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k-dokja · 2 years

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Thanks to you setting the lowest expectation for him when you decided to have a kid together, Jonggun somehow had managed to out-perform on every occasion where he was required to go above and beyond. You couldn't be more pleased.

Had anyone told you he'd have been an excellent father a few years down the line, you'd have laughed at them. Then, you laughed at him for good measure. The Park Jonggun you knew was one who cared little for anything except result, no matter what underlying sense of compassion or disfigured moral code he had.

He'd have been terrible as a father, you'd have thought, nurturing a child required patience and understanding. Jonggun had neither.

Then, for having that mindset, fate had decided you'd be the fitting candidate to be the mother of his child. Leave it to karma to ridicule you whenever it came to Jonggun and leave it to you to make bad decisions around him.

You'd never have thought he'd make it past his thirty, much less you'd be staying with him by then. In spite of every unimaginably horrible thing he did, somehow, Jonggun always came out triumphant.

Life had a wicked sense of humour.

His brand of triumph happened to come with a tiny human being when it came to you. Genetically spliced from your and his template. which meant there was about an even chance she'd turn out like either of you. From the bottom of your heart and for the greater good, you hoped your daughter would take more after you.

Yet, the reality was seldom giving and merciful. It was sooner or later that both of you had to show up at the principal's office for something your daughter had done. All because she took too much after her father. You always hated these formal meetings. Long, drawn-out conversations which could’ve conceded with a text message.

All of it was pretentious and tedious down the core. The only thing you could take from these events was an occasion to dress up. And if there was anything you could say about Jonggun during these occasions, it was that he made everything look nice. Even while the two of you sat in front of the principal’s desk, awaiting for further development.

You sighed audibly, hoping it would transmit your displeasure to Jonggun. He didn't even dignify you with a glance of acknowledgement. The gall.

"I cannot believe she'd actually get us called to the principal office," you decided to voice your grievance out loud. "This is your fault for teaching her how to fight this young."

"She's eight, that's old enough," Jonggun shrugged, "I'm surprised we didn't get called earlier."

"Didn't mean you should egg her on to deal with everything using violence either," you sniped, "that's the problem with you men, you think every problem is a nail you can use a fist to hammer down."

In spite of the open airing of your grievance, he continued to remain nonchalant. "It can be if you're strong enough," Jonggun replied matter-of-factly.

You couldn't stand him. Not without great effort. "Listen here—"

"Mr and Mrs Park," the principal arrived in time to diffuse your rising anger. Immediately, your previous aggression vanished and got replaced with a pleasant smile, far too theatrical for your own good.

No need to antagonize the woman, but you didn't sit well with misinformation. "Not Mrs park," you corrected her demurely, "we're not married."

"Hmph, of course," the woman snorted, much to your aggravation. "that explained why your daughter behaved the way she did."

"Excuse me?" You were appalled by her apparent slight but kept your smile on, all the while shooting a glance back at Jonggun to confirm if he heard what she said.

He did.

"it's obvious that Ms Hwayoung's outlandish behaviour, committing violence against her classmate, talking back to her teacher, all stemmed from her parents' negligence." the principal droned on, uncaring for the brimming rage surfacing in your eyes. "If you had disciplined your daughter better instead of spoiling her with unnecessary material goods, she'd have learned better to behave in public instead of acting like she's above everyone."

Jonggun, on another hand, continued to hold his composure. In fact, he even went on ahead and pulled out his cigarette from inside his jacket and lit it the moment the principal finished talking, undeterred by her look of horror.

Finally, he breathed out a long, undiluted cloud of smoke. "She's eight," Jonggun said, "couldn't you at least figure out the context of her actions before wasting our time by calling us up here?"

The principal opened her mouth to talk again, insulted by his openly flippant attitude. Just then, you noticed. the strain of prominent vein on his neck. He was mad mad. It was for the best that you let him handle this unless you wanted another altercation.

"From what I heard from my daughter, the teacher had violated our family's privacy by talking disrespectfully about her mother in front of the whole class," Jonggun continued, "as for the fight, it stemmed from the bullying led by her classmates for the personal business of our family which was disclosed by the teacher."

Your eyes widened when you looked at him. Hwayoung had not told you anything about this. How did you not know? "She didn't tell me anything," you gaped, "why didn't she tell me?"

"Because they used very colourful terms to describe you," Jonggun inhaled another smoke, "she didn't want to upset you by letting you know about it."

That made you a little teary-eyed. in spite of the current circumstance, that was.

While you clutched your heart in admiration of how great your own parenting went, Jonggun fixed his attention back to the principal, his smile was insidious. "As we are speaking, my lawyers are already working on the case on the count of defamation," he said, "I'm only here today to talk about her pending transfer. Let's make this easy and painless unless you wanted our case to have even more evidence against you."

"Ah, I did so well with Hwayoung," you sniffed a little, wiping away an imaginary tear, "I will have to buy her that plush toy she wanted later."

"We'll do it after we're done here," Jonggun turned his eyes to you for once, "I surmised that the necessary paperwork won't take long?"

That was a question aimed at the principal. Newly recovered from her shock, she only managed to mutter a few unintelligible words before a full sentence was formed. "Y-Yes, let me retrieve her records."

"Go on then," Jonggun nodded towards her as the woman scurried out of the office again, whatever conversation that was meant to have got cut short. his eyes met with yours. "Still think it's my fault?"

"Meh, you get a pass this time." You waved him away, elated by the newfound information. "We should take her to Lotte World after this."

"Mhm."

Truly, he really always did flex his muscles when it was needed. If only he did it this way instead of using his actual muscles more often.

#park jonggun x reader #park jonggun #lookism #lookism x reader #fics

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therealvalkyrie · 3 years

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exactly the spring

Pairing/setting: Ushijima Wakatoshi x Fem!Reader, college!AU

Summary: Reserved biology student Ushijima finds himself falling in love when you, an adorably disorganized art student, wander into the greenhouse.

Word Count: 3.4k

Warnings: fluff, kissing

AN: Hi!! So, the inspiration for this one sprang from the beautiful, sexi brain of Emme ( @doinmybesthere ) way back in MARCH ahem anyway, it's done! I hope it's just as soft and intimate as you envisioned<33 Also, big shoutout to my beautiful friends Arobi ( @daqueenobooty ) and Cee ( @spacelabrathor ) for being wonderful betas and giving me such kind comments:) I hope you enjoy, and as always don't be shy about leaving comments or coming to chat! Be kind to yourselves and others. ~valkyrie

p.s. check out this amazing art that @/54prowl made of plant boy ushi!! :D

Plants don’t talk back, Ushijima learned as a toddler. He’d babble to them in nonsensical phrases as his mother worked in the garden, and they’d only sway in the wind and listen, waxy under his chubby fingers.

A volleyball doesn’t talk back, either, not even through its bounces and echoes on hands and hard surfaces. It doesn’t listen as easily as plants, but can be herded and shaped like putty into a winning thing if you touch it right. This, Ushijima learned at his father’s hand and carried with him through childhood and adolescence.

The joy and puzzlement of you is that you do both. You listen so intently and openly with your steady eyes and soft body as the words pour out of him. And then, you reply. With your clear voice and new perspective, you offer something new. You offer companionship.

It was the second week of spring semester that you wandered into the greenhouse, eyes lit by the sun and sketchbook under one arm. Ushijima was repotting a large fern, dirt up to his elbows as he kneeled on the floor. He barely gave you a second glance, preoccupied with nestling the plant’s root system comfortably.

You settled a short distance away, crossing your legs to sit on the tile floor in front of an orange tree to sketch its still-closed flower buds with charcoal pencils. He kept working as you did, the sun sliding across glass, shadows shifting into the early evening of winter. When the sun was threatening to set over the city skyline — even with the greenhouse where it sits on the roof of the biology building — he turned to tell you he was closing up, only to find you gone. In your place, sitting on the wooden table that held newly planted basil and sage, was a drawing.

It was a single branch, detailed in shades of charcoal down to the last dewdrop. At the bottom, looping handwriting scrawled, “thank you for the peace.”

That night, he tacked it up above his desk in his dorm next to the postcard from Tendō and hoped you’d come back.

And you do, a couple of days later, on a Saturday. He looks up from where he’s filling in the logbook, this time, catching your gaze and holding it for a moment before you break away to survey the room. Today, he thinks you looked breathtaking. You’re wearing a long, flowing skirt and a sweater that makes him want to feel how soft it is, and how soft you are in it, and by the time his brain catches up with his thoughts, he’s been staring too long and your eyes have wandered back to him. It’s raining, today — it never really snows in this city, he’s learned — and shadowy droplets play across your face as they drip down the greenhouse’s arched glass ceiling, highlighting the curve of your cheekbone and making your eyes glow softly.

He clears his throat and looks back to the thick spiral-bound book on the table before him. Sometimes, when he meets people for the first time, he knows he can come across as intimidating. That worked out for him in high school and on the volleyball court, but in his adulthood, it’s been more of a hindrance than a help. It makes it… difficult to make friends here, where he doesn’t already know anyone.

And the last thing he wants is to scare you away. The last thing he wants is to break the peace you’ve apparently found here.

Which is why he barely dares to breathe when he looks up to find you approaching him where he’s perched on a sturdy wooden stool.

“Hi,” you smile and lilt, and god if it isn’t the most beautiful word Ushijima’s ever heard, if it isn’t the prettiest smile he’s seen.

He doesn’t respond, doesn’t want to scare you away.

“Uhm,” you start again, when the silence makes it clear he’s waiting for you to speak, “I have an art assignment,” you start digging around in your shoulder bag as you speak, “to draw a, um, what’s it called?”

“I don’t know.”

You pause in your rifling and pin him with such a sunny smile it makes his knee start bouncing. And you laugh, too, which officially replaces your “hi” as the most beautiful sound in the world.

“Ha, you’re funny,” you resume digging, “it was um, pretty leafy and... tropical, I think? Oh! Here.” Triumphantly, you produce a wrinkled paper from your bag. It’s the first imperfect thing Ushijima’s found out about you, that you’re shit at keeping your belongings organized, and he files it away for later reference. You hold the paper in front of your face and squint slightly to read in the shifting light. “Canna indica.”

Canna indica, native to tropical climates, notable as a minor food crop for South American Native populations for thousands of years.

“And I was told that you have it, here, in the greenhouse.”

Ushijima nods and finds himself relieved that this is what you’re asking him. Plants, he can do.

“We do. Would you like me to show you?”

“Yes, please,” you also sound relieved, like he’s provided the solution to every problem you’ve ever had.

He unfolds himself from the stool, setting down his pen as he goes. You take a step back and look up at him mildly, as though you hadn’t realized quite how huge he is.

“This way,” he indicates, leading you deeper into the maze that is the biology department’s greenhouse. The winding path back to the tropical room gives him a moment to sink back into the earthy peace of being here, even if now there’s someone sharing that peace.

The temperature change from the warm main greenhouse to the balmy tropical room prompts Ushijima to shed his flannel outer layer, hanging it on the nail hammered by the door while you step in behind him.

“Whew,” you exhale, shrugging off your soft cardigan as well, “it’s hot in here.”

Ushijima hums in agreement and tries not to look too hard at the patch of skin revealed by your cropped tank top. Canna indica isn’t too far into the room, so he just gently moves past draping leaves and ceramic pots.

“Here,” he stops, holding back leaves for you. He stops breathing again when you duck under his arm and end up so close in the narrow aisle that he can smell your shampoo. The moment passes, and he can breathe again when you breeze past him and squat down to peer at the bright, waxy red leaves of your subject.

