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etirabys · 3 months

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meandering post about reading Orson Scott Card again

I've been offline starting at 9pm every day (except once. I was drunk at karaoke and asked for anons at 8:30pm) for six weeks, with the result that in befuddled boredom two nights ago I picked up Orson Scott Card's Songmaster from the house bookshelf.

I read Ender's Game and three sequels when I was a teen thought the books were mid. Since those are OSC's best works I assumed he had nothing more interesting to offer me and didn't try more of him for fifteen years, but Songmaster was compelling enough that I immediately afterwards picked up The Memory of Earth, the first book of a pentalogy.

TMoE is extremely my jam: after humanity blows itself up on Earth, AIs monitor thriving human civilizations in the planets that survivors managed to escape to, and suppress any tech that enables large scale violence by exerting low key mind control via satellites. But forty million years pass, many of the satellites break down, and the AI needs help from humans to restore capabilities. Because as its control wanes, people are starting to e.g. conceive of airplanes or bombs again, and override the injunctions against entering military alliances more than two edges of connection away.

The AI is worshipped as a god all over the planet, but the fourteen year old protagonist that becomes one of the AI's agents tells the AI from the beginning that he'll break with it if its morality seems wrong to him. I like the fourteen year old – unlike Ender or Songmaster's protagonist (adult minds piloting ten year old bodies), he's a normal gifted kid who's unpopular 50% due to his ego and big mouth and 50% because he's socially inept and offends people even when he's trying to be nice.

Songmaster is also partly about a permanent solution to large-scale violence, albeit through one guy who establishes a monopoly on violence and sweeps in pax galactica. Both it and TMoE are preoccupied with the eradication of suffering from evil / human violence, which is closer to my resonant frequency than narratives about defeating particular people or ideologies. At the moment I can't think of any other book with such an insistent focus on the matter than T.H. White's The Once and Future King. It's hard to make a compelling story out of, and I don't think Songmaster really succeeds, but TMoE's premise is well suited to explore that. (I'm also enjoying the matriarchal culture where everyone is expected to have multiple serial-monogamous marriages.) After reading 70% of TMoE last night I wrote:

Usually when I read fiction there's a small part of me going, how can I use this as fodder for my own growth, how can I remix or improve or react against this, how do the author and I measure against each other? (If the quality and content are at an anti-sweet spot, the small part becomes quite large and I feel all teeth towards the author.) But on occasion I read something so close that the absence of that measuring-feeling is its own sensation – ego departs, or at least is split across two bodies. There's just amity and recognition

And it's pretty interesting to feel this way about Card for, well, the reasons.

(If you're familiar with Card drama none of the following will be new to you; I'm coming to it fresh so the rest of this post is me going "uh... wow")

I vaguely knew he was a homophobic Mormon who'd gotten into fights about gay stuff, but I couldn't tell from the Ender books I read. But in Songmaster his issues spring off the page in such a weird way. Every fifth Goodreads review of this book is "Card, u gay?" because, well,

(One review, possibly from a fellow Mormon, that went "Card, it's so sinful of you to be this gay in your novel". Why did he write this book that would predictably make everyone mad...)

it's full of gay male desire. The protagonist (Ansset) is approximately a castrato and characters notice him sexually a lot. The first and only time Ansset has sex it's with a Kinsey 4-5 male character he loves, who's married to a woman but has fallen in love with Ansset. It turns out the drugs Ansset took to prolong his singing career painfully and only-kinda-figuratively explode your balls when you have your first orgasm and you'll never feel sexual desire again. (You'd think his loving teachers would have warned him of that, but, whatever, they didn't.) The other guy is literally castrated in punishment for inadvertently torturing a highly valuable castrato. It's pretty bald: GAY SEX IS ALMOST IRRESISTIBLY TEMPTING BUT YOU SHOULDN'T DO IT.

(Sidenote: both Ansset and the guy's wife are very close and have a "there's enough love to go around" attitude about the gay sex initially, before they go "wait Josif is a SERIAL MONOGAMIST... he can only love one person at a time... the moment he had the gay sex his marriage was destroyed". It's funny in a mildly stupid way that Card would set up this parable of homosexuality destroying lives and a marriage but almost everyone involved is peacefully ready to sail into an open marriage. I guess it makes sense if you want to say very clearly that THE GAY PART IS THE BAD PART)

which is fascinating to me, because... why would you tell on yourself like that

(81k also told me secondhand of an essay? interview? where Card openly says "we have to stand against legalizing gay marriage because everyone will get gay married and society will collapse", so that's informing my read of Songmaster as well)

I am pretty dang open about my personal life online but if I had a lot of feelings I thought were disgusting and immoral I would not write a novel dripping with those feelings before pointedly castrating the leads for them. Especially if it wasn't relevant to the actually highbrow themes of (checks notes) winning over your adversaries with kindness and never relinquishing your monopoly on violence. I would be so so so so embarrassed to let this go to print, it's so psychologically transparent, what was he thinking

(Well, I assume he's a very different person with different social incentives. For all I know, people in his church went "hey Orson we read your book and it's clear that you're gay but signaling strongly that you won't give into the gay feelings, we're here for you, it was really brave of you to publish this".)

#rambl #orson scott card #eti reads stuff #eti reads the homecoming saga #songmaster #content note: homophobia

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galedekarios · 5 months

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gale, elminster & mystra: new infos from the epilogue and how they tie in with what we know from the base game

so i was mulling over bits and pieces of new information we got from the epilogue, connecting it to the stuff we already knew:

1. gale's story of how mystra came into his life in the full release

gale jumping from from "i'm what one might call a wizard prodigy, who from an early age could not only control the weave, but compose it" to "such was my skill that it earned me the attention of the mother of magic herself" to then the teacher, muse and lover dynamic.

and from early access:

Player: What did Mystra’s attention feel like? Gale: Love. Player: He sounds like a very talented individual Gale: He was. Even though it was in Mystra’s affections that his true power lay. Player: Teacher’s pet, was he? Gale: He fancied himself much more than that. He fancied himself favoured above all others. Perhaps it was not quite love, but you see, the wizard was but a very young man. It was most certainly love to him. Mystra showed him the secrets behind the veils. The gossamer veils first, draped across the Weave. The delicate veils next, draped across her body. ‘Chosen One’ she whispered, as she slipped them off completely.

2. elminster's new letter from the epilogue

we knew before that elminster must have come into his life early-ish as well from this convo:

"While most know Elminster the legend, few know him as you have. He plucked you from obscurity. Offered you his guidance. His faith."

we also know that gale got to attend blackstaff academy.

now, with the new letters from the epilogue, we know that elminster met him at eight years old:

elminster coming into his when gale was just "eight summers old", gale's talents being as they were from "an early age", mystra involving herself in his life.

perhaps those two events happening are connected: the chosen of mystra. plucking him from obscurity. taking him under his wing.

perhaps on the guidance of someone? someone very clever? someone who'd later use said mentor to also deliver a message that needed to be conveyed with the utmost severity of her bidding?

someone who'd involve herself in gale's life, too? someone who needs his ambitions to be laid to rest because of a future she glimpsed at?

3. raphael's new epilogue lines if gale fails his ascension:

Raphael: I owe you a debt of gratitude. You were the spark of ambition that rekindled Gale's ambitions, after Mystra had so cleverly put them to rest.

i'm thinking thoughts not only about "cleverly", implying some sort of scheming here or manipulation.

a goddess involving her chosen, to oversee a child, so full of promise and ambition -

(a relationship forming between elminster and gale, which even by the point we see them interact in the game, speaks of the care and love they hold for each other) -

before she too involves herself: becomes his mentor, teacher, and he becomes her chosen.

making gale her chosen as a form of control, so he perhaps would not oppose her, like, for instance, even elminster is hardly capable of.

but not only did she make him her chosen, in the same breath, she made him her lover.

we know she very much is capable of using her chosen for her needs.

raphael is also very directly saying that gale's "ambition" reawakened after meeting the protag. so we are talking about mystra putting them to rest before gale met the protag, so the comment couldn't possibly be about his character arc during the game.

i already touched on this a bit earlier but:

4. we also know that mystra has foresight, being able to predict the future to some sort of degree:

History of the Chosen of Mystra: The reason why Mystra, the Goddess of Magic, invested a portion of her divine might into mortals is not known. One of the popular theories, and one that is gaining more support in light of the other goddess' during that period, is that Mystra foresaw the Time of Troubles (and her own passing at the hands of Helm) and chose to give some of her powers to mortals in order to ensure that her successor (the female mage, Midnight, as it turned out) would have a number of nearly immortal allies in the struggle against the schemes of the gods (the now dead Bane, Myrkul and Bhaal) who precipitated the Time of Troubles by stealing the Tablets of Fate.

(again, i want to reiterate that larian doesn't keep close to the dnd timeline at times, and has quite a few lore mistakes and even breaks. i know mystra was 'dead' around the time gale would have been that young. take it up with larian, please. i'm only trying to extrapolate from the things we are told in the game and the narrative in it.)

#gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #elminster aumar #mystra #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #bg3 meta #ch: gale dekarios #ch: elminster aumar #ch: mystra #vg: baldur's gate 3 #series: baldur's gate #meta: mybg3 #bg3 spoilers #bg3 patch 5 spoilers #grooming cw

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eyesxxyou · 7 months

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Backstage Show Pt.3

★🎸 {} .. hobie brown x groupie!reader

rating. m

word count. 3.5k

synopsis. hobie invites you to hang with him and his band for your birthday. They have the birthday present planned for you

hobie lets his band have their way with you

🍒・．❕warnings. the sexual tension is palpable, lots of group teasing, group is just different versions of Hobie's concept art, voyeurism (sex in front of hobie), clothed sex, ass eating (f receiving), fingering, praise, three on one, kinda foursome, titty play, making out with multiple people, hobie has a bit of a god/ superiority complex, y/n is a group who'd do anything for her idol, bit of a power dynamic fr

backstage show pt.1 | backstage show pt.2

Hobie had you on a leash. Metaphorically of course but you'd be more than happy to make it physical if he so desired. From that first night, you were hooked, waiting on every beck and call, obsessed was too light of a word to describe it. Fanatic maybe, in dire need of therapy is another option because you'd let him do whatever he wanted to you and he knew it.

Hobie took advantage of it in minor ways, asking you if you might send him pictures knowing that you would without so much as a second thought. He could ruin your life with pictures like that in his possession, your fingers in your wet pussy just like he instructed, so down bad that your own self preservation for any future endeavors was thrown out the window. But he had proved that he at least cared somewhat for you reputation and not getting you fired from your job by hiding your face from the tabloids when the two of you were caught fucking in an alley.

You were madly in love. Any fan would be if they were regularly fucking the person they idolized, the parasocial feelings you had suddenly becoming actualized and recognized by the one on the receiving end of it.

Never once did you try to place a label on things and Hobie appreciated it, you could tell. So often people will want to rush into trying him down to something he never really agreed to. You never tried to call yourself his girlfriend or claim him as your boyfriend because you were just happy to have him in any way he would allow. Maybe that’s why he was so comfortable letting you stick around, because you knew your place and didn’t infringe on those boundaries.

You were thinking about the long game, really. Not just the momentary gratification.

Hobie texted you after nearly a week of radio silence. For a moment, you feared he might be done with you even after the two of you stayed up texting into the early mornings about music and life, and all sorts of things. You ran through your messages time and time again trying to decipher if he had given any signs that he was upset with you. None were apparent. You told yourself that he was just busy to soothe your nerves and when you received his text, he didn’t address his absence. However, he did address something else of import.

