#trying to kill me is absolutely not a dealbreaker
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Zevran's "I'm in mortal danger - better flirt" is an inspiration to rp players everywhere, I tell you. Alas, I fear his days of standing around being pretty ended by the time he appeared in DA2.
Over at Patreon, society6, and redbubble we only portray Zevran as he appeared in DAO.
#champions and heroes#dragon age origins#alistair theirin#zevran arainai#Morrigan#Mahariel#Morrigan you have to understand#I can't just NOT recruit everyone#Zevran Loghain Nathaniel#trying to kill me is absolutely not a dealbreaker#but he did also win me over with his promise of advanced lockpicking skills#so you are right#I'm a damn fool
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I want you to want me (Part 1/3) - Privileged boy learns to consider other people's feelings
So here's the thing. I don't believe Jinshis communication issue is keeping his desires to himself. That boy if he wants something will make his desire known if you want it or not. He will chase you with his gaze, he will try to feed you honey, he will shower you with gifts, he will declare that he will marry you in front of everyone via symbolism anyone who isn't pretending to not get the hint would get the hint.
Jinshis real issue is recognizing boundaries, excepting them and not treat people like things. He actively has to fight the mindset that he just can do everything what he wants. And in the beginning no one his helping with this (sorry not even Gaoshun and Surei). This is an issue people with power/privilege often run into because the more power you have the less people will tell you no directly to your face. You have to intuit it.
Let me show you some of the development Jinshi goes through in LN 1 (consider this your spoiler warning also my hand slipped, this will be long and disorganized and will have a part two)
The hairpin scene
"This hurts Sir!" This time she didn't hide her displeasure. [...] "Does it? I give this to you"
The scene begins with Jinshis getting closer and closer to Mao Mao who for once isn't wearing her freckles. Gaoshun notes that he looks like a boy who's playing with his toys. Banter starts then Mao Mao tells Jinshi that she disguises her face because she doesn't want unwanted attention from men. She doesn't want to be raped, she doesn't want to be kidnapped, she wants to be left alone. Jinshi learns that Mao Mao isn't in the rear palace because her family sold her into it but because she was kidnapped and sold. But it wouldn't make a difference to her either way. This does something to him because he has to consider for the first time that Mao Mao isn't in the Rear Place because of her own choice. She's unfree and that makes him feel bad. So how does he react to that revelation? He doesn't ask what she needs or wants he just stabs (HA! I'm so funny) her with his own desire to protect her and leaves it at that. And thing is, giving Mao Mao the hairpin is a nice thing to do - the hairpin is basically Mao Maos ticket out of the rear palace if she wants to use it. It's protection, it's safety, it's freedom in a certain way. BUT it also means that she belongs to him and Jinshi doesn't consider even for a second that this is something Mao Mao wouldn't want. Even though all she's giving him are dirty looks. He wants her, so she belongs to him. She is his toy. He's absolutely blindsided by Mao Mao not relying on him. That's why he thinks he has a right to question Mao Mao who Lihaku is once she used Lihakus hair pin instead of Jinshis. And to give credit were credit is due he accepts that Mao Mao doesn't want to use his hairpin. He accepts the boundary once he realizes it's there. But this is something he really struggles with.
Please execute me with poison
This is another important scene for Jinshi and it shakes him to his core: after a Courtesan kills herself Mao Mao tells him point blank that she can't refuse him because he has the power to have her executed. And this manufactures non consent even if Jinshi would never ever give the order. This is something Jinshi didn't realize and didn't want to know. Powerful people rarely want to know why people consent to their actions.
But once he knows he wants real enthusiastic consent from Mao Mao. He just has no idea how to get this consent. And he doesn't know yet that Mao Mao feels safer when she's just a tool but he will learn that too, because he values Mao Maos feelings even though he will make a lot and I mean a LOT of mistakes on the way. Some of those mistakes might be dealbreakers for some people. Not me though because i see this through line and I find it important! It's his character arc. One of the reasons Jinshi and Mao Mao get to have the semi equal relationship they have in LN 10 is because Jinshi actively wanted her to be his equal. Mao Mao would have been fine to just follow orders. Gaoshun notes that she is a useful and willing tool. Jinshi makes everything more difficult for himself. But only because he does, there is a chance for a real relationship to bloom.
(SN: This makes him different from Lakan who I really like but let's face it: Lakan doesn't respect Mao Maos wishes at all. Lakan desires Mao Mao as a daughter and wants to take her away. He never even stops to consider that Mao Mao already has a father. He also never considers that she might like the brothel she grew up in. He just wants to be close to her. In one of the later Novels Mao Mao mentions that she can't give him even an inch because he would never let go afterwards. It's this desire she dislikes)
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#Jinmao#Jinshi my boy#kusuriya no hitorigoto spoilers#kusuriya no hitorigoto#the apothecary diaries#Mao Mao#Lakan
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WujiWatch: CQL Rewatch Episode 15
CQL is an especially rewarding show to rewatch (and to write fic about) in part because of the ambiguities that the show intentionally leaves unresolved. What happened to Wei Wuxian's parents? Why did Lan Wangji's mother kill Qingheng-jun's teacher? Does resurrected Wei Wuxian have a golden core or not? Why did Xue Yang and Jin Guangyao have a falling-out? What is Baoshan Sanren's deal?
The ambiguity that hangs over this episode is: would Yu Ziyuan really have cut off Wei Wuxian's hand? You can argue it either way, and fans do: yes, she had every intention of cutting off his hand until Wang Lingjiao started talking about creating a Yunmeng Supervisory Office, which was the actual dealbreaker; no, she was only playing along to buy time and would never have really done it.
Trying to resolve this ambiguity by reading into Yu Ziyuan's words and actions is a dead end. The show gives us occasional internal-monologue voiceovers for some characters (including one for Wei Wuxian in this very scene) but never for her, and certainly not here. We can't read her mind. We'll never know for sure.
But to me, the truly decisive fact is: both Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian absolutely believe she is going to do it. Jiang Cheng pleads with her to spare Wei Wuxian - you could say he, too, is just playing along, but that doesn't check out; that boy cannot act worth a damn. (His numerous unhelpful emotional outbursts, in this scene alone, demonstrate a total inability to act in a way contrary to his true feelings.) And we know Wei Wuxian believes she's going to do it because the writers helpfully give us a voiceover in which he immediately resigns himself to the loss of his hand. The thought that Yu Ziyuan might be faking it doesn't even cross his mind.
So to me, this is one ambiguity that isn't that ambiguous in the end: the two people in this scene who've spent their whole lives observing Yu Ziyuan, who know her better than we as viewers ever will, have no doubt that she would and will maim Wei Wuxian for life.
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like father ~ diego hargreeves;umbrella academy
word count: 2817
request?: yes!
“Hii! Could you please write a Diego Hargreeves x pregnant!reader fic :) If you feel uncomfortable you don't need to”
description: after she tells him she’s pregnant, he starts to worry about ending up like his father
pairing: diego hargreeves x female!reader
warnings: swearing, unplanned pregnancy, absolutely tooth rotting fluff
masterlist (one, two, three)
You never thought two simple, little lines would ever change your life so drastically. And yet, here you were, stood in your bathroom, looking down at the two digital lines that had effectively changed everything for you within five minutes.
You weren’t sure how long you had been stood there. You had been sat on the floor for the five minutes it took the test results to appear, but once the alarm you set on your phone had gone off, you stood. And now you continued to stand, still staring at the test. Had it been minutes? Hours? Days? Who knew. All you knew was that there was a life growing inside of you, and you had no idea how Diego was about to take the news.
Maybe it was something that should’ve been discussed in the early days of your relationship, but the idea of kids had never been brought up between the two of you. You knew that you wanted them, but not so badly that it would be a dealbreaker if Diego didn’t. He hadn’t brought up the idea before, and you didn’t think to bring it up, either. So, the topic just went undiscussed for a very long time.
Until now, when it was definitely too late to make the decision considering you already had a bun in the oven.
You wanted to desperately to be happy. Deep down, you felt kind of excited. The only thing dampening your mood was the dozens of outcomes running through your head of having to tell Diego that you were pregnant. You wanted to try and hope for the best, but your mind kept thinking of all the possible bad endings this could have.
When you heard the front door open and shut, you flinched. It was now or never, although you really wished it could be never.
Diego was walking up to you with wide smile as you exited the bathroom. He picked you up in his arms, causing you to exclaim as he lifted you off the ground. You couldn’t help but smile, hoping that this reaction would stay once you gave him the news.
“Hey baby,” he said. “How was your day?”
“It was...alright,” you responded. “Listen, I have to tell you something.”
He placed you down on the floor, still smiling a little but also a concerned look behind his eyes. “Uh-oh. That’s doesn’t sound good.”
“Depends on how you take the news.”
You passed him the pregnancy test. He took it and looked down at it. For a moment, there was no reaction. The suspense was killing you. And then, realization crossed his face.
“Wait,” he said. “Is this...?”
You nodded.
“How long...?” He trailed off.
“How long have I known? Or how far along am I?” you asked. When he didn’t respond, you decided to answer both questions, “I only just found out, but I’ve had a suspicion for a while. My period was late and it’s never been late before, and I’ve been experiencing some other signs of pregnancy. I don’t know how far along I am. I would have to make a doctor’s appointment to find out.”
He was still silent. He kept looking down at the pregnancy test in his hands. You wished he would give you some sort of reaction. Literally anything. Even if it was anger, you would’ve taken it over the silence. It was eating away at you, making you feel even more uneasy by the second.
Finally, he passed you back the pregnancy test and turned away. He started to walk away from you, and you quickly kept up the pace with him to follow. “Where are you going?”
“I just...I need to go out for a minute.”
“You just got home.”
“I need to go out again.”
“Diego, please.” You reached out to grab hold of him. He stopped walking for a moment, but didn’t look back at you. “Can you at least...tell me how you feel? Tell me what this means for us if I...if I want to keep it?”
But he still didn’t respond. He pulled away and started for the front door again. He didn’t even slam the door to give you any sort of clue as to whether or not he was upset. He just walked off, got into his car, and then drove away.
You watched him go before sitting back on the floor. You pulled your knees up to your chest and began to cry.
~~~~~~
You managed to pull yourself together long enough to make a doctor’s appointment for a few day’s time. You texted Diego to let him know and to tell him that if he wanted to go with you that you would greatly prefer that. When he didn’t respond you weren’t shocked, but it truly broke your heart even more.
You didn’t think this would be a dealbreaker for Diego. You didn’t think he’d get so upset that he would just up and leave. The two of you had been together for many years. You had a bond that seemed to unbreakable, to a point where even his siblings noticed how much happier he had been since meeting you. You remembered the first time you ever met the Hargreeves family, where Luther pulled you aside before you left and thanked you for “making Diego, Diego again”.
And now he was gone. No calls, no texts, no indications on whether or not this relationship was going to continue. All because you told him that you were pregnant.
Your upset was starting to melt into anger.
If he wanted to react this way, then fine, he could react this way. But he wouldn’t have you anymore if that was the case. You’d raise this baby all on your own if you had to. You didn’t need Diego.
You were in the process of calling your mom to ask her to come with you to the appointment when you heard the front door open and close. You hung up before your mom answered and slowly rose from your spot on the bed. You knew who it likely was and you weren’t sure if that made you more or less tense.
Diego appeared in the doorway just as you were about to step out. You were inches away from one another. He was looking at you in a way you once again weren’t able to read. Your anger was still fresh, so you stepped back and crossed your arms.
“Welcome home,” you said, coolly. “I wasn’t sure if you’d even come back.”
He winced at your words. “Of course I was going to come back.”
“I don’t know, you left pretty quickly after I gave you the news. When that happens, it usually means that person isn’t coming back.”
The hurt look on his face didn’t go unnoticed. You felt a little bit of pride knowing he was feeling remorse for what he did.
“I just...needed to think,” he said.
You raised an eyebrow, encouraging him to go on. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Look, come sit. I can explain everything.”
He reached out for you, but you took a step away. You turned your back to him and walked back to the bed. You both sat on the edge, leaving a bigger space between the two of you than you wanted. You couldn’t be close to him without caving, you knew that. Now that he was back, your hormones were running wild (could you even blame the pregnancy hormones yet?”, but you had to stay strong. You couldn’t cave just yet.
He was silent for a moment. You were about to open your mouth to tell him to get on with it, but he cut you off by saying, “I was scared.”
“Scared?” you questioned. “Of what? Of...of the pregnancy?”
“Of being like my dad.”
You felt your angry tension leaving your body. You moved a few inches closer to Diego, your brows furrowing together. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve told you about my dad. How he was never actually...well, a dad. He treated me and my siblings like shit. We were weapons to him. We weren’t kids to him. He fucked us all up big time.”
“I know all of this, but what does it have to do with you walking out on me after I told you I was pregnant?”
“I only had two parental figured growing up: my robot mom and my asshole father. When you told me you were pregnant, I was happy. But that happiness was overshadowed by this fear that, since Hargreeves is the only parenting style I know, that I’ll...I’ll be just as bad as him.”
You closed the gap between the two of you completely. You took his hand in yours. Now he was the one having issues making eye contact with you. You could see the moisture forming in his eyes, something he only ever let you see, and even then it was rare.
“You’re not going to be like your dad,” you assured him. “For one, I’m not popping out seven kids at one time for you to try and train as a superhero team.”
A small smile appeared on his face, which you took as a win.
“But, to me, the fact that you’re so worried about ending up like your dad means that you won’t. You’re aware of your dad’s behavior and how its effected you and your siblings, and you know you don’t want to continue that cycle with our baby.”
His eyes darted towards your stomach for a split second. You took the hand you were holding and flattened his palm against your stomach. There was no sign of a bump yet, you knew you were too early in the pregnancy for that, but you couldn’t help but already picture the baby that was growing in there.
“But what if I fuck their life up?” Diego asked, his voice soft.
“You won’t,” you assured him. “I know you won’t. You’re going to be a great father, and this baby is going to be lucky to have you as their father.”
A tear ran down his cheek. He was quick to wipe it away, but his eyes were watering quicker than he could wipe them. Diego pulled you into a tight hug. You rested your head against his chest and took in his familiar smell and warmth. You were glad to have gotten past the issue, even if you wished he had said something before he left you in your uncertainty for so long.
