Otome and other fandoms

Part 1 with the other 5 and the art that inspired this.

🔞CW: Dry humping. Dirty talk. Self love. Smut.🔞

Infold, give us our wolf back! Please!

A special thanks to @stardustsirens, I love your beautiful brain 😚

Twenty minutes. You'd been gone twenty minutes before you turned around, halfway to work, because your work folder was still sitting on the kitchen counter.

Valko had stayed the night, though not the way anyone would assume. You'd cooked too late, ended up on the couch watching movies until midnight and the idea of him driving home just to come back in a few hours was ridiculous. So he'd stayed. Folded that huge body of his onto your couch—which was built for exactly one normal sized human—insisting he was fine even though you both knew his neck would hate him for it in the morning. He hadn't so much as brought up sharing your bed. That line was still there between you, respected without either of you having to say so out loud.

Making out with a nerd bf on the floor

"No, too soon, too soon..."

Valko whimpers desperately as he stills, trying not to blow his load. Your pussy felt too good wrapped around him and he was like a drowning man gasping for air.

He'd fantasized about you so much lately that when you finally came home, he was all over you like a magnet on iron. Now his hot, leaky tip had grown sensitive and hadn't been that long since he started.

He feels like a loser trying to hold it all in, but your slick warmth and arched ass were breaking him down like he was made of cardboard.

"Oh fuck..." He squeezes his eyes shut, praying for retraint but primal instinct takes over and he's rutting into you like a beast, his moans becoming high-pitched and whiny.

"So good...missed this...missed you..." He kisses the back of your neck, your cloying scent only pushing him further to the edge.

As a child, I thought The Giving Tree was a story centered on generosity.

As an adult, I'm no longer convinced it is.

Children tend to be drawn to the tree. Adults, I believe, should be paying closer attention to the boy.

The tree gives the boy apples so he can make money. It gives him its branches so he can build a house. It gives him its trunk, so he can build a boat. It offers its stump, as a final place of rest.

And somehow we're expected to close the book believing we've witnessed one of literature's greatest examples of unconditional love.

But, here's my challenge to you, dear reader... If the tree is a giving tree, what does that make the boy?

The Missed Opportunity

The older I get, the less interested I am in what the tree gave and the more interested I become in what the boy never thought to do.

Every apple he carried away contained the possibility of another tree. Another harvest. Another place for someone to rest decades later. Another opportunity to leave the world with more than what he found.

One could argue that the boy had been too naive to know what he held in his hands. Fair enough. But, that's precisely the point. It is our job to teach our children that there is value in being able to look beyond the next need; to care for the things that care for them; and to leave the world more (not less) abundant than how they inherited it.

Every apple the boy carried away was more than fruit. It was a potential source of perpetual income. Another place for his children, and perhaps their children, to climb, gather, and rest. Had he planted seeds throughout his lifetime, he may never have replaced the original tree, but he could have grown an orchard.

The remarkable thing is how little such a reality would have asked of him: only a few moments of foresight in exchange for generations of abundance.

Yet, the story never tells us that he planted a single seed.

That's what has stayed with me. Not the generosity of the tree.

A striking absence of even mutually beneficial reciprocity.

When Did We Stop Thinking Beyond Ourselves?

Somewhere along the way, we've become remarkably comfortable in our consumption. We take from people, places, and institutions without bothering to consider the cost of continual contribution of society's givers. We celebrate generosity, but fail to normalize talking about the conditions that make generosity possible in the first place. It takes two seconds to destroy something. It takes months, years, decades to heal, recover, and replenish...if even at all.

We expect teachers to spend their own money on classroom supplies because they don't want children to go without. We praise nurses, social workers, therapists, and caregivers for being endlessly compassionate while rarely considering the mental, physical toll, or whether their compensation is commensurate with the cost of care. Parents are celebrated for sacrificing everything they have, and then quietly judged the moment they admit that they're tired.

Perhaps, that's what unsettles me most about The Giving Tree. We have become remarkably good at applauding the tree. We celebrate the sacrifice, thank the giver, hand out plaques, pizza parties, gift cards, and employee-of-the-month awards, yet rarely invest in ensuring that the people and things we depend on have what they need to keep thriving. We praise resilience while quietly assuming it is inexhaustible. Then, we act surprised when there is nothing left to give.

Before Asking for Another Branch

I don't believe all people set out to intentionally exploit others.

