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itariilles · 2 years

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The Elves From Episodes 1 & 2 Of The Rings of Power

On the 30th I was lucky enough to attend the world premiere of The Rings of Power. This means that I've had some time to sit down and process some of my thoughts regarding how certain thematic elements were addressed in the show, from the adaptation of textual themes, to the altering of themes to better fit the narrative the show is attempting to portray.

Specifically, how the elven characters were portrayed. The breakdown of my thoughts have been included below the text break with commentary and context from various texts. I've limited myself to the published Silmarillion, LOTR and The Hobbit, and Unfinished Tales as I don't have the capacity at the moment to delve into additional contexts from Histories of Middle-earth.

Disclaimer: this is my opinion, and my opinion only. While I am trying my best to be fair in my critique, one has to remember that this is a show produced and streamed on Amazon with a 1 billion dollar budget — the highest of any TV production in history. I am also basing my critique on the first two episodes only, meaning that there is much more to come, but I still believe that there are themes worth talking about that were established in the first two episodes that will likely reoccur over the duration of Season 1 if not the whole show.

@silmarillionwritersguild makes an excellent statement on the ethics behind consuming Rings of Power, and the labour and human rights abuses by Amazon.

Galadriel's Motivations

"Finrod was with Turgon, his friend; but Galadriel, the only woman of the Noldor to stand that day tall and valiant among the contending princes, was eager to be gone. No oaths she swore, but the words of Fëanor concerning Middle-earth had kindled in her heart, for she yearned to see the wide unguarded lands and to rule there a realm at her own will." — Of The Flight of The Noldor, The Silmarillion

The prologue briefly depicts a two minute summary of the Darkening of Valinor, Flight of the Noldor, and War of Wrath. We are shown Galadriel presiding over Finrod's corpse which bears scratch marks and a brand of the eye of Sauron which can be assumed to be after his infamous duel with Sauron during their duel in Tol-in-Gaurhoth.

While it is extremely likely that Galadriel will bear personal animosity towards Sauron for the murder of her brother, it does feel odd to me that the choice was made to establish the avenging of her brother as her primary motive in remaining in Middle-earth.

Christopher Tolkien's note in Unfinished Tales on the passage above is interesting in that:

"Most notable however in the passage just cited is the explicit statement that Galadriel refused the pardon of the Valar at the end of the First Age." — History of Galadriel and Celeborn, Unfinished Tales

This seems to fall in line with her established motivations in text with her desire to rule over a realm herself, as up until this point she has only aligned herself with rulers of other realms (Thingol and Melian in Doriath, Círdan in the Falas, etc.)

In the context of Rings of Power, Galadriel is portrayed as being "rewarded" a return to Aman by Gil-Galad as an honour which she too refuses for the sake of continuing her altered show motivation of avenging Finrod and hunting Sauron.

"She did indeed wish to depart from Valinor and to go into the wide world of Middle-earth for the exercise of her talents... and she felt confined in the tutelage of Aman. This desire of Galadriel's was, it seems, known to Manwë, and he had not forbidden her; but nor had she been given formal leave to depart... Galadriel, despairing now of Valinor and horrified by the violence and cruelty of Fëanor, set sail into darkness without waiting for Manwë's leave, which would undoubtedly been withheld in that hour, however legitimate her desire in itself." — History of Galadriel and Celeborn, Unfinished Tales

The issue with this change of primary motivation is that it makes no sense with regards to her imperialist incentive in crossing over to Middle-earth which is something that is core to her character.

"Galadriel laughed with a sudden clear laugh. 'Wise the Lady Galadriel may be,' she said, 'yet here she has met her match in courtesy. Gently are you revenged for my testing of your heart at our first meeting. You begin to see with a keen eye. I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired to ask what you offer[.']... She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad. 'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'" — The Mirror of Galadriel, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

The completion of her character arc is when she rejects the one ring when it is offered to her, and with it she relinquishes her desire to rule. It is only then she willingly makes the journey back to Aman as she rejects her ambition and rule, and when that happens Lothlórien begins to fade, and with it the last of Noldorin imperialism in Middle-earth.

I must reiterate that while I take no issue with the idea that pursuing Sauron as a means of avenging Finrod's death is a motivator for Galadriel, it should not be her primary motive as has been portrayed so far. It is unclear whether or not at this early stage in the show if she has come into contact with the elves of Lórien, but this is something to keep in mind when she interacts with Amdir and Amroth later on if they do appear in this adaptation.

It is also absolutely crucial to acknowledge the complexities and nuances of Galadriel's imperialist narrative, and the settler colonialism of it all. I could go on for literally an entire essay's worth of points, but I'm saving that for a paper later on.

"In the Second Age their king, Oropher... had withdrawn northward... he resented the intrusions of Celeborn and Galadriel into Lórien." — Appendix B: The Sindarin Princes of the Silvan Elves, History of Galadriel and Celeborn, Unfinished Tales

While the text does seem to portray her imperialist ambitions either positively or neutrally, there are also characters who are shown to be critical of Noldorin imperialism.

"'You are of the house of Eöl, Maeglin, my son.' he said, 'and not of the Golodhrim. All this land is the land of the Teleri, and I will not deal nor have my son deal with the slayers of my kin, the invaders and usurpers of our homes.[']"

"'I acknowledge not your law,' [Eöl] said. 'No right have you or any of your kin in this land to seize realms or to set bounds, either here or there. This is the land of the Teleri, to which you bring war and all unquiet, dealing ever proudly and unjustly... Your father commands you. Leave the house of his enemies and the slayers of his kin, or be accursed!'"

— Of Maeglin, The Silmarillion

@skyeventide has an excellent thread on Twitter analysing Tolkien's specific choice of Eöl as the narrator for his critical commentary on the Noldorin settlement of Beleriand and in-text bias favouring narratives of settler colonialism.

Additional links and sources:

Galadriel and Ayesha by William H. Stoddard

Fantasy Racism Against the Elves

The first time we are introduced to the fantasy racism element of the show is when a man from Tirharad launches a tirade against Arondir venting his frustrations over the elven presence in their lands, calling him "knife-ear" which is a slur taken straight out of Dragon Age. It feels cheap and delivers less commentary and insight into the power dynamics the show attempts to suggest with the elven garrison guarding Tirharad on orders from Gil-Galad.

When approaching racism as a concept, one must remember the dynamics of power and disenfranchisement, in which the group(s) that wield power exert and abuse their power over another group for gain and profit in one form or another.

Textually, there is an element of cultural hierarchy and supremacy judged by a Quendi group's proximity to the West with Calaquendi (most notably Noldorin in a Middle-earth context) hegemony on the top of that pyramid, closely followed by the Sindar. While this deserves its own essay, I think the fact that Arondir is a Silvan plays into the uncomfortable "lowly Silvan elf" narrative that was introduced in adaptation in Peter Jackson's Desolation of Smaug (2013). Any review that claims fantasy racism is a "new" element to Tolkien adaptation in Rings of Power is inaccurate in this regard.

This is also made all the more uncomfortable by the fact that Arondir is played by Ismael Cruz Córdova who is Black and Puerto Rican, and is so far the only elf to be portrayed by a non-white actor. This, coupled by the fact that he is also a Silvan OC highlights a bunch of in-universe, and productional issues with regards to the way in which racism and inclusion are handled.

“[Wood-elves] differed from the High Elves of the West, and they were more dangerous and less wise. For most of them… were descended from the ancient tribes that never went to Faerie in the West. There the Light-elves and the Deep-elves, and the Sea-elves went and lived for ages, and are fairer and wiser and more learned, and invented their magic and their cunning craft in the making and of beautiful and marvellous things, before some came back into the Wide World… Still elves they were and remain, and that is Good People.”

— Flies and Spiders, The Hobbit

While there are definitely more nuanced ways to handle the element of inter-Quendi cultural dynamics, hierarchies, and conflicts, I don't think that establishing it using one-dimensional cheap commentary from a throwaway Tirharad man is the best way to go about it.

There are implications of Eldar holding power over men in the First Age, with men being portrayed as vassals in a feudalistic system under the Noldorin princes. In the Second Age there is less of this implication with the establishment of Númenor as the new mannish cultural centre, but it would have been better handled in the Tirharad context if there were points made about power dynamics with the Tirharad men treated as second-class citizens of their own lands or vassals of Eldar power and hegemony over their lands for the sake of their interests.

A line said by a Silvan soldier reasoning their station over the men of Tirharad as "descendants of those who served Morgoth" is uncomfortable as it plays into the established trope of South/Eastern men being inherently evil which links into Orientalist ideas of the East being percieved as fundamentally Other. This is an established trope in Tolkien which some of my links from my race in Tolkien masterpost linked below regarding the portrayal of Easterlings by Tolkien and in adaptation explain in more detail.

"The Silvan Elves had invented no forms of writing, and those who learned this art from the Sindar wrote in Sindarin as well as they could. By the end of the Third Age the Silvan tongues had probably ceased to be spoken in the two regions that had importance at the time of the War of the Ring: Lórien and the realm of Thranduil in northern Mirkwood."

— Appendix A: The Silvan Elves and Their Speech, History of Galadriel and Celeborn, Unfinished Tales

There is also a soft imperialism and cultural assimilation aspect to Sindarin settler colonialism in the Second Age, and while we have yet to meet the major Sindarin players of the Second Age (namely Oropher, Amdir, and Amroth), it may yet hold implications for Arondir down the line.

It feels rather strange that Gil-Galad is implied to hold dominion over Silvan elves, as it feels reductive of inter-Quendi dynamics from textual material. Unless Arondir and the other Silvans garrisoned at Tirharad are Silvan elves of Ered Luin or of the forests that fall within Lindon, there is no reason they should answer Gil-Galad's orders, much less recognise Gil-Galad's authority over them as a people group.

It is also strange that Gil-Galad appears to hold the more imperialistic narrative, rather than Galadriel who is explictly depicted as having imperialistic motives in Middle-earth. I question how this aspect of his character will be handled in the show, but I'm not holding my breath given how fantasy racism is often handled poorly and with little nuance in Tolkien fandom, adaptation, and fantasy as a genre.

The second instance in which we are shown the theme of fantasy racism is when Galadriel is rescued out of the water by human castaways. Halbrand reveals her ear, and the woman on board who had previously showed her kindness in offering water, turns on her and shrieks at the elf.

We do not know which people group(s) the castaways belong to, but Halbrand claims to be of the South.

The undertones of fantasy racism falls onto Galadriel's shoulder, who once again in adaptation is played by a white woman. I have written a thread on Twitter criticising fan responses to Morfyyd Clark's instagram posts, and how the Rings of Power fandom has ascribed to the actress the role of a white saviour in which it feels as if the conversation of racism is again being centred on whiteness.

Additional links and sources:

Please check out my Race in Tolkien masterpost for more links on the topic. I've last updated it 02/09/2022.

The Neoclassical Aesthetic Given to the Noldor and its Unfortunate Implications

Elves in their Roman mid-first century legionnaire-esque armour designs battle amongst the chaos against legions of orcs, and a mound of helmets as a symbol and testiment to the mighty dead. Galadriel adds a galea to the mound in sorrow and grief.

The scene shifts to Lindon in an unspecified time during the Second Age. A male elf crowned in golden laurels plays the lyre, and the female servants clad in their sleeveless Doric chitons linger in the background of shots.

As I mention above, the proscription of a neoclassical aesthetic to the Noldor exacerbates existing textual favourtism and cultural superiority, made all the more uncomfortable with recent discourses regarding the whiteness of the elves and the knowledge that real life facist and white supremacist groups have a habit of co-opting Classical Greek and Roman imagery. One need only look to Benito Mussolini and Identity Evropa as examples.

It feels less coincidental when considering the Classical Greek and Roman imagery and white actors the show has deliberately chosen for the Noldor.

This is a complicated and nuanced subject, with the popularisation of Ancient Greece and Rome as inherently white societies being a recent invention popularised in the 18th century by scholars such as Johann Joachim Winckelmann.

I brace myself and wince for the inevitable far-right white supremacist co-option of the neoclassical Noldor from the Rings of Power. It feels as if all my arguments against elves being inherently "white" are all for nothing, as in the past I have come face-to-face with white supremacists who have used the Peter Jackson film portrayals of Galadriel and Arwen as the pinnacle of white feminity to further their incentive to keep the elves in adaptation as white as possible.

Additional links and sources:

The whiteness of the Rings by Sean Redmond

Whitewashing Antiquity by Imara Ikhumen

Why the alt-right loves ancient Rome And Greece, too. by Sean Illing

#rings of power #the rings of power #lotr on prime #racism in tolkien #tolkien meta #tolkien adaptation #finrod #galadriel #arondir #gil galad #rings of power critical #not really a review per se but just some opinions and analysis

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lunamond · 2 years

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I've just finished episode 3 of the Rings of power and I wanted to write down some of my thoughts. This is going to be a full on ramble, so be warned! ;)

So first of all NUMENOR!!! It is so beautiful and grand! I really enjoyed how real it felt, there was so much of the hustle and bustle in the background that you would expect from a city of that size. Also I absolutely loved the throughline of sea motives and I might have spied a statue of Uinen. (Also loved the puppets!!)

One thing I was waiting for though is an offhand mention by an Numenorian (either Elendil or Miriel) about their lifespan. Sth along the lines of "I haven't heard about that in fifty years" or "A hundred years ago..." But I can wait, the longevity is definitely sth they have to bring up at some point as it will be highly relevant for the whole Numenorian conflict and it calls back to Aragon.

The show is also slowly selling me more and more on Galadriel's characterisation and her relationship with Halbrand. I really like how consistently her stuborness and pride stand in her way (following the lore, flaws she will have overcome by lotr) But I also loved her smugness when she talks to Halbrand in the cell.

So let's talk about Halbrand. I've been pretty sceptical of all the Sauron=Halbrand theories, but this episode 100% cemented the idea that he is not. Because he is so clearly set up as an "anti-Aragon" figure. He is descendant from a royal bloodline BUT his ancestors didn’t fight evil they joined it, his land that he has to retake is already overrun by orcs, Aragon initially apeared to be a dangerous man until he is revealed to be a heroic figure, Halbrand on the other hand initially is friendly and charming but secretly steals from people, is leaving others to die to save himself and beats up people in backalleys.

Currently my predictions for his story is that he either will through the influence of Galadriel (and possibly Elendil) slowly morph into a more heroic Aragon-esque figure.

Or they will built up his arc to become this heroic person, which will garner sympathy from the audience. Until a turning point in which Halbrand will be put into a situation in which he has to chose between falling back unto his old ways or fully becoming a true hero/king, and he will chose wrong and either become a Nazgul or be set on the path of becoming one.

Outside of Numenor, I really enjoyed Arondir's story. Especially how much importance the elves put on the tree and specifically it's long life. It really went a long way of showing us the elven perspective. They feel a sort of kinship with the tree.

The orcs were great. They are really viseral in their appearance but also in their movements. They also came across as a serious threat, one thing I didn’t enjoy in the PJ trilogy was how often the orcs were used as comic relief, so I'm really glad that the show sofar hasn't done that. Also their was some genuine tension in all of the scenes in the orc camp, especially when one orc gave them water to trick them into letting their guard down.

Lastly, the harfoots are cute as ever, but his episode I was probably the least invested into their side of the story (still enjoyed it , though).

I do really love their little festival, where they seemingly reanacted some events from the first age (orc, wolves costume). Combined with reading the names of their lost ones, it made their whole culture seem much more real and genuine.

My final thing I have to mention is that thus episode really kicked of my theory brain. I'm going to post that seperatly, because this is already to long and disorganised, but as a small tease for my theory: I think Stranger=Sauron but he is not yet (fully) evil, Adar is independant of Sauron and behind all the orc activites

#lotr on prime #rings of power #trop #trop episode 3 #rambles #rings of power spoilers #trop positivity #numenor #harfoots #halbrand #galadriel

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draumstafir-blog · 28 days

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1.04 | vikings rewrite

episode summary: the vikings return home and are finally allowed to reap the consequences of their disobedience. (cw: mature themes)

the echoes of metal clangs and ambient mooing filled the bright midmorning sky. the sporadic ringing of the cowbells contrasted perfectly with the rhythmic footsteps of horses approaching. and beyond the seemingly endless green flatlands stood a great mead hall, where a reception party was already waiting.

“erling!” a familiar voice called to jarl haraldson, who busied himself helping his wife and daughter dismount from horseback.

“it has been too long since you have set foot in svealand!”

jarl haraldson beckoned for his family members to curtsy to the white-bearded, grandfatherly figure standing before them all. his smile continued to widen as he opened his arms, in great contrast to the man he was welcoming.

“it is wonderful to see you once more, at a joyous occasion such as this.” the old man’s head seemed to nod as he spoke, although it may have been a more involuntary shaking.

“likewise,” the jarl started, disinterested as ever, “i’d like for you to meet my wife, sigrún.”

the old man took her hand, kissing it near where the armband rested.

“and this is my daughter, þyri.”

the old man seemed particularly enchanted by þyri, raising an eyebrow slightly as he repeated the same gesture. the young woman used her other hand to swipe curly brown locks from out of her face, her rosy lips pursing into a straight line as she tried to conceal her unease.

“well, i’m sure you are all very tired from the journey. my servants will show the women and their ladies in waiting to their quarters, where you may feel free to freshen up before this evening’s marvelous banquet.” the old man clasped his hands together, all the while grinning from ear to ear.

þyri couldn’t help but pull her father aside, “you’ve not said a word about who this man is.”

“your handmaidens will explain it to you,” he did not reciprocate her discreet volume, in an attempt to shirk off the conversation, “just understand that he is a very important man, and pleasing him is our top priority.”

sigrún stayed back, her brows furrowing in a similar level of concern, as her daughter was ushered out of sight in one swift moment.

“siggy, dear, please. us men are going to be discussing business.” jarl haraldson clearly did not appreciate his wife’s apprehension, though he did not do much to disabuse her of it.

her grey-blue eyes wore a thin line of kohl on the upper lid, although her husband could still see them trembling behind it, “my capable husband, i only wish to know the nature of our visit, to this land which is completely new to our daughter and i.”

“jarl bjarni is going to be taking good care of us. we will sup in his halls this evening, and if your heart wills it so, we may leave at any point after that.” jarl haraldson was resolute, trying to end the discussion there, but his wife knew him too well.

stopping him with a gentle grip on his arm, sigrún posited, “and what of þyri?”

the jarl murmured reluctantly, “she will not be at liberty to come with us.”

a chilling breeze swept through sigrún’s hair, as beads of sweat seemed to turn to icicles clinging to her back. her husband hurried off, his demeanor callous as he caught up with jarl bjarni, who appeared as jovial as a man his age could be. a horde of servant women suddenly crowded around sigrún, trying to escort her away delicately, though their touch on her arms felt more so menacing. she had to swat them off like flies around a fresh corpse, and trudging forward on her own, she hoped that she might be able to do something - anything - if she got to her daughter soon enough.

once sigrún finally approached the door to þyri’s chambers, the faint sound of her only child weeping formed a darkness too vast to think through in the lady’s chest.

björn was eager to set out that morning, running around the house collecting his wooden shield and wooden sword, he nearly stepped on a couple of the family’s pigs in his haste. crumbs of his breakfast were still stuck to his lips.

“björn,” his mother called out from a window, “wait just a moment. there is a matter i wish to discuss with you today.”

the boy’s shoulders visibly deflated as he exited the blaring sunlight and shuffled into the family kitchen, where lagertha was pacing in the comparatively dank room, surrounded by black cooking pots that had yet to be cleaned.

“what is it, mother?” he asked, his tone sounding concerned, but a bit more for himself than for his poor mother.

“one of the neighbor women invited me to an evening at her sister’s residence in kattegat,” lagertha kept taking absentminded steps back and forth, apparently unable to stop herself from fidgeting, “it’s going to be a supper gathering just for a few women, i take it, for their old friends to catch up after a long while.”

“it wasn’t haftýr’s mother, was it? her hair looks like bird nests.” the young björn bluntly protested.

“she is a good woman! and, you should be thankful that she continues to allow you to torment her son with those toys every day.” lagertha gestured sardonically at her son’s makeshift weaponry, the boy pouting in response.

“if father would only allow me to train with real steel, as he did gyda, then it would not seem to onlookers that haftýr and i were jabbing each other with playthings!”

“then, perhaps upon your next visit to kattegat, your mother shall buy you a real weapon.” lagertha finally settled down, her mind slowly easing into the idea as she spoke it.

“really? you would take me with you?” björn perked up.

“well, i was more so hoping you would take me with you. my son is now a man in his own right, and has made the trip before, having lived in the outskirts of kattegat for his whole life. whereas i hail from hedeby, and have only ever voyaged to kattegat when your father has been there to guide me.” lagertha adopted a playful tone, enjoying her son’s adorable attempts at adulthood.

“father did tell me once that a woman should always be accompanied by a man if venturing out past sunset,” lagertha watched as björn cocked his head to the side and scratched his scalp, probably only half-remembering his father’s words, “and he used to tell me to watch over you and gyda when he would go away. but i did not think he meant it seriously, did he?”

“i am sure he did,” lagertha allowed her thought to trail off, the realization that these likely were ragnar’s teachings slowly dawning on her, “so it is decided. if we depart for kattegat within the hour, we can arrive before sundown tomorrow.”

björn jumped in place, excitedly scurrying around outside once more, only this time to prepare the livestock for their absence. trips to kattegat increasingly meant big changes for his family - and björn was intent on having his manhood proven, being a permanent shift.

þyri’s once defined cheeks became puffy and damp; dripping with tears and mucus, red around the eyes and nose, both from crying and from screaming. a servant girl had tied her hair into a loose knot, but the pieces that fell framing her face were still subjected to being soaked in salt and snot.

handmaidens frantically altered her bridal dress, their hands buzzing over her entire body like bees trying to locate their queen.

“you can’t let father give me away like this, mother i beg of you!” the young maid wailed, though she had already learned not to squirm, as her sides now boasted almost as many prick marks as a pin cushion.

“believe me, sweet daughter, for i am not pleased with these circumstances either,” sigrún proclaimed, not meaning to yell but her volume perhaps grew with the tension in the room, “although i wish to end this demeaning betrothal and whisk you away from this wretched place, the dowry has already been secured, and i am told that your father has brokered a very favorable deal in exchange for your hand.”

a vein on the side of sigrún’s temple bulged out, the sight of so many sets of foreign hands grasping at her daughter became harder to stomach.

“be still, lady þyri, we urge you,” one of sigrún’s own ladies in waiting tried to reason with þyri, “there is only eye kohl left to be applied, and then you may don your bridal wreaths.”

“then please, allow me to do it!” sigrún suddenly erupted, more authoritative than any of her servants had ever heard before.

from one of the pockets of her cloak, she took out a small drawstring bag, inside of which was a pot of kohl and a fine horse hair brush. she held her daughter’s face in her hands, using her thumbs to wipe warm tears, as being eye level with þyri caused her own tears to bubble up.

“you will be a beautiful bride. just have patience from this moment, and i shall draw thick strokes of kohl around your exhausted eyes, so that your new husband and new subjects will not pester you.” sigrún cooed, giving þyri the opportunity to steady her breaths and compose herself.

“if melancholy should befall you again,” the lady continued, “at least save your sobs for the bridal chambers. you are not obligated to bed the jarl, nor are you expected to bear him sons, as his line of succession is beyond secure. your only duty is to placate him, and in doing so, you placate your father. he has had many troubles as of late.”

“i am not a bargaining chip for father to use as he pleases. i should have, at the very least, been given notice beforehand.” þyri seethed, her eyes almost welling up again out of anger.

“you are our only living child, and therefore, you are your father’s greatest asset. he was willing to sacrifice even you for an alliance with this ancient man, so does that not speak volumes as to his desperation?” sigrún reasoned.

finished with the black kohl, she stepped back and admired her handiwork from a distance, trying not to be bothered by her daughter’s dejected expression beneath it all. a handmaiden promptly swooped in and draped a wreath woven with summer blossoms over þyri’s shoulders, while a matching floral crown was set atop her head.

in one last attempt at reaching out for comfort, the young maid shakily grabbed at her mother’s hand, intent on walking into the mead hall side-by-side.

rows and rows of oaken dining tables were arranged, and the seats were subsequently filled with rowdy off-duty soldiers, that barked and cheered when the bride arrived. jarl bjarni was waiting at a raised platform in the middle of the room, its short sides decorated with flowers and lit candles that glowed warm yellow as the sun set outside. musicians playing drums of various sizes and opulent harps were stationed in a corner. servants poured mugs of fine ale and wine, with the particularly elegant ones assigned to the jarl’s new father-in-law.

by all measures, it seemed as though this was a ceremony that all of svealand was present for, and that none of its residents should soon forget.