Happy birthday, luv. You wanna come over?

Something you had offhandedly mentioned, something as important as you birthday, he took the time to remember. Even when you, who was too busy worrying about him to even remember, didn't.

It was hardly even a question you had to consider. You had tossed on a nice outfit as quickly as possible, did your hair and makeup. You grabbed your bag and left the house for the subway while asking him for the address. So quickly you had forgotten about him ignoring your text because you knew that in some way he was thinking about you and you were just lucky to even be acknowledged by him.

That’s how you got here, at this little building that was rundown but cozy, just how you liked it. The entrance was round the side and the door was left unlocked for you. You pulled open the rusting metal door gate before walking inside. You could hear the music from upstairs as well as the laughter emanating from the men and followed it up to their studio.

“There she is." Hobie's lead guitarist, Mace motioned to you as you entered the room. “Told ya she’s the punctual type.” He nudged Hobie who sat beside him with a joint. Their studio was a dim place, layered in a perpetual haze of smoke only illuminated by a red LED light in the corner. There were posters and decorations all over the wall, some spray painted art on the East wall. The boys were lounging around, listening to music while either drinking or smoking.

They were all beautiful and you’d have your pick of any of them, or rather, all of them if you could. Mace, the lead guitarist with his long locs he usually kept in a half up, half own style decorated in gold cuffs. He was cool, occasionally playful, and spent most of his time while you were around teasing. Cass, the rhythm guitar and backup singer, kept his locs in a ponytail with the font out and down his face. He was the quieter type, didn’t talk much, but he was kind when he did talk.Then there was Eli, the drummer, loud, eccentric with hair to match in streaks of white and red. He had the prettiest eyes, one blue and one brown. He was the one who brazenly flirted with you in front of Hobie.

But there was a way they all looked at you. It’s not surprising seeing as your very first interaction with them was getting fucked in front of them while they jerk off to it. Sexual tension was implied with an interaction like that.

Hobie smiled at you as you entered. “There’s ma girl. Com’ere, luv.” He motioned you to him with two fingers and you came. You slid into place beside him and he kissed you, his teeth grazing your bottom lip and his fingers tracing the curve of your delicate jaw. He kissed you like he knew you were in love with him, always kissing with just enough passion to keep you on the hook but never enough to make you believe that you’re entitled to claim him in any sort of way. "Happy birthday, baby."

“Aw, I don’ get to have a kiss, doll?” Eli came over, placing his hands on the back of the couch on their side of your head as he leaned in close to you. You hesitated, your eyes widening as you look at Hobie for what to do. He doesn’t give you any reassurance nor does he show any sign that he’s upset about the question. He just takes a drag from his joint while the other two see what you’ll do.

On the other side of the room, Cass sat strumming to the melody of the song playing over the hidden speakers on his guitar. “Don’ look so fuckin’ terrified. He’s jus’ pullin’ ya leg, dove.” He scratched behind his gauged ears, his upper lip pierced with fanged angel bites pulling into a lopsided grin. "Happy birthday by the way."

Eli sighed and fell onto the couch beside you, tossing his arm over your shoulder. You were wedged between him and Hobie, both of them with an arm around you as Hobie passed his joint to Eli. Oh the things you thought about. All the ways they could manhandle you into any position they so desired. They could pass you around like that joint they have and you’d have absolutely no qualms with it.

“Nice shirt. You make it ya’self?” Mace leaned over Hobie’s lap to get a good look at your crop top with the band’s signature and “The Mary Janes” written in bleached letters. You nodded. “Took me forever to figure out what kind of design I wanted to do but yeah.” You find that he's looking hard. Your shirt is tight, leaves nothing to the imagination though it's not like they haven't seen you in various positions. He's checking you out hard. They all are in their own way and it's nothing new but it flusters you every time.

"Stop starin' at 'er tits, pervert." Hobie jabs him in the chest with his elbow and earns himself a tug at one of his wicks in return. They squabble like siblings, bickering between themselves while Hobie moved his hand to your thigh subconsciously. You're wearing a low-waisted black maxi skirt with platform boots. A simple outfit your haphazardly tossed together in the moment to get out of the house as quickly as possible.

Eli places the joint in front of you as it sits between his long, slender fingers. "You eva smoked before, doll?" He asked in a hushed whisper beside your ear. You look up at him. “Once when I was younger. I didn’t like it all that much… but I’d be willing to try it again.” He huffs out a laugh at this and hands you the joint to take a drag of it. The smoke immediately makes you cough and your face twist up, nose scrunching in slight disdain. Cass laughs at you lightheartedly from across the room. “Maybe smokin’s jus’ not for ‘er.”

You hand it back to Eli who laughs as well, placing the joint back between his lips. “Mmh,” He hummed softly, “tha’ strawberry?” He could taste your lipgloss on the tip, savored it a little before taking a drag. “Like ma girl’s with a lil’ flavor.”

“I’m not your girl though, am I?” You say this still while leaning your head on his shoulder and looking up at him with the smallest hint of a smile. Sometimes you took it upon yourself to flirt with the others. It’s not like you an Hobie are an official thing, you two are free to flirt with whoever you so please (though you’re sure if he were to give the attention he gave to you to someone else, you’d lose your shit).

“Sure ‘Obes wouldn’t mind sharin’, would ya ‘obie?”

Hobie stopped his wrestling with Mace to look at his sporadic drummer then at you. “Don’ usually like sharin’ ma tings… but I also don’t believe in consistency.” He glances at you, something mischievous brimming on his lips as he leans in and kisses you, his hand comes to cradle your neck, his thumb rubbing over your throat. “She’ll always know who she belongs to at the end of the day, won’t you?” You look him in the eyes and nod.

"Das ma good girl." Hobie hummed softly and pecked you one more time. "My bes' girl. I gotta surprise fo ma favorite." Your chest swelled at his praise and the thought that he thought enough about you enough to gift you a surprise.

Hobie got up from the couch, leaving a dip in the cushion from not moving for so long. "Since it's your birthday and you must be tired just fuckin' with me all the time–" He made his way over to a recording panel, plopping himself down in a spinning chair. He was joking knowing you could never get tired of him. "So, the boys offered themselves up. Let them make you feel good, birthday girl, if you'd like. No fucking or blowjobs in return."

You never thought you'd be in a position like this, surrounded by the most beautiful men in the world and they were offering themselves up to you for your pleasure. For your birthday.

"I-I don't know…are you okay with it?" You wanted to, you wanted their hands all over you, wanted their mouths in any way you could have them but you had a creeping suspicion that this was all some elaborate test to see if you really were loyal to him. Hobie didn't like sharing his things. He already made it every clear.

"Baby, that's up to you. I only agreed as long as I was there to watch." Hobie looked at you for a moment, the way you sit squeezed between the large, warm bodies of Mace and Eli. Cass had put down his guitar and stood up. “You said ya good wit’ us sharin’ ya girl here?” He made his way slowly over to the table and around it.

"No but how could I deny my girl on her birthday?"

It was like their minds ran in parallel with each other because they all had that same look on their faces. Mace and Eli turned in to you and you felt even more trapped between the two of them and Cass standing right in front of you, looking down at you with a smirk ghosting over his lips.

It was intimidating to be trapped between three men so beautiful you felt you might pass out and they all looked about ready to devour you. What a dream it would be to be splayed open, let them pass you round, take their turns with you until you’re all dumb and fucked out. Then you want Hobie to hold you, tell you you did an amazing job while he cleans you up.

It was Mace who kissed you first. Softly at first to ease you into it. You panicked a little admittedly when he pulled back, immediately looked to Hobie for some kind of approval of the situation but he completely left it up to you to decide that for yourself. Fuck you how and who you’d like, at the end of the day the two of you had no commitment to each other. He took another drag and crossed his legs, waiting. Plus, he wanted you to accept his gift to you.

You turned back to Mace, everyone waiting to see what you might choose, all willing to back off if you gave any indication you didn’t want any of this. It takes you a second that in the moment, you have all the power and if feels fucking amazing. You kiss Mace again and that give the signal for all of them to attack.

So many hands are on you at once, tugging at your clothes, grasping at your skin, removing as much as they could to expand their access to you. It’s almost overwhelming how quickly they leave you exposed and whimpering. Cass is on his knees, his large hands grasping your thighs while Mace and Eli trade places. Eli's much rougher when he kisses, his tongue demanding absolute submission from yours, his teeth sinking into the supple flesh of your lips. Mace busied himself with those pretty breasts of yours, his long fingers playing with the pebbled peak of your nipple while his lips latch onto the nipple of your other.

"Be gentle. Don't like ma tings broken, mates." Hobie makes eye contact with you and smirks. "Go on an' slut 'er out. She's a stupid cockwhore anyway. You-" he finally speaks to you like you aren't just an accessory in the room. "don' you dare take ya eyes off me, got it?"

Your only confirmation was obedience. Your eyes remained on Hobie even as Cass's lips kissed the lips of your pussy and his tongue dipped to test the waters. Even as Mace tortured your sensitive buds with his own tongue and fingers, pinching and nipping and teasing to no end. Eli’s lips teased at your neck, feasting on the way your breathing hitched at every overstimulating touch.

Hobie was relaxed, not threatened in the least by the way you could hardly handle the sensation of all of them on you. Cass’s head was slotted between your thighs. He took his time to explore, spit on your pretty little pussy like he intended to claim it. Eli helped him out, his fingers playing in Cass’s mess, teasing at your clit while his mate's tongue went back and forth between your little cunt and the taut ring of muscle of your ass. Cass kept your legs pried open despite how your muscles fought to cover your modesty and hide from the overbearing nature of their stimulation. Together, they had your pussy trembling.

Mace fondled your breasts in his hands obsessively. You wonder how many times in all of this he's thought about tit-fucking you. Maybe from the moment Hobie first brought you around. He left red marks against the brown of your skin, all destined to blossom into roses of blue and purple.

"H-Hobie." You moaned his name like he was the one with his tongue in your cunt and his fingers playing your swollen clit like a fiddle. It seemed he was enjoying the show from where he was sitting. "What is it, ma pretty girl? You enjoyin' yaself?"

Enjoying yourself was an understatement. They were making your pussy sing, playing you like a fiddle. Mace was teasing your nipples raw and you were sure you'd simply combust at any moment. You could only whine in response, looking at Hobie as he smiled and continued to talk you through your pleasure. "They've all been wannin' to fuck you for a while now, you know tha'? All they talk 'bout afta ya leave."

You could feel Cass chuckle against your clit while his tongue swirls between Eli's soaked fingers. "Have 3 holes 'n a nice pair of tits fo a reason." He spits on your clit again, making a mess of his bandmate's fingers and your pussy before dribbling down the underside of your pretty little asshole.

"Oh the ways we've thought 'bout usin' you, lovely." Mace added on with a rumbling chuckle of his own as he kissed down your diaphragm. "How we talked 'bout takin' turns fuckin' this magical cunt Hobie was goin' crazy ova."

"I talk high praise ova ma girl." Hobie murmured from the side as he took another drag. "Bes' pussy this side of the Atlantic."

"Tas'e like heaven." Cass murmured against your saliva-coated pussy while Eli continued to pinch and flick at your clit. Your pussy is pulsating, you moans growing in volume and cadence. Mace's lips are on yours again, his tongue exploring yours and savoring your taste, his long, skilled fingers teasing their buds of your nipples.