The boy never strikes me as cruel. If anything, I suspect he loves the tree in the only way he knows how and yet, it never seems to occur to him to ask whether the tree is healthy enough to keep giving without being pushed past its point of no return.

I've started wondering how often we do the same thing in our day-to-day.

How often do we mistake someone's consistency for endless capacity? How often do we assume that because someone has always shown up, they always can, will, (and should)? How often do we thank people for their strength without bothering to ask what that strength has cost them?

Notice how the story never invites us to wonder whether the tree's love should have included boundaries nor does it ever require stewardship of the boy. One is celebrated for giving without limits. The other is never challenged to wonder whether he should keep asking. Somewhere between those two extremes is where healthy relationships live.

So, perhaps, the question isn't whether the tree loved the boy. It's whether this is the kind of relationship we want our children to grow up believing is healthy—or whether we're quietly teaching them that love means becoming either the tree or the boy.

The Orchard We Forgot to Plant

It's a beautiful story and one that I still own, but sometimes I imagine an ending that Shel Silverstein never wrote:

The boy returns one afternoon with empty hands. He doesn't need money. He doesn't need a house. He doesn't need a boat. He simply sits beneath the tree because he enjoys its company. Before he leaves, he pulls out half an apple from his pocket, collects the seeds, and plants them nearby. Not because the tree asks him to, but because somewhere along the way he has learned that gratitude isn't only expressed by saying "thank you." If it is said at all.

That is how healthy love is modeled and it is a reminder that:

Little boy, there is giving in you, too.

Giving Tree, there's a point at which giving can cost you far more than the right to your very name.

Happy birthday, with love💜

Or: How Cybird Accidentally Invented Mothman Faust

The Cybird conference room had been prepared with the desperate optimism of people who still believed meetings accomplished things.

A long table. A projector. Three untouched coffees slowly cooling into regret.

And seated before the blank presentation screen were the worst possible men to assign a Faust event story.

William Shakespeare had already claimed the first chair like it was a stage and he had been cast as the storm.

Arthur Conan Doyle sat beside him, deceptively relaxed, eyes sharp with the bored delight of a detective praying the meeting would become a crime.

Dazai occupied the final seat with the faint, resigned air of a man who had attended his own funeral and found the catering predictable.

The Cybird intern stood trembling at the front.

“Thank you all for coming,” she said weakly. “Management wants ideas for the next Faust event story.”

No one spoke.

Then Arthur did.

“No.”

The intern blinked. “Pardon?”

Arthur folded his arms.

“Faust is impossible to write for. Every romantic premise involving him becomes either a psychological experiment, a hostage situation, or foreplay with footnotes. Frankly, I refuse to be liable for any of those.”

Dazai lifted a hand lazily.

“Counterpoint. That’s what makes him marketable.”

Shakespeare’s head lifted, birdlike, as though marketable despair had entered the room carrying roses.

“O tragic alchemist of yearning and restraint…”

Arthur pointed at him immediately.

“No poetry.”

“You wound me.”

“You survive it every time.”

The intern cleared her throat nervously.

“So we just need something romantic. Popular trends right now are café dates, cozy intimacy, maybe some light possessiveness…”

All three men slowly turned toward her.

Dazai smiled first.

“That’s adorable.”

Shakespeare rose immediately in a swirl of theatrical purpose.

“Then allow me to demonstrate true romance.”

Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose like a man preparing for incoming weather.

Shakespeare swept toward the projector with the confidence of someone about to commit literature.

“The heroine encounters Faust beneath moonlit roses,” he declared, already writing furiously, “‘whereupon he takes her trembling hand and whispers…’”

He cleared his throat dramatically.

“O fairest star that wanders through the cathedral of my despair, thou hast unstitched the sable veil around my immortal heart.”

The room went still.

Arthur stared at the screen like he had discovered a corpse and disliked the murderer’s handwriting.

“…What,” he said carefully, “was that.”

Shakespeare blinked. “Romance.”

“That was not Faust,” Arthur snapped. “That was a widowed vampire peacock.”

Dazai considered this.

“He does have peacock energy occasionally.”

“No he doesn’t.”

Shakespeare looked wounded.

“You object to poetry?”

“I object to evidence tampering.” Arthur stood, already pacing. “Faust would never begin with praise. Praise gives the other person footing. He would begin with an observation precise enough to sound clinical and intimate enough to ruin your week.”

Shakespeare folded his arms.

“Such as?”

Arthur adjusted his cuffs, eyes gleaming despite himself.