þyri reluctantly let go of her mother, who then assumed a seat next to her husband. looking on with a particularly dull and apathetic gaze, jarl haraldson watched as his only surviving bloodline was wed to a makeshift alliance that would deteriorate in less than a decade. although, he sweetened the situation by keeping his cup full for the whole night.

the feast and accompanying festivities carried on as dancers danced to the bards’ nauseating rhythms, and the fragrance of roasted meat seemed to trap the great hall in its own greasy noxious cloud. at one point in the evening, some kind of sweet course was served. and although the puddings and pastries smelled appetizingly of cinnamon, the obtuse amounts of butter in every dish had þyri forcing down each bite and gulping at her drink.

a middle-aged man dressed in clean furs with a gilded dagger strapped to his waist, approached þyri, and she presumed him to be the jarl’s son. he slurred together something resembling a sentence, and the young bride could only bring herself to nod along politely.

“my fine jutish beauty,” the elderly jarl interjected, “pay my foolish son no mind, for he can hold his liquors no better than a linen sack can hold wellwater. come, let us slip away and enjoy the peace of our bridal bed.”

dreading this moment with all of her being, þyri thought back to her mother explaining how necessary it was to be in her new husband’s good graces. she smiled wearily, accepting the hand that he offered her and heading out unnoticed into the deep blue night.

the bridal chambers were only a short walk away, though upon opening its doors, the jarl huffed and puffed as if he had ran all the way there.

“tonight was very lively indeed,” he plopped down onto the side of the bed, “i do not have much tolerance for such commotion nowadays.”

as þyri cautiously approached the bed, she was hit with an intrusive stench when the jarl breathed with his mouth open. his breath seemed to reek of fermented fish, which þyri did not recall being served at supper. she turned away only for a short moment to process her shock, but as she looked back at the jarl, he had already rolled over and immediately fallen asleep. the bride’s instincts told her to feel insulted, though she was only glad her maidenhood would live to see another day.

lagertha pushed the hood of her cloak back from its position over her head, revealing her silky blonde hair, and braid that wrapped around her skull like a crown. she was in awe of the late afternoon sky, with its hues of orange and pink, as björn was apparently also quite impressed with the speediness of their journey.

“…with father’s route, we would’ve taken at least until sundown!” he was in the middle of exclaiming, childishly oblivious to the other villagers side-eyeing him for shouting.

“now, björn,” lagertha placed her hands firmly onto his shoulders, bending her back to maintain eye contact, “you have the choice of sleeping tonight in the home of your friend haftýr’s aunt - though the gathering will consist of only women, and you will have no friends to play with - or we may take up the vacant bed of your uncle rollo, whose longhouse is not too far from the center of town.”

“mother, i wish to stay by your side and protect you like a good man,” björn started, his chubby cheeks naturally forming a pout as he furrowed his eyebrows, eliciting a proud smile from his mother, “but i cannot bear to sit through an evening full of wenches trading child stories or discussing soup recipes.”

lagertha straightened herself out, the grin on her lips becoming a scowl, “you dare call your mother’s chums wenches. this must be what your father has taught you to think of women at child-rearing age, lest you forget that your own mother is still a famous shieldmaiden!”

“i could never forget such a thing, mother, seeing as you remind me every day!” björn retorted.

“as i will continue to do until my son truly understands what it means.” letting out an irritated sigh, lagertha reached into her pocket and pulled out two items.

“here,” she handed björn a silver shilling, “when i am through trading child stories and discussing soup recipes, i will fetch you. but in the meantime, take this to the blacksmith and buy whatever your heart desires.”

in lagertha’s other hand, she held the hilt of a small hunting dagger, the blade of which was covered by a worn leather sheath.

“if you are really a man, you will not allow yourself to become the mark of petty thieves.” she placed the dagger’s hilt side into björn’s hand, folding his fingers over the top. she was almost loathe to loosen her grip.

“from what i observed last time, kattegat is very safe,” björn tried to console his mother, although he was seemingly just as nervous for her to leave, “i can handle an evening on my own. worry not.”

lagertha sent her son off with the stroke of her thumb across his cheek, tender yet brief. watching his short stature disappear into a crowd of other townsfolk was a most humbling feeling, as even the fierce shieldmaiden quickly found herself powerless to the will of the gods. after so many years of marriage and motherhood, lagertha was now alone once more - and for the first time, she was lucky enough to find companionship outside of her family. she corrected her posture and marched with conviction towards the house that was described to her by the neighbor.

it was a modest single family cabin, similar in size to lagertha’s own dwelling, though it had little outside space and was packed in somewhat tightly with the surrounding structures. smoke emulated through the designated openings in each house’s roof, signifying that the families of kattegat were all cooking dinner or lounging by the hearth; a simple joy that lagertha would not have been able to take part in, had she gone raiding with her husband. which was objectively a good fate, she tried to convince herself.

approaching the door to the cabin in question, lagertha got close enough to overhear the recognizable voice of her neighbor.

“my haftýr is so desperate to become a viking like his father,” the neighbor, who went by hlín, seemed to be in the midst of telling a grandiose tale judging by her exaggerated tone, “he will eat anything to grow taller and stronger! the neighborhood children once goaded him into eating a concoction made of mud, twigs, and disgusting things that they found outside. haftýr finished the whole bowl, and claimed that the only ingredient to his distaste was coriander!”

child stories and soup recipes. the piercing noise of the other women in the room seemingly exploding with laughs, mocked lagertha’s ears. she stepped away from the door, which was open a crack, pressing her back against the exterior wall of the house. all she could do was stare into the cloudless sky, breathing shallow, anxious breaths. the only truth she had known in all her life was that she did not belong in the kitchen.

she did not belong with those women. she would not allow herself to.

lagertha tried peaking through the open door once more, doing well to keep herself out of the line of sight. as she turned to leave, deciding to mercifully dispatch this misadventure, the setting sun blinded her momentarily.

she bumped into the backside of a woman walking by. but this woman was unlike any other she’d encountered before. the top of her head towered over lagertha, though the woman’s back seemed to be hunched over with terrible posture. the woman’s hair was long and graying, woven into a braid that could not disguise the tangled nature of it. the woman was dressed in tattered rags, her brown skirt somehow too long for even her spindly legs, the bottom of it looking torn and stained with dried mud.

lagertha’s stomach admittedly dropped when the woman finally turned around, keenly aware that she’d just given her only weapon to her son. lagertha was not looking to fight this woman, though upon finally seeing her face, she was too flabbergasted to try diffusing the situation.

the first place that lagertha’s eyes were drawn to was the wispy beard that adorned the lower third of woman’s face. the spot where her left eye should’ve been, seemed to be lacking any eye socket at all, whereas the right eye was covered by an old bandage.

“care to pity a wretched being,” the woman spoke, her voice clearly a male voice, “you may unlock your future for merely the price of a hot meal.”

lagertha nodded - although in vain - as she processed the situation, “are you a seiðmaðr?”

“i am many things. as are you. a daughter, a wife, a mother, a shieldmaiden,” lagertha swallowed a lump, becoming unnerved by the cryptic speech of the seiðmaðr, “i am a fortune seer of sorts. i am mímir.”

as lagertha’s mind raced, arguing with itself over whether or not to trust this stranger, the seer’s tall frame turned and left without warning. lagertha stammered for a moment, unsure of how to regain his attention, although she ultimately decided to just follow him. surely any good fortune seer would notice somehow.

weaving through the narrow streets of kattegat, the seer led lagertha at a surprisingly fast pace back to his abode. it was something of a wooden shack, much smaller than the other houses in the area. but the inside exhibited no kitchen, hearth, or any other rooms at all. the door opened to reveal simply a box, in the center were two stones, big enough for sitting on. and to the side, there lay a row of sacks on the floor, placed into a line just long enough for the seer to sleep on. as small of a space as it was, it was made even denser by the decorum that hung from the ceiling. they seemed to be dangling fish skeletons, chiming hollowly as they knocked against one another.

lagertha had known zealous mystics before - her husband’s friend flóki being a prime example - but this fortune seer’s home felt like entering another world. a world where men were at the mercy of magic. it was intimidating for the mighty shieldmaiden to feel so small in comparison, but the seer simply sat on one of the stones and waited for lagertha to follow suit. he did not seem interested in anything other than reciting prophecy, though lagertha’s own mind had already decided that a future told in such a place couldn’t be anything but bleak.

“so,” lagertha sat with a grunt, her demeanor switched to being straightforward and authoritative, wanting to shift some of the power back to herself, “how does seið usually work?”

“ask not about the present time,” the seer croaked, “for my sight extends only into the mists of evermore.”

“then, what about evermore? where is my place in the future that you see?” she asked assertively, growing impatient.

“you concern yourself much with your place in life. but take comfort in knowing that there is no such place here for you. not on the battlefield, though you have not had your fill of blood. and not in the birthing bed, though the bridal bed beckons you still. no, you will not feast in valhöll, nor frolic in fólkvangr. you shall only feel the comforting cushion of soil beneath your back.”

lagertha leaned back from the fortune seer, coiling into herself as she blinked furiously, troubled by what she’d heard. the seer licked his thin, cracked lips that had a sort of permanently frost bitten look, as they were so dry they turned a grayish blue in the center.

“how am i meant to be comfortable with such venomous doctrine?” she growled quietly, fuming so hotly she could barely muster enough air to form the words.

“for an extra shilling you may receive a more thorough reading with the oracle lots.” the seer toyed with a small pouch in his calloused hand, its contents rattling with the sound of the carved sticks he spoke of.

“why should i concern myself with any more of this foolishness, after the putrid invention you’ve spouted thus far?” lagertha straightened out her skirt, almost ready to get up from her seat.

“i would tell you the tale of the little bear.”

lagertha stopped in her tracks, the seer once again successfully piquing her interest.

“you speak of my son,” she pursed her lips with subtle ire, “whose delivery went totally without incident, though the womb from which he came now suddenly and inexplicably lay barren. is that the kind of fantastical tale you would have me believe, you sodomite?”

“go on then,” the seer’s voice became an inhospitable grumble, “the boy shall have to draw his own lots if he wishes to hear their secrets. he is welcome to do so, once his mother gains appreciation for the true nature of seið.”

lagertha took this as her cue to leave, not wanting to entangle herself any further with such an unpleasant magician - and possibly scam artist. although, the seer sensed her hesitation as she let her hand linger upon the misshapen door of his hut.

“allfather óðinn lost his eye in order to acquire the knowledge of the nine worlds. he sacrificed it to my namesake and drank from the well of infinite wisdom. yes, shieldmaiden, we must all lose to gain.”

she breathed deeply one last time before pushing through to the outside world again, the fishbone garlands scoring her exit with a sort of percussive serenade. the evening sky, which was now completely dark, disoriented her as she made haste to find björn near town square.

the stars that speckled the indigo abyss illuminated the boy’s hay yellow hair. the top of his head poked out from under a thatched awning, where the local blacksmith displayed some of his more eye-catching crafts. whatever chilling atmosphere was present in the seer’s shack melted away, as lagertha felt a wave of warmth in her heart, seeing björn acting friendly with a few other men there. they were older, past prime raiding age, and it seemed that one of them had offered the boy a horn of ale. it was clear they’d been charmed by his earnestness, as most everyone who met him was. lagertha smiled with a contentment so sincere, yet almost melancholic - envious, even.

she headed over to join her son, finding out that the brawny blacksmith was recommending a short sword for björn to train with as a novice viking. but the boy kept gravitating towards the stack of shields that rested against the display table. they were nowhere near as glamorous as the other goods on display, but björn recalled distinctly how his father bought one similarly as gyda’s first piece of equipment. lagertha patted her son’s back encouragingly, proud to give her coin for this purpose.

“a great warrior knows that to guard himself is most important,” lagertha remarked, “you have truly proven yourself today, my son.”

the blacksmith fastened a strap to the shield so that björn could wear it over his shoulder, and with a playful tussle of the boy’s hair, he sent the two customers on their way. lagertha linked arms with björn, guiding the both of them toward where she remembered ragnar mentioned his brother’s longhouse was. björn also knew the way, and when they finally arrived, he found that he knew something else which his mother was never made aware of.

“can i help you?” a woman opened the door, perhaps not much older than lagertha, although her tired expression and shabby dress made her appear very crone-like.

lagertha was almost too puzzled to reply, so björn stepped in, “we’re kinsmen of rollo, the raider. he has allowed us to take refuge in his vacant quarters for the evening.”

“ah yes, rollo has kin out on the sandy skagens odde…” the woman muttered, seemingly to herself, as the door creaked all the way open. the kitchen area now exposed, lagertha raised an eyebrow at the sight of several small children eating at the table, with a gauntly thin man who was presumably their father.

“why does your uncle live with this family?” lagertha whispered as she and björn slinked over to the far side of the house.

“they are kinsmen of his friend arne. uncle, torstein, and arne share the other half of this longhouse together, so as to travel more quickly to the jarl’s assemblies. torstein told me that he used to serve as jarl haraldson’s personal guard.” the boy paused his excited anecdote as he happened upon what was obviously his uncle’s bed.

in the unlit corner of the house, there were three single beds, each in varying states of disarray and still smelling faintly of sweat. there was no divider between the bachelors’ quarters and the family’s, though the difference in cleanliness felt to lagertha like separation enough.

she got started lighting a candle, “i suppose once your uncle starts a family of his own, he will have to find a new residence. perhaps even a single family dwelling, akin to ours.”

“in size alone, perhaps,” björn exhaled as he flopped down onto one of the beds, “but uncle will never be a boring, meek farmer like us. it is a lifestyle suitable for no one. you of all people should understand, mother.”

“it is a lifestyle suitable for parents with children, that is why we endure it, sweet björn. your father had already proven himself an excellent raider - he could have pulled himself from poverty with sheer talent - but when i became pregnant with your sister, he devoted himself to caring for her. being a raider or a hired warrior is demanding; the jarl of kattegat is paranoid and tough on his men, and living in the village is cramped. your father knew that being present was the best thing for his children, above being wealthy or famous. and he thusly joins only the first annual raids.”

“so you also gave up your dream of being famous raider?”

“for me, that was not a dream. it was simply my reality. before my first raids, most danesmen had never even seen a shieldmaiden with their own eyes. but i dreamt not for fame or fortune. i only wished to live happily - which i’ve now done for many years.”

lagertha felt a smile forming as her son, the object of her happiness, fluttered his eyes open and shut - much like a baby falling asleep to a story. she puttered about, trying to the best of her abilities to tidy up the belongings of her brother-in-law, before ultimately giving in to her tiredness. she chose the bed that was the more pleasant smelling of the two options, although its pillow sported long strands of hair in multiple colors. lagertha resolved to be content in not wondering how many other women had spent the night in this bed, and simply made herself comfortable in it. almost about to blow out the candle, she felt the call of nature, and opted to relieve herself one last time before turning in.

lagertha tiptoed across the house, noticing that the other children - all four of them - were huddled together in the same bed, being sung to sleep by their mother. the surly woman’s voice was no more pleasant than her appearance, but lagertha was just relieved to know that the children wouldn’t be running around or making noise whilst she slept. a basin of stillwater was placed in between the family’s beds and their hearth, filled with cookware. the father of the family squatted behind it, damp rag in hand, though it didn’t seem that his arms were moving at all. his empty gaze was palpable on lagertha as she opened the front door cautiously, and stumbled through the darkness to find a suitable hedge.

lagertha found herself blinking uncontrollably, gripping to the side of the house as her eyes adjusted to the blackness. as she finally reached the back of the house, she crouched down over a secluded patch of grass, once she was sure she was alone.

“how decent can a woman be,” a growling voice from behind lagertha’s back sent icy shivers up her spine, “if she so easily leaves her husband’s side, and exposes herself to another man?”

lagertha was reluctant to turn around, knowing whose unsightly face to expect when she did. and, as she arose anxiously, she remembered that her hunting dagger was still residing amongst björn’s belongings.

“there was no need to follow me if you did not wish to see me exposed,” lagertha’s voice shook as she tried to maintain composure, “indeed, only the indecent man seeks to mask his true dispositions.”

she finally allowed herself to face the wretched man - arne’s brother - and his top lip twitched with boiling rage.

“you are no shieldmaiden. you conduct yourself like a common whore.” the man’s withered and blackened teeth showed themselves as his expression morphed into a sinister smile.

from lagertha’s position behind the house, she would have to run past the man and nimbly around some bushes, if she wanted to get to the main street. she lunged left and then right, buying herself a head start over the man. then, she darted towards the light that was emanating from another nearby house, praying that the people inside would hear the commotion.

once on the clearing of the dirt road, lagertha’s heart dropped, when she realized that not a single soul was in sight. no one was milling about on the wide streets, as townsfolk often did in the daylight. kattegat after nightfall was like a void, and lagertha now fell prey to the pull of its cavernous maw. but, as she turned to face her attacker once more, now outrunning him by a safe distance, she remembered just how valiantly she had been fighting to rid herself of this weakness.

lagertha got into a hand-to-hand combat stance; she was not merely a wife, nor a mother, nor daughter, nor whore, nor victim, and not simply a decent woman. she was a shieldmaiden in the truest sense and her ferocity became her armor.

her left foot planted firmly on the ground, lagertha extended her right leg and kicked the man squarely in his stomach. he grunted as if the life had been torn from his body. although he’d been pushed back a good few paces, he answered by allowing his gangly arms to flail around haphazardly, attempting to strike lagertha at her left side. expertly, she raised her battle-hardened forearm to block his fist, though he used his other leg to sweep along the dusty path and trip her. she fell upon her rear end.

lagertha’s dastardly gown and cloak prevented her from getting back up as swiftly as she’d liked. she could only look up at the man’s dreadful face, feeling lowly like a worm as she dragged herself backwards.

“now you submit like a good whore,” the man mumbled through heavy breaths, “only now that you are powerless to my will. you ought to have learned by now that a man’s affections are only as sweet as his intended.”

lagertha slowed her desperate crawling to a halt, her forehead steaming with sweat in the dead cold of night. she took one last breath as the man just about hovered above her. she dug her hands into the gravel behind her.

then, with stunning athleticism and flexibility, lagertha’s back arched. she flung her body into a horseshoe shape and lifted her dominant leg, kicking the gaunt man in his groin. the momentum of her blow knocked him backwards as he attempted to catch himself by his elbows. he soon curled up in pain, and lagertha took this as an opportunity to finish the deed with a message.

“how dare you!” she screamed, her voice scarce as the air in her lungs was going toward kicking the man while he hugged his knees to his chest.

“you will not take! what belongs to me!” she exclaimed breathlessly and hysterically in between kicks.

eventually, the man propped himself up with the least sore of his two arms, and hobbled off into the darkness. lagertha lost sight of him, for she didn’t care to see more of him anyways. finding a nearby tree to compose herself against, lagertha pressed her back against the bark and allowed her head to fall backwards. her breathing couldn’t slow, despite her best efforts, as tears erupted from her squeezed shut eyes - the water scalding and salty, like runoff from a sulphuric geyser.

quiet, helpless sobs continued to pour out of lagertha, to the point that she didn’t notice the steady footsteps along the dirt road. they veered off into the wild grass and got louder, yet slower. lagertha attempted to soothe herself by folding her arms and letting her fingers massage her own elbows. her sorrow momentarily on pause, the figure that arrived in front of lagertha gave her a great shock.

“it does not take a soothsayer to recognize the distress you are in,” uttered the familiarly hoarse voice of mímir, the seer, “collect the little bear. i shall await you both, shieldmaiden.”

still battling some leftover sniffles, lagertha watched, confounded, as the seer vanished into the night. his tall, bony silhouette resembled a needle falling into a murky pool. between ghastly lechers and buxom soon-to-be crones, lagertha only felt more isolated than ever, having reaffirmed her suspicions that kattegat truly held no place for her.

not all men were good men like ragnar, and even he, lagertha was beginning to reckon, would not understand her plight. although, the seer was not quite a man, was he?

presupposing the seer expected lagertha to wordlessly follow him to his hut as before, she dashed into the longhouse to awake björn. the boy, still more asleep than not, got to hitch a ride on his mother’s back and made it practically to the other side of town without questioning the disheveled state of her once regal hairstyle.

lagertha laid björn down on the coarse sacks that seemed to be seer’s bed. he grumbled a faint complaint under his breath before drifting back off as if his slumber had never been disturbed.

the boy’s mother looked on. lagertha’s brows had furrowed into a perpetual worry, made even more obvious by the fact that she’d normally break into an uncontrollable grin at the sight of her son so peaceful. the seer simply stood at her side, the stone stool before his feet. without contorting his face nor motioning with his hands, lagertha understood that he wanted her to sit.

“i thought i had yet seen all the evils of men,” lagertha started, “for what viking raid is conducted without the plundering of some local women’s bodies?”

mímir sat too, expressionless.

“being on the other end… i loathe to admit that it has frightened me away. but alas, where would i seek refuge? at the hearth? like a wench kneading rye into bread, while my husband is free to fight and fuck to his heart’s content? before i had a husband, i too was free!” lagertha’s lips quivered as she found herself leaning into the seer, her volumed capped at a frantic whisper, though she made sure her point was being received.

“my input contains no prophecy, shieldmaiden, so you may find it suitable to be expressed.”

the guttural drone of the seer’s voice forced lagertha to forget her frustrations - if only for a moment, to focus on the trepidation she still felt from his unsettling presence.

“all men are slaves to their own shortcomings,” he continued, “cowards cannot have their choice of women through legitimate means; they can only seek the freedom of pleasure through force. but the coward is bound to treachery, and is doomed to be defeated. a raider married to the freedom of the sea can be brought to his knees by the bindings of that temptress - the drink. but he still forges the chains.”

lagertha blinked and sighed with all the air in her chest, “i know that ragnar has his own troubles. he seems to let his worries stew within him all day, and never wants to burden me with his woes.”

“his woes and yours weigh the same, shieldmaiden.”

“o cryptic one, i must concede! please, tell me what you make of our future! i fear that both of our woes combined would weigh too heavily on our marriage.”

lagertha had to stop herself from leaping into the seer’s arms and shaking the answers out of him. he never once moved.

“in your future, i see a little bear, as i stated before. truthfully, there are many bears. and serpents. and a hound.”

“i used to live further inland, on a mountaintop. there, i had a great hound and a fierce bear guarding my abode. my husband, ragnar, slew them both to win my hand in marriage. then, he went on to slay a legendary serpent, and now there lives not a soul that hasn’t heard of the shaggy breeches he wore on that day.”

“that was the past, my fair shieldmaiden. in your future, i see that your husband will not be able to protect you from these beasts. the bears, i see, are a family. one with fur white as snow, another crossing the ocean blue, and the last married to a princess; her crown gold as barley corn. the serpents, i see, are twins; one may not be born without the other. the dog, i see, will demand your demise.”

lagertha shifted back in her seat, the seer’s words haunting the air around them. all she could do was let this sinking feeling wash over her. with a shaky exhale, lagertha turned her attention to the drawstring pouch that was secured to her leather waist belt, and took a shilling out of it. mímir was clearly privy to the sounds that these objects were making, though he did not accept the offering when lagertha extended her hand to him.

instead, the seer rose from his seat, snuffed out the one candle that just barely lit up the room, and stood outside the wooden shack - keeping watch over the shieldmaiden and her son - where it seemed that he remained all night.

the weather at the harbor of kattegat was grim, the sun shone through not a single cloud as whispers of rain began to drip from the heavens. flóki had intended for his snekke ship to be brought back to the river near his house, though ragnar anticipated that the jarl would be waiting for them.

indeed, jarl haraldson had a unit of ten armed men stationed by the ports, offering an unsurprisingly cold reception to the returning raiders.

as the boat steadily approached the docks, gyda shrunk into her father’s side, perhaps more afraid than she ever was of any saxon. no one - neither ragnar’s crew nor the jarl’s - spoke a word. the sound of æthelstan’s teeth chattering thus became even more obvious. occupying the seat on the other side of ragnar, he scratched his head anxiously, short hairs already growing into the bald spot he usually shaved.

ragnar’s eye twitched as he sized up the jarl’s men; each of them tall and broad, their hands menacingly gripping at the hilts of their swords.

ragnar simply leaned back and tried not to let it bother him, at least to set an example for the rest of the raiding party. for a few fleeting moments, he allowed himself to be still, until his ear twitched at the shivering monk next to him.

he grabbed the small holy book that æthelstan stowed away under his robes, and with one swift motion, ragnar tossed it overboard.

rollo, torstein, and arne busied themselves tying the ship to the port, meanwhile æthelstan pitifully scrambled to reach for his sinking bible. the two other saxon monks onboard urged him in their native tongue to calm down.