“Beautiful,” you murmur, and he silently agrees.

You’re leaning so close to the plant he’s afraid you might topple over when you make a noise of realization and sit back on your butt to rifle through your bag once again. Ushijima knows he should probably leave you to it, but he’s glad he waited just an extra minute when you pull out a pair of glasses and pop them on your face. Adorably.

“That’s better.” You’re looking back at canna indica, now, at a normal distance.

He’s figured you’ve forgotten he’s there when you start to pull out pastels from your seemingly bottomless bag, so he turns to leave you.

A soft, “hey,” calls him back to you, however, and he’s met by your face glowing eerily in the shifting rain-light. “Thank you for your help.”

“You’re welcome.”

When he locks up that afternoon, he finds another charcoal drawing waiting for him on the table near the door, this time of his favorite agapanthus africanus. No note, this time, but he attaches all the sounds he heard from you today in its place. He also finds your cardigan forgotten next to where you were sitting and carefully folds it for when you come back.

The drawing joins the orange branch on his wall-- an odd starter garden, he thinks, but all the more precious because it came from you.

The next time he sees you isn’t in the greenhouse, but instead at a cafe a couple of blocks away, two weeks later. He’s walking past, gym bag slung over his shoulder, when he hears your laugh ring out across the outdoor seating area. His eyes find you, head tipped back in sending peals of mirth into the lively spring air. It’s the first truly warm day of the season, though you and your companion are the only patrons sitting outside, and the sun catches on your glasses sat atop your head.

Your friend says something apparently hilarious, because your giggles redouble, and an honest-to-god snort pushes out of your nose. Ushijima catalogues it in his ever-growing list of sounds you make, and pauses at the crosswalk, halfway turned back to keep one eye on you and one on the light. If you were alone, he might’ve approached you and told you that he still has your sweater in the greenhouse, waiting on a shelf between succulents, but he doesn’t want to interrupt your— date?

He isn’t sure, but the person sat there with you seems like someone you might date. Clearly also an art student, judging by the carefully disheveled blue hair and combat boots. Are you the type to date someone with blue hair? Unlikely, he decides. You seem too… bright. Too floaty to be so concerned with looking like you don’t care how you look.

Ushijima’s still debating whether you find blue hair attractive when the crosswalk light begins its countdown and he starts across the street. And he almost makes it all the way across, too, when a voice calls—

“Wait! Hey!”

He turns partially because it sounds urgent enough that it might be an emergency, and his grandmother would roll in her grave if he remained a bystander to some horrific accident. But it’s you, standing up from your seat and waving him back over. He glances at the crosswalk countdown, which lights up red as it ticks from four to three, then turns and jogs back towards you, waving a hand apologetically to the cars waiting at the light. You meet him at the metal fence around the cafe seating area, and now that you’re standing, he can see you’re wearing a yellow sundress that cuts off at your calves and drapes over your hips like the fabric was spun from pure light.

“Hello.” Ushijima talks first this time because if he doesn’t refocus his brain on something else he knows he won’t be able to stop staring.

“Hi! Sorry about that, uh, and I’m sure you have places to be, but, um, did I leave my cardigan at the greenhouse? I can’t find it, and I know I have a tendency to forget things, so,” you finish with a laugh, one hand fiddling with the rings on the other.

“Yes, you did. I put it on a shelf in case you came back.”

“Oh! That’s great!” You sound relieved, and Ushijima’s suddenly very grateful he didn’t take it down to the bio department’s lost and found like they’re technically supposed to. “Is there maybe a time I can come pick it up? When you’ll be there?”

“I’ll be there all day tomorrow, opening at nine.”

He can’t tell if he sounds a little too eager, and he’s about to soften his meaning by telling you that they’re open today, too, and anyone can hand you a sweater, but you’re already smiling big and sunny and telling him,

“I’ll see you at nine, then. Do you drink coffee?”

He doesn’t; his coaches have always told him that caffeine can only harm his athletic performance.

“Yes, I do.”

“Then I’ll see you at nine, with coffee.”

Ushijima says goodbye and turns to wait at the crosswalk again while you swirl your way back to your seat and pick up your conversation with your friend. He can feel two pairs of eyes on him as he crosses the street, red numbers blinking down from ten, and can’t help but turn to look back as he steps onto the opposite sidewalk. Where your friend tactfully looks down into their cup of tea, you catch his eye with yours and wave. He lifts his hand halfway in a goodbye before an eighteen-wheeler stops at the intersection and blocks you from him.

Ushijima’s normal work attire is typical of an average agricultural biology student accustomed to being up to their elbows in dirt every day: practical cargo shorts, dirt-stained but sturdy sneakers, a “plant dad” t-shirt (a gift from Tendō when they’d said their goodbyes and gone away to college), and a soft cotton flannel. He’s usually satisfied with this for his shift at the greenhouse, expecting to be mud-covered at least up to his wrists by the end of the day.

But today… Today, he pauses in the dorm bathroom to scrub his face raw, and he clips and shapes his nails like his mother used to do for him every Saturday. He normally only does it before tournaments, now, and it calms his nerves to feel prepared for a Big Event, even if that event is only handing you your gently pilled cashmere cardigan and receiving a coffee he won’t drink in return.

The air that morning is heady with spring, earthy and alive, reminding Ushijima of lying beneath the hedge along his mother’s garden to pass notes to the girl next door. He was seven and she was nine, so naturally she knew everything he didn’t. She knew about the planets and why worms live in dirt and how to spell the word “catastrophe,” and Ushijima would’ve bet his whole weekly allowance that she was the coolest person in the world, if he knew what betting was. (She did, and once bet him half an ice cream sandwich that he couldn’t climb the oak tree in his backyard all the way to the top. He did, and then twisted his ankle on the way down, and she brought him an ice cream sandwich every day for a week as an apology.) She was all shiny, long black hair and dark eyes and fast words, nothing like the spring blooming around him.

You, on the other hand, are exactly the spring.

He stops at his favorite pastry place on the way to work to pick up two fresh cream donuts. The line is just dwindling from the height of the morning rush, so he manages to make it to the biology building just five minutes before he normally does.

Morning sun sends rainbows through the automatic misting spray as Ushijima unlocks the greenhouse door, letting a burst of humidity out into the rest of the building. The spiral-bound log book is there on the desk, a thick parchment bookmark sticking out from where whoever closed last night marked the page.

Ushijima places his backpack and pastry bag on the desk and reaches to hang his key on its hook just when there’s a knock on the door.

“I know I’m early,” you start, edging your way into the room with a paper coffee cup in each hand. “But I saw it was already open, so...”

Ushijima smiles despite himself. In their second year Oikawa Tooru had told him that his smiles can be unnerving, but he can’t help it right now. You look so lovely today, in jeans and a silky tank top, with a certain morning tenderness in the way you hold yourself.

“It’s okay, come in. I just need to check the temperature controls and I’ll be done opening.”

“Sounds good,” you reply, smiling back.

As he makes his way to the temp controls on the Southern wall, you perch on the wooden stool and set down the coffee.

With his back turned to you for a moment, you allow yourself to slouch, planting two hands on the table and stretching your shoulders with a sigh. It’s earlier than you normally get out of bed, let alone actually leave your apartment, and you can already feel a quiet exhaustion setting into your bones.

But this is worth it, you remind yourself. Worth it to talk to the beautiful boy with broad shoulders and gentle hands.

He’d been unexpected. That first day in the greenhouse, you’d sat down with the intention to calm down from a tedious school day and nothing more. Your hands had moved of their own volition on that second drawing of the orange branch, scribbling out a hasty message that made your cheeks burn. But he was so present that day, in the corner of your eye but staying respectfully out of your space. And you’re not blind -- you saw the muscles under his shirt as he lifted an entire small tree in its pot. You saw the startling shade of green his eyes took on in the sun. You saw it all, and it drew you back, and now you’re here.

When he joins you back at the table, leaning back against it to face you, you stick out your hand and offer your name.

He looks at it for a moment, then back at you.

“I just, uh, realized we never properly introduced ourselves,” you explain, with a hesitant smile.

He smiles again and your heart thuds, then his big hand engulfs yours and he shakes it firmly.

“Wakatoshi. It’s nice to meet you.”

You learn in the following weeks of coming to the greenhouse that Wakatoshi doesn’t like coffee. But he does like tea and donuts, so that’s what you bring him on the mornings you can find it in you to wake up before nine. You sit with him in the greenhouse, talking and listening as he records data and waters plants and sits next to you on the quilt you’ve fallen into the habit of bringing. The occasional professor or student comes through, and you get to watch Wakatoshi show off his brains when he leaves you to help them.

There are several things you learn about him over those weeks. Number one: he never minces words. Two: he prefers grapefruit chapstick over anything else. And three: he kisses like it’s his last day on Earth.

You discover number three late one night when you decide to drop by after class, shooting him a text to make sure he’s still there. Today he’s closing instead of opening, and you missed spending your morning with him.

The city lights cast a different kind of glow at this time of night. They add a distance to everything that’s palpable as you drop your bag by the door.

“Toshi, are you here-- oh, hi.” You turn the corner to find him closing the door to the supply closet.

His cheekbones are highlighted briefly by a billboard outside flashing red.

“You should get some sleep.”

“I’m not tired. And I wanted to see you.”

“You wanted to see me?”

He takes a step towards you and you have to tilt your head back slightly to keep your eyes on his. They’re leaf green and unreadable.

“Yeah, uh,” you wet your lips with your tongue, “is that okay?”

“Yes.” He pauses for a long time, then, watching you carefully in the neon glow of the exit sign. His hand shakes as it reaches up to push your glasses from your face onto your head.

Without them, he looks fuzzy and soft around the edges.

He says, “Can I kiss you?” and it feels like there’s a bird trapped in your ribcage.

“Yes. Kiss me.”

Wakatoshi kisses nothing like you expected, all tongues and teeth and heavy fingers in the dip of your waist. He growls when you gasp and mewl against him, sucking on your lower lip as your hands find purchase in his shirt. He kisses you so absolutely breathless that you think you might pass out. Your knees buckle and you pull away, gasping with your eyes closed for a moment until you come back to yourself.

“Are you alright, little one?”

The endearment makes your cheeks flush with heat and your eyes snap open.

“Yes, I’m alright. Please do it again.”

And so he does it again, and again, and again until you find yourself bringing him home with you on the last bus that goes towards your neighborhood. He’s standing in the aisle, one hand wrapped around a pole and the other wound around you, who’s standing in front of him. He keeps you steady as the bus rounds a corner.

That night, you bring the peace of the greenhouse into your home, and the only thing you find yourself wishing for is that it never leaves.

#ushijima wakatoshi x reader #ushijima x reader #ushijima x fem!reader #haikyuu!! x reader #haikyuu!! fanfic #hq fanfic #valkyrie writes #exactly the spring #haikyuu fluff #ushijima fluff #don't look at me i'm posting this early bc i'm IMPATIENT #*sobs*

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t-l-machine · 2 years

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Even the best-laid schemes go awry

{Elden Ring Spoilers}

There is strong evidence that Marika planned to buck the influence of the Greater Will. The Tarnished are part of that evidence, but some people overestimate Marika's ruthlessness I think.

Planning the brutal half-assassination of your golden child sends a message, sure. It just makes more sense to sacrifice an Emperyan (?) offspring if that message is "reject the Greater Will."