You exclaimed in shock as Diego pulled you both down to lay flat on the bed. He let go of the hug to sit over you. His hands pulled up your shirt just enough to expose your belly. You giggled as he pressed a kiss against your soft skin, the stubble of his beard tickling your sensitive skin.
“I don’t care what you are, or if you come out with powers or not,” he said to your stomach. “I already love you so much, and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you and your mom are safe and happy for the rest of my life.”
You felt tears starting to well up in your eyes as you ran a hand through Diego’s hair. He looked up at you and you felt like he had taken the breath from your lungs with just one look. You smiled at him and he smiled back before he raised himself up to become level with you again. When he kissed you, it was gentle and full of love and passion.
“I want to come to that appointment,” he told you between the kisses he pressed against your cheek, your jaw, your neck. “The one you texted me about. I want to know that our baby is healthy in there.”
“I want nothing more than for you to come with me,” you responded, a soft whimper escaping your lips as his lips found your sweet spot. “And I’m glad you want to come with me.”
In response, he pulled your shirt the rest of the way off and you both helped each other to take the rest of your clothes off and discard them onto the floor, both them and the earlier issue long forgotten.
~~~~~~
You could tell Diego was nervous the day of the appointment. He had tossed and turned so much the night before that he had woken you a few times (not that you were going to tell him that as you knew he’d feel bad if you did), he refused breakfast because he said he wasn’t hungry enough to eat, and he seemed very unfocused as you both got ready and drove to the doctor’s office. You offered to drive since you weren’t sure if you could trust him behind the wheel in this state.
You’d be lying if you said you weren’t nervous as well. You were afraid of what the outcomes to this appointment might be; of the doctor telling you that you had a false positive pregnancy test and weren’t actually pregnant; that there was something wrong with the baby; hell, even just the idea of the doctor confirming the pregnancy made you nervous. As excited as you were to be having this baby with Diego, you were also nervous for what pregnancy really entailed. You and Diego had agreed to wait before telling his family, but you were dying to talk to Allison about it since she was the only woman in your life - besides your own mother, of course - to have gone through a pregnancy.
You arrived at the doctor’s office and were brought in almost immediately. The doctor did some standard tests just to check your health and confirmed to you and Diego that you were as healthy as a horse.
“You’ll be just fine to go through this pregnancy,” he told the both of you. “But, of course, we’ll want to do annual check ups just to be sure you and the baby are doing alright.”
You nodded, although you weren’t completely absorbing his words. You were waiting for him to get to the part of the appointment that you and Diego had actually been waiting for: the ultrasound. The test that would truly confirm for the two of you whether or not you were pregnant.
The doctor helped you up onto the bed in his office and had you pull up your shirt just enough that he could see your belly. You suppressed a yelp as he put a cold, jelly like substance on your stomach and started up the ultrasound machine. The machine’s humming noise filled the room as the doctor placed the wand against your stomach and started moving it around. At first, you couldn’t see anything and you felt your heart drop. You were convinced that your worst nightmare was being confirmed - there was no baby in there.
But then the doctor said, “Ah, there you are.”
He pointed to his screen where a grey blob, no bigger than the shape of a peanut, was on display.
“It may not look like it just yet,” the doctor said, “but there’s your baby right there.”
“Whoa,” you breathed, unable to believe it.
“Holy shit,” Diego said. “That little bean turns into a baby?”
The doctor chuckled. “I know, it’s hard to believe. The fetus usually doesn’t actually develop to look like a baby until the later stages of the second trimester into the third trimester. Most people can’t even see the little blob of the fetus in their first ultrasounds like this and start to believe there’s no fetus in there.”
You tried not to let it show on your face that you were one of those people.
Diego took your hand in his. You looked up at him and saw his eyes were fixated intently on the screen. You could see they were starting to gloss over with tears again, but you knew Diego wasn’t about to try in front of a stranger like this.
You squeezed his hand and he finally looked down at you. You couldn’t help but smile at him, and he smiled back.
“That’s our baby,” he said, looking back to the screen. “I can’t believe it, but...that’s our little bean.”
“It is,” you said, feeling yourself becoming overwhelmed with emotions again. “What do you think?”
“I think I’m going to protect that little bean till the ends of the Earth.”
You let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. Diego brushed his lips against your knuckles before leaning down to kiss your lips.
In that moment, you swore nothing could make you happier. But you knew that, within the next nine months, you’d be having another happy moment that would definitely trump this one.
#diego hargreeves#diego hargreeves imagine#diego hargreeves x reader#david castenada#david castenada imagine#david castenada x reader#the umbrella academy#the umbrella academy imagine#imagine#one shot#request#fanfiction#fanfic#fandom
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shooting star: who is your ideal s/o?
Can I plead the fifth and not answer this question?
Assuming the answer to that is no, so let's see. I need a woman that can make me feel all of the things again, since that hasn't happened in years and it won't be easy. It'll be damn near impossible but let's not kill the spirit of anyone wanting to try. She'd be absolutely stunning, to the point that every head turns when she walks into a room. Gotta be funny, kind, able to properly communicate how she feels and what she wants or needs from me as a partner, dedicated to her career, and at least open to the idea of having kids. Scratch that, she has to want kids, and the puppies. She also has to know what her love languages are and has to learn mine so that we can properly shower each other in it. Oh, and the dealbreaker: she has to love me out loud. I don't care if she shouts it from the rooftop, puts it on a billboard, or even has one of those planes fly across the sky with a sign that says it — I deserve a public declaration of love.
#asks.#answered: kurt#meme weekend#/strikethrough is her personal thoughts so nothing to see there folks
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When Harvestella was first announced, I was surprised by how excited I was for it. I don't even play farming sims, and I've had more criticism than praise for Square Enix side projects like Bravely Default and ESPECIALLY Octopath Traveler, but the trailer was so reminscient of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles that I couldn't help but eagerly anticipate it. The idea of a fifth season of death that kills crops, forcing adventurers to venture outside in search of a way to stop it had the potential to give this farming sim as potent a sense of urgent melancholy as miasma had done for FFCC, and I've yearned for some kind of aesthetic successor to that game for nearly as long as I've been playing video games, with little luck. The game's action combat and use of huge crystals as setpieces further cemented in my mind that the two games were alike.
Harvestella isn't like Crystal Chronicles. It's not like Bravely Default, or Octopath Traveler. Hell, it's not even developed by Square Enix. The developers, Live Wire Inc, cut their teeth on shoot 'em up ports until 2021, when they released a sidescrolling Dark Fantasy action RPG they co-developed under a small publisher. Harvestella might be published by Square, then, but it is not to my mind A Square Game. It doesn't feel like it's trying to be the contemporary version of an old Square property the way much of Square's smaller output does. It feels like an indie game. Harvestella is best thought of as a passion project by some folks who didn't really have the budget to make something as lavish as their ideas deserved but did have some really talented artists who were able to smooth over some of the rough edges with some absolutely gorgeous visual art, one of the best RPG soundtracks in years, and a thoughtful and complex story.
Harvestella is an overly-simple action-RPG and also an overly-simple farming sim with an absolutely bonkers story that has absolutely nothing to do with farming. It's missing a lot of features that are expected in its genres. Its tutorials in some areas are close to useless, there's no way to see how much money a product will sell for until it's been sold - which is uhhhhhhh not great in a genre about simulating mercantilism, its combat never reaches a point where it feels complex or even good, its farm customization options are too basic for your farm to ever really feel like your own, and it has no romance options. None of these are dealbreakers for me - obviously, as I put over 90 hours into the game - but they're not great issues to have, either. Also, the game simultaneously has too much voice acting and not enough. Almost none of the dialogue is voiced, but characters have lines in battle and while you're farming, and the delivery for those lines ranges from just good enough to abysmal. A voice line kicks in every single time you perform any farming action, and for some reason all those lines are done in a really grating falsetto stage whisper that makes the game actively embarrassing to play. Frankly, I don't think the game is worth $60. It clearly wasn't budgeted like a AAA game. Lots of love and talent went into it, but that's true of plenty of $30-$40 games. I came away from Harvestella feeling like I'd played an indie game that industry giant Square Enix pretended was something else. But that's not the fault of Harvestella or its devs - that's Square's fault.
I want to get into story spoilers next, because the themes and philosophies of Harvestella are unique enough that I was baffled by most of the game's story decisions for over half the game, before they made it clear what they were getting at, exactly. Honestly, what Harvestella is trying to say is probably the most interesting thing about it, in a way that reminds me of Legend of Mana, which is high praise. Harvestella is a game about cultural constructs and societal collapse. For a time, I was describing the game as "post-truth," and I still think that's accurate, but not exactly in a conservative way. The first two-thirds of the story felt impenetrable for this reason. It kept making story decisions that were directly counter to the decisions that I'm used to RPGs making.
For example, one party member is a high-ranking church official, but when she joins the party, she learns that the church leader, who adopted her as a child and took her into the church, is a literal monster who has been using his position in the church to eat adherents. Pretty standard RPG fare. In the party member's side story, she learns that the church's doctrine itself was created by an AI. A robot was tasked with keeping humans from fighting each other too much and decided the most effective way of doing so was to procedurally generate a holy book using texts like the Bible and the Koran as inspirations. In most games of this kind, when the characters learn that a church's foundational history is entirely fabricated and its clergy has been engaging in murdering innocents, the characters then fight to dismantle the church. Here, though, the character decides that the good of the church, even if it is based on lies, outweighs the harm it has inflicted, and places herself as the church's leader and central figure so she can better control it as a force for good. She says she does this to "fight the status quo."
In another character quest, a character learns that his memories about the royal family he serves are all fabricated, as the family doesn't actually exist. When he confronts the robot who created his memories, the robot tells him that the species that created it had gone extinct before it was ever given consciousness, and it decided that carrying out orders for a fake master you vividly remember is better than the hell of doing the same for a real master that you have never met and never will meet. with this in mind, the character decides to keep and cherish his false memories. Moments like these gave me whiplash, and I talked to anyone who would listen about how strange the game's decisions were.
It's only in the last third of the game that these themes about pushing back against what's true and inconvenient in favor of what's imagined but comforting begin to coalesce into something interesting and worth engaging with. I won't get into all the details, but like most RPGs, Harvestella is a game about the coming climate crisis. It is revealed partway in that Harvestella takes place two millennia in the future, after humanity went extinct and new humans evolved to take their place through sci-fi means that don't really matter. The people of our time had tried desperately to flatten the differences between humans and drive cooperation in the face of climate disaster. When the internet failed, they developed technology to push the continents back together into a Pangaea, hoping that proximity would foster understanding. When that failed, scientists created a telepathic machine that could read the thought patterns of the entire population - essentially an artificial collective unconscious - so they could discover some kind of consensus they could build on. The only consensus the machine could find, in the face of seemingly inescapable societal and environmental collapse, was a belief that there was no chance of a future. People feared the existence of human diversity, fell back on nostalgia for an idealized past, and in doing so had unintentionally formed a death cult - essentially, they had embraced fascism.
Quietus, the season of death, was created by this artificial collective unconscious to grant humanity's shared wish for an apocalypse. The game uses its theme of illusions versus the truth to argue that while the logical course of action in the face of dire news and statistics is to accept that the odds of surviving and building a better world are infinitesimally small, we have to ignore the facts and push on to survive and build that better world regardless, because there's no chance of it happening if we give up at the starting gate. It's remarkably similar to FFXIV Endwalker's dichotomy of despair versus hope and message that forcing ourselves to feel a false hope just to stave off despair is better than allowing ourselves to despair and therefore not even trying to fix things. Even Harvestella's final boss is very reminiscent of FFXIV's Endsinger boss in theming and design. Which I don't mind and don't really think is a case of one developer copying the other; this stuff is just on everyone's minds lately.
When I first began describing Harvestella as "post-truth," I did so entirely as a comparison to the rise in political lies spread and accepted by the right-wing that has been widely discussed since the beginning of the Trump era. As the game justified its theming, however, I found myself beginning to want to embrace "post-truth" as a much broader and even somewhat positive characteristic of our era. We're quickly reaching a point where believing that there can be a future at all is a lie we knowingly tell ourselves, which was the point Harvestella makes. But in a time where we are becoming increasingly aware of the presence of hegemonic narratives influencing our perceptions of reality, just pushing back against those narratives can be, to an extent, post-truth. Harvestella has almost no character creation options, but it does allow the player to choose body type, voice, and pronouns entirely independently of each other. I'd originally seen this as a nice little addition to a game in a genre that often does embrace queerness, but now I'm starting to view it as an opening manifesto. From a certain point of view, queerness is a sort of engagement in post-truth. We all are who we say we are, hegemonic narratives be damned.
The secret class you earn in Harvestella for building up your farm enough is the Aristotle, a kind of mage that can fight using the four classical - or Aristotelian - elements, fire, water, wind, and earth, which pop up throughout the game. One character from our own time finds everyone's acceptance of the classical elements frustrating when she knows about the existence of the periodic table. But because she's in a world where people only know of four elements, those elements function as the philosopher Aristotle had theorized they had. Even after your protagonist learns that there is a far greater range to science than their society has learned, they are an Aristotle anyway, drawing energy from only four elements and using that energy to cast powerful magic. Our hegemonic narratives may limit our scope, but as a bloc, we have the power to shape those narratives and change the scope. Our collective imagination can construct Truth, which is an incomprehensible amount of power that's mostly been used to oppress and harm, but we could, in theory, turn around and use for good.
I'm not sure where the line is - if there is one at all - where postmodernity ends and this post-truth begins, but I'm starting to begin to think of things in those terms. I think there's some real potential in exploring the limits and capacity of this framework, and I guess I have a simple farming sim and a simple RPG to thank.
So, Harvestella. It's an overpriced, low-budget but pretty little game with some cringeworthy voice lines, some fun farming, and a story that's possibly impacted how I think about the world from here on out. 7/10.
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𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐍𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐋 𝐂𝐀𝐍 𝐏𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐎𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐀 𝐋𝐎𝐓 𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐄𝐑
repost do not reblog
NAME: min lu, minlu, or just min for short
PRONOUNS: he / him, she / her
PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION: tba
NAME OF MUSE(S): otakemaru, as well as kidomaru at @kidoryanse, belphegor of katekyo hitman reborn at @belacedia, and my two extremely low activity muses, mostima of arknights at @chronoma and kogil of fate at @goldknboy
RP EXPERIENCE/HOW LONG: no fucking clue. its been at least five years but I haven’t been keeping track at all to be honest, and it also depends on what you consider roleplaying ? does passing notes in class count ?
