for whose sake?

- mars

this choked me and slammed me and made me crazy so yeah :D <33. cw: some angst near the end, not a lot tho. fem reader all i can think of.

"Why are you calling me?" You pull the phone away just in time to dodge the whine that buzzes through your device—from a grown man.

"You know whyyy, angel. I miss you." Izuku's voice carries that familiar pout, and even though you'd love to sink back into your beauty sleep, you'd rather hear him a little longer.

"Hmm."

"Everywhere I look, you're there." He sounds like he's imagining you in gauzy details. . .

He's tugging on your heartstrings. You shift beneath the covers, wrapped in his shirt, your body curled into his side of the bed. Every small movement sends his scent drifting up from the fabric.

"Do you miss me?"

You don't answer right away. After a beat, you say, "What did you see? You didn't send me anything today." He usually does, but it makes sense that he might have gotten buried in work.

"Oooh, accept the video call, I'll show you."

You do, angling the camera so your face fills most of the frame. That way he can't tease you for being on his side, in his clothes—missing him.

"Hi, pretty girl."

"Hi, bubba—now show me, please."

"Lemme look at you a second." He acts like he hasn't seen you in years. You roll your eyes and purse your lips to keep from smiling. "There's that silly face you make when you don't wanna smile. C'mon, lemme see it."

"'Zu—"

"Please—or-or, New York will be hit with an attack from space and Pro Hero Deku can't fight because his beautiful girlfriend didn't smile at him and—ohhh there it is."

You roll your eyes again, not bothering to hide your grin. Sucking your teeth, you watch Izuku lift his pointer finger and wiggle it up and down, the way you'd say hi to a baby.

"Izuku—"

"Pretty, pretty girl, hiii—"

"I'll hang up—"

"No! Sorry, look—"

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

✩꒱ overworked, underpaid and severely fucked — ft. izuku midoriya .ᐟ

🏁 ꒰ ✩ smut ⋆ mdni ⋆ pro hero izuku midoriya & fem!reader. oral sex, established relationship, care taker izuku. -> izuku midoriya is a good boyfriend, pervy and a little weird … but good. what? it’s not his fault that you’re so easy to look after.

overworked, underpaid but not!! underfucked when you’re with izuku !!!

he’s a little weird, a little perverted but he can be a really good boyfriend if you just give him a chance. promise! izuku is so doting, he’ll leap at the chance to take care of something for you even if you insist you’re getting along well financially.

the first time you let him pay for your food shop and essentials, he walks out of the store with three bags for life on each arm and a boner he just barely manages to conceal. you’re huffy and annoyed because you hardly need the stuff he picked up but it’s enough to last you, so you can’t complain. you kiss deku stupid after he’s loaded the car and lick into his mouth when he settles into the driver’s seat. “always happy to help you, baby.” he murmurs giddy. “just text me what you need next time, you don’t even have to leave the house.” between smooches he doesn’t say he expects a thank you, but you feel the way his chest bristles bristles beneath your fingertips whenever you do give your thanks. as though you’re praising the lord and graced him enough to give you this blessing. he is a little weird.

You think you know what is happening, then, when the most handsome man you've ever seen washes ashore after a storm.

This is your family's hardest year yet, and somehow, despite the unlikeliness of the tide, he's deposited along the shallow pools where you and your sister gather shellfish. Water pools too enticingly in the hollow of his throat, beads along his long lashes, glittering against his pale skin. You do not trust the look of him. But your sister is already halfway in love with him, and cannot bear to leave him behind.

So you take him home, hoping that you are wrong.

You nurse him back from the state the sea left him in, careful not to let your sister go too near. Her fantastical, romantic waxings in the warmth of your hut have you almost believing you were too quick to draw conclusions about him. She is a year younger than you, in ways that feel more like a thousand years sometimes, but the naiveté and idealism of her world view make you want to believe the world can like be that too. You hope she is right, and he is just a beautiful man.

But then he wakes, and you are all too certain he isn't.