Rather than Marika participating in her son's murder as a precedence for shattering the Elden Ring, would his death at the hands of another child not be the trigger?

Imagine you are Marika. Your life has been blessed with power, but you've also been dictated by the will of something else. It's a Faustian bargain that's cost you your autonomy. Now imagine that your own daughter kills herself and her brother to escape the same fate.

That's just devastating isn't it?

And if you're Marika, you deal with heartbreak the same way you solve all your problems: you look for a nail to take a hammer to. She waged war to assert her rule, so she declares war on the Greater Will by smashing its symbol of power (and possibly herself). And if you're Radagon, you realize that war will take more from you than it gives. You mend the Elden Ring as best you can, just like you mended relations with the Carrions, because you have the well being of still-living children to think about.

The tragedy is those progeny followed your and Ranni's example. They used the opportunity to wage war on each other because they're too much like you.

Marika lived in the shadow of a cosmic tyrant. This is fairly certain I believe. It was her own mistakes catching up to her that destroyed her family though.

my one disclaimer in all of this is i am still in the process of finishing the game

i may change my mind on things in the future, but understanding marika requires extending grace (heh) her way and seeing her as a person

#elden ring #elden ring spoilers #radagon of the golden order #radagon #queen marika #marika #queen marika the eternal

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opbackgrounds · 2 years

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I question the wisdom of threatening anyone who you have to stand on a table to see eye to eye with, particularly when that person still has to sit down for to manage even that.

One of the things that makes Spandam so immensely hateable is that he’s a one trick pony, a man with only a hammer who sees all of his problems as nails to be smashed down with the most violence possible. This is his first time meeting Tom, they’ve been talking for only a short time, and since he’s not immediately given what he wants, Spandam resorts to this kind of behavior.

It’s very telling that after this conversation Spandam immediately jumps to the plan that will cause the largest amount of suffering and loss of innocent life, and nothing about that changes by the the time he gets his hands on a Buster Call

#opbackgrounds #one piece #ch355 #spandam #character analysis #backstory shenanigans

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shesinmy · 2 years

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I love your jjk cast headcanons sm. I’m partly deaf and would love if you did jjk x deaf reader.

JJK WITH DEAF S/O

1. Gojo Satoru: he knows sign language, so communicating was never a problem with him. The problem is the stupid things he tells you when he notices that those around can't understand you two. Always trying to scare you, but always fails because he is a heavy walker.

2. Nanami Kento: he asks for your help to learn sign language. He is always looking out for you trying to know when you feel uncomfortable and prevent it from happening or perpetuate. He sees you as the strongest person he knows. Don't let Gojo know though.

3. Itadori Yuji: you have to tell your story over and over again for him to understand why/how you are death. He tries to learn sign language but he can't, poor dumb thing. It isn't a problem since he expresses himself wildly. He is really easy to read.

4. Fushiguro Megumi: he learns sign language and researches everything about what it means to be deaf. He loves to learn how you listen to the world and he asks you to show him how you do so. He is proud of how you come through to every obstacle and is as independent as anybody else.

5. Kugisaki Nobara: well, another one that is very expressive. So, at the beginning, she is dumbfounded of how easily you understand her even without actually listening. If anyone makes fun off you, she just puts her hammer out giving them a deadly look. "What about I nail your stupid mouth?".

6. Inumaki Toge: even though he can't speak freely, he never used sign language before. It was knew to him, but also fun. Because of it, he can fully communicate with you and that makes him so happy. Anytime he wants to catch your attention, he pokes your cheeks rhythmically what leaded you to start learning and using Morse code as well.

7. Okkotsu Yuta: first thing he did was to learn sign language. Always asks for your advice and gets extremely flustered when you touch his hands with your delicate fingers. He loves to learn how you listen to music and he is always coming with new songs to see your reactions to them. When walking around the street, he never lets go of you.

I saw that are different types of death and each has it's own frequencies that are inaudible. It also varies the speech depending from these inaudible frequencies. I made this one more general in an attempt to embrace all those differences. Hope I managed it, also because I learnt from this previews research that being death is different from not being able to hear. Thank you so much, dear!

#jjk headcanons #jjk x reader #jujutsu reader #jujutsu headcanons #gojo x reader #nanami x reader #itadori x reader #megumi x reader #kugisaki x reader #inumaki x reader #okkotsu x reader

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aiweirdness · 3 years

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AI Doesn't Understand Scale

One of my favorite ways to mess around with text-generating AI is to see what it does with new games that didn't exist on the internet back when its training data was collected.

OpenAI's GPT-3 models were trained with data that cut off in late 2019 which means that they're unaware of certain major world events, as well as of the latest internet memes.

Recently someone posted this hilarious bit of startup advice that had people posting terrible advice of their own:

I guessed that even if a neural net like GPT-3 can't possibly have seen this meme before, it would still be capable of giving terrible startup advice. So, I entered the entire above sequence of brilliant entrepreneurial moves as prompt text, preceded by the word [tomatoes] in brackets to help indicate this was supposed to be a short thing about tomatoes. Then I wrote "[" and let it write a short thing about something else.

DaVinci

Unsurprisingly, the largest GPT-3 variant was the best at catching on to the format. It made the leap that you could amplify eggs in a similar way. And you end up making $1 million on each egg!

[eggs] Same as the tomatoes. Eggs sell for $1 each. He uses 39 chickens to make a dozen eggs in 9 minutes. One hen can lay 355 eggs in 355 days. That’s 11.844 muffins a day. 9:11AM go to the best grocery store in town and buy ALL THE CHICKENS. Keep your receipt. 9:19AM - you take $9.8MM and buy back all your chickens. 9:30AM bring the chickens home. 9:39AM - sell the chickens back to the store for $9.8MM Speculation in eggs prices rises dramatically. If you buy all the eggs, you can sell them back and make $1MM on each egg.

Object permanence is not a strength of DaVinci's - keeping track of the status of physical objects isn't really in its job description. Its world is text.

[wigs] You don't understand scale. Buy one $50 wig. Use it for 6 months until it breaks. Throw it away. Buy another $50 wig. Use it for another 6 months until it breaks. Throw it away. Repeat until you have 182 wigs. Sell them for $50 each.

GPT-3 DaVinci does at least realize that you should end with profitable things happening.

[hammer & nails] You don’t understand scale. Use $100 to buy a hammer. Use the hammer to build with 4 nails. Burn the nail building for warmth. Repeat indefinitely.[chocolate milk] 1 cow gives 160 glasses of chocolate milk per day. A single glass sell for 10k. Lots of profit.[fork] You don’t understand scale. Buy 3 forks. Solve any problem that takes less than 3 forks.

Ada

I also turned to the smallest GPT-3 variant, Ada. It caught onto the format only partially. It got that it was supposed to be about tomatoes. And possibly about money?

[tomatoes] Use $1 to buy 1.5MM tomatoes.[Tomatoes] Do you intend to build a city? ?" Build $500,000 lots and then sell $1,000,000 lots. You want a house outfitted with 50 toilets, 50 outdoor shower systems along with 132 rooms.[tomatoes] They are botanical machines. Of all the tomato varieties, they only grow once! Traversing is their way of existence. They do this every day. They can do "rainbow fruit trees", making "green smoke and crumble flower."

Had I not stopped the generation process, I'm not sure how long Ada would have continued this next one. When people talk about researchers shutting down their AIs because of an unwanted outcome, this is often the kind of thing they mean.

[tomatoes] You don't understand that it's basically the same thing as a bowl of cereal. Potatoes in a can. Pour the potatoes into 35 quart jugs and fill jugs to the brim. Whisk soapmaker. In little tub layers stout ash alum pot paper. Divide into four equal parts of qt and rl into segments measuring 3.2 cm by 0.8 cm. Wash wire wool in 80-95% dewashed water and rinse under tepid water. Prepare three inches of hot coals, gently heat in center of stove 4 inches deep. Roll up soap in crinkly napkins two times to fit into form according to volume-diameter. To remove bubble wrap insert aprons. Heat a small hole as necessary per each pot. Dip each slip to the brush onto each pot, then collect the whole wrap under the string from the soap's top to bottom. Crackfish, partially hulled and cut to about 3 cm across, on an upright flake computer of sufficient volume. Measure and cut parts of soap into even thickness, add by 1 cm to diameter of each bowl. Take soap left out to apartments with sheets and wrap it up in a towel. Fill Sanitary Pail with clay pot suders, layers clay that been finished of three times, each surface 3 cm thick, to the top of the pails. Split soap in half 3 cm ¼ x 0.7 cm just below bottom of tub. Fill bathtub lengthways and level with edge. Lay soap at 4 cups depth, with top down. In the dryer attach film and cling wrap, then lay sheet-hooks 1.6 cm apart on the film. Place plastic apple cores on top of film. Lay film and cardboard pails on top of each other. Cap and secure, then dry for 7-10 days.

If you don't do the entire list, are you really cut out to be an entrepreneur?

I also decided to see what the two midsized GPT-3 models did with this startup advice. Become an AI Weirdness supporter to read the results as bonus material! Or become a free subscriber to get new AI Weirdness posts in your inbox.

#neural networks #gpt-3 #startup advice #you don't understand scale #tomato #bad advice #Sanitary Pail #Heat a small hole as necessary per pot #any problem that takes less than 3 forks #dewashed water

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introloves · 4 years

Text

— voyeurism + soft dom! bokuto + edging + mutual masturbation + size kink + orgasm denial + squirting + cum play + lots n lots of cum + friends 2 lovers <3 + fluff at the end + f! reader

— word count; 2.3k

bokuto thinks it’s absolutely unfair.

unfair that he can hear you through the thin walls, fucking yourself, trying to hide those pretty noises leaving your mouth with every good hit inside your undoubtably pretty cunt.

it’s unfair that he can’t go over to your room and help you out, he’d do anything to get you to cum, by the sounds of it you’re having a hard time getting there- like there’s something weighing heavy on your mind. but he knows he’d be able to, he’d slave away at your pussy for hours to make sure your gushing down his cock, mouth, fingers, thighs, just anything.

every desperate little huff of air he can hear you make when you can’t reach your peak makes him grip the cock he’s been fist fucking along to you, tightly against the base. making sure to stop and relax, careful not to blow his load when you can’t.

it’s frustrating, he can hear you shuffling around your bed, getting in a new position to fuck yourself. probably thinking that this time you’ll get it right.

the tip of his dick is a purpling color, it hurts.

but he tries to reason with himself, if he’s using your sounds, your image to get off without you knowing, at least he can hold off for you, wait until he hears you whine high and desperate, wait until he hears the shaking of the bed smack against the wall- it helps him picture your cunt contract and wet itself, drip down those thighs he wants to be inbetween.

you start once more, the soft creaking of the bed giving away the full picture of what you’re doing to yourself inside the safely of your room.

“fuck, fuck! she’s humping her pillow isn’t she.” bokuto thinks outloud, a shaky hand coming up to his forehead, sweeping his hair back from a sweaty hairline.

hips move involuntarily at the image, smacking against the palm he had resting against himself, fingers tightening more and more around his dick. it’s jumping freely in the air, throbbing with each contraction of his balls. dribbles of precum hit his thigh, soiling himself in even more of it.

