of bad chemicals, moon debris, leftovers of destroyed infrastructure, etc, in it when unfiltered or filtered poorly.

and etho, although smart, wasn't smart enough to give proper attention to the metallic taste of the water in the building he moved in to. like, sure it tastes a little weird but otherwise it's fine, it's something you would expect from an abandoned skyscraper right?

well, little did he know that the water he drank for god knows how many years of his life, was actually slowly dissolving his insides and poisoning him! and yknow, sharp pain in your guts every so often is one thing, but actively coughing up blood is another. and thank god he met cleo by then, because they forced him to actually do a check up to see what was wrong.

everything was wrong how you might've already guessed, to the point where the damage wasn't reversible anymore and there was no way to heal naturally. sooo etho had to get the prosthetic and say goodbye to his organs. the other option was to say goodbye to his life tho so he got pretty lucky there i think. thankfully cleo is a prosthetics doctor neurologist person, and she was able to get everything sorted fairly quickly for him and get that man on the operating table as soon as possible.

so at the end, all of etho's vitals had to be changed, including his throat and lower jaw because it also god badly damaged by being in contact with the water. (turns out etho had the raspy voice not because he was cool but actually because he was dying 😬) and! let me tell you, removing someone's entire set of vitals and changing them for the artificial ones in one surgery without killing the person in the process is actually very hard!! who would've thought huh...

well uhmm, yeah so this is what happened to etho o3o

(the eye prosthetic is another story tho, this post is already pretty long so maybe next time)

#recks au #recks!etho #recks!cleo #briefly mentioned but very important #yagotalk

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penaltyboxboxbox · 4 months

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any genderbend headcanons you would like to share 👀????

YEAH....YEAH I DO....theyre all pretty random and non specific but if you want to hear me ramble about my girl drivers here u go

Charles: she's a non conventional fashion girlie...........she likes to dress quite femininely and and gets a lot of fashion based brand deals so she is often pairing skirts and such with her sportswear and it sometimes looks a bit silly. a lot of her fits are like...is it a fit or is she just really pretty and wearing designer lol. the skirt i drew her in is what I THINK would be her version of the quali pants, it's this knit skirt from gucci 💁‍♂️

Carlos: she is like two steps away from being a high bun lesbian. still keeps her FEM VIBES mostly because of family pressure. but the second she gets put in a dress its all a little . hm. youre a masc arent you.

Pierre: happy to be the paddock baddie like....she embraces it fully. she got a boob job and doesnt care if people know. constantly hints at being bisexual on instagram but will never confirm.

Esteban: the girl who had the most major glow up............and who has also had a bob her whole gd life. literally lives in a lulu jacket and yoga pants like its her uniform. she and pierre had the most toxic codependent girl friendship of all time. she's soooo so so tall and always got mad growing up because none of the boys liked her cause she was taller than them and got teased about it....still tall as fuck

Lance: my tall and beautiful wife...every few months she chops her bangs too short and everyone cries until they grow out again. she hates having hair in her eyes.... hates dresses and heels since she always sits with her legs out...gotta be comfy duh..

Fernando: milflonso............she was an it girl in her youth and then got divorced and came out as a lesbian and became an irresistible masc

George: the preppiest girl you can imagine she will never cut her hair AND she will wear a skort. extreme complex about being a tall girl.

Lewis: ultimate fashionista like she gets it....changes her hair a lot more than boy lewis....extremely in denial lesbian who dates the gayest men imaginable

Yuki: shes a hey mamas lesbian. she flirts so hard with pierre from like eye level with her huge boobs. kind of a fuckboy she swears she'll treat you rightttt come on babyyyy

Daniel: used to be such a hotgirl such a coolgirl like in her younger days she had long long hair and dressed sexy and was all about pushing this like....im a hot girl but im also so cool and just like the boys 😜 (she was overcompensating for something) but after she leaves redbull she like cuts off all her hair and slowly starts mascing the fuck out as she gets older.....now shes just straight up soft butch and everyone knows she kisses girls

Max: grew up forced to have the worst bowlcut in the world and never got to be very girly or anything so when she grew up she finally let her hair grow long and never cuts it. has barely any personal style and still cannot walk in heels tho.

Checo: arguably the one who cleans up the best like shes the one with the makeover montage everyone is so used to seeing her in red bull gear and a ponytail every damn day the second she puts on an outfit everyones like HELLO?????

Valtteri: used to be permanently in the low pony tail and attempting to dress acceptably business casual woman enough for things but after she left merc just embraced being a butch. has the same mullet as guy val. hallelujah

Guanyu: suuuuuch a fashion girl and absolutely rules instagram and weibo..........always doing photoshoots and stuff. experiments with cute hairstyles a lot, but always keeps her bangs ☝️

Alex: used to be super plain like wore big hoodies and just left her hair long and straight and hanging there until one day she got the chop+undercut going on.......now shes well aware shes everyones ideal boyfriend if he were a girlfriend.

Logan: my florida girl......my natural blonde with her little ponytail.....when she was growing up her parents definitely put her shirts like this

Lando: she is a racing driver as much as she is an influencer.............people discourse about if shes fanservicing like every 2 seconds. girl gamer and proud.

Oscar: she lives in gym clothes. nike pros or leggings every day with the most boring shirt. never does her hair or wears makeup

KMag: best mom everrrrrrr 🫶

Nico: she talks openly about how men are very intimidated by her. she is indeed kind of scary.

#ask #genderbend

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thewertsearch · 18 days

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Let's kick things off with a mega-giga ask compilation!

I've spent the last couple of days working through the backlog, and I've been able to answer some quite old asks that were spoilers at the time they were sent.

@kintatsu asked: So, I was rereading your blog, and got to the post where you determine that John's 13th birthday was a Monday, and complain on his behalf that he couldn't really relax due to having the whole schoolweek ahead of him. Well, I checked, and the previous day was the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox, i.e. Easter Sunday. So it might have been a holiday week.

John entered the Medium shortly after Easter Sunday, and he did so by biting into an apple. Forget about the god tiers – his most powerful transformation is clearly Catholic Beast Mode.

Anonymous asked: The thing about knowing your Aspect, I think, is that it's the Aspect you most GET. I GET Space and Light, I understand them completely, they are suffused in my bones and my blood, they are writ large upon my brain and every base in my DNA. What aspect do you just GET?

To be honest, I don’t think I know enough about any Aspect to ‘get’ it.

If I had to choose, then I'd probably feel the most natural affinity for Life and/or Doom – and if was forced to pick one, I’d say I'm very slightly more drawn to Life, just based on vibes.

@mhafanlol2000 asked: I think the horrorterror’s plan (or the closest thing we can comprehend) is CHAOS-by which I mean LIFE. Skaia is order. If it can want, then it wants its players to follow the script it has written-the Alpha. It wants propagation, the snake to eat it’s own tail, blah blah blah. That is order. That is perfect servitude. That is NOT life. The gods, meanwhile, want chaos. It wants its servants to live. It does not tell people to do anything. It simply gives them the facts, and says “here is what you should do. You can not, you can do whatever the hell.” It wants romance, conflict, CHAOS. that is life.

And if this theory is accurate to the canon Life aspect, then I feel justified in my affinity for it. It falls fairly closely in line with my own philosophy.

@necrowyrm asked: When searching your blog I always type "thew" before Tumblr autocompletes your URL. That has become who you are to me.. Thew, Glorious Liveblogger, navigating the treacherous seas of Homestuck

Sally ‘Thew’ Ertsearch, reporting in. 🫡

Anonymous asked: there's actually another arthurian joke to do with dave's land/quest. have another look at the disc platform that bro stabbed. how would you describe the shape of that turntable?

Ayy, Dave's a Knight of the Round Turntable! Honestly, that'd be a pretty great name for his theme song.

@caliquill asked: kanaya vs rose would be absolutely hilarious but. kanaya IS the original "I Can Fix Her" girl for a reason.

Anonymous asked: the only real requirement for a name suggestion to be picked was that the firstname was 4 letters. but by really cool coincidence strider and lalonde are 7 letters, and egbert and harley are 6, and if you add those together its 4/13! similarly, both the trolls names were required to be 6 letters (i think hussie mixed and matched them actually, some of the firstnames were suggested as surnames and vice versa) so theres a similar case to be made for 6/12. but just doubling the same number i think holds less water than adding together two different numbers

Number symbolism is just very flexible in general. All Hussie really had to do was introduce a few 'important' numbers, and the fandom could start finding them everywhere!

Anonymous asked: This may be the wrong place to ask, but have you deleted your post of analyzing the Let the Squiddles Sleep song? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

Here it is. Hopefully you're able to see it now!

Anonymous asked: Will the Mega-Ask-Compilation and Liveblog Recap also happen? ~LOSS (19/2/23)

The former is currently taking place. The latter was planned, but after skimming my blog for a bit, I realized I didn't have as much to say about it as I thought I did. Plus, it's been ages, so I'm really excited to look at some new pages. We can leave the old ones for later - I'll probably do some sort of blog retrospective eventually.

Anonymous asked: i figure the trolls' battlefield went through a full set of dnd dice/platonic solids, plus maybe some other notable johnson solids like a truncated icosahedron (aka a soccer ball or buckminsterfullerene), before becoming a sphere. maybe the outer ring went through stages like simple torus, mobius strip, borromean rings or other fun knots, before becoming a mobius net. (not really sure what a mobius net is, mathematically, but that's apparently what the thing around the final form of the kid's battlefield is called.) or maybe something weird happens with that many prototypings, and the battlefield turns into a tesseract or a klein bottle or a menger sponge or a mandelbulb.

If you so much as look at the Battlefield created by the Gigasession, your brain will leak out of your ears.

@manorinthewoods asked: <3Dave, >3>John, >3oJade, <>Rose (by process of elimination) ~LOSS (5/6/23)

I don’t think either of the girls have worn a playing card symbol. The leaf on Jade’s Wardrobifier does kind of look like a spade, but John’s already got that quadrant on lockdown.

Anonymous asked: Reading stuff about skaia on this blog reminded me of madoka, and made me consider that skaia might be like kyube and the other incubators and sburb is skaias way of keeping the unerverse from decaying

Reading this ask makes me realize that Rose is a near-perfect mark for Kyubey.

There’s only one way to save your session, Seer. Form a contract with me, and become a magical girl.

Anonymous asked: man. i dont know what i expected to happen when you found it. but for The Baby Is You to be liveblogged in less than 20 words during a post was not the way i expected it to go

I know it’s not technically part of Homestuck canon, but it really feels like Homestuck canon to me - at least to the same degree as Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, and I liveblogged that.

Anonymous asked: begging (lightheartedly) for you to add posts like LOLCAT and "this guy's an orb" to one of the liveblog tags. they're pretty funny, and it's nice to see off-the-cuff reactions like that, haha. imo it'd be a shame for new readers to miss those kind of posts

Done! I sometimes forget to tag posts like that, because I usually just fire them off and forget about ‘em.

@captorations asked: “Give me a set of rules, and I'll analyze the hell out them, every time.” hello fellow doom player. hope you like the color green

Based on ~ATH’s association with curses, as well as Sollux’s programming hobby, I think there’s a decent chance that Doom relates to coding in some way.