“Something like, ‘You continue returning despite ample warning signs. Fascinating.’”

The intern slowly lowered her pen.

Dazai nodded immediately.

“That’s unfortunately accurate.”

Shakespeare looked horrified.

“That sounds like a diagnosis.”

Arthur pointed triumphantly.

“Exactly.”

Shakespeare pressed a hand to his chest.

“You would put yearning in a filing cabinet if left unattended.”

“And at least then we could find it,” Arthur replied.

He turned toward the projector now, the expression on his face changing from irritation to professional hunger. A bad idea had entered the room, and unfortunately, it had clues.

“If any of you wish to write Faust without committing character assassination, you begin with circumstance, not moonlight.”

The intern brightened weakly. “That sounds promising.”

Arthur approached the screen like a detective about to accuse a duke at dinner.

“Simple. We begin with a locked-room mystery.”

The intern perked up. “A murder?”

Arthur smiled.

“Worse. Faust has locked himself in his laboratory for three days, and no one knows whether he’s dead, working, or sulking with scientific intent.”

Dazai looked thoughtful.

“So the mystery is whether he’s dead.”

“Or working,” Arthur corrected.

“Those are visually identical,” Dazai replied.

Arthur ignored him, already too pleased with the structure.

“The heroine investigates. She notices the untouched tray outside his door, the faint smell of chemicals, the absence of his usual condescending remarks. All signs point toward disaster.”

The intern nodded faster.

“And then?”

“She picks the lock and discovers Faust unconscious beside a failed experiment.”

Shakespeare perked up.

“At last. Tragedy.”

“Exhaustion,” Arthur corrected. “Possibly self-inflicted. Very important distinction.”

“And the romance?” the intern asked carefully.

Arthur looked mildly surprised by the question.

“…He allows her to remain in the laboratory afterward.”

Dazai slowly covered his mouth.

“Arthur,” he said, almost reverent, “you accidentally understand Faust better than all of us.”

Arthur sat down immediately, irritated.

“It’s called deduction.”

Shakespeare looked deeply offended by the understatement.

“Deduction? Nay. That is devotion in a white coat, love translated into permission and proximity.”

Arthur looked at him.

“You just made a locked door sound indecent.”

Shakespeare smiled.

“Then the scene lives.”

The intern raised a cautious hand.

“What about something softer? Cozy domestic romance, perhaps? Baking together?”

Silence reclaimed the table.

“No,” said Arthur.

“Insufficiently tragic,” said Shakespeare.

Dazai looked thoughtful.

“Faust would measure flour with laboratory equipment.”

Arthur nodded reluctantly. “Accurate.”

The intern brightened slightly. “So maybe baking could wor…”

“No,” all three said immediately.

The intern deflated.

Shakespeare suddenly raised one hand dramatically toward the heavens.

“The event shall be titled…”

He let the title descend upon them like a chandelier nobody had secured properly.

“THE LABYRINTH OF DESIRE.”

Arthur immediately objected.

“That sounds like an erotic minotaur situation.”

Dazai nodded thoughtfully.

“I would read it,” he said. “Briefly. Then I would stare at the wall.”

The intern looked panicked already. “Maybe something less intense?”

Shakespeare pressed a hand to his chest.

“Nay. Picture it. A maze at night. The heroine wanders alone, guided by candlelight and the distant sound of a man refusing to process his feelings.”

Arthur frowned.

“Why is she wandering alone?”

“Symbolism.”

“Terrible security.”

Dazai rested his chin in his hand.

“Faust is at the center, obviously.”

Shakespeare’s eyes lit up.

“The beast in the labyrinth.”

Arthur stared.

“You want Faust to be the minotaur.”

Dazai shrugged.

“He already has the temperament.”

The intern whispered, “He doesn’t have horns.”

Arthur gave her a tired look.

“That has never stopped marketing.”

Shakespeare leaned forward, suddenly soft, which was somehow worse than when he shouted.

“The beast is not monstrous because he has horns. He is monstrous because he believes love cannot survive the sight of him.”

Arthur stared at him.

“Stop making marketable points.”

Shakespeare bowed slightly.

“I bleed value.”

The intern hesitated.

Arthur noticed immediately.

His eyes narrowed.

“Why did you hesitate?”

The intern clutched her pen.

“Monster romance is… performing well right now,” she admitted, with the haunted voice of someone watching analytics chew through the floorboards.

Arthur stared at her.