“silence!” ragnar boomed. his daughter had never seen him become so enraged so quickly.

helga and flóki looked on with unease and unbridled glee, respectively.

“you simpleminded saxons forget that óðinn was the father of your people! you will show him the respect he deserves, here in his domain, or i will personally send you into the depths along with the words of your wicked christ!” ragnar had thoroughly exhausted his vocal range yelling, to the point that a vein flashed across the side of his neck like a lightning bolt.

one of the monks, a timid old man, managed to lock eyes with ragnar. for a second, the man’s trembling pupils gleamed with intent, as if he too was going to stand up and start preaching. ragnar’s upper lip instinctively curled with disgust as a second wave of rage rushed throughout his body. the viking roared like an aggravated beast and punched, with his bare fist, one of the decorative trims off the stern of the ship.

flóki’s smile promptly disappeared.

“torstein,” one of the burly soldiers standing at the dock called out, “your presence was missed at the raid in pomerania. how is it you’ve neglected to inform us of this merry ball we could have attended instead?”

the jarl’s men all shared a laugh.

the atmosphere on the ship was tense, torstein retorted through a clenched jaw, “refer not to me. ragnar loðbrók is the fearless leader of this band.”

“so you admit then,” the same soldier responded, “ragnar loðbrók is either a renegade or a fool.”

once the boat was close enough to the dock, members of the raiding party started to climb out of it. several of them held sacks full of riches and flóki held the rope that tied the three captive monks in a line. ragnar, from his position at the last bench onboard, was the last to reach the pier.

the jarl’s soldier - who must have known torstein from his time in the jarl’s employ - tried to intimidate ragnar. the viking’s admittedly average sized frame never once flinched, though.

“why don’t we let jarl haraldson decide this matter?” the man’s red, sun-damaged face and even redder beard taunted ragnar, as the jarl’s soldiers all snickered again. the burly soldier confronting ragnar then grabbed both of the viking’s arms, as other men did the same to rollo, flóki, torstein, and arne.

gyda’s eyes darted around frantically, unsure of what to do or how to help, at one point her gaze even settled on æthelstan for some kind of cue. a hand soon landed on the girl’s shoulder, but it was only helga. the group of them were being so cordially escorted to the jarl’s assembly hall.

jarl haraldson was ushered out of his chambers and into the great hall, after picking at his midday meal and finishing the entire accompanying mug of ale. his wife, who would usually join him in judicial affairs, was for the past several days too heartbroken to even leave her bed.

the relatively lackluster building was already full to the brim with townsfolk murmuring amongst themselves, all too eager to be entertained by the latest drama. and right on schedule, the main players were brought in by jarl haraldson’s guard.

“well, well, well, if it isn’t the heroic ragnar loðbrók,” the jarl relished in a rare opportunity to be smug, although his face quickly fell as his men began emptying the raiders’ loot onto the floor, “how did you find the english isle?”

ragnar maintained his composure, “the weather was not very pleasant, honorable jarl.”

“i take it the saxons mounted an awesome defense,” the jarl casually sat upon his ornate cherry wood throne, “judging by the measly haul of slaves you seem to have brought back.”

some of the spectating villagers laughed.

“on the contrary, jarl haraldson, the saxons we encountered were feeble and the plunder was plentiful. my own daughter, a mere novice with the blade, was able to capture one of these slaves here.” ragnar explained.

the jarl shifted his focus from the booty for a split second, only to find himself aghast by the sight of the girl at ragnar’s side.

“your daughter…” he trailed off, his mouth hanging slightly open, “i pray she would be but a novice with the blade, for this girl is but a child!”

the crowd seemed to exhibit mixed reactions, as did the raiders themselves. rollo wrapped an arm around his niece’s waist, wanting to shelter her from the jarl’s wrath, since the girl’s father was preoccupied with trying to win in the court of public opinion.

ragnar took a calming breath and began to explain again, “her stature may be small, jarl haraldson, but my daughter is older than her brother, whose coming of age ceremony you recently presided over.”

“loðbrók, children are a treasure worth more than any piece of gold in all the nine worlds. thus, i beseech you to tread carefully… the next time you plan to bring your sweet daughter on a raid.” as soon as the last word left jarl haraldson’s lips, rollo and gyda exchanged excited glances.

helga gasped audibly as several of the other raiders rejoiced between themselves. ragnar, however, did not break his emotionless exterior. he was in no way interested in letting the jarl get what he wanted.

“yes, ragnar and crew,” the jarl went on, “i will mercifully waive all punishment for your disobedience in this endeavor. you will be permitted to return to england and raid with full legal recognition in my jurisdiction. but, as a tax for bringing pillaged goods into my domain, i shall decree that each raider will be allowed one item of plunder. the rest will go towards financing future raids.”

the jarl’s declaration elicited loud chatter from the townsfolk. it seemed that most of them were distracted by the last part about future raids, praise coming from the spectators and whining from the raiders.

torstein’s old friend, the red soldier, pushed him forward with a bracing slap to the back, “get on with it then! everyone choose their one item.”

ragnar’s raiding party took turns going to and fro the pile, all the while their leader never broke eye contact with the jarl.

“you know, loðbrók,” the jarl addressed ragnar directly, his volume just low enough that onlookers wouldn’t interrupt, “if so much as a hair on your girl’s head is harmed during the next raid, i’ll see to it your testicles are floating in a jar of saltwater brine. even in norway, they tell stories of vikings sailing too far south and encountering vicious saxon warriors that still fight like the saxons of the old country. so take great caution.”

ragnar desired so desperately to quip back with something witty, but the jarl’s warning was startlingly ominous. the wanderer who gave ragnar his trusted compass had specifically suggested to sail south along the english coast. surely the words of such a greedy man deserved to be heeded far less than those of an experienced traveler.

“brother,” the red soldier barked, and suddenly it dawned on ragnar that he was addressing the jarl, “only ragnar loðbrók is left to pick his plunder.”

ragnar looked to his side and noticed gyda holding a silver wine pitcher, rollo was admiring a golden necklace inlaid with red jewels, and flóki and helga had chosen a set of matching chalices.

ragnar approached the pile cautiously. deep in his heart, he knew he hadn’t the slightest idea what to even look for. then, he looked above the pile, and saw the three monks off in the corner of the room; their wrists bound together by the rope which was now being held by a member of the jarl’s guard. æthelstan stood by his lonesome on the far end, his jaw still visibly chattering as though he’d been frozen.

“i shall take the boy priest,” ragnar announced, pointing to æthelstan, “what better than a living memory of my daughter’s first success in raiding.”

jarl haraldson hardly reacted. instead, with one limp gesture of his wrist, he ordered, “very well. knut, fetch the esteemed ragnar his new saxon slave.”

the red soldier glowered at ragnar as he obeyed his brother’s command. æthelstan was cut from the other two monks, whom he appeared to fret greatly about leaving behind, and was led to ragnar by knut - much like a dog on a leash.

“yes, i am overjoyed that this issue has been solved in a timely manner,” the jarl started, apparently trying to get everyone out of his hall as soon as possible, “but, in regards to financing future raids, there is one last endeavor i wish to inquire about.”

the jarl’s guard swooped in and picked up ragnar and crew’s hard-earned riches, filling their own linen sacks with the loot and leading the thralls outside.

“i wish to purchase the vessel on which you have so bravely sailed westward. i understand it to be the handiwork of boatbuilder flóki. and with another ship in my collection, we will be able to bring home even more plunder from the next raid.” announced jarl haraldson.

the crowd cheered.

helga nervously squeezed the hand of her betrothed, but flóki remained unphased, answering, “it is with great remorse, honorable jarl, that i must respectfully decline. for you see, the ship is now in a state of disrepair, and i could not responsibly sell it to you without first attending to the damages.”

the jarl shot a quick glance towards knut.

“it is true, brother.” knut confirmed, the wind seemingly ripped from his sails.

“very well,” the jarl leaned back in his seat, perhaps so that he may view ragnar from an even higher position, “then, boatbuilder, i shall expect you to complete the repairs and return to sea with ragnar loðbrók’s band within the fortnight.”

as the townsfolk and raiders alike began to pour out of the great hall, knut stopped torstein with an unexpectedly gentle pat on the shoulder.

“let us keep in better touch,” the red soldier suddenly had a friendly glint to his eye, “i would hate for our only meetings to be filled with such tension, dear torstein.”

torstein pursed his lips into a half-smile, and simply nodded politely before hurrying away.

gyda beamed with elation at her father, making sure to also giggle at æthelstan’s prolonged state of panic, as the trio set off for home on their little peninsula.

björn was waiting outside the house just before supper. the sun had not yet fully set, due to the long daylight hours of nordic summer, though the crickets and fireflies had already started their song and dance.

the footpath from kattegat sprang over the horizon, and from the treeline emerged ragnar and gyda, with æthelstan in tow. björn sprinted over to meet his father halfway, after a few minutes finally colliding into him in a spirited embrace. as soon as the boy pulled away, his sister grabbed him by the neck and took her own turn hugging him, roughly yet affectionately scratching the top of his head.

lagertha emerged from the house, her shining smile dropping faster than the evening sun upon seeing the strange man her husband had brought home.

“come inside, my dear ragnar,” she mustered as the rest of her family creeped closer, “rest, my sweet gyda. there are rye loaves baked fresh for you. i am stewing kid with turnips, too.”

ragnar could sense his wife’s discomfort; he knew he had much to explain. but, he was also eager to tell her that the status quo of their lives was forever altered.

#vrp tag #vikings #vikings fanfic #vikings headcanons #vikings imagine #vikings history channel #history channel vikings

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spookysnz · 2 years

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Spy × ... fic with Yor

Yor had spent ages staring at the display of flowers to purchase. The store had a large selection, which made it all the more difficult to choose.

Yor remembered the roses her brother had brought, but Loid didn’t seem especially enamored by them after Yuri left. She smelled each bouquet one at a time, trying to choose one with the best smell, since it would be sitting in their apartment for a while. A careless shopper had bumped into Yor as she sniffed a bouquet of daisies, causing her to disturb the shelves of flowers and send a cloud of pollen into the air. It made her eyes water and her nose began to drip.

As she regained her balance, Yor’s gaze turned towards a bouquet of lilies. Upon looking more closely, she realized how beautiful the lilies were. This is an arrangement that could show her love. Yor picked them up and made her way to the checkout, careful not to damage any of the stems.

As she waited in line, she could feel her nostrils itch. She rustled through her purse with one hand, still careful to hold the bouquet upright.

Yor Briar sneezed forcefully into a handkerchief. If she kept this up, she’d never be able to finish her errands in time. She sneezed again, trying her best to muffle a quick “heh’kshhEWW!” into the small cloth. Her cheeks turned red as she felt the gaze of other shoppers on her. She didn’t turn to look at them from her spot in line, but she could tell.

She exchanged greetings with the cashier and waited for them to ring her up. Camilla had emphasized the importance of flowers in a relationship and how thoughtful and kind Dominic was for bringing her flowers after work. Yor realized she’s never bought a gift like that for Loid before. She wanted him to know how much she appreciated what he did for her and Anya.

The cashier complimented the flowers Yor had chosen. She beamed. “Thank you! I hope my husband likes them too.”

The walk home was refreshing, the cool breeze comforting her stuffy sinuses. She held the flowers close to her body and stayed on alert for anyone walking too closely to her. The lilies smelled amazing, though it was getting harder to tell as she became more and more congested. Yor sniffled carefully with every move she made. She didn’t want to trigger a sneezing fit, so she adjusted her breathing to be both inconspicuous and wary of shifting anything in her nose that might irritate it further. She dabbed at her nose with the handkerchief, which was reaching its limit in how helpful it could be with each minute that passed.

It wasn’t long before Yor reached her apartment building. She climbed the stairs swiftly and silently. Loid had previously commented that he never knew she was coming home until she reached their front door, whereas Anya was occasionally loud enough to be heard the moment she entered the building. She tucked the handkerchief into a pocket and reached for her keys. As she unlocked the door, another sneeze snuck up on her, forcing a small, itchy “hehNGt! h’SHh!” in quick succession.

“Welcome home, Yor!” Loid called cheerily from the kitchen. He kept his gaze on the stove, managing multiple dishes cooking simultaneously.

“Hi mama!” Anya kept her eyes glued to the television, completely enthralled by the latest episode of Spy Wars.

Yor could smell the curry he was cooking. From what she could tell, dinner was nearly ready. “Hello!”

Loid immediately noticed a huskiness in her voice, as if something was caught in the back of her throat. He quickly adjusted the dishes on the stove, so he could leave them unattended while he devoted more attention towards his wife.

She stood in the entryway and approached the kitchen, holding the bouquet out towards Loid. “I brought you some flowers!” Yor felt her cheeks turn red as she timidly offered her gift.

Anya’s ears perked up. Mama was nervous: What if he doesn’t like the flowers? Is this a bad time? He seems busy.

It didn’t take a telepath to sense her anxiety. Loid walked over and took the bouquet from her, admiring their beauty. “Oh, Yor, thank you so much! These lilies are beautiful. I have the perfect vase for them in the cabinet.”

Anya chimed in after quickly glancing away from the television to peek at the bouquet. “Pretty flowers! Mama is so nice!!”

Yor’s eyes began to well. Loid maintained an easy-going facade, taking a step forward to comfort her, but internally started to panic. Did he say something to upset her?

“Eh-excuse me,” Yor just managed to utter before turning her head to the side. “HEH’kshh! EhKSHUU!” She scrubbed at her nose with the back of her fist and sniffled aggressively, then rubbed at her eyes with both of her hands.

She must have been allergic to the flowers. This explains the tears in her eyes and her flushed face. Loid offered her a box of tissues from the side table by the front door, which she gratefully accepted.

“I’m sorry!” Yor stammered. “I don’t know why, I can’t stop sneezing.”

Loid furrowed his eyebrows. Did she not know she was allergic to the flowers she had purchased? “These lilies smell amazing!” He offered the bouquet towards her, inviting her to sniff them.

Yor leaned in, then frowned. “Sorry,” she offered another apology. “My nose is so stuffy, I can’t really smell them anymore! They smelled really nice at the store, though.”

This meant her symptoms were not in effect while she was shopping for the flowers. It seemed like the lilies didn’t cause any further damage. Not that she seemed especially in danger from her allergies, only uncomfortable. Loid would never intentionally harm his wife. “No worries! Let me put these flowers in a vase. Can you stir the curry for me?” He knew she liked to help, and he didn’t mind the extra hands.

Yor nodded, quickly shedding her coat and purse to hang them on the rack by the door. Loid watched as pollen fell from her clothing onto the floor. He smelled other species of flowers on her clothes, from daisies to chrysanthemums to sunflowers.

“Actually Yor, I know why you’ve been sneezing!” Loid announced, quite proud of himself.

“You do?” Yor looked at him bewildered. Loid was so smart. He must be an amazing psychiatrist.

“I think you’re allergic to some of the other flowers you saw at the store. I can smell them. Why don’t you take a shower? I promise it will make you feel better. I can take care of everything here.”

“I can stir the curry while you put the flowers away! Then I’ll shower.” Yor conceded.

Loid knew better than to argue with her. “Alright, just don’t sneeze in the food.”

#spy fam #snzfic #sneezefic #allergies

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justaghostingon · 1 year

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I posted 279 times in 2022

That's 55 more posts than 2021!

169 posts created (61%)

110 posts reblogged (39%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@kitkat-the-muffin

@crookedblade

@jay9marie

@mosaicofdreamsanddragons

@snazzyscarf

I tagged 274 of my posts in 2022

Only 2% of my posts had no tags

#room of swords - 204 posts

#room of swords reactions - 176 posts

#gyrus - 33 posts

#kodya - 28 posts

#iro - 21 posts

#don - 21 posts

#reblog - 14 posts

#tori - 12 posts

#yumeji - 12 posts

#strawbarrow - 11 posts

Longest Tag: 135 characters

#of course a watsonian explination is that she hasn’t progressed enough at level 1 to begin to hone her craft and specialize her ability

My Top Posts in 2022:

So i get why y’all mad about the short hair in the Rings of power, but consider:

The short hair was a fashion choice unique to the second age. Where everyone jumped on the trend and then immediately (for elves so a couple centuries) jumped off again. It’s the embarrassing haircut every elf tries to forget they ever had, so much so that they tear down all statues and paintings where they have it.

The kind of thing that galadriel will absolutely hold over elrond’s head every time they come to visit, and show all his kids.

“Oh Arwen, he doesn’t want u to marry ur hot human boyfriend? Well sometimes he doesn’t make good decisions. Just Look at this painting i keep on me of him with short hair. Could you imagine a worse decision? I can’t”

Arwen (horrified): father?!!!

Elrond: it was a phase! Stop showing people that!

Galadriel: No ☺️

420 notes - Posted September 3, 2022

The Inversion of the Ideal Type:

A mini meta on Komi-san Can’t Communicate

So i’ve been watching Komi-san lately, and I really love the main couple, but it took me a while to finally pinpoint why.

When the show begins, we start from Tadano’s perspective: he’s an average guy with a beautiful but silent classmate who’s secret he discovers. And at this point, I thought i knew what i was getting. The everyday man finding out some secret about a girl way out of their league causing the girl to need to keep them around is a very common wish fulfillment plot. Komi is clearly Tadano’s ideal girl, and the fact she has a weakness he can exploit is just the icing on the cake. I’ve seen it all before, and it always left a bad taste in my mouth.

But here’s the kicker: Tadano doesn’t exploit Komi’s secret. He doesn’t make her dependent on him, or act jealous of her new friends. He’s constantly looking out for her comfort and trying to help her reach out and make new friends. And in this, he becomes a wish fulfillment character himself. After all, a guy who genuinelu cares and tries to help you with your crippling anxiety? Someone who always understands when u try to communicate? People with social anxieties want that. Any girl who’s ever felt misunderstood wants that. Komi-san wants that. Tadano, with his gentle encouragement and seemingly endless patience, is as much Komi’s ideal man as she is his ideal woman.

And that’s what makes the show work. They both value each other, they both want each other, and every episode they find new little details about each other to make them fall even more in love. Its sweet and uncomplicated, and maybe its a bit idealistic, but its like having a yummy desert after a long day, it soothes you.

571 notes - Posted June 29, 2022

The Great Demon Fiance ManHunt of Cang Qiong Sect

A scum villian’s self saving system au

It all started when Liu Qingge fell into another succubus pit.

Now the succubus in this pit had been gossiping just before he arrived. Well, more like debating in demon fashion, which is to say they had been in an all out brawl.

Liu Qingge thinks this might be an easy fight since they’re all so distracted, until on smarter succubus stops the others

“Wait!” She says. “He’s from Cang Qiong. Maybe he knows something!”

Liu qingge isn’t particularly interested in hearing them out, but they overwhelm him, united as one and fueled with the vigor of one who is starving for gossip

They ask him: “which cang Qiong peak lord is getting married to the next mobei-jun?”

This completely throws liu qingge for a loop nad he venemently denies it

But the succubus insist, spinning a tale of star crossed lovers which as reached their ears: of a young mobei-jun who was rescued by a pittiful human from cang qiong sect, who promised to always be there for mobei-jun, even as he rose higher and higher in thr sect, never betraying him, until even the great mobei-jun could not help but fall in love

Liu qingge dismisses this, but the succubus insist its true, because the same Mobei-jun visited their madam (i forget her name) for a fortune told, and there was a human at his side, dressed in the robes of a cang qiong peak lord!

Their madam is famous for her love fortunes! Why visit her with someone if u weren’t planning to marry them?

(Mobei-jun was not there for a love fortune. He and Shang Qinghua were looking for some plot device to help thwart on of his uncle’s schemes, and needed directions)

So which one was it? Was it him?

Liu qingge is outraged by this suggestion, so much so that it gives him enough of a power boost to escape

At first he ignores it. But it keeps circling in his brain, like a nagging fly he can’t get out of his mind

Then the unthinkable happens: Shen Qingqiu starts being nice! He saves him! He wants to bury the hatchet! He starts being nice to his disciples!

It’s almost like he recieved some very, very good news.

Like a secret proposal.

But no! Shen Qingqiu liked woman! He was always sneaking down to the red pavilon! Right? Right?

Unless he was just using that as a cover to sneak out to see his demon lover????

Filled with worry, he tries to subtly interrogate Shen Qingqiu by asking him what he thinks of demons. Rather predictably, this fails horribly. With an oblivious shen yuan thinking this was a perfect opportunity to get liu qingge to soften to his future brother-in-law’s heritage and gives his whole “there are bad and good ones” speech

Liu qingge leaves heartbroken, certain his shixiong is in love with a demon

He goes to yue qingyuan and tells him that they might be losing a martial brother to an engagement, but refuses to say who

Leaving yue qinghuan witn thr impession its liu qingge who’s getting engaged

At around this time, the rumor of a cang qiong peak lord marrying a demon reaches the peak, because those succubus are still fighting over which one it is, and have taken to asking every cang qiong disciple they can find

Yue qingyaun panics, because his shidi has all but told him he’s getting engaged, liu qingge panics because shen qingqiu could get in serious trouble if this is found out, and shang qinghua panics because what if this inane rumor causes people to examine his own connections to demons?

Shen qingqiu is not panicking. Shen Qingqiu is having a lovely time playing house eith binghe and ignoring everything else

Meanwhile the other peak lords all start accusing each other, the disciples start using this to start fights with other peak disciples, and its all getting very out of hand

Yue qingyuan is forced to call a meeting, and tries to politely get liu qingge to confess

See the full post

689 notes - Posted July 16, 2022

How to Woo the Girl You Dumped Without her Demon-possessed Brother Getting in your Way: A Guide by Jin Zinxuan

A crack au

It all begins when Jin Zinxuan notices that Jiang Yanli is actually really pretty.

This is unfortunately right in the middle of him yelling at her for trying to claim credit for the soup someone’s been making for him

Wei Wuxian shows up, demonic tendicals (we’re going anime version here) dripping from all around him as he defends his sister, it comes out that she has been making the soup, and now he’s smitten with a huge problem: the girl he likes both now prob hates him because he humiliated her, and also her brother is definitely a demon

Now a sensible person would first try to patch over the relationship with jiang yanli by apologizing, but jin Zixuan is a Jin! He’s never done a sensible thing in his life!

And also talking about feelings is really scary and as his friend Miammiam likes to point out, he is really bad at it

So naturally, he decides that the most important step to wooing Jiang yanli is to save her brother from demonic possession. That way she’ll be super impressed with him and he’ll be less terrifying and so greatful he’ll well come him into the family!

What could go wrong?!!

Jin Guangyao insists that it is not demonic possession, it is demonic cultivation. But jin zixuan has heard jin zixun rant about “that wei demon” enough times to know better

Figure of speech? What’s that?

So jin zixuan decides to exorcise wei wuxian, and to do that, he’ll need help from the smartest person he knows: jin Guangyao

Jin guangyao is less than thrilled at being sent on a rediculous job like this, to exorcise the clearly not possessed wei wuxian, until he realizes jin zixuan will do anything he suggests without question

ANYTHING

So Jin guangyao decides to have fun with this, setting jin zixuan on increasingly ridiculous tasks to “cure” wei wuxian of demonic possesstion

Like covering him in salt. Or throwing itchy flowers at him. Or running after him chanting this truely awful tune while hoping on one foot.

The result of course, is a very angry wei wuxian who chases zixuan away, and an increasingly desperate jin zixuan who thinks wei wuxian’s frustrations are proof that “the demons are trying to stop me!”

Now the sect heir acting strange is going to raise some eyebrows, and when outsiders look at jin zixuan throwing flowers and singing, they come to a very different conclusion.

Within a day, everyone in every sect is convinced jin zixuan is trying to court wei wuxian

“My son is a cutsleeve!” Moans jin guangshan. “How did this happen! I showed him all the fine ways to love a woman!”

“You’re lessons are the reason my son is a cutsleeve!” Madam jin retorts. “U scarred him for life!”

They proceed to spend the rest of the time arguing and somehow forget to actually talk to their son

Meanwhile in yumeng everyone is losing their collective shit. Jiang cheng is furious that jin zixuan thinks he can poach wei ying with a few pretty words and flowers. Jiang yanli is depressed because her crush is really hopeless now, and how could she measure up to wei wuxian?

Wei wuxian himself is disgusted, not that jun zixuan is a cutsleeve, but that he’d dare to court him! After what he did to shijie! He resolves to firmly rebuff every attempt jin zixuan makes

Which only serves to make jin zixuan more determined because “those demons are really stubborn!!”

But then… the rumor reaches gusu

And lan zhan hops on the first sword to the jin sect to challenge jin zixuan to a duel for wei wuxian’s honor

Lan Zhan tells himself he wouldn’t do this is wei wuxian actually loved the guy. But its not just some guy. This is jin zixuan, wei wuxian hates him! Even he knows that!