PLATFORMS YOU’VE USED: discord, tumblr, and others
BEST EXPERIENCE: when I get to chat ooc with my mutuals a lot !!
RP PET PEEVES/DEALBREAKERS: to be honest I’ve never really had any major issues with the rpc on tumblr !! but I used to have problems with oc related drama. in general I’m pretty laid back and forgiving, but as soon as it’s a personal issue then I have a problem. basically an excess of ooc drama puts me in a sour mood.
FLUFF, ANGST OR SMUT: I am honestly really not that great with fluff but I do enjoy it in small doses. like once a month you’ll see minlu reblog a soft / shippy meme and that’s my quota for fluff filled before I go back to writing nonstop angst and gratuitous violence.
PLOTS OR MEMES: definitely memes !! I enjoy myself more when I can kinda make stuff up as I go rather than stick to a specific plot. If we ever do plot, then it’ll be more about the *vague hand wave* general direction / premise of our thread.
LONG OR SHORT REPLIES: the length of replies that I’m comfortable with tends to fluctuate between being tempted to answer a meme with a one liner ( in which case I usually try to produce at least two paragraphs, but it takes longer to finish ) and writing like four chunks of text in one sitting. it really just depends on what I’m replying to ( I can only squeeze so much out of a yes or no question with some of my less talkative muses ) and my mood that day, sometimes I’ll go to bed with absolutely no inspiration for an ask reply then wake up with a lot to say about it.
TIME TO WRITE: shouldn't take long !! between an hour and, um, 11 months
ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S): considering that a frightening majority of my muses are serial killers I’d like to say that I’m not like my muses at all. but honestly I think I have more in common with kidomaru or belphegor than I do with otakemaru, just like, except for the serial killing.
tagged by: @kiriisu
tagging: @halcyonies, @zorkaya, @sortilegii, @imarahuyo
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ok tell me how to fuck him up 💔💔💔💔
I SUPPOSE THIS IS A MEME NOW -- @snowtombedstar
i. the classic, to start with: emotional distance kills the entire thing u have with kaeya. completely and utterly. hurting him, playing victim and showing 0 desire to have him back and being willing to work towards forgiveness will VERY quickly turn you from his lover to someone who, like everyone else that has been in his past, doesn't value him and simply used him either for sex or to not be alone for a while. either way....... big fucking ouch? not only this confirms to kaeya that he's disposable, only good for his looks and a quick fuck, and turns his future interactions with the person into more trauma fuel. there's little to no redemption past this point, truly. either the person has an holy revelation and shifts of 180° and gives up everything to pursue kaeya ( and even then this might not work ) or the trauma stays permanently and everything is fucked :D
ii. confusing the lines between devotion and love also sends you packing: worship him like a god, and he goes from slighty aroused to outright uncomfortable. worship him like... you know...... the gods who raided his homeland. yeah! yeah that is FOR SURE a good idea and will absolutely not make him feel objectified!
iii. falling for his 'captain' persona and not recognizing that under there he's fucked? yeah. this mistake is an istant dealbreaker. he'll humor you, and... that's it
iv. competition? as in, try to romance multiple lovers while you're trying for kaeya, too? another instant dealbreaker. he doesn't come second, or third, or fourth. he wants to come FIRST and if it's somehow a kink to collect lovers for you then you either you keep this shit under super well hidden wraps, or not only he will dump you, but he'll work hard to humiliate your life decisions and undo your love stories. also bleeds a bit of a deal breaker ooc for me too due to me being uncomfortable in harem-settings and having said that multiple times in such a way that it can’t be misurestood. if you romance/flirt with another kaeya then mines outta the picture, as much as i’m more than okay with alternates of him this just won’t do for him. bye and thank you!
#snowtombedstar#HELL YEA LET'S BREAK IT DOWN#the ooc bit may make me ruthless in communicating this but this is a writing hobby and my comfort comes first ngl#u can't misurestand 'don't fucking put my muse in harem-like settings' without me voicing it#feels like i should put this in my rules but ill edit those in 2025 at this point
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Control Z, Episode 2-3
-PABLO, WHY WOULD YOU JUST ANSWER AN UNKNOWN NUMBER, HOW STUPID ARE YOU
-I know the new principle is supposed to come off as an uncaring jerk, but I’m just SO HAPPY that an authority figure is FINALLY calling out Quintanilla and Raúl for SOMETHING.
-Okay, I’m sorry. Why have they forgiven Raúl, but not Alex? Alex was at least TRYING TO DO SOMETHING SHE THOUGHT WAS RIGHT? She was actively trying (horribly) to correct a wrong that WAS IN FACT RAÚL’S (and Gerry’s ofc) FAULT???? Look, I know this probably sounds unfair since I am an Alex Apologist™, but Alex is at least taking accountability; Raúl is just an asshole. (“Alex, you buried someone alive” Yes, and Raúl kidnapped someone and tried to save his money over a different kidnapped teenage girl who was in mortal danger, like have some consistency here.)
-Claudia wants to be an actress!!!!
-Wtf, theatre teacher, these are STUDENTS, obviously they aren’t going to be doing Shakespeare monologues perfectly, THAT’S WHY YOU ARE TEACHING THEM, God why are all the teachers in this show absolute trash.
-...Oh, this is an interesting direction to take Gerry’s story in. Confronted with a guy who reminds him (and us) of Luis, who is instead treated horribly by Gerry’s peers instead of Gerry himself. Presumably, since he failed Luis, he’ll help this guy, especially since he’s being bullied for “acting too gay” just like Luis was.
-Why...why is Quintanilla trying to push Alex and Gaby back together??! She was his colleague and ALEX’S TEACHER, WHY IS THIS MAN AN EDUCATOR WFT IS WRONG WITH HIM
-When did Pablo become heart-eyed over María. I swear if this show ends with the two of them being a couple...
-Also, why are he and Claudia friends now????
-I...do not like the way this theatre teacher is interacting with Claudia. But maybe that’s just because Gaby is.....there. And still being treated like some Tragic Love Interest.
-Hmmm, New Inmate covered up for Gerry. Interesting. This could either be a really interesting dynamic or a catastrophically-badly-handled one.
-Natalia!!!! Confirmed okay!!!
-So obviously she and María are faking María’s death, but the question is obviously WHY. I don’t think María is behind this, but...tbh it really COULD be Natalia? I’m sure Maria told her about what happened on the roof, and it would make sense that Natalia would only do this when she was absolutely sure her sister was out of the way and wouldn’t be blamed. Her embezzlement being revealed by Raúl is why she made the decision to Get In Debt With The Drug Cartel (I cannot believe these are real plotlines on a teen drama as I type them out, lmaooo), so I can see her blaming him (and, by extension, the people around him). Please tell me she’s not doing this because she’s mad Javier broke up with her, I’ll be so disappointed.
-FUCK, MARÍA TRIED TO KILL HERSELF??!? I mean. There’s no body, which means she’s not dead as per Usual Mystery Rules, but. God. That was...unexpectedly dark.
-Ohhh, does Natalia blame The Gang for (what she thinks is) María’s suicide??? (Sorry, I’m still stuck on the theory that she’s the culprit.)
-I did appreciate the little detail of Sofía, who survived a suicide attempt, knowing immediately what Natalia means when she tries to hint at what happened with María. While Javier seems to need it spelled out for him. Good job, show!
-If Sofía really does believe Alex...and she’s proven that Bad Hacking Behavior isn’t a dealbreaker.......Sofía/Alex endgame? (I know I made this as a joke before season 2 started, but honestly? I think I’m here for it in earnest now.)
-You know what? Sofía going to law school actually makes a lot of sense. Once again, good job, show!!
-Oh, God, is the theatre teacher having a predatory “““relationship””” with Claudia? I cannot handle this again, I really can’t.
-Ugghhh, he IS, please let this end, can we STOP DOING THIS.
-It seems like they might have Claudia hook up with Pablo, and you know what, if it means she’s not “““dating””” her teacher, I’ll take it. I’ll take just about ANYTHING to not have any of the endgame relationships be teacher/high school student.
-RAÚL IS FUCKING BROKE I AM LAUGHING SO HARD I WANT HIM TO BE MISERABLE AND ROT IN HELL
-I genuinely thought Claudia was hardcore into María, I am SO confused as to what they’re doing with her.
-Okay, so she’s not going to hook up with Pablo, but he sure tried. (Presumably because she’s the only connection he still has to María? Yikes, that’s messed up, lmao.)
-.........PABLO??? Obviously it’s more complicated than that, but. His name is?? On the essay???? And he was in the car? Like I think whoever it ACTUALLY is was getting Raúl and Pablo in the same place so Pablo would unintentionally kill Raúl by running him over (which. sadly. did not actually happen. Sorry, I’d like to say that one day I’ll shut up about hating Raúl, but it’s basically my Brand™ at this point, and also I can’t pretend like I’m not spending every second of this show hoping he’ll die.)
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What about them reacting to a MC that's the complete opposite of them with the bros? (Sorry if you've done this already!!)
No! I haven’t done something like this yet! Please enjoy!
Lucifer Vs. Humility in Human Form
…this human is driving him up the wall and they haven’t even done anything wrong.
They have such a low view of their own importance, which can be seen as a pretty shitty thing but they- this fucking human-
They admit their mistakes, they’re willing to learn, they keep an open mind, CAN THEY JUST STOP. THEY’RE MAKING LUCIFER LOOK BAD!
Ugh… now they’re offering to help with his paperwork… sure human. Help him out.
Tsk, as annoying as this human is, they should at least have a little confidence in themselves. They do good work. Like geez… take some amount of pride in what they do, it’s not like it’d kill them.
Mammon vs. The Person He’s Gradually Squeezing Money Out of but he Feels Real Bad About It
Huh, so the stupid human’s going to buy him lunch? Good! He deserves it after he spent all that time lookin’ after them! And they’re gonna get him new sunglasses? Awesome!
The human is Mammon’s second wallet, and our favourite greedy demon is milking for all it’s worth.
…he feels kinda bad to be honest… just a smidge! Not ‘cause he likes the human or nothin’ it’s just that… uh… ONLY HE GETS TO USE THEM AS A WALKING ATM! THAT’S WHY!
Phew… crisis averted…
But yea, Mammon gets very nervous about people taking advantage of his MC, so it gradually gets him to slightly ease up on the “HUMAN! BUY ME THIS!”
Levi vs. Human with Good Vibes
…how is the human not self conscious about… anything???? Like, Levi could absolutely pwn them in any game and they’d just shrug it off and congratulate him!
HAEEEEH? No jealousy?! No desperate need to be the best?! No envy?! …man…
MC just has immaculate vibes and works to better themselves. They keep trying to tell Levi that there’s always going to be someone better than him at something, and that he should just enjoy what he’s doing.
It doesn’t help that MC goes outside, and exercises, and does… NOT Otaku things!
Does not compute. Does not compute. Computational overload-
It doesn’t stop MC though, they work tirelessly to try and help Levi understand his own self worth and defeat his envy. They uh… have their work cut out for them…
Satan vs. “Calm down, relaxation, chill out, stop screaming.”
This human just doesn’t seem to get angry… they have a god-like level of patience. At first Satan just thought he was overestimating how angry a human could get, but in reality MC was just very very calm.
They weren’t one for book reading either, which irked Satan a little, but it wasn’t a friendship dealbreaker.
MC’s very open with who they really are, they don’t hide anything behind fake smiles and pretty words. As we know, that’s not exactly Satan’s thing, but he can respect MC for being like that.
Satan and MC just vibe together in the same room. MC themselves is a calming figure.
Asmodeus vs. Dense, Chaste, and Afraid
My oh my~ what a cute little human. Asmo immediately got his flirt on, but this human was just so… dense???? They got NONE of the innuendos Asmo was spewing.
The human was so awkward too, nothing like Mr. Social Butterfly Asmodeus. He couldn’t go out with them without them looking like they were going to spontaneously combust!
At one point, Asmo got so frustrated that MC didn’t seem to be understanding his flirting, he straight up asked to have sex with MC.
“MC, babe, would you like to commence coitus? I am incredibly attracted to you, and I enjoy your company.” “Oh! Uh… I didn’t know you felt that way about me Asmo…” “H O W?!”
Beelzebub vs. “No, I’m good! I’m not hungry!”
Is MC… not hungry? :( are they sick? That’s so sad omg-
MC is expressive, Beel has RBF, MC is as prickly as a cactus, Beel is a teddy bear. Don’t worry, Beel will still hug cactusy MC :D
MC’s also quite lazy too, Beel doesn’t particularly mind, he’s already used to helping out Belphie.
Belphegor vs. “Jesus Fucking Christ do You Ever Sleep?!”
Human. Human no. Human stop. Stop moving just sit the fuck down.
Belphie gets tired just looking at MC work, they do all their chores with a sweet smile on their face too. Man… this human is way too perky while doing ugh, work.
MC is very open with their emotions, unlike Belphie, who stews angrily and can hold a grudge like no other.
It’s hard for demons to change, but maybe Belphie could learn some things from MC. Please. PLEASE learn something from MC Belphie we’re begging you here!
—————
I really ran out of ideas with this one… sorry guys :/
#obey me#obey me!#Obey me Headcanons#Obey me! Headcanons#obey me! shall we date?#obey me shall we date#obey me mc#Obey me Lucifer#Obey me Mammon#Obey me Leviathan#Obey me Satan#Obey me Asmodeus#Obey me Beelzebub#Obey me Belphegor
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The Cullens don’t value human life, or: Carlisle, honey, I’m so sorry
So, Carlisle is in a miserable situation.
He was forcibly turned into a vampire under traumatic circumstances, and became a cannibalistic demon. Against all odds he discovered that he didn’t actually have to kill people: however, he was still lonely. Fast forwards a few lonely years, he found a BFF and homoerotic academic in Aro, and spent decades trying to persuade him to his diet. Failed. Decided to travel the world in search of likeminded - failed.
There’s no one.
Fast forwards to 1918, Carlisle has spent centuries trying to get someone, anyone, to understand this seemingly simple concept. Don’t eat people, please, it’s literally the only thing Carlisle asks. And he’s still asking too much.
We know how history then unfolded itself - Carlisle was going to let the Masens die, as countless patients had before, and then Elizabeth Masen said “nu uh, not my son he won’t!”, and that was the kick in the butt Carlisle needed to create his own companion. Converting others had failed, but maybe a brand new vampire who has never known anything different and who looks to Carlisle for guidance will follow the diet.