“it’s okay,” he thinks, the painful burn of keeping his orgasm at bay is punishment for what he’s doing.

this time you last longer before giving up, this time it’s too much.

your face is wet with tears, head knocked back to sob into the air. you’re covered in sweat and arousal, chest heaves with the peak that’s left you once more.

you’re so close, but you have a need to be stuffed. playing with your clit hasn’t satisfied you in days, your own fingers cant stretch you out and the plastic toys you have don’t offer the same warmth and movement a read dick gives you.

you’re crazy with lust and want- you call his name before you can even think about it.

why are you torturing yourself when you share a house with a perfectly virile, big man?

you know he’d give you what you need, know that with his build and athleticism, he’d be able to shoot a heavy load inside you like you want.

the prickle of embarrassment heats up your neck when you realize you can hear thumping,

“is he really com-“

the sound of your door opening stops your thought.

he walks right in, having the decency to stuff his aching cock back into his boxers before barging in. you can see that he’s hard, makes your mouth and pussy wet with the thought that he was doing this with you- to you.

“p-please, can’t cum, i can’t.” you sob openly, passing your poor cunt over your folded pillow. all it does it hurt, doesn’t bring you any pleasure or relief- you feel empty, you need a dick stuffing you.

“bo, it hurts. make me feel good.”

he almost cums right then and there, but he powers through it, mind set on sinking himself inside you.

“shit, don’t worry bunny. ‘m gunna take care of you okay?” bokuto pants, taking large strides towards you, his hand immediately finding your thighs, he’s so big and strong it doesn’t take much for him to have you on your back.

you open your legs, showing him all of you. you’re well past the point of any shame, the twisted need you feel doesn’t give any room in your mind for shame.

he takes a glance down at your pussy watching the light catch it, he can see you’re dripping down your thighs, puddling right at the curve of your ass and thighs.

his stare has your clit throbbing, he salivates when he sees the swollen bud.

he wants to split you open right now, but he can’t help but take two fingers and slide down to open your pussy lips. your cunt makes a wet sound as he drags his fingers into your folds, passing right over a fluttering hole that’s dripping.

“fuck.” he grunts.

“i don’t think your cunt can handle me. ‘s too tight.” he slurs, already upset at the thought. but you don’t listen.

“-no!”

the answer is desperate and pleading, you make a show to grab his big- wide shoulders. nails digging into the ungiving mass, arms outstretched to bring him close.

he’s so strong it takes almost all of your own strength to make him come down to you.

“please i can take it- don’t care if it hurts i need cum, i need your cum koutarou.” your words are rushed, makes his eyes roll to the back of his head when you call him by his first name.

“you’re dangerous, absolutely dangerous.” he thinks, if you want his cum, he’ll give it to you.

“that’s real dangerous bunny.” he growls, grabbing your hands off him, if you’re holding on like that he wouldn’t be able to put you in a press.

it’s harsh, but with how feverish and wildly you’re looking at him, he knows it’s what you need. knows that this is the easiest way to get you satisfied and pumped full of his cum.

he doesn’t have the time or patience to rid himself of his boxers, just slides his hand down and pulls his cock out.

you’re trying to hold back- really, but as soon as you see it, you’re hump the air. he has to hold you down, make sure you don’t hurt yourself.

“please!” you whine, acting as if you’re going to die if you don’t get what you want.

bokuto ignores it, grabbing your ankles, pushing them down so theyre almost at level with your head.

you didn’t even know your body could bend this way, it leaves you completely bared, pussy and ass at his mercy. it shuts you up, struggling to breathe in this position.

bokuto lines himself up with you, there’s a touch of resistance as he tries to sink in, having you like this helps, but he’s still so thick your lips stretch with the girth of him. it doesn’t stop him though.

“f-finally.” you breathe out, clutching his biceps when he starts pushing in.

you hear an audible pop when he slides his head in, a fucked out whine leaves your lips when he sinks in further, pushing against the restraint your tight cunt gives.

it hurts, but the drag of his dick against your walls makes elecriticty run down your toes. this is what you’ve been waiting for, what you’ve been craving. he’s so big, it fills you so much that you can feel it in your tummy, shuts your whining up, you’ve gone quiet and complaint below him.

your mouth hangs open in a desperate ‘o’ once he’s fully sheathed, bokuto looks on at you, his own teeth clenched tight while your pussy clenches down on him.

“that’s what you wanted, hm?” bokuto hums, smiling when you give him a nod.

he’s going to ruin you with how much you’re wetting the base of his dick, painting his pubes with arousal.

he doesn’t think he’s ever had anyone with a pussy this sensitive.

when bokuto finally moves, it knocks any coherent thought you had out of your head.

the slap of him against you is loud, not as loud as the scream you give him when you feel his balls slap against your ass though.

“shit.” the first pump knocks the wind out of him he takes a bit to adjust himself, making sure all of his weight is going into every downstroke. if he’s going to fuck you like you want, it was going to take a lot out of him.

but it’s not a problem, the start of him pounding into you makes you loose control of your body. you don’t know what sounds you’re making, or how hard your nails are biting into his biceps while he has your ankles in a hard grip. the only thing you are aware of, however, is the speed in which your orgasm comes barreling towards you.

the build up is familiar, a tight coil in your tummy, making you buck against him, he holds you down.

he wishes he could comment on how fast you’re loosing it, but can’t speak in favor of making sure you finish. you’re wheezing with every push down into you, weak little sounds leave your lips.

you wish he wasn’t fucking you stupid so you could tell him how good it feels, you wanna stroke his ego, make sure he knows he’s the best dick you’ve ever gotten. but you cum before you even get the chance.

it’s a messy haze of your pussy creaming, gushing all over him.

“f-fuh-“ you try and speak, try to get out just a word but you can’t. you can openly hear the splatter of it hit his tummy, can feel it run down your own, pooling in the crease of fat with how your body’s bent.

“you just squirt all over me.” koutarou declares with a fever in his voice. feels the need to let you know, his ego peaking.

“that’s a good girl.”

he doesn’t sound like himself, it’s a deep and guttural want that has him spitting the first thing that comes to him.

the praise warms you up, you clench down at it, giving him another spray.

everytime he leaves your pussy, his cock is coated in a thick creaminess, it’s settled right at the base of him and everytime he makes contact with your puffy lips, it leaves you painted in it too.

he’s still hammering you through it, you’re completely overstimulated, but it’s welcomed. you’ve missed the tingle and pure pleasure of it, he could fuck you unconscious and you’d wake up thanking him.

he follows soon after, hips stuttering, no longer giving you thrusts that jiggle your ass violently. hes pumping into you with languid strokes of his hips, when he cums he doesn’t want it everywhere. usually he’d take the time to paint you in it, smear it all over your abused cunt and clit, but you wanted it inside. he’s going to do just that.

a deep sigh leaves you when he spears himself for the final time, every spurt of that heavy cum settles right against your cervix, gravity helping to keep it there. he looks so good, biceps straining to keep you down, pecs squishing and even thicker thanks to his big arms being so close.

“t-thank you.”

it’s the first thing you’ve said throughout this whole thing, but you squeeze it out. an appreciative hum.

it’s the right thing to say to someone like him, the fact that he’s filled your cunt up with cum and milked your pussy for everything it has, and you’re looking up at him with wonder and the cutest dazed expression has him move his softening cock against you once more.

you hiccup, anything else following your gratitude dies in your throat.

“s-sorry.” bokuto stutters, now forcing his hips to still, slowly lowering your legs down to plop beside his body, keeping him settled against you still.

“it’s okay.”

it feels good to freely breathe again, the mess of your release looks nice against your stomach.

you don’t think you’d be able to look him in the eye after this, you’ve finished and now the repercussions of everything that went on weighs heavy on your mind.

he’s gentle now, letting himself slowly unwind from the pent up state your absolutely submissive self had him in.

there’s a harsh blush that creeps up his neck, tinting the tips of his ears red with the way you shyly rest a hand over your chest, the other coming to cover your tummy. it looks like you’re hiding from him, he can feel the lust settle now, knows that you’re thinking about how to detangle from him so you two still come out as friends.

but he doesn’t want that. he’s harbored such a crush for you for so long, the opportunity to fuck you was just something out of his fantasies, pure luck.

“y/n.” he whispers, letting you know that this is something to talk about. he’s still inside you for gods sake, it wasn’t good to shut him out after this.

“hm?”

“i like you... a lot.” he begins, searching your face for any hint of discomfort. all he sees is your eyes widen, a tiny smile on your face forming, you look like a cat who got its cream. absolutely pleased by his confession.

“i know. i like you too.”

it’s a punch to the gut, seeing your devious face light up like that.

“is that why you called my name?” he questions, and you nod.

“yeah, and well, you’re so big... i knew you’d be able to give me what i want.”

you were right, successfully going after what you’d been longing for, for so long. there wasn’t a chance in the world you’d give up your koutarous cock after this, no matter the dynamic that came with it.

“course i would, i’m gunna give you what you want all the time. you just say the word.” he boasts, bending down to kiss you sloppily, snatching your quip to his words right out your mouth.

it was nice finally have a big man like him in your arms, inside your cunt, keeping the cum there nice and warm.

#bokuto #bokuto koutarou #bokuto smut #haikyuu smut #bokuto koutarou smut #bokuto x reader smut #bokuto x you #bokuto x y/n #bokuto x reader #haikyuu x reader smut #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x you #haikyuu x y/n #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#haikyuu!! smut #smut #one shot #jax celebrates 4k!

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olderthannetfic · 2 years

Note

I explored radfem spaces a bit when I was younger and I remember them being explicitly welcoming of anybody AFAB (including trans men) saying that anybody AFAB experienced the patriarchy and still does, unless they pass perfectly. Like, female infanticide is an issue that affects female babies, regardless of the gender identity of those babies. Idk that logic made sense to me and it’s hard to divest myself of it

Everybody experiences the patriarchy.

This focus on things like female infanticide can make a lot of sense in certain contexts. If you're running a nonprofit in a poverty-stricken part of Asia, then sure, you're going to mostly focus on the dismal lot of AFABs in societies where they don't do the desirable labor and where they need dowries. If you're even just a community member there, this kind of focus makes sense.

But I live in California.

Here, the patriarchy benefits cis men materially but emotionally and psychologically hamstrings them. I don't think they suffer more than cis women, but it's not all upside for them either. Trans women suffer heavily. We don't need to play misery poker between trans women, cis women, and trans men to recognize that trans women face prejudice too.

I don't know where you live, but it's pretty common for radfems in my kind of social context to pull out some red herring about women in a farming village half way across the world like this is the most salient detail to how I should feel about bathroom signage at a tech firm next door.

Globally and historically, cis men have it good and everyone else has it bad, but that doesn't mean that's the most relevant analysis for every single moment in life. That kind of thinking is essentially a rejection of intersectionality.

To bring up the tediously obvious: I'm a rich white woman in the US. If I'm upset by some black guy and there are cops around, do you really think Man Bad Abuser, Woman Eternal Victim is the most relevant power dynamic going on?

Maybe if we were dating and he refused to do his share of the chores, standard gender stuff would be relevant. If I'm calling the cops because I don't think he could possibly belong in my suburb, gender still matters, but definitely not for the same reasons!

A lot of radfem thinking suffers from that problem of:

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

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spicycreativity · 2 years

Text

Remus Sanders de Cyrano de Bergercock, or: Post-PoF but Make it Valentine's Day

4k; content warnings for crude sexual jokes and references (Remus) and one short make-out scene 😌

I tried a new narration style this time just for funsies

Happy Valentine's Day!