Coding is all about rules, so perhaps Doom, is, in fact, the aspect of rules and logic. I'm not sure why such an aspect would be named 'doom', but it's been obvious for a while that these aspect names aren't always literal.

Anonymous asked: I’d just like to clarify some terminology because it seems relevant, but Aradia isn’t a red blood, she’s a rust blood

[The blood colors all have canon names: Aradia = rust blood Tavros = bronze blood Sollux = gold blood Nepeta = olive blood Kanaya = jade blood Terezi = teal blood Vriska = blue blood (I like cerulean better tho) Equius = indigo blood Gamzee = purple blood Eridan = violet blood Feferi = fuchsia blood and Karkat has no official blood name, but people usually call him mutant blood or candy-red blood - C ]

Oh, there are official names for each color? That’s going to be helpful to disambiguate each blood caste, especially when we really start digging into troll culture and biology.

Anonymous asked: I do believe the top-left ship on the wall - no, Karkat doesn't have red eyes. […] It's probably Vrisrezi, yes, but it could also be Vriskat.

Yeah, I’m still not sure who this ship is supposed to represent.

They have Terezi’s eyes, but the hair and symbol look like Karkat’s. Plus, Nepeta hates this ship, which would make sense if it’s between her crush and someone other than her.

Honestly, my best guess is that it was meant to be Karkat, and the red eyes were just a mistake on Hussie’s part.

Anonymous asked: something I never thought about… is the blue blood sourced from equius or did he get a stock.

Aradia has real blue indigo blood in her veins, and it almost certainly belongs to Equius himself. He could have got it from a donor, but I personally doubt there was anyone else he could ask. Equius feels like he'd be an outsider, even to other indigo-bloods.

Anonymous asked: vriska would be a good strider

Vriska Serket raised by Bro Strider would be the most terrifying character imaginable. I don't even want to contemplate what that upbringing would do to her.

Anonymous asked: Any piece of lore hussie writes needs to contend with the fact that hussie is resolutely committed to the bit. Hence all the words on how different trolls are being entirely blasted aside by 'and then they're just grey humans anyway lmao'

That's the price of admission into Homestuck, for better or for worse. Hussie quite clearly enjoys screwing with us, and we have to take everything we see in the comic with a huge pinch of salt.

Anonymous asked: I'll disagree a bit on the phrasing that Eridan forces Feferi to <> him because firstly she doesn't even seem convinced that he would commit genocide and secondly she dropped him super easily once the lusus-feeding is no longer necessary. While understandable, that doesn't suggest to me someone who is obliged by Eridan's aggression to pacify him. I think she has much more agency in this relationship (or lack thereof I suppose) than that.

Feferi definitely had her doubts – but she must have believed that Eridan was dangerous to a certain degree, because that’s the basis of a moirallegiance.

Forced might not be the right word, but she certainly felt some amount of obligation to pacify him. She sure wasn’t in that relationship for the good of her health.

Anonymous asked: So, Vriska has a conversation with Karkat, where he says she seems to have blackrom feelings for Tavros, but that he doesn't think Tavros can even feel blackrom properly. Then she has another conversation with Tavros in which she antagonizes him, and he notices, but just kind of ignores it and doesn't respond emotionally. Then we see her make a huge dramatic redrom gesture and kiss him. She vacillated because he wasn't into her… incel behavior.

Yup. I’ve always held that Tavros never wanted anything to do with Vriska. He doesn't want to love or hate her - what he really wants is to live in a world where she doesn't exist.

Vriska’s refusal to accept this basic fact is one of the main reasons she’s decided to make his life a living hell.

Anonymous asked: I headcanon that troll blood is analog, but the empire culls non-digital colors because they make the troll race seem like a joke or something. Lol

If there were minor variations in blood color, the Empire probably wouldn’t want to acknowledge it, since the stratification of blood classes forms the basis of their society.

We haven’t seen any trolls besides our twelve (apart from Troll Will Smith) so we can’t compare the blood of two members of the same caste - but we can speculate. Human blood color is known to vary depending on its oxygenation level, and I imagine troll blood would reflect its current chemical composition in the same way.

Anonymous asked: Vriska must be seething while Karkat introduces the concept of quadrants to the reader. Imagine this basic and important facet of troll life, and you're just getting schoolfed it. (This message was sent on 20/10/22.)

This was a fun bit of weirdness from early Hivebent, wasn’t it? In retrospect, it's kind of hilarious that Karkat decided to infodump to Vriska about the obscure, niche topic of… dating.

@sanctferum asked: According to his formspring, Hussie's self-insert's classpect is Waste of Space. He also briefly considers Huss of Lips. This is obviously not meant to be taken seriously but. since you asked @absinthe-and-alabaster asked: i believe hussie said somewhere that FedoraFreak's classpect was "Gent of Piss" Anonymous asked: (not sure if this is technically a spoiler but) hussie has jokingly said that fedorafreak's class is a gent.

If Dad Egbert was a Player, then the Gent class would be forced into canonical existence, as the only class that could possibly define him.

Anonymous asked: If Vriska's control does require the victim to on some level want to do the thing, then Sollux's insistence that you do not under any circumstance eat the mind honey could be something he developed in response to that incident. So that if she ever controls him again, she won't be able to make him eat it.

Wow, I never considered that. That’s a very good (and tragic) take, and I think I'm at least locking it in as a headcanon.

Anonymous asked: the official extended zodiac actually has… 288 signs, if im doing my math right? and also probably hadn't yet been conceptualized when that page was posted (the earliest known evidence comes from 2015). i don't know if any thought was put into the number or if it was just pulled from their ass, but there was a running gag in hussie's q&as where he repeatedly threatened us with a 10,000 page intermission focused on 48 squiddles, each representing a sign from the alternian zodiac Anonymous asked: I believe the troll zodiac is one of the few things in HS lore that was truly retconned, there’s actually 288 signs.

Move over, 48 Squiddles. I want to hear about the 288-player clusterfuck that actually gave rise to Alternia!

@manorinthewoods asked: wheee, you got to the first god tiering! this probably opens up a load of new things to say, so, first off: do you think you need to have a full echeladder to god tier? vriska implied so.

She never outright stated that it was required, but I still think it probably is. You generally need to max out your class levels before you can prestige.

@morganwick asked: Believe it or not, you're still in the "Homestuck could have updated RIGHT NOW" phase of the comic's release schedule. The break after the Equius-Aradia kiss aside, the hiati you've heard horror stories about didn't start becoming a thing until the end of Act 5.

[this was around page 3000. still true at this page though - C]

Hussie’s sheer productivity at this stage continues to astound. Could you imagine having that much creative energy?

Maybe Hussie just drinks twenty coffees a day.

Anonymous asked: as someone who is Normal about aradia it's an absolute delight to see someone dig into her character. she's so fascinating to me. (also, fun fact, a while ago tumblr voted her the coolest character in all of homestuck. so there's that)

Aradia’s awesome, and I still don’t think her death is going to stick.

Her ghost was perfectly capable of existing without a body, so there's no reason she can’t survive her new body's destruction.

Anonymous asked: feferi hasn't just woken up, she won't be stuck asleep until 3 hours and 14 minutes into the future! timestamps, yo

Consider this the first mark on my otherwise impeccable record.

Anonymous asked: does cat have a troll/kidsona? itd be interesting to see a full 4 player session in art

[No kidsona, yes trollsona, but even a picture of her would spoil stuff from Act 6 😆 - C]

What she said. It’ll be a while until we can meet KATYAA SCRENR.

@mhafanlol2000 asked: Hey! You can just call me Fan. In all honesty I’m just some guy who likes your liveblog. He/him. I’m gonna list some fan aspects, and I want to see what you think they’d represent, and what abilities they’d give Law Dreams Might Shape Flow

Ooh, more fan aspects! These were a lot of fun to puzzle out the last time.

Law would be the aspect of command, instruction and agreement. An example power would be giving someone a simple rule they're compelled to follow, such as 'don't turn around'.

Dreams would be the aspect of ideas, motivation and symbolism. An example power would be the ability to detect people's idle thoughts - the things they're not even aware they're thinking about.

Might would be the aspect of growth, conflict and evolution. An example power would be the ability to temporarily enhance someone's Aspect abilities, at the cost of making those abilities harder to control.

Shape would be the aspect of form, encapsulation and topology. Shapeshifting is the most obvious application of this aspect, but it's appropriate.

Flow would be the aspect of persistence, momentum and continuity. An example power would be the ability to 'continue' something that has recently stopped. For example, if your PC ran out of power, they'd be able to keep it running for a while. The longer it had been previously running, the longer they could keep it running.

@martinkhall asked: I think Bro might have been raised entirely by shonen anime and My Little Pony Friendship is Magical (the version that existed only in the heads of the worst examples of Bronys). And puppets. Puppets were definitely involved in raising Bro. Anonymous asked: "He has no known relationship with any of the other parents, but was definitely getting foreknowledge of Sburb from somewhere. I’m not even sure I want to know what sort of childhood produces Bro Strider." well. i mean. he grew up with Lil Cal didn't he? the clearly haunted puppet from the sburban dreamscape of derse? it was what he dropped to earth with. i feel like that might explain at least a small part of, like, whatever he had going on.

That’s true. I don’t trust that puppet one bit, and we don’t know what it was up to before the start of the session.

I still suspect that the thing’s still just as alive as it was on Derse, and is just choosing to play dead.

Anonymous asked: I imagine you might've already been told this, but when checking out your FAQ I noticed you described PS/PQ/FS as "not exactly canon" and that you're less interested in liveblogging them because one of your favorite parts is watching all the story come together -- without spoiling anything, I find it pertinent to mention that Pesterquest & Friendsim definitely contribute to the wider "canon" even though dubiously canon themselves. Definitely "part of the story" so to speak.

Yeah, we’ll have to see what comes of this. The problem is that I’m still fuzzy on what ‘dubiously canon’ actually means.

Hopefully that will become more clear as I’m actually liveblogging these tie-in materials – which I am planning on doing. Only time will tell how in-depth the liveblog will actually be, though.

@manorinthewoods asked: In my Sundered opinion, Bec Noir is the best character design in Homestuck. I can't think of any other interesting designs at the moment, other than some which don't beat him and are spoilers anyway (like LE's). Which design do you find most interesting, out of the ones you have? ~LOSS (22/9/23)

I definitely agree that BecJack has one of the best designs in the comic. Plus, Scratch is so weirdly intimidating for a cueball-head.

Anonymous asked: My favorite part of PKWU is just how pointy Gamzee's chin is. It's so… Defined.

iT’s ToO lAtE, ErIdAn! I’vE AlReAdY DePicTeD MySeLf As ThE ChAd, AnD yOu As ThE SoYjAk >:o)

Anonymous asked: i need you to know ag canonically ripped off the sleeves on all of her shirts just to show off the robot arm

I believe it. I don't even need a source; this is just so true to Vriska's character that it's obviously correct.

@bladekindeyewear asked: If you and your ask screener decide that literary/external-media hero title examples without any details or explanation are alright to pass on unless they're too obviously revealing -- and those in and of themselves are usually in heavy dispute by classpect theorists -- I've long been of the opinion that Monkey D. Luffy and Peter Pan are the best possible literary examples of a Page of Breath.