And it works. Edward follows Carlisle’s diet. A few years later Carlisle repeats the experiment, now he’s in a coven of three vampires who are actually doing the diet. What a world. I’m sure he was walking around in a daze for a solid portion of that time.
The coven grows, soon Carlisle has a whole squad of vegetarians, and even a cousin squad. (Although since the Denali sister went for the diet because they wanted to have sex with the same men multiple times, I can only picture Carlisle’s delight upon finding them quickly turning into a thousand yard stare.)
Anyway, Carlisle has what he always wanted, let there be happiness galore.
Unfortunately, none of the Cullens actually care about human life.
Off the top of my head:
Edward left Carlisle for years. This by itself is a dealbreaker, he had all the love and support he could ever ask for, and turned his back on it because he’d rather kill people. Killing rapists wasn’t even his first instinct, at first he killed homeless junkies, since no one would miss them. He only turned to rapists because junkies taste awful. He turned back not because he learned the error of his ways, but because life wasn’t fulfilling. He has learned nothing: when we meet him in 2005, he would have eaten Bella and the Biology class if it weren’t for Carlisle, contemplates killing all the Quileutes, and in Volterra he would have gone on a massacre, again if it wasn’t for Carlisle. This guy doesn’t care about human life, and he never becomes a better person. He abstains from human blood for Carlisle, to feel like less of a monster, and because it plays into his superiority complex.
Esme makes it very clear she’s fine with Bella’s untimely death. She’d let Bella die to satisfy Edward’s thirst, or to keep him in Forks. Her vote for Bella to live has nothing to do with Bella, and she later gives Edward implicit approval to eat her if he wants. It’s additionally damning that Edward isn’t at all surprised by her behavior. She does the diet for her family.
Rosalie used not wanting to move to a new place and start over as an argument in favor of killing Bella. She later places her bet that Bella will be eaten in the meadow. She adheres to the diet better than anyone in the family, but she doesn’t actually care for the individual human life, not even when it’s an innocent girl. Her main reason for following the diet is that she wants to be as close to being human as possible, and maneating demon is about as far from human as you can get.
Emmet’s response to Edward having a singer is “Treat yourself, bro!” and when Bella’s becoming a vampire, he makes a bet about how many people she’ll kill. He could not care less. He follows the diet for Rosalie’s sake.
Alice lives the way she does because her visions told her that she should live with the Cullens. She cares about Bella because Bella is her barbie, and she treats her like an accessory rather than a person. When push comes to shove she brings Bella to Volterra, knowing what the Volturi do to humans who know the secret. She never appears to care about humans for the sake of humans, at one point we see her try to help Jasper control his thirst: “It helps if you think of them as people!”
Jasper’s gift is essentially a shock collar that made a human diet unsustainable for him.
Bella chooses vampirism, knowing that there’s a chance she’ll kill people. When told of Jasper and Emmet’s newborn Bella body count bet, she is not at all concerned. And the thirst is never a problem for her, she doesn’t have to struggle to stay on the diet. She eats animals because she’s a Cullen, Cullens eat animals. Duh.
(I know this is a bit reductive, I do have far more to say on each of these, but I’m trying to be a succinct person)
They’re not doing the human diet for altruistic reasons.
This is the thing that makes Carlisle a tragic character to me.
Loneliness is his whole thing, and all he ever wanted in a companion someone who shared his ideals, who would value human life as he does. What he ends up with is the Cullens, who all believe they’re amazing people for not eating people and morally superior (they won’t say it aloud, but- well they’ll absolutely say it aloud. And they do.) to other vampires, but they don’t actually care at all.
We see it in Rosalie, Emmet, and Jasper deciding to kill Bella in Midnight Sun, we see it in- well, I just wrote a bunch of examples above. We see it again and again, these people care about human life up until the second it’s inconvenient for them to do so.
And all Carlisle can do is live in intense double think denial where his family is filled with wonderful people who care about humans so much, but he also has to make them go to their victim’s funerals in a desperate, and very telling, bid to make them understand that humans are people.
The whole point of the Cullens is that after centuries of loneliness Carlisle finally has a family of vampires who share his ideals, but when they don’t actually care-
Well.
Carlisle, honey, I’m so sorry.
#i have a million asks in my inbox and tonight i'm answering none of them#shoutout to the person who asked me about whether Edward's interest in Bella will wane now that she's a vampire#that's a huge question requiring a huge answer with so many book quotes I scream just thinking about it#i'll answer you one day#some day#before covid is over#also i do have far more thoughts on jasper but i try to keep my posts short if you people can believe it#i mean i have far more thoughts on all of this#but i saw a post that just sort of set this whole thing off#carlisle cullen#alice cullen#edward cullen#esme cullen#rosalie hale#jasper hale#emmet cullen#bella swan#twilight meta#twilight#twilight renaissance
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bang a gong.
summary: you’re tired of being a virgin, and when you meet harry at a bar, he’s more than happy to help you out.
warnings: literally all porn, very little plot. fingering, m+f receiving oral, dom!harry
word count: 11.1k
listen to while reading: bang a gong (get it on) by t. rex
You should say - for the record, or perhaps to maintain your dignity - that this is never the type of place you’d generally be caught in.
If you hadn’t been dragged from your faux pretense of nonchalance after you got dumped, you never would have come. It wasn’t like it was a serious relationship - barely two months - but it was your first since graduating college and perhaps you thought, maybe, you were in with this guy for the long haul, but he didn’t agree. You suppose it was a silly thought (your friends had told you not to expect too much from a former frat boy, anyway.) And it did prove to be, anyway, dissipating the second you woke up to a text saying he didn’t reckon things were working out, and could he please have his hoodie back?
Whatever. You hadn’t been too sad but your friends insisted you needed to let go of him and that is exactly why you’re here, pressed into a booth at a high end nightclub you can’t afford, your friends and the randoms they’d pulled from the dance floor packed so tight that you can feel your thighs sticking to the leather seats and to each other. You hadn’t intended on drinking anything because the prices of the drinks would absolutely kill your bank account, but that, according to your friends, is exactly why you’re here - meet rich guys who frequent here, to have drinks bought for you with false promises of a night of fun, before leaving them high and dry while you are thoroughly drunk.
A good concept, in theory, and it was enough to tug you off of the couch and dig through your closet to find a suitable dress to wear. Perhaps you’d support it more, though, if you had any experience in seducing guys at all - the entire night, you’d merely been grabbing the extra shots your friends had gotten from the guys they’d located.
“Aren’t you having fun?” your friend asks, and you turn to look at her from where she sits next to you. The music is thumping some song you can’t recognize and it rings in your ears as you raise your eyebrows at her. Speak louder, your eyebrows say, and Natalie leans closer so her lips are nearly brushing your ear. “I said, are you having fun?”
Are you? Well, you’re not sure. Even if you’d done nothing to earn the two shots you’d downed, they did taste better than the cheap bars you and your friends frequented on weekends. And it was entertaining, watching guys nearly twice your age seriously believe they’d end up between the sheets with your friends later. So you shrug, bringing your hand to fan at your neck, trying desperately to alleviate the heat burning at your skin. “It’s alright.”
It’s good enough for Natalie and she turns back to Valerie, whose legs are swung over the lap of some 50 year old who had got you all your second round of shots. His hand is pressed to her waist, fingertips digging into her skin through her dress, and it makes your stomach churn to see, so you drop your eyes to the table, where you’ve been picking at your screen protector for the past 15 minutes.
It’s times like this you wish you were a lightweight but you barely feel tipsy, and you’d like nothing more than to rip away your inhibitions and go out and dance against some guy who you’ll never see again, but you find it too awkward to do while practically sober. You bring your eyes up to scan at the dance floor - God, there’s so many girls with the same ideas you had, presumably. The demographic of this club is rich old men and broke, early-20s girls and you don’t know how much you really like to be one of them.
Though you can’t deny that the drinks are good.
“Stop thinking so much!” you glance back at Natalie with your brows furrowed. You hate the way she can practically feel what you’re thinking because you’d have been more than happy to tug at your screen protector until it peeled off of your entirely-too-vulnerable phone but she’d never allow it. Never let you sit here, in this booth, while everyone else is having a good time. Sometimes you appreciate it and sometimes you don’t and you aren’t quite sure of how you’re feeling about it now. “You know what I think?”
You can’t fucking hear her and you lean your head in more, awating her response as your narrowed eyes look around the crowd on the dance floor again. No one catches your eye but nobody catches your eye here, either, and you reckon you’d have better luck roaming the streets of LA to find someone worth your time.
“I think you should go get laid,” Natalie tells you, and you exhale, a humorless smile turning your lips up. “I’m serious! There has to be some hot, rich guy here. What, did that guy fuck you so good you never want anyone else again?”
The thought of being pinned under any guy that your eyes are glazing over could make you gag, but you reckon she may be right. Unbeknownst to your friends, you’d never fucked anyone and you hadn’t necessarily felt the need - you’d done just about everything else under the sun, and not a single guy you’d given a blowie to, or who’d fingered you, had ever been able to find the spot that made you squirm more than anything. So you’d never quite understood why having someone’s dick inside of you was such a big deal but you can’t deny, now, that getting it out of the way does sound quite nice, solely to boost your self esteem after getting dumped by a graduated frat boy named Logan.
There wasn’t much of a bigger blow to your ego than that.
You tug your gloss-coated bottom lip in between your teeth, dropping your eyes back down to Natalie’s, and she widens her eyes at you in a way that further encourages you to get the whole virginity thing out of the way. It’s not like it matters, anyway. “Maybe,” you tell her, entirely too quiet compared to the music pulsing through the club, and she smiles, leaning back in the booth. You’re not sure if she heard you because you can’t hear whatever she says next, but it doesn’t matter - you’re already pushing your way out of the booth, calling excuse me to where Alexa is leaning close to the man she’d found (and he’s, by far, the most attractive of any of the three guys your friends had located, but Alexa has always been the best at finding the hottest guys, and you’re nearly positive she actually will end up fucking him tonight.) She leans forward so you can climb behind her, awkwardly in your heels, and you tug at one of her curls as you clamber out of the booth.
Working your way through a crowd of people to the bar is a skill you’ve all but mastered and at a club like this, it’s a lot easier than you’d expected. There’s less people dancing than you’d thought though you shouldn’t be shocked - it certainly isn’t like the usual clubs you go to. And so, you push your way through the people dancing to the bar, and there’s a few people spread out on the barstools. You scan the back of them - you can’t see any of their faces, naturally, so you merely judge from their hair, and you take a few steps forward and settle yourself onto a stool besides a man with messy brown curls, a pint of beer in front of him.
When you peek at his side profile he certainly looks younger than you’d expected - hardly older than you, if at all. And that’s a score for you, you figure. You’d much prefer to lose your virginity to someone who doesn’t seem like they could be your dad. But he is wearing sunglasses and that’s a bit weird - certainly not a dealbreaker but odd enough to make you wonder.
You aren’t sure what to say - should’ve listened closer when Natalie, Valerie or Alexa were seducing their men for drinks - and for a moment you sit in silence.
It’s only when you turn your head to take another look at him, at the sunglasses sitting at the very top of his nose, that the silence between you two is broken, and his head tilts ever so slightly towards you. “What’re you looking at?”
God, his voice. You’d always had a thing for British accents and his is better than most, deep and raspy and slow, and you shift on your stool. And it sounds just a bit familiar but you can’t exactly pinpoint where - well, it doesn’t matter. If things go further between you two, tonight, you surmise he’d forever be the sexiest voice you’d slept with.
But you can’t get your hopes up. After all, the sunglasses in a dimly lit, fancy club is enough to make you just a bit suspicious of what type of person he is, and you refuse to hand over your V-card to a weirdo.
“Just wondering what your glasses are for.” Figure it’s best to figure that out before you let this get any further. You don’t want to waste your time. And you pointedly glance up at the ceiling, eyes darting around the walls of the club. “S’not like there’s much light here to protect your eyes from, is there?”
He chuckles, then, and you raise your eyebrows. “Guess I just don’t want people to see me,” he tells you, and when he turns to face you fully your eyes scan over his face and - God, he really does look familiar. And he sounds familiar. Have you met him before? No, you don’t think you could ever forget someone like him.
But - well, maybe. You weren’t necessarily known for having the keenest of memories.
You smile at him, brows creasing together. He certainly does seem to be a mystery and you’d love to uncover it in more ways than one. So you lean forward, resting your arm on the bartop. “Seems like the wrong kind of place, if you don’t want people to see you.”
“I reckon it’s working - you’re the first person to talk to me all night.” A hand - a large hand, you note - goes up to his hair, fingers brushing through his curls, and your eyes follow its path in a way that certainly isn’t anywhere close to subtle. “Not that I’m complaining, of course.”
Is he flirting with you? You’re not quite sure but God, you hope so, because so far he keeps getting better and better to you. So you turn to completely face him and you can see the small smirk on his lips, as if he knows what he’s doing to you without even having to try. “Are you going to tell me your name?”
You can see his eyebrows raise as he picks up his beer and takes a sip. Your eyes can’t help but follow every movement he makes and you don’t care if you look desperate - truthfully, you are. You hadn’t even seen his face in its entirety but you suspect your friends would be impressed if they could see the sort of guy you’d located. Even if you leave this club and never see him again, you’re not sure you could ever forget the way he’s making your stomach flip just with a small quirk of his lips.
When he’s set his drink down again and brought his wrist up to wipe at the beer still lingering on his lips - is that a Gucci watch? - he tilts his head at you, curls flopping, and then says, “Tell me yours first,” so you do. And he nods slowly before telling you, “My name is Harry.”
Harry.
Your mind is whirring because suddenly the pieces are coming together - and you hadn’t been in your One Direction phase for a few years but you certainly know who Harry is. And the fact that you’re just sitting here, right now, talking to him in a club filled with too many other girls to count, seems like an accomplishment in itself. But you don’t want him to know you know, though surely he must assume you do, so you nod in the same fashion he did, as if you’re content with what he’d told you.
“Harry,” you repeat, as if testing the name out on your tongue. He spins his stool slightly so he’s facing you and your knees knock into his slightly. And then you raise your eyebrows at him, reaching down to tug your dress down slightly where it’s been riding up on your thighs, and you don’t miss the way his eyes follow your movements. “Are you going to let me see your eyes, Harry?”