There was a thin line that separated Heaven from Hell, blissful pleasure from soul-crushing pain and you walked that line like a tightrope, wobbling a little into each from time to time but never fully surrendering to one or the other. All those hands, all those tongues, Hobie’s piercing gaze as he watched them have their way with your body. Cass’ tongue soothed the ache of Eli’s aggressive fingers, Eli’s lips kissed the bites Mace left on your body, Mace cooed at how well you were for them all while Cass went places only Hobie has ever known.

And Hobie— he was there to watch you fall apart completely and utterly. He took a drag from this joint before leaning forward to tap off the ashes as he stood. Your eyes were trained on him, muscles quivering from the onslaught of pleasure seizing them but you’d such a good girl that you never take your gaze from his pretty, slander frame.

He stood before you, partially over Cass who ate your pussy like a starved dog, lips wet with your slick ad saliva. Mace moves his hot mouth from yours and focuses more on your abused tits, littered in hickeys and bruises, nipples erect and slightly swollen from stimulation. Eli slipped his fingers down your smutty pussy and teased at the entrance of your cunt accompanied by Cass’ tongue. He used the heel of his palm to rub your clit as he sled his two long digits into your dripping pussy causing you to gasp sharply.

Hobie reached out, taking the opportunity to slide his thumb onto the wet pad of your tongue. “Close.” And you closed your lips around his thumb, suckling softly as you moaned in pleasure. You were so close to that high you sought everytime you were with Hobie. You looked up at his with those large eyes of yours, your body spasming as your tongue rolled against his thumb.

“You gonna cum, doll?” Hobie murmured at you, taking another drag as he pussed his thumb further into your mouth and down your throat until you gagged, your throat constricting. You nodded vigorously, your hips bucking uncontrollably against Cass’ face and Eli’s hand. Your hands were in Mace’s hair as he reached down and replaced Eli’s palm with his fingers now testing your clit. Your pussy jolted, throbbed with the beginnings of a climax as you moaned against his tongue. You drooled, Cass hands push your legs apart as you attempt to close them around the many fingers and single tongue against your cunt.

“Go ahead. I know they’re dying for it. They want my pretty, birthday girl to feel her best.”

Tears pricked the ducts of your eyes as your orgasm crashed down on you. Your cries were muffled by Hobie’s thumb as he weighed the pad of it down against your tongue. Your muscles spasmed, back arching off the couch as you shook. You kept looking at Hobie under the red LEDs and through the smoke from his mouth like a good girl, wanting nothing more than to feel his lips on yours.

When he pulled his thumb from your lips, a string of saliva connecting you, he ran the pad of his thumb across your southern lip and cooed at you. “My girl.” You feel back against the couch, fucked out and sleepy while they one by one retracted themselves from you, starting with Cass, then Eli, then Mace.

“You’ve ou’done yaselves, boys.” Hobie came and sat beside you, pulling you into his lap while you trembled against him. His fingers ran circles along your inner thing, growing nearer to your swollen, used heat until his fingers her dragging through the cum and saliva Cass left behind. “Ain’t this the bes’ birthday eva?” Hobie whispered into your ear and with your arms wrapped around his neck, you nod against his cheek with your lips pressed into his cheek.

#across the spiderverse #spiderman atsv #hobie brown #atsv #spiderman #hobie brown fic #hobie brown smut #spider punk #backstage show #hobie brown x reader #hobie brown my love #hobie x y/n #hobie x reader

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zykamiliah · 1 month

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the many ways shen qingqiu loves luo binghe

this was more or less inspired by this post, but because this is gonna be a personal opinion and i don't want to make a thread of it and inadvertently contest with the other two's points, I'm going to make my own post.

so i wanna start saying that "the moment one falls in love" is a trope that's waaaay too overstated. in my opinion. specially because falling in love tends to be something that has to do with romantic love most of the time, and it pretends to establish a sort of timeline, a point of no return, for ships and fictional relationships.

when the stories surrounding the characters are more straightforward, i don't really mind, since it makes sense for there to be an "Oh" moment when the character realizes they are in love. like, we know the moment lbh started to see sqq in a sexual light, and we can roughly add to this that the events of the demon invasion and the nightmare scenario are what sealed the deal for lbh. it helps that he's more honest about his feelings and the sexual awakening had already happened, and we can easily assume that from that point on lbh's feelings have a romantic-sexual side.

it still has other sides... because lbh loves sqq as a shizun, as a parent, and this side of their relationship, the master-disciple and parent-child side, is intrinsic to their dynamic; it's a conflicting element during their prolonged conflict for most of the novel, but at the same time, it's their default when they want to approach each other, it's the "safe zone".

but when it comes to sqq I think it's a much more difficult thing to ask: when does sqq falls in love? when is his Oh moment? Is there one, a conscious realization that he's in love? Can his relationship with lbh be described as "being in love"?

he loved Luo Binghe The Character

—the way a reader loves a favorite character, and fanboyed about him plenty before and after transmigrating. the shadow of what the little sheep he was raising would became was ever-present throughout those first 6 years before their meeting in Jinlan City.

but he loved lbh the character in a fanatical way that wasn't actually real... it was meaningful to him because he liked this fictional character a lot, but it's a safe love from the side of a screen.

he was compelled by lbh the character, by his tragic backstory full of angst, and by the ways lbh the character did things: he "rightfully" took his anger out in the people who'd hurt him and paid back for it tenfold. in a way, sy as a reader was also projecting himself in lbh the character.

in short, he loved the Idea of luo binghe, but not luo binghe as a real person.

he loved Luo Binghe the White Lotus Disciple

—and he loved him like a parent loves a child. yet, as I mentioned, he always kept in mind that this boy would grew up to be a very attractive and sexual man, and thus sqq expected him to have romantic encounters with girls around his age.

i know some people shy away from talking about this because everyone is paranoid about your favorite character being called a pedophile etc etc, but really, sy could be nothing farther from that, and whoever who says that has a very, hmm, wide definition of the word and it's probably just using the buzzword to hate on the character.

the important thing is that, despite sqq being aware that lbh is a potential sexual being and will become very sexually active in the future, he does not in any way sexualize his and lbh's relationship. Like I said, sqq would never abuse his power in that way, and he'd never get it on with someone he sees as a child, his disciple. that lbh is very much viewing their relationship with romantic and sexual lenses is a complete shock for him because of this, along with other reasons and assumptions (that lbh was straight)

the problem here is, precisely, that he treated lbh like a child once, and would go on treating him as a child later, post-holy mausoleum: disregarding lbh's agency, making decisions for him and without asking what lbh wants, since as the parent he obviously Knows Better, and taking responsibility for lbh's "bad behavior". the endless abyss was a decision he made without consulting lbh. he self-detonated because he thought that would be best for everyone, and he intended for his death to (among other things like saving the city and escaping prison) "make up" for his mistakes. in maigu ridge, he almost kills himself again because he thought that would be better for lbh.

he's self-sacrificing, protective, caring, and overall parental/maternal towards lbh, which has it's good and bad sides. for a long time, he loves lbh like a parent loves a child, and though this side of his love for lbh is not lost in the extras, it's lesser in the sense that the power imbalance is nullified, and the parent-child, shizun-disciple side of their relationship turns more into a comforting, safe roleplay that allows them to access intimacy and express their feelings (that infamous "if i was your mother" speech) than the entirety of their relationship.

and the thing is, he always loved and will always love lbh as a parent loves a child. and i think people uncomfortable with this fact have to get around to accepting that lol

he is subconsciously attracted to luo binghe (bingmei) the Man

we all know this part. sqq's descriptions of lbh's beauty are numerous and far too difficult to quote them all, but one that really stands out to me, because it proves the point, is this one:

[Shen Qingqiu] asked, “The important person you’re talking about, was it…a good-looking young man?” When he thought about it, he decided against suppressing his conscience and clarified. “Not just good-looking, he’s very good-looking, especially good-looking. Fair skin, pretty face, tall. He doesn’t smile often, but when he does, it’s exceptionally dark.” chapter 9: borderlands

if he was unaffected by lbh's attractiveness, he wouldn't need to "suppress his conscience" about it. also this description is just... describing lbh's smile from his own pov? a personal feeling? to a stranger? he has it bad.

he's repressing his own feelings, so it's difficult to point to a specific moment as the moment he realizes he's attracted to lbh... because he never has a conscious realization, and he's in constant denial about it. all the way through to the last bingqiu extra, the wedding extra, he'll continue using the same narrative: the Protagonist is Beautiful and Irresistible, so what can sqq do but surrender to him? It's inevitable, really. (hahahaha he can't help but love and be attracted to lbh. it says more about him that he could ever verbalize)

so yeah, sqq really has the hots for lbh the man. but he'll NEVER admit it, he'll never had an Oh moment. Not even when he unconsciously called lbh "husband".

i want to make a clarification: for a character like sqq, who care about his pride and dignity way too much and has internalized homophobia and sexism to the detriment of his own peace of mind and fulfillment, admitting that he enjoys sex is way too shameful. he's never doing it. he mentions being "drunk with lust" in the showdown extra; in the deep dream extra he gets enthusiastic and proactive, initiating sex with lbh himself very smoothly; in the RoC,SoBQ extra he initially asks to do it doggy style and then changes his tune and wants to see lbh's face, DESPITE being embarrassed about it, and his desire is described as wanting the spot inside him to be rammed. all of this are subtle hints of how he really feels about sex, despite his inner struggles with his pride as a man.

another clarification: the way smut is written in western space is not the same as the way is written in chinese novels. for example, some chinese slang put the the top as the one "attacking", as if sex is a sort of fight. there's always this implication that the shou surrenders to the gong. there's a clear distinction of who tops and who bottoms and the roles of husband and wife made by this distinction; pleasure is described differently: phrases like "scalp going numb", "getting goosebumps" are not particular to svsss alone; the way the bodies engaged in the sex act are described, etc. (it IS a different language with a different culture) so it's normal that most of us come out of the extras thinking the smut is not enjoyable for readers or the characters themselves. what is the difference between the mdzs extras and the svsss extras? that wwx, being characterized as a "shameless" person, is very vocal about how he feels during sex. he has no shame around sex, unlike sqq, who is in the opposite side of the shame spectrum.

sqq is still struggling with that part of himself, and personally I think it's very understandable that even until the end of volume 4 he still has a difficult time with it; it's not easy shedding the believes one grows up with.

which bring me to,

he loves luo binghe the Man, "romantically"

—and it's a love that conflates his parental love, his attraction, too, but that starts to develop mostly post-holy mausoleum: it's when the hand-holding starts, somehow, though it develops fulling throughout the extras, when they finally become romantic partners and explore sex together. mxtx traces an arc that starts with the showdown extra, goes through the deep dream extra that has sqq telling lbh that "Tonight I feel like... I live you a great deal" and ends in the wedding extra with sqq calling lbh "husband" unprompted; despite previously agonizing about his loss of face and dignity and the humiliation of it, his actions speak louder than his words and inner thoughts. because of this, functionally, sqq can be read as a tsundere.

but aside from the sex, sqq enjoys domesticity and spending time with lbh; he likes teasing him, conversing with him and going out with him to see the world. post-main novel they're equals in their relationship and treat each other with respect and consideration, even if their shizun-disciple roleplay prevails. by romance definitions, I believe they mostly fit them, even if their relationship is unconventional.

as for when sqq fell in love with lbh? i still don't have a clear answer. he's always loved him; this love evolves through time, bringing him and lbh closer together. personally, i don't think it's not important. sqq loves lbh, and that's what matters.