Janus was doing it again. The teacups on the table had long since been emptied and now the dregs sat cold and still smelling faintly of Thomas' anglophile phase. Two teacups. One for Janus, one for Patton (and still smudged with his strawberry-flavored lip balm). Remus had pointedly been left out of the equation, having been shooed out of the room with a 'behave' that held all the menace of a teenage girl warning her parents not to ruin her first date.

Now the little meeting was over and Remus had been unleashed and Janus was just staring at the teacups in the least dangerous silence Remus had ever known.

Most of Janus' silences came with a bold warning spelled out in crossed arms and furrowed brows: disturb me and perish. But this. This was something Remus had never seen before, something that would have made Virgil (the old Virgil) cackle with friendly schadenfreude: Janus sat with a flush on his cheek and a small smile on his lips as he stared dreamily at the spot Patton had occupied not five minutes before. Even as Remus observed him, he sighed and tilted his head, more Disney prince than man. (Somewhere on the other side of the subconscious, Roman suffered a shooting chest pain.)

Beads rattling, Remus got a running start and threw himself onto the couch beside Janus, jostling him out of his lovestruck stupor. "You're mooning," said Remus, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. The cups and saucers rattled, wafting up the smell of earl grey and Louis Tomlinson.

"I'm not mooning," Janus argued, more out of habit than anything. A millisecond later, the teasing clicked and he straightened his posture, his face falling into picture-perfect incredulousness. "Over Patton?"

"You're moonier than a college football game." Remus reached for his fly to give a demonstration, but Janus stopped him with an outstretched hand. Remus sat back to allow the mental image to sink in instead.

He'd had a sneaking suspicion something like this might happen, hammered home by how excruciatingly one-note Janus had been lately. Every other sentence was about Patton somehow, whether to complain about his taste in food/movies/philosophical ideologies/friends or to recount some 'utterly stupid' thing Patton had said about food/movies/philosophical ideologies/Remus. It was a textbook crush with all the signs and symptoms of someone too emotionally stunted to tell they had a crush. This starry-eyed, gooey, abhorrent Janus was simply the final nail in the coffin of the dead horse. Crushes like these were the reason Disney had invented the word 'twitterpated.'

"Look," said Janus, lacing into his metaphorical tap shoes, "if this is because I kicked you out, I genuinely don't think you would have enjoyed yourself—"

Remus pulled up his sleeve to check his watch, which he had imagined into existence as soon as it was necessary for the gag. "Uh-huh, uh-huh."

"If it's really that important to you, I'll invite you next time and you can sit right next to me and listen to Patton talk for three hours about his conflicted feelings on pugs."

Remus ran a hand through his hair to hide the manic grin yanking on either corner of his mouth like he'd been caught with fish hooks. "How does Patton feel about pugs?"

"He thinks they're cute, but he hates that they have such severe breathing problems," Janus answered automatically. The flush had crept into his cheek again, a dainty shade of pink that made Remus' toes curl inside his boots. There was a softness in Janus' eyes that Remus had never seen before, not even when Janus was talking to him about Thomas, whom Janus valued above all else.

He was lost.

Something must have shown on Remus' face, because Janus slammed the door shut on everything too early, and his face was a blank mask ready to be molded into an expression he hadn't chosen yet. Remus took the opening, watching Janus decide on an expression as he talked: "I bet he likes you back. He's always coming around to visit and you're always locking me away in the chokey!" He threw himself against the back of the couch, raising his arms as though he'd been chained to a dungeon wall. "Augh! The indignity!" He made a whip-crack sound with his mouth and pretended to flinch. "Harder!"

"Are you done?" Janus asked, having settled on annoyed incredulity.

"Will you admit that you were all moony-eyed for Patton just now?"

"I was thinking—"

"About Daddy Patty's 9-inch c—" With a subtle motion from Janus, Remus' hand came up to cover his own mouth.

"Look," said Janus with a heavy sigh. When Thomas wasn't forcing him to the forefront of conscious thought, when his features belonged wholly to himself, he was the shortest of all of them. He looked especially small now. "Even if I had an interest in Patton, which I don't, pursuing him, which I don't want to even do, would just make things harder and more complicated for him. So even if I wanted anything to do with him, it would be far kinder to just keep it to myself."

"Or," said Remus, his hand finally dropping from his mouth, "convince yourself you don't even have feelings for him in an act of self-delusion and cognitive dissonance to allow yourself to not think about the fact that you, the embodiment of selfishness and self-preservation, are committing an act of pure selflessness that defies your function? Hypothetically?"

Janus sighed so heavily that it sent a shiver down Thomas' spine. "Sure, Remus."

A thousand thoughts raced through Remus' mind until his brain (imaginary, metaphorical, or otherwise) threatened to shut everything down and send him floating into the gentle waters of dissociation. "Interesting," he said as the water began to lap at his ankles.

"In that case," Janus said in a slow, guiding tone, "it would be better for you to just leave it alone. Do you hear me, Remus? Say it with me now: Leave it alone."

But Remus was gone, swept away on the tide.

Janus really was a bad liar, when you thought about it. His real talent lay in obfuscation, namely, in keeping his mouth shut when it really counted. Once you got him talking, the truth practically ran out, but it ran out backwards and usually tripped and fell on its ass. If Janus succeeded in smoothing everything out, it was usually through more obfuscation.

But this time, he had failed to obfuscate the truth. Remus, with his persistence, was uniquely well-suited to weaseling the truth out of Janus. And so it lay naked and tantalizing before him: Janus was head-over-heels for Patton. And it was making him miserable. That couldn't be allowed. Remus had to fix it.

In many ways, Remus served as Janus' opposite; blunt and aggressive, he got his way through the repeated application of verbal force. He was a living wrecking ball with an experienced hand at the controls. Probably some old Italian guy named Vito who smoked cigars on his lunch break and thought OSHA was a small town in Wisconsin.

Anyway.

Remus' impulse had been to swagger on down to Patton and tell him outright just how badly Janus wanted him. But, contrary to prevailing belief, he was sharp enough to know how that would end. As much as Patton insisted that everyone needed to tell the truth, he sure wasn't equipped to handle it, at least not until it had been wrapped up in pleasantries. Like wrapping a pill in lunch meat for a stubborn dog. No, Remus needed a subtler plan, a plan that slithered and crooned like that creepy snake from The Jungle Book. Remus was going to have to act like Janus.

So. WWJD? Probably something old fashioned like— The speeding semitruck of an idea struck Remus full force: Love poetry. Some flowery, hand-written little rhyming missive, scented paper, swirling calligraphy. A piece of paper appeared on the desk before him and a pen jumped into his hand.

Huh, when had he gotten to his room? Maybe Janus had taken him once it became clear that Remus was having a trip.

Eh. Did it matter? Taking up the ballpoint, he scribbled 'Draft 1 Love Poem, Remus de Bergerac.'

No.

'Cyrano Vaginerac.'

He could do better

Ooh. It was coming to him. Cyrano de Berger-cock, the porno parody, and instead of having a big nose, Cyrano was cursed with a 12-inch monster—" Knock.

Knock knock knock.

Remus' paper had turned into a screenplay without his realizing. He flipped it over as he went to answer the door, humming The Police's Roxanne on his way. Deception was the name of the game. No hints.

Janus stood in the doorway tapping his forefinger against his thumb. Remus beamed at him. "How goes it, Romeo?"

Janus made a face like Remus had just inserted a slice of lemon into his mouth. "I was just coming by to ask you to keep it down. You've been awfully noisy since this morning."

Remus spotted the concern buried in the sarcasm and the truth sprang to his lips before it could even occur to him to lie, but he caught it by the tail in the nick of time: "I'm okay. I'm just working on—" He stared at Janus, wide-eyed and smiling in cornered-animal frustration. The silence stretched out before them and his imagination, which he had previously thought boundless, delivered no lie. Well, there went that.

What Remus did not know: The look of feral panic on his face was nigh-indistinguishable from the expression of manic excitement that tended to overtake him when he was immersed in a project. That he had gone silent was of no concern to Janus, who was merely waiting to be polite. He waited a few seconds longer. Remus' left eye began to twitch. "Can I come in?"

"But of course!" Remus said, snapping back into himself. Acting against his function was hard and it kind of hurt in the same way it hurt to focus on something he didn't find interesting. Janus suppressed him a little as he came in, a small exertion of denial to keep the effects of Remus' room at bay. "Business or pleasure?"

"This place is filthy," Janus said like that was any sort of revelation. Remus threw himself backwards onto his bed to wait. Janus would get to his point in time. "Look, you'd tell me if you were upset, wouldn't you?"

"Upset?" Remus sat up, but Janus was busy pretending to care about Remus' DVD collection.

"About certain conversations we might have had this morning?" Janus prompted.

"Do you like Patton better than you like me?"

The answer was not immediate, which was how Remus knew to trust it. "...Of course not."

"So why would I be upset?"

"Oh, you know, I've heard tell that some people can get jealous when, uh…" Janus broke off, having lost himself. "If I had a thing for Patton, I might expect you to be slightly…" He gave up with a sigh and looked plaintively at Remus. "So you're not jealous?"

"Please!" Remus spread his arms out wide. "I may be green, but not with envy! You can get back to your mooning guilt-free."

"I'm not—" Janus gave up with a huff. "I think I'd better go. I'm going to be very busy with important work, so try not to disturb me." He swept out, leaving the invitation floating in the air like fine cologne.

Remus waved it away. Unlike Janus, he did have work to do.

A new stack of paper was waiting for him at his desk. He sat, one leg folded with the ankle resting on his opposite knee. If it were up to him, he would write something to the point like 'Roses are red, violets are blue, rhyming is hard, let's bone.' But Janus would never say something like that in a million years and the point was to sound like him.

The subtle feeling of discomfort was back. It just wasn't in his nature to imitate and skirt around things like this. But if it was for Janus, he would endure it.

Such a declaration was easy to make, but much harder to stick to. Remus wrote two stanzas of a sestina before the fraying high-wire of his attention span snapped and the unicycle-riding clown driving his thought process plummeted to a gory death in front of a crowd of sickened onlookers. Well, that was fine. It wasn't like Janus was some master poet. Poetry didn't suit him, anyway. These two stanzas would have to be enough, plus an envoi tacked on for a feeling of completion. Writing in iambic pentameter was hard enough on its own, it's not like Janus would really put in the extra effort to make it all rhyme, right?

Janus' pen of choice was the Monteverde Invincia in brass, a suitably pretentious pen that matched his aesthetic. Thomas had seen one once in a boutique stationery shop and Janus had seized the memory in all six of his yellow-clad hands. But Remus didn't know that, only that Janus had some sort of a fetish for fancy pens, and what was fancier than a quill pen?

After a few failed attempts at cursive, he came to realize that writing neatly with a quill on was about as intuitive as performing a kickflip in stilettos. Ah, well. Rollerball, then.

Once done, he surveyed his work and felt oddly proud of the result. His looping cursive looked good on the cardstock he'd chosen, shiny gold against matte black. Remus had, against all odds, done a good job impersonating Janus. (Or so he thought).

Remus' poem read thusly:

With one deft thrust, you opened up my chest

And there exposed my bleeding, beating heart

Will you gasp when you find it burning up

Or hold it in a one-handed embrace?

Just one touch has left me open for you

Panting, trembling, waiting for your next move

Oh, oh, oh! how I long to make you move

And meet you face-to-face and chest-to-chest

With no one in our way, just me and you

And in the silence you would hear my heart

You would feel the pounding as we embrace

In this sweet moment, you would take me up

Know the rabbit-fast movement of my heart

Eat me up within our tangled embrace

Eyes, chest, feet, mouth: yours. I belong to you.