Harry laughs slightly and then stands, and you look up at him, confusion blazing in your eyes. Is he leaving? God, you hope not. You don’t want your experience with him to be over before it's begun, no matter what it ends up being. But then he motions, with one finger, for you to follow him and you’re standing so fast your head is spinning, and you trail after him as he leads you through the crowd of people, and you crane your neck to try and see where your friends are but you can’t see them anywhere.
It’s fine by you, you decide, as Harry stops in front of a small, darkened booth towards the back of the club. You’re surprised but positively overjoyed that it’s empty - seems like the perfect type of table for anyone looking to get lucky. And, Christ, you are.
You slide into the booth and Harry slides in right next to you, leaving hardly a few inches between you two as he rests his arm against the back of the booth oso he can face you, and, beneath the table, your ankle links with his. You give him a moment to see if he’ll pull his foot loose from yours, but he never does, and it makes your heart race.
“Gonna take off your glasses for me, Harry?” you tilt your head forward - where you’d moved to is closer to the source of the music and it’s harder to hear, all of a sudden, but you can’t bring yourself to pretend that’s why your face gets so close to his. His breath smells like beer and mints, and you can see the smirk spreading further across his face. “I’ve been dying to see your eyes. Bet they’re pretty.” And you’re not quite sure where this confidence is coming from, because you’ve hardly tried to seduce anyone like this, but you’ll lay it on thick for him.
He’s different.
He chuckles and you can feel his breath, hot against your face. It sends a shiver down your spine and you hope the instinct was imperceptible. “Take them off for me, then,” and you do, reaching up to pull the glasses off his nose, and you can tell - just by the feeling of them in your hands - that they’re more expensive than anything you’d ever held in your life.
As if everything before this wasn’t proof enough that you truly were talking to Harry Styles, sliding the glasses down his nose and meeting his eyes really validates it. You can’t help the way your lips part as you reach down to rest his sunglasses on the sticky table and you hope you don’t look as amazed as you’re feeling.
God, you have to be dreaming. The guy you cherry pick from the randoms sitting at a bar is - him. And you’re sitting with him, his fingers dancing across your shoulder blade where his arm is thrown lazily over the back of the booth, your ankles intertwined.
16-year-old you never could’ve believed it, but 22-year old you is having the time of her life.
“You look a bit shocked,” Harry murmurs, barely heard over the pounding music, but you hear it as clearly as if he’d yelled it in your ear.
You shift your mouth closer to his ear, so close that you know your lips graze his skin when you tell him, “Prettier than I’d expected, s’all.” It’s then - with a start - that you feel his other hand drop to your knee, pressing circles into your soft skin. You could nearly moan at the feeling and you know, suddenly, that this’ll definitely go where you want it to, assuming you don’t fuck it up.
And you won’t. Won’t let this opportunity go to waste.
“Ah.” When he tilts his head ever so slightly your lips are hardly a centimeter apart and with one shift forward you could close the gap, press your mouth to his, slip your tongue into his mouth. Force this into exactly the direction you need it to go, feel his hands drop to your hips, pulling you into his lap, cock hard against your core where your dress is riding up your hips.
As soon as you start to lean in, to make every fantasy you’ve had a reality, you feel two fingers, harsh against your shoulder, and they don’t belong to Harry.
You glance up, eyes narrowing at whoever had disrupted you, and standing in front of your booth is Alexa, wearing a small smile reeking of both excitement and guilt. And you can’t bring yourself to be mad at her for interrupting you, even though you want to, as she drops your phone onto the table.
“Sorry for interrupting,” she calls above the music, and you roll your eyes, leaning over Harry’s shoulder to move your head closer to his. In your ear you can hear him groan softly as your chest presses against his, and you can feel his arm that had been over the top of the booth drop to wrap around your waist - exactly where you’d wanted to feel it. “We’re gonna head out. Are you going to come?” The question is innocent but you can tell she already knows the answer as her eyes drop down to Harry’s arm, secure around your waist, fingers rubbing patterns into your hip through your tight, black dress.
“No,” you tell her, and Harry squeezes your hips in approval. “No, I’m gonna stay.”
“Are you sure?”
It’s then that Harry turns his head to look at her, effectively pressing your bodies closer than you’d thought they could go, and you can see the exact moment Alexa recognizes him - the way her eyes widen and her lips part into a smile. You’re not sure if she’s simply shocked that she’s seeing Harry in person or if she’s surprised you’re wrapped around him, but either way, she looks absolutely shell-shocked. “Promise I’ll take good care of her,” Harry tells your friend, and the double entendre makes you shift slightly, thighs rubbing against each other.
He better take good care of you.
You bring your hand up to wave to Alexa and you can’t hear the response she squeaks out before she’s gone, and you don’t look to see her go back to your friends. You merely lean back, just a bit, pressing your hands to Harry’s shoulder to look at him.
“Gonna take good care of me, then?” you raise your eyebrows and you can see Harry’s pupils dilating as he stares at you, and you shift closer to him, practically in his lip. The music changes, then, and you hadn’t been paying attention to it before but now, Bang a Gong seems quite fitting for the moment. “Hope you follow through on that.”
It’s then that he leans forward, eliminating the distance between your faces as his lips press to yours. And you hardly have a moment to even comprehend it as his hand rises to the small of your back, pulling you closer to him, and you moan into his mouth just about immediately. Harry’s tongue slips into your mouth and one of your hands drags up to the back of his neck, nails tracing along his sweaty skin. You’re not sure you’ve ever truly appreciated being kissed until right now, feeling his lips slotted against yours, the way his hand is pushing further up your thigh until his fingertips are creeping up the cheap material of your black dress.
You only pull away when you need to catch your breath, and Harry’s arm keeps you so close to him that the thought of regaining your composure seems too far away to consider. You’re not sure you’ll ever recover from that and you know there’s so fucking much more to come and you truly have scored, even if you only end up with kiss swollen lips to show for it.
But you reckon he has a thing for hickeys. It’s just a vibe you get from some guys, and as soon as the thought settles into your brain Harry proves it - mouth moving down to just below your jaw, and you drop your head back with a whine as you feel him beginning to suck a dark mark into your skin. His hand on your hip clutches your dress between his fingers, pulling the material tighter to your body than you’d even thought it could go, and it’s all the leverage he needs to pull you as close to him as you can go without being on top of him.
Which - you aren’t opposed to, but you’d always pictured your first time being below an incredibly handsome man.
(Though, you hadn’t ever pictured your first time being with your teenage crush, so you shouldn’t start relying on your fantasies now, you guess.)
When you shift your leg so it’s hooked across his, he pauses, pulling back to glance at the mark he’d left on your skin. In the dim light in the back of the club you’re not sure how well he’d be able to see it, but he grins as he examines it. Your fingers tangle in the curls at the nape of his neck and you can feel him shiver beneath you and it makes your clit throb. “I think,” he tells you, leaning in so his mouth is right at the bottom of your ear, and you fight back a whimper at how deep his voice had gotten - dropped nearly an octave since the last time he spoke. “I think we should take this somewhere else.”
Harry squeezes your bare thigh, then, fingers just a few inches from the hem of your panties. You’d let him pin you to the booth, fuck you hard where anyone could walk by and see but - of course - that isn’t feasible. And as much as you truly do not care about losing your virginity, you don’t think you want it to be here, so you nod your approval. In an instant he’s out of the booth, fingers wrapped around your wrist and tugging you out after him. You grab his sunglasses and your phone, resting on the sticky table. You stumble as soon as you stand up and you’re not sure why - you think you’re just a bit overwhelmed with everything that had happened in the past 20 minutes, and the fact that Harry fucking Styles is almost certainly taking you to bed.
“Hang on,” you tell him, and when he turns to look back at you with an eyebrow raised, you reach forward to perch his glasses on top of his nose, preserving the anonymity you knew he wanted. He smiles slightly as he reaches up to push them further up his nose, and then he wraps his arm around your waist and pulls you closer to him as you begin to walk towards the door.
Your friends are gone, you note, as you pass the booth you’d occupied earlier. Your phone, firm in your hand, has been buzzing incessantly since Alexa dropped it off but you haven’t bothered to check what the notifications are - your friends, surely wondering what you were doing, where you were going, when you would be home. And you didn’t know, truly, but you hoped it wouldn’t be anytime soon.
Harry pulls you through the doors of the club into the moist, nighttime air, and immediately you’re shivering - it’s chilly, just a bit. Not too bad, but you can tell it’s just rained by the way your foot sinks into a puddle of water, soaking through your cheap black heels.
You pay it no mind - just keep walking in pace with him, wondering, briefly, if there’ll be a time when you wake up from this. Perhaps right as he slides inside of you, filling you up so good, you’ll squeeze your eyes shut and moan and when you open them you’ll be in your bed, staring up at the ceiling and wishing you didn’t have such a rampant imagination.
There’s no way this can truly be real but at the same time it is - the way his fingers tap against your hip feels so real. The way he leans in, pressing a kiss to your temple as he turns you both down the street, it feels like it can’t possibly be a dream.
“What are you thinking about?” his voice sends vibrations rolling through your body and now that you’re free of music blaring through your head, muffling every word the pair of you spoke, you can appreciate it more - the rasp in his tone, how deep and slow he speaks. You could nearly moan at that but you hold back, biting on your tongue to prevent any loose noises from slipping out.
You lean up so your mouth is close to his ear like you had in the club, even though there’s no music surrounding you to make it necessary - you like the way he tightens his grip on your hip when you breathe against his ear. “Just wondering where you’re taking me.”
That wasn’t, in fact, what you were thinking about, but you didn’t think you could muster up the courage right now to tell him how bad you want him inside of you.
Harry points down the street and you squint to what he’s motioning to - “Have a driver waiting for me. Gonna take us to my hotel room, not too far from here.”
“And then what?”
He raises his eyebrow as he glances down at you, and you can see the amusement twinkling in his eyes even on such a dimly lit street. “And then -” he turns into a parking lot, just behind the club you’d been in, and you can hear the distant thumping music from inside - “I’ll do whatever you want me to.”
Christ. You nearly whimper just at the implication and your mind speeds off, leaving your body behind, imagining every single thing he could do to you - or you could do to him - or anything. You can picture a thousand different scenarios and every single one ends with you in his hotel bed, your V-card firmly in his pocket.
It’s then that Harry stops in front of a sleek, black car - raps two knuckles on the tinted window of the driver’s seat and it rolls down almost immediately, as though it had been waiting for his signal. You can’t hear what he murmurs to the driver as he ducks his head inside the window and you don’t strain your mind to try and listen - within a few seconds he’s stepping back, opening the door to the backseat and ushering you inside.
You’d never been in a nicer car before but you shouldn’t be shocked - the outfit he’s wearing tonight could pay your rent for the next four months. There’s a partition between the backseat and the front and you’re beyond thankful as Harry slides in beside you, slamming the door shut, and he doesn’t give you a moment to process anything before his lips are on yours.
You wouldn’t dream of complaining as your arms wrap around his neck, pulling him closer to you, and he’s groaning into your mouth as his hand drifts downwards to cup your ass through your dress but it’s not enough for him and you can tell. Fingers push up the bottom of the cheap material so he can slip his hand beneath it, hand cold against the back of your thigh and he slides his hand further up until he’s groping your arse once more.
“Fuck,” you breathe, and you can feel Harry smirking against your lips - a smug bastard, he is, but you find you don’t truly care. You pull your mouth from his, feeling his teeth tugging at your bottom lip, but you’re hardly disconnected a moment before you throw your leg over his thighs, straddling him, and he moans like music to your ears.
He uses his grip on your ass to force your hips to rock against the bulge, prominent even through his pants. His other hand tugs your dress up to your hips, letting the material bunch around your waist, and immediately his hand comes down hard on your ass - you squeal, dropping your forehead against his, as he rubs over the spot he’d just smacked.
“Y’like that?” You nod, pressing your lips to the side of Harry’s neck as he lands another slap down on your bum. Your hips press harder into his, feeling the pressure on your clit as you roll against him. “Yeah, know you do. Dirty girl.”
And - you’re not sure why - but you drop your lips to his ear, nibbling on his earlobe and feeling the way his cock twitches beneath you. “Can I tell you something?”
He nods, and you bring your hand up to his hair, running your fingers through his sweaty curls. Harry tilts his head to the side and your lips briefly brush, feather light, as you slow the pace your hips are rocking, savoring every brush of your panty clad clit against the material of his pants. “Anything,” he mutters, head dropping against the headrest, and you reach down to press your palm to his cock. God, he’s so hard and he feels so big too, too big to even fit in you, but you know damn well you’ll try your very best to make it work.
Even if you’ve never done it before, and before you can wonder if it’s the best time or thing to tell him, you lean in. “I’ve never had sex before.”
Harry certainly seems shocked and the way his lips part goes straight to your ego - do you seem so good at all of this that he’d suspected you’d done it time and time again? Maybe he’s confused as to why you told him and truthfully, you are, too. Just felt like the kind of thing he’d like to know. Your ex boyfriend had certainly wanted to know, and two days after you’d told him he’d ended things.
Maybe some guys don’t want to take girls’ virginities, but judging by the way Harry’s fingers dig further into your ass, you suspect he does.
“Never?” There’s the surprise thick in his voice and you nod, grasp on his cock tightening ever so slightly, and he groans beneath you. “God. Never would’ve thought. Bloody good at this.”
Yep, there’s your ego inflating, and you shrug. “Done just about everything else. Just haven’t gotten to the good part.” Another smack lands against your ass and you moan, pushing back against his palm as he smooths his hand over your skin.
He leans back, then, shifting his hips, and you can see his pupils dilating more and more as he glances down at the way your cunt presses to his cock - “Why don’t you show me what you can do, then?”
You’re much more than willing, and you lean in to give Harry one final kiss before pushing yourself off of him and sitting, on your knees, on the seat beside him. He’s watching you so intently you could almost feel judged but you love it - love the way he watches you push your hair behind you, how he reaches down to slowly undo the zipper of his fancy dress pants, but you wanna do it yourself. You push his hand away, wrapping your hand around his wrist, and surely he’s strong enough to resist the dominant act you’re playing if he wanted to but you can tell he doesn’t. You finish unzipping his pants and he lifts his hips slightly so you can shimmy them down his thighs, just enough so you’re face to face with his cock, thick and bulging through his briefs.