#svsss #zykamiliah-svsss #bingqiu #shen qingqiu #shen yuan #had this post in my drafts. feel like now is a good time to post it lol

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urmomsbunkmate · 8 months

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Accidents happen ?

Kirishima x femreader

Potential series if u BOOTYFUL people would like

Warnings- nude taking? Boobies, hot sexy momma y/n, female masturbation if u squint. suggestive shit rn but if we do more then the suggesting will be literal. I cannot think of anything else rn

Synopsis-Y/N SENDS ACCIDENTALLY SENT NUDE TO A KINDHEARTED and CUTE BOY.

EIJIRO KRISHIMA GETS SENT NUDES FROM THE PRETTY GIRL IN ART CLASS.

———

The sun was long gone as Y/n released low sigh, situating herself in front of her large mirror, sitting on the ground practically nude. The pink lace accentuated her perky breasts and her hardened nipples after rolling them between her fingers, contrasting against her soft tan skin. She slightly angled herself to the left making her ass curve into the picture. The lingerie wrapped around her tailbone wearing as a thong. although the lining was moved to the side as she teased herself, knowing this Denki guy wasn't going to send anything cum worthy back. They were all just so useless.

The brushed her wavy pink hair cascade down her boobs, a messy look that is arousing in this context. Her lips were glistening in glistening lip gloss, the upper part of her face was never included in the pictures of course. She drew a line at that. Her future had some have some hope.

Y/n knows she's pretty. She knows. But she hates when other people only treat her as a pretty face, expecting sex or nudes just because she's a beautiful girl. Her old boyfriends did that. People still do that. She's treated like a plastic barbie with this box she lives in, a box people think her whole life revolves around. People think the box contains booze and sex and nothing nice - she's just a pretty face, what more can she be? The box cannot possibly contain anything other than those things, like intelligence and integrity.

The girl sighs, the thought of what she has become haunts her. She never wanted to be this: this Barbie in a plastic box, one who says yes to sex and nudes and doesn't refuse, one who goes through the motions like a robot as greasy jocks have the best orgasm of their life, one who longs for a sense of stability, of integrity. Your quirks pretty much define you for the rest of your life, and she could do nothing to change that. Y/n wants a nice boyfriend, one who actually cares about her, one who knows her birthday and gives her a kiss on the forehead out of the blue, one who isn't afraid to be her person despite the repercussions that come with her. She's said to be too pretty for a relationship, too much of a whore. Who'd want to date her?

So many people have called her a whore that she just sticks with it, knowing she'll be nothing more.

Y/n snaps from her trance, looking at herself in the mirror before continuing what she prepares herself for. Y/n settled on the perfect one, and she's tempted to send it to the chat since she debates it's her best one yet. The lingerie is just perfectly in place, her lips are slightly parted, breasts pushed up and shadowed from the light, making them bigger.

She knows this'll give Denki what he wants.

Putting on plaid shorts and a large sweatshirt, she yawns, seeing the time is nearing midnight. It's usually around the time she goes to bed on a school night, given her homework is massive and she normally spends the majority of her time doing school related things.

Padding against her carpet floor, she lazily walks to the other side of the room to turn on her fan, something that is background noise and allows her to sleep with ease. Her eyes are lethargically glued to her screen, blinking sleepily as she types out the number clicking the K and selecting the first number she saw.

Choosing the photo and pressing send without any further thought, the clueless girl goes to bed, not knowing what she has done.

Where as the boy just trying to work out before he falls asleep get the most jaw dropping notification from an unknown number.

Y/n

(1 attached photo)

KIRISHIMA ( art class)

Um I don't think u meant to do that

Y/n

oh my god

KIRISHIMA ( art class)

It okay don't worry we all make stupid mistakes

Y/n

hello kind person, that was not meant for u 🥰

KIRISHIMA ( art class)

I didn't look for more that 2 seconds if it makes u feel better

Y/n

Not really but I'm so fuckin sorry

KIRISHIMA ( art class)

😭😭 it's okay

Y/n

Can u delete it please 🙏

For the sake of the people

KIRISHIMA ( art class)

Oh I did that ages ago

I kinda worked out it wasn't for me

Y/n

thank u ☺️ i could literally kiss u

KIRISHIMA ( art class)

Like what else am I supposed to do?

Y/n

The male race has no boundaries

I'm not willing to push what is already not there

KIRISHIMA ( art class)

On behalf of the male race I'm sorry!🫶

Some of them just aren't manly

Y/n

ur an angel

KIRISHIMA ( art class)

So I've been told

Y/n

It means a lot that u delete it btw

KIRISHIMA ( art class)

That what I'm here for saving the day

U look pretty in pink

(Deleted)

Y/n

Don't go a heroic on me

Is that all u 1-A kids do?

KIRISHIMA ( art class)

Nahhh we also braid each others hair when the times right

It's good team bonding

Y/n

😬

Imma assume it's a joke but my hearts telling me otherwise

KIRISHIMA ( art class)

I'll guess u will never know

Y/n

I like u red

Ur nicer than I though you'd be

KIRISHIMA ( art class)

Compliment? I'll take it

Y/n

Good choice

I gotta go sleep

See u in art red

KIRISHIMA ( art class)

Good night

Kirishima dropped his phone upon his aches and let out a loud sigh. His cheeks flushed a red colour, imitating his face. The whole situation was utterly insane but somehow, in some weird fucked up way his ultimate classroom crush had initiated conversations. Well not conversation of such, but now he felt like he could say hello or wave when he saw her without making it utterly weird

Oh actually he could probably take that back. It will probably make his crush on her 10 times more awkward. Unless she didn't find it awkward, wait did he make her uncomfortable.

The boy grabbed onto his pillow and shouted a loud "you idiot!" Into the fabric. What is wrong with him.

“Shut your fucking face shitty hair!” A shout followed by pounding on his wall echoed into his room.

“Sorry.”

———

Omg okay let’s not idk if I’m feeling it, I tried not to hold back or go all the way in. So this is what I’ve got.

Please like and comment if I should continue on?? Does our fake red baby ever get to see the big titi queen again ?

Like people what should I do👎🫄🏿🍋😁🔛🚶🏿‍♀️🤪🫶🏃🏻‍♂️🔛☺️😊

#kirishima eijirou #kirishima x reader #kirishima smut #mha smut #mha fanfiction #mha #mha x reader #mha eijirou #kirishima eijiro x reader #bnha eijiro kirishima #bnha x reader #bnha smut #denki #bnha denki #denki kaminari #text fic #sluttybaby

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therightrighthand · 1 month

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Chaos Arc.

----

So happy to finally finish this after keeping it on the back burner for so long! Read through the full story of Delgoth here!

----

35 Betrayal: Anger and frustration began to fester. She felt like a fool being played and toyed with by the Inquisition, but what fueled her anger most was the insight she got from her time on Atoma Prime.

She saw how citizens were demonised and threatened for simply wanting to survive in a cruel world. Her anger allowed the taint of chaos to seep into the back of her mind. This led to a sudden outburst of violence and the unprovoked murder of an inquisitor during a private meeting as it all came to a head. All Delogth could do was flee to the Underhive of Atoma Prime and hope she would not be found.

36 Metamorphosis: After her fall from grace Delogth struggled in the Underhive. Without food, shelter or safety, she withered, but it was only at her lowest that she was granted a gift... Approached in a catatonic hallucination by a mysterious figure, Delgoth was offered the opportunity to play host to a new god, The Fathomless, The Son of Nurgle and the parasite god of decay, pollution and new life. How could she refuse?

By the chaos gods' graces, Delgoth awoke the following night in the generous care of the Benevolent Hand, a cult of chaos worshipers who'd found her starving to death in the filtration tunnels. Discovered by Jeremechy, a cultist whom she'd helped not long ago Delgoth was offered a sanctuary and home out of the kindness of their hearts, asking nothing in return, the truest nobility she'd once believed to be something the Imperium once stood for.

Over time, as her Psyker powers became more apparent, Delgoth was worshipped as a religious figure due to her connections to the Warp. Esepcially as her body began to physically change and mutate beyond her control, as the parasite started to grow ... and rebuild her her body, like a moth evolving in a cacoon.

37 Rebirth: After a year of incubation and growth, the parasite infecting Delgoth's body had completed its work and rebuilt what was broken; she and it were now one, and the power of the warp flowed through it, and her, like water through a stream. Her body wasn't just physically stronger, but her Pysker abilities had become fearsome to behold.

Among cultist groups, she had begun to embrace the role of a messiah, protecting the weak, spreading the good word of Nurgle, and tainting the lower levels with a toxic substance known as 'Blight'. Those who embraced Chaos and the Fathomless learned to live with Blight by growing immune, whilst non-believers suffered toxic poisoning or starvation of what little organic material wasn't tainted.

41-45 The Fathomless Blight: While becoming a religious figure appeased Nurgle and their offspring, voices from distant futures beckoned Delgoth to widen her ambition and share her gifts with the stars. During this period, Delgoth's body began to produce more parasites and use them to connect the minds of willing participants in a hive mind level of control. This became the beginning of her new army, The Fathomless Blight.

Piecing together fragments of the Imperium's tech and a few rotting corpses from fallen Astartes, Delgoth used her vast power to lead an army off of Atoma, and into the wider galaxy. They did not travel through ships but rather through oceans and seas, wading into the water on one side of the galaxy and out into another where chaos was most prominent. They were small, but they were formidable.

46 Eldritch Lord: The gods had truly smiled upon Delgoth, as each victor in her crusade brought her more power and allies to her hive-mind army. They infected oceans, corrupted landscapes, and attacked from the murky depths where the Imperium could not defend itself quick enough. For every planet that drowned in blight, millions would fall under her sway and become part of her infested trawl as the Fathomless Blight rose to power. With it, so did she as her body became to the Parasite's changes, as an Alpha level Psyker and an equivalent to some sort of Edlrtich Demon Prince.

Some tell tales that her reach is endless, that she can appear behind you in the death of night, silently lurching out of the water and taking you away in your sleep.

Whilst others tell tales of a small pollution scrubber who fell from grace.

Now Delgoth lurks on the fridge of Imperium space doing Nurgles bidding, but occasionally, she turns her sights past the walls of reality and the echoes of other worlds, other universes.

... other 'Del's...

-- Find my discord and other sites: linktr.ee/The_red_right_hand Do not use, repost or claim (rp) my art/character Art © The-Red-Right-Hand

#my artwork #oc #sci fi #del-verse #warhammer 40000 #darktide #40kart #delgoth

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laurzzz · 1 year

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Reading through Clown's most recent post earlier makes me feel and think that the only thing we should be doing as a fandom right now is to give him space to figure things out for themself but also keep on being kind, to those who have been doing so.

As they've said, it's not just about the boundaries it's the loneliness that comes with it too. Maybe they feel alone that everything is so sudden, that what once was only a few thousand eyes on you becoming 100x more than that and it can debilitate you. It can give you an invisible pressure that even if no one's forcing you to continue your projects on a time crunch you still won't be able to deny what's there, and what's there is hundreds of thousands of more people wanting to see and know more from you. It'll make you start to question if all you're wanting to make for your projects is for the sake of liking what you do or because you feel the need to keep up with the excitement of others towards it.