They fight, but jin zixuan for all his denseness, even he knows he doesn’t have a quirrel with lan Zhan, and eventually he gets lan zhan to calm down enough to ask why they are fighting

Lan zhan explains and jin zixuan is horrified he’d ever thing that, and quickly fills him in on what he’s really doing: saving wei wuxian from the demon that is possessing him

See the full post

692 notes - Posted September 13, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

The Yiling Laozu’s Lost Spells, A.K.A. The Weird Ones

A Collection by Mo Xuanyu

aka another crack au

Edit: Now with a part 2!

When the Yiling Laozu died his work was divided up by its use

The Lans took anything deemed undemonic, like Spirit Lures and Demonic Compasses

The Jins snuck out anything dangerous under the lie they’d destroy it

And the rest of it…it got scattered everywhere to every lowdown village and wanna be demonic cultivator.

At first, no one thought this would be a problem. It’s not like anything dangerous is out there, and not just anyone can culitvate

But they forgot two very important things: 1) no one needs to be a culivator to use demonic cultivation and 2) people will find a way to use anything

Soon the culivation world is overrun by really, really weird cases that their cultivators just can’t keep up with

And when I say weird, I do mean weird here’s a look at some of the cases:

Case 1) Giant rabbits the size of houses have been spotted in a mountain near a sheparding villiage eating all their feilds. They asked Hanguang-jun for help. Hanguang-jun went up but he did not come back down. It is suspected the giant bunnies ate him

Case 2) the dancing radishes. Every night on the full moon radishes come to life in a villiage and dance on their beds. Its not hurting anyone, but its really freaking them out

Case 3) dog begone spells. A whole villiage has lost all its dogs and no one knows why. Some of them were really expensive spirit puppies, including one jin guangyao was planning to purchase for his nephew

Case 4) the case of the running radishes. Radishes are leaving their beds a d running away as fast as thry can. Every time someone gets close they keep moving farther away

Case 5) flowers flying to lan clan ribbons and sticking. Every flower, even ones on stems. The lans are walking around covered in flowers and it is becoming a Problem.

Case 6) radishes that look like potatoes. Again? What is with this guy and radishes? This spell would have been harmless if it hadn’t been in a villiage with two rival families of radishes and potatoes. The potato family is accusing the radish family of sabatoge and the radish family is accusing the potato family of stealing their crop

Case 7) Lotus soup possession talisman. If u stick this talisman on someone, they will make lotus and pork rib soup. Always. Again and again. They can’t stop. Everything they make is soup. They’re crying.

Case 8) the peacock tail talisman. Every jin who comes into contact with this talisman will get a peacock tail. They can’t get rid of them. This is a problem.

Case 9) grass butterflies come to life. Again, not harmful, but very annoying. All children love it. All adult toy sellers do not. Their wares keep flying away. Please someone save their buisnesses

Case 10) hug jiang cheng. You must hug jiang cheng. You can’t help it. You can’t stop. If u don’t give him one hug a day you will die. Jiang cheng is furious. Fix this now.

Case 11) give Hanguang-jun compliments. Not hard, no one would notice if it wasn’t stuck to Su She. He hates it. He’s sueing for emotional damages. You better fix this quick!

And these are just the first ones! In times like this, people look to the Chief Cultivator. But the Chief cultivator is off flirting with women, so like all things, this falls to jin guangyao to solve.

So Jin guangyao decides he needs to get those documents back, and who better to send to handle the weird cases no one wants to touch than his weird half brother who’s so fasinated by demonic cultivation?

Thus Mo Xuanyu finds himself with his dream job: chasing down the yiling Laozu’s lost works! What more could he want?

The first case is easy. He goes up and finds Hanguang-jun asleep cuddled in a pile of giant rabbits. All he has to do is find out where the talisman is and remove them. The hard part is getting Hanguang-jun to stop looking like he just killed his wife. Mo xuanyu didn’t know Hanguang-jun had puppy eyes. Since when did he have puppy eyes? Eventually to make him feel better he helps him take all the rabbits to cloud recesses. And at another puppy dog eyed, gloomy look like he’s denied him his long lost lover, Mo Xuanyu gives him the talisman too. Jin Guangyao’s not happy, but really, what was Mo Xuanyu supposed to do? Not make that handsome man smile again?

The second case is a lot harder. Nothing Mo Xuanyu does gets the radishes to stop singing. No spells, not talismans, nothing. The only thing left is to dig them all up and throw them deep into the woods where no one will have to listen. Mo Xuanyu’s ears are still bleeding from their reedy songs

The third case is where Mo Xuanyu feels a bit of hope in Yiling laozu’s work really paying off. Lots of his bullies at the jin sect have dogs. If he can make them vanish, he’ll be safe! Unfortunately this spell makes all dogs leave, or none at all. And even when he finds a way to undo it, he can’t afford to copy it out because jin guangyao took one of the pups to give to jin ling, and if mo xuanyu makes the grumpy jin ling’s beloved new puppy go away, he’ll be kicked out of Koi Tower and feel bad besides

The radishes are back, but they run now. They aren’t even violent, u can’t use them for anything! They just run! It takes mo xuanyu months to catch one and track it back to its home. The radishes have built a radish villige in the forest. Radish farmers radish shop keepers and radish children. Mo xuanyu feels like he’s stepped into a children’s book. Then he hears the familiar reedy songs and it becomes a nightmare. The running radishes found the singing ones. They interbred. Now they have musical theatre radishes. Mo Xuanyu booked it out of there as fast as he can. Fuck the Yiling Laozu. Mo Xuanyu isn’t messing with that

See the full post

1,022 notes - Posted September 23, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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theangrypokemaniac · 11 months

Text

Part One

In a sense, childhood never really stops.

Everything to come simply grows round and upon those foundations like the rings of tree, which means that all the thoughts and feelings you had then, even if no longer consciously 'there' on the surface, are all still inside, waiting.

And if you dig down far enough, they burst out like spirits from a haunted forest.

You'd best be sitting down for this one.

The thing to remember about Pokémon is that it was only supposed to last for one region, so its set up and early canon were written in the assumption of an imminent ending.

When that changed, it meant having to slowly prise apart the relationships already established, in order to give them more run time before a belated conclusion finally tied it all together.

If you look, there is a clear difference in tone between series one (which is, officially, from Pokémon — I Choose You! to The Breeding Centre Secret) and two (the rest of Kanto plus the Orange League).

Near enough all of the beloved and best-remembered Rocketshipping moments (Pokémon Shipwreck, Holy Matrimony! etc.) are confined to the first series, because that was intended to lead somewhere.

I actually can't think of any stand-out scenes from the latter half of Kanto. In fact, and perhaps tellingly, that's when the earliest Anti-Shipping elements crept in, as in Bad to the Bone, which is another rant in itself.

By series two, the writers knew Pokémon would last until at least Johto, and therefore tried to roll back the status of these romances to a more moderate level, so it felt less of a fait accompli done and dusted, and more of a work-in-progress with some way to go yet, i.e. still carrying enough mileage to get them over the finish line.

We know from Mewtwo Strikes Back and its deleted footage that characters were originally intended to age, move on with their lives and settle down, which is the right thing to do if you believe the grand finale is just around the corner.

And again, this was obviously how early Kanto saw the future unfolding, because it makes several references to the passage of time during Ash's travels.

(He tells Giselle, for example, that he's been a Trainer for 'about two months').

Even as late as The Battle of the Badge, Misty says it's been a year since they last visited Viridian City.

By the third film, suddenly now it's only a year since Ash and Pikachu met, but nevertheless, time was still ticking onwards, even if in a somewhat stretched condition.

Once we get to Hoenn, the idea of Pokémon as a product, dragged on and on forever, comes into play, where status quo is god and nothing can ever really progress, as doing so would push it closer to the end, thus leaving less room to manoeuvre in the following region.

Even if it does superficially 'develop' during the era, thereby giving the writers somewhere to go, it's simply cancelled out by re-booting it in the next generation, and thus they can do the same plots all over again.

I bet this is is why Kanto and Johto get lumped in together as 'the Original Series', even when Johto was specifically promoted as 'a whole new world', because that was the last point with any real semblance of continuity, when time actually mattered to the story.

Anyway, that's the prologue of why I hate this scene.

There is no 'Jessie episode' to the Indigo League.

We have one for James (Holy Matrimony!) and Meowth (Go West, Young Meowth), but I need to search round the era, picking out the fragments, in order to piece together the puzzle of her background.

And I will do that.

1. Met James at Pokémon Tech. Failed the entrance exam. (The School of Hard Knocks)

2. Got Ekans for her birthday. (Island of the Giant Pokémon)

3. Fears rollercoasters. (Island of the Giant Pokémon)

4. Despises women who sit around moping over a fella, 'cause she's got some bloody standards and don't take no nonsense from men. (The Ghost of Maiden's Peak)

You go, girl!

5. Spent years thinking Santa was a Jynx after one came down the chimney and stole her creepy Bruce Lee doll. (Holiday Hi-Jynx)

If that's a prized possession it doesn't say much for her childhood.

Or, rather, it says a lot.

6. Lived with her mother in a shack with no running water in the far north, and ate snow to survive. (Snow Way Out)

I know, I know it's not Ma Jess in the sub, but they chose to give her the exact same colour hair, when they could've picked any other shade, so it doesn't make sense otherwise, besides the rest.

7. Wants to be worshipped and waited upon 'like Cleopatra' by subservient pretty boys. (Pokémon Scent-sation)

8. Really has a thing for long-haired, effeminate lads, particularly with blue and purple hair. (The Punchy Pokémon)

9. Joined a bike gang with James and finally made friends there. (The Bridge Bike Gang)

10. Said bike gang came directly after running away with James from Pokémon Tech. (Holy Matrimony!)

11. Got nothing for Kids' Day, except 'baloney, and with one slice'. (The Purr-fect Hero)

I was never sure if 'baloney' meant cheap American meat (and meagre amounts of it at that) or was a deliberate play on words and actually indicated no filling at all.

12. Grew up poor and couldn't have Pokémon Dolls. (Princess Versus Princess)

13. Used to be friends with Cassidy. Hates her now because she's 'jealous'. (The Breeding Centre Secret)

James didn't recognise Cassidy here, which suggests Team Rocket separates boys and girls for training, where she and Jessie then met but fell out rapidly, so it can't have been that much of a friendship.

Then again, it takes very little for girls to resent one another.

14. Considers herself an actress for playing a worm in a school play. (Lights, Camera, Quack-tion!)

15. No friends before James. (Friend or Foe Alike)

This is before we even consider supplementary material about her mother, for all that it's never come up in the anime.

Picture the scene: Little T.A.P., having compiled this list, settles down to watch a new episode of the Orange League, and what happens?

...

Right, everyone dies now.

...

All the above, that I bothered to notice and value, because I'd invested in the programme, near enough every one of them is wiped out by this single bloody montage.

I paid attention, I listened to what they told me, I cared, and for what? To watch them set it alight once it's inconvenient?

They are, in effect, punishing the audience for loving what they want us to love in the first place.

One by one:

• Oh, so you did have friends as a kid then? (15 gone)

But only one foot.

• I bet you get a breeze something awful up them robes. (6 gone)

• Note the clear implication here that Jessie met this berk as a little girl and grew up with him, thus she had a stable, settled upbringing, so you can put all that stuff about her getting shunted about here, there and everywhere in various foster homes after Ma Jess snuffed it out of yer head right now. (CD gone)

You take yer filthy hands off her.

Mind you, I don't blame Jess keeping her eyes shut.

Gotta protect her soul from getting sucked into the black hole of oblivion in Darren's face.

Yeah, he looks like a Darren to me.

Fresh from smashing up the local offy before browsing the racks of Top Man for classy, clearly-not-chav clobber.

Q. What do you call Darren in a suit?

A. The defendant.

• That's some fancy gear yer got on there, Jess. I'll bet that cost a few bob. (11 and 12 gone)

• Not keen on pale, long-haired foppish youths devotedly waiting on you hand on foot, eh?

Oh no, she's always wanted 'em assertive, domineering, cropped, and Ronseal'd to the non-existent eyeballs. (7 and 8 gone)

• May I again state that this routine shows Jessie growing up with this tosser, from almost birth to her current age, with no indication they'd ever parted during that time, which neatly eliminates the history she had with James. (1, 9 and 10 gone)

Not only that, but since she's now apparently lived near Darren until the very minute she signed up for crime, having no reason to do so in this continuity, it's erased the Chansey school before it's even been bloody invented!

It can't be a case of mountain shack, went home, Jynx castle, went home, Chansey school, went home, Pokémon Tech., went home, bike gang, went home, Team Rocket, as what the hell was she going home to? Parents?

And why wouldn't James go with her?

DARREN!!!

Girls like her disgust me.

Always waiting around for her man as if she were his faithful pet.

She can't stand the thought of losing him.

She cries but I'd say: 'See ya later!'

There are plenty more fish in the sea. (4 gone)

That screenshot is this meme:

Out of the list of fifteen, there are five left, 'cause that scene just kept on whittling 'em down like Cassidy on a speed run.

And before anyone starts (because they always start), I'm gonna pre-empt the 'ackshully' treatment.

What they type:

Fufufufufu... Oh they don't say that in the sub, don't you know.

What they mean:

Well if you were a Deesunt Yoomun Been, like me, you'd pay no attention to that vulgar old dub.

Frightfully common.

Alright, alright, I'll take all the words out an' all. (2 and 14 gone) Happy now?

Since Pokémon is no longer set on Earth, that'll be no Christmas allowed either. (5 gone)

All I have left is that she hates Cassidy and rollercoasters, and I'm not even sure if that counts these days, considering how quickly she pushed James on to her supposed mortal enemy. (13 gone)

And there's bound to be an episode I've forgotten about cutting out the rollercoaster terror. (3 gone)

Probably in Kalos.

It's the sort of thing they'd do.

So that's it then. Jessie's past was already a mystery, but this one scene destroyed every important piece of information I'd gathered about her, and quite a few minor details to boot, which set the pattern to come.

Now this wasn't the first time Pokémon ticked me off. We are, after all, dealing with the Orange League.

Who's this twat? And where's Brock?

Bad to the Bone was a portent of doom, but I grudgingly put it aside because I enjoyed the full series.

At least Tracey joining only changed the present, and didn't piss all over the past, but here, when I already don't like the overall situation, watching something blatantly wrong is even more infuriating.

Oooooh, it's just one scene. Get over it.

Exactly. One bloody scene. A few needless seconds easily eaten up by any other content, but oh no, they simply HAD to rip up everything they'd already said, for nothing.

I almost think being a meaningless, throwaway scenario makes it worse, as it led to no plot point within the episode, no vital exchange building to a legendary story arc, nothing of any worth whatsoever, which might (MIGHT) justify the soiled beginnings; it exists only as filler for empty air, never hinted at before, and never referenced again.

It doesn't matter at all, but they did it anyway.

At times like this I realize the value of Zero Tolerance, because the moment you put up with any slight slip in standards, precisely because it is so slight, and you're told to 'be reasonable', you've already consented to a hundred other much worse things down the line, because it's always 'just a little bit more' and 'But you accepted that, so why not this?' dragging yer down the path of damnation.

They got rid of Brock, and replaced him with Tracey, but fans weren't 'avin it, and kicked off.

So Brock returned, and stayed for another three regions, writers waiting for two generations of fan to grow up and leave before they dared pension him off again, and Tracey's barely been seen since.

But this? No one ever said a word.

No one ever says anything, and that just handed 'em a licence to do whatever they wanted.

And what have we had since then?

(Training Daze)

What be this 'shared history' of which ye speak?

Why, all the very moral people know Jessie and James only met in Team Rocket, so it must be true.

Mmm-hmm.

Ever noticed how most of the Team Rocket episodes after this retcon are all about splitting 'em up?

Oh, I wonder why.

Yeah. It's as if there's no deep bond anymore.

How people got swindled into believing this was a prime Rocketshipping goldmine I'll never know.

You'll gladly trade away their entire youth spent side-by-side, all to have one bloody GIF of him falling on top of her?

Why is this a novelty? Weren't they always hugging and falling asleep beside one another before?

Why is it suddenly a big deal?

Oh yeah. The Darren Dilemma hints as much, but this is the one making it official:

Jessie and James didn't know each other from Adam before today.

God knows what they were up to since birth though, 'cause all the adventures explaining have been deleted.

You can't have The School of Hard Knocks, you can't have The Bridge Bike Gang, and best of all, you can't have Holy Matrimony!, as that references them both.

Bye-bye now!

So we've gone from them staying together from childhood, as a choice, irrelevant to joining the Mafia, to something founded on a business deal between work mates?

That's romantic, innit?

(Sweet Baby James)

Jessie, and ME?!

Together?!

A COUPLE??!!

Ewwwwww!!! Yer dirty bitch, Grandma. I'd rather DIE!!!

I wish the writers wouldn't keep sending us these cryptic messages.

Come on, say what you mean for a change.

Uh! She's so disgusting, kids! Don't ship him with her!

That's just cruel, that!

(Crossing Paths!)

Well whaddya know. Here's another vapid dickhead who totally ruined my life in an unspecified timeframe who I nevertheless forgot about til now.

Austin Allegro or whatever his name is.

Real tragic tho.

Not before or after Darren, apparently.

In-between.

Try and make both these Shameful Secret Pasts fit, and you end up with Jess taking a break from Darren mid-way to fanny about with a fellow gibbering non-entity, who inflicted Major Trauma Of Which We Do Not Speak by getting on a bus, but shrugging it off immediately and going back to Darren, who inflicted Major Trauma Of Which We Do Not Speak by donning Giant's flasher mac.

Ah. The classic triggers.

What's this, anyway? Nurse Joy: The Wonder Years?

No, no, no, no, no! It's Jessie! Jessie, Jessie, JESSIE!

Ooh, yes. I'd know that hair anywhere.

This was a Serious Moment, people!

Ah, you mean another Butterfree rip-off?

NO! It was a moth this time! That's a completely different animal!

(Noodles! Roamin' Off!)

Yeah, I'm gonna do this Contest schtick full-time, love.

No, you can't come with me.

I ain't even offering.

Look, just sod off back to Jessibelle will yer?

She'll have yer. Daft bitch.

Hey, it's Mondo!

NO! It's once more a never-before-mentioned Very Important Character!

Amazing how Chris made such a life-shattering impact on the pair but somehow never showed up in the episode covering their Team Rocket training.

Crazy.

(A Fork in the Road! A Parting of the Ways!)

I don't like yer. I never really liked yer.

There will never be anything between us, so yer can forget that.

I don't even respect yer as a friend, 'cause I am outta here at the first sniff of something better without so much as a goodbye.

Who's this creaking old duffer?

That's Jessie an' all.

????????

I will dump you for some beady-eyed pencil neck within five minutes of meeting him 'cause it's Very Definitely Troo Luv Bruh.

Yeah, I know. But I don't give a shit about all the years we spent together.

You were just the only crawling simp I could get at the time.

Come on, even our 'best bits' recap is crap. What does that tell yer?

I don't even care if all yer Pokémon get nicked and you end up alone. I ain't coming back.

...

Okay, I'm back now. He doesn't want me so I might as well.

But don't get too comfy, sunshine. I am NOT happy and I will chuck you at the next opportunity.

Genius continuity here where James has gone from vowing to die before he married Jessie to having a nervous breakdown when she legs it.

Ssh. The Next Opportunity is coming up.

(The Good, the Bad, and the Lucky!)

You'd be much better off with that bird I've loathed with all-consuming murderous hatred for the last two decades.

You know, after she's bullied, belittled and beaten us up relentlessly?

Aye, that's the one. Go on, lad, get stuck in.

I can't be taking you away from Paradise when you've bonded over that famous shared interest of yours.

Whittling.

End of Part One

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gra-sonas · 2 years

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There’s a new trio of aliens in Roswell, and while we have no idea what they’re up to — including why two robbed a bank or why the sky has turned purple — this can’t be anything good.

Elsewhere in the Roswell, New Mexico Season 4 premiere, Max (Nathan Dean) planned to propose to Liz (Jeanine Mason), only for her to ask him to wait since she felt like the other shoe was about to drop (and then it did, crashing through the Crashdown sign behind them). Michael (Michael Vlamis) moved in with Alex (Tyler Blackburn) and panicked after he broke a childhood touchstone, but Alex assured him, “what I can’t live without is you.” Anatsa (Sibongile Mlambo) told Isobel (Lily Cowles) she loves her, and the other woman responded in kind and was about to tell her she’s an alien when the sky lit up. And Maria (Heather Hemmens) finished treatments from Kyle and Liz to slow her brain degeneration, but that may have led to her losing her powers.

Executive producer Chris Hollier teases what’s ahead and promise a “satisfying” series finale.

What exactly is this new triad up to? And how did you want to use them in contrast to Max, Isobel, and Michael?

Chris Hollier: We have essentially a good one, so what does it look like to have one that is not good, or at least starts off in that place? We wanted to give more aliens to a show about aliens. I can’t say what they’re up to because that’s part of the journey. By the end, they are going about the alighting so we’re going to lean in and start to define what that means, but this is Roswell, so we’re going to dip in to get to know — they’re not just a wall that moves in unison. They all have their own thoughts and wishes and good and bad parts, and so we’re going to dip into all of that.

What did you want to do with Max and Liz’s relationship this season? How much will that proposal come up?

We wanted to try to play what I think happens —it’s been a minute since I’ve been that age — in that age group about when that stuff starts to come up in your life: What does it mean to start to redefine yourself right along next to somebody? We use that as a jumping off point. I don’t know if anyone’s gonna be staring at a ring every episode, but I think that the metaphor of what that means will live, which is, “I have to understand myself better. I have to be better with myself so that I can be better for somebody else.”

Clearly Michael’s the more hesitant one when it comes to taking steps forward in his and Alex’s relationship. They’ve made it past one obstacle already in living together, with Michael’s nerves. What’s next?

We know now that these guys love each other and are committed to one another, and so we’re gonna give them an obstacle that doesn’t question whether they love each other, but just because you love somebody doesn’t mean that life stops throwing you obstacles. So we’re looking for new ways for them to face things together.

Isobel did tell Anatsa she loved her, but before she could tell her she’s an alien, all that happened in the sky. Is Isobel going to change her mind after that or keep trying?

That to me is the fun because saying “I love you” comes with, “OK, now I get to really show you how I’m broken and unique.” And so that’s the part we really wanted to dive into. We wanted to pull some Season 1 show ideas into this. This is a fresh couple for us to explore this territory, to see what this particular obstacle looks like through them.

Especially since we see how intrigued Anatsa is at the end there.

Exactly. They all really chose incorrect people to fall in love with, right? A scientist, a military person, and now a reporter. We found that amusing in the writers room.

But then there’s the Kyle (Michael Trevino)of it. What’s coming up for him and Isobel?

One of the nice discoveries of the last season was how much chemistry they have. That was the other thing, too, is we started to pair people off into couples. We still wanted longing. We still wanted choices to be made and people to fight for. And it’s not like Anatsa is a bad choice. She’s a great choice. So what happens when sometimes you have two great choices?

It doesn’t seem like Kyle’s having much luck with anything. Now, he’s throwing himself into his work…

No, but he has such great reactions when the world is breaking around him. He’s so much fun to write to, so we’re like, how can we deepen him? We are gonna deepen his side of things. We’re gonna dip into his family. We set the ending of Season 3 in Careyes, which is where his family’s from. So we have more Kyle’s stories to tell.

Is Maria losing her powers as a result of the treatment or is this just the beginning of some sort of evolution of them?

This is something that we want the audience to ask: how your environment affects you, what happens when you start to grow personally, and how do you let certain aspects of yourself define who you are? What are other versions of yourself with or without those pieces is where we started to explore for Maria. We felt like she embraced this gift she had, even though it came at a cost, so we wanted to play around with, what does it look like to take that superpower away from her? Will others emerge? Or does she need any at all to be a Maria that we love?

How does she handle that?

I think the group has come to lean on her and it’s one of the things that helped bonded her to family. To this family of aliens, she’s one foot in, one foot out, and she took steps to say, “No, I’m OK. I belong with this group here.” And so we wanted to at least test internally for her what that meant for her. “Am I still a part of that family? What does that mean for me?”

What’s going on with Maria’s love life?

Gregory’s (Tanner Novlan) just mentioned off screen. I love the actor that played Gregory. We had some difficulty getting him for some of our work early on, but that presented an interesting opportunity when we saw scenes that Maria’s playing with Dallas (Quentin Plair), we thought it’d be fun to see if we could start to get something going. I’m curious to see what people start to put on that, if they think they might be good for each other or not.