You don’t give yourself a moment to examine just how big he is - bigger than you’d anticipated when you were on top of him and when you’d felt him up. You’d sucked off plenty of guys and none of them came close to his size but you’ve mastered the faux confident facade as you shift backwards, leaning down with your ass high in the air to press a soft kiss against Harry’s cock through his boxers.
He groans, those glasses slipping down his nose, and his wandering fingers end up dancing down your back - you’re not sure where he’s going but you shift forward to give him easier access to your ass, if that’s what he wants, and your fingers hook in the waistband of his boxers to pull them over his cock.
Jesus, yeah, he is big. You wrap your hand around him, pumping experimentally a few times, listening to the way Harry moans brokenly. You wonder, briefly, when he’s last done this - he looks as though it’s been a bit too long but, well, you suppose you can’t judge how sensitive he is when just the feeling of his hand splayed across your lower back is wetting your panties faster than anything has before.
Lips press a wet kiss against the tip of his cock, just briefly, before you wrap your lips around his length and push our head down - a gurgled cry escapes his throat and you nearly smirk around him, taking him as far down your throat as you can until your nose is just about brushing his pelvis. Your hands press to his thighs and you can feel him growing stiffer in the confines of your mouth by the second. Fingers tangle in your hair, forcing your head down, and with any other guy you’d roll your eyes but there’s something different about him, something that makes you like the dominance. Any semblance of it that you’d had seconds before is gone and there’s a smack against your ass, causing you to cry out against his cock.
Normally you pull off of guys after 15 seconds (or so) but Harry doesn’t let you, holds you down, and you hollow your cheeks around him. Swallow, and his hips jerk up into your mouth, forcing a gag from you, and then he loosens his grip on your hair, allowing you to pull your mouth from him.
Harry’s breathing is heavy and his hand is groping your ass so tight it nearly hurts but the pleasure overpowers it and you push back against his hand. His fingers tug at your thong, slipping beneath it as you lap at the tip of his cock, and no sooner have his fingers circled your puckered hole - is he gonna do it? - that he slides them further down, running his digits through your soaked folds.
“So - so fucking wet -” his voice cracks as you take him down your throat again but his hand doesn’t force your head down like last time - instead he brings his other hand to your bum and smacks you hard, harder than every other time, and you moan and he moans, and then two of his fingers slip into your cunt and you moan again.
God, it really is happening, because if it wasn’t, you’re sure you’d have woken yourself up in excitement by now. He really is two fingers deep in your pussy while his cock is all the way down your throat, and he really is crying out as you whine against his cock. His digits curl, brushing against that sweet spot in your velvety walls that has you clenching around him, and you think he’s the first guy you’ve ever done anything with whose found your G-spot without 10 minutes of needed assistance.
Your tongue swirls around his cock as you take your mouth from him, throwing your head back with a cry, and your first still pumps him up and down - his fingers are thrusting in and out of you so fast that the sound of your arousal is nearly the same volume as your moans lingered with his. You’re going to cum so fucking hard, first time you’ve cum from anything other than your fingers or your toys, and you roll your hips against his fingers, grasp on his cock tightening.
“Gonna cum -” your eyes roll back into your head as your thumb flicks over the head of Harry’s length, feeling the way his body jerks at the sensation. “Fuck, don’t stop, don’t stop -”
“Gonna cum for me?” his voice is a hiss through gritted teeth as his fingers speed up even more, pumping inside of you so fast that your head is fucking spinning. “Do it, then. My dirty - fucking - girl, cum for me.”
It’s all you needed and you can’t even bring yourself to feel embarrassed at how fast you’re cumming because as soon as the pit in your stomach starts to unravel you can feel his cock twitching in your fist. You can’t think of a single thing to say, vocabulary wiped clean, merely throwing your head back with a noise akin to a scream as you cum on his fingers, and as his hips jerk up, you can feel his release coating your hand.
Harry’s fingers still pump slowly inside of you, prolonging your orgasm until it fades away and in turn you try to do the same to him, hand moving up and down his cock until your breathing steadies from labored pants into something more normal. So you pull your hand off of him, pushing yourself to sit on your knees, cum covering your fingers. And, in an instant, Harry’s fingers are wrapped around your wrist, and you let him guide your hand up to your mouth.
You can tell he’s merely testing you to see if you’ll do it - but, truthfully, you’d wanted him to cum in your mouth, anyway, if only to prove something to him, or to yourself. So you stick your tongue out, lap a thick stripe through his cum on your hand, dripping down your wrist, and Harry’s lust ridden eyes watch you, lips parted and breathing picking up again.
Your eyes never leave his as you lick up the last of his release on your hands, swallowing every last bit of it, and when you open your mouth to stick your tongue out - proving to him that you took every single goddamn drop - his hand flies to the back of your neck, pulling your head in, and your lips connect with a clash of teeth.
“Like a fucking angel,” Harry groans, pressing his fist to the car seat next to you, and the feeling of him hovering ever so slightly above you makes the buzzing in your head that much more intense. His other hand works at tucking himself back into his pants, zipping them up, and you figure it’s good to pull your dress down to cover your ass, too. “My fuckin’ perfect girl. Jesus Christ.”
You can feel the car slowing to a stop and you’re entirely too ready to go up to Harry’s bedroom and have your goddamn brains fucked out. You already feel like you’re on cloud 9 with one orgasm down, one so intense and brutal, one that you reckon nothing but him could muster up, and that’s just his fingers - you need to know what his cock’ll do to you.
His hand falls back down to your waist where it seems to love to reside and he squeezes your hip, leaning in to nibble at your bottom lip again. You grin lazily, then reach up and push his sunglasses back up his nose where they’d slid down the bridge ever so slightly. “Want you t’fuck me,” you breathe, voice raspy in all of its post-orgasm glory. “Never gotten fucked by anyone before but I need you - swear, I’ve never cum so hard in my life.”
Harry chuckles and turns to glance out the window - then he grabs the door handle and pushes it open. When you’ve both clambered out of the car his arm is around you in a heartbeat, and you need the support, legs feeling shaky, and you take just a moment to glance up at the hotel you’re walking into - nicer than anything you’d ever been in in your life but you feel a bit more used to it by now.
“Tell me,” Harry mutters, leaning his lips close to your ear, as the automatic doors slide open for the pair of you to walk into the hotel lobby. “How many guys have made you cum before, hmm?”
“None,” is your response, turning your head to the side so you can witness the shock that overtakes Harry’s face - you can’t see his eyes but you’re sure they’re wide. “Told myself I didn’t want to fuck a guy who didn’t know where the clit is, and - well, none of them did.”
He chuckles as you two make your way through the lobby towards the elevators - it feels wrong for you to even be here, walking by people who see more money every day than you have in your life, in your dress you’d gotten at the thrift store and your heel still slightly wet. But being with Harry, having his arm around you, makes you feel decidedly less awkward, because you’re sure millions of girls would positively die to do what you’re about to do.
But you get to do it, and if that isn’t the best feeling in the world.
He stops in front of the elevator and presses the button to go up, and the doors open almost immediately - such a gentleman, he is, letting you step in first, and when you’re both in you watch the button for the very top floor light up as he pushes it.
“You’re in for the night of your life,” Harry tells you as the elevator doors slide shut, and you’re entirely expecting him to pin you to the wall but he doesn’t - incredible composure, really, staring straight ahead like he can’t feel the desperation practically dripping from your body. You stare at him, for a moment, at his side profile, jaw set. Like he isn’t as needy as you are, but, as your eyes trail down his body to the bulge already hardening again in his pants, you know that he is.
It seems like an eternity later that the elevator doors slide open again, and you want to race down the hall to his room but you let him lead the way, even if his pace is pathetically slow as he strolls down the hallway. There are only two rooms up this high, on either ends of the hall, and his is to the left of the elevators and it seems so much further than the one to the right.
But you make it there, and Harry’s reaching in his pockets to find his key card - and then he’s swiping it - and then he’s pushing open the door - and as soon as it shuts again, you’re pressed firm against the wall. Your hands fly to the back of his head as his drop to your back, trailing downwards to cup at your ass again (he seems to have a thing for it, but you would never think of complaining.) Your lips press to his as your head falls back against the door, and his hips jerk forward to roll against yours.
You still feel entirely too sensitive and you moan out, pushing your hips forward to meet his as you pull his face closer to yours, using your arms around his neck as leverage to pull him in, but you didn’t need it - you can tell he’s just as desperate as you are, and soon he pulls you off of the door, backing you up to God knows where. You let him lead you until your legs hit something and you fall backwards onto a plush couch, pushing yourself onto your elbows to watch Harry as he drops to his knees before you.
Oh, shit.
Your cheeks heat up as he rests his hands on your knees, spreading your thighs apart. Harry’s hand rises up to his sunglasses, perched, still, on his nose, and he pulls them off, resting them on the coffee table behind him. His eyes meet yours and perhaps he can see the apprehension in your eyes because he leans up, pressing a kiss to your lips. You savor the moment, the sweetness of his tongue entering your mouth, before he lowers himself back down onto his knees. Hands go to the bottom of your dress, rolling it over your hips until it can settle around your waist, exposing your entire bottom half to him, and it feels so much more intimate now that you’re not confined to the backseat of a car.
Harry leans in without giving you a breath to collect yourself, pressing a kiss to your clit through your arousal-soaked lace panties - your hand drops to the couch, squeezing the edge of the cushion between your fingers, and you can already feel your slight embarrassment slipping away as Harry pushes your thigh, forcing it further open.
“Tell me,” he says, deep and hot with how close he is to your cunt, and your hips roll of their own accord at the feeling. “How many guys have done this to you?”
You pause to think, chest rising and falling as he leans in again, licking up your panties, and the sensation makes it a bit difficult to gather yourself enough to respond - eventually, though, you swallow and say, “Not too many. One or two.”
He leans back, pressing a kiss to your thigh. “And they never made you cum.”
“N - no.”
“Well, I will,” is his response, and, as cocky as it may seem, you know he’s right - could probably make you cum through your panties, but his fingers hook in the top of them as soon as the thought pops in your mind. You lift your hips up so he can drag them down your legs, and when they’ve puddled by your feet he helps you take them off. You watch as he crumbles the lacey material in his hands and then stuffs it into the pockets of his fancy pants - for later, he murmurs against your thigh. And then he goes in - hands on your thighs forcing them apart so hard it nearly burns but you find you like the stretch, and his lips wrap around your clit, cheeks hollowing as he sucks on the small nub.
Your head drops back against the couch and you bury your hand in his hair, a loud moan escaping your throat. He wasn’t teasing you and you were beyond grateful - tongue laps up every drop of wetness that gushes in your cunt, kitten licks against your clit, and you can tell he has more experience than you could have imagined. Harry has it mastered, exactly where to place his hands (one on your thigh, the other creeping its way beneath the material of your dress towards your tits) and how to flick his tongue just right to have your hips bucking up against his mouth. And if you thought you’d cum hard in the car you know you’re in for a fucking treat because there’s already pressure building in your stomach and it won’t be long until it fucking erupts.
When you squeeze your eyes shut he stops - pulls away, his mouth and his hands, like he’d never been there in the first place. You open your eyes, chest heaving as you stare down at him. His pupils are lust blown and wide as he stares at you, eyebrows raised, as if you’re meant to know something he never told you - “Eyes open,” he tuts, tone condescending and smug, and you hate how much you love it. “Keep them open. Gonna watch me make you fall apart, alright?” You nod slowly. “Tell me.”
Your voice is caught in your throat as Harry’s lips form a small o, breathing a puff of air onto your beyond sensitive clit, and your fingers in his curls tighten to what has to hurt - but he moans, ever so slightly, as you finally breathe, “Yes. Okay.”
“S’what I thought,” is his response, and then he leans back in, licking up your soaked folds as though no time had passed. Both of his palms press against your thighs, pinching your soft skin, fingers dangerously close to the area he’s working so well. God, his fingers, you swear you’ve never felt anything better than them - you want them again, so bad, hitting your sweet spot so good.
You can’t begin to get the words out to tell him that, though, so you merely reach down, shaky fingers wrapping around his wrist and pushing it closer to your cunt - he pauses, tongue mid-swirl around your clit, and looks up at you with a glint of pure cockiness in his eyes.
“What do you want?” he doesn’t remove his mouth from around your clit as he speaks and the vibrations roll through your body, sending a cry through your throat, and you push his hand further towards your cunt. You know it won’t be enough - haven’t known Harry for quite long at all, but you reckon you know that much about him. “Use your words,” and Harry sounds so fucking commanding that it could make you cum right then and there.
“F - fingers,” you just about sob out, rolling your hips up into his mouth so your clit brushes against his tongue. “Please, Harry - need your fingers, please -”
“Fingers, hmm?” His digits dance across your thighs, straying further away from where you need him, and your eyes just about roll back into your head as he pulls his mouth from your clit and blows on it again. “Where do you want my fingers?”
But you’re too far gone to speak - as he leans in to brush his tongue against your sensitive clit once more, you can feel the pit in your tummy starting to come undone. You drop your head back as Harry licks a thick stripe up to your sensitive nub, and he stops again, pressing his cheek against your inner thigh. “Does my dirty girl want my fingers in her pussy, hmm? S’that where you want my fingers?”
You moan out in affirmation.
Harry pulls his head from your thigh and you push yourself so you’re sitting up more, getting a clear view of everything he’s doing as he spits on your pussy, the saliva dripping down onto your clit, and you fucking cry out. His fingers come up to collect the spittle, rubbing it along your clit before dragging it down your folds so he can push them into your pussy - curling up immediately, knowing exactly the spot that makes you squirm. His other hand comes up and lands a firm smack against your clit, one that has your eyes rolling back into your head.
It only takes a few quick pumps of his curled fingers, in and out of your fluttering cunt, that has you cumming so hard you swear you see stars. Every single sob that breaks free from your throat is so loud that you swear the neighbors in the room at the other end of the hall must be able to hear you - should send them a flower arrangement tomorrow morning, because it’s just his mouth and fingers that has you screaming bloody murder.
“Oh my god -” your hips jerk against his mouth, your hands in his hair dropping back down to the cushions. “Fuck.”
Coming down from your second high of the evening is entirely different from your first - you can’t imagine how you’ll possibly be able to pull anymore from you but, as Harry stands up, your slick covering his mouth and chin, you know you have to.
The whole point is to fuck him. To finally know what everyone’s talking about - to see what the fuss is all about.