All Pages of Breath must be associated with pirates. No exceptions.

Anonymous asked: unfun fact: the reason rose and jade dont have a lot of pesterlogs with eachother is just because their text colours were kinda eyestrainy together. thats it thats literally the whole reason!! god damn

Hussie: "I don't write Rose/Jade conversations because they’re hard to read."

Also Hussie:

Anonymous asked: you have officially passed my second favourite flash in literally all of homestuck. it's all so well hinted at beforehand but it still comes to punch you in the gut nonetheless Anonymous asked: My favourite thing in this flash is how the name of the flash isn't John: Rise Up, it's JOHN. RISE UP. it's WV sending a plead to John to not die. My second favourite thing is the way the music remixes Doctor (The theme for LoWaS). Anonymous asked: [S] JOHN. RISE UP. is one of my favorite flashes in all of Homestuck. Savior of the Waking World is some of Toby's best work What are your thoughts on our first taste of god tier? @violetsquare111 asked: So glad you liked Savior of the Waking World! One of my favorites in the comic for sure. It takes a lot of ideas from another of Toby's songs, Penumbra Phantasm, a song that… never actually got finished or officially released. There's still various renditions of it though, and the HS collection links a couple of em. (Some people have speculated that Penumbra Phantasm itself was never supposed to be a Homestuck song, and might end up being used in Deltarune, which would be cool as hell) Anonymous asked: It's crazy to think that just about 12 hours ago John was wearing silly disguises to fool his dad and now he's dying to become a god.

God time!

I do think it was the most emotional flash we’ve had, on the strength of the music alone. Savior of the Waking World goes hard as all hell.

Honestly, when WV started calling John a hero, and telling him to rise, it did start to give me some mild chills. Like, yeah – we know John’s a hero, but it feels extra special when it’s coming from someone who’s normally so irreverent.

@elkian asked: Welcome back, hope you're feeling better! I am losing it a bit over you IMMEDIATELY understanding how this coin flip sitch works, something about the narrative and reasoning doesn't match my brain so I've reread it multiple times with total understanding out of grasp and watching you dissect it halfway into the page is truly wild (delighted). Also feel like I understand it a lil better with your analysis.

Thank you! This message was actually sent the last time I returned from a pause, so apologies that I’m one hiatus late in answering it.

@royalvorpal asked: I just reread your entire blog in anticipation. Anonymous asked: This is such a good liveblog, I'm rereading it again and you are really letting me relive the pleasant parts of my middle school years. Reading this blog makes me feel like I'm back on the school bus talking to my friend about the newest update. Thank you for doing this 💛 Anonymous asked: That return page didn't have any sound, so misleading! (I jest, nice to see you're back.) ~DJ @manorinthewoods asked: Hahahah, we are BACK! Lovely, I've missed this liveblog. Most in-depth Homestuck liveblog I'm aware of, looking forward to the restart! ~LOSS (29/3/24) @popcornsalty asked: So excited to see you back!!! :D @chaosorchestrator asked: welcome back! It's good to hear that you're planning on getting back into it! I hope things have been going ok for you in the meantime! @necrowyrm asked: HAPPY 4/13 (OR AS THE ENLIGHTENED KNOW IT: 13/4) AND WELCOME BACK!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for your votes of confidence, and happy 13/4 to you all!

@rippledphysique asked: Just found this blog and devoured it in a few days. I am selfishly wishing you the best in health and life so that it may return one day… @elkian asked: Hey Sally! Just wanted to wish you well on the recovery, the plague is no joke and I hope you've been able to enjoy some kind improvement. And that 2024 will be kinder, as well. Anonymous asked: wishing you the best in your interim, hopefully you can get a better position where you're not prone to burning out! Anonymous asked: Hope you're doing ok!! I miss seeing your cool liveblog on my dash @kittycatttmattt asked: Poor girl… Got killed by the schedule

Thanks for all the well-wishes, as well. Really, it wasn’t the schedule that was the issue – I just had a lot going on in the background last year. That’s all over now, though!

Anonymous asked: yeah, Homestuck's back babeyyyyy - the site was crashing because of traffic and everything @calamitascalliope asked: You coming back from your break resurrected Homestuck's corpse hggfffdd Anonymous asked: i think this actually is the first time homestuck has updated since you started liveblogging lol - homestuck 2 has been inactive assumed abandoned since december 25th 2020. also happy slightly belated blogiversary btw - you've been delighting us with your journey for two years now! @heliotropopause asked: New Homestuck upd8 just dropped. Apparently. Anonymous asked: what are the odds that you start liveblogging again the same exact day that postcanon comes back from the dead? Anonymous asked: crazy news. so literally just today, october 8th 2023, hussie has officially given complete free license to the newly formed "homestuck independent creative union" (HICU) to create content and monetize it with the homestuck brand however they see fit, with zero creative or financial control from any corporations or even hussie themself, though hussie has said they're available for consultation whenever the HICU wants their input. the HICU seems to be made up of people the community largely has respect for, and the person heading all of this up is James Roach, who is one of the most widely respected individual who has been inolved in homestuck "post canon" (ie. after homestuck itself ended). nobody was expecting any of this, it's completely bonkers. hopes are looking pretty high for homestuck compared to where they were merely a day ago.

Throwback to the day I personally resurrected Homestuck.

Has anything come of this since, actually? I haven’t heard anything about this new comic – although I do scroll in the opposite direction any time I see a reference to Homestuck, so I guess it makes sense that I wouldn’t.

@corporalotherbear asked: What’s your favorite Pokémon?

Contrarian, that I am, I’ll instinctively gravitate to Missingno., if only for the nostalgia factor. Gen 1 glitches were my first real experience with pulling back the curtain of a game’s code, and taking a look at what lies beneath.

My favourite official Pokémon are Porygon-Z, Shedinja, Reuniclus and Metagross!

@heliotropopause asked: Breath/Light is an interesting one, because the ‘Mixolydian’ implies a musical theme, and I thought Time was the musical Aspect. Maybe it’s not that simple. They've all got a musical reference in the name- they are called fraymotifs, after all. Anonymous asked: The Fraymotifs are all musical references actually. E.g. Breath/Time is "Ivories in the Fire", the ivories in question being John's piano keys. A fraymotif is a battle theme. Anonymous asked: ivories in the fire is a musical theme, especifically a Rap term used by Snoop Dogg. So yeah it's connected to Dave Anonymous asked: re: fraymotifs: you pointed out "mixolydian", but that's not the only musical term there. feather "cadence", pneumatic "progression", even fray "motif" itself! hell, the building where you buy these things has an emblem with a crossed sword and music note! so i think this might be less a situation of "need to rethink time aspects association with music" and more "fraymotifs have a musical association also" Anonymous asked: if you look a bit closer at those names, (including the one "fraymotif",) you may realize that "mixolydian" isn't the only musical term referenced…. @galaxa-13 asked: You say the breath/Light Fraymotif implies a musical theme, but they all do! Fraymotif is a portmanteau of "fray" (to fight) and "leitmotif" (repeated musical phrase). Each Fraymotif name implies a musical theme.

Dang it. Yup, they’re all pretty obvious references to music.

I wrote that post the day I was trying to wrangle our family PC into running the Homestuck Collection without lag, so I was a little distracted at the time. Please direct all complaints to Windows XP.

#asks #full liveblog #act 5.2 #this is just the first part of the comp. I have enough asks for another one. maybe another two. we'll see

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prototypelq · 6 months

Text

So, me and the ever-wonderful Raven @whitebeakedraven have been discussing the twins (S)DT forms, and quite a number of details were noticed by us over the course of that conversation, plus some worrying headcanons were born! I felt the need to compose them into a tumblr post for mutuals, especially since I have not seen them be discussed by the fandom at large.

To start off on a high and very shaky note: I believe Vergil’s horns were broken!

The coolness factor and the amount of ‘exhaust pipe horns’ jokes kind of desensitized me a little, but if you look closer at the horns’ model - it is clear they suffered a lot of damage. The ‘exhaust pipe’ itself is my primary evidence for this - the horn structure around the power-flames looks sponge-y. That kind of bone structure is found in the innermost layers of the bone, right around the marrow. It is not built for sustaining pressure, but instead to support the living tissue of the bone and to allow for its growth.

It is not built to sustain pressure or forces of any kind, it should not be the outer layer of any bone. Yet, Vergil’s Final Form shows it clearly on display!

If we go back to the previous DT models we have of Vergil’s trigger - namely his triggers in DMC3 and DMC4 - we can see that his horns…have not changed since then. At all.

(the growth sizes are very approximate, but I think the pictures convey my meaning here)

Now look at how much Dante’s horn crown has changed from his original DT - that is a very, very sizeable growth spurt right there, his horn crown pretty much grew three or so times the size it was, plus he got the neck-/gill-guard second set of horns, same as Vergil. What I’m saying here is - it is mighty suspicious that Vergil’s horns remain unchanged since his teenagehood. Also, as Raven lovely pointed out - the damage done to horns is too symmetrical to be a natural occurrence or a simple mistake.

And where did Vergil spend his time in between his last appearance in DMC3 and his return in DMC5? In the hands of a professional demon torturer. I’ll just quote Raven here:

Horns seem to me like a point of pride for demons, which could be the reason Mundus targeted them and Vergil internalized that targeting. So his horns didn't develop much further except cracking open to show his power and having extra defenses in case they are targeted again.

Some other supporting evidence for this theory:

- uneven ‘cut’: the horns look curved a little, the inner layer having died off and unable to grow out, while the outer layer tried it’s best to grow out again after the damage was done, but with limited success

- the DMC5 DT Vergil concept art horns have a small inner part growing out - which I would interpret as the damage fully healing and the horns beginning to grow properly again. you can also see that the ‘powerline’ in the horns is straight, and not uneven as in SDT render in-game, plus they look more sleek and elegant.

- from the front the horn crown looks very, very rough. If we compare to Dante, his horns are long, smooth, and the ‘powerlines’* of the horns can only be found on the inner side and are glowing.

[* btw Dante having long thin appendages around his head that exert a lot of heat makes me think of long-eared animal adaptation to hot climates, which are used to let the animal cool down faster. in demonic biology terms, I imagine having a ‘powerline’ being rerouted around the head like that to the horn crown instead might allow twins to remain in SDT without constantly frying and regenerating their brains back]

Vergil’s horns from the front look to be cracking from the power that is fed into them, like they should be able to contain it but cannot and it is ‘leaking’ out of the front cracks and result in the ‘side flamethrowers’ he got instead.

I admit, this theory is very SSDP (Syndrome of Search for Deeper Meaning - СПГС, an extremely handy term in ru), and can be explained in two simple words - Stylistic Choice, plus, as Raven pointed out - any damage should have been healed during Vergil’s resurrection... However, I had fun figuring this out, and the details align way too neatly into a single picture for it to be simply coincidence in my opinion. An alternate explanation for this - or a counterargument, provided by the lovely Raven - would be that Vergil chose this current form, one way or the other. He did not evolve a huge horn crown ‘cause that’s an easy grab appendage, and instead he influenced them to be more practical with smaller horns, getting himself some sick flamethrowers as a bonus. The ‘exhaust pipe’ design being either an intentional or a more subconscious display of Vergil remembering the torture and reacting accordingly to protect his horns from further damage, by making them literally untouchable.