Talk about casting Shiri Appleby and deciding on her character [Liz’s mentor, Dr. Allie Meyers].

It was interesting. Shiri and I talked about it even before we put her in the end of Season 3. We had a little chat about who she might be and it bent and changed a little bit, but what we wanted to do was kind of honor what Shiri meant to the whole series, meaning her own as well. We’re here because of her and Jason [Behr, who appeared in Season 2 as Tripp Manes], and we wanted to fold that into our show, to let her live large over our show as well.

What can we expect from her character this season?

We introduced that she was a mentor, and so we wanted to explore, as you find yourself, how do you go and look for people to kick you to that next level? And so for us, we liked onscreen and offscreen what that meant with Shiri Appleby.

What can you say about Liz and Allie’s dynamic then?

I don’t know if I could because I feel I’d be taking something from the audience to give too much away.

This is the final season. Talk about wrapping up the series. How much closure will the finale offer?

It’ll feel first like it honors what the season is and I think addresses a couple things series-wise as well. We of course always have more — if they want to reboot next year, we’re ready. But it’ll be satisfying. They did give us a little heads up, so certain aspects of it that might have been more cliffhanger-y got wrapped up.

What else is coming up this season?

I’m curious to see what people say online what they think about our villains and who they think they are because on Roswell, I think the villains grow just as much as our heroes and if we really want to pair them off, they’re going to help each other ask questions and evolve, some for the better and some to a dark-ish place.

#chris hollier #rnm spoilers #roswell new mexico s4 #rnm cast interviews

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quinntamsin · 2 years

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Who are you?" she asked staring at the form before her. Exhaustion nagged in her mind as she tried to keep it together. After fighting for hours she was fatigued beyond reason. No Lembas remained to sate her frame and as she leaned against her sword. "You Fëa sung to mine young Nis," the words were Sindarin, the common tongue, but the newcomer spoke with a Teleri accent. Canting her head the Nolda sighed as she saw pale eyes. "I am called Alesse."

Rings of Power is over, and after a lot of time waiting for it to come out, I'm still thinking over it. My mind has spent a while formenting theories while having to cast off a few others. Halbrand being Sauron was so fucking obvious I was hoping it wasn't him, but then again they went with the misogynistic trash he was. Honestly, the fact that Galadriel was that keen of mind made sense. She's a smart and powerful wielder of Nenya, a ring known to create a aura of preservation and concealment. It is because of Nenya that the White Lady is able to create the beauty of Lothlorien. Without the art and craft of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain and Celebrimbor, the forest said to remind everyone of the First and Second Age aka the Elder Days, would not have existed. A woman who would have had to sus out things as well as rule a realm in her own right. Her figuring out Halbrand also makes sense to her own level of distrust. The man's story made no sense and it was good to see she wasn't fooled. Now, we have his revelation out its time to actually discuss the overall reaction.

Weaknesses Yup, we're doing these first. Rings of Power had a few obvious weak narrative points in the story. The start of the story while interesting was at times disconnected. Episodes 1&2 were pretty slow on introduction and while I did like her I felt a stronger narrative connection to the Harfoots and the Dwarves. Elrond going off to talk to his friend was far more interesting than the Elf on the ship or being toted to Numenor. Nori and Poppy interacting with the stranger was the highlight more so than Halbrand. This also brings us to the Southlanders, their story is interesting, and has the most obvious connection to the "Dark Lord". They're in proto-Mordor and I really did adore Arondir and Bronwyn. What did bother me though was honestly the racism at the elves here and even in Numenor felt out of place at times. The Southlands had a reason for it they were basically occupied, but Numenor framed it at times as some sort of "They Took Our Jerbs". But, when we walked away from this in later episodes the story actually picks up. That's the thing though, RoP obviously was trying to foreshadow stuff in the beginning and it wasn't bad. But they spent a lot more time playing peek-a-boo with Sauron than working out some of the narrative kinks. This to me is one of the weaker parts, but overall it was a good story. Oh, and I have to mention it, the expedition armor for the Numenoreans, it was kind of bad. Like, OMG ridiculous even Wheel of Time (which had a smaller budget) had better armor than them silly!

Strengths The particle and physical effects were great. The Orcs felt so much more real than the weird overall animated ones from the Hobbit. I liked how they leaned into them being corrupted and incest born elves! I could even see where some orcs were only a generation or two from Adar! Ignoring the Elves with Long Hair, I liked their costuming. Little shit like the pins Elrond wore or the embroidery on his wear. It all spoke to their culture. This goes well for the Dwarves as well. They felt lived in and made me want to learn more bout them! The final one is acting holy fucking shit, this show brought the theatrical skill and owned it. Elrond and Prince Durin's actors sold their tortured friendship and status so fucking well. Tar-Miriel had me nearly in tears when she realized her new disability and damn it still hits hard to watch. But the stand out is either Nori talking to the Stranger near the end or that "20 Years" line from Durin. Both had my heart on every word.

Theories So, we know that Halbrand is Sauron, which is straight forward. Let's discuss a few of the folk in the series which I think will play an important part later on. Adar, aka Uruk Father is likely going to die, he's a Moriondor or a proto-Orc, I don't see him being allowed to live after he "killed" Sauron's previous corporeal form. Waldreg I think might join him or could end up as a Ringwraith maybe? I dunno he doesn't exactly fit the "Great Men" types we see in the OG story discussion. But who knows.

Theo, i think will either end up as a ringwraith or perhaps the Witch King himself. I say this because he was marked by what is obviously a Morgul Blade and I could see him becoming fixated on reviving the Southlands. So rising as a the Witch-King as he gets older would make sense. We know he's going to Pelargir and he was hardcore into the "King of the Southlands" story. But we did give him a mini-redemption arc so who knows. Honestly, I don't see much about who will get the Nine Rings until maybe season two. But what do y'all think?

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rj-anderson · 2 years

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Growing up, I formed very strong impressions of The Hobbit and LotR by hearing my father read them aloud to my older brothers and then reading them myself every few years between the ages of eight and thirty. So I am sad to say that despite their exquisite attention to costuming and other visual details, I found Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations painfully disappointing. I mention that not to be a jerk about it, only to explain why I originally had no desire to watch The Rings of Power, because I felt sure it would only frustrate and perhaps even anger me.

However, last week a friend whose taste I respect said that she’d really enjoyed the first two episodes of ROP and thought they reflected the spirit of Tolkien’s work much better than the Jackson films (which she disliked for all the same reasons I did, plus some).

And you know what? Having now watched the first two episodes of ROP, I agree with her. Maybe it’s just that I don’t have as strong convictions about these characters’ personalities as I did with characters like Aragorn, Faramir and Denethor. But I genuinely like what I’ve seen so far.

I do agree with those who’ve complained the elves are for the most part not at all elvish-looking (except for Galadriel, and I’d also say Arondir). As a long-time Elrond fangirl in particular, I’m still waiting for someone to cast an actor that really looks and acts like him. Still, I’d rather have hit and miss visuals with a show that seems to respect Tolkien’s sensibilities, than sublime visuals with a script that overlooks or even rejects those sensibilities as frequently as Jackson’s films (IMO) did.

I’m not here to argue with anyone who loves the Jackson films or who hates ROP for whatever reasons. I’m just saying that I am interested and even guardedly hopeful about what this new miniseries is doing.

#not using any tags that might provoke drive-by quarreling #just wanted to say what I think #I’m actually kind of relieved to find I’m not as fussy and impossible to please as I feared #I just fundamentally don’t agree with Peter Jackson on what’s important

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urlkssknt · 2 years

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last piece (7)

pairing - nanami kento x fem!gojou!reader x fushiguro toji

genre - parent!au, 4.5k

warnings! none for this i think

a/n - heyyy so i know this episode is a little shorter than normal, i just wanted to get something out because i have two exams next week and an assignment which are stressing me out, pls remember to give any feedback! i love reading everyone’s thoughts! anyway love you all

masterlist

now playing - mirrors, justin timberlake

Gojou Akira was a well-known businessman, usually referred to as a tyrant ruling over most of Japan with a tight iron fist. He was something similar to a snake in a field when angered, he’ll hide in the tall shadows of the grass and wait for the right moment to strike his enemy with fangs sharper than knives, leaving a deadly venomous sting. Whilst this was the side nearly every soul on the earth witnessed, Gojou Akira was a loving husband. There was no one he loved more than his wife. After so many years, he could still recall her laugh sounding like wind chimes fluttering against each other to create a sweet-sounding ringing. Though, it was becoming increasingly harder to recall certain features of her face, like the slight bump on the bridge of her nose or the small dark mole dotted under her eyebrow, with every passing day. Age wasn’t treating Akira kindly. It became harder to walk without a steady cane to rely on, his breath would shorten after a few minutes of exercise. The only thing that motivated him through the painfully tiring and bothersome years were his grandchildren: Satoru and Y/N.

Akira didn’t want to sound boastful nor egotistical but when his eyes first laid upon the newborn boy, saccharine eyes shining with curiosity up at the old man, Akira knew his grandson was destined for greatness. Of course, the blood of a Gojou coarse through his veins, there would be nothing he couldn’t achieve, nor any desire left wanting. He would have everything he could wish for, and Akira was more than willing to dedicate his limited time to having the perfect heir.

However, when the news that his first son’s wife had given birth to a healthy baby girl spread through family members, Gojou Akira felt his mouth run dry suddenly. There was only room for one woman in his ice-block excuse of a heart, he didn’t wish to spend unnecessary time for a child he knew would receive any of his care or attention. Satoru was his chosen heir and no other grandchild could change it. Akira ate his own words as soon as his eyes landed on a tiny (bordering minuscule) figure, wrapped up tightly in a warm fleece blanket, resting in a carefully hand woven Moses basket. The hospital room was slightly cold, just enough to send a chill down someone’s spine. He wondered if it was bothering the newborn as much as him. Shouldn’t it be warmer for a baby? Wouldn’t the child get a cold?

“Are you cold, my darling?” Akira asked innocently in a breathless whisper, he had lowered himself to be level with the basket, as if he were genuinely engaging in a conversation. With attentive eyes, Akira noticed how the child’s tiny button nose scrunched up at the feeling of his hot breath against their sensitive skin. It frightened the old man. Was the baby going to cry? What should he do, hold you between his arms and cradle you till your cries hushed to hiccups?

Gojou Akira fell in love again. From the birth of his dearest granddaughter, he found a new motivation to drive his passion of creating the most powerful and successful company in Japan. Family was important to Akira, there wasn’t a single person who could even compare to a single strand of hair from his wife’s head, there wasn’t even a soul worth considering until the graying man had two pairs of feet trailing after his every step, loud cherry giggles filling his empty, lonesome house with a sense of joy again.

There was nothing he wouldn’t do to protect his grandchildren’s happiness. Absolutely nothing.

A harsh cough escaped from Gojou’s throat as he sat at the table with other business men and women, waiting for you to arrive with the current head of Kamo Holdings. His health had been deteriorating slowly but surely over the years, Akira made sure to consult with the best doctors about his condition regularly every few months, especially since he knew how much you worried over his health, more than you cared for your own.

“Should we get started?” You ask no one in particular but just as a formality, and as a signal for the Kamo associates to start with their presentation. The few trusted employees of both groups stood around the long rectangular table, waiting for your arrival before seating. Simultaneously, each employee bowed to you as a gesture to convey their respect. They all knew who you were, sometimes you would accompany your grandfather during business meetings when he seemed to need your guidance, when in actual fact he was just missing you.

The meeting had been delayed by a few minutes as everyone was patiently waiting for the two company heads to enter the chilling room. Your pointed heels clacked with every step, a sound loud enough for the employees to stiffen in their seats as they anticipated your appearance. This was your first official project as the head of the Gojou Group. Many were praying to the gods for you to make a mistake somehow so they could have an excuse to belittle Gojou Akira. It was the same downfall they wished upon Satoru when he had first walked into the CEO position years ago. Uncles were jealous that their eclectic nephew had gotten a role they were begging for.

Once you had taken a seat next to your grandfather, a representative of Kamo Holdings stood up and introduced himself before starting the presentation. As the middle aged man spoke in a shaky tone, your eyes scanned and analysed every piece of information on the handout you were given, glancing over to the large screen every once-in-a-while. Kamo Holdings hoped to join ties for the new hotels being made overseas in European countries. They proposed lending their construction facilities for the development of the buildings for a small percentage of the incoming revenue. As you listened to a different voice, much softer but still trembling, your eyes zeroed in on the numbers on the printed sheet.

“No.”

The woman who was standing at the front of the table paled at the sound of your cold voice. “I-is something wrong?” She asked wearily, looking to her co-worker for assistance but his eyes were trained to the floor, he was far too afraid that if he made eye contact with you he’d turn to stone.

“You’re taking advantage of the Gojou Group’s kindness,” you state simply in a bothered tone, it felt like you were being taken for a naive little girl who knew nothing about running a company, which was the common perception of you from the employees. They were loyal to Satoru and didn’t like someone using their connections to land themselves a job they didn’t deserve. You were more than determined to prove them all wrong. “The conditions benefit Kamo holdings much more than us.”

A moment of silence passes as the tension increases drastically. No one dared to even breathe because of how nervous they felt. Your eyes bore into the woman standing at the opposite side of the room to you, waiting for her to come up with some kind of poor response. Sure you felt some sympathy for her since you were the one who put her on the spot so suddenly. If it were you in her shoes, your gaze would also shift from one side of the room to the other, thinking up a correct solution which makes both parties satisfied.

The sound of the doors opening alerts everyone of a new presence entering the board room, heads whipping around to face the source instantly. The employees of Kamo Holdings weren’t sure if they should feel relieved to see the sight of their current long haired CEO - Kamo Choso.

“Maybe if you reconsider my proposal,” Choso arrived extremely late, his employees weren’t even expecting him to show up since he never bothered showing up for other meetings. “I’ll reconsider our contract.” Flirtatiously, Kamo Choso winks at you from his end of the room with a shining glint in his eyes. He was beyond excited to see you again, hopeful to reconnect with you after so many years. “We’ll comply with any changes necessary,” Choso shrugs off the worried expressions across his employees faces at his words as if his words were blasphemous. This was absurd and outrageous. How could their boss just agree so willingly?

Next to you, Akira scoffed loudly, completely appalled from the brazen behaviour Choso displayed. Your grandfather knew of Choso’s interesting habits, in and out of the workplace, but he never expected for the younger male to act so shamelessly in front of a respected elder no less.

You gave no reaction to the man who desperately wanted one out of you, only scribbling things down on the sides of multiple sheets for the lawyer’s guidance so they could start up a contract. Normally, Suguru would sit in meetings like this as the head of the law department since the two companies were partnered together. For some reason he couldn't make it and decided to send another person on his behalf.

“Thank you all for your time, you’re dismissed.”

With that, you waited for each employee to leave the room like herds of sheeps, soles of shoes creating hard sounds against the floor as they scurried out, no longer wanting to be in the presence of the overbearing Gojou’s. If they had even spent a split second longer in the ice cold presence of you and your grandfather, the workers were sure a few years of their lifespan would be shed off.

You sighed deeply to let the irritating weight off your chest, this wasn’t going to be easy, especially not when you were going to have to deal with men worse than Choso on a regular basis. If it were women you would have business with, you wouldn’t mind so much. “That went well.” It fell off your tongue sarcastically as the aged image of Choso popped back into your mind again, and made the old man beside you laugh with amusement.

“There is no way you’re going to marry that asshat,” your grandfather was more than determined to keep Kamo Choso far far away from you. Akira was under the impression that the long haired boy was a quiet, sophisticated man who kept his head down and worked hard, not some outwardly arrogant hair model. The old man presumed he was a hair model of some sorts, why else would it look so silky soft tied back?

“Good.” As much as you liked Choso, there was no way on this earth you would ever choose to marry him willingly. The pair of you had grown up together, you knew Choso from secondary school, where your first impression of him was a shy introvert with hair you were extremely jealous of. There were way too many awkward moments shared between the two of you for a relationship to be established. It would’ve felt like being in a relationship with your brother.

“Speaking of marriage,” Akira begins with a tone more serious, no longer playful and dampening the light atmosphere quickly, “that Nanami boy said he wishes to marry you.”

Your jaw dropped to the floor and your eyes widened to the point they could have popped out of their sockets. If you had anything in your hands, the items would fall straight to the ground in a loud clatter. There was no recollection of Satoru mentioning Kento and marriage to you when he told you nearly next to everything about everything that was discussed in the impromptu meeting. You cursed the six foot idiot for never telling you important things. “Did you force him to say that?” You were more than aware of how intimidating your grandfather can be so you wouldn’t blame Kento at all for saying absolutely anything to get the old man off his back.

“That man knows what’s good for him, you my darling are good for him.”

You couldn't help but scoff at your grandfather’s endearing tone, it was similar to how you spoke to the boys whenever you felt like doting on them. “Marriage is way too early for us, I-I haven’t even thought about it.”

After your first marriage, you were a hundred percent sure you would never find another person to settle down with again. It was hard for you to trust people, especially with how scheming your own blood relatives are, and the stunt your own father pulled after his anniversary party left a bad taste in your mouth. It was bitter yet sour; enough to make you feel like bile was rising up the back of it. Marriage makes you feel uneasy like a large ship sailing along an ocean with angry waves crashing against the body.

Akira was gifted with the talent of reading people as if they were a children’s book, you were no exception. From the slight frown of your face, he could tell you were looming around with thoughts as dark as the night sky running around aimlessly.

The benefit of having your grandchildren take over your company was the amount of free time he now had on his hands, so much that he took up a hobby of gardening and caring for the plants growing fruitfully under the sun gracing his beloved garden. “Come home for dinner today.”

Your grandfather left a few minutes before you, letting you note down the last few necessary details. Just outside was his chauffeur waiting patiently for longer than he knew, ready to escort the gray man to the car, always walking three steps behind the aged man out of formality and out of caution in case the wooden cane miraculously gave way leading to a sudden nasty fall. A trip to the hospital was the last thing Akira needed.

“Took you long enough to leave,” a low voice speaks at you as soon as you step foot out of the boardroom, making you jump in your heels from fright. Luckily, the few items you were holding in your grasp didn’t fall to the floor in a clutter like you would’ve expected from losing your composure.

You were met with the sight of Choso leaning against the wall carelessly, one leg resting over the other whilst donning a bored expression over his soft features, eyes sunken from the dark circles around them.

Once your heart rate declines from its rapid pulses, you flash your old friend a simple smile. “Choso, hi!”

The said man pushed himself up to stand on both feet, reaching up to his full height and easily towering over you, even in your heels. There was a short period of time when the both of you shared the same height, back in the first year of secondary school, as soon as the next year came around, Choso had not only grown out his hair but he had begun growing into the overly large uniform his mum bought two sizes bigger, which were then used as hand-me-downs for his younger siblings and cousins. School uniforms were expensive. Mothers found no point in buying a jumper that would fit just right when their child would grow out of it in a few weeks; this was Choso’s mother’s exact thought. It was a plain waste.

“How have you been, Y/N?” He asks with a pure joyous smile and not a single amorous glimpse lurking behind from earlier, just an air of purity surrounding him. This was the Choso you knew and came to be fond of. Most of the tabloids had it wrong when they called him a ‘womaniser.’ In retrospect, he’s just making sure the ladies get home safely from the club. “How’s Megumi? He must be huge, right? I haven’t seen him in like a year.”

“He’s grown a lot since he was three,” you laugh.

“Do you have any pictures? I feel like you don’t post on instagram anymore,” he says with a pout before encouraging you to show him every photo you have of your son on your phone, scrolling through the album you have purely dedicated to just Megumi.

From a far distance, Nanami was observing every laugh and smile the tall man seemed to get out of you. Nanami recognised the distinct features of the man standing next to you. The long ivory hair, a slightly slouch in his posture, the obvious tiredness in his face from who knows where. It was Kamo Choso. Nanami’s only apparent ‘competition’ in your grandfather’s eyes. At first thought, Nanami was quick to question your grandfather's choice. But then the more he observed the two of you, the more anxiety rose in him. Why were you smiling so much? Was that guy really making a funny joke? Is he funnier than him? Is Kento even funny? (According to Sukuna and Yuuji, the comedy police, the answer would be a strict ‘no.’)

“Y/N, I need to speak with you about something,” Nanami declares with a tone of urgency, hoping that he’s playing it off as well as he thinks he is.

Both you and Choso look up from the small electric device and pause mid-sentence, talking about how Megumi really wanted a dog. Slowly, the light atmosphere drops as you just blink up at Nanami obliviously and Choso stays silent. Before coming to work, the blond was very explicit with setting professional boundaries at work.

“Oh, ummm, okay,” you looked at him puzzled before turning to Choso, “I’ll get my legal team to get in contact with you soon.”

Choso wasn’t too sure what was unfolding before him. The glances Nanami sent you were albeit short and quick but his eyes were filled with a certain intensity. The long haired man decided not to question it, at the current moment. Maybe you’ll explain why Nanami looked like a puppy waiting for its owner to come back over a phone call? Ah! Choso remembered! The photos his mother forwarded to him in an email of you from a party with a man by your side, along with some very angry words about ‘messing up another relationship.’ It all made sense now.

Choso decided to have a little bit of fun before he would leave and return to his own company building, where piles among piles of paperwork were waiting to be read and signed off. Purposely ignoring Nanami, Choso takes a hold of your hand and turns you around slightly to face him directly. “Do you really have to go?”

“Yes, she does,” Nanami rebuttals quickly, as alarm bells go off in his head at the sight of another man having physical contact with you.

“I can wait!” Choso adds with a look of hope, when in reality he was wishing it was riling up the other stoic man.

“It’s going to take a while, see you!”

You don’t even have a chance to say anything to your friend as Nanami pulls you out of his touch and whisks you away. Two hands were on your shoulders guiding your direction. You were lucky that you weren’t tripping over your heels with how fast Kento was pushing you to who knows where. Before you knew it, you were pushed into an office you didn’t recognise. You let out a shriek of surprise from the sudden force. Kento closes the door behind him, taking a moment to catch his breath from all the frantic movements.

“Kento, what the hell?” You really wanted to scream at him, you did. Who on earth in their right mind would just, essentially, kidnap you like that? From a conversation with a friend, no less. What you thought was anger for the unexpected event, slowly simmered as you looked around the room.

This was Kento’s office.

To you, it was like one of the seven wonders of the world. Kento was a private person, a trait which you came to accept with time. Sure it was annoying when he told you in the morning that announcing a relationship would only cause trouble but you knew his intentions were pure minded. It wasn’t like Nanami was trying to hide you from the view of others.

Straight away, you hear a sincere apology from Kento as his breathing became stable again. There was no reason for you to be mad but it didn’t stop the jutting of your top lip, forming into a tight pout; scarily similar to Megumi’s one after he loses in a board game.

“He was making you laugh too much,” Kento tried to explain his feelings as best as he could understand them. The blond man still couldn’t grasp why it caused such a stir in him. Nanami prided himself as a man who didn’t care too much, if it didn’t affect himself or his children, he would simply bat an eye and move on. Yet, after meeting you, Nanami cared about things he usually didn’t before: the styling of his blond strands, the depth of the wrinkles forming on his face. Hell, he even thought about going to the gym more often to get himself into even better shape. You were the catalyst for all these worries but Kento wouldn’t have it another way.

“Will this be a problem?” You ask whilst biting back a laugh as you weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry, “I have to interact with a lot of males in this job.”

“I’m not jealous,” Kento grumbles under his breath and avoids any direct eye contact with you.

Pushing onto the toes of your heels, you gently grasp Kento’s shoulder for stability as you kiss the skin of his cheek. You couldn’t help yourself, he looked so cute with the scowl on his face. “Sure, sweetie.”

With that, you took it upon yourself to take a seat on the sofa in the office, placing the files and bag in your grasp down onto the low coffee table. Quickly, you spotted a picture frame on the table. Out of curiosity, you pick up the silver frame to inspect the photograph inside like an analyst. It was a photo of Nanami and another guy, much shorter and with darker hair. Both of them looked so young. Nanami’s hair was shorter too, and for once he was smiling carefree. You assumed the other boy in the photo must have been a friend from school since they were both in school uniforms, one you didn’t recognise so they must not have attended the same secondary school as you.

“Is this your best friend?” You ask Kento when he sits beside you closely, knees resting against each other.

“Yeah, I don’t see him much anymore.”

“Did you two fall out?”

“Something like that.” Kento didn’t want to relive the last memories he had of his beloved friend, someone he cherished deeply. The photo caught him off guard since he thought that he threw it away. In due time, he would reveal the truth of his friendship with Yu Haibara but for the time being, Kento just wanted to spend time with you.