Discerning readers will spot anywhere from 7 to 10 sexual innuendoes in the above. Luckily for Remus (and maybe Janus too), Patton had an endearingly obnoxious (or obnoxiously endearing) habit of taking everything at face value.

Remus signed the bottom of the paper with a shiny, swooping 'J' and set off for Patton's room.

The following hour was an ecstasy of agony, all trembling limbs and giddy anticipation. Remus paced and bounced on the balls of his feet, even going so far as to make a few passes by Janus in the living room but never quite daring to show his face. He was too nervous right now; his honest face would give away the game faster than Virgil could jump to a bad conclusion. So he paced until his thudding heel strikes summoned Janus, who was doing a passable job of pretending to be annoyed, anyway. He had his arms crossed over his chest and his hip cocked just so, but the furrow of his brow hinted more at concern than he would have preferred. But that was alright. Good lies weren't necessary with Remus. "If you're trying to wear a hole in the floor, you're going to get bored before you get anywhere with it."

"Not if I wear really heavy shoes," Remus said, but he was too distracted to summon up a pair of cinderblocks to demonstrate his point. Instead, he leapt forward and turned, slinging one arm easily over Janus' shoulder. "Let's go play Pokémon Stadium."

Remus sat in the discomfort of lying for the next few days, shimmying and stamping his feet when the unfamiliar sensation got to be too much. Janus remained none the wiser, too caught up in a pink-tinged and distinctly 1950s-inspired love fantasy. He kept having dreams about sharing strawberry sodas with Patton and waking up with a craving for strawberry-flavored kisses. Beyond that, nothing happened. So much nothing, in fact, that it was starting to get unusual.

"Where's the Foxy Froggie?" Remus asked on the third morning after his illicit delivery, inadvertently startling Janus out of a daydream wherein Patton asked him to go steady at the roller rink.

Janus stiffened and said, slightly too casually, "Am I Morality's keeper?"

Well, damn. He hadn't snuck into Janus' bedroom in the night and, in the immortal words of Conway Twitty, laid him down and whispered pretty love-words in his ear. Remus tucked his feet under him on the couch and began to work. "You killed him with a rock?"

"Don't be uncivilized, Remus, obviously I used poison."

"The coward's weapon." Remus waved a hand, grinning behind it.

"'Coward' in one font is 'pragmatist' in another," Janus said lightly, glad of the distraction. Patton's absence was unusual and it weighed on him.

"Sorry," said a voice that was neither Remus' nor Janus', "is this a bad time?"

Remus sprang to his feet in delight, unable and unwilling to keep the deranged grin off his face. "Not at all!" he said. Then, regrettably, he threw his head back and cackled like an asthmatic hyena.

Patton (the voice belonged to Patton, if you hadn't already figured that out) took this in stride. Sort of. "Uh, great!" he said with an expression like an underpaid worker who'd just found out he was getting a pizza party instead of a raise. "Thanks."

He was holding, Remus noticed with delight, a small, white envelope. "Shall I leave you two alone together?" he crooned, leering at Patton. This was it! His master plan, deviously woven, was all coming to a toe-curling climax. Move over Janus, there's a new Lord of the Lies in town. And his name? Remus de Bergerac. No, wait. Berger-cock.

"Ah, Remus?" Janus gave a restrained little wave that the untrained observer might have mistaken for polite.

"Oh, don't mind me!" said Remus, laying it on thick. Like, 'artificially-flavored maple syrup that's been congealing on the back table at IHOP for 6 years' thick. Sticky, too. "Pay no attention to the rat behind the curtain." Raising his hands in surrender, he backed away, hit the coffee table, did a fantastic Gene-Wilder-as-Willy-Wonka-style pratfall that went unappreciated, and finally left the room. He stayed close enough to eavesdrop, of course.

"That was…" Janus hesitated, base instinct to lie getting tangled up with his inability to choose a word to describe Remus' unusual behavior. "Well."

"Yeah." Janus and Patton met eyes, each of them blushing and breathless and starry-eyed. In the hall, Remus stuck out his tongue and gagged. Patton gave a shy smile. "Hey, Janus."

"Hey," said Janus, smelling strawberries. Then he remembered himself. "By all means, let's just stand here and stare at each other."

He motioned at the couch, but Patton shook his head. "This is okay. I just, um. I wanted to apologize for how long it took me to get back to you."

"That's alright," Janus said slowly, feeling the first subtle pinch of wrongness, that he might be missing something.

"I guess I was just panicking, because it was something I didn't even know I wanted until I had it. And I wanted to do something equally as special for you."

"Uh... huh…" said Janus, Lord of the Lies, Subterfuge Specialist, Master of Mendacity, Captain of— Well, you get it.

"So," said Patton, holding up the envelope and taking a deep breath, "I wrote you this:

Self-Care is yellow

Morality is blue

Poetry is hard

But I like you, too."

Around the corner, Remus stamped his foot. He'd really put way too much effort into this little scheme, hadn't he?

Janus blinked, excavating bits of the truth from the situation. The emerging fossil was starting to look distinctly Remus-shaped, but it was no good to jump to conclusions quite yet. "You like me?" he repeated. His lips tingled.

"I'm sorry I couldn't put it as well as you did." Patton looked down at his feet, blushing like an anime schoolgirl. "But all that stuff you said… I want to be yours, too. And I want you to be mine."

"This is a love confession," Janus said out loud. He'd been caught on the back foot before, but never quite like this. Unsure of what else to do, he borrowed a trick from Roxy Hart and swooned.

"Whoa!" said Patton, catching him in the least-romantic way possible, which is to say he grabbed Janus under the armpits and set him back on his feet like a toddler.

Annoyed, Janus grabbed him by the collar and kissed him. Patton was wearing strawberry lip balm, and a surge of vindication made Janus' heart hammer in his chest. The third-act twist could wait; everything could wait. Reality gave a thrilling shudder and turn as Patton bent at the waist and picked Janus up under the knees. Janus wrapped his arms around Patton's shoulders to keep from toppling backwards but broke the kiss, instead touching their foreheads together. And face-to-face, chest-to-chest, Patton felt the rabbit-fast pounding of Janus' heart.

In the hall, Remus punched the air.

"I have to tell you something," Janus murmured, unable to keep from imagining his gloves away so he could run his fingers through Patton's hair.

"Oh, yeah?" Patton's grin was distinctly boyish, so unlike the fathering persona he wore around his shoulders like his cardigan.

"No— Really, I have to tell you something. But. I need you to know that this isn't going away."

"This?"

"Us."

"Why would we?" Patton asked, tilting his head. "Is it bad news?"

"I'm afraid you'll have to decide that for yourself." Janus wiggled out of Patton's grip and snapped twice. "Remus!"

Remus slunk in like a guilty dog, pouting up at Janus and Patton and flinching like they might hit him. "Yyyeeees, Janus?" he said in a whine.

"Is there something you'd like to tell us?"

Remus dropped the act. "You know it!" He sauntered over to Patton, displacing Janus, and leaned hard on Patton's shoulder. "Janny-Bananny is really in love with you, y'know. He's been pining like a tree ever since you stood up for him way back when."

"That's totally what I meant," Janus huffed, crossing his arms over his chest and drawing into himself.

"But…" Patton looked at Remus, then at Janus. "I know. You told me so in that poem."

"Oh, that!" Remus smacked his forehead so hard his head snapped back, feigning forgetfulness. "I wrote that."

"You wrote that?"

"He wrote that," Janus confirmed. "Without my knowledge or permission, I might add."

"But…" Horror dawned on Patton's face. "So I just…"

"Well for Christian's sake, it wasn't like he was going to tell you," Remus snapped.

"Christian?" Janus' eyes widened almost imperceptibly. "Oh my God, Remus, you do know that Christian and Cyrano both die, don't you?"

"Really?" Remus shrugged and bounced on his toes. "Maybe I should actually read Cyrano de Bergerac."

"Oh!" said Patton suddenly, reaching behind Remus so he could hold Janus' hand. "This isn't going away."

"No," said Janus with a sigh of relief. "Yes. Whatever."

"I get it." Patton beamed and then, dropping Janus' hand, wrapped both arms around Remus and bear-hugged him so hard his feet left the floor. "Thank you, Remus."

"Oh my God," said Remus, wriggling fruitlessly like a worm freshly removed from an apple (get it?). "Approval. Ew, ew, ew, get it off, get it off! It burns!"

Patton winked at Janus over Remus' shoulder. Janus smiled back and joined the hug, squeezing Remus from behind. "Yes, thank you, Remus. We owe everything to you." Ignoring Remus' protests, he stood on his toes and kissed Patton again.

Revenge was sweet, but Patton's strawberry lip balm was much, much sweeter.

#queuing this for later today as well bc time zones #moceit #sanders sides #platonic dukeceit #theyre QPPs etc etc #sanders sides fanfiction #spicywrites

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sorapricots · 2 years

Text

You have Us

Summary : The Bakusquad catch you having a mental breakdown in the living room so they did their best to cheer you up.

Genre : Hurt/comfort, Fluff

Warnings : overthinking, mental breakdown, suicidal thought, self-harm, abuse.

A/N : this story will talk about a lot of serious problem and if you feel you are gonna be triggered by this please skip this story and please reach out to someone you trust if you have some struggle or you can reach to me if you want :) also this is gonna be a long one..

Wc : 1500+

Being the eldest daughter of a respectful family have it’s own good and bad side. Especially when your dad is not so nice to your mother, your siblings, and you.

With a lot of expectation you have to shoulder sometimes, woke up in the morning and continue your day feels like a chore for you. And today is not different from the previous day.

You thought when UA decided to have dorm system you can finally break free from your family problems. You can run away from them and take care of yourself. But somehow you feel like yourself is a foolish as it seems like you never escape.

“Hello?” your phone on your ear as you start to play with the hem of your shirt. Today after class your guts say that there’s something is wrong in your house. So you decided to call on of your siblings to check up.

“Hey sis.” You frowned a bit when you hear your sibling answer you with a whispered tone. Your eyes moving left and right to check if there’s anyone that is in the same room as you. You don’t want your classmates to know what’s wrong with your life.

“Hey what’s wrong? Where’s mom and the other?” you asked as you feel anxiety start to creep up at the back of your neck. Suddenly you hear your sibling start to sob.

“She’s in their room. With him. They are screaming and sounds like they throw things to each other. When will you come back? I miss you.. we all miss you sis. Dad won’t shut up about how all of us is a disgrace.” Now your sibling let out a loud cry and start to choke.

You exhale slowly as you ball your fist. Hand start to bleed with how deep your nails cut your palm. You can feel your heart hammering your chest as your whole body start to shake full of rage and anger.

You have enough of your father treating your mom and siblings with disrespect. But in the same time you know there’s nothing you can do to rebel your father that won’t put your mom and siblings at risk.

“Listen, now I know it might be scary, but I need you to be strong for me. I can’t protect you guys right now. The only one that can do that is you.” You pinch your nose’s bridge as you can feel your head throbbing for holding back your rage.

“So right now I need you to go to their room and just kick the door down. If that old geezer is mad at you, you told him I told you to do that, okay? Also I want you to take our siblings inside my room and then told mom to sleep in there to, understand?” you stand up from the living room’s sofa as you start to walk back and forth.

After awhile finally you finish your call with your sibling. You throw your phone to the sofa as you let your body flop on it. Head throbbing and heart breaking as you curse why you have to live a life like this.