Another interesting part of Vergil’s SDT design is his tail and wings. I admit, I was quite salty that Vergil got four wings and a tail, while Dante only has wings, but we might have found an explanation for that.

First, let’s take a look at Vergil’s SDT back…. It’s a goddamn mess!

He has a full-range-of-motion shoulder girdle (1.) , plus, five additional limbs sprouting from his back (tail (2.) plus four wings (3.)). The tail making it all even worse, because it is placed between the upper wingset shoulder blades!

If you know anything even remotely about birds or flying, you know that the wings need a lot of space to rotate and function properly, and having a tail right in between them is not a good idea at all. This is a mess, but let’s start simple - wings.

Interesting bit about Vergil’s wings is that, aside from one extremely stupid flying freight lizard attack (seriously, what was Vergil thinking, making a big show and parading like he did, only to have an attack itself be telegraphed miles ahead and very easy to dodge?...makes you think...), Vergil does not fly. Actually, he doesn’t use his wings at all, except as a flourish/added hit at the end of some big combos, so only when he knows he is safe and ready to deliver maximum pain. You can argue he prefers instantly teleporting around as his main movement tech, but still, it’s weird that even his jump doesn’t have at least *some* wing movement involved - he doesn’t even instinctively try to slow his fall or anything with them!

(here is a screenshot of a fall part of jump animation - wings are kept low and close to the body, just as they are when Vergil is standing normally or attacking)

Another look at his back might provide the answer to that. Here we see that the bones connecting the wingset to the chest are protruding out of the body so much, they are, anatomically speaking, tapered on, and very poorly at that. If not for demonic resilience, those wings should have been torn off from the body by their own generated take-off force.

So, the twins' wings are not built very well, mayhaps this is why Vergil is so protective of them and doesn’t use them too much, except for situations when he is sure it’s safe.

His tail in that case, is a great addition to offer protection for his wings! The tail is long enough to be an effective counter from all sides (imagine if Vergil’s parry was not with the sheathed Yamato, but with his tail… that pointy end does not look friendly at all), and its placement between the wings now makes sense, because the tail is actually a guard for his back.

During my previous photomode experiments, I found out that Urizen’s multitude of eyes track the camera movement. Even in photomode Urizen does not feel safe enough to be still, apparently. Raven interpreted that as a clear manifestation of Vergil’s paranoia and trust issues, and I completely agree... The tail then, is another feature that reflects this. Also, y’know, Vergil did spent a few decades in hell, where he had a very bad, no good, absolutely horrible time… and I’ll just quote Raven here:

And I mean, what better way to enforce the fact that escape, that freedom, is impossible towards a prisoner, than by ripping their literal wings off…

The poor connection of the wings to the main body could in that case also be a reaction to this trauma. If someone gets to them, they're easily removed without too much further damage, so that they can start regenerating immediately. But before that, any attacker will have to get by the tail that’s got a sharp enough end to provide ample amounts of protection.

Another reason why the tail fits Vergil so nicely is because of the speed and balance it provides.

DMC5 introduced us to lovely lizard demons like Riots, Chaoses and Furies, all of which are known for having a tail. Interesting bit here is that the higher back attachment makes the tail act as a great balancing tool for bipedals. All of the lizors mentioned above sure do love their speedy attacks, so it makes sense they developed the tail to counteract their erratic and swift movements. And Vergil’s SDT seems to have adopted that feature too.

As for Dante, as much as I would have loved for him to get a tail as well, Raven pointed out another detail here. If Dante had any control whatsoever over the SDT evolution... he definitely wouldn’t want any more demonic features. The four-winged and big horned flying form is probably the inherited template from Sparda that neither Vergil nor Dante would have been able to stray away from too much, but the tail is clearly a Vergil-only development. Dante might have gone ‘minimalistic’ in that sense, since he has no additional features of his own (anatomically speaking... technically speaking you might count his Luce, Ombra and Demolition ranged magic moves as special features)

Now, since we’re already on the topic of Dante, we have found another interesting tidbit - his DT face evolution.

We know that in DMC3 Vergil helps his brother unlock his demonic heritage, finally giving Dante his Trigger. The detail that made me curious here is that the DMC3 face is very similar to the face the SDT form has - specifically the lack of human features and the demonic jaws. Let’s have a look here at the evolution of Dante’s DT faces over time (in more ways than one…):

In DMC3 his DT face is pretty much the template from which the SDT form will later evolve, since it lacks any human features that are present in other forms (save for SDT). This DT form is adaptable and changes depending on the Devil Arm Dante is using, showing that he clearly doesn’t have too much control over it yet. The most noticeable example would be the horns - they change form significantly... Also the horns Dante has sprouting here from the back of his head might be the neck-guard horns and the main crown he will fully develop later on. Unlike Dante, Vergil’s form seems much more stable in the sense that his horn shape changes as well, but not nearly as much, and nothing else is affected by the Devil Arms in his appearance.

DMC1, now THIS I almost overlooked, and I sure am glad that I didn’t. The DMC1 DT forms are also affected a lot by the Devil Arms Dante is using in the moment. The weapons seem to ‘overwrite’ Dante’s innate form a lot here, and without their induced features, his face in DT is actually…blank. There is just a blank head until the Devil Arms give him some additions… I have a feeling this might be connected to Dante’s twin-related trauma in the game, they have the same face, after all…

In contrast to everything that comes before, the DMC2 form is a mix of both Dante’s strive for humanity and his ever-growing powers, because his face in DT is - for the first time in the series - completely human. He can’t however, escape the transformation entirely unchanged, and the dark scales and skin color... they make him look a lot like Nelo, or at least to me it seems that way. This is also the game where the SDT makes its first appearance as a Majin form, which is a low-health DT transformation. The Majin form has all the classic features of an SDT - four wings, developed horn crown and even arm-blades like the ones SDT Vergil has. The Majin form is also my big evidence for the ‘SDT forms have a template twins were always supposed to evolve into’ argument.

DMC4 is the ‘mature’ phase where Dante’s DT finally stabilizes and stopped evolving (before SDT was thrown on the table). None of the Devil Arms alter his appearance anymore, the horn crown is finally developed properly, and his facial features are demonic, but the face as a whole still reads as human.

Additional stuff I have noticed but have nowhere else to place:

- Vergil had undergone extensive torture in his time as Mundus’ captive. His horns were broken, wings - ripped out, and if we keep going down that route the V-cut on the SDT chest bears quite a similarity to a badly done dissection scar.

- Alternatively, the V-shape could be seen as the V signature Vergil used to mark his things. In DMC5 he is pretty much picking up the torn and scattered pieces of himself, so that characteristic shape might also be him Reclaiming his name, as one well-known song might have said

- Meanwhile, Dante’s ‘chest rupture’ shape reminds me simultaneously of the numerous stab wounds Dante has been subjected over time, but also a literal bleeding heart pattern, speaking of the heartbreak physical, and the metaphorical one he suffered and never recovered from. This is made worse, if you remember that Dante got his SDT form before the final battle with Urizen in mission 17, so it is also a manifestation of his inner conflict and hurt at that moment in time and story, as he had yet to kill his brother. Again.

- to end on, at least somewhat positive note - the twins’ scales are iridescent!!! Some scales make this more apparent than others, but ultimately all scales have this quality and it brings me much joy)))

Aaaaand the final piece of wisdom I have for today. It is no secret that the DT wings mimic the series-standard leather coats the twins love so much, but I have not seen much of a reverse read on this connection - the twins loving their long leather coats because they mimic the feel of DT wings. The wings have an intricate swirl pattern on the inside and there is a lot of power going through them, so they should be warm, and the pose the twins normally have their wings around - the coats might give them a similar feeling. They are, obviously, leather, they should be good at reflecting warmth, the coats cover the same ‘forward hug’ area like the wings, they are heavy, and they whirl around the back and legs like the wind one would be feeling if they were to move.

This, just might damn be, why V(ergil) stuck to wearing that horrific goth clothing for the entirety of the almost two months he was alive (I say this because I don’t like that outfit, also because V is Vergil and I hope we can all agree Vergil himself would never wear that).He was alone on the street, had no power, no weapons, no money or anything on him and was painfully human, only to have a leather coat thrown his way in a merciful turn of fate. Vergil did not care how passable he looked at that moment, he stated that multiple times himself.What he cared about was the feeling of comfort the leather coat gave him. It reminded him of his better days, of days where his own wings were just one trigger away. And that might be why he didn’t change his clothing from literally the first stuff that was handed to him.

Sooo, that would be it for the post. This one was in the works for a while xD. Again, immense thanks to Raven for rambling about this with me, it was super fun and her contributions to that conversation have been ginormous. Thank you dear reader, for finishing this monster of a post too! Text your family you love them to avoid ending up as these losers here please.

p.s. the DT different forms over the series photos were taken from the dmc wiki, everything else was captured by me in-game

#prepare your tinfoil hats it's gonna be a longread #thank you tumblr for not crashing while posting this too #hellsite (affectionate)#dante sparda #vergil sparda #dmc #the sparda loser twins #devil may cry

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prince-liest · 2 months

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Hey, since you've written a lot of Alastor-centric fics that explore him having complex relationships with other characters, I was wondering if you had any wip about Alastor & Husk, or just any hcs about them in general!! I find it interesting that Husk is the only one who knows about his deal...

And yes the fact that Alastor owns Husk' soul is pretty bad for any development in their relationship lol. But it also adds flavor to their dynamic! (and Alastor hasn't been THAT abusive with him so far in regards to their contract? He made a death threat but he didn't need to own Husk' soul to do that. He forces him to work at the hotel but Husk used to use the souls he owned like pawns he could gamble away, treating people like property he could afford to lose to other "masters", so he's not worse that Husk in comparison... That's an insanely low bar, I know)

Current WIPS, no, headcanons, yes!

I think their relationship is very interesting, and a lot of that specifically comes from Husk's side of things. I'm honestly fully putting aside the issue of how abusive Alastor has or hasn't been to him, because in the end, slavery is slavery (assuming that's the power that Husk's contract grants) even if one overlord isn't as sadistic as another (Husk himself included), BUT:

I think it's very interesting that Husk and Alastor clearly have a long-term working relationship that includes Husk giving at least half of a shit about Alastor. Their interaction during Mimzy's episode is not very long but I think it is very telling. Obviously it's telling about Alastor's intolerance toward his power and position being questioned, and it's also telling about how much Alastor has been undermined that even someone who knows him like Husk is expressing doubt... but I think its also particularly telling that it includes Husk reaching out to watch Alastor's back (before Alastor bites his head off for it).

I think it's hard to say exactly why he does it - how much of it is because he knows that Alastor getting in trouble also means Husk getting in trouble, how much of it is because Husk is growing to care about the hotel, especially after his episode with Angel, and how much of it is because he's grown attached to Alastor in a weird way over the years, but I personally like to think it's a combination of all three.

Husk was a powerful overlord and I think that's very in line with his portrayal of being someone who distances himself from people in callous ways... but ends up caring more than he intends to when he does get close to them. We most clearly see this with Angel Dust, but I think it's also reflected in his callousness as an overlord and how it turned into regret once he lost his soul to Alastor, and also how he occasionally reacts to the people he's known a long time: namely, Alastor (during the Mimzy episode) and Niffty (when she gets drunk at the club)!