There’s no point in living in the past anyway. It wouldn’t change anything.

nanami kento💙: Do you think you can take the kids? Your brother just sprung an impromptu meeting with someone

y/n: yeah okay! tell satoru i’ll increase his workload if he keeps doing this to you

Kento shouldn’t have lied. He knew that. This was the second time he dumped his kids onto you for Yuki. Like the angel you are, you were more than happy to oblige and take them with you to your grandfather’s. You didn’t even question him and went along with everything he said williningly. For once, Kento wished you would put your foot down with him as you do with incompetent employees. Why do you do everything he asks so easily, didn’t it anger you? Kento knew the answer deep down. You were a selfless person, probably the most out of the limited people he knew.

There was a lingering feeling of guilt when Nanami saw Yuki approach him, in nothing but a short dress exposing her long legs to the cold. She didn’t even have a coat with her. It made him roll his eyes. What was he expecting from her? Nanami sat in his car quietly, waiting for the woman to clamber in after all the unnecessary commotion she caused.

It was only three in the afternoon. Three! And yet Yuki was already drunk and causing fights in a restaurant. Nanami would question Yuki’s sense of responsibility but the answer was already expressed explicitly when she upped and left him in the middle of the night with their newborn children.

“I didn’t know who else to call, Kenny!” She said with an annoying high pitched whine. Yuki pouted up at the taller man when she received no reaction from him, just a sneer of disgust covering his already unreadable face. What Yuki didn’t know was in those few seconds of Nanami reading her expression, he couldn’t help but think of you, and how endearing it is when you pout, it stirs a feeling in his chest, where he just wants to hold your face in between his larger hands and smother you with kisses. Yuki just resembled a duck to him.

“I only gave you my number so you could get in touch with your children.” Nanami’s voice was cold, he didn’t bother putting in any more effort with the short haired woman. This was as far as he would go. She didn’t deserve anything more from him, not after the constant years of manipulation he endured.

“Hmpft!” Yuki huffs loudly before turning to face out the window of the car. “I wish you were like my old Kenny!”

The rest of the drive is spent in silence, which Kento is thankful for. The reason for the silence was because Yuki had fallen asleep. Nanami only realised when his ears were met with her snores. Typically in this situation, the man would drop the woman off at her house, the problem here was that Nanami didn’t know where Yuki lived, and it seemed like she wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon. So he decided to take her to his apartment and let the woman rest there for the time being. It was harmless, right? Nanami was sure that he was doing the morally right thing. Anyone would do this.

Right?

So then why did it feel so wrong like gut wrenchingly wrong? He wasn’t doing anything bad, just helping out the mother to his children. The two boys who would have beaming smiles amongst another woman’s presence.

Yours.

Surely, you would understand the situation like the caring person Kento knew you to be. It wasn’t far off from the same dynamic you have with Toji. However, the difference there was that you always told him about each time you had to meet with your ex-husband, truthfully.

Right?

🏷 @irreverent-dream @mystic-poteto @the-amaranthine @ys2800 @aphrodani @thoreeo @bryandechartisasmolbean @nanamiswaifu @youraggedybitch @coconut-dreamz @usualsworld @ryobf69 @tsukkikeisimp

#jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #nanami kento x reader #jjk nanami #jjk x you #toji x reader #nanami fluff #nanami x you #series: last piece

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reids-rendering-reality · 3 years

Text

Guys My Age

Summary: Y/N is the newest addition to the BAU team and Spencer appears to have taken a special liking towards her. The only problem is, he thinks he’s too old for her. However, that’s all about to change when they share a hotel room.

(A/N: I’m such a sucker for the hotel room trope so I combined it with two of my other favourite ideas: Spencer being older than the reader and catching her doing yoga)

Type: fluff + a sexual innuendo or two

Warnings: dirty thoughts, insecurity about age, age gap, anxiety, yoga?

Word Count: 2.1K

Spencer Reid’s POV

I pulled the handle of my satchel over my shoulder as I sighed. It was a very long day in a small rural town somewhere deep in Alabama. Everyone else had gone back to their hotel room, besides Hotch and I. There was just something about this case I couldn’t get out of my mind. The feeling of being so close to the final piece of the puzzle, as if it were on the tip of my tongue but I couldn’t grip it. Yet I had to let it go for the night and get some rest. The much needed REM sleep could give me an entirely new perspective on this problem to me tomorrow. At least that’s what I hoped.

On the walk to the hotel room I was getting increasingly nervous, the more rooms I passed in the hallway. This small hotel did not have enough rooms to accommodate the whole team separately. They only had four rooms for the seven of us. JJ and Emily had immediately paired up, just like Rossi and Morgan. And Hotch being the team leader took the single room. Leaving me with our newest and youngest member, Y/N.

It’s not like I didn’t like her. That’s not what it was at all. Just, she made me a little bit nervous. She was so beautiful that sometimes I couldn’t get out any words around her. And that says a lot because I always have something to say. But as cheesy as it sounds, in some moments there is not a single fact that I can recall.

But the elephant in the room demands to be heard. She is younger than I am. And that by a lot. By exactly ten years and three months. That appears to be a lot. I don’t really know why, but that bothers me. We are both adults, but because of social conventions at our age, I feel as though it is inappropriate. Yet if I were 60 and she were 50 or I was 80 and she was 70, no one would even blink at the gap. Yet because we are young it matters. I feel sad when I think about it because I like her a lot. And when we talk I don’t notice the age gap. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that it wasn’t even there at all.

What surprised me as I was having these thoughts and neared the room was the fact that I actually considered asking her out. Since Maeve I have not been on a single date. And who said she would even be interested in anything beyond a casual friendship or even colleagueship with me? That’s not even considering the amount of courage it would require for me to tell her. But it’s not like that would be a fruitful endeavour.

And that was the last thought I had before I reached the door to room 179. A prime number. Prime numbers would be my lucky numbers if there were such a thing.

As I rummaged around my pockets and satchel for the key card I noticed the sound of music coming through the door.

“Gotta thank him he’s the reason

That I’ll find what I’m looking for.”

I heard a woman sing over the sound of an electric guitar. I still hadn’t found my key card.

“Guys my age don't know how to treat me

Don't know how to treat me.”

My movements stopped when my brain registered the lyrics. Guys my age…?

“Guys my age don't know how to touch me

Don't know how to love me good.”

My breath hitched and I gulped, key card in hand. Did she mean that? Could it be possible that she would be interested in someone ten years older than her? The feeling of hope was beginning to form in my brain, scenarios of what could be clouding my vision. But they were quickly pushed aside by a dark storm of self-doubt. Because most people don’t listen to lyrics as closely. The lyrics to a song don’t mean anything to them. Did they mean anything to her?

I realised I had been standing in front of the door for way too long and gathered all my confidence to go inside. But nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see. After closing the door behind me and tucking away the key card into my bag I turned around for the first time.

There she was. In the middle of the room in front of the two twin beds on a yoga mat. Her front leg was bent as she stretched her back. She was only dressed in skin tight pants and a matching bra that complimented the way her body was contorted. The soft light from the night lamp next to one of the beds made her skin glisten just noticeably as if it were glowing. I could feel my eyes widen as I my brain finally added up the pieces of what I was seeing.

“Oh, hi Spence!” she said gleefully turning her head towards mine, “I was feeling a little tense after sitting in that conference room all day. I hope you don’t mind.”

I didn’t even bother to attempt to talk, I could feel how dry my throat was and how my lips would not listen to any command I would’ve given it. So I just shook my head and pulled my eyes away from her as she moved her upper body towards the floor, holding herself up by her ellbows. I walked towards the beds in her general direction trying not to notice how gorgeous her ass looked now that her body was turned away from me. That I even had that thought surprised me and caused a blush to rise to my cheeks. I was thankful that she couldn’t see my face in that moment as I loosened up my tie. Taking a deep breath to calm my nerves, my attention drifted back to the song.

“Don't know how to love me good

So I'm never going back”

There was nothing in that moment that could keep me sane. My wildest dreams could have not come up with this scenario. It felt utterly unreal.

As the song ended I saw her change positions again from my peripheral vision.

“You’re awfully quiet today,” she said while turning the music down.

I noticed panic begin to fill my brain. She wanted to have a conversation.

“I um- it’s been kind of a long day,” I said and cleared my throat, while deciding whether or not it would be a good idea to turn around towards her.

“Have you been at the station the whole time? You must be exhausted,” she responded and continued when I didn’t answer, “I thought you could show me that show you’ve been gushing about.”

How was this real life? My brain began to lose control of my executive functions as my body turned around to face her. She was now sitting on the floor, legs stretched out in front of her, her hands wrapped around her feet as she looked up at me. The low-cut top she was wearing gave me a perfect sight into the curves of her-

I dared not continue that line of thought, already flustered enough as it is.

“Really? You’d be interested in watching that?” I said and blinked.

Her lips spread into a smile, twinkling her eyes, “Yeah, of course. The way you described it makes me really curious.”

“We could watch an episode or two before going to sleep, if you want.”

I just had to take this chance. Even if I could only begin to have a friendship with her, I wanted to be close to her because for some odd reason, I couldn’t bear to admire her from afar.

So not long after, I was setting up the odd hotel room tv to watch the show. It took me the entirety of her taking a shower so that I was only standing back up when she was walking out of the small bathroom in a white bathrobe and a towel wrapped around her head. She smiled up at me as she walked past me, her hand brushing my arm so casually that I questioned whether it actually happened.

I hesitated again before sitting down on the bed. Was she going to get dressed in front of me? Because no matter how much my amygdala wanted me to see that, my frontal cortex wasn’t going to allow it. I forced myself to look through my satchel in an attempt to find a distraction as I waited for her next move. But luckily, she didn’t tempt my brain too much into overdrive.

I felt as if there was a higher power not willing to spare me for the night when she came out of the bathroom a second time, now something someone might call dressed. She was in a loose light coloured satin pyjama set that showed off her legs perfectly. And as if that were not enough to torture me for the night, she joined me on my twin bed with her bag of chips.

“I hope that’s okay with you, then we can share snacks,” she said so innocently that I almost believed it. But I could still hear the song ringing in my ears and I noticed her eyes take a short glance down at my lips as she said it. I was almost convinced that I wasn’t imagining things.

What really sealed the deal was that I noticed her scoot a tiny bit closer to me every once in a while. At first I could only feel the warmth she radiated, but after about 30 minutes I felt the bare skin of her arm against mine. My breath quickened, which I was sure she had noticed.

I knew the episode off by heart. Which was to my advantage because then my brain could run in a speed that I could barely follow. I tried my hardest to calm down a little bit, which was hard when I could feel the movement of her body as a whole-hearted laugh filled her throat.

“Y/N,” I whispered with all my courage. It was so low that I almost thought she wouldn’t hear it, but she turned her head towards me her eyes following a few seconds after.

Her eyes met mine and it was like I could feel my neurons firing electrical signals throughout my entire body. And just like that, in one swift movement she had grabbed my face by the back of my head and pulled me into her lips.

That was the first time that night that my muscles began to relax as I eased into the sensation of her soft lips moving against mine. It was as though I was beginning to lose myself in the kiss, all insecurities about her feelings towards me or my inexperience gone.

When she ultimately pulled away and rested her forehead against mine, we were both panting gently. My whole body felt warm with the feeling of her breath on my skin and her hands still in my hair. I didn’t dare open my eyes, still afraid that I would wake up from this idyllical dream.

We both didn’t know what to say as we pulled away further and looked at each other. I wanted to say something, to let her know how I felt, but once again, my brain did not follow my commands.

“Did you know when you kiss someone for the first time it causes your dopamine levels to increase for a short period of time? It also makes your heart rate and the oxygen supply to your brain to raise,” I heard my voice say in something between a whisper and my normal talking voice.

“For the first time, huh?” she grinned a little at me.

I reached for her hand and gently took it in mine. I moved her palm over my shirt to the centre of my chest. I could feel my heart race through her hands and I know she could feel it too. She looked up into my eyes again with a look on her face that told me all I needed to know.

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1kook · 4 years

Text

disney+ & bust

this is part of my netflix & chill collection !

summary; There’s a pounding on your door a little past noon, so hard and rough, that you almost think it’s the police finally coming to catch you for all your years of illegally pirating Phineas and Ferb. It’s not. It’s just a really drunk boyfriend wailing for your forgiveness at the door. warnings; arguments, feelings of insecurity, bit of asshole jk, smut in the forms of degradation, dumbification, choking, fingering, spit kink, self punishment, unprotected but [ passionate ] sex, jk losing his cool, return of mean jk, he is actually an emotional mess in this one wtf miscellaneous; ANGST, anniversaries, the L word😳, app developer kook, rip ‘pretty girl’ </3, we all become phineas and ferb stans word count; 13k !!

notes; me: *writes couple who’s whole arc is being silly* y’all: MAKE THEM SUFFER GIVE US ANGST!! u ask I deliver so now we all suffer 😐 ngl it was hard writing this fic n u might notice there’s some parts that seem weird n that’s bc this was TWO fics w diff wording but I ended up mixing them bc I’m insane. still had a lot of fun! felt like I challenged myself!! not proofread bc when I say we suffer we SUFFER

please let me know what you think!!! a simple ask goes a long way <3

previous part: kissanime & foreplay

Approximately one week after The Bullet Bestie’s rise to prominence, Jungkook grows annoyed with it as his weirdly competitive nature rears its ugly head the more and more orgasms that little vibrator coaxes out of you. It turns on a weird switch in him, something slightly stuck up and snooty that he’ll never admit to out loud but is there nonetheless. By the following Friday, The Bullet Bestie is nestled deep in your garbage can and Jungkook’s back to pleasuring you with his tongue and fingers alone.

He had those moments in him, the ones where he liked to think he was better than any and everyone else, and occasionally they manifested against inanimate objects like a bullet vibrator.

Despite his polite and generally soft exterior, you catch glimpses of that cocky spirit more than anyone else. Over the past year, you’ve come to realize that Jungkook’s personality was like a coin that had been left out in the sun too long. He had this sweet and reserved nature you saw most times, a kindhearted boyfriend who adored you almost as much as you adored him. He was your angel whom you knew had a heart of gold, even if you were slowly bringing out his more childish tendencies. You knew him like the back of your hand, knew what his mom’s favorite color was and how he liked to stack the plates in his cabinet according to size and make. It was a side that was rusted from years of being out in the sun, basking in its adoring warmth, and you loved every inch about it.

And still, there was this other side to him you rarely saw. This cocky asshole who hid beneath the soft smiles and careful hands, making his appearance only through sly smirks and a tongue prodding against the inside of his cheek. He was a braggart, a man who knew his greatness yielded for no one and wanted that fact shoved down everyone’s faces. This Jungkook, this other side that never saw the light of day, was like the Hyde to his Jekyll. An unexpected, almost mean side to him that only dared make his appearance when his exhilaration was at an all-time high. Like when he was fucking you into another dimension, or kicking your ass in Mario Kart, or like now, when he was receiving an award at an annual tech ceremony.

On the eve of your one year anniversary, Jungkook’s company invites him to an awards ceremony for other web and app developers like him. It’s a grand event, filled with all the biggest nerds in the developing industry here to present the baby nerds with awards. Jungkook lies somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, both a seasoned player and a rookie all at once. He spends the night tolling you around in a floor-length gown and fangirling over all the “legends” in the room.

You know next to none of these people and none of their accomplishments but still pretend you respect them to hell and back. By the end of the main dinner, you’re sympathizing with Barbie’s ever-smiling features because your cheeks feel sore.

Towards the end of the night, Jungkook wins that random award— okay, who were you fooling? He wins the Platinum Mobile Standard of Excellence Award, recognizing him for all the hard work you’ve seen him put in this past year. It’s probably the highest recognition he can receive at this point in his career. It was an esteemed award that was bestowed upon only the most innovative developer of the year among tech companies, something Jungkook had briefly mentioned he always wanted. It’s basically the equivalent of placing first place in his field, but given Jungkook’s competitive industry and his young age, you think it’s like telling all these old Facebook lords to suck his big fat cock. (But that was your job when you got home.)

He gives a short little thank you speech, promising to work hard and own up to this title. The people around you are swooning, obviously endeared with his soft puppy dog features and melodic voice. They don’t know him like you do, don’t know that uppity twist to his grin like you do. It doesn’t slip off his face even when he steps down off the stage, arms wide open as he comes barreling towards you. Even with you in his arms, the congratulations that are thrown from every direction ring loudly in his ears and swell that ego of his.

The night goes like that for the most part, Jungkook’s acquaintances approaching him every few minutes to rain down their praises. He goes a little crazy at the open bar after a while, shoving the gold trophy into your arms as his beloved work seniors whisk him off for drinks. You don’t mind because you resigned yourself to a night of playing Jungkook’s perfectly perfect partner anyway, watching him politely mingling with his coworkers. Despite his earlier success, you know he won’t brag about it verbally. No, he’ll wait until the two of you get home—your place or his—and remind you how amazing he is with a quick snap of his hips.

As you said, he’ll never boast aloud.

However, that doesn’t mean you won’t.

“That’s my boyfriend,” you explain to the seventh person that greets you that night, excitedly pointing to where said boyfriend was slowly losing all sense of self by the bar. You don’t know anyone here beside Jungkook, and you’re pretty sure no one in their hammered minds is going to remember who you are anyway, so a little gloating never hurt anyone. “He won the ‘I’m Better Than Everyone Else’ award tonight,” you emphasize to the tipsy woman beside you who only laughs at your exaggeration. You assume she’s like you, accompanying one of the many developers here, because as soon as you finish boasting about Jungkook she moves to brag about someone too.

Truth be told, you spend the whole night re-analyzing the Zootopia movie you saw on Disney+ the other night in your head. So if the little fox fellow didn’t control himself would the city have fallen to ruins? Why was the useless sheep girl so evil and bitter? Why was there an unreal amount of romantic tension between the fox and the rabbit? Whatever, you’ll have to rewatch it some other night, and with your new Disney+ account, you could watch it anywhere you wanted to.

Now, you had never bothered to purchase a Disney+ subscription or even tried to swindle Jungkook for his password before. As far as you know, Disney+ was filled with old tv shows from your childhood, sitcoms that made you laugh when you were ten. There’s nothing wrong with that, but personally, you were a firm believer that that which was perfect should not be touched once finished; in other words, you were utterly terrified you’d rewatch an old episode of The Wizards of Waverly Place, only to find out the same joke you’ve been regurgitating for the past ten years doesn’t actually go that way.

However, the harsh reality was that Disney+ was good for a few things. Ugh, you hate when giant corporations provide decent services. Aside from Zootopia, you’ve watched about every animated media on there as well, all of which you replay in your mind as Jungkook has the time of his life with these nerds, knocking back champagne glass after champagne glass.

Anyway, the night ends a little past midnight, and Jungkook who is buzzed on alcohol and high on exhilaration ends up calling an Uber for the two of you. Your apartment— the new one he had not only helped you hunt for but also helped you move into, greatly cutting the cost of movers out with those glistening biceps and thick thighs —is still going through her rebellious phase where the potted plants are trying to take over, courtesy of Kim Namjoon. So for now, there’s a potted plant in an awkward corner that both of you stub your toe against on your way to your bedroom.

You’re thinking Jungkook is going to go to town tonight, given the fact he’s on Cloud 9 and has had his ego stroked by a bunch of dudes for the past couple hours. Maybe you guys can try out the hot role-playing scenario you saw on GirlsWay a few weeks ago, or the handcuffs you impulsively bought from Amazon one Monday night. Or maybe, and this one really makes you flutter, he’ll let you fully take the reins for once.

All those lewd fantasies end up being for naught because just as you shimmy out of your gown (with the help of his hands, of course) and turn to climb him like a tree, he’s on the other side of the room getting your makeup remover out for you. And also talking. A lot. And way more than usual.

“Did you see him, babe?” he sighs, dare you to say, dreamily, handing you the cotton pads as he begins pulling a million pins out of your hair. Slowly and with a lot of confusion, you pull your fake lashes off and begin cleaning your face. “He was amazing.”

“Uh-huh,” you say, having absolutely no idea who ‘he’ is or why Jungkook is so in love with him and not you at this very moment. “But so were you,” you add. Perfect. Stroke his ego and then stroke his cock.

Jungkook sputters at your praise. He’s carefully placing your hairpins on your thigh, cheeks flaming red every time he leans over you. “Was I?” he murmurs, voice sweet in that cute little way it always gets when he’s downed one too many shots of whiskey, enough to be buzzed but not enough to be wasted.

You turn and the pins clatter to the floor and across the bedsheets. “Yes,” you confirm, ignoring his sad huff at the mess you’ve made. Instead, you grab him by the collar of that pink button-up he taunted you with all night. “You were fucking incredible and I think incredible men deserve to have their dick sucked.”

Jungkook laughs at your vulgar statement, holding you gently by the hips as you climb into his lap. “Is that so?” The soft, shy persona is gone now, replaced by the gentle stirring beneath his dress pants. You nod hurriedly, plopping down on his lap and running your hands through his styled hair.

“Yes,” you confirm, kissing the corner of his mouth. “Luckily for you, I know this nymphomaniac who would gladly gobble up your cock at your every command.”

He snorts just as you push him into his back, nose adorably scrunched up. “First of all, you know I hate that word,” he chuckles, finally gracing you with a sweet peck that only makes you want him to fuck you into the fifth dimension. “Secondly, please don’t ever say you’ll gobble my cock up ever again.”

Something inside of you squeals with excitement as he rolls the two of you over, firm body pressing down on yours. “Oh, baby,” you groan, lazily throwing a leg over his hip. Jungkook grins and then decides to entertain you for a few minutes with a sloppy kiss.

You say a few minutes because just as things are heating up, he pulls away. He smiles apologetically. “As much as I’d love to be here with you, I actually have an early morning tomorrow.”

You frown at the sudden change in events. “Huh? They’re gonna make you work the morning after a Gatsby party?” you gasp, sitting up as he gets off of you. With every step he takes away from the bed your heart breaks a little more. “They can’t do that— that’s illegal!”

From the doorway he levels you with a comically raised brow. “No, it’s not.”

You scamper after him down the hall, watch the muscles in his back flex as he pulls his suit jacket on. “You can’t work on our anniversary— that’s illegal!” you offer instead.

He stops at your front door, feet squeezed back into his shoes. “Baby, it’s not,” he rolls his eyes, leaning down to peck your forehead. “It was either I work in the morning or work at night,” he explains, giving your messy hair a soothing caress. He’s looking at you with those eyes, the ones that make your heart lodge itself into your throat and make life a tightrope experience. There’s a devastatingly lovesick part of you that wants this moment, this kind face, to be engraved into your mind for the rest of your life. You want this to be the first and last thought you have and nothing else: just Jungkook’s adoring gaze on you for the rest of time.

The moment ends too soon when he flutters one last peck against your lips. “I’ll be done in the afternoon, okay?”

You pout. “Okay, your place?” you huff, making sure to get one last octopus squeeze around his waist. He nods. “Promise you won’t be late?”

The corners of his gaze soften. “You know I won’t,” he smiles, leaning down to bump your noses together playfully. “Can’t stay away from my pretty girl too long. Besides, I have a gift for you tomorrow.”

It’s with that sentiment and a hammering heart that you let him go. With Jungkook gone, there’s really nothing for you to do now. You took the next two days off in preparation for your anniversary sex, so you don’t have to head to sleep early like usual.

With nothing else planned, you decide on rewatching that Zootopia movie that had plagued you all night, ready to dissect every plot hole to hell and back. You don’t think Jungkook’s seen this movie yet so you add it to your long list of animated movies you’re forcing him to watch.

Part of you is actually really surprised Jungkook left. Well, kinda sorta, very, but not really. Jungkook was a good boy, that much was obvious. He took his job seriously, and if his job wanted him to come in at the asscrack of dawn, then he’d come in before the sun even rose. He was a goody-two-shoes, but even so, you were occasionally able to bring out that darker side in him.

Jungkook working, like actually working in an office setting, was pretty rare though. The dude had a chill job that let him stay home most of the time, and essentially clock in whenever he wanted. Every now and then you were able to convince him to stay, tucking him beneath your body or the covers, depending on the night, and refusing to let him go the morning after.

Once he had eaten you out until the wee hours of the day, ravenous between your thighs, and then went to work the next morning like he hadn’t broken you. Another time you had persuaded him into watching every season of the 2017 DuckTales reboot through the night. When the alarm had rung in the middle of the season finale, he had simply gotten into your shower and gone off to work.

So maybe you were a little confident in your skills, and Jungkook slipping between your fingers tonight was a huge bummer. But there was no use crying over spilled milk, you tell yourself, flinging your bra off somewhere in the corner as you snuggle back into your sheets. You’re ready to tear this Zootopia movie apart, scene by scene.