It’s only start from a silent cry. No sounds come out from you. Only tears keep rolling down from your pretty eyes. The living room is so quiet as you remember most of your classmates use this time to have a quick nap. Only your shallow breath can be heard. You quickly sit up and wipe your tears as you hear a light footstep.

“Oh, (y/n) why you here? I thought you are in your room.” You frowned a little when you heard Kaminari’s voice.

“Feel a bit restless today.” You answer him as quiet as you can. Try to stop your voice from breaking. You can feel his stare burn at the back of your head before he finally walked to the kitchen. You let out a sigh as your body flop down to the sofa again.

“You sure you are okay?” Kaminari asked as he came out from the kitchen. You lift your thumb to him showing you are okay. The footstep disappeared. Now once again you are by yourself in the living room.

Suddenly you feel your phone vibrating. You quickly check it only to see a message from your sibling. Telling you your dad hit them and your mom. You close your eyes as you can feel you start to lose control over your quirk. Nails start to dig deeper to your skin blood start to pooling on your shirt.

Quickly you type a respond with your shaky fingers. And you quickly shut your phone off as you wipe your face with your hand and fix your hair when you hear heavy footsteps.

You can hear Kirishima, Bakugou, Sero, and Kaminari’s voice start to get closer. And in the same time you hear the lift from the girl’s dorm hall. You see a glint of pink and dark purple hair came out from the lift before you decide to hide your face with your hair.

“(Y/n)?! What happened with your hands?” you flinch when you heard Jirou mentioning your hands. Now that you’ve calm down and the adrenaline is gone, you can start to feel pain and wet feeling on your palm.

You eyes went big as your vision start to become more clear and see your bloody clothes and your bloody hands. Crowded steps start to become more closer with you and your body shake with panic.

To say both Bakugou and Kirishima is not livid would be a lie when they see your condition. Eyes and nose are red and puffy. Your cheeks are wet with tears and blood that come from your palms. There is even some of the blood on your neck.

Kaminari go with Mina to the kitchen to take some snacks and drinks as Sero and Kirishima sit on both of your side to prevent you do anything that can cause more harm to yourself.

While Bakugou run back to his dorm with Jirou following behind him. Kirishima carefully take one of your hand in his when he notice you start to shake ignoring how your hand still have blood on it. Sero softly caress your back. Fatigue start to take over your body as you start to relax from the warmth Sero’s hands and Kirishima’s hands give to you.

“Let’s go to my room.” Bakugou pat your head softly as you look up to him. He let out a harsh scowl when he see how dull your eyes are. Kirishima and Sero carefully help you to stand up and help you walk to Bakugou’s room with Kaminari and Mina following behind with snacks and drinks in their hands.

“Let me go. I can take care for myself.” Your voice cracked a bit. Bakugou shake his head in disapproval. Sero and Kirishima went panic when you try to pull yourself from them. Suddenly Kirishima tugged you and pick you up bridal style. You let out a protest but stop when Sero hold your face.

“Let us take care of you. We don’t know what happened to you but you can rely on us too you know. You are also our friends.” You choke on your sobs when you heard Sero’s words. Mentally cursing yourself at how easily they breakdown the wall you built.

All of you finally arrived at Bakugou’s dorm. Jirou is in his room setting up some game console. Kirishima carefully put you down as Mina and Kaminari put down the snacks they took from the kitchen.

Jirou and Mina carefully help you go to the bathroom to clean yourself. Sobs never stop coming out from your lips when you hear Jirou’s calming voice while Mina carefully clean your bloody hands. Jirou’s hands carefully wipe your messy face.

“Everything will be okay..” Mina said before she pull you to a warm hug. You let out another sob as Jirou join you both. You cried hard in their arms before you decided to peel yourself and try to clean yourself.

When the three of you go back to Bakugou’s room, the boys are joking while waiting for the girls. You let out a soft smile when you watch Kirishima holding Bakugou that tried to fry Kaminari’s face with Kaminari hiding behind Sero.

“Oi.” The boys freeze when they heard Jirou. Slowly their head turn to the three of you. You smile a little as Kaminari walk over you and pull you into a hug. Sero decided to join with you both as you pull Mina and Jirou to also join the hug.

“Come on bro.” Kirishima pull Bakugou. The blonde let out a grumble before he finally let Kirishima pull him to join the hug. Now all of you looks like a pile of rainbow.

“Thank you. I don’t know what to do without all of you.” You said as you nuzzle your face closer to them. They let out a smile (even a constipated emotional person like Bakugou manage to give you a soft smile).

All of you start to huddle together while eating snacks, gossiping, and playing games. You can feel your phone vibrating but as you want to unlock your phone Bakugou quickly snatched it away. You let out a pout but Bakugou won’t budge. He just pat your head with his eyes glue to the screen.

You pull the blanket that covered your body closer and your body start to relax on Jirou’s lap as Jirou start to play with your hair.

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #bnha #mha #bakugo katsuki #kirishima eijirou #kaminari denki #sero hanta #mina ashido #jirou kyouka #bakusquad #mha fluff #mha imagines #bnha fluff #bnha bakusquad

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mango-empress · 2 years

Text

A young webcomic stands in it’s bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, 2022, is this young comic’s birthday. Though it was thirteen years ago it was given life, it is only today it will be given a name!

What will the name of this young comic be?

> Enter name.

X ZOOSMELL POOPLORD

> Try again.

Homestuck

> Examine room.

Your name is HOMESTUCK. As was previously mentioned it is your BIRTHDAY. A number of CHARACTERS are scattered about your room. You have a variety of INTERESTS. You have a passion for DEATH. You like to entertain readers and YOU ARE REALLY GOOD AT IT. You have a fondness for PARADOX SPACE LORE, and are an aspiring AMATEUR GAME. You also like to UPD8 sometimes.

What will you do?

> Homestuck: Quickly retrieve arms from drawer.

Your ARMS are in your JUJU BOX, pooplord!

> Remove VRISKA from JUJU BOX.

Out of sympathy for Homestucks's perceived lack of arms, you pick up VRISKA for him and put her on its BED.

> Homestuck: Quickly retrieve arms from JUJU BOX.

You retrieve your FAKE ARMS from the chest. You use these for HILARIOUS REFERENCES.

You CAPTCHALOGUE them in your SYLLADEX. You know exactly what that means.

There are other items in the box.

> Homestuck: Examine contents of box.

In here you keep an array of humorous and mystical ARTIFACTS, each one a devastating weapon in the hands of a SKILLED AUTHOR or a CUNNING ARTISTS.

You are neither of these things.

Among the ARTIFACTS are: TWO (2) FAKE ARMS [CURRENTLY CAPTCHALOGUED IN YOUR SYLLADEX], ONE (1) HAMMER OF ZILLYHOO, ONE (1) CUE BALL, ONE (1) PAIR OF ANIME SHADE, ONE (1) PAIR OF BEAGLE PUSS GLASSES, SEVERAL (~) BUNNIES, SEVERAL (~) GRUB SAUCE PACKETS, and ONE (1) COPY OF COLONEL SASSACRE'S DAUNTING TEXT OF MAGICAL FRIVOLITY AND PRACTICAL JAPERY, and ONE (1) BROWN LEATHER WALLET

Some of this stuff will come in handy at some point. For now, you decide to just take the BUNNIES.

> Homestuck: Captchalogue bunnies.

You stow the BUNNIES on one of your CAPTCHALOGUE CARDS in your SYLLADEX.

You are totally sure what that means, and you are starting to fall in love with the vernacular.

You have two empty CAPTCHALOGUE CARDS remaining.

> Homestuck: Equip fake arms.

You aren't totally sure if "EQUIP" is a verb copasetic with the abstract behavioral medium in which you dwell, but you give it a try anyway.

Unfortunately, you cannot access the FAKE ARMS! Their card is underneath the one you just used to captchalogue the BUNNIES. You will have to use the rabbits first in order to access the arms. But this is probably unadvisable, since you'd just make your room lousy with different kinds of hare!

Your SYLLADEX'S FETCH MODUS is currently dictated by the logic of a STACK DATA STRUCTURE. You were never all that keen on STACKS’ simplicity.

But with any hope, perhaps you will advance new, more mystical FETCH MODI for your SYLLADEX with a little more experience.

> Homestuck: Examine Problem Sleuth Poster.

Is it even possible to get any more hard boiled than that? You really doubt it. This poster is a great reminder of your best predecessor.

There is a nice spot on the wall next to it. You've been meaning to hang a meaningful piece there soon.

> Homestuck: Read note on drawer.

This note is rich with the aromas of FATHERLY AFTERSHAVES AND COLOGNES.

Beside the note is a SADLY BLOODIED HAT

> Homestuck: Take hat.

Another BIRTHDAY ARTIFACT. You wonder what could have been.

You'll need some way to honor it on your wall.

> Homestuck: Acquire zillyhoo and nails. They will come in handy.

You first place ZILLYHOO into your SYLLADEX.

But now all of your CAPTCHALOGUE CARDS are full. You know what will happen if you try to take the NAIL.

You guess it doesn't hurt.

> Homestuck: Take nail.

You captchalogue ONE (1) NAIL into the top card, and push all the ARTIFACTS down a card.

The FAKE ARMS are pushed entirely out of the deck!!!

Oh well. They're probably completely non consequential anyway. But you probably don't want to do that again, unless you want to drop the BUNNIES and suffer the consequences.

In any case, you now feel like you have gathered enough things to get down to business and do some really important stuff. The next thing you do will be exceptionally meaningful.

> Homestuck:<Action> like a(n) <Animal/Appendage> and <Action> on your <Possession>.

This is the dumbest idea you've had in weeks!!!

STUPID STUPID STUPID.

And yet the polished surface of your <Possession>...

It beckons.

> Homestuck: Combine the nail and hammer.

You MERGE the top two cards.

ZILLYHOO and the NAIL are now captchalogued on the same card and can be used together.

> Homestuck: Use zillyhoo/nail on wall.

You use the ZILLYHOO and NAIL card IN CONJUNCTION with the wall ahead of you

> Homestuck: Hang hat on nail.

It's glorious. Not exactly what you wanted, but it's what you get. The old man really came through this time.

> Homestuck: Examine the gentleman's fedora.

you read the note it came with...

CHAMP.

YOU CAN DO ANYTHING IF YOU PUT YOUR MIND TO IT.

I BELIEVE IN YOU.

#homestuck #413 #Homestuck 413 #April 13 #john egbert #vriska serket #vriska #Dad Egbert #Dad Crocker #Dad Egbert/Croker

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shanastoryteller · 3 years

Note

can you give us some of your thoughts on dumbledore, both in canon and in siat or your other hp fics? the vibe i’m getting is that dumbledore is ridiculous and him not telling people things sometimes does more harm than good, but he’s ultimately a good person and means well, but id like to hear more about him from you

i tend to think of dumbledore as someone who is very powerful, very clever and used to being the most powerful and clever person in the room. the problem with dumbledore, i think, is not a lack of competence but rather an over abundance of it

when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail

when you are an old, powerful wizard who’s weathered two wars and managed to come up on top on both, and watched friends and loved ones fall in these wars while you come out still standing, then i think you do what you've always done and try to keep as many people out of it as you can, because you’ve lost and lost and you are very powerful and very clever and if you’re only a little bit stronger and smarter than you’ve ever been, maybe you can lose a little bit less than what you’ve lost before (you are too old and have seen too much to believe you can eradicate loss so instead you strive to mitigate it)

and you end up with even more loss, the very thing you were trying to avoid

but

when you see yourself as the answer to every question, the questions always end up looking like things you can answer

and sometimes you’re wrong

and others have to suffer the consequences for your own belief in yourself

#at his core dumbledore is a tragic character of the greek variety #asks #anon #harry potter

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rhysismydaddy · 3 years

Text

Prisoner's Game Pt. 1 (Rowaelin)

Synopsis: Aelin Galathynius never thought of herself as a vengeful woman. Until her boyfriend not only testifies, but leads a case against her that lands her in prison for the rest of her life. Post I-Love-You's. He didn't believe her, and she's about to show him that not only is she innocent, he made the worst mistake of his life betting against her. To a woman with nothing but time, life's just a game, after all.