I think Alastor and Husk's lives have been intertwined for a long time, and I also think that it's hard not to grow to care about another person on some level as a result, even if you also heavily resent them, especially if their well-being is your well-being. I don't think Husk likes Alastor very much (it would be hard to in his position) but I don't think he sees Alastor's ownership of his soul as having taken advantage of him so much as a natural consequences of the games he himself played with people's souls, which lets him sit in a position that to him feels less like "victim" and more like "beleaguered subordinate."

And Alastor also does put some effort into keeping things with Husk copacetic. He loses his cool and snaps at him during their confrontation, but outside of that context the attitude he maintains seems to include both being a smarmy jackass and giving Husk actual reasons to work for him other than "or else." It's technically not canon to the show, but I personally consider his bribing of Husk with drink to work for the hotel in the pilot to be canon to my interpretations, at least. It makes sense to me that Alastor wants to maintain a decent working relationship, as opposed to one where Husk would be more inclined to actively sell him out for a dime rather than marinate in his own resignation.

Anyway. Long post! But I think they're interesting, haha.

#ask #personal #Anonymous #hazbin hotel #husk #alastor #long post #meta #my writing

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kiwanopie · 2 years

Text

ran across this picture of pro!hero shinsou and immediately died of brainrot. part time college professor shinsou x bimbo!reader [if you think this is ooc then maybe you should just kiss me on the lips then.] suggestive

Seeing your face in full for the first time is already enough to twist his stomachs in knots. Fold it over itself a few times until it’s tightened in a neat little hitch, and his lungs the pretty bow on top the moment her mouth opens. Plump lips that kiss each word on its way out and nearly leaves him envious. His brain barely registers what’s actually been said until he’s taking a moment to revise.

And then he short circuits.

“Are you interested in having sex?”

Shinsou stands there a little stiller than he should as his student stares up at him curiously, doe eyes blinking expectantly at the older man as the cool training ground air dries out his slightly gaped mouth and his brain buffers at the reality of things.

You breathe in a little briskly before nodding again, looking away briefly like you’re chiding herself. “Oh, sorry,” You redouble. “Are you interested in having sex with me?”

This is his reality right now.

Shinsou Hitoshi is not a religious man, a spiritual man, sure; but he has never been quite so comfortable with the idea of god’s and otherworldly forces - so powerful that they foresee the outcome of his and the lives around him. He doesn’t like the thought of greater powers or deities of any kind. Invisible men that pull his strings or any leveraged omnipotence that could disrupt the equilibrium of reality or nature. He believes in Then and Now, and any paths he may take in the latter are his choice and his doing. His fate will always be in his hands.

….Although - He stares at that familiar soft tawny now softened by the evening sun. Exposed shoulders veiled by dark thickets of bouncing curls and about eight months of over the shoulder glances and lingering stares that are apparently being cashed in right before him. Even a man so dead set on his ideals might have to reconsider at an opportunity like this. Maybe there is a big man in the sky. Maybe he’s been watching him piss away his love life for the past twenty seven years and decided that this was the time to knock him on his ass about it. Maybe this is a gift?

Maybe this is a test.

There’s a long second he spends blowing out empty air before his voice can seep into the atmosphere.

“Wha-…You’re… seriously asking me this?” And he can’t tell if he means that out of disbelief or genuine curiosity.

You must take it as the latter, because you nod so genuinely - so cutely. That his teeth instinctively start to grind against each other. “I hope this isn’t an inconvenient way to ask. You’re usually really busy outside of our training bumps and I doubt your assistant would take me seriously if I made an appointment for this reason.”

“It’s also…” And he almost feels like the weird one for saying this. “…Wildly inappropriate.”

“Oh...” You pause, and for a moment he expects you to finally tune into how bizarre this situation really is.

Until you’re hitting him with another curveball. “Rejecting me would also be fine then, Sensei.”

That makes him openly grimace - throw his head back a bit and remind himself that: No, that isn’t the worst thing you’ve said since this conversation started. And yes, rejecting you was always a valid option. You say it so cooly that he’s almost afraid that you’re indifferent about the whole thing to begin with. Which begs the question:

“What’s this about?” Shinsou furrows.

You finally move your gaze from him to an empty corner of the wall as you fidgets on your feet a few tense seconds, wrapping your arms around yourself with a short hesitant shrug of your shoulders and pout in a way that can only be described as troublesome.

“I’ve… I can’t put all of my focus on climbing up the ranks anymore. Or on studying… or on anything else for that matter,” You start shyly. “All I’ve been thinking about for the past few months is you.”

The more you continue the closer he gets to self-destructing. “To be fair, I thought I admired your skill and resolve. - Which I do. It’s just… I like the sound of your voice and how it sounds when you talk to me. And the way you handle us trainees, and me whenever I mess up. I like the way your fingers feel on my leotard.”

The fact that he can see you riling yourself up at the thought of him, redistribute the weight on your feet like you’re looking for friction - His mouth doesn’t know whether to dry or salivate and for his sake he hopes his suit is thick enough to hide the bulge that’s steadily forming.

“All I can think of is having sex with you, Sensei.” You say truthfully. “And at least if you reject me then the humiliation of that’ll-“

“I’m not gonna reject you.” And the way your eyes light up makes his lungs feel near to bursting. Seriously, have you seen you? What chump would be so out of his mind to pass up something like this?

But he steps in a little closer, enough to get a whiff of oat and honey, and finely scrubbed in sugars. It’s an ego trip to see you start to fluster a bit. Although he’s sure he’s not faring any better.

You’re bathing in his attention. “But _____ - Sweetheart, it sounds like you just have feelings for me.” Shinsou exhales a little breathlessly. “A regular confession would’ve done just fine, and we could’ve gotten to the good parts later.”

“I feel the same way about you, y’know?” He pinches one of your cheeks. “‘Have for a while, actually,”

You simper. “You have?”

He nods with a warm hum. You’d purr in his hands if you could. “And now that everything’s out in the open, don’t you feel a little better? ‘Can finally think straight, huh?”

“No, now I wanna do it even more.”

Ah,

He pats your cheeks a few times as he raises his back to look over at the rest of your fellow classmates, flashes an innocent little lazy smile toward the field as he looks out for any wandering eyes and prays that that overhead bell is close to ringing.

Shinsou finds a secure grip on your jaw when the coast is clear. “Okay,” His smile sharpens. “That’s okay. - Hey, how about you try and make it through this bump and if you can do that; I’ll sneak into the ladies locker room and fuck you stupid. How’s that sound?”

The way your lips form into a pout by the force of his grip nearly has him pulling you forward to press his against them. “S’good, shensei. Thawnk yew!”

#there are some physical descriptors in this unfortunately #i was very much in my own world while writing this #shinsou hitoshi x y/n #shinsou hitoshi x reader #hitoshi shinso x y/n #hitoshi san #mha shinsou #my hero academia shinsou #bnha shinsou #shinsou x reader #shinsou smut #bnha x reader #bnha #bnha shinso hitoshi #mha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #mha x reader

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leggerefiore · 1 year

Text

Ghost

cw: long, not overly romantic, Volo being himself, platonic cynthia, unrequited love at first

pairings: Volo/Reader,

summary: Volo disappears after you defeat him. Your unrequited love for him leads to you leaving Hisui for modern times where you make a friend who reminds you of him.

----

Volo was a beautiful man.

It was hard not to notice such an obvious trait when he first introduced himself to you not long after your forced landing in the lands of the past. His golden strands caught the light beautifully, while those stormy eyes held such a variety of emotions. To say you got a small crush on him from his looks was embarrassing, but it was the truth. When he acted kindly towards you, no matter how much of a farce you came to know it as, you fell deeper and deeper in love with him. It was why his sudden shift into the man who stood opposed to you at the Temple of Sinnoh caused heavy tears to escape your eyes.

His disappearance completely wrecked you, naturally.

Your confession of love to him during your battle staggered him a bit, but he shook his head and chose to declare your affections untrue unless you gave him the plates. Even your pleas for him to stay after your battle only led to a terrifying glare from Volo. Your hand reaching for his own desperately went entirely ignored. He left you desolate on the freezing top of Mt. Coronet.

Everything that happened to you in Hisui, led to a change to the modern day when the Alpha pokemon returned you to your own era. Your final attempt to find Volo saw you before Cogita, convinced she knew exactly where he was. No matter your pleas, she continued her carefully feigned ignorance. It hurt enough to simply see your returning home. Bidding all your newly made friends farewell stung. Their deaths would come without your knowing and leave you unable to speak to any of them in your modern days. That, naturally, included the man who left you.

Readjustment was not as difficult as you thought it might have been. Returning to previously understood rules versus learning something new was always going to see a victory from the former. A trip to Sinnoh was in order after you felt settled back in. Your friends may have questioned your sudden trip, but you needed to see the region you left through a modern lens. At least, if not to pay respects to your departed friends, too.

It was during these travels throughout the cool region that you found an eerily familiar face. Her long, blonde hair that fell over her left eye and a pendant heavy on her chest made you swallow. Volo had certainly lived on to have a child, it seemed. You nearly jumped when the woman approached you with a curious expression. “Are you curious about the ruins, too?” she asked with a friendly smile, “You are eyeing them up pretty intensely.” You realised she had noticed you staring at her.

“… I had a, er, friend who used to love these sorts of things,” you lied, “He was a bit mad about them.” Volo's descendant having an interest in the very thing that sent him into his madness was a bit unsurprising, honestly. She gazed back to the walls covered in the language of the Unown.

“... Were you curious about my pendant?” she continued. Your cheeks flushed at the realisation that she had caught you staring at her. While you were, it was not like you were ignorant to its meaning. It was more than obvious when both Cogita and Volo had worn their own in the past.

“It means you are descended from the ancient people of this region, doesn't it?” you replied with a question. Her eye went wide as her attention returned to you. The smile on her lips was strikingly familiar. Perhaps, it was the nature of the Celestica people to carry the history of Sinnoh.

“Correct, actually,” she stood before you, her tall height almost as staggering as her ancestor's own, “I'm Cynthia, an archaeologist and a trainer.” You nodded along at her words. “Would you like to join me for a cup of coffee? I feel like we have a lot we could talk about.”

You were not going to turn her down.

Cynthia was a fast friend, admittedly. She was kind and genuinely caring, while a powerful and strong person. In many ways, she was the best of what Volo had to offer. Even challenging you to a battle and being amused when you beat her. The team she chose… All except one pokemon was the same as a Volo's choices. It was obvious how much she enjoyed your company, too. Endless conversations about history and random little things.

The blonde trainer worried about her image a bit. Everyone was always so nervous to approach her and made her feel the need to act a certain way, so your presence was entirely welcome in her life. You would admit it was nice to be around her, as well, but the lingering feeling that you were using her to replace Volo always remained heavy. Their similarities were completely undeniable. She was not him, however. Your heart clenched at the thought of his eyes and the madness mixed with pain they held. What led him to such a horrible fate?

Your attention returned to Cynthia's words as she finally ended a phone call she took. She had asked you out to a café again. It was not long after your meeting that you moved to Sinnoh, so these meetings were quite commonplace in your day to day. She took a sip of her coffee and looked over some notes.