“Do not encourage him.”

“I’m not encouraging him,” she whispered. “I’m reporting market conditions.”

“You are supposed to be the adult in the room.”

“I’m an intern.”

“That is not a moral exemption.”

Dazai smiled faintly.

“So we agree,” he murmured. “Monster romance. Humanity returns to the forest eventually.”

“We do not agree,” Arthur said.

Shakespeare whispered, “The beast may yet be beloved.”

“No beasts.”

Dazai did not answer immediately.

His gaze had drifted past Arthur’s shoulder, unfocused and distant, as if some private tragedy had wandered into the ceiling tiles and begun performing for him alone.

The intern turned slowly.

A moth was circling the fluorescent light above the conference table.

Tiny. Pale. Doomed. Enthusiastic.

It struck the bulb once.

Then again.

Dazai watched it with the grave tenderness of a man witnessing prophecy make poor choices.

“…There,” he said softly.

Arthur followed his gaze.

“No.”

“It already chose him,” Dazai murmured.

“It is a moth.”

“So is fate,” Dazai said, “when the lighting is bad.”

The moth hit the bulb again.

Arthur stared at it, then at Dazai.

“You are not basing an entire Faust route on an insect with poor survival instincts.”

Dazai’s smile barely moved.

“It understands longing.”

Shakespeare rose slowly, eyes shining with religious disaster.

“A creature drawn to radiance though it knows the flame may kill it…”

Arthur pointed at him.

“Do not make it good.”

“Too late,” Dazai said.

Shakespeare clasped his hands together with terrifying sincerity.

“Gentlemen. For once, we are not enemies.”

Arthur looked up.

“We are absolutely enemies.”

“Nay. We are midwives.”

Dazai murmured, “To something that should have been stillborn.”

“To art,” Shakespeare corrected.

The room became dangerous.

The projector flickered ominously.

Dazai leaned forward slightly, as if the moth had handed him minutes from a meeting no human should have attended.

“Suppose,” he said, voice mild as rain on a grave, “Faust attempts to improve human transportation and accidentally worsens himself.”

The intern blinked. “…Why.”

“Science,” Arthur muttered bitterly.

“A terrible accident occurs,” Dazai continued. “A moth enters the machine with him.”

The intern stared.

“…A moth.”

“He avoids sunlight,” Dazai said reasonably. “Sleeps in cocoons. Appears silently at night to say psychologically devastating things.”

Arthur slowly looked up.

“…You’ve thought about this before.”

Dazai’s eyes returned to the moth.

“Not before. Beside.”

Arthur frowned. “Beside what?”

“The idea,” Dazai said. “It arrived early and waited for us.”

Shakespeare looked spiritually enlightened.

“THE MOTHMAN OF YEARNING.”

Arthur closed his eyes.

“No one has ever said those words before because God was merciful.”

The projector changed slides.

EVENT TITLE: Moonlight Metamorphosis: The Mothman’s Desire

The intern whispered:

“We’re going to lose our jobs.”

Dazai almost smiled.

“No. You’re going to break sales records. The market has always loved a beautiful warning sign.”

Arthur stared at the slide in visible pain.

“No.”

Dazai tilted his head. “You haven’t heard the mechanics.”

“I do not need to hear the mechanics. The word ‘Mothman’ has already assaulted both literature and God.”

Arthur’s eyes narrowed.

“…Unless the transformation is gradual.”

The intern stared at him.

“You’re helping?”

Arthur straightened.

“I am preventing worse people from helping.”

Shakespeare clasped his hands together.

“Ah! The detective enters the monster’s chapel.”

“The detective is filing a complaint,” Arthur snapped. “If we are committing this crime, we are at least giving it internal consistency.”

Dazai smiled.

“Of course.”

Arthur approached the projector with renewed purpose, already trapped by his own cleverness.

“At first, the symptoms are subtle.”

The projector changed again.

SYMPTOMS: • heightened nocturnal activity • attraction to light sources • increasing cocoon behavior • judgmental fluttering sounds • emotional vulnerability under moonlight

The intern made a strangled noise.

“Judgmental fluttering?”

Dazai nodded.

“You can hear disappointment in the wingbeats.”

Arthur tapped the bullet point with a pen.

“Actually, the first symptom should be attraction to light. He begins standing under chandeliers and claiming it improves his concentration.”

Dazai nodded gravely.

“Second symptom: cocoon behavior.”

“Already present,” Arthur said. “The man disappears into blankets and calls it recovery.”