Idk, I just see Welcome Home as a project that's so well-made and so well-loved, it's not something that's rushed and only made to be commercialized like the type of content we're used to nowadays. I'd hate for it to end up going down that road in the future because of the uncontrollable hype right now. And I just wanted to share my piece to maybe help feel Clown feel seen and that I'm one of the many people who'd gladly stand by him even if it takes him years to finish Welcome Home as long as it's done to his own accord and love for his creations, not because there's a heck ton of eyes surrounding him right now and watching his every move for new updates to the lore.

Idk man, I hope my words are coming out right. I really like Clown as an artist, his work inspires me even if they're not Welcome Home related. Selfish as it may sound, I do wish I had the opportunity of finding his blog before all this, they seem so cool and genuine. But now with the many amount of people watching him, he also probably feels lonely because there's too many people and the "building a connection with the fanbase or people who appreciate their work" is essentially left to be drowned out by the large numbers.

#welcome home #partycoffin #talks talks talks

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pinchinschlimbah · 2 months

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Still thinking about this article and also generally what we've seen of the new Dick Turpin series so far and was suddenly struck with a realization. Themes of queerness and gender nonconformity have always been present in Noel's work, but this really feels like the first time where those themes are the overall POINT of a media he's created rather than incidental.

Dick himself is heavily traditionally queer coded, both in his interests/character traits (fashion design, knitting, tea, crossdressing, the color purple, kindness and emotional intelligence, encouraging those around them to also be their most flamboyant and authentic selves etc) and the way others react to him because of it- much of the tension of the first two episodes comes from Dick's father and Leslie both looking down on Dick for not acting in ways they deem to be what a real man is like, and Dick being described as "strange" and "creative" feel practically like euphemisms not to mention him literally being called names like "foppy tit" to discredit his abilities as a highwayman.

In the first 30 minute episode alone we have 3 major characters (Dick, Moose, and Nell) presenting in gender-nonconforming ways. When we are originally introduced to the Essex gang, their leader Tom King immediately kills the most outwardly queer person in the group for no real reason, and the rest of the gang later admits that they hated Tom's oppressive and callous leadership style and start to come out of their shells more once they get to know Dick. Dick's first course of action before anything else is to help the gang be their most authentic selves- he encourages Moose to embrace his emotional nature by speaking about his feelings and then to embrace his femininity by making custom dresses for him AND in a bit of a throwaway line Dick admits that he once spent an entire year wearing dresses himself! While the reveal that Nell has been pretending to be a man initially comes as Dick saying he thinks its cool if she wants to dress as a man, it appears he also ends up giving her the safety and confidence to realize that she's still the toughest one in the group, disguise or not! So far Honesty feels like he just needed someone to generally look up to and show him what can be possible, but I'm hoping we'll get a more in depth arc from him in the future episodes. Everyone is given stylish new outfits to make them feel powerful and then brought out to show them off and get a portrait done together- already a bonded found family who'd risk their lives for each other! And episode 2, where were left at so far, ends with an indication that others in the highwayman community are becoming interested in Dick's softer kinder way of doing things.... It makes perfect sense to me that now, while promoting a show where the whole central messaging is that you can find success through creativity, compassion, authenticity, and of course a bit of panache, rather than adhering to old fashioned violent and restrictive societal expectations, we've gotten one of the clearest statements yet about Noel's relationship with his own gender, and I'm very excited to see where else this series might take us!

#working on an even longer essay about noel and queerness and the concept of coming out that I said I was gonna write forever ago #but wanted to get this out as its own thought for now #noel fielding #gender files #gay yelling #dick turpin #the completely made up adventures of dick turpin #shouts into void

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nanomooselet · 3 months

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My Brother's Keeper (VII)

Knives, despite it all, I do indeed pity you. You horrible creature. More than you might imagine anyone would dare.

I said some time ago that Knives has agency and Vash doesn't, and that the Eye of Michael's dogma demands sacrifice.

One lives. One dies.

When Knives tells Vash to leave humanity, it's at that very instant Vash realises the truth: that this isn't about the Plants versus humans. It was never about that, ever, and trying to dissuade Knives from continuing his descent by arguing from that premise isn't ever actually going to work.

It's about how discovering Tesla broke them in two. It broke reality, cracked the singular unit they once believed themselves to be in half, and sent each half down forever-separate paths in both space and time.

Vash, through Rem, decided he could face the future. Even despite this discovery, how apathetically cruel the world is to the innocent, the future is always ours to shape as long as we live to choose. Rem showed him that through acknowledging and accepting responsibility for the pain of the past, even if once ignorant or complicit, one could learn and heal, and therefore work to be free of it. Not perfect. Never perfect. But still better.

Nai only saw potential pain. The fear of facing the world where it could be inflicted, and of those who'd done so, consumed him. He would erase both by returning to the past, the innocence and ignorance of having never learned the frightening truth. He'd thus build a paradise, an Eden, where no sin was committed and no sinner would set foot. He alone, in his own singular perfection, was fit both to assume this task and the power - and thus the right - to fulfil it.

Since when have we been so different?/Who are you? We've become so different I don't think I even know you anymore.

Vash begins to cry because he sees now that Nai… Nai is gone. Maybe he ran for too long, or maybe the Nai he thought he knew never existed. It doesn't matter anymore. There's nothing of his brother left to love in this monster before him, who's done everything that he's done and isn't sorry and wants to keep doing it by seizing control over Vash's own body. (Even though they look more like each other now than they have since they were kids, which still absolutely ruins me.) Vash grieves his brother, his brother's love and their togetherness in the past, but he finally knows for sure that they're gone, and he must define his own identity, and move beyond them.

His declaration that he'll always run isn't about running from humanity, anymore than Knives is truly fighting for the freedom of the Plants.

Seriously, Knives isn't fighting for the freedom of the Plants. He thinks he is, because he thinks that justifies controlling their bodies and consuming their power and benefiting from their suffering, but he's reversed cause and effect. He acts and so they suffer, but he believes their suffering is what motivates his actions and not his fear and his greed for the power to destroy whatever he fears. It's circular, and it's entirely self-centred.

It's the logic not of a liberator but of the entire system of oppression.

Knives's paradise, the home to which he's so desperate to return, no longer exists. It never will again. Not for him or for Vash or for the Plants. Knives himself broke it. Knives himself ripped it out of the heavens and plunged it into the earth, shattering it, so he could reshape the pieces into something that he alone controlled. Knives will always assume control, and he won't stop if you give what he says he wants, because he won't admit or even try to understand that it's not the truth.

He wants to stop being scared and alone. He wants his brother to need him and never leave him. He wants his mother, but she's gone. (He killed her. Over and over and over again he kills her and she's still always gone and he hates her for always being gone. Why is she gone? Why didn't she stay? He asked. He gave her a choice.)

(Yet in Vash's memories and in the people he loves, Rem's spirit lives on, and always will. She still loves him, her perfect boy, even still protects him, just as she promised she would. Did you guys know Vash's coat is bulletproof? Did you guys realise Vash literally still walks around kicking ass in the protective embrace of his mother? I actually had to take a minute, when I figured it out. It made me tear up.)

I was rejected?

Let me back in! Take me back.

Knives wants to go home. To be a child again with Vash by his side. Innocent, together, in paradise. But once you've grown up, you can never really go home again. It's a fundamentally selfish desire to want everything to go back to being the same forever - what it means is that because it was good or kind for you specifically, everyone else has to conform whether it was good and kind to them or not. There's always danger in nostalgia even when it's not misplaced. It encourages destructive nihilism, malicious and ignorant apathy. If the best can only ever be behind us, there is no reason to try to go on.

Vash is not nostalgic. Vash will run, and run, and keep running. For a lifetime if he has to - and a Plant's lifetime is a long one. It's not that he hasn't made a choice, but that he'd already made it long ago: to be free of Knives, to live and to fight for independence from his brother's abusive care, and to find a way to unite humans and Plants, the purpose he's been eager and happy to serve since the day he found it. Rem's dream is one he longs to fulfil, and he finally knows he has the power, intelligence, resilience, strength and above all, the right to take up that task.

He's just acknowledged and accepted that it's not also his purpose to help his stupid brother, not if this is all he gets in response. Dismissed, ignored, insulted, his grief and compassion mocked; abused, put down, smothered, injured, rendered permanently disabled, scarred, violated, traumatised. Forced into the shape that Knives imagines he should be in, pieces cut away until he fits the image in his brother's head.

It's very sad that after all that Knives has done to him, Vash doesn't value his own life and wellbeing enough to care for himself as much as he cares for everyone else in the world. But it still beats Knives trying to do it for him. He's so bad at it.

In the past, on occasions such as this, when Vash demonstrated like... the capacity to sort of almost disagree, Knives would yell at him suddenly and loudly enough that Vash would freeze up in terror, and then Knives would do whatever he wanted regardless. My man isn't good at hearing the word "no". If yelling or insults failed, he'd do something physically violent. I've seen a lot of takes on how funny and/or gay it is that Vash's reaction to Wolfwood grabbing his lapels and threatening to torture him to death is... this.

But understand that when Vash suggests an alternative that doesn't involve mass murder, his brother tends not to agree to it. Or stop at threats. Vash's arguments with Knives always make Vash sound a bit pathetic and dumb because Knives doesn't actually engage Vash - he shuts him down or insults him, telling him he's too weak and stupid to even speak. He has no respect at all for Vash's opinions, abilities, or as a person - honestly, I wouldn't treat an animal this way.

When someone finally respects your beliefs and abilities after they've been coldly or violently dismissed so many times, that's… how it feels.

Knives assumed that Vash had no powers so he was weak, and then when Vash did demonstrate powers, that Vash was weak because he was frightened of them. As usual, the trauma he's inflicted maybe being the problem never entered his mind; it's always Vash's fault. When Vash finally has both power and the will to assert control of it, he finally has the capacity and strength to enforce his refusal. And that leaves Knives finally exhausted of any means to break his will.

Except one. One final choice.

Vash is right: the plan has failed and this is over. Knives can never again have the power he desires, and what's more, Vash would rather be shot at for another hundred years than be together with his brother in paradise.

In spite of everything Knives has done to destroy it, the independent identity of Vash the Stampede yet survives. And so.

One lives.

One dies.

Nai is dead.

There's no turning back.

(The stars are falling down.)

And no one ever really goes home.

If you want to tell me Stampede is a poor quality adaptation, it's not funny and it's shallow and Vash is a loser now and there's no Milly and they're just exploiting the property and if it just hadn't been called Trigun maybe... maybe...

Maybe! You're entitled to an opinion. I'm open to the discussion. I do always try to assume good faith.

However, I'm still probably not going to agree.

And I'm done. Now I need to lie down on the floor and cry over my beautiful disaster twins. Thank you very much for reading! I encourage you to be as insane in the tags as you feel moved to be, because I crave validation.

(Extreme Lesbianism for Meryl Stryfe: Coming Soon.)