“So, there are these ruins I plan to investigate these ruins between Sinnoh and Johto,” she explained and moved the paper before you to show an old map, “The old verses my grandmother had mentioned this area, Sinjoh, as being similar to 'Hisui,' the old name for the Sinnoh region.” You stared at the map curiously. The old verses, as you recalled, were handed off to Cogita by you after collecting them all. Something about them felt as if they belonged to her.

“Do you think your ancestors may have settled there as well?” you asked her, wondering about whether Volo knew of this place. She nodded.

“Both the people of Sinnoh and the people of Johto are said to have met and blended their cultures here,” Cynthia explained, “I find myself fascinated with the information it may hold and how it could reveal more about the nature of certain features in Sinnoh.” It had caught your attention, too, admittedly. From how the Kantonian Galaxy Team had spoken, it almost felt as if the Hisuian people had little connection with them before their settlement. Cynthia gave a chuckle at your expression. “Would you like to join me then?” she offered, “You almost look more interested in this than I do.”

You gazed at her with big eyes.

“I'd love to,” you agreed, “I actually find the Johto region's history just as interesting.”

Sinjoh was isolated.

The ruins themselves laid at the top of a snow covered mountain top, with little reprieve from the chilly weather. The moment your eyes landed on the structure, you felt your hand reach toward the illusion of Arceus that you had captured after accepting the deity's challenge. Something told you bringing it was needed. Cynthia found herself immersed in the information she had gathered, while you felt an ominous call.

Thinking back on it, Cogita had said she had been waiting an eternity for you. What was she? You wondered if these were things you should have discussed with your friend instead of hiding it in fear. The old wooden pokeball almost sweetly whispered your name to release the pokemon. Your sudden change had not gone unnoticed by the champion, either. She gazed at you as you sat on the cushion nervously.

“... You seem like you are in a situation,” she said while placing a cup of tea in front of you, “What's wrong?” Your nervous demeanour strengthened. Would she hate you? You knew she would not, but the thought of telling her it made your mouth dry. It was needed, however. It was currently just you and her in the cabin. Her hand even softly rubbed at your back.

“I – I was brought to Hisui by…” you felt it impossible to say the word Arceus, “… By a strange portal. I knew your ancestors. I had to stop one of them!” It all came pouring out into the poor woman's chest as you recalled everything you had been through in Sinnoh of the past. Even your feelings towards Volo were spoken of in your desperation to finally share the event with someone who could understand. Cynthia was stunned at first, but slowly shifted into quiet understanding. By the time your tale came to an end, you held the wooden pokeball out nervously to her with tears stinging your eyes.

Her expression was gentle and sympathetic. There was no judgement anywhere to be found, just simple curiosity and concern. “… I see,” she finally said, “I feel the need to apologise for his actions.” Cynthia took the pokeball away from you to place it on the table. Her hands held yours tightly, warming the now chilled skin. “Thank you for telling me all of this,” the blonde's soft smile calmed you down, “I am completely apologetic you experienced such things at the hand of my ancestor.” You shook your head.

“It's not your fault, Cyn,” the nickname just came out naturally, “… I miss him, actually…” She shook her head. The hug she pulled you into came completely unexpected. It was warm and the scent of old parchment stung your nose. “I think I need to bring my piece of Arceus into the ruins,” you told her. She nodded.

“According to an ancient document, time, space, and antimatter, or what combined we call the world, shall be born when Arceus stands on the Mystri Stage,” Cynthia spoke with a strange eagerness, “That is, if Arceus stands alone in the stage inside the ruins, perhaps another legendary pokemon of Sinnoh could be created.” You swallowed.

“… Well, let's go, then,” you were confident as long as she was at your side, “I'm sure we both want to see what this brings.” Both of you readied yourselves as you took the pokeball alone into the ruins. A mysterious, yet powerful air ruminate in the ancient room.

The triangular stage stood in the middle of the room, with runes engraved into its dark stone flooring. Snow dusted the room, having blown in from outside. Cynthia watched in amazement as the runes glowed with ominous colour. A deep blue, a vibrant magenta and a frightening crimson all apparent. Statues of ancient guardian pokemon stood in line as you approached the stage. You felt energy coming from the pokeball as you called out the power of the deity inside. Even just a small portion of the Alpha pokemon could be terrifying with its staggering height.

Cynthia gazed at the stage curiously. “All my study of ruins and Pokémon mythology in Sinnoh may have been to bring you up on this stage here today…” She murmured to herself. Easily, she explained what each pattern represented before standing behind you. “Which will you choose?” The champion asked. Your eyes could certainly stare a hole in the stone where Giratina's symbol lied. You took a step towards it. Cynthia cocked a brow curiously at your choice. As you stood in the middle of Giratina's pattern, a light broke out and darkness overcame your mind. Dancing visage played past your eyes of many things.

At the end of it all, the ruins came back into view and a bright light hovered above your head. It floated down to lay in your hands as a singular egg. No difference laid between it and any other pokemon egg you had observed, yet what laid inside was like no other thing that would hatch. “An egg?” Cynthia was at a loss for words, “I see… An Egg is the cradle of every being. The planet itself is an Egg in a sense…” Before her mumbling could continue, footsteps echoed into the ruins.

“… It has been a century since I last had anything catch my attention,” your blood ran cold at the voice. It was impossible. The egg still flush to your chest, you turned around with lightning speed. Through the wash wintery winds heavy with snow stood a single man with a large pack on his back and a heavy winter coat. A hat laid on his head. Cynthia immediately took to stand on guard against the strange man. “Finally, I have my curiosity quelled,” those stormy eyes and a familiar pendant left you completely at a loss, “To think, it would be you again.”

“Stop right there,” Cynthia ordered him, “Who are you?” She demanded of him. Her expression may have been stiff, but you could read her confusion towards the man with ease. Having your long dead ancestor stand before you would make anyone tense, after all. Volo paid little attention to her, instead having his gaze remain on you.

“… That is not the real being a seek standing behind you yet, however,” Volo stopped just before you and Cynthia. You nearly ran towards the man. Tears poured from your eyes, unrequited feelings of love and an odd feeling of camaraderie bubbled in your chest. “You still haven't changed I see,” he said with little emotion, “Will you confess your undying love to me once more as I attempt to kill you again?”

“Who are you?” Cynthia demanded, clearly unhappy with everything he was causing, “You are no one in my family that I am aware of.”

“I am Volo,” he answered her, if only to quiet her, “I am your ancestor. May I speak with my old friend?” Cynthia stood back at his words. You gave up on pushing back your feelings and rushed towards him. The minute your hands made contact with his body, you felt more feelings pour out. He was real; Volo truly stood before you alive. The grin on his lips should have terrified you, but you grasped on to him desperately. Unexpectedly, he allowed an arm to embrace you, too.

“How is that possible?” Cynthia demanded, before rushing to pull you away, “Records show your death in the early 1900s.” She held you behind her, clearly not trusting anything lying before her.

“Mistress Cogita still lives if you can believe that as well,” his words were directed at you, “… Her reasons are different from mine, naturally.” Cynthia called out her Garchomp as Volo dared to take another step towards you both. He easily responded by pulling out his pokemon. Togekiss fluttered her wings high above him. “… She told me how desperately you sought me out,” he continued, “I was foolish then. I realise that now. I rejected you in my jealous that Arceus had chosen you over me.”

Your heart clenched as your thoughts were confirmed. Before everything had gone down at the Temple of Sinnoh, you felt at least some minor sense of friendship from him. At least, an understanding of not belonging. He and Cynthia fell into a battle, but Volo quickly emerged victorious. Age and who knows what else would win in the end. “Even when I found another, I still failed to find what I was searching for,” he remained still despite having won against her, “… I cannot be deigned worthy by Arceus, no matter how I try. I am cursed to walk this earth for an eternity to repent for my actions.”

You gasped while Cynthia finally seemed to accept that her ancestor stood before you both. “Why are you here?” she asked. Volo shrugged.

“I heard that the champion of Sinnoh and a friend of hers were going to investigate ruins related to Arceus,” Volo replied, “When I saw who that friend was, I figured something would happen.” Cynthia nodded. You wondered many things as you gazed at the man. Cursed to walk the earth for an eternity… How lonely must he have been? He was already a loner in Hisui, you could not imagine how he handled the changing ages and his time and people being truly forgotten.

“Volo,” you finally spoke, “I…” It was honestly difficult to speak with him. Clinging to him, pretending he was the same man who left you on Mt. Coronet alone, that was wrong. “Cynthia, can I be alone with him?” you asked her desperately. She gazed at you carefully before turning to the other blond. Her eyes closed for a moment.

“Yell if you need help,” she said simply, “I still do not trust him.” The champion walked out of the ruins, leaving you alone with the impossible man. You took a step towards him again, still in partial denial he was truly there before you.

“I… I still love you,” what had been a century for him had only been a year for you. You could not even meet his gaze during your confession. Volo made his way towards you, grabbing your chin, forcing your gaze to meet his. Those eyes which many emotions still had yet to change. Gloves covered his hands and his attire may have been changed, but Volo still remained. The kiss that followed knocked the air out from your lungs. It was long and staggering; it was something that had clearly echoed in his mind many times.

When he pulled away, your heart raced more. “I will not pretend to be a better man,” he said simply, “I still envy and despise how Arceus chose you, but I also have come to realise there's more to my feelings than simply that.” His hand moved to cup your cheek, his eyes stared down at you. “I love you,” he said easier than you expected, “I have made a terrible mistake once, please allow me to amend that now.” You nodded and buried your face into his chest. His slow heartbeat calmed your racing one.

Finally, you and Volo had come together, and neither of you planned to let the other slip away.

#volo x reader #volo/reader #pokemon x reader #pokemon volo x reader

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pinkacademic · 5 months

Text

Studying Language

Sorry I've been rather inactive, I'm slowly trying to get back into the swing of things!

This is something I’m actually qualified to talk about! I speak three languages fluently, albeit in need of a little practise, and I’m learning one more currently, with one on pause due to time constraints. Nevertheless, I feel pretty confident in my information lol. I’m also a qualified TEFL teacher and have worked abroad teaching English!

Full immersion is the best option. The best thing you can do is spend your time in a country that speaks your target language and force yourself to learn, once you have the “Hello,” “Goodbye,” “Where is the bathroom?” all mastered. In Ireland, there are places called Gaeltachtanna where you go for different lengths of time depending on the course and live in a town speaking exclusively Irish, usually staying with an Irish-speaking family, and going to classes for the language and for games and dances. Of course, that’s not an accesible option for everyone, so you could try going to places like your nearest Asian market, Eastern European market etc, and any areas in your city with a lot of immigrants that might speak your target language. If you have friends who speak that language, natively or just to a better level than you, ask to meet them for coffee and chat as much as you can in your language.

Immersion Part Two: Culture. The people who speak your target language natively do so not just becaus that’s the place in which they exist, but because that’s the place that they live- they get their groceries there, they go to school there, and their language developed because of the day-to-day, as well as unique aspects of their culture such as dances, music, and especially food. Learn about the culture of the country or countries that speak your target language. Eg, fold a paper crane or eat sushi if your language of choice is Japanese, watch an telenovela or go to a salsa class if your goal is to learn Spanish.

