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vbecker10 · 2 days

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Can you do a jealous ex where reader is with Loki and the ex starts getting mad and starts texting and calling reader constantly then one day she forgot her phone and Loki reads the texts and listens to the voicemails then reader comes home to a concerned Loki because reader got hurt somehow?

She's Mine Now

Pairing: Loki x female reader (y/n)

Summary: You and Loki have only just started dating and you're worried your ex-boyfriend will ruin everything. You've been able to hide how often your ex contacts you but one night he calls over and over while you are with Loki. After finally admitting to Loki what has been going on, the God of Mischief takes matters into his own hands.

Warnings: controlling ex-boyfriend, jealous ex-boyfriend, some vague mentions of previous abuse (nothing specific), arguing, swearing, threatening language, name calling, Loki being super protective

A/N: I'm so so so sorry it took me ages to get to this. I'm finally going through my request box and I loved this the minute I saw it. I changed it just a little but I hope that's OK. Thank you for sending it! I hope you like it! 💚

Also... I realized as I was proofreading this that I never named the ex-boyfriend so it's whatever you want it to be lol pick any jerk you know haha

Loki sits on the end of his couch, your head resting on his shoulder while his fingers run slowly up and down your arm. You've only been together a month but you have completely fallen for him. You look up at him and smile when he laughs at the movie you selected.

He notices you watching him and kisses your nose causing you to giggle. "The movie is more interesting than I am, I assure you," he jokes.

"I've seen it," you respond but rest your head against him again.

Everything about him makes you want to tell him how perfect he is and how deeply you love him but you are afraid to. A small voice inside you keeps holding you back from opening up to him the way you want to. Every time you told you ex-boyfriend you loved him, he would tell you that you sounded clingy or needy or desperate. You don't want Loki to feel the same so you keep those three words to yourself.

Loki's fingers move from your arm to your back, moving in slow circles. You close your eyes and focus on how calming it feels but then his hand moves further up. He begins playing with your hair, his eyes still fixed on the screen, a small smile on his lips. You try to keep your thoughts from racing as you feel a familiar pit growing in your stomach. He's upset, he doesn't like your hair this way, your inner voice starts to spread panic throughout your body, he's going to grab a fistful of it any second and yell at you. You tense as his fingers gently run through your hair and he notices the change in your behavior.

"Are you okay, love?" he asks, he removes his hand and looks down at you concerned.

"Yea, I just-" you look down and begin playing with the sleeve on your sweater as your mind replays what happened the last time you got a haircut without talking to your ex first. "I'm sorry, I- I was going to ask you before I cut my hair. I know I should have but I was only going for a trim so I thought it was okay but then I saw a shorter style I really liked and I just went for it but-"

He cuts off your words suddenly when his lips met yours, your whole body responds to his kiss and the feeling of his hand softly touching your cheek, relaxing you instantly. He pulls back slightly, his eyes locked on yours so he knows you are listening to him. "It's your hair darling. You can do what you like with it," he gently plays with the ends of your hair. "You don't need to ask me to do things like this," he says as if it is obvious.

You nod and remind yourself for the hundredth time that Loki is not your ex-boyfriend.

He settles back on the couch, bringing you with him easily, his arm around you. He smiles and adds, "I'm sorry if I forgot to tell you that you look beautiful today."

You blush and bury your face against his chest, the heavy feeling inside of you vanishing completely. He kisses the top of your head and goes back to watching the movie. You close your eyes and force the images of your ex-boyfriend's reaction from your mind, replacing them with Loki's words.

Half an hour later your phone vibrates on the coffee table. You lean forward to try and reach for it but Loki keeps his arm around you. You giggle and try again but he doesn't let go. He looks down at you and smirks, "Where do you think you're going?"

Your phone continues to vibrate. "I need to answer my phone," you roll your eyes.

He looks back towards the TV and dramatically puts his foot on the edge of the coffee table, sliding it further away from you as he straightens his leg.

"Loki!" you laugh as a smile spreads across his lips. He finally loosens his grip so you can get up. You pick up your phone but as soon as you see the number, you end the call and put it face down on the table.

"Who is it?" he asks.

"Wrong number," you answer with a shrug but the laughter is gone from your voice.