Even though your apartment is a little cold, you’re comforted by the fact Jungkook will be here to keep you warm all day tomorrow.

All men do is lie.

Despite his promise to come home early the next day, Jungkook ends up lying. The meeting he had been in all morning— the same one that had stopped you from getting bent like a pretzel the night before —drags on well past noon. Then, Kim Namjoon, AKA Jungkook’s favorite senpai in the entire world, catches wind of Jungkook’s success last night and absolutely has to take him out to lunch to celebrate.

You scoff, glaring down at your phone and the impulsive messages you’d sent out an hour ago when Jungkook had first texted you telling you he would be late.

You whirl around to stomp off in the direction of his living room, where all of yours and Jungkook’s favorite foods were growing colder by the minute. You had spent the longest time carefully laying them out, making sure the fried chicken was closer than the pizza but not closer than the breadsticks. Truthfully it’s a nightmare. There are about eight stomach aches worth of food sitting on his coffee table, the greasy stench makes you gag and will certainly stick to your hair for weeks, but none of that mattered because it was all for your beau.

Your very late beau who was making you grow more and more agitated with each minute that passed. Ugh! How inconsiderate of him to test your patience on a day like this. You didn’t want to be upset with him, but this was your first, real milestone as a couple with him. You had wanted to spend the whole day cuddled up, maybe finally tell him how much he really meant to you— definitely not waking up alone with eyeliner crusted eyes and an aching heart.

Deciding you’re being a little too dramatic, you head into the bedroom to calm down. This was fine, you tell yourself, carefully laying out the damn near harlotrous lingerie you had yet to put on. Jungkook would come over soon and everything would be A-okay.

Except for the part it’s actually F-not okay because soon it’s nearing sunset and the food has gone cold so you’ve stocked it into the fridge, and the pretty sheer bra has a wonky wire that’s two seconds away from piercing through your heart, but that doesn’t even matter because Jungkook being late for your all-day anniversary celebration has already ripped it to shreds anyway.

You plop down on the couch in defeat, impulsively opening up the Disney+ app to cry through another episode of Phineas and Ferb. You’ve abandoned the satin robe that came with the lingerie in favor of donning a big t-shirt that smells like him and makes your heart hurt even more. The setting sun paints the living room in muted oranges, the chirping of birds outside the soundtrack to your lonely day.

You end up watching some other cartoon on Disney+, avoiding the Marvel section because you had promised Jungkook he could be there when you lost your Marvel virginity. Well, at least one of you was good at keeping promises, you think bitterly. For a second, you think about randomly watching one of the infamous MCU films out of order just to spite him. But then you think of that soft puppy gaze and how disappointed he’d be in you.

Whatever! It wouldn’t ever match up to the way you felt now.

Anyway, you circle back. When you’re five episodes into Phineas and Ferb you hear the doorknob rattle.

You sit up just as the door swings open, visible from your spot on the couch. He meets your gaze almost immediately, big doe eyes caught in the act. What act? You’re not really sure. In fact, you don’t even know what you’re looking at when he walks in because he’s drowning in shopping bags. His lips twist into a grin. “Honey, I’m home,” he says playfully.

You don’t laugh.

Jungkook frowns, dumping all his bags down at the entrance before waddling over towards you. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks, coming to stand before you and cupping your face in his hands. He’s towering over you, so tall and gorgeous but for the first time, you’re not dazed by his beauty.

“Kook, you said you’d be back hours ago,” you say slowly, avoiding his gaze. You try to keep the frustration out of your voice, but you’ve had hours to dwell on it now, and those annoying cartoon characters, though charming at first, had only served to multiply your annoyance.

Jungkook blinks, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “I mean… yeah. But I got you presents?” he beams, glancing back at the mountainous pile he made by the door. You look over too. There are some luxury bags squeezed in between other shops you like, the occasional jewelers' logo on the side.

You stand with a sigh, sauntering off into the kitchen with him on your tail. “I don’t want presents,” you mumble, reaching to pour yourself a glass of water. You’re briefly aware of how childish you must seem. Jungkook hovers behind you.

“What? Yes, you do,” he says. “You had an entire wishlist on my Amazon of things you wanted.” It’s his turn to level you with an unreadable expression, slowly crossing his arms over his chest.

Your frown only deepens as you turn to match his stance against the counter. While it may be true that you did indeed have an entire list of impulsive items on his Amazon, that didn’t necessarily mean you wanted them all. Sometimes you just wanted to stare longingly at a pair of satin gloves without actually buying them. You don’t know how to explain this much to him. “They’re not…” you stop with another deep breath. “Forget it. Thank you for the presents.”

Now it’s Jungkook’s turn to question you. “What,” he says in an unimpressed tone, padding over to you before you can escape back into the living room to watch the entire princess movie collection on Disney+. “No, tell me what’s wrong.”

For some reason, that’s exactly what you don’t want to hear. “Jungkook,” you say flatly, narrowing your eyes at him. “You come home six hours after you said you would without telling me why, and normally I wouldn’t care, but today was supposed to be a special day for us.”

Jungkook reels at your bluntness. “Babe, I was out getting stuff for you. I know it’s our anniversary— that’s why I wanted to treat you,” he responds, oddly condescendingly like you’re a child who doesn’t understand what exactly he was doing.

You brush his hands away from your shoulders. “Yeah,” you huff. “Now I know that. But I spent all day waiting for you,” you stress, chest puffing as you grow more and more agitated by his inability to understand you. God, can he let you go now? At least a bunch of animated, geometrically drawn cartoons won’t question you like this and make you feel as childish as he was.

When he doesn’t say anything else you stomp back into the living room, snatching up your phone from its forgotten spot against the couch. “I’m going to bed.”

At that Jungkook seems to kickstart back to life. “What? ___, it’s barely six,” he says as he follows after you into your bedroom. You ignore him, shuffling beneath the covers. In all actuality, you’re going to bed to mope and watch more animated family shows, maybe cry under the guise of the plot just being so sad. Jungkook sits beside you just as you click back on to finish off your episode. “Baby, I don’t get it,” he sighs. “You’re always talking about how much you want this or that, and I go out and get you it all but now you’re mad?”

You bite down on your lip, eyes lasered in on the pictures moving before you. “Jungkook, just forget it.”

“No,” he says, more sternly than he’s ever been with you before. “If there’s a problem, tell me.” There’s a heavy pause, and then he says, “don’t make me waste my time guessing what’s wrong, okay?”

“Waste your time?” you scoff, sitting up with pinched brows that you find match his. “I’m not trying to waste anyone’s time— in fact, that’s hot coming from you, Jungkook.”

He rolls his eyes. “What are you even saying? You’re mad because I took a little long getting presents, for you, might I add,” he huffs, plopping down on the edge of the mattress beside your knee. “You’re always saying you want this and that, but you can’t handle me going out to get those things? Do you hear how weird you sound?”

You whip the covers off of you. “Me talking about things doesn’t always mean I want them,” you defend.

Jungkook snorts. “Yes, it does,” he says. “Anytime you ramble about stuff for minutes like a little kid it’s because you want me to buy it for you.”

You blink. “Like a little kid?” you repeat, stunned by his comparison. Granted, you always knew you were the more childish of the two, but you never thought that would equate Jungkook thinking of you as a child. Something red and nasty flares in your chest. “Well sorry,” you spit, crossing your arms over your chest defensively, “sorry we all can’t be perfectly mature golden boys who would never see the light of day if I constantly wasn’t dragging them out.” You know it’s a somewhat low blow, especially because Jungkook’s told you before how his introverted tendencies were a sensitive issue growing up, but you can’t help it.

Jungkook groans, dropping his head into his hands. “Baby, don’t do this now,” he warns, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Stop acting like this.”

“Like how?” you spit, “like a kid?” Jungkook says nothing, leveling you with a blank stare from the corner of his eye. You roll your eyes, phone falling off your lap. Another episode of Phineas and Ferb had started, the corny opening tune filling the space between the two of you. “At least now I know what you think of me,” you mutter over the guitar riff.

“Oh my god,” Jungkook blurts, sitting up wildly. “Of course I’m gonna think of you as a stupid little kid, look at you,” he seethes, gesturing at the phone beside you. You flinch. “All you do is watch kids shows and whine whenever I wanna watch anything normal adults watch. You complain every single day about the most normal things, like your job? Why should I fucking care that you’re working a dead-end office job in a field you didn’t even study for— that’s not my problem, __!” he snaps, eyes narrowed into little slits. “I just won an award last night,” he says suddenly, voice back to its regular volume. “I’m at the height of my career and I’m only going up, but I can’t even enjoy that because I have to come home and cater to you,” he finishes, a loud scoff punctuating the final word.

You had never imagined Jungkook finally bragging about himself would be at your expense.

A beat of silence passes, the angry glint in his eyes quickly fading away the longer you don’t say anything. You sniff once, turning your head idly to the side where Phineas and Ferb is still blaring loudly from your phone speaker. Picking up the device, you throw it across the room where it hits his closet door with a terrifying bang the breaks the silence.

The sound snaps Jungkook out of whatever shock he’d been in. “Baby…” he says slowly, carefully, like you’re a caged animal that’s just escaped the zoo.

“I’m going home,” you say, also a little too calmly. You saunter over towards his closet where your shattered phone screen glares up at you as you yank a pair of sweats off a hanger. Jungkook is still frozen on the edge of the bed, watching you with wide eyes as you move about the room.

It’s when you’re in the hallway leading downstairs that Jungkook finally snaps out of his daze, scampering behind you as you descend the stairs. “Baby,” he rushes out, loudly bounding down after you, “___, wait,” he gasps, catching you by the kitchen counter collecting your keys. “I-I didn't mean that,” he rushes out, eyes wide and frantic as they flicker over your expression. “I don’t think that—I don’t, baby, please, just… let me explain, please.”

“Jungkook, let go of me,” you respond, shaking your wrist in an attempt to release yourself. He’s not even holding you tightly— he never would—but the sound of your heart pounding in your ears makes your movements jerky and erratic. “I wanna go home.”

“No,” he chokes, cornering you against the counter. “No, baby, please just listen to me, I-I—“

“You what, Jungkook?” you snap, placing a hand on his chest and forcefully pushing him away. He lets you, stepping back with a wobbly bottom lip. “You need to tell me how you’re too good for me? How much I hold you down because I wasn’t lucky enough to get a job like yours straight out of college?” He says nothing, swallowing roughly as you jab a finger into his chest. “Well let me tell you something,” you snarl, chest heaving, “I may be childish and a huge complainer, but I’m not stupid enough to let someone walk all over me like this.”

With that, you make your great escape. Truthfully, you don’t want him to see the tears in your eyes as you yank his door open, stomping down his steps and in the direction of the nearest bus stop. The door opens right after you tug it shut, painting your shadow across the sidewalk. There’s the scrambled sound of house slippers against the concrete that follows you down. “Go the fuck back inside,” you snap without missing a beat.

Sensing your obvious anger, he pauses before he can reach you. “Text me when you get home?” he calls out quietly.

“No,” you respond.

You would never admit to anyone that you spend the entire night eating a tub of mint chocolate ice cream. It’s disgusting and makes you gag, but it’s the only one you have in your apartment. And of course, it was brought over by none other than Jeon Jungkook himself a few days ago. Even when you’re trying to comfort yourself over how mean he was, on your anniversary night no less, you’re plagued by thoughts of him everywhere.

As much as you want to brush his words off, put on that cool girl exterior you’ve maintained since high school, there’s something different about this situation. You guess it’s impossible to brush off such hateful words when they come from someone you love and adore so much.

Were you too childish? You had always believed that side of you was what made your relationship with Jungkook so perfect. The two of you meshed well because of your differences, like yin and yang. So how had he been able to so easily deconstruct every inch of that balance in a matter of a few seconds? Was this perfect reality all in your head this whole time?

You want to tell yourself it was just a heat of the moment outburst from Jungkook, give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s never snapped at you like this before. Of course you’ve fought a couple of times in the past year, but neither of you had ever stooped as low as you did yesterday. Furthermore, the insecure part of your brain says he obviously felt this somewhere in his heart to bring it up at all. What he had said to you wasn’t something someone could make up on the spot.

You don’t text him when you get home, partly to spite him, but mainly because you had left your phone at his place anyway. You know he tried calling you last night because the call log is synced up to your laptop. He called on and off for about thirty minutes before he probably found your phone in his room. Whatever, he can mope in his regret for all you care

—is what you wanna say, but the longer he goes without showing himself to you the more your insecurities and hurt fester. Was this it? Was this the end of what was probably the best year of your life? It’s too painful to think about, to even consider the possibility that Jungkook might have gained a new insight last night and decided, hey, maybe this is for the best after all.

You drown yourself in an ungodly amount of sugar for breakfast, your laptop blaring yet another episode of Phineas and Ferb on the dining table. Muscle memory has you making Jungkook’s favorite pancakes before you can stop yourself, and by the time you do realize, you’ve resigned yourself to the blueberry smell anyway.

There’s a pounding on your door a little past noon, so hard and rough, that you almost think it’s the police finally coming to catch you for all your years of illegally pirating Phineas and Ferb.

It’s not.

It’s just a really drunk boyfriend wailing for your forgiveness at the door. You open the door with a fright, jumping back when he slumps forward and almost crashes face-first into the floor. “You didn’t call,” Jungkook cries, leaning a little too much of his weight onto you when you reach out to steady him.

The thundering of your heart slows upon registering it’s him. “Kook?” you frown, nose pinched at the ungodly stench of alcohol wafting off his clothes. “Have you been drinking?” you ask even though the answer is staring you right in the face (and in the nose).

He groans, staggering deeper into your arms. You blindly push the door shut behind him, resigning yourself to this new situation while your pancakes grow cold in the other room. “Baaaby,” he slurs, letting you guide him into the living space. He’s unceremoniously dumped onto the couch, half-opened eyes gazing up at you. “Let me,” a hiccup, “explain.”

You won’t lie. There’s a very obvious sense of discomfort sitting in your chest, torn between two paths that you don’t wish to choose between. His skin is warm and flushed like he’s just walked all the way here in this morning sun. You step over to the window that faces down onto the street below. There’s no sign of his car; you would have killed him if he ever tried to drive in this state.

“Did you walk here?” you ask instead, deciding there’s no need for one singular path, not when you can walk straight down the middle, both cleaning him and grilling him at the same time.

Jungkook’s response is delayed, head lolling from side to side as you help him out of his sweater. His skin is sweaty beneath, scorching to the touch. “Uh-huh,” he groans. Jesus, you sort of assumed but him confirming it really set things into perspective.

By no means did you and Jungkook live on opposite ends of the earth. On a good day, a drive from your place to his took about ten minutes. But walking? Easily an hour. Had he walked all the way from his place, drunk on top of that?

You brush his hair away from his face, his eyes fluttering shut at your touch. His lips are pouty yet chapped, dehydrated from the sun and the alcohol he reeks of. “Sit up for me,” you instruct, scampering off to your room for chapstick and water.

“Anything for you,” Jungkook wheezes, throat probably dryer than a desert. When you return, he’s two seconds from face planting into the coffee table and breaking that pretty face of his. You catch him with a hand on his shoulder, keeping him balanced. “Tell me what to do,” he chokes out, voice hoarse.

“Just need you to drink some water,” you say, pressing a cup against his lips. He drinks it, but a drop still dribbles down his chin.

“No,” he groans, catching your wrist in his hand when you reach up to apply some chapstick on him. “Tell me what to do,” he stresses, “to fix this. Fix us.”

His words make you pause, the tube of chapstick hovering over his plush lips. “You don’t have to do anything,” you respond quietly, trying to finish the application so you can pull away.

Jungkook doesn’t let you go. You try to look away, but there’s something about him that looks off. Maybe it’s the raw skin under his eyes, red and swollen. Or the sad droop to those same eyes that hold you captive. Or maybe it’s the subtle tremble in his hands, the fingers that hold tightly to your wrist, not to keep you there but to ground himself. “I don’t wanna lose you,” he rasps out, shakily bringing your hand to his mouth, where he presses one airy kiss to your knuckles. “Tell me ho-how to fix this and I’ll do it,” he pleads, a vulnerable look in his eyes.

Unable to withstand the sheer amount of agony on his expression, you look away. “___, please,” he chokes out, stumbling off the couch in his drunk and desperate haze until he’s kneeling in front of you. “I can’t… I can’t,” he sniffles, tears clouding those pretty eyes you’ve come to love so much. “I don’t know who I am without you.”

You clench your jaw. “You’re Jeon Jungkook,” you murmur, slipping your hand out of his hold to run through his hair. It’s knotted and a little too greasy, two things Jungkook would usually never allow. “This year’s Platinum Mobile Standard of Excellence Award recipient,” you remind him, trailing your thumb across his cheekbone when he turns to look up at you with those big Bambi eyes. “Sweet and shy, but you love being rowdy with your friends. You love movies and TV and organizing your shirts according to fabric type. You work harder than anyone I know and never complain. You date me, even though I’m a huge child,” you smile sadly.

“No!” he jumps, turning that frantic stare back into you. “Y-You’re not— it’s not,” he stammers, words still slurring together. “I’m a liar,” he cries, resting his forehead on your knees. His shoulders shake. “I don’t deserve you,” he weeps quietly. You place a hand on his shoulder. “Y-Y-You make my life so much better, ___, so colorful and fun. I-I wish I knew you in high school,” he admits, “maybe I wouldn’t have been so emotionally constipated now.”

“You’re not,” you reassure him softly.

He disagrees. “You bring out the best,” he hiccups, “the best in me.” Your heart skips in your chest. “I-I love you, you know that?”

You sputter, eyes wide at his sudden confession. “I… love you so much, y’know? I think about you ev-every night, ___,” he rambles, eyes dreamily gazing off into some miscellaneous spot on the wall behind you. “I can’t get you out of my head. Like you're a song, o-on repeat but it’s not annoying because it’s my favorite song, and I could listen to it for the rest of my life, y’know? My favorite song, I know all the words b-because it’s all I think about! I love... My love… I love you so much.”

“Kook,” you rush out, cheeks flaming as you try to pull him away from where he’s slumped over your legs. His passionate speech has you abuzz, body tingling everywhere until you feel overwhelmed, head spinning like you’re on a rollercoaster. “Let’s get you to bed.”

He nods sleepily, seemingly coming down from whatever alcohol induced rampage has allowed him to walk for an hour straight in this searing heat just to confess to you. “Y-You don’t have to say it back,” he continues to stutter as you guide him through the living room on wobbly legs. “I just-I just— can I?” he babbles. “Can I love you, ___?”

You pass through the kitchen space, where whatever you were watching on Disney+ is blaring loudly. It distracts Jungkook for about two seconds before his attention returns to you. When you don’t answer, he presses on. “Is that okay?” he asks, whirling around to face you, catching your shoulders in his hands. He towers over you by the entrance to your bedroom, dark curls tickling your forehead. His eyes are dark and glazed over, both in tears and an emotion so raw and unfiltered it squeezes around your chest until you can’t breathe. “Is it okay for me to love you?” he murmurs softly, knocking his nose against yours.

Your cheeks blaze. “Yes, th-that’s fine, Kook,” you blubber, placing a hand over his chest, where his heart is also hammering away. “Just need you to go rest now, okay?”

He nods sleepily, nudging your nose with his one last time, like a soft almost-kiss, before letting you push him into the room. “Yes, yes,” he breathes, his body finally crashing from his adrenaline spike. He flops down onto the bed unceremoniously, dark waves fanning across your pillows. You try to wiggle him out of his shirt, but it only gets about halfway up his chest before he blindly reaches for the covers. His legs stick out awkwardly, clad in the sweatpants you’ve come to associate with him.

When he’s all swaddled up in your blanket he finally goes limp, tiny snores leaving his lips as he dozes away from reality. You sigh, pressing a palm to his forehead. He’s still warm and clammy, but at this point, there’s nothing you can do but wait for him to sober up.

With a final kiss to his forehead, you leave the room, closing the door behind you before sliding against the wooden surface. There’s a trapped bird in your chest, wildly flapping its wings in an effort to get out, and it’s all stupid Jungkook’s fault in the next room. Stupid Jungkook who demolished and remodeled your heart all in less than twenty-four hours. It doesn’t calm down, even when you rush off into the kitchen for a glass of water, or when you try to immerse yourself in some other show on Disney+. It stays beating against your ribs and your chest until you’re forcing yourself to sit down on the couch and process.

He wakes up a little before dinner. You hear him from the living room, where you’re flicking through the options on Disney+ for the nth time that day. You’ve seen the first fifteen minutes of about twenty different series and movies by now, always growing antsy and abandoning them early on. The only reason you know he’s awake is because the shower turns on for a few minutes, and then his bare feet are heard padding across the hallway back into your room.

By the time he resurfaces in the living room, you’ve resigned yourself to just more Phineas and Ferb, nonchalantly watching the silly cartoon. (Except you’re anything but nonchalant, and your heartbeat rings in your ears.)

Jungkook hovers by the door, clad in a pair of shorts he’s left here before, and a t-shirt you stole from him. “Hey,” he says quietly, lingering by the doorframe. You nod back in response. “Can I watch with you?” Again, another nod.

Slinking over to the couch, he’s rather careful as he sits down, leaving a few inches of space between the two of you. You don’t even think he can see the screen of your laptop until he murmurs, “he’s my favorite character,” when Perry the Platypus appears on the screen.

You hum. “Thought you didn’t like these kids shows?” you ask. You don’t mean it to sound as petty and backhanded as it comes out, but that’s really no one's fault but his own.

Jungkook’s breathing tightens beside you. “No,” he admits, “I don’t. Only watch them because I know you like them.” You contemplate pausing the episode and engaging in a real conversation with him, but at this point, you’re very tired from the events of the last day. Jungkook doesn’t press either, just shuffles more comfortably beside you.

You get about five minutes in, quiet chuckles shared between the two of you, before he strikes. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” he says, so hushed you almost don’t hear it. His hand is resting in the space between you, pinky brushing against yours. “About… being late. And the presents.”

You inspire slowly. “That wasn't even the problem, silly,” you brush off. From your peripheral, you see Jungkook’s slow nod. “I didn’t want any presents,” you mention, “I just wanted you.” You look away from the screen immediately after, pretending like the spot on the ceiling is actually really interesting.

The two of you fall into silence, the animated characters on your screen rapidly chattering away. “Oh,” Jungkook says after a moment.

You roll your eyes. They’re moist but you don’t want him to see. “Yeah, oh,” you parrot back softly, relaxing into the couch again. “Did you eat the food I left out?”

Jungkook shuffles beside you, the soft lull of the speakers soon being cut as he reaches over to pause Phineas and Ferb. A couple of seconds pass and then he’s leaning into you, head resting on your shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes again, placing a palm over the hand he had been teasing for the past few minutes. “I thought I knew what I was doing but I was wrong.”

His voice is so soft and sincere, it makes your chest ache. You try to burrow your face against your opposite shoulder, try to hide the stray tear that escapes out of the corner of your eye. “It’s fine,” you brush off, voice choked off and hoarse.

Jungkook leans up, pecks your cheek so tenderly it makes you go mushy. “No, it’s not fine. I acted like a know-it-all and said something way out of line,” he murmurs, raising his head to look at you. His hand feels warm over yours. It’s the touch you craved all day and yesterday, the warm feel of his body against yours. You’re embarrassed at how easily you melt into it. “You’re the best thing that has happened to me in a long time,” he tells you, holding your hand close to his chest. “I had no right to say those things to you.”

You sniffle, resting your head against his shoulder now. His heart beats loud enough for you to hear. “Was it true?” you mumble. “Do you really think of me like that?”

He shakes his head, his soft breaths fanning across your forehead. “No, never,” he answers. “I think you’re incredible. My brain was just trying to justify my dumb anger.”

You nod, even if you don’t believe it just yet. But that was a conversation for later, you suppose, sometime in the future when you aren’t on the verge of tears and threatening to crumble apart at the simplest word that leaves his mouth.

“I should have come home like you wanted, thought about my words before saying them,” he says, snuggling closer to you. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop,” you sniffle, covering your face with your free hand as he presses a kiss to the vein that runs over the back of the hand he’s holding captive. “Now it just sounds like I'm just being inconsiderate of your gifts and a crybaby.”

Jungkook kisses your temple softly, gently. “Don’t think about the gifts,” he says. “Just tell me what you wanted to do, doll.”

His voice calms you, has you like putty in his arms. “Watch movies,” you mumble, toying with a thread on your couch cushion. “Be with you.”

He hums. “Then we’ll do that,” he says, reaching for your laptop again. The screen nearly blinds you when it flickers back to life before you, Jungkook’s low breaths against your ear making it near impossible for you to process the titles on the screen. “You liked Disney+?”