(Part I)

(Part II)

(Part III)

(Part IV)

(Part V)

(Part VI)

#trigun stampede #tristampparty #millions knives #vash the stampede #trigun meta #hundreds spoons #vash is in fact perfect #hundred spoons is a yellow-bellied baby who needs his mommy #throwing a tantrum trying to blow everything up #maybe if he'd tried the ramen in july he'd be less on fire #TOO LATE NOW #loser #i cherish them both #full disclosure the shot where knives is launched through the rem-plant-thing's face is only there because it makes me giggle #on a scale of millions knives to one how graceful are you in defeat #meta: my brother's keeper

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garden-of-omegas · 5 months

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⚜ FIRST MEETING [SPYXFAMILY - THE FAMILY] ⚜

┌── ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ ••✎•• ──────────

characters: loid forger | yor forger/briar | yuri briar summary: the details of your first meeting with your future mate. warnings: spies, contract killers, references to assassination, references to torture, adopted families, references to war, yuri rating: sfw a/n: guess who finished the spy x family anime? i did! i love yuri so much, and i love the forgers so much, and i love so many characters so much! honestly, haven't felt this motivated to finish something in ages. i'm back bitches! hopefully i'll start getting faster at writing these too.

~🎕

└── ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ ••✎•• ──────────

≿━━━━༺❀ loid forger ❀༻━━━━≾

✿ you were a hitman. you'd never really been anything else. you were infamously known as "dawn", though no one had ever actually been able to pin anything on you specifically, mostly because you could control minds.

✿ both your and loid's ages are... nebulous at best, though loid had been working as a spy for about a decade, while you'd been in the business for at least two of those.

✿ you'd recently come to ostania under an alias to work as a teacher at the eden academy. loid was looking for an alpha to play a part in his pretend family, and just happened to meet you while shopping for anya. the moment she realized you were a spy too, your fate was sealed. anya insisted on you becoming her new appa, and once loid realized where you worked he saw an opportunity. you on the other hand, thought that a marriage could be beneficial to blending in while on your mission.

✿ before neither of you got to the point of actually proposing (a fake marriage) you received a mission to retrieve some valuables, a mission loid had also gotten. after several shenanigans, the two of you run into each other out of disguise, get chased by a bunch of smugglers, and loid proposes to you to the sound of explosions. you say yes. obviously.

✿ loid found you inconspicuous, a bit odd but sweet. admittedly, anya's love for you might've made him a lot less suspicious than he might've been if he actually paid any attention to literally anything about you. loid was handsome, and that was about the extend of your initial thoughts. a decent man, with a good job, and an adorable daughter. the perfect cover for any spy, which you should've probably thought about a little harder.

≿━━━━༺❀ yor briar ❀༻━━━━≾

✿ you were an... "interrogator", let's put it that way. but also the heir of a mysterious earl, who'd been kind enough to take you in when you were a child and taught you to be the person you are today, to be "the bloody prince".

✿ yor was 26, while you were 25. your father had recently started insisting that you find yourself a spouse, as you were soon to start training a child of your own.

✿ you actually met while working. you were having a "conversation" with a target, trying to get the names of some traitors out of him when the thorn princess showed up to kill your target. you fought about it, you even tried using your powers against her but they didn't work. she pretty much kicked your ass, and you barely got away. after finding a place to catch your breath, you realized that you found your almost killer to be heart-poundingly beautiful.

✿ you met yor a few days later, having met your new protege (a cute little girl by the name of nel) just the same day. she noticed yor and complimented her looks, which got you interested in her as well. while you were still a bit hung up on the mysterious beauty who almost killed you, yor seemed sweet and the type to not ask too many questions. thus, you asked her out on a date, and became a bit infatuated when she got flustered by the whole thing. she still said yes of course.

✿ yor found your secret identity to be impressive, if a little cruel. not that she could really speak on it. but meeting the real you, she thought that you were the most handsome alpha she'd ever met. if only you didn't fluster her so much. you enjoyed both sides of her, not that you knew they were the same person. she was strong, she was beautiful, she was everything you could possibly want in an omega. but you weren't actually looking for love, as you claimed to yourself.

≿━━━━༺❀ yuri briar ❀༻━━━━≾

✿ you were the leader of an anti-government organization, still in it's starting stages. but for the most part you were simply going to school, trying to quickly get yourself through schooling to start truly working towards your goals with your comrades.

✿ you were 17, on your second year of college, while yuri was 14 and already on his first year of college. it'd been three years since you started your group.

✿ to put it simply, you and him were put together as roommates. you'd been impossible to find a roommate for, and yuri didn't get along with any of his classmates, so the administration thought that the two of you could just bother each other. and bother each other did you, both of your personalities clashing together the moment you met. especially about your views, even though you didn't dare to actually talk about your true beliefs. but it was hard, yuri was far too talented at riling you up.

✿ you remained roommates for the last two years of your schooling, and it was a disaster up until that point. but there were moments of peace, where yuri would help you with your school work and you'd look after him to make sure none of the older students bothered him. but most of your relationship was full of bickering and disagreements.

✿ yuri thought that you were the most annoying roommate one could possibly have, not for your habits or anything (you were actually pretty strict about keeping the place clean) but your personality. he admittedly did get a bit of a crush on you already, but would never admit to it. yuri was a kid. an annoying one, but an understandable one too. you didn't actually hold anything he said too seriously, and mostly just enjoyed riling him up because he'd act all huffy and cute about it. if he wasn't so stubborn about his beliefs, you might've asked him to join your cause.

#⚜ garden walks #omegaverse #a/b/o #alpha!reader #x reader #spy x family #loid forger #omega!loid #yor forger #omega!yor #yuri briar #omega!yuri #spyxfamily - the family

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bumblesimagines · 4 months

Text

Imagine:

Becoming a tribute alongside Glimmer

Request: Yes or No

First work of 2024!

~~~

When Scoria Spring's name had been plucked from the bowl of names, Glimmer's hand had been first to shoot up into the air, her lips breaking out into a wide, satisfied grin when District 1's escort, Brioche Wellbreeze, pointed her out amongst the other many female volunteers. Her blonde waves bounced against her shoulders as she headed up the steps and onto the stage, spinning on her heel to greet her classmates and friends with that familiar Glimmer smile. She'd been training all her life for this very moment, for the opportunity to win the Hunger Games and bring more glory to District 1.

Her eyes scanned the crowd of teenagers and children below, sending a smug yet fleeting smirk in Scoria's direction. Scoria wasn't meant for the spotlight anyway, not with her thin-as-paper lips, her awkwardly lanky figure or the thick mane-like hair she forced into a ponytail each day. No, the spotlight had been created for people like Glimmer. For people who'd grown up being called beautiful, for people who knew how to have others eating out of their hands with just a smile and wink, for those who could actually hit their targets during practice. Someone like Scoria would only make District 1 the laughingstock of this year.

Brioche reached into the bowl again, rummaging her hand around the slips until she pinched one with her fingers and tugged it out from the bottom. Her bright aqua-colored lips pulled into a smile and she stepped up to the mic, clearing her throat and finally looking down at the name on the paper. "Marvel Thorneworth." She announced. Glimmer recognized the name immediately. How could she not when his brother-

"I volunteer!" The familiar voice startled her enough for the smile on her glossy pink lips to falter, just for a split second before she noticed her expression on the screen and forced another smile on her face. Shit. It wasn't supposed to turn out like this. She was supposed to go to the Capitol and win the Hunger Games so that he would realize how much better than everyone else she was. He wasn't supposed to be her competition, no, he was supposed to be her future.

Glimmer's stomach withered when Brioche lifted her finger in his direction despite the number of other arms raised and voices shouting, begging to be picked. (Y/N) forced his way through the crowd and Glimmer squeezed her hands together, eyes following him when he made his way up the stage and stood beside Brioche. Where had the boy who'd always mumbled and grumbled about his distaste for the games gone? She craned her neck slightly to peek around Brioche and searched his face until he finally lifted his head, the grimace on his face speaking volumes. Shit.

"May the odds be ever in your favor!"

#x reader #x you #x y/n #x male reader #x male!reader #the hunger games #the hunger games x reader #the hunger games x male reader #the hunger games x you #the hunger games x y/n #the hunger games glimmer #the hunger games glimmer x reader #glimmer x reader #glimmer x male reader #thg glimmer x male reader #thg #thg glimmer x reader #thg marvel

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inklings-challenge · 7 months

Text

Genre Thoughts: Adventure

Chesterton famously said, "An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered," which suggests that adventure as a genre is less about the story elements and more about the attitude one takes toward them. Lots of genres can incorporate adventure, because adventure is largely defined by the tone. An adventure puts the characters in danger, but it gives the characters a chance to go exciting places and do exciting things, and generally takes an optimistic tone--this adventure is a good, exciting thing, and the characters are privileged to experience it.

Not that every adventure has enthusiastic and optimistic characters. Reluctant heroes are a staple of the adventure genre--someone who is pulled out of their comfortable life and into a realm of intrigue and danger. But the audience knows that the adventure, as inconvenient as it is, is a welcome escape from the safe routine of daily life, and will give the main character a chance to prove their mettle and become a hero.

Which makes adventure an ideal genre for promoting courage. Adventure lets the audience see that staying in their safe routine isn't always the best way to find happiness, that the problems in life can be opportunities, rather than inconveniences, if we take the right view of them, and have courage in facing them. As Christians, our life is an adventure that offers a lot of dangers and pitfalls, but also lots of opportunities for heroism.

As I said, almost any genre can incorporate adventure, but for Inklings Challenge purposes, we need to incorporate some type of fantasy or science fiction element. To differentiate it from the adventures that could be written by other teams--with their alternate universes or other planets--it could be best to try to keep the action largely focused on past, present, future, or an alternate Earth. Which still offers lots of opportunities for imagination. This is where writers can play with alternate history, steampunk, cyberpunk, dieselpunk (all sorts of -punks), fascinating future Earths, or even just someone in our ordinary world getting caught up, say, in a mad scientist's plot or involved in the political intrigues of elves. Your characters can go on Indiana-Jones-style quests, or Jules-Verne travel adventures, or anything else your imagination can think of!

Some types of adventure stories:

Mysteries

Spy stories

Thrillers

Quests

Treasure hunts

Superhero stories

Alternate history

Steampunk, cyberpunk, other "-punk" type universes

Dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction

Writing Prompts

A person living in an underwater colony on a future Earth goes on a quest to find lost technology that could save their home from destruction.

Someone gets a package with a invisibility cloak and uses it to go on the run from nefarious criminals who'd do anything to get their hands on it.

On a post-apocalyptic Earth, the leader of a peaceful settlement must decide whether to trust the stranger and accompany him on a quest to find a food cache that could get the village through the winter.

In a steampunk world, a dead inventor's notebook leads his son on a quest to find a rare element that could revolutionize airship technology.

A woman is mistaken for a lost elven princess and must evade those who would assassinate her.

#inklings challenge #team chesterton #genre: adventure #writing help

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runnning-outof-time · 1 year

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Free the Slave | Tommy Shelby x Reader

Request: no - written for @little-diable ‘s 14k Follower Celebration

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x Reader (AU)

Summary: (Y/N) becomes blinded by opportunity when mysterious preacher, Thomas Shelby, comes into her town that she doesn't see the bigger picture of what's going on at first. But when she’s shown it, she becomes even more intrigued.

Warnings: smoking, discussion of an attempted hanging, impersonation of a religious figure

Word Count: 3832

A/N: I’m…not exactly sure what this is. I struggled to write it because it’s so different from anything I’ve tried to write before, so I appreciate the challenge you posed, Chi (which congrats by the way 14 thousand followers is unreal!!) This is also the story that this moodboard was inspired by…I hope it lived up to the expectations. Enjoy! :)

A/N 2: the storyline in this is loosely based off of the show Damnation (which I really need to finish)…I pulled some plot points from it. It’s also inspired by KALEO’s song Free the Slave - I pulled a lot of the lyrics from the song and incorporated them into the story.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!

Comment/Message me if you’d like to be tagged in future stories similar to this one!

"Dark days are coming," Thomas Shelby spoke in a firm, ominous tone as he looked out at the people who had gathered before him, "whether you want them to or not. They're coming for you; coming for everyone in this room. You will have to make the choice on whether you want to fight or take shelter and hide. But before you choose, remember this: he who takes shelter is often forgotten about...it is the man who fights for what he believes in that gets to tell his tale," he paused then, hearing sounds of agreement coming from the crowd.

Hearing these reactions spurred him on. This was what he craved; the response from those who so easily subscribed to his word. He held a confident expression as he looked out at the congregation, which was still buzzing over the words that he said. He knew that he had them in the palm of his hand.

"Those dark days are almost here!" his voice cut through the talk of the crowd, bringing the attention back on him, "it will soon be time for us to stand up and fight for what we believe. The day of reckoning is almost here. So I ask all of you...is your conscience clear?" he ended by raising his eyebrows as he asked the question, panning across the crowd one more time. "Think on that," he left the crowd with a parting sentence, leaving his sermon open for the next time he'd step up on the pulpit and speak.

He stepped away from it and was immediately stopped by members of the crowd who were eager to talk about what had just been said. Tommy didn't say much. Instead he nodded along as he listened to the excited conversations; something inside of him churning as he realized just how into his word these people were. He'd never met a more receptive crowd in all of his travels.

A woman standing in the corner of the room caught his eye as he 'listened' to another person drone on about their take on his sermon. He could care less about how they received it. All that mattered to him was that they listened. But this woman...she interested him.

And she stuck around; waiting until all of the other churchgoers spoke to the man who'd just delivered a moving sermon before she decided to approach him herself. "Preacher Shelby," she started off as she stopped in front of him.

"Hello," he greeted her with a nod of his head.

"I was really moved by what you said in your sermon today," she said to him, and unlike all of the other conversations Tommy had stood through before this one, he listened, "people around here are too afraid to be upfront and confront their fate. What you said was right...we can't just let it overtake us. We must do something about it."

"I'm glad to hear that you found meaning in my sermon," Tommy started, a sense of poise in his voice, "too often people hear the truth and want to run away from it."

"I won't run from it," she told him in an assured tone, her words making a look of intrigue form on his face. There was something about this woman. "Preacher Shelby, I think I can help you," she said then, tilting her chin slightly upwards to show the confidence that she had.

"You think so?" he questioned her, his eyebrows raised. She only nodded, biting at her cheek to contain the grin that was threatening to form on her lips. "What's your name then?" he asked her, his lips parted slightly as he awaited her response.

"It's (Y/N)," she happily shared with him, "(Y/N) (Y/L/N)."

"Well, (Y/N)..." he started off, giving her a once over before continuing, "I look forward to speaking with you in the future."

"As I with you, Preacher Shelby," she allowed her grin to surface, and it stayed present on her face as she stepped backwards, leaving the conversation so that she could turn and exit the meeting house.

Tommy watched her leave, even more so intrigued now than he was before. He didn't get too long to look at her fleeting figure though as another man had approached him and wanted to get into the deeper meanings of what he'd just spoken about...oh if that man knew that there weren't any to begin with.

It took twenty minutes until he was finally able to leave the meeting house. His car was the only one left in the lot, which made the slip of paper sitting on the driver's seat catch him completely off guard. He instantly reached for his revolver that was tucked away inside his jacket, brandishing it and doing a sweep over the land; making sure nobody was waiting to ambush him.

He opened the car door once he found that the perimeter was clear, grabbing the paper and opening it. There were two sentences written on it: meet me by the riverside later on today...I have things to tell you. — (Y/N). Tommy pursed his lips together as he read the note over again. What things could she have to tell me? he wondered to himself, looking up again to make sure that he was still alone and hadn't been drawn into a trap. The land around him was still empty; no trap had been set, which meant that this woman actually wanted to talk with him. And he was interested.

He got into the vehicle after stuffing the note into his jacket pocket and started it before lighting himself a cigarette. He then took a long drag and exhaled the smoke slowly before putting the car into drive and leaving the lot.

——

(Y/N) was already sitting on one of the rocks positioned by the river when Tommy's car pulled up to where she told him to meet her. She watched as he shut off the engine and exited the vehicle. "I'm pleased that you showed up," she stated as he walked over to where she was sitting.

"I'm interested in what you had to tell me," he said to her, his statement holding truth. He was curious about her.

"Have a seat," she told him, moving over on the rock so that there was enough room for him to sit.

He nodded before sitting in the empty space. He looked at her then, and when she said nothing, he began speaking, "what is it that you wanted to tell me?" he asked, cutting right to the chase.

"I need your help," she kept her first statement vague.

"With what?" he took the bait, his eyebrows furrowing together as he asked the question.

"With what they've decided to do to a man in town," her answer was still vague.

"What are they doing with him?" he asked another question, his patience slowly wearing thin. She asked him to come out here...he shouldn't be the one prying for answers.

(Y/N) took a deep breath, ready to explain everything now that she saw he was genuinely interested in what she had to say. "You may or may not know that there's a strike happening in town. The men are protesting the low wages and terrible conditions. A man named Harvey was asked to come back...the bosses told him that they'd give him an increased pay if he broke the strike and returned. He's hesitant, but he has to...he's got two young children to feed and another on the way. His family couldn't keep living on nothing. He was desperate."

"The point of this is...?" Tommy trailed off, a slight amount of confusion present in his voice. Why was she telling him this?

"They're going to hang him, Preacher Shelby," she dropped the bomb, her voice dire, "he's an honest man, and yet they're going to hang him. They say he isn't guilty, but that someone still has to pay. And they won't be pleased until it happens because they want to make a statement...to show everyone what happens if you stray from the cause."

"Why're you sharing this information with me?" he asked her, still trying to figure out where he fit into this situation. Sure, it shocked him to hear that this innocent man was going to be hanged for trying to provide for his family, but at the same time he'd personally taken down men for far lesser offenses.

"Because they'll listen to you," she wasted no time in answering him, her eyes showing how much emotion she had invested into this predicament.

"How can you be sure that they will?" he asked her another question.

"I saw how they listened to you today, as you spoke about the dark days that are upon us. I saw how they lined up to speak to you afterwards. They were moved by your words. What you say holds weight in their minds. They'll surely listen if you tell them that what they're doing is unjust. You just need to get them to see sense," she continued with her pleas, making a strong case for why he should stop them.

Tommy took a deep breath, fingers itching to pull the pack of cigarettes out of his jacket so that he could let the smoke clear his mind. He had little care about these workers' movement...their struggle wasn't affecting him, so why should he go and stick his neck out for a man he'd never met? But yet (Y/N) pleas were weighing on his mind. He wondered for a moment if that was because they solidified the fact that his plan was working, or if it was simply because of the woman who was making them. He'd met few like her in all of his travels.

"Say you'll help me, Preacher Shelby," (Y/N) spoke again after a few silent moments had passed. Her voice had gotten even more desperate in the time that had passed without a decision being made. She hated that she was stooping this low to a man who she'd just met earlier that day, but she had exhausted all of her other options. "Say you'll help this honest man and his family."

"What'll be in it for me?" he asked her then, tilting his chin up slightly as he asked the question that had been burning a hole in his mind since she made her case. It had been hard for him not to ask this earlier...everyone was motivated by something after all.

"Anything," she blurted out without second thought, "I'll give you anything you'd want if you can help this man."

Tommy clicked his tongue at her words, shaking his head slightly. Stupid girl, he thought to himself, making foolish deals with people she hardly knows. "It isn't smart of you to put the word 'anything' out on the table, love," he told her, "someone might just hold you to it," his words were said as a warning, hoping to get her to realize what she'd done.

"I'm desperate," she didn't take it back.

"I can see," he pointed out.

"Will you help me, Preacher Shelby?" she asked him again, no care for his ominous comments present in her words.

She's persistent...I'll give her that, he thought to himself as he thought her statements over. It was unlike his choices in the past, but something was telling him to help her. "I'll help you," he made up his mind, his words making her grab onto his hand and squeeze it out of appreciation.