You sit heavily next to him and he waves his hand to bring the table back to its original spot. He doesn't respond but you know he can tell you are lying, his expression has become serious and his eyes remain fixed on your phone. Before you can think of a better excuse, your phone begins to vibrate again. You grab it and hang up quickly without stopping to see the number, you know who is calling.

"Who is it, Y/N?" he asks again, his tone is curious but you can feel your nerves getting worse.

"It's no one," you tell him as you tug on your sleeve again.

He sighs at your response and turns off the TV. "I don't like being lied to," he says as he faces you.

"I know," you shrink away from him, waiting for him to yell or tell you to leave.

"Y/N," he reaches out to touch your chin lightly, wanting you to look at him but you flinch away from his touch involuntary. He pulls away as well, giving you more space instead of invading yours. You look up after a moment and instead of seeing anger in his eyes as you expect, he looks sad.

You know in your heart Loki would never hurt you but your instincts had forced you to distance yourself from him. When your ex was upset because you had lied or had done something he thought was wrong, he could be unpredictable.

Your phone vibrates again and he sighs as he picks it up off the table. He hands it to you and says, "Whoever it is must really want to talk to you."

"I don't want to talk to him," you tell Loki, trying to hold back your tears. You toss it away from you wanting it as far from you as possible. It skims over the top of the coffee table and lands on the ground in front of the TV.

"Who keeps calling you, Y/N?" he asks again and this time you know you need to answer him.

You tuck your legs underneath you and move further away from Loki, wrapping your arms around yourself. He shifts his body to face you but doesn't move any closer. "It's my ex-boyfriend," you tell him, you try to keep the fear from your voice but you know he hears it.

"The one Wanda told me about?" he asks, his eyes glance towards your phone and you see a flash of anger cross his face.

You nod but don't say anything else, you had barely mentioned your ex to Loki for so many reasons. You aren't sure how much Wanda told Loki but it was obviously more then you had ever shared with him.

"Please talk to me," he says, moving towards you slowly, testing to see if you will pull away again. "I don't understand why he would still be calling you. I thought you ended things with him months before I met you."

"He started calling and texting me again a few days after our first date," you finally admit to Loki. "I don't know how he even found out about us..." your voice trails off as you look down.

You feel Loki move closer to you again and your body tenses as you prepare for an argument or worse, you shouldn't have hidden this from him, it was as bad as lying.

"I'm not texting him back I promise. I always ignore him. I don't want him to call me but he just keeps doing it, I've asked him to stop but he won't," you say quickly, all in one breath. Loki opens his mouth to say something but you are too afraid to give him a chance. "I didn't want you to be upset, that's why I didn't tell you, I wasn't trying to hide anything or lie about it, I'm sorry," you feel the apology pouring out as it had so many times with your ex. You cover your face with your hands but can't stop the first few tears from escaping.

"I'm not upset Y/N," he says softly. He gently touches your hands and slowly takes them away from your face, "I'm worried about you, that's all."

You look at him, not having expected that response. When your ex found out you were texting Wanda after work, he had been furious. He had never met her and didn't want you telling a stranger anything about him or your relationship.

"I'm sorry," you mumble quietly, not even sure what you are sorry for anymore.

"Please stop apologizing," he says in a calm voice, "You haven't done anything wrong." He wipes the tears from your cheeks, his eyes never leaving yours.

You nod and without thinking you answer him, "Sorry."

He gives you a half smile and puts his arms around you, pulling you close. You squeeze your eyes shut and press your cheek to his chest as he rubs your back slowly. He holds you and sighs, "I don't know what he did to you... and I will never ask you to tell me," he adds when you look up at him, "But I need you to remember that I am not him. I never want you to be scared of me, you can tell me anything."

"I know," you wipe your eyes again. "I'm sorry-"

He raises an eyebrow at you and you let out a small laugh. "There's that beautiful smile I love so much," he smiles in return.

A few hours later, Loki lays awake staring at the ceiling, wishing you hadn't left. He has told you on numerous occasions that he sleeps much better when you are curled up in his arms. Unfortunately, you need to run an errand before work tomorrow so you had gone back to your apartment after the movie finished. Closing his eyes, he rolls over but sits up quickly when he hears a faint buzzing sound.