Belatedly, you nod. “I like the animated movies,” you admit quietly, the anxieties of before slowly melting away, even more so when he slides his arm around you, pulling you close against his chest.

Unlike other times where he’ll critique the hell out of such childish films, Jungkook says nothing as he starts up the Zootopia movie instead, the same one you had wanted to show him before, right from the beginning. “That bunny looks like you,” you murmur when Judy Hopps first appears on the screen.

Jungkook snorts. “You say that about every cartoon bunny.”

You turn your head to glance at him over your shoulder. He meets your gaze with a small smile you return. “It’s because you’re so cute,” you say softly, lips twisting playfully when his cheeks grow scarlet.

He knocks his forehead against yours, eyes fluttering shut. “Not cute, just lucky,” he chuckles. “Lucky enough to have you.” Your heart turns over in your chest, threatening to burst out of your rib cage at his words. You try to turn in his arms. Before you can say the words that have been sitting on the tip of your tongue for months now, he’s beating you to it once again. “I love you,” he confesses in a hushed whisper, no alcoholic influence.

Something inside of you blossoms, eyes wide as he chastely kisses you. He pulls away without you ever reacting, too caught up in surprise to kiss him back properly. He stays close, curls tickling your forehead as he leans over you. “You don’t have to say it back, I just wanted you to know. I love you,” he says again, long lashes blinking down at you. “So much. It makes me feel like a stupid teenager again, going to the mall to buy a gift for my crush.” He laughs sheepishly, reaching down to tangle your fingers together. “Is that okay?” he asks quietly, pressing a kiss to your knuckles.

It mirrors the confession he’d given you that morning, those slurred words and teary eyes. It had been difficult to pinpoint the legitimacy of it before, the meaning scrambled by his hazy mind. But with him staring at you like this now, like you single-handedly plucked the stars from the sky to put them in those sparkly eyes of his, it makes something inside you ache.

Still, you choke on your own spit. “I-Is it okay for you to love me?” you sputter incredulously, realizing the oddity of the same question he’d thrown at you earlier. But now, you’re both sober and you can really tear apart that sentence. Jungkook nods a little too seriously for your liking. “Are you crazy?” He blinks in confusion, brows pulling together as you slowly but surely lose the last bits of your sanity. “You’re an idiot, Jeon Jungkook,” you huff, “a stupidly handsome, rich, walking dream, idiot who goes out with stupid girls like me.”

“Not stupid,” he murmurs, closing in on you again as he finally understands the truth behind your masked insults. He smells minty and like his favorite body wash of yours.

“No,” you deny. “You’re actually, like, insane. You have a bachelor pad, make enough money to sustain an entire litter of kittens, look and talk like every teenage girl’s dream boyfriend— but you mess it all up by dating evil, conniving hoes like me who lose their shit over Disney cartoons.” He says nothing, watching you with an amused grin as you talk over yourself, basically regurgitating his statement from yesterday except it kinda seems plausible now that you’re over it. “It’s stupid. No, you’re stupid. No— I’m stupid.”

Jungkook chuckles, kissing the corner of your mouth gently. “Done?” he says, a dimple appearing on his cheek. You could kiss it away, but you need him to know the amount of stupidity in this room was astronomically high. “You’re not stupid, baby,” he says. You level him with a look. “Well. You have your moments.”

“Moments?” you repeat, standing up in a hurry that has him flopping down beside you. Your laptop is lost somewhere on the cushions, the voices faded as they grow farther away. “I am so stupid. I called Namjoon a whore for taking you out for lunch!” you cry. “I am the stupidest person in the world.”

Jungkook cackles, standing up beside you. “Yes, yes, you’re my stupid girl,” he teases, tapping the pout on your lips playfully. “So stupid she slanders herself instead of just telling me she loves me too.” He bumps your noses together, dark eyes staring at you almost daringly after his claim.

You fold soon enough. “I love you,” you mumble, “even if I’m too stupid to say it.”

He rewards your confession with a kiss, pulling you into his arms soon after. He sighs, almost wistfully. “Whatever shall I do with my very stupid girl?”

After exactly three minutes of feeling safe and loved in his arms, he abandons the living room in favor of leading you back to your room, where he pushes you down against your mattress. You cling to him, leaving him positioned over you at an angle. His chest presses against yours, arm curled around the back of your head. “Gotta get up, baby,” he laughs.

You shake your head, caging him in your arms. “Nuh-uh,” you murmur, legs wiggling when he places a hand on your hip.

Jungkook chuckles, pressing a kiss against the side of your ear. “Your movie is still playing in the other room,” he reminds you, thumb drawing soothing circles on your hip. You don’t release him, his mindless touch only encouraging you to keep him close. “Babe?”

You say nothing, relishing in the comfort of Jungkook’s presence. His hair smells good and feels even softer against the side of your face. The cotton shirt he found is crumpled beneath your fists, dark blue pattern wrinkling. Finally coming to terms with his new home, Jungkook eventually relaxes into your hold with a sigh.

“Alright,” he hums, patting your hip as he repositions himself more comfortably. “I get it. My pretty girl must’ve missed me, huh?” You nod, soaking in every detail about him in this moment. Jungkook shifts, the hand on your hip suddenly falling over your thigh instead. “Or should I say my stupid girl?” he purrs, hand slipping between your thighs. “My stupid, little girl?”

A gasp catches in your throat when he runs his fingers over the front of your panties. Your legs kick out wildly at the sudden touch, toes curling at the hands you dreamt about all day and night. “Oh,” you pant, each brush of his fingers feeling better than the last.

“What?” he says, mouthing against the side of your neck. His tongue feels warm, but the trails of saliva he leaves have you shivering. “Too dumb to speak?” he scoffs, biting down against a particular spot on your neck. You whimper, unsure if it’s because of his hands or his mouth.

“N-No,” you try to sneer back, fingernails digging into his skin through his shirt. His hands are getting braver now, the pad of his pointer finger dancing over your engorged clit. The sheer material of your panties certainly doesn’t help, each touch feeling like it’s being magnified three times over. And if it felt this good with underwear, you can’t even begin to imagine how it’d feel without.

You don’t have to ponder for long, because soon after Jungkook is slipping his hand beneath your waistband, touching your sensitive pussy head-on. “Kook.”

He uses your momentary vulnerability to ease himself from your hold, finally recoiling enough to smother your mouth with his. You moan in surprise, thighs quivering as he gets to work circling your hardened bud sans your panties. Jungkook isn’t the least bit kind as he kisses you ruthlessly, likes he’s trying to compensate for something with his movements. When he finally pulls away it’s with an obnoxious pop and cherry red lips. He huffs, glancing down to see where he’s got his fingers pleasuring you.

Your thighs are squirming back and forth, closing around his hand every few seconds. Jungkook snorts. “Huh, look at that,” he mutters, trailing down until his fingers are gliding over your quickly sopping folds. “Stupid girl is good for something.”

Your cheeks burn. “Kook, I’m not—“

Jungkook levels you with an unimpressed glare. “Not what? Not stupid? But I could’ve sworn you just spent the last few minutes saying you were,” he drones meanly, landing one light slap against your cunt that makes your hips buck.

You bite down a whimper. “I was just…” you trail off, eyes rolling back when he teases one finger against your opening.

“Kidding?” he supplies. “Well, I wasn’t.” Your heart stutters in your chest, eyes growing wide as he finally pushes himself off of you, propping himself up with an elbow beside your head. His gaze is dark and unrecognizable. “I think you’re so fucking stupid, doll,” he sneers. “And what are you gonna do about it?”

You should have seen this moment coming, the manifestation of that shiny side of the coin finally reaching its full potential.

While Jungkook wasn’t exactly shy about his interests, he certainly wasn’t tripping over himself to tell you every new kinky thing he wanted to try. You sort of guessed he had some interest in this sort of play a few weeks ago when you watched the Barbie movie at his place. A lot of that night had branded itself into your three am wet dreams, but there was one particular moment that stood out to you. That was you, on your knees, with him condescendingly patting your head. Or just last week, you vaguely remember the term slipping through his lips as he pleasured you with The Bullet Bestie.

The thing about Jungkook was that, until last night, he would have never admitted, or so much as even thought, that he was better than you. That was fine because you would say it enough for the both of you anyway. Did you think Jungkook was amazing, an absolute diamond among these measly rocks? Absolutely. (Were you slightly biased because you were his girlfriend? Skip.) However, you also had this insane evil villain complex that made you want to brag about everything you possibly could, especially if that meant bragging about your boyfriend.

Realistically speaking, he was better than you, that much you could look past yesterday’s anger to admit, and not even in a stuck-up, conceited way; he had a really good job, an architecturally amazing house, and a hot girlfriend. Meanwhile, you had a mediocre job, an okay apartment, and an insanely sexy Calvin Klein boyfriend, half of which he had pointed out yesterday. Regardless of how powerful that third factor was, he still outnumbered you three to one.

Sue you, Jungkook was amazing. Anyone could see that! Except, maybe, himself.

And if the only time Jungkook would openly brag about his greatness or establish how much better than you he was, was in a post-fight, sex-induced setting, then you were more than happy to be his punching bag. So long as it was on your terms, and not as a result of his weirdly bottled up feelings.

(Yeah, you would have a long talk about that tomorrow.)

But for now, you pout up at him, clamping your thighs shut purposefully. “You’re stupid too,” you defend, “stupid and mean.”

Something in his expression changes. Suddenly, he’s moving at superhuman speed as he snatches his hand out from where you had previously trapped him between your legs, yanking you up by the front of your shirt. “Mean?” he mocks. “Isn’t that what you always wanted?” You shiver, fingers wrapping around the wrist that holds your sweater. “Wanted me to be mean and push you around like a little rag doll?”

Jungkook looks at you for another two seconds, before he’s slowly pulling away from you, leaning back on his knees. His tongue is pressing against the inside of his cheek, jaw tightening from the movement. “Baby,” he says so quietly it instills a prickle of fear in you, tainted with delicious excitement.

“Yeah?” you whisper, sitting up tentatively as you watch him, He was a bit frightening, like a wild animal about to devour you whole.

Jungkook rolls his neck, the joints in his spine cracking as he begins tugging off his shirt. You salivate at the sight, too focused on the sinewy muscles of his body to catch the dark gaze he levels your way. He throws it off to the side, his sleeve of tattoos that wraps around his bicep and begins to crawl down his chest wonderfully unobstructed now. “Eyes up here,” he says and you quickly meet his gaze. He leans forward, muscled arms coming to cage you against the headboard. “Stupid little sluts don’t have the room to make such comments,” he rasps out, unamused expression adorning his normally soft features. “Don’t you think so?”

“I-I don’t know,” you stammer, leaning away as he comes closer and closer, eventually just turning your head to the side to avoid that emotionless look. It’s the wrong move, and Jungkook lets you know as much by forcefully digging his fingers into your cheeks and turning your face back around to meet his gaze.

A hand grabs beneath your knee, tugging harshly until you’re flopping down onto your back with a squeal. You settle with his knee pressed hotly against your core. Jungkook stays towering over you. “Dumb little girls who make me watch cartoons,” he spits, tracing a hand over your chest, molding your breasts beneath his hands roughly enough to make you gasp. “And watch little animal movies on Disney+. Aren’t they just so stupid?”

“So stupid,” you concede, subtly shifting your hips for some desperately needed friction. Jungkook snorts, finally granting you your wish with one rough slide of his thigh against your core.

“I agree,” he says, and surprises you with a hand around your throat as he leans in to properly grind his thigh into you. “All they’re good for is being dumb little sluts with good pussy,” he murmurs darkly, thumb pressing into the side of your neck forcefully. “Sometimes, they don’t even do anything,” Jungkook continues, his other hand on your hip hauling you higher up his thigh. You mewl, soaked panties rubbing roughly against your folds. You miss the soft swirl of his thumb, the gentle prod of his fingers. Even so, you can’t deny this change in Jungkook is doing something to you, riling up a part of you that you hadn’t known existed. Maybe it’s the horniness from yesterday that was left unfulfilled, the one year anniversary sex that was put on pause. “Just lay there and take it, too fucked out and dumb to say anything.”

His fingers loosen for the briefest of seconds and you gasp for breath. “That’s terrible,” you whimper, rolling your hips up into his thigh, so close to his swollen cock.

Jungkook chuckles without an ounce of humor, pressing your foreheads together as he helps grind you to completion. “Isn’t it? I think that stupid little girl is cute though.”

“I’m sorry,” you blurt, vision spotting as he tightens his hand back around your throat. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you moan, stomach tight from all the stimulation.

Jungkook hums, slowing you down with a tight grip on your waist. “Hm, what are you sorry for?” he croons, pink lips pulling into an evil smile. “You said you weren’t that stupid girl, __.”

You shake your head, trying to roll your hips up again but he’s holding you too tightly now, rendering you immobile beneath him. “I am,” you choke out shamefully, grabbing at the hand on your hip in a feeble attempt to remove it. “I am a stupid little girl.”

Jungkook smirks, leaning down to slot his mouth over yours. “That’s right,” he murmurs, “nothing but a dumb little slut.”

You shiver, opening your mouth when he slides his tongue against your bottom lip. He’s not the slightest bit nice, and more messy than usual. He pulls away with a bite to your lower lip, meeting your trembling gaze with that same unrecognizable glint in his eyes. “Come on, dummy, keep up,” he snarks before devouring you again. You try to, you really do, but he’s moving like an animal today, despite his slow and drunken movements from that morning. So you end up with his saliva dripping down your throat, clinging to the corners of your lips as he begins slowly grinding you against his thigh again. He flashes you a wicked smile, pearly teeth on display for you as he glances down at your messy appearance.

“Are you gonna touch me?” you ask, lower lip trembling at the thought after your desperate rutting. Jungkook purses his lips together in thought.

“Mmm,” he hums. “Don’t know yet.”

You whine. “Jungkook, please,” you whimper, wrapping your legs around his waist. “I need you.”

Jungkook chuckles, running his hand up your waist and taking your shirt with him. He slips his fingers beneath your bra, pushing the wire over your chest as he mouths at your neck. “Cute,” he says. “Can’t do it yourself?”

You tremble, chest arching into him as he rolls your nipple between his fingers. “I-I can,” you gasp. “Just feels better with you.”

Jungkook follows your statement with a nip against your skin, tongue soothing over it right after. “Why? Because I do everything better than you? Even make you cum better than you?”

Your cheeks heat up at his blatant ego rearing its head, hands carding through the hair at the nape of his neck. You say nothing, and that only eggs Jungkook on. “Come onnn,” he teases, finally, finally rolling his hips down onto your core. You squeak, head falling back against the pillows as you’re granted the one thing you’d been chasing. “Say it.”

“Say what?” you ask, voice wobbly as he continues to slowly rut against you, the front of his shorts pressing against the soaked crotch area of your panties. “Oh, oh, Jungkook,” you whine.

Suddenly he bites down harshly, teeth digging painfully into your skin. You yelp in surprise, pussy throbbing at the pain that shoots throughout your body. Jungkook pulls away and doesn’t bother soothing over it as he leans up to capture your jaw this time. “Say you’re a stupid little slut who can’t do anything without me,” he purrs, kisses too soft for the words he says.

Your mind blanks, torn between the humiliating phrase he wants you to say and properly checking him in his place. In the end, it’s with a twisted need to please him that you’re repeating the words back to him. “I-I’m a stupid slut,” you whimper, fingers digging into his shoulder blades as he continues pushing you right along the edge. The rope pulled tightly in your core is slowly being pulled apart, threads hanging on for dear life. “Can’t... can't do anything without...”

“Without who?” he asks, reaching down and untying the front of his shorts. “Can’t do anything without who, baby?”

“Without you, without you,” you cry, bucking your hips up against his, the combined movements of both your bodies making you shake like a leaf. “Ah, K-Kook,” you wail, hips stuttering as your orgasm finally swallows you up. Your panties quickly grow wet and icky from your own arousal that pools between your thighs. Jungkook lets you writhe beneath him as you chase your high, mouth sucking a pretty blossom against your jaw.

You know better than to expect the night to end here, especially after seeing the glint that had been in his eyes as he watched you unravel.

He leans close, let’s his nose brush against yours as you catch your breath. “So perfect for me,” he groans, slotting his lips against yours. You can barely keep up with him, languidly going along with his hot tongue. “Perfect, perfect girl,” he murmurs, a stark change from the less than friendly adjectives he used just moments before. “Tell me you love me?” he says softly.

You nod, mind fuzzy as you wrap your arms around his neck. “Love you,” you exhale, letting your fingers knot in his hair. Your proclamation does something to him, makes him grind the front of his cotton shorts hard against you. For someone that was often rough and brutal with you in bed, he sure was sensitive to the mushiest of things.

“Don’t deserve you,” he huffs, hot breath fanning across your skin. He switches gears fairly quickly. “Tell me you hate me,” he begs hoarsely, rutting against your soiled panties. “Tell me I’m a piece of shit and you could do better without me,” he pleads, voice too airy to be another one of his usual sex-induced thoughts.

You shake your head, pressing a kiss to his cheek as he rolls his hips. “It’s not true,” you whisper, “I love you more than you’ll ever understand.”

Jungkook groans, suddenly winding back and tearing your ruined panties down your legs. You gasp in surprise, letting him haul you about in his blind, self-inflicted rage. “Stupid, stupid,” he huffs, though at this point you can’t tell who it’s directed at. With your underwear out of the way, he wastes no time plunging his fingers back into your cunt, bypassing the tight ring of muscle around it without any of his usual care. “You should hate me,” he snarls, lips pressed against your ear.

You moan, back arching at the sudden pleasure that blossoms between your thighs. “I-I don’t,” you gasp, toes curling.

Jungkook groans, the sound traveling down your spine and straight into your pussy. “Stupid girl,” he huffs, slipping an arm around you to pull you so close until you can’t breathe, chests lined up together. His skin is warm to the touch, scorching almost. “Fuck,” he groans, curling his fingers inside of you. You whimper and moan, incapable of staying still beneath him as he tortures you with a thumb to your clit. “Tell me you hate me,” he seethes again.

Despite the fog that’s settled over your mind, you still manage a resolute shake of your head. “N-no,” you cry, digging your nails into his back. They run dark red lines over his skin, making him hiss at the sting.

Whatever punishment he’s trying to put himself through is falling through with your refusal to admit such a thing. It aggravates him even more, your adamant stance on loving him so, and he’s retracting his fingers before you can cum again. “Please,” he chokes, face tucked into your neck. He’s sloppy with his movements; as he pulls his shorts down and kicks them away, he nearly suffocates you with his weight. “I don’t deserve you, ___, please.”

“I love you,” you whimper for lack of explanation. Jungkook leans back, that same madman gaze in his glossy eyes. He’s looking at you in disbelief almost, pouty lips puckered and swollen. Your hands slip from around him, falling on either side of your head.

Like a cobra he strikes, collecting your wrists in one hand he pins above your head. The sudden movement has him leaning in close, lips brushing over yours. His lashes are coated in a wetness he refuses to acknowledge, looking at you like you drive him insane. “If you ever try to leave me,” he whispers, jerky breath fanning over your skin, “I’ll lose my mind.”

He loves you so much it aches.

“I won’t,” you whimper, feeling your own eyes well up with an emotion that consumes every inch of your being. “I’ll never leave you, you stupid, stupid boy.”

A faint smile crosses his features at your words, lips quirking to the side. You relish in it for all of two seconds before he’s ramming his cock into you, your sensitive walls spawning around him. You sob loudly, eyes rolling back into your head. Your legs instinctively hook themselves around his waist, digging into the base of his spine as he rolls his hips into you.

You feel full and complete like he belongs there in this moment and every moment after this. It makes your heart constrict painfully. Jungkook’s soft groans follow your more unraveled noises, the vulgar slapping of skin on skin the underlying melody to it all. “Ffffuck,” he spits, greedily swallowing your moans up. You whine, arms bucking in an effort to hold him close. But he’s determined in his act of restraining you, long fingers tightening around your wrists until they hurt. “I warned you, didn’t I?” he huffs, snapping his hips into you.

Your walls clench around his hard cock, the drag as he exits sending shivers throughout your body. Jungkook’s body towers over you, glistening in sweat as he nails you into your mattress. “Remember what I said?” he asks, voice but a shuddery exhale. You shake your head numbly, overwhelmed by the rough drag across your walls. “All those months ago, when you first came over,” he adds. The hand on your hip abandons its post to cup you beneath the jaw, palm pressing sinfully against your throat enough to block the tiniest of airflow. “I’ll fuck you and keep you forever,” he murmurs, voice deeper than the pits of hell. He licks a fat stripe over your cheek like you’re nothing but a sweet for him to devour. “Do you remember that, pretty girl?”

You nod jerkily, hips arching up into him when he thrusts into you again. It’s a memory that replays in your mind every so often, your first night with the man you had planned to humiliate over a mere misunderstanding, now your boyfriend of one year. “Want that,” you gasp, tears blurring your vision when he begins picking up the pace. “Wanna be y-your pretty girl forever.”

Jungkook groans, kissing the corner of your mouth. His thighs are some magnificent beings, keeping his pace consistent even as he loses himself in his overwhelming need to kiss you. “Always,” he manages, soft lips pressed against yours. “I won’t ever let you leave.”

A shriek tears itself from your lips as he picks up that harsh piston, releasing your jaw to hold both wrists above your head. It makes his curls dangle in front of his eyes, covering that beautiful dark gaze. It makes his thin little necklace swing back and forth too, though it’s too small to actually touch your face. The rhythmic swing has you hypnotized, just like everything else about Jungkook.

With the length of his hair, you’re left staring at his lips, pulled taut between his pearly white teeth. The word from before sits heavy in your chest, begs to drip from the tip of your tongue. But he’s moving too fast and too hard, scrambling your thoughts until all you can think about is the cock plunging into your heat. His name falls from your mouth like mindless blubber instead, arms thrashing as your second orgasm swallows you up. It sends you crashing, body spasming as the sheer euphoria waves over you slowly and then all at once.

“Perfect,” he grunts, leaning down to slot his mouth against yours, “my perfect girl.” Your cum makes the sound of his hips erotic, the loud squelching following your panting. Still sensitive from your high, your body unconsciously tightens around him, keeps his cock from fully leaving. It brings a soft whine out of Jungkook, one he tries to muffle against the side of your face.

“Inside,” you whimper, even though your body feels like jelly beneath him. “Cum inside, Kook, please,” you beg.

It only takes a few more thrusts into your leaking hole for him to finally reach paradise, hips stuttering when that first shot of pleasure hits him. “Fuck, fuck,” he growls, wildly snapping his hips into your achy cunt. You moan, feeling just about brainless at the overstimulation. His cum leaves you full, almost makes your belly bulge from it. When he’s done he doesn’t bother pulling away, simply slumping into your limp form. His cock, though quickly softening, serves as a plug for the cum threatening to spill out of you.

There’s a muted noise coming from the other room, the faint sound of the mail slipping through your letterbox, the quiet chattering of the street outside. And of course, the loud blaring of your laptop playing the Phineas and Ferb theme song. Jungkook registers it at about the same time as you, a soft chuckle leaving his lips.

He pushes off of you soon after, leaning on his palms over you. He’s got that molten look on his eyes, the heat of a thousand suns burning behind those irises as he looks at you. Like he can’t get enough, even though he’s just about taken everything there is to take. “Love you,” he murmurs quietly.

A drop of sweat rolls over his forehead, clinging to the end of his eyebrow. You reach up and brush it away, let your hand trail down his face to cup his cheek. Immediately he leans into the touch, eyes falling half shut. “Love you more,” you respond.

“Impossible,” he scoffs.

Soon after you’re both stumbling out of bed, clothes haphazardly shrugged back on as you drift through the living room. There’s a thin, hot pink package sitting at the door, just having slipped through the letterbox; the stark Sexuality Unleashed logo is printed on the visible side, so you have to wonder what Doyeon could have possibly ordered this time that could be so thin. The laptop is awkwardly sandwiched next to a throw pillow, barely open a crack. Jungkook retrieves it, sets it on his lap as you scamper over to the couch.

“More Phineas and Ferb?” he asks quietly. He hates it, you know he does. And still, he wants to watch it with you.

You nod. “Please.”

He isn’t so concerned with the plot as you, clicking some random episode to start. You snuggle into his side, quietly singing along to the opening. After a moment, Jungkook speaks again. “Phineas and Flirt?” he offers cheekily.

You roll your eyes. “That might’ve been your worst one yet,” you sigh, trying to drown out his indignant huff by focusing on the screen.

“I don’t exactly see you coming up with these,” he points out, obviously feeling wronged.

Without missing a beat you say, “Disney+ and bust.”

epilogue

commercial break one ; the resolution

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