Watch TV shows in your Target Language. If you can’t access the locations, and even if you can, watching TV or movies is great because it’ll help you understand the cadences of natural speech that you can’t get from a textbook or formal class situation. Start with movies you might be familiar with like Disney movies (I will die on the hill of “Mother knows Best” from Tangled is better in Spanish). You can also combine your subtitles and audio, using subtitles in your own language at first, and challenge yourself to changing the subtitle.

Similar to the above points, use YouTube or Twitch to your advantage too. That’s probably a lot easier if your target language is English, but there are creators that speak in their non-English native language too. My friend watches a Mexican Minecraft YouTuber called Quackity who has a Minecraft server modded to feature a live translator between Spanish and English, which is very cool.

Read books in your Target Language. We don’t love The Chronicles of the Boy Wizard in this house, but the books are available in 85 languages. The Hobbit also has a tonne including Cornish, Thai, and Ukranian, and Twilight has about 37 translations, just to list a few well-known examples. Learn especially about books written originally in your target language.

Consume Media Originally from the Country or Countries that Speak that Language. Read the Witcher, watch Física o Química, join the dubbed vs subbed anime bloodbath. It can be so beneficial to your understanding of a language to see how those who speak it write it themselves, not just for localisation purposes. It can especially be useful for slang and dialects.

Duolingo and other apps. I’m swiftly approaching my 365 day duolingo streak,* and I fully intend to celebrate with pierogis and a green cake. But there are other options out there, and all of them are great for beginners. I can only speak about Duolingo as its the one I use, but I’m having a lot of fun with the layout of it. However, I do need real practice if I’m going to become actually fluent.

That’s it! I hope this has been helpful!

*I've surpassed it since writing this!! I'm at 400+!!

#pink academia #pink #academia #pink academic #pink academia masterpost project #studyblr #langblr

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spop-romanticizes-abuse · 2 months

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Something that bothers me in the worldbuilding of She-Ra is how Etheria doesn't feel like an actual planet

Every kingdom is like, miles alway from each other and the heroes can just walk to each one of them super easily. We never had an explanation on why there's some people who look animalistic while other look more human (i always assumed that the humans would be descendants from the first ones since Mara also looks very human, but since they all seemed to have left the planet i think that woudn't be possible)

And we don't really have a sense that the planet have multiple species. Like, we see that there's animalistic characters but there's never an explanation on what their species is, where they come from, etc. We never found out what is Double Trouble species, or Glimmer's, or those random goat characters that apear from time to time, it seems like they just wanted to make those characters...because!

The race thing is never explained in She-Ra, it feels a bit like the old Star Wars movies where they just made the aliens design without thinking on context, just because would make it looks cool. And it did, and we later found out where these guys come from, but we never have this with She-Ra

Also, everyone was kinda racist, they just call Rogelio "lizard guy" and the heroes seem to be disgusted at DT transformation

(And do they even have animals in Etheria? Or is kinda like pokemon where they mentioned an animal but that in the context of the show woudn't exist?)

this bothers me too. the worldbuilding is so lackluster, it hardly feels like a world at all. it feels like a 2d cutout of a planet. we never learn the difference between the cultures of each kingdom, because there seems to be no culture. and that's just realistic because culture and traditions are something that naturally comes about in a place where a bunch of people live.

i know i sound like a broken record but again, the reason atla's world seemed so real was because each nation had its respective culture and traditions, you could plainly see the difference between earth kingdom civilians and water tribe citizens, or fire nation locals and the air nomads. culture was, in fact, an important part of the narrative because it was the source of aang's biggest dilemma.

in spop, etheria is like a hologram or a metaverse kind of thing. apart from the heroes and villains, no one else matters. we never see the perspective of the civilians. and this is especially important because there's a fucking war going on. that doesn't just affect heroes and villains, it affects everyone. people were dying but that isn't really focused on because the crew was more interested in writing teenage conflicts and forced romances.

anyway, i digress. like you said, i wish we had gotten more explanation as to why some etherians were more animalistic and some weren't. they don't seem to be divided into groups and there's no explanation to why they are like that. its just for the ~ a e s t h e t i c ~. i'm not sure if the rogelio and dt thing counts as "racism" since they're different species, not different races. but it does feel a little iffy when put into perspective.

they do have animals in etheria btw, we see horses (swiftwind was literally a normal horse that was turned into a pegasus later) and i'm pretty sure there were aquatic creatures too? there was also melog though he's not a "normal" animal by any means.

#did.. did some of the etherians procreate with animals? is that why some of them have animalistic features??#on second thought i don't want to know the answer to that #spop #spop critical #spop criticism #spop salt #spop discourse #she ra #she ra spop #anti spop #bad writing

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artwithoutblood · 3 months

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now i feel like a fraud because, like neil gaiman, i too have a dream that just wants to die. this is awkward.

Nooo! I'm sorry, I am the awkward one, getting all overexcited about a theory and forgetting that it can be really rude to compare. (Even accidentally.) That was just trying to spitball what the demon rules for dealing with Silas could be!

Dream gods are just Like That anyway, they're a bunch of sad emo bastards. Too much time spent in their own other people's heads. It's the natural way of things - Dreams die.

Hive minding happens.

The characters are also quite different in personality, character arc, genre... Morpheus tried to clean up his act and in doing so brought about his own death indirectly. Silas is not contrite, went full serial killer and is completely unable to die despite actively seeking it. Plus under the horrific elements Sandman was a classic Greek tragedy with heaps of specific nods to Shakespeare and theatre, and Silas' story is more like cosmic, supernatural or psychological horror. It’s fine!

samir's domain is sand. all sand. little hideaways underneath, where he spends his days drawing and weaving. i could see him keeping silas in a coffin, buried deep, deep in the sand. should silas awaken, he will be drowned by the weight. perhaps adonis can trap his soul in a photograph and take him away. demons don't have souls.you get it. or, perhaps, his body must be forced into the erotic ritual of giving a human demonhood. take over another's aspect. let the former body rot.

👁️ 👁️ 🍿

Lore drop

That's pretty cool. The deserts bring to mind Africa, 'the cradle of humanity''. Or the Middle East, where important theories/inventions around math and astronomy emerged - showing people the workings of reality.

The drawing and weaving are the mind's images, creating narratives, constructing realities. Spinning a yarn. An unbroken thread passing through human lives, an extant tapestry recording experiences that cannot be forgotten.

The desert tunnels also recall the primordial caves. Ancient mankind. The dark. The unknown. The earliest recorded depictions of history and human lives.

Nightmares are as old as humanity and developed alongside them to deal with the horrors. Samir delves deep, down into the suppressed, the hidden back corners and labyrinths of your mind. Samir gets to the hidden reasons, the mysteries. While it's mostly around remembering and managing danger - Samir gives the tools and understanding to engage with, make sense of, and gain mastery of the world you live in.

So that's a really good idea...

By breaking Silas down to his building blocks (physically and/or metaphorically) and understanding his workings he could be stripped of his power by integrating him into, suppressing him under, or extinguishing him with another consciousness.

From a deadly figurative nightmare he could become a weaker literal nightmare. A powerless figment that is terrifying but loses its grip quickly, lurking in the subconscious like an attenuated virus, helping to deal with real fears and predators. A boogeyman suppressed under conscious awareness and weighted down by the sifting sands of Time. No longer real. Passing into myth, into collective memory, now only marked by a constellation.

Samir can also do the opposite. A horrific, primal and subliminal force can be given a different symbolic form. Processed, relived, released, ultimately taking a more acceptable expression.

*points at Silas* Get sublimated idiot.

I also like Adonis trapping him in a photograph. Silas doesn't have a soul but he is an idea, a concept that can be fictionalized into a grim old fairy tale. Like the opposite of those Victorian girls with their paper fairy hoax, people will gasp at the clever photography effects and the tide of scepticism could weaken his grip on humanity.

And perhaps he can even be trapped temporally in a photograph. Frozen forever in time.

“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” ― Susan Sontag

I'm not actually smart, I don't know who Susan Sontag is. Tumblr dash just shows me random quotes and this one was on the nose for Aeron and Adonis

it's alright! i meant it in the way where 3 years before the film was released, i wrote the plot of guardians of the galaxy 2 beat by beat for one of my ocs. and then i realized it's ok that i didn't flesh out that storyline because gotg2 was bad. i now have to be like "DAMN!! I CANT DO THIS, GAIMAN ALREADY DID"

samir keeps to himself. he's probably, actually, the most kind, gentle person in the universe thus far. he speaks like the morning dawn. he keeps the cave drawings. makes textiles, makes cloth. plays pretty strings, beautiful instruments. watches nightmares from afar. i know that we must suffer to grow. that doesn't mean i like it.

sometimes, he can make a nightmare just an hourglass. the sand falls on your face. he watches. he has acknowledged you. if he was finally able to find silas and drag him back home by the hair, he'd put his body in a coffin and bury it deep. perhaps, he'd force the essence out of silas and into a younger body. a pretty girl with the fluff of the clouds, eyes of the stars, she should be the one to represent dreams. children have dreams. she could play with toys in the dreamscape.

he is there in your first nightmare. he is the comfort of waking up. he is the comfort in knowing that you can overcome the fear of the nightmare. but he is also the repeating nightmare that haunts you, reminds you of your sins.

there are, perhaps, parallels between samir's solitude in his own caverns and kayn, crawling around in the cold of a dead culture.

because of your asks involving samir, here he is, in his glory.

#samir ask #silas ask

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ohnoitstbskyen · 1 year

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what;s your thoughts on ionia if you have any? from a design perspective? I personally feel like ionia lacks design coherency, and kind of forces a bunch of unrelated design elements into what is suppose to be a single nation.

I feel pretty mixed. The concept art and conceptual ideas behind Ionia's aesthetics are genuinely beautiful - if you check the Universe page for the art, you'll find some visual absolute bangers.

One of the major ideas of Ionia is the idea that people live in symbiotic harmony with nature by way of magic and spirit magic, and one of the very clever ways this is reflected is that Ionian buildings are not built by felling trees, but by asking trees to arrange themselves into structures that buildings can be built around, in return for the occupants nourishing and honouring the tree that shelters them, which is a super cool idea and genuinely comes across in a lot of the region's concept art:

And the artists at Riot explored some genuinely incredibly creative visual ideas for the aesthetics of the region that draw from various fantasy aesthetics without feeling like it's merely regurgitating lesser imitations of Chinese, Korean or Japanese fantasy. Like, it does at least try to imagine and synthesize something novel out of its influences, mixing stark rocky environments with impossibly vibrant nature colors to create the sense of a dreamlike, shifting landscape, something that makes sense in a region defined by a living environment animated by magic. Plants and rocks flow into one another and merge, rock formations sprout like trees, the boundaries between land and life blur.