He gets out of bed and follows the sound into his living room. Loki looks around as the buzzing gets louder until he finally sees your phone lighting up on the floor just under the tv stand. You must have forgotten you threw it there when your ex-boyfriend was calling. He was worried when you didn't text him to say you arrived home like you always did, so at least now he knows why.

He stands still for a moment, watching it ring as he debates what to do next. The call ends and he bends down to pick it up then he takes a seat on the couch. After a few seconds, it vibrates once more notifying him that there is a new voicemail.

He sits back, phone in one hand with his other hand over his eyes. Loki trusts you more than anyone he has ever known, on Midgard or on Asgard and doesn't want you to think he's invading your privacy. It's not you he wants to check up on, it's your ex-boyfriend. Everything he knows about him, he heard from Wanda in one very short but eye opening conversation. She only told him what little she knew but it was enough for Loki to know that you deserved better. He sounded like a man you weren't safe with and your reaction to his calls tonight confirmed that for him. Loki would do anything to protect you so he takes a deep breath and unlocks your phone.

Thankfully he remembers your password, you had told him what it was last weekend so he could send himself some pictures you took together at the museum. He opens your call history and covers his mouth with his hand in shock. Fifty-three missed calls in the last week alone, he stares at the number in disbelief. You hadn't answered a single call but still he attempted to reach you over and over. Most of the calls came in groups late at night, like they had while you were watching the movie.

He opens your texts, feeling both guilty for looking around and angry knowing what he will likely find. He smiles a bit when he sees how you've saved his name in your phone, Mischief 💚, but immediately frowns when he sees an unsaved number right below his conversation with you.

He clicks on it, at first he barely reads the words, he just scrolls further and further down hoping to find the end. He sees text after text after text, some are long rants while others are a single insulting word and it seems to go on forever. Once a day is a text from you pleading with him to leave you alone but it only seems to enrage him.

Loki quickly goes from upset to angry to furious as he reads the threats and insults your ex-boyfriend had thrown at your over the last few weeks. He grinds his teeth as he thinks about you being afraid of your ex and the things he has done to you. He sits back and types out a lengthy reply but at the last second he deletes it.

With a smirk he sits forward with his elbows on his knees and begins to type a new, much shorter message. He hits send and waits a few moments. Your phone vibrates when your ex replies and Loki turns off your phone before going back to his room.

You look both ways and cross the street quickly, excited to finally see Loki for lunch like you do every day. You spot him sitting on his usual bench just past the entrance to the park, lost in his book. You smile when he looks up, his book vanishing as he stands. He hugs you tightly then leans down to give you a kiss.

"I missed you," you tell him, his arms still around you.

"Then you shouldn't have left last night," he smiles. "Oh, I believe this is yours," he takes your phone out of his pocket.

"Thanks. I can't believe I forgot it, that was really stupid," you shake your head. You had realized when you got home last night that you had left it at Loki's but it was too late to go back.

Your heart stops when you realize its your ex-boyfriend. You look up at Loki, one of his arms is still around you but his eyes are fixed to your ex as he approaches with a wide smile and outstretched arms.

"You are not stupid," he corrects you and before you can respond you see someone walking over to you.

He continues towards you and when your brain finally registers that he is trying to go in for a hug you free yourself from Loki and quickly back away. Loki moves in response, putting himself easily between you and your ex which causes him to stop.

"Seriously Y/N?" he says, already sounding annoyed with you. "I drove all the way out here for lunch with you and you won't even give me a freaking hug? You're lucky I accepted your ridiculous invitation after you kept ignoring me."

Loki says, "Y/N did not invite you here, I did."

"Oh really?" he's looks from you to Loki and seems unphased that he is face to face with the Prince of Asgard. "What, are you looking for some tips on how to control her better?" he laughs to himself. "Of course, if you've decided you're done with her, I'll gladly take her back. I put years into fixing her, wouldn't want that to go to waste."

You take another step back as his eyes find you again and they roam up and down your body. You suddenly wish you hadn't worn a skirt and you cross your arms tightly around yourself. He always commented on how you dressed, he had so many opinions on what he wanted you to wear.

Loki notices how uncomfortable you are and brings the attention back to himself. "Do not look at her, this conversation is between you and me," he tells your ex.