Harry leans down, tongue forcing its way down your throat the second your lips part for him, and you can taste yourself on his tongue. Your arousal mixed with the beer he’d had earlier, all traces of the mint washed away, and it tastes so divine. Even more divine as his hands drop to the zipper of his pants, sliding it down, and you slide your fingers in the waistband, helping him tug them down his thighs. He kicks them off as soon as they’re near his feet and then he pulls away, palm pressing against the bulge in his briefs.
“How do you want it?” he asks, words dripping with lust and desperation and you know the exact way he’s feeling and more. You watch him intently as he grips the bottom of his sweater and tugs it over his head - it drops to the rug atop the ground and you let your eyes soak in the sight of him, almost fully nude, briefly ignoring the question.
You hadn’t necessarily expected him to ask. He seems more dominant than that, needing to take control, so you swallow, chest heaving as you try to think. “I don’t - I don’t know.”
He seems to have been expecting that answer, because his hands fall to your waist, pushing you down so you’re lying on the couch. It’s spacious, just enough room for you to adjust yourself comfortably, and Harry lowers himself down on top of you the second you’ve shifted enough.
“How’s this?”
And his caring demeanor is shocking but fitting, because as much as you merely want to get your virginity out of the way, it does feel like a sort of important moment. You want it to be comfortable, and lying on the plushiest couch you’ve ever been on with Harry hovering above you, his arm inches above your head, is about as comfortable as you’re going to get.
You loop your arms around his neck and you can feel his clothed cock, pressed to your cunt. He’s so fucking hard and you’re amazed at the amount of composure he has. “Perfect,” you mumble, leaning up to attach your lips once more (you swear, you can’t get enough of him.)
Harry tugs down his boxers, just enough to free his cock from the flannel confines, and you can feel his tip, running along your folds - he slaps it on your clit and you groan. You drop your head back against the arm of the couch as he sinks his tip into your cunt. Slowly, steadily, he pushes himself the rest of the way in, stuffing you so deliciously full of him that it nearly overtakes the pain.
Nearly.
You’ve used dildos before and you’re thankful for it, now, because you reckon without any sort of experience you’d feel absolutely split in half. Even now, there’s a dull burn sparking between your thighs, and you drop your head back, eyes squeezing shut as you try to adjust to the feeling. No, it didn’t necessarily hurt but it was different and that in itself was enough for you to need a moment to adjust. The way his cock twitched inside of you every so often encouraged you and subsequently turned you on beyond belief, and you don’t need too much time to adjust, after all.
Harry’s breathing is heavy and you can feel it against your face, barely an inch above yours. Poor guy, must be torture, holding out, because you can practically sense how needy he is. You lift your head up to press your lips to his, soft like the brush of a butterfly’s wing, before pulling back. “Move - fuck, please, move, Harry.”
He didn’t need to be told twice, pulling his hips back before thrusting them back in. That is certainly different, verging on the border of pain, but with a few more slow pumps, in and out of your dripping cunt, the pleasure is beginning to take it over.
It takes a moment to find a rhythm that’s enough for both of you. There’s still a slight discomfort but not enough to make you want to wait any longer. You’re finally having sex and you want it to keep going, to do it forever and ever with the absolute God hovering above you.
“So goddamn tight,” Harry grunts as he rocks his hips into yours. “Squeezing me so good. Never fucked anyone so tight in my life, I swear.”
His compliments, whether they were in the heat of the moment or genuine, makes you moan out - makes this entire thing feel so much better.
And fuck, it truly does feel good, especially when he angles his hips just so, every thrust sweeping against that sweet spot deep inside of you that he’s so adept at finding. For the first minute or so you’re fine with the leisurely pace he’s doing but you can tell it’s killing him and it’s starting to kill you, too. You’ve never been too patient, even if you’d waited 22 years for this exact moment.
You’re not a virgin. It feels good, the invisible badge of honor and the cock, going entirely too slow for your liking, deep in your pussy.
“Faster - need you to go faster,” you gasp as Harry’s thumb drops to your clit, rubbing slow circles on the sensitive nub, and they’re immediately a sharp contrast to the way he pulls his hips out and slams them back in. This is what he wanted, what he needed, and it’s what you need, too. No slow pumps. You need him fucking fast and hard and God it feels good, the way he presses down on your clit, sending pleasure coursing through your veins. “Feel so good inside me. God, keep doing that.”
Harry braces a hand on top of the couch, lifting his body slightly off of yours to piston his cock in and out of your cunt, taking him greedily and fully. He’d been with plenty of girls before - more than he could count - but there was something different, being the first guy to fill you up, to fuck you so hard you saw stars. And it was bloody good, watching you beneath him, your mouth falling open with a broken moan, pushing your pelvis up towards his, trying to help him along.
“Such a dirty girl,” Harry rasps, reaching down to grab the top of your dress - should’ve taken it off of you, really - and he pulls it down so aggressively you’re sure the fabric will rip. Your tits spill out of the top, covered only by your bra, and his fingers hook in the cups, pulling them away from your breasts, and in an instant his head is lowered to flick his tongue against your nipple. “Feels so good, hmm? Getting fucked for the very first time? Poor baby - never had a dick before. Tell me how - tell me how it feels.”
Your head is fucking spinning, is how it feels, and you’re not sure you’re going to be able to talk for days to come. You sob out your response, barely audible, but Harry hears it as if you’d spoken loud and clear - “So good, fuck, gonna cum.”
Two of his fingers pluck at your clit like the strings of a guitar, as if you’re merely something to be played with, but it’s enough to send you over the edge again. Your body convulses beneath him, eyes squeezing shut. Your cunt fluttering around him could make him cum but you can tell he wants to hold out - wants to see if you have one more in you, and you’re not sure if you do.
It’s as though Harry can sense the second you’ve milked your orgasm for all you can, because he pulls out of you the second you’re done. Before you can cry out, his hands grab your hips and flip you over with such ease it’s nearly embarrassing. You hardly have the muscle strength to hold yourself up, merely dropping your face into the cushion as his hands position himself at your cunt, pushing in without giving you a second to adjust, and it’s back to the hard, steady pace you’d reached before.
This position is a fucking change and one you love, a new angle letting him reach spots inside of you that you hadn’t even known existed. Your moans are muffled where your mouth is pressed to the cushion but Harry’s are loud and clear, piercing the air near violently as he cries out. You can’t see him but you try with all your might to picture exactly what he’s doing - picturing how his mouth is open and his eyes are shut and he’s lifting his hand to land it back down on your -
As though he can read your thoughts his hand goes up and smacks down on your ass, the noise cracking through the air, and you sob out at the feeling. You love that, you really do, and you’d never have expected yourself to but as he sends another slap to your skin you decide it’s one of your favorite things you’ve done this whole fucking evening.
“Gonna cum,” Harry grunts, hand gripping your thigh to rock your body in time with his. You wiggle your ass, pushing it against him, and for that, you earn another smack. “Where d’you want me to cum? Want it on your back, hmm? Or maybe flip you over again and cum on your pretty tits.”
You can’t verbalize anything, nothing except for broken cries and his name falling off your lips like a mantra, and he knows it.
“Or -” and his voice drops nearly a whole fucking octave, deeper than you’d even thought it could go, and you’re so close to your fourth that your ears are starting to ring - “does my dirty girl want me to cum in her pussy? Fill you up with my cum, fuck you so good until you’re stuffed with it.”
It’s that - his words, fucking filthy and rising above every other noise the two of you make - that ends you. Sends you hurtling into your fourth, now, the couch practically absorbing your moan (or more like a scream) and any ability you’d had to hold yourself up on shaky legs dissipates as you collapse against the couch but Harry’s there, holding you up, forcing your hips back into his you were made for it.
You don’t need to say anything - he knows what you want, can read you like a book by now, and you’ve only known him for tonight. So as his cock gives its final twitch inside your cunt, worn out from cumming four times in such a short amount of time, he makes no move to pull out. Just grips your hips and holds them close to his, and the feeling of hot ribbons of cum shooting into your cunt, filling you up exactly the way you’d wanted, is a sensation you don’t think you’ll ever forget.
When he’s done, pulling out slowly, you collapse fully onto the couch with nothing to hold you up - you’re fucking exhausted but you’ve never felt better in your life. A haze seems to be settling over your mind and body, preventing you from paying any attention to anything that’s not Harry as he stands up above you. And then you feel him, wrapping his arms around you, picking you up like a goddamn baby and you like it a lot.
You’re entirely too close to falling asleep in his arms before he lies you down on a surface softer than the couch - has to be the bed, the rich hotel beds, and as your head lands on the pillow you know you’re correct. God, feels like a pillow, and you’d like to spend the rest of your life right here.
Harry’s like a God in human form, truly, getting a warm washcloth from the restroom to wipe at the cum dripping down your thighs. You two speak in soft, hushed voices, as though making up for the absolutely inhuman noises you’d made before, as he pulls your dress over your head and deposits it on the ground. It is ripped, you can see, but you find you don’t really care. Not like you didn’t get it for less than $10 - and it’s just a reminder of every amazing thing that happened tonight, not that you’d ever need one. You know you’ll remember this night forever.
Finally he lies down beside you, shifting so he’s spooning you, arms firm around your waist and your head to his shoulder. This feels perfect, exactly what you needed to end off your first time perfectly.
“M’not a virgin anymore,” you murmur, adjusting yourself to press your body closer to his. “Feels good. Feel like I’m finally living.”
Harry chuckles at that, pressing a kiss to the side of your face. “Hope your first time was as good as it could be.”
You exhale softly. “It was perfect,” you tell him, voice soft and dripping with emotions you can’t possibly decipher. And it’s the absolute truth - even if your first time wasn’t with a boyfriend you were in love with, like your friends, you don’t think you’d ever have it any other way. “Maybe we could do it again, some time.”
Probably a mistake to ask, but there’s nothing to lose, really. Maybe a piece of your dignity if he says no, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. You’d do this a thousand times over again with him without hesitating.
He takes a beat to respond and you know you fucked up, already squeezing your eyes shut in regret, but then he rasps, “Definitely gotta do it again. Tomorrow night … and the night after that … and the night after that …” and you know you’re in for it.
#harry styles smut#harry styles x reader#harry styles imagine#harry styles one shot#can u tell i rushed the ending#harry styles blurb
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Leanne: Yes, let's talk about that voicemail because that message was way more intense and damning than I thought it was going to be. However, I need to praise Cole [Sprouse] because he absolutely crushed it and his vocal performance was both so visceral and moving. Talk to me about how you created that moment.
RAS: Yeah, well first off, Cole did kill it on that voicemail and I will say he first recorded it when we shot that episode. But in an upcoming episode, we follow Jughead and everything that has happened in those seven years. We see how Betty and Jughead's relationship evolved over those seven years and we see the events that lead to that tragic night when he left that message -- and Cole's performance in that episode is so good.
And I've got to give him all the credit because he reached out to me and he said, "Hey, I want to go back and I want to re-record the message that I left Betty in 511." So even after we locked that episode, we went back and looped in Cole's [new] performance. And these poor actors, you know they sometimes have no idea why they're doing things, but then they find out three episodes later. So with Cole we initially talked a little bit about the voicemail and he totally dove in and went for it -- but then once he had more context, he went back and re-recorded it and it's a beautiful performance that Cole gives in that episode.
Leanne: Do you feel like the additional context from this future episode which explores Jughead's past will help to change the audience's perspective of the voicemail?
RAS: Yeah I definitely think so, I love Jughead's arc and in a very real way this season is kind of about him unpacking his trauma. I think he's wrestling with some even more real demons, like I think we'll see him wrestling with some of the same problems his father had, like alcoholism for instance. And I think if not for Cole, I'm not sure that that storyline would land the way that it does, but again he's so good.
And listen, that's a pretty terrible message, but I think people will understand where Jughead's headspace was when we get to that [future] episode. And listen, I love Jughead and I root for him and I root for him and Betty so hopefully people will understand that that voicemail reflects a moment in time. But it is pretty intense though. I remember when I first was watching I was like, "Oh God!" but again, Cole killed it. And I think Betty, and subsequently Lili, I think she weirdly understands Jughead better than anyone and I think it's close to a dealbreaker, but hopefully not a dealbreaker.
Leanne: I'm not sure how Betty and Jughead fans are going to feel after they hear the voicemail, but I'm sure they're still going to be diehard for Bughead. What can you tease about these two as they try to put pieces back together -- even though those pieces seem pretty smashed right now?
RAS: What's funny is that Betty and Jughead haven't really been in a storyline together [this season] and when we did the time jump we really wanted to make sure that when we returned to it, [Riverdale] didn't immediately fall into the same show. But I will say we love that Betty is worried about Jughead, we love that she's teaming up with Tabitha to try and find him. And there's one scene, I think it's maybe episode 516 that is almost like a standalone mini opera. It's just Betty and Jughead alone and it's so good to see Lili and Cole in scenes together and their chemistry is sort of undeniable. So we are going to see more of Betty and Jughead and even if it doesn't mean that they are immediately getting back together, they were an important part of each other's life and it's good that we're getting back to that.
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Dear Game Developers, I don’t want to be a rapacious colonizing blight on the world.
I like a pretty wide variety of games, but one general thing I’ve always been particularly keen on is the sort of game where I start off just kinda naked in the wilderness with nothing and have to build up a bunch of infrastructure to accomplish something. So you know, RTSes, Civ clones, survival games, sandbox-y Minecraft stuff, Dwarf Fortress and similar things, but these all have this really annoying habit of making my character the biggest existential threat to the entire world, and I would really like them to stop doing that all the time.
So, just to open up with an example of how to do this sort of thing in a way I like, Subnautica is one of my favorite games. I recently streamed the whole thing, so, links to that if you’d like: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
Subnautica actively confronts my issue head on, and handles it right. I’m not slaughtering everything I see, I’m not strip mining the whole planet, I’m not leveling forests. I’m here by way of horrible tragic accident, and by the end of the game I’ve done my best to clean up the mess from that and address some other global issues to the point where I can confidently say my presence over the course of the game has made for a net positive impact on the environment in which it’s set. Plus it’s a great game in a bunch of other ways.
I’m also pretty happy with Factorio, oddly enough. In Factorio I AM strip mining the whole world, slaughtering absolutely all of the local wildlife, and any forests I’m not clear-cutting I’m choking out with industrial emissions that leave nothing but dry withered skeletons where there were once beautiful stretches of foliage. The thing of it is, between actually tracking my environmental impact as a mechanic and having such downer visuals, it at least feels like the developers and I are sharing a really dark joke about how awful you are in games like this.