Unfortunately, outside of the concept art, Ionia really is just treated as Magic Asia: The Region. China, Korea and Japan, with sometimes a bit of south and south-east Asia conglomerated in there, it's all just mushed together into one homogenate; and that rankles a bit in a game that devotes four entire regions to various flavors and time periods of Europe Shit.™

And that's where your complaint comes from, I think. Ionia is a big soup of pan-Asian fantasy tropes all packed into a single compressed region, where none of them really have enough room to define themselves, and it leads to a lot of incoherency. Wukong is drawn straight out of Wuxia, and he runs around alongside a Batteries Not Included minor Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle villain-looking cyber samurai in Master Yi, a samurai-ninja in Shen, a Korean kumiho in Ahri, a fantasy Yakuza in Sett and random spirit creatures like Treebeard On Weed Ivern and Disney Princess Bambi in Lillia. It's messy.

It could be genuinely brilliant, I think, if Riot committed more to inventing their own mythology and aesthetic here, rather than merely reproduce pop-culture tropes and archetypes, but we're 150 champions deep in this now and I don't think there's much chance they'll pivot at this point.

#tb answers #league of legends #ionia #riot games #concept art #runeterra

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berryhobii · 10 months

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Hi there! First of all, I wanted to say how much I like your work!! As a black woman myself, its is so nice to see other women creating work that represents us and is so well written!

I saw you are accepting requests, and I wanted to ask if you could write about how the LateForWork!Couple met. Like how everything progressed and they fell in love with each other.

Thank you in advance and keep up with the amazing work beautiful <3

Wow! Thank you so much for your kind words!🤧it makes me feel so good knowing that black women are feeling represented in works of fiction. I’ll continue to do my best to represent every black woman out there.

And thanks for the request! I think the LFW couple would meet kind of through Taehyung/Jimin at a company meal. Jungkook’s more of an introvert here with reader/OC being naturally flirty and knowing exactly what they want.

I really enjoyed writing this and I hope you like it!

Jungkook didn’t know how he kept letting Taehyung drag him to these meet ups. He didn’t know any of Taehyung’s coworkers or other friends outside of Jimin so he felt really awkward sitting at this table. He’d much rather be at home right now, maybe live streaming Little Nightmares 2 or cracking open the new Resident Evil game he had just received through pre order.

All Taehyung had to do was bribe him with promises of expensive beef and fancy desserts for him to leave the comfort of his home. Taehyung even managed to force him into a loose button up shirt just as Jungkook was about to throw on his signature hoodie. Goodness, that man was strong when he had a goal. At least Jungkook would get some free food today and maybe a sweet to take home so tonight wouldn’t be a total waste.

His face was practically glued to his phone, focus on clearing all of the jelly on this level of Candy Crush. He was down to 1 move and one more jelly square but there were no moves in that area that could help him! Urgh! And he didn’t want to uselessly use any of his power ups. Should he just lose his streak?

Just as he was about to move the candy, a hand came out of nowhere and did it for him. That move created a power up that triggered itself thus clearing the jelly and causing him to win the level. When the happy music played along with that little girl popping up to tell him he won, he couldn’t fight the smile on his face.

Then he realized that he didn’t make that move. Turning around, he was expecting to see Taehyung or Jimin but his mouth dropped at the sight of the person.

You were……what words could he use?

Beautiful? Gorgeous? Majestic? Attractive? Stunning? All of the above?

Your skin was dewy and effervescent, even the lights that lit up the restaurant paled in comparison to your glistening and dark skin. You looked like earth personified—graceful and cool and he just knew you sparkled when the sun hit you.

Your hair was in a half up half down style, claw clip holding it up, 2 locks of hair framed your face and were curled at the end. Your lashes were long and your full lips were shiny with gloss.

He couldn’t take his eyes off you, it was hard to look away when such a gem was standing before him. Could someone even be that exquisite in real life?

And when you smiled, he swore he heard angels singing in his ears.

“I hate when there’s only one move left yet nothing around it. I just know my FBI agent sees me throw a fit over it every day.”

His brain short circuited for a moment. Were you initiating conversation with him? About a game? Willingly? Oh god, is he getting pranked right now? He thought Ashton Kutcher was dead. Is he?

Stop thinking about possibly dead actors! There’s a pretty girl in front of you!

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. They must be concerned I’m having a mental breakdown because they advertised a therapist to me.” He actually shocked himself a little from how easily those words flowed out. Small talk with a stranger was not a specialty of his.

Your laugh was loud and a little goofy but so endearing, it made him chuckle as well.

“Candy Crush will do that to you. I wouldn’t be surprised if the creators opened a rehab for us.”

“It’ll just be us having group discussions on how bringing hazelnuts to the bottom has been affecting our ability to form positive relationships.”

He couldn’t believe how easy conversation was flowing between you two. For some reason, he didn’t feel pressured or nervous speaking to you. You just seemed so open and kind.

Who were you?

“Jungkook! I see you met one of my coworkers. She’s super hot, isn’t she? I told her to let me make her a model but she insists on staying in PR. Boring.” Jimin appeared out of nowhere like a jump scare, draping an arm over your shoulders. Jungkook’s face faltered a little. Jimin was the biggest flirt known to mankind. He could probably charm the pants off a dead person if he wanted to. If you knew him, and more importantly if you worked with him, you must have been on the opposite side of his flirting. Was it a possibility that you two were closer than coworkers?

But instead, you just rolled your eyes, moving his arm off of you.

“Save that talk for your next spread, Park. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that you still haven’t submitted your portfolio.”

Jimin’s smile never dropped despite your slightly cold attitude. He could tell you were just poking fun at him.

“Anyway, Jungkook, this is y/n. y/n, this is Jungkook.”

“I can introduce myself, thank you.” You said before pulling out the chair next to Jungkook and sitting down. That movement caused your perfume to flutter all around him—it was light but sweet like some kind of dessert.

Once you were settled, you turned your body to Jungkook, propping your elbow on the table to lean your cheek against it.

And the way your hooded eyes stared at him sent a harsh shiver from the top of his head all the way to his toes. He didn’t even notice Jimin’s smirk or how the man tip toed away to gossip to his favorite buddy.

“I’m y/n.”

He opened his mouth but no sound came out. He didn’t know why his throat felt dry all of a sudden.

Oh great, he could chat with you about mobile games and FBI agents but getting his name out was difficult?

Clearing his throat, he forced out his name, voice cracking a little at the end. Embarrassment rushed through his body, heat rising to his ears and he was grateful his hair was long enough to cover them.

You must think he was a dork now.

You giggled, your eyelashes fluttering and making his heart weak.

“Nice to meet you.”

He shyly nodded. “You too.”

“Sorry about Jimin. He’s like that at work too.”

Jungkook pushed his hair back with one hand, not noticing how your eyes followed the motion. “At least you only have to work with him. Imagine knowing him since childhood.”

You pressed your hand against your chest in faux distress. “How awful. I could only imagine the pain you endure daily.”

Wow. You were so easy to talk to. He had completely forgotten about his phone, tucking it into his pocket to finally have a rest.

Eventually, food and drinks began flowing. Taehyung and Jimin joined you two at the table but not even they could pop the bubble that you’ve formed.

Jungkook could barely focus on his food. You had his full attention, holding onto every word and laugh that fell from your lips. He found you to be witty but also humble, not afraid to poke a little fun at Taehyung and Jimin who just laughed right along with you.

You were mesmerizing. He almost hated blinking if it meant your beautiful face left his sight.

And when you would turn your attention back to him, not realizing that you’ve never left his, you’d send him a flirty wink and coy smile that would send his blood pressure through the roof from how his heart would stutter and race. If a doctor was listening with a stethoscope right now, they’d think the organ was giving out on him.

“So how’d you end up here?” You asked after taking a sip of your drink.

He sighed, eyes going over to the other side of the table where Taehyung was showing Jimin something on his phone but the man was so drunk that he was holding it upside down. And Jimin probably didn’t even notice, laughing as if he could understand the upside down photo. “Taehyung dragged me here. Said I need to start getting out more and I can’t waste my youth playing games all day. He keeps pushing me to date but I’m not that interested right now.”

Well, that was before. Now, however, he was starting to change that view.

You hummed, using your chopsticks to eat a piece of meat, chewing carefully and swallowing before speaking again.

“Does it make you happy?”

That was a question he didn’t hear people ask him often. Well, in a genuine way. He’d normally hear it rhetorically. He’s heard it come from his parents more times than he could count, followed by a lecture that he’d drown out.

He blinked a few times. Gaming did make him happy. He appreciated the hard work creators put into each frame, the adrenaline he got from jump scares, and the accomplishment from completing one. “Yeah….it does.”

“Then that’s what matters. Who cares if someone else feels like you’re wasting your life? It’s yours. You can’t be focused too much on what others want for you. You’ll only neglect your own self.”

Wow.

“Then again, we should thank Taehyung from forcing you out tonight.”

He tilted his head. He would absolutely never do that but he was intrigued by your suggestion. “Really? Why?”

You didn’t say anything, just gazed at him with those captivating eyes and he knew exactly what you meant.

Maybe he should thank Taehyung.

As the night came to a close, he helped escort Taehyung to his car. Jimin had left a little earlier with a person you identified as one of the newest members of management. Apparently, they were kind of resistant to Jimin’s flirting at first but had crumbled after about 4 months of Jimin trying and trying. Jungkook recalls Jimin speaking about this person, claiming he was in love with them and would respectfully shoot his shot whenever possible.

That left Jungkook with a drunk Taehyung and you were helping your coworker who lived in the same apartment building as you.

Jungkook didn’t just want to see you walk away. Who knows if he’d ever see you again? And he refused to ask Jimin or Taehyung for your number. The teasing would never end.

“Hey…..wait.” He called out to you after practically dumping Taehyung in the back seat. You had parked right in front of his car and were buckling your roommate’s seatbelt who was slumped over asleep.

You turned to him after closing the passenger door, your eyes locking in with his.

There was that nervousness again but he swallowed it down. He couldn’t chicken out now! Not when you’d been getting along so well this evening.

“Um…..look, if you don’t mind, could I have your number? Maybe we can hang out sometime.”

You eyed him up and down but not in a checking him out kind of way. It was like you were analyzing him, finding every little crack in his personality that you could.

He honestly felt a little vulnerable. Why weren’t you speaking? Hadn’t tonight gone well? Was he just trying his luck and you’re already dating someone? Oh god, were you just being nice and he took it as you flirting with him?! Assumptions really were dangerous.

He was about to apologize and roll under his car to stay there until the end of time before you finally spoke.

“I’m not a maybe type of woman, Jungkook.” You spoke bluntly.

His mouth dropped a little in shock. Not necessarily because of your blunt tone but because you were just his fucking type. You knew what you wanted and that was his cup of tea.

You didn’t wait for him to respond, rounding your car to open the driver’s side. He just watched you with doe eyes and a funny feeling swirling in his tummy.

However, before you got in, you said,

“I don’t wait around.”

And on his drive home with a snoring Taehyung in the back, he thought one thing….

When you arrived at work Monday morning, it was to a bunch of people surrounding your desk. That wasn’t really out of the ordinary since people often got their assignments of the day from you.

What was out the ordinary though?

The huge bouquet of flowers that sat just in the middle of your desk, the colors vivid and the arrangement looking larger than your desk.

Your coworkers chatted excitedly about the flowers as you approached but you ignored them. Instead, you reached for the little card on a plastic stand just nestled between the blooms.

You had to bite your lip to fight your smile but you couldn’t fight the feeling that was rising in your chest.

I don’t either.

#askberryhobii #bts #bts requests #jungkook #jungkook smut

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