He sighs and says, "Fine, what do you want?"

Loki holds his anger at back and in a controlled tone says, "You will apologize for how you treated her in the past and then you will leave, never return here or contact her again."

He almost laughs and says, "I treated her the way she deserved. She needed to learn how to behave and you should be thankful I trained her as well as I did."

Your eyes dart from your ex to Loki and your heart races with anxiety about what might happen next. Loki doesn't respond at first, you watch his fist clench and his jaw tighten. He looks like he is holding himself back from lashing out with every bit of strength he has.

"You have no idea what she was like before. When I first met her-" he tries to look at you but Loki cuts him off.

He walk steadily forward, glaring at him as approaches. "I will not stand here and listen to a pathetic mortal like you speak poorly of Y/N. She is kind, funny, generous, creative, beautiful and so much more. She never deserved to be mistreated by the likes of you. Y/N is a queen and I will ensure she is treated as such."

You can't take your eyes off of Loki, you've never had anyone speak about you this way before.

Loki stops just in front of your ex and says, "If you ever speak to her, text her or see her again, I will make sure you suffer greater than any human on Midgard has ever suffered before."

Your ex-boyfriend looks at him in shock but it quickly morphs into anger, he does not take being challenged or threatened well. He takes a small step backwards and says, "You can't just threatened me like that. You might be some fancy royal on your planet but here your just another asshole. If I want to talk to her, I will. She was mine once and I could take her back if I really wanted to."

As soon as the words come out of your ex's mouth, you know he finally pushed Loki too far. Loki's full armor and tall horned crown appear in a bright flash of gold and green. Your ex goes quiet in an instant as you are both reminded that Loki truly is a God among men.

The God of Mischief looms over him, staring down at him, daring him to speak again. Loki raises one hand and suddenly your ex is picked up by his throat, a green mist surrounding his neck. He tries to claw at it but Loki's magic brings him closer, until they are eye to eye. In a dark voice, Loki says, "She's mine now."

Your ex-boyfriend looks utterly terrified and a part of you can't help but enjoy seeing the fear in his eyes after all the pain he inflicted on you. You watch, your heart still pounding quickly. As much as you want your ex to suffer, you are afraid Loki will go to far, you've never seen him so angry. Look had worked so hard over the last few months to gain the trust and support of the Avengers, if he hurts your ex he will have to face serious consequences. As much as you hate your ex-boyfriend, its not worth risking Loki's future with the team or with you.

Loki's magic brings him closer, until the are inches from each other, his feet dangling helplessly above the ground. "Do not doubt for a moment that I will do what needs to be done to protect the woman I love. Is that clear?" Loki asks and he nods rapidly in response.

Loki releases him from his grasps and he falls to the ground. Getting up quickly, he runs from the park without looking back.

Loki's magic vanishes, his crown and armor fading away in the breeze as he turns to face you. The determination and rage in his eyes is gone, replaced with his own nervous fear. Your eyes remain locked on him as he slowly walks towards you.

"Y/N," he asks softly. You don't answer, your mind still processing the events from a few moments ago. "I'm sorry, I never meant to let my temper get so out of control but I just couldn't bear to listen to him talk about you for another moment," he explains and you nod in understanding.

He reaches out to take your hand, looking down as your finger interlock and sighs. "I told you not to be afraid of me and then I showed you exactly what kind of terrifying monster I really am. I never wanted to scare you, I only wanted him to leave you alone."

"You um..." you pause, biting you lip as you think. "You said you love me?"

"Loki," you close the distance between you and touch his cheek with your other hand. "I could never be scared of you." He looks at you slowly and you smile, he breaths a sigh of relief and smiles in return.

He laughs and relaxes completely, his arm wrapping around your waist. "Darling, I have loved you from the first time we spoke," he tells you. "You mean everything to mean."

You reach up and kiss him, his hands move down your back to hold you flush against his body. You look up, still pressed together and say, "I love you too. Thank you for keeping me safe from him."

You rest your head on his shoulder and he kisses the top of your head. "I promise, I will always protect you, you just need to tell me what is bothering you," he swears.

You smile when you look into his eyes and see how much he means it. He leans down to kiss you again and between breaths he whispers, "Mine."