Then on the other side of the coin here, we have, say, Satisfactory. A game in the same weird subgenre as Factorio (do we have a name for these yet? Convey’em Ups?) but... really gross. The player is explicitly just heading down to this really beautiful planet to extract and process all the resources they can. You’re rewarded for killing... basically all life you see despite it not generally posing any sort of real threat to you, clear cutting all the vegetation, and to keep the factory building vibes nice and chill, when you tap into a coal vein or set up an oil well, you get an endless supply of those burnable fuels to use forever, with absolutely no consequence, as you just consume all the things to make all the other things and ship them out to meet quotas. And that’s... kinda gross? Again, the fact that nothing you do has any sort of consequence despite half of it being stuff that is literally killing the world in reality makes it way worse.
Meanwhile, lately I’ve been keeping a lot of modded Minecraft videos going in the background to stave off the social isolation with the whole plague and all with some human voices, and see what cool new ideas people are testing there. One of the real popular new mods is this one called MineColonies, and you know what? It’s really neat. The idea is you find a big open plot of land somewhere, throw down blueprints for really huge multiblock structures of houses and workshops and such, get those built up a little, and NPCs start wandering in you can start giving jobs to. Here’s someone to harvest and replant trees, someone to go mining for underground resources, someone to build and upgrade the rest of these buildings, people to provide renewable food and medicine to all these other NPCs. Schools for their kids to get their stats up to good places by adulthood, a whole higher learning system to advance a tech tree, it’s cool.
But the thing is, as you probably gathered from the name, it’s DISGUSTINGLY colonialist. All these people coming in are explicitly white, with British accents, explicitly gendered and explicitly heterosexual too incidentally, and a huge part of the general infrastructure building is having to set up guard posts and barracks all over, training knights and archers to defend against the local barbarians native to the land you’re building on who wander out of the wilderness to attack everyone with some regularity. And I mean, how messed up is that? This mod is explicitly adding in native people’s just so there’s someone for you to displace and murder as you colonize some big chunk of unspoiled wilderness in the name of prosperity for your... British colony. Which of course works on an explicitly feudalist system (and then also for some reason has everyone grumbling about how you’re spending your gold, which you aren’t even doing). It totally thematically ruins what I’d otherwise be super super into. And not long after this was released, baseline Minecraft did basically the same thing. There are now roving barbarian tribes who go around trying to kill you and any villagers near you and you have to concern yourself with wiping out whole groups of them with some regularity, whereas previously the only enemies you really had to deal with were zombies and skeletons and a few other weird explicitly monstrous things. It’s gross.
My distaste for slaughtering barbarians extends to the civilization games too. Which... I mean I have put a LOT of hours into a lot of Civ games so it’s obviously not a total dealbreaker for me, but... you’re always this weird immortal dictator and even if you set your civilization up as a democracy, you sure do win every single election regardless of how unhappy people are with you, and you spend a good chunk of time slaughtering local barbarians. And increasingly, with each new game, smaller independent nations because they really keep putting more and more emphasis on military conquest being, if not the best path to victory, one you have to push pretty far no matter what you’re going for.
And it doesn’t have to work like that. My favorite game, mostly in the franchise, is still Alpha Centauri. Where the “barbarians” are brain eating space worms, not other humans, and even then, you can (and I consistently do) be a big tree-hugging hippy, enact worm-friendly social policies, make friends with them instead of killing them, and have them go devour a bunch of violent anti-science anti-environment right wing creeps, strongarm everyone else into adopting similar policies, and, like Subnautica, leave the world better than you found it by foregoing all the easier wins and doing the thing where you find a permanent solution to the local planetary superconsciousness accidentally going berserk and eating itself at periodic intervals. Happy ending for everyone! Except for Miriam. Screw Miriam.
Meanwhile, someone I know not to long ago just randomly pitched a game where there’s a big nature ravaging industrial sprawl, but you play as some sort of reclaiming embodiment of nature, strategically... I guess spreading trees to grow up through everything and have rats chew through the wiring and stuff, and yeah, I would play the hell out of that game. If nobody else gets to it before I clear my plate of all these other projects, I might even make that game.
I should stress again too that it’s not even that I don’t want games to ever put me in such a role as the player, just if you’re going to do it, acknowledge that that sort of thing isn’t cool, and either make it clear that the player character has been forced into a really unfortunate position, or that said character is just awful. Or both, both works.
What I don’t want to ever see people do is rationalize a way out of the issues. “Oh this is an infinite supply of clean-burning coal” does not fly with me. “Oh we’re establishing a colony but it’s on an alien planet” is still colonialism. The weird fetish the whole game industry seems to have with leveling forests is not made better by having those trees give you saplings that fully replace every tree cut down in like 2 minutes. If you don’t want to unpack the moral implications of something, you can just not include it to begin with. None of the stuff I’ve been laying out here is actually necessary for any of these games to work. Just... quit being weird and making me play coal-mining conquistadors already.
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HEY DID YOU KNOW that four years ago, I had a full AU idea for Miraculous Ladybug that integrated Felix and Bridgette as the original Parisian Chat Noir and Ladybug and inserted them into the canon timeline by making Felix the younger brother of Gabriel Agreste?
If you want the rundown of the AU and basic plot (and the reasons why I will never finish it), it’s under this read more:
Felix and Bridgette have the same roles they do in the pilot. Felix is a little less social than his older brother, they were close when they were younger but grew apart as time marched on and Gabriel met and married his high school sweetheart, Emilie. I was going to make it so that Emilie Agreste was the original Moth miraculous holder. The old man gave all of them their miraculous secretly, so it’s likely very few of them know who the others are. Emilie and Gabriel are either given theirs as a unit, or Gabriel finds out his partner’s identity on his own.
Felix tragically dies while using his bad luck during a particularly tough job (conflict is either caused by general bad juju/negative emotions taken to the extreme OR the holders just save people from regular disasters and crime) and the current Ladybug is beside herself with grief. (In my headcanon, miraculous ladybug either doesn’t fix death OR because there’s no akuma to purify, it just doesn’t have the same amount of power.) She may have had a crush on Felix at school, but she had become quite close to Chat Noir during their time working together. Possibly at that point they had grown up and ended up together as a couple, even.
Tikki, in an effort to save Bridgette from the trauma, uses her miracle to fix what was broken and also wipe Ladybug’s memories. (Or this may have been a deus ex, more than one miraculous being used by Bridgette, something like that.)
Gabriel witnesses all of this and suddenly realizes he has lost his brother. He didn’t even know Felix was Chat Noir. When Felix gets killed by his bad luck, Gabriel blames the miraculous and kwami and steals Emilie’s moth miraculous and stashes it away with his Peacock Miraculous. He becomes obsessed with the miraculouses and with his failure to protect his little brother. They have and raise their child, Adrien, but their relationship quickly degrades due to his controlling and abusive behavior, and eventually she runs away to try to regain control of her life.
Gabriel’s role in the show is shifted by this. He owns two miraculouses and is desperately trying to find the old man and the rest. When a new Chat Noir and Ladybug appear on the scene, it enrages him. He starts using the moth miraculous to try to steal theirs in a misguided attempt to save them from the miraculous and themselves. This makes it Extra Dangerous for Adrien to be found out by his father, as Gabriel blames Plagg for his Felix’s death.
If you’ve read this far, the big twist, the big surprise ending? The young woman who gave up her memory of being Ladybug rather than feel the grief of losing her partner? It was gunna be Nathalie. Gabriel’s loyal assistant, who upon having no memory of her role as Ladybug and therefore no memory of much of her youth, was taken in by Gabriel and given a job so that he could keep an eye on her and make sure nothing else happened to her.
Over the course of her boss acting as Hawkmoth, she encounters Ladybug and Chat Noir a few times and has niggling memories and reminders. Of course at some point the memories would be unlocked at just the right moment, or to prevent Hawkmoth from doing something heinous. I was never sure how this AU was going to be resolved, but it explained some of why Hawkmoth is such a dick towards two kids and why he wants the miraculous so bad (he wants his wife back, but it’s possible he may believe the power of all four would be able to bring Felix back for himself and Nathalie).
It’s too bad the network approved/published a super racist comic where Marinette interacts with super-stereotypical “gangster” African Americans (plus Marinette is naked/wearing a cardboard box and assumes they are going to kill her - you know, fun for the whole family!) It’s too bad the show’s creator defended the comic and called those who were upset ‘sjws’ and looking for racism where there was none. :)
It’s also a shame Astruc was such a dick to members of his audience in general and treated them like they were idiots for wanting to identify with a struggling teenage girl playing the villainous rich-girl role (and wanting to see her redeemed and grow as a person). He straight up insinuated that a struggling teenage character was evil and never going to change her ways! :) So that’s the other grudge I hold in addition to the racist comic thing.
No shame to anyone who is still in the fandom, because the characters were super sweet and relateable, and it was a really fun sandbox to play in. But these were dealbreakers for me, and as I don’t trust the show or Astruc anymore, I will probably never return to this idea or the Miraculous Ladybug franchise ever again.
But like, if you’re reading this and you still care about these characters and think it would be interesting to explore this idea, it is absolutely up for grabs! You can take pieces of it or the whole AU, I do not mind at all. I appreciate credit but it’s not required. You can also reblog my other fan art and AUs for this show if it floats your boat.
#miraculous ladybug#gabriel agreste#emilie agreste#chat noir#chat noir felix#cw racism#i put so much work into this image#only to have my interest in this show ripped out of my hands lmao#shout out to dark for being many of the reasons i formulated this AU in the first place#667-darkavenue#I still think my characterization of young Gabriel is bomb#art
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So I just started a new DA2 playthrough, and remembered something that I'd love to get your thoughts and opinions on, especially since your Joanna romanced Anders. If you give Fenris to Danarius, basically everyone disapproves, except Anders, who actually *approves*. I understand the basics: he's so far gone to his cause he wants everyone who disagrees with him *gone*, fellow ex-slave or no, but I'd love to see if you had a more in-depth thought process on it. Thanks!
Hi. :)
I ... honestly don’t have much in the way of deep thoughts on Anders himself here, because I don’t think Anders is the core problem. I’ve seen people wring their hands over that +5 before, and it’s always confused me. I feel like if you’re worrying about the minutiae of a +5 to friendship you are not grappling with the full horror of what just happened. This whole quest is a catastrophic failure of the friendship/rivalry system.
So - the quest page is here.
Digging a little further tells me that on XBox, at least, Isabela will give a +5 to rivalry for the threat to Fenris’s sister, but nothing for Fenris himself. She has a line, objecting to Hawke’s actions, but no friendship/rivalry change.
I mean - what the hell are we looking at here? Do you know? Because I absolutely do not.
We have a solid +10 rivalry average for handing a friend over to a slaver. I can make that back with two moderately funny purple responses in the right places. In fact, as this is an Act 3 quest I would imagine that many people are missing some or all of these changes because they’ve already maxed out their companions’ scores one way or another. It’s an utter non-event.
Merrill, whose people were enslaved en masse by Tevinter, who lost her whole culture to them and is scrabbling to reclaim it, gives a +10 to rivalry when a fellow elf is handed over to a Tevinter Magister for enslavement and torture. Isabela, the pirate captain who liberates slaves has no followup on that at all. Our biggest rivalry gain is from Aveline, at +15, and - wow. Impressive. A whole 15 rivalry points for doing the worst possible thing to a long-time friend and comrade.
+10! +10! What does it mean? “We can still go for drinks later, but we’re going to sulk”? “Hawke, you’re barred from game night for the next two weeks for that silliness”? I can’t let it go. Those little +10s to rivalry make me much angrier than Anders’s +5 to friendship because they’re treated as sufficient. Anders’s +5 causes distress and dismay, because it worries people that he approves of slavery, but a tiny +10 to rivalry for one of the worst things you can do in this game - and we are not a little bit worried about everyone else’s moral compass?
This isn’t the dealbreaker? This isn’t the day we all leave and never talk to Hawke again? Why the fuck not?
So - for context, in The Urn of Sacred Ashes, back in Origins, Leliana will literally fight you to the death over desecrating the relic; if you spare Loghain in The Landsmeet, Alistair will leave you; if you don’t murder Anders in The Last Straw in retaliation for the death of Grand Cleric Elthina, Sebastian will leave and wage war on Kirkwall. But we can give Fenris to a slaver and it’s fucking fine. Oh, we’re a little annoyed, but we’ll get over it
I am so angry. Not at you, for talking about it, but at the writing in this quest. I don’t think there’s anything very meaningful to be said about Anders specifically. He and Fenris loathe each other. They fight and they poke each other’s sore spots. It seemed like a good idea to someone to give Anders a minor friendship bump if Fenris leaves. When the positions are (broadly speaking) reversed, and Fenris gets to comment on Anders’s fate in The Last Straw he says “He wants to die. Kill him and be done with it”. This is not Fenris having strong opinions about the mage rebellion - although he does have those elsewhere. This is a very broad, facile “fuck that guy”. Obviously the circumstances differ, but in terms of caring about each other’s wellbeing they’re about the same. Fuck that guy. If he’s going away, I’m having a good day.
Was it tacky for Bioware to put that +5 friendship into Alone? Yes. Definitely. But I don’t think it means anything at all about Anders or his view on slavery or his cause, because if I did think that, I’d have to think the other companions’ responses were significant too. I’d have to think that their firm position on this is to wrinkle their collective noses a little and then forget about it. And - I’m just going to do the obvious and gesture emphatically at Isabela’s whole character arc here in refutation of that.
I’m not opposed to evil choices in RPGs. That’s ... kind of how role playing works. But this one is so utterly facile as to be revolting. There are no meaningful consequences for this. And while it is possible to do other revolting things in Dragon Age, things done to companions stand out, because from a narrative perspective they matter. We can say in theory that the deaths of unnamed NPCs are bad and wrong - but it will be the characters we know and love that we mourn over. This isn’t the only bad choice you can make, but it’s a really big one.
For Joanna - this is a non-issue. She’s not going to hand anyone over to a slaver, much less her friend, so (mercifully) I do not have to try to rationalise this nonsense.
For anyone going to because they’ve committed to an evil playthrough? This might be a really good time to bring in “Varric is an unreliable narrator” and head canon yourself some reasonable fallout.
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