Shakespeare whispered, “A chrysalis of sorrow.”

“A duvet,” Arthur corrected. “But yes.”

The intern’s pen moved against her will.

Arthur leaned closer to the screen, almost smiling now.

“Third symptom: heightened irritation when disturbed.”

Dazai blinked.

“Isn’t that normal?”

“For Faust, yes. Which is why the heroine mistakes the transformation for his personality at first. Clean misdirection. Very efficient.”

The intern looked horrified.

“That’s… actually good.”

Arthur pointed at her.

“Do not sound surprised.”

Shakespeare had begun pacing again, drunk on possibility.

“The heroine discovers him wrapped within silken bedding, hidden away in moonlit chambers like some wounded creature of longing…”

Arthur muttered:

“Or a haunted camping larva.”

Dazai actually smiled.

“Premium avatar item: Cocoon Sleeping Bag Faust.”

The intern dropped her pen.

“No.”

Arthur’s head snapped toward Dazai.

“…No, wait. That sells.”

“Arthur,” the intern whispered.

He looked disgusted with himself.

“I know.”

Shakespeare ignored them completely, now pacing not like a poet but a director watching scenery rise into place.

“At the climax of the route, the transformed doctor descends from the night sky itself!”

Arthur frowned.

“Moths don’t fly that high.”

“Rule of cool,” Dazai replied.

“That is not a rule. That is a confession.”

“No, no,” Shakespeare said suddenly, holding up one hand. “Not the sky. Too distant. Too heroic. Faust is not thunder. He is the shape waiting inside the room after the lamp is lit.”

Arthur paused despite himself.

Shakespeare stepped toward the projector, eyes narrowed in horrifying concentration.

“The heroine should not look up and find him above her. She should enter the laboratory believing herself alone. The lantern flickers. The shelves breathe shadow. Then…”

He lifted one finger.

“The shadow should reach her before he does.”

Arthur looked genuinely wounded.

“…Unfortunately, that is good staging.”

Shakespeare bowed.

“I accept your surrender.”

“I did not surrender.”

“Your pause did.”

The projector changed one final time.

PREMIUM CG: Faust beneath glowing lantern light. Dark wings spread behind him. Green eyes luminous. One hand against the heroine’s throat.

And in the corner:

DO NOT TOUCH THE COCOON.

Arthur studied the proposed CG with the grave focus of a man examining footprints in wet clay.

“…The lantern placement is clever.”

The intern whispered, “Please don’t say that.”

“It draws the eye to the wings,” Arthur continued, unwillingly captivated by the craft of the disaster. “Establishes motive. Explains why the heroine approaches despite every instinct screaming against it.”

Dazai smiled.

“So you like it.”

Arthur recoiled.

“I said it was structurally effective. Do not make me vulgar.”

Shakespeare pressed both hands over his heart.

“A monster bathed in forbidden light! A heroine trembling before the silhouette of appetite! Desire itself takes wing!”

Arthur pointed at him.

“Too much.”

Shakespeare lowered one hand.

“A little wing?”

“Acceptable.”

The intern stared at the screen.

“So… the route is Faust slowly becoming a mothman because of a failed experiment, while the heroine tries to save him, but he keeps being drawn to light and wrapping himself in bedding?”

Arthur nodded, grimly proud despite himself.

“And the emotional arc,” Dazai said softly, “is that a man who hides in darkness mistakes light for danger until someone refuses to look away.”

Arthur stared at him.

“…Annoyingly usable.”

“I know,” Dazai said sadly. “Awful, isn’t it?”

Shakespeare whispered, “By the lantern.”

Arthur sighed.

“By the heroine, you incandescent nuisance.”

The intern looked down at her notes.

“This is the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

Arthur glanced at the screen again.

“…The worst part,” he admitted quietly, “is that people would absolutely bark for this.”

Dazai folded his hands.

“Especially for this.”

The moth struck the fluorescent light one final time.

No one looked up except Dazai.

He gave it a small, respectful nod.

Shakespeare looked radiant.

“Then we have done our duty.”

Arthur sat back, looking ill with competence.

“No. We have solved a crime we committed ourselves.”

Meanwhile, somewhere deep beneath the castle, Faust looked up abruptly from his research notes.

His green eyes narrowed.

“…Why do I suddenly feel as though someone has put wings on my dignity.”

I had to turn this off, but it's something that allows Windows and anyone using your device to generate text/images.