I hope you liked this!! Please like, share and comment if you did 💚💚

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werewolfbneimitzvah · 2 days

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vent post. There are two stories i was told in my teenage years that even before i had a real concept of trans issues made me uninterested in discussing the supposed sacredness and safety of separated sex-based spaces.

First, when i was like 13 or 14 my PE teacher told us about a time she went to a women's public restroom, some guy was hanging out outside the bathrooms, she didn't think anything of it, went to the bathroom, and he walked in after her and like, creeped on her over the top of the stall. She was ok, she wasn't telling us this to scare us, just telling us what to do in situations like that (and iirc she was telling the whole co-ed class this, not just girls, bc it's useful for everyone), but this taught me immediately and forever that there's nothing actually keeping these spaces separate really, that anyone can be a creep in any space, and that establishing a space like that as for women only isn't actually particularly useful for safety.

Second, when i was 16 i was at an anime convention, a friendly acquaintance of mine and i ended up in conversation outside, and he showed me his bare wrist and told me he'd been kicked out. A female friend of his had stepped in dog poop outside, and between that and the stress of the convention she'd had a bit of an emotional breakdown, so being her friend, he started comforting her and ushered her into the women's restroom so they could wash the poop off her shoe together. And because he was a man who went into the women's bathroom, he got kicked out, no matter that he was doing something that was actually beneficial to a woman. Punishing a woman's friend for supporting her was supposed to... protect her somehow? This made it clear to me that a no-exceptions rule separating the sexes like that wasn't actually inherently good for everyone.

And this isn't even getting into me as a child needing to accompany my younger sister to the restroom when we were out with just my dad because she had certain support needs past the age he felt comfortable bringing her into the men's room with him. And what if I'd been born a boy, or she'd been the first born? Who's helping her then?

And of course even putting all this aside, we should always prioritize compassion and support anyway. But i never even needed to meet a trans person to know that "keeping men out of women's bathrooms" is silly nonsense. But trans people also need to pee anyway and as humans they have that right, so leave them the fuck alone. your precious women's restroom is just a fucking room with a door, holy shit give it a fucking rest, if someone is attacking you in the bathroom that's bad and if someone is in there to pee that's good and it doesn't fucking matter what their junk is or was when they were born.

a woman could have done the exact same thing to my PE teacher and it would have also been bad no matter how "supposed" to be in the restroom she was, and no one should ever be punished for helping a crying friend wash their shoe.

Anyway i know I'm speaking to like-minded folks here, i just think about those two stories literally every time bathroom gender shit comes up and it pisses me off.

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frownyalfred · 1 day

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What if T&M sort of start trying to parent Damian instead.He canonically looks a lot like Bruce when he was his age. They obviously know he is not but he's still their Blood . Like low key projecting their baby bruce on him. Damian might not immediately catch on but Dick ? Tim? They would close ranks so fast. Extra extra angst if T&H really dont try to make effort with other kids and see them as getting in the way of Their Family. Trying to Take Their grandBABYs inheritance.Bruce would hate it so much because it doesn't matter if damian is his blood.He raised Dick since he was 8 .He was his first child ,the one who saved him from darkness. In his heart he's clearly his first born .the reason his family exists in the first place.

That would be an interesting way to explore the tensions between adopted/non adopted siblings. because yeah. I've known rich families that adopted kids who definitely didn't treat them the same as their "blood" kids and it's super rough to see. You're part of something, but you don't really count in some ways.

Meanwhile, everyone in the family knows that Dick truly is the golden firstborn son in so many different ways. The idea of putting Damian above him in importance simply because he's Bruce's biological kid seems ridiculous to everyone except maybe Thomas and Martha (in this AU, to be clear).

#asks #anon #fic ideas #batfamily #dc #dc comics #bruce wayne #batman #martha wayne #thomas wayne #dick grayson #damian wayne

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yuri-is-online · 1 day

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Ooohhh any head cannons with malleus! Yutu and how diasomnia reacts to them?