"Thank you so much, Preacher Shelby. You have no idea what kind of service you is doing for this man and his family," she said to him, sharing her praise for his decision, "thank you," she uttered her thanks and squeezed his hand one last time before letting it go and fighting the embarrassment that was bubbling up in her from making such a brash decision to grab him.

"When is this happening?" he asked her, now wanting more details about the event he'd agreed to stop.

"I...I'm not sure yet," she hesitantly answered him, sheepishness present in the apologetic smile she sent him. She didn't think she'd get this far.

Great, Tommy thought to himself, wanting to bring his hand to his face in frustration, I've agreed to this and she has no bloody clue of the finer details.

"I could get you the information though!" she jumped to tell him before he could back out of the deal. "I mean it, I can find everything out and tell you as soon as I have it," she added, her desperation present once again.

"Ok," he nodded, making her sigh in relief. She was happy to hear that he was still interested. "I'm staying at the inn; room 273. Come there when you find any information," he told her then, hoping that she wouldn't question the fact that he didn't have a permanent residence in the town.

"I will," she nodded as well, "thank you so much, Preacher Shelby," she expressed her gratitude once again.

"Thank me when it's over," he told her, his voice unintentionally holding a grim tone.

——

(Y/N) rushed down the hall of the inn, intently looking at each of the number plaques until she found the one she was looking for. She'd visited this room only a few days ago, but today it felt like she couldn’t get to it soon enough.

She knocked on the door the instant she got to it, and after trying four times, it opened. "Preacher Shelby," she panted, having not quite caught her breath yet, "thank you," she added once she trusted her voice again.

"For?" he asked with furrowed eyebrows, slightly surprised by seeing her at his door.

"You told me to thank you when it's over," she reminded him of their conversation by the riverside, "it's over, so thank you."

Tommy nodded as what they spoke about came back to him. "There's no need to thank me, love...they backed down quickly once I reminded them that judgment would be brought upon them and they would be condemned for hanging an innocent man," he gave her a rundown of how things unfolded.

"So you'll forgive them, Father?"

"Why?" Her question surprised him.

"Because they know not what they do...they're only working for their cause. My goal was to make sure that my brother stayed alive. I didn't want them to be condemned," she said to him, her stomach doing flips at the idea.

"Your brother?"

"That man was my brother," she told him, nodding slightly to accentuate her point. "You stopped them from hanging him. He was able to go back to his family because of what you said."

"Condemnation is up to God to decide," Tommy told her, "have a good day, (Y/N)," he moved to wrap up the conversation, starting to close the door between them.

(Y/N) stopped it before it could latch. "Wait, Preacher Shelby," she said, sticking her arm between the door and the frame.

"What?" Tommy asked as he opened the door again.

"I want to follow your cause...to help out in any way that I can," she said to him, her eyes locked onto his as she spoke.

Tommy furrowed his brows at her statement, letting it sink in before he stuck his neck out into the hallway so that he could look both ways; checking to see if it was clear. Upon finding it empty, he grabbed her forearm and ushered her into the room. (Y/N) gasped at the suddenness, but didn't try to pull away. Instead she followed him in, letting him shut the door behind her before he moved to lean against the chest of drawers sitting on the opposite side of the room. Nothing was said as he grabbed his pack of cigarettes and took one from it, rolling it across his bottom lip before bringing a lighter up to strike it.

(Y/N) watched as he took a drag and exhaled the smoke slowly, letting it billow out around his face. The way he looked at her from across the room made her shudder involuntarily. It seemed as though he was sizing her up, and he was now surrounded by a darker presence, one that she'd never aliken to a man of God. It confused her slightly, but overall made her more intrigued by him.

"Did you hear what I said before, Preacher Shelby?" she asked him, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. "I said that I want to be invested in your cause...to support you fully. I offered you anything in return for helping my brother, and that offer still stands, although I don't think I could ever be able to repay you for it."

"You don't want to do that, (Y/N)," he told her, speaking in a low voice that caused another shudder to course through her. She saw that he was now gripping the top of the dresser, his knuckles white.

"Why not?" she asked, playing the innocent part to continue to - hopefully - get more answers out of him.

"Because I'm not the man you think I am," he started vague, looking her over once before he continued, "I'm no preacher, and I'm certainly not one who's cause you should invest your time into."

"Why shouldn't I?" she asked another question, still not deterred by his ominous answers.

"I'm a bad man, (Y/N)," he admitted, pushing himself away from the dresser so that he could take a few steps in her direction.

"You saved my brother's life. You must not be so bad," she pointed out, not backing down from him even though he was becoming more daunting with each step he took in her direction. She wasn't afraid though. He almost wanted to laugh at how innocent she sounded.

"Words weren't what got your brother spared...it was my actions that did. I threatened those men; told them that they'd face a worse demise than the man they'd accused if they went forward with it," he told her of how things really went down, moving closer to her as he spoke.

"I don't care how you did it," she said to him, holding her ground.

"You should," he responded, standing toe to toe with her now.

"I don't," she insisted, taking a moment to look him over. She could see his striking blue eyes now. The ice in them was evident and staring into them did not reveal what he was thinking. It did make her more entranced by him though; she’d never seen eyes that blue in her life. "I'm tired of living this life...I'm tired of having no say. You accepted my invite, listened to me, and then brought justice where it was needed. That stands for something. I want you to free the slave in me; to free me from this hell that I've been tangled up in," she said then, her eyes staying locked with his as she watched them flit down to her lips before trailing back up. Seeing that made a fire ignite inside of her, "you don't scare me, Mr. Shelby," she said to him, dropping the religious title but still addressing him formally.

"I don't?" he asked her, his eyebrows raised as he held his intent gaze on her.

"No," she shook her head ever so slightly, a grin ghosting on her lips, "you excite me," she admitted then, her eyes locked with his, watching for how he'd react to her confession.

A grin teetered on his lips as he heard what she had to say. "Excite you?" he questioned, humming to himself before he continued, "I do bad things, (Y/N)...it'd be wise of you to rethink what you've said," he warned her.

"I said I'd give you anything," she reminded him, holding her ground even though she felt like she was going to combust on the inside. These things he was saying were meant to ward her off, but they only made her want him more.

She'd had her eyes on him from the moment she entered the meeting house he was speaking at. No man she'd met in the past had ever come close to the way he was making her feel at that moment. Her learning of his true persona made him even more enticing; now she was just waiting for him to make a move, because it seemed as though he was sizing her up in the way that she'd been doing to him.

His eyes roamed her face once more before he finally spoke again, his words cutting the tension like a knife, "so then tell me, (Y/N)...where's your savior now, eh?" he asked her, his eyebrows raising as he waited intently for her response.

"He's right in front of me," she wasted no time in telling him before she couldn't resist herself any longer and went forward with reaching over to take hold of the sides of his neck so that she could collide their lips together in a haste kiss.

It didn't take long for Tommy to take over, moving her back so that she was pressed against the door, his hands gripping onto her hips as he kissed her with the same amount of intensity that she was putting into her efforts. Her hands roamed up to his head, knocking the peaked cap off so that she could grip onto to the longer stands of his cropped haircut. They kissed until their lungs were burning, and (Y/N) was the first to pull back for air, giving him the opportunity to press a few kisses to her jaw.

"Is there something other than preacher that I can call you?" she panted out, bringing her knee up to brush against his thigh, her actions making him groan in response.

"Tommy," he shared his name in between the kisses he'd been pressing against her skin.

"Tommy..." she tried it out for herself, loving how it rolled off of her lips, "I said I'd give you anything, Tommy...just free the slave in me, please," she finished her statement with a satisfied sigh before his lips found hers again.

"Be careful what you ask for, love," he cautioned her, but his words fell on deaf ears as she was already too far gone to heed to the warning.

It was too late to turn back now. There wasn't anything that he could say or do that would make her stray from him. She realized that she was getting involved with a man who was surely closer to the devil than he was to God, and that notion alone excited her. She was invested, and he was going to free the slave in her...starting with making her feel things she'd never felt in her life.

Tagged: @mgcldydrms @the-anxious-youth @cloudofdisney @look-at-the-soul @elenavampire21 @mrsalwayswrite @julkaamazing @evita-shelby @lilyrachelcassidy @notyour-valentine @shelbydelrey @december16-1991 @onlydeadcells @peakyswritings @just-a-blackhole @watercolorskyy @strayrockette @peakyduchesss @alexxavicry @captivatedbycillianmurphy @yummycastiel @dark-academia-slut @tommystargirl @stevie75 @lyarr24 @signorellisantichrist @zablife @anotherblinder @midnightmagpiemama @cillmequick @rangerelik @dandelionprints @letal-y-poetica @itscheybaby @gypsy-girl-08 @insanitybyanothername @depxiety @raincoffeeandfandoms @dragons-are-my-favorite @acewritesfics @forgottenpeakywriter @cilliansangel @cljordan-imperium @areyenotfondofmelobster @little-diable

MASTERLIST

Listen to the song Free the Slave by KALEO HERE.

#tommy shelby #tommy shelby x reader #tommy shelby x y/n #tommy shelby imagine #tommy shelby oneshot #tommy shelby one shot #tommy shelby fanfic #tommy shelby fanfiction #peaky blinders #peaky blinders x reader #peaky blinders x y/n #peaky blinders imagine #peaky blinders one shot #peaky blinders oneshot #peaky blinders fanfic #peaky blinders fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfic

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f0point5 · 2 months

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whenever i hear about ocon's parents selling their house and living in a caravan (iirc) i just feel so bad for him. it really reminds me of all those traumatised child actors whose parents quit their job because the child can now be the breadwinner. obvs it's two complete opposite sides of the spectrum but both are such unfair sitautions to be put in as a child! esteban needing to succeed because otherwise his family would be broke forever?? (also i know that these decisions are often mentioned in a heart warming "oh look at how much my parents sacrificed for my dream" -way, but i find it so hard to look at it from a positive light. i'm sure they did it all out of love but i just can't imagine putting your child in such a tough position and putting that much pressure on them. i guess i just lack that top performance athlete mentality lol.) not to mention that most of these racing children hardly have a plan b career plan since they usually drop out of school. so now you have a kid who single handedly has to save the family from financial ruin AND has no safety net or plan b whatsoever. that's just insane and it's no wonder esteban is like that. he really has the ultimate rags to riches back story but his history gave him such a massive chip on his shoulder that he's just become unlikeable, which sucks!!! wish someone would grab his shoulders and shake him around a little and say: estieee!! youve made it!! stop driving like losing would full on kill you and just focus on getting the best out of the car and be the best you can be!! you'd think that someone with his backstory would be the last person who'd need to be humbled, but fucking hell he acts so smug and can be so delusional it's exhausting.

anyyyyways, apologies for dropping a full essay in your askbox, i don't even care about esteban lmao. it's just that whenever i do happen to think about him i just get so frustrated 🤷🏼‍♀️😬

have a lovely evening!! 💞

This.

I remember reading that once when I didn’t know too much about him and thinking, okay that’s a bit extreme. And then I thought about how much pressure that must have put on him. Pressure to succeed, but also just pressure in terms of that being not an ideal quality of life for a teenage boy. His parents made his life exponentially harder in every single way to support his hobby in the hopes that he could turn it into a career to support them. And then I thought about the fact that if he hadn’t been that 0.00001% that makes it, how much harder his life would have got, and how much guilt he would have lived with. They set him up to live with constant insecurity and instability, and to shoulder the burden of making that all worth it for them. Who does that to their child? I don’t care how talented you think they are, betting you’re financial security on that is imbecile behaviour. Even Esteban said if he were in his parents’ position he wouldn’t do it. Poor guy knows what it does to child.

It’s exactly like moving your kids to LA to be the breadwinner, except it’s worse because the amount of kids able to support a family on acting work is probably 10,000 times the the amount of drivers making enough money to support a family from driving alone. Statistically, there was a 0% chance that that gamble would pay off for them but they did it anyway. That’s worse odds than a slot machine. And they bet the house their son was living in?! Ew. Just ew.

And yeah, people say “look what my parents sacrificed for my dream” with affection when that dream has come true. But what would have happened if he hadn’t made it. “Look what my parents destroyed because they bet my future and theirs on my childhood hobby”. What in the damn hell. These stories are not in any way endearing to me - they’re just examples of narcissistic and irresponsible parenting.

And now I’ve just seen clips of a podcast he did talking about his childhood and I was almost tearing up for him. How he and his dad used to take tyres from the other kids’ karts out of the bins and reuse them because he didn’t have enough sets over a weekend, and how he didn’t go to birthday parties or on holiday because it was all focused on his racing. That’s a CHILD. And he was talking about how he and his dad would see Max and Jos and how everyone was intimidated by them but he and his dad weren’t…because they had literally bet their shirts on his career and couldn’t afford to be scared. That. Is. A. Child. What if he woke up one day and didn’t want to do it anymore? What if he wanted a life beyond what his parents chose for him by putting their lives on the line? Would he have been allowed to? I mean. No bloody words.

Again, anyone who says Jos is a problem father better be coming for the Ocons (and Anthony Hamilton).

The way he is is so clearly connected to the fact that he lived his whole life in survival mode. That guy moves through the world like the last meal he had was one he had to fight for in an abandoned warehouse. And fair enough it got him where he needed to go, but once you’ve made it, It’s the most unpalatable energy to be around, and it no longer serves you. And it also makes you look like an ass because how can you be a whole f1 driver and stink of desperation. Logically it’s clear why but it’s still just not a likeable combination. He probably knows that, but doesn’t know any other way to be. That’s why he has such an issue with teammates - he can’t not fight for things because he’s always scared someone is going to take something from him. He’s like a stray dog that you take in and they hide food in their bed because they think you might not ever feed them again.

I really hope he’s getting some therapy because the childhood is trauma-ing out in the open.

I think of everyone on the grid he’s the one I feel most sorry for, because of all the backstories that you hear, he seems the most unhealed.

But the levels of delulu is something else. That f3 season where he beat Max (racing for a top team while Max was in one that I don’t think had even won a race until Max won 10 in one season) really got him thinking they were on a level and he hasn’t let go of it since. He’s like “oh I look at it like I’ve never had the opportunity to go against Max because we’ve always been in different leagues of car”…as if there’s not a REASON. You’re out here like “he’s in a red bull” well why aren’t you? By your own admission you were on the same f3 track…helmut wasn’t looking for you bro.

Hope you don’t mind my essay back lol. I’m low-key obsessed with him because I find him so annoying but at the same time he’s like literary gold dust. He has such Main Character backstory. It’s just a pity he comes across so unlikeable to me. And the thing is, I genuinely think underneath it all he is a sweet person (delulu still, but sweet), but it just comes secondary to his survival mode personality.

#esteban ocon

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