His eyes fix too readily on you when he opens them, his attention too immediate and precise. He is too interested in you when he recovers enough to speak—and repeats your name in a way that makes a shiver slink down your spine.

He tells you his name is Rafayel, and he's been shipwrecked. When pressed, however, he cannot name his home port, the name of his ship, or any of his crewmates. The memory of what they were carrying is conveniently lost to the tides. He is too empty of anything except the sea, you think, and you watch him as closely as he watches you.

Your sister is entranced and enthralled with him. You should feel relief that his attention does not linger on her the same way hers lingers on him. But you cannot, with Rafayel inside your home, asking after you instead, your habits, your likes and dislikes. He's come ashore for something, you know, and you do not intend for him to find it in your home.

You watch him carefully, and when he is well enough, you cajole him outside with a request for help gathering shellfish. You lead him back down to the tidepools, a large bucket clutched in hand. You are apprehensive that he will catch on to your plan so you move slowly, try to turn back to him often, tipping your face up to his. You find yourself doing it almost too willingly, reluctant to tear your eyes away from him.

You turn your face up to his again as you make it to the tidepools, and Rafayel steps closer this time. His mouth lingers over yours, his body so close, the promise of something slipping between you. His eyes glint blue like the sea, and you almost forget yourself for a minute as his mouth lowers to yours.

It's half and accident when you overturn your bucket of collected rainwater between you.

But Rafayel's face changes immediately as he takes a shocked step back, and it's then that you know for sure.

Harbor folklore says Lemurians cannot pursue someone across running fresh water. And Rafayel stumbles back, long eyelashes fluttering as he stares at you in stunned disbelief. The tide laps angrily at his heels, suddenly growing discontent, roiling like a pot over the fire.

He says your name, sweet and entreating.

But you turn and leave before your small, freshwater stream can run its course into the sea. You will hang braided eelgrass across your door tonight, and burn peat in the hearth, so that he cannot get in again. You tell him as much as you clamber back up the shoreline to safety, tell him he is wasting his time on you.

The $1 per hour rule. It’s exactly what it says on the tin. If I’m purchasing physical media, I consider it good value if I can expect to get at least one hour of enjoyment for every dollar I spend on it.

I don’t remember what I spent on BG3, but I know it was a good deal because I’ve logged 600 hours in it. Hades II costs $30, and I was more than happy to pay that because I know I’ll play it for at least 30 hours. When I add books to my library, I almost exclusively buy used books that cost under $5 because 5 hours is a good average estimate for how long it takes me to finish a novel.

I'm going to try it.

First, let me preface this with something very important: you can treat all of this advice as SECOND-DRAFT ADVICE. It is so much easier to rewrite this kind of stuff once you have words on the page. Telling yourself the first draft is totally appropriate and acceptable.

What we’re talking about here are FILTER WORDS (and to some degree verbs of being). Yes, “thought” words are included. But so are “heard, saw, looked, tasted, smelled” etc.—most words having to do with the senses.

This isn’t black and white advice; sometimes you’ll use these words and that’s okay. They’re not WRONG. They’re just weaker. And they’re weaker because they create distance between the reader and the experience of the character.*

If you want your reader to feel like they’re experiencing the story right alongside the character, you want to cut down on filter words.

*This is particularly important with first person and close third POVs. The reader always knows whose eyes they’re seeing through and thoughts they’re privy to. So you don’t need to tell them “I saw X.” Or “I heard X.” Or “I thought Y.” You can just jump into the action/observation as it’s happening.

This is also where you want to pay attention to verbs of being.

you want to pay attention

to verbs of being.

That means that when you read a line like

John saw that the curtains were open.

It immediately takes you OUT of the character's perspective and instead tells you what they experience as a secondhand observation.

You don't have to get fancy or purple with how you rephrase things like this. Not everything needs a ton of breathing room.

You wanna know what's perfectly impactful while keeping a tight POV?

The curtains were open.