Ah yes the banished Prince. I was wondering when I was going to get an ask about him, and I admit I am a bit surprised it was only the one unlike a certain other prince. It's rather fitting to come back to Yutu posts with him though, there's a great deal of tragedy to be had with Malleus in this ayuu.

notes: they/them used for Yuu, for context on the fyuuture kid au can be found here and here. SPOILERS FROM BOOK 7 ON HOW DRAGON FAE REPRODUCE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

I've mentioned it before but Malleus! Yutu plays by half elf rules. He's very young looking, he's around the same age that Yuu is, whatever you think that is, but he looks around 15 at most and shares his father's eyes and teeth. Even in your world he had a reputation for being quite baby faced, this annoys him quite a lot, though he keeps his outrage to a brief pout if the person talking about it is Yuu.

Yuu remembers Malleus being their best friend, someone who was socially awkward due to isolation and came off as intense and scary because of it. They go to great lengths to try and encourage Yutu to make friends, but the public opinion of them as weirdos really hinders this and is only increased as Yutu matures. This Yutu doesn't like people very much, he grows up assuming everyone is mean and overly judgemental and that he will never be truly accepted for who he is no matter how hard he tries.

Being born in a different world does not make him any less of a Draconia, though unlike his father he is less prone to rage and more to long periods of melancholy; he is very much that sensitive goth kid with reams of bad poetry he will want to burn when he gets older and a love for rainy days. He has a deep love for classical poetry, music, and old clothes. If the area where Yuu lived had a ren faire then you can best bet Yuu took him there as a special treat more than once, he loves seeing all the medieval outfits and activities. He's explored every cemetery your town has, knows all of it's weird rumors, and any fun history stuff that might have happened in and around it, something he retains when transported to Twisted Wonderland. There are few people who know more about the history of Night Raven College than Yutu Draconia, for better or worse.

His interest in the macabre effects how he sees his parent's situation. While other Yutus might have needed time to adjust to the idea of magic and curses, Malleus! Yutu always firmly believed in it and assumed that was exactly what had happened to his parent. He went back and forth on his beliefs about his father, as a small child he thought of his father as a wonderful person who loved his parent so much that he must be searching for them surely, and that any day now he would swoop in and fly Yuu and him away to where they really belonged. When that never happened he began to wonder if maybe his father saw his relationship with Yuu as a mistake and that their memories had been altered purposefully to hide his identity. Whatever the truth, Yutu has decided that his loyalty is to Yuu, and that no matter who is trying to harm them he will hunt them down and have his revenge.

He announces as much to Crewel after he arrives in the mirror chamber, magic sparking at his finger tips as he roars it with a force he didn't know he had and immediately starts hacking at how dry his throat has become. It's very cute and not as intimidating as he might have wanted, but his point comes across well enough. Diasomnia is extremely pleased to have a Draconia back in the Housewarden's seat, though Yutu is less than pleased with this new position of authority.

The transition of being a hated outcast to the rightful King of a literal fallen kingdom is jarring. Learning of his father's controversial marriage to Yuu, of the uproar caused by their disappearance and his father's outright refusal to ever give up hope that his child and spouse would return is heartbreaking. Silver and Sebek had standing orders to go to them when not if they did, that's how badly his father wanted to believe he would be back. He was barely able to live with himself without them, but he had to. He had a kingdom relying on him, and someone else too.

We have gone back and forth in these posts about giving Yutu a sibling, but Malleus! Yutu absolutely has one. Dragon fae create eggs from magic and their partner's love, so in this scenario Malleus and Yuu decided to have two children, one that Mal would nourish and one that Yuu would. Technically, the Crown Princess is older than Yutu, but since she hatched from an egg she matures even slower than he does. She did grow faster than her father, the ability to transform into a human came much more naturally to her because of Yuu's love, but she doesn't look or sound much older than six. You are insane if you think this means she thinks of herself as the younger sibling though, her egg was older by two whole years so there! That means she is in charge! So Yutu absolutely has to stop learning boring "political smience" or whatever and play with her RIGHT NOW. She's wanted to meet him for so long TᴖT how dare her little brother deny her TᴖT look at her she's so cute how could he even think of scolding her TᴖT oh jail for brother jail for 1000 years TᴖT

Yutu might hate socializing and have a negative view of people but he absolutely adores his sister and thinks of himself as the big brother. He lets her claim to be in charge in the same way Malleus let Sebek do whatever he wanted because he finds it amusing. It is not uncommon to see the King in Exile holding court with the Crown Princess on his lap, rocking her softly as she naps. It helps solidify his control over what remains of Briar Valley, they might have been skeptical about having a half human King who cannot even transform into a dragon, but his professed dedication to his father's legacy of sacrifice and the clear adoration of his sister make his authority tough to deny.