The cinderblock wall dug into her back uncomfortably as she reclined against it, the air in the room was stale, and she hadn't showered in two days. By any measurement, Aelin Galathynius was far from her best.

And yet she somehow managed to look perfectly at ease--happy even--as she lounged in her cell, toying with the ends of her too-long hair.

It was a ruse, of course, just a little trick to piss off the man currently stomping into her space. By the flare of Rowan Whitehorn's eyes, it worked.

"Hello, Rowan," she greeted pleasantly, giving him a little smile and acting like it wasn't taking everything in her not to use the makeshift knife under her pillow to gut him like the spineless coward he was.

She could tell, even across her 8x12 cell, that he was gritting his teeth and fighting a similar action.

The heel of his expensive Italian loafers clicked as he walked across the space to the small table and took a seat at the steel chair in front of it. He tried to push it out further, but stopped when he realized it was bolted to the floor.

"Aelin," he said back, none of the so-obvious anger he was feeling present in his voice. "Been a long time."

Eight years, six months, three weeks, two days, and thirteen hours.

Not that she was counting or anything.

She nodded her agreement, reclining further on the bed and crossing her legs as if she was in the finest dress she owned, not a faded orange jumpsuit.

"What brings you to my side of town, Rowan? Here to finally switch sides and represent me?"

Dressed in a two-thousand dollar suit and tie, hair perfectly gelled back, he looked like he was successful a lawyer meeting with a wealthy client, but they both knew the last thing he'd ever do was work for her.

"You know why I'm here."

She did indeed, but she still said, "I must be exceptionally smart to know why you've come all the way here-"

"Cut the shit," he snapped, finally losing a bit of his cool. He regained it quickly, though, and continued, "I want to know how you did it."

She frowned at her split ends. "Did what?"

Rowan waited until she looked at him to respond. "You know what."

Sighing so deeply it should've rattled the walls, she said, "I can't believe I've spent the last eight years thinking you underestimated my intelligence. You clearly think I'm some sort of oracle genius."

Rowan mimicked her sigh, and she bit her lip to stifle a laugh.

Probably trying to stall, he spent a moment looking at her cell, at the completely bare walls and lack of photographs. All she had was the tally marks drawn in pencil on one wall and a dusty chess set sitting on the table.

When he'd taken inventory of those two things, he sat and just looked at her.

It was clear she wouldn't admit to knowing exactly why he sat in front of her, and he was simply putting off being the one to fold.

Predictable, proud little man.

Eventually, he took his loss and said, "I want to know how you managed to rob me from inside the most secure prison in Rifthold."

She smiled, a full, undulated smile she hadn't used in a long time.

She'd been planning this moment since the day the bars had locked behind her, and it felt damn good to finally see it come to fruition.

According to what she'd heard, definitely not what she knew from personal experience, the private vault in Rowan's apartment had been broken into. Apparently, only one thing was missing: an antique dagger that had been handed down in the family and was now worth over a million bucks.

"Why do you think it was me?" she asked, still smiling.

He gritted his teeth some more, and she internally snickered at the idea he'd have permanent tooth damage because of her. Something else to remember her by.

Green eyes spitting flames at her, he growled, "You left a goddamn business card."

Aelin forced her eyes up to the empty bed above her head, trying her hardest not to laugh. "Maybe I'm being framed?"

"Your fingerprints were on it."

She did laugh then, then laughed some more when his eyes narrowed. He looked like he was about to strangle her. "Rowan, in case you haven't noticed, I'm incarcerated."

She gestured around them to her cell to prove her point.

The bastard just smiled.

Of course he knows that, she thought bitterly, forcing her hand back to her lap and away from where it'd started to creep toward the pillow.

"So how would I rob you?" she asked, getting her mind back on track.

"That's what you're going to tell me," he demanded angrily. "I want to know how you got out of here, got all the way across Rifthold, broke into my apartment, and stole from me without any surveillance camera picking it up."

Aelin ran a hand through her hair, fluffing it just right. When she caught sight of the impatience on his face, she fluffed it some more and readjusted the thin jacket on her shoulders.

It was always too damn cold in this place. She hadn't been warm in almost nine years.

Because of him.

Just for that, she fluffed her hair some more.

Then she said simply, "I didn't."

"Stop lying!" he shouted at her, eyes flashing.

She wasn't, but that was besides the point.

"Fine." She rolled her eyes like he'd won. "I got my cousin to-"

"Aedion spent the night in Wendlyn. His travel is verified, and there are at least a hundred eye witnesses that witnessed him singing karaoke all night. Stop. Fucking. Lying."

Once again, she wasn't lying.

Aedion sure as hell hadn't been in Wendlyn last night. She'd just wanted to make sure his alibi was air-tight as planned.

Sighing again, she asked, "Rowan, even if I did do it, why the hell would I tell you about it?"

His jaw worked for a moment, and she could tell whatever he was about to say was difficult for him. "I'll get time off your sentence if you tell me what you've done with it."

She tried not to laugh, but she couldn't help it.

It burst out of her, full and uncontrollable, and she flopped over on the dirty mattress and howled for a good few minutes.

He glared at her, looking for all the world like he was experiencing a portion of the rage she was made of, but regardless of the threat in his eyes, she took her time composing herself.

"I'm serving ten consecutive life sentences, you idiot."

One for each and every one of her "victims."

"I'll make it nine," he offered generously.

"Even if I was a cat, that'd still leave me dying in a prison cell. Offer me something else."

He just glared at her, unwilling to give her anything she could actually use or want. Just like she'd expected.

"That's what I thought. So no, Rowan Whitehorn, I'm not accepting your little deal. You can think I robbed you all you want; hell, you can even know, in your famous gut, that I did it." She tilted her head, a cruel smile filling her lips. "But it isn't about what you believe, it's about what you can prove. Isn't that right?"

His eyes shuttered at the words, and just like that, they were sucked into the memory of all those years ago.

~Eight years ago~

~Rowan~

Rowan rolled over, edging away from the woman next to him carefully as to not wake her.

Her hair was spread out on his chest, her soft hand was on his stomach, and her leg was draped over his. By all accounts, she was all over him.

And it felt so fucking good.

He'd never met anyone like Aelin before. Anyone so full of life, so hilariously open.

It was like she was constantly on fire, flitting from one place to the next with endless energy and jabs about him being too old and slow.

"What are you going?" she murmured, nails digging in slightly to keep him where he was.

"To get some water. Go back to sleep."

He leaned down and kissed her brow, and she sighed happily and rolled over. Like a total cliché, he watched her sleep for a moment, trying to get his feelings under control.

They'd been seeing each other for less than a year, but he couldn't imagine his life without her. He was in love with her, and if the way she acted and smiled around him was any indication, she loved him, too.

He ran a thumb over her cheekbone, smiling when she tilted her face into his touch.

He was whipped, and he didn't even care.

Rowan shook his head at himself, pulled on a pair of boxers, padded to the kitchen, and held a glass under the faucet.

Then frowned as it sputtered.

He figured he'd at least make himself useful, knowing damn well she would never agree to call the plumber when she could "figure out how to fix it herself on Youtube."

So he knelt down in her kitchen and opened the cabinet door, trying to see what the problem with the pipe was.

Except he never got that far.

His eyes got stuck on the piece of paper sticking out under a false piece of wood covering the back panel.

Knowing it was wrong to pry but somehow unable to stop himself, he tugged the paper loose.

Then fell backwards to his ass, heart hammering and brain spinning as he read it over and over again.

The list of names wasn't long, but all ten of the people on it were highly distinguished members of society.

And they were all dead.

He wouldn't know that, since the death of the last person on the list wasn't even public record yet, but he was the attorney working with the police to find the killer.

Why did she have this list?

And what did the numbers next to the names mean?

One way or another, he knew he had to find out. He also knew he couldn't ask her. He was in too deep, too unbiased to know whether or not she was lying.

He didn't trust himself with her, so he'd have to go the traditional route.

He took a picture of the paper quickly, tucking it back where he'd found it. He snuck back in the room to get dressed, leaving her a note he had to go to work.

He thought he was going to be sick as he left her apartment, a feeling suspiciously similar to dread coiling in his stomach.

There was only one way she could know that last name, only one explanation that made sense.

But he had to know for sure. Had to know if he'd been an idiot this past year; an idiot who'd spent almost every night sleeping next to the killer he'd been searching for.

So he started investigating his girlfriend.

Six days later, he found the security deposit boxes and the murder weapons inside, still covered in dried blood that would be matched to the victims. All with Aelin's prints on them.

Two days after that, the woman he'd thought was the love of his life was arrested on ten counts of murder.

Despite the tears she shed, despite the promises she made to him, despite the love she claimed to have for him, Rowan told the cops everything.

Even though he couldn't imagine her killing anyone.

"It doesn't matter what I believe, it matters what I can prove."

That was the last thing he'd said to her, right as she was being dragged out of the court room and yelling at him to believe her.

The truth of the matter was that when it came down to it, he didn't trust her enough. The facts were against her, everyone on the jury had been against her, and in the end, Rowan was too.

~Present~

~Aelin~

Rowan shook his head, almost like he needed to clear it from the memory they'd obviously both been immersed in, and she smiled.

She hoped what happened all those years ago still haunted him, hoped he went to sleep at night thinking about her and the betrayal he'd served to her on a silver platter.

The first year of her sentence, she was so lost in emotion--in the rage and confusion and deep, deep hurt--that she couldn't bring herself to do anything.

He hadn't even bothered to ask her first. That's what had hurt the worst.

He'd seen that stupid, stupid list and had jumped to the first conclusion possible.

She knew it had looked bad, had looked like she was guilty, but she'd thought that if the worst happened, he'd at least ask her to explain before slapping the cuffs on her.

But he hadn't. She'd gone to prison, and his career had exploded into stardom from the success of the case.

"See, Rowan, when you refused to accept any other explanation other than the easy one, you made a mistake. Because I didn't kill those people."

He rolled his eyes. "Aelin-"

"And I'm not only going to prove it," she continued as if he hadn't spoken, "I'm going to ruin your precious little life while I do it. Just like you did mine."

She stood, put a hand on the steel table, and leaned over him.

"If you want it to stop, all you have to do is drop these bullshit murder charges and issue a public apology for locking me up in the first place."

He stood too, so close his loafers brushed the toe of her dusty, prison issued sneakers.

"That's never going to happen," he promised, voice uncompromising and angry.

Aelin smiled, having predicted his reaction down to the facial expression.

His pride, she'd decided, would be the first thing to go.

She reached around him to slide the pawn on the chess board forward, leaned in even further, and whispered, "Let the game begin, then."

~~~~~~~~~~

Part 2

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