Speaking of sacrifice, going back in time was hard for Malleus! Yutu. He felt there was absolutely no way he could bring his sister back with him because of how young she was and he was skeptical of whether or not it would even work. If it didn't he would be depriving Briar Valley of a king again, but if it did well. Then he would never need to be king in the first place, which Yutu finds reliving. While he did step up to the task, all he ever really wanted was to live with his father, Yuu, and now his sister in whatever way would have been normal for them. Sure, that normal turns out to have been quite abnormal, but that doesn't mean he still does not want it.

When the Once and Never King sees his father he has maybe more information than any of the other Yutus, even those who had met their dads. He conducted lengthy interviews with both Silver and Sebek, compiling a great pile of notes that he went through over and over again trying to come up with a strategy. All of that planning goes out the window when they actually meet, Yuu asks for permission from Tsunotarou to introduce the two of them, thinking it would be nice for both him and Yutu to have more friends and Malleus is just intrigued enough to say yes.

So this is a dragon fae. It's the only thing Yutu can bring himself to think when he sees Malleus, the other, more intense thoughts and emotions are distracted by the fireflies that accompany his father's arrival. They're beautiful, he can't remember having seen anything like them before, certainly not in his future. His father looks at him in brief surprise, and magic tingles up Yutu's spine. It's similar to the feeling he had when he first saw his sister, like recognizing like and seeking to form a connection. It hurts to shut himself off, but he smiles and focuses on his humanity as he puts forward his hand. "Hello Mr. Tsunotarou, I'm Yutu." The smile that stretches its way across Malleus's face is pure amusement, he must have really liked this ruse. What did Yuu think about that when they learned?

"My the humans of your world are certainly brave." He shakes his hand proudly, clearly pleased at the normalcy of Yutu's treatment but still painfully unaware how to be normal about it. "I am deeply pleased to make your acquaintance."

Malleus adores Yutu. There's just something about him that activates a part of him that he wasn't aware of before, and while he doesn't understand what those emotions are he recognizes his increased need to be protective of Yuu for exactly what it is. His mind thinks of Yuu as his mate, in body and soul, and that does terrify him slightly. Yuu is so tragically human, they'll die if he takes them home. They'll die if he lets them go to their home. They'll die if he never says anything at all and lets his love rot out his heart alone in his tower while they freely move through the world without ever having known of his emotions-

I haven't given much thought as to how I would want a Malleyuu confession to go down, but I could see them starting a sort of awkward courting process where Malleus takes them for long, late night walks in the forest to slow dance alone, brings them roses and handcrafted jewels he silently begs for them to wear to show just how close they are getting- but however it happens there is at least an understanding that there is something between them by the time Yutu's disguise is knocked off and he's forced to come clean.

It's a reveal Malleus does not take well. Oh not that he hates his son, he is overwhelmed with such a powerful love and joy at the mere concept of his existence he could never- no it's the fact that his future. His happy ending, that he fucking deserves after everything that his family has been through, was robbed from him and he wasn't able to do anything about it other than go to sleep? Him? The most powerful mage (fifth actually but he doesn't care about that) in existence couldn't stop that? Unacceptable.

After Yuu gets him to calm down and soothes the brewing thunderstorm they both are very focused on the well being of their child. I feel like both Yuu and Malleus would want Yutu to have a chance to just enjoy himself, for him to take off the crown he was never meant to have and just. Breathe for a moment. That's part of Malleus's motivation for introducing him as his son to the Diasomnia gang, he wants his child to have a chance to have some fun with his Uncles and Pee Paw Lilia.

Sebek bursts into tears when he learns of Waka Sama jr's existence. I think he feels a sort of kinship with Yutu, they're both half fae and they both have a deep respect for Malleus. He's very shy when he sees how much respect Yutu has for him. He's surprisingly humble when Yutu thanks him for protecting him in the future, insisting that he was just doing his job. He likes listening to Yutu play the piano, I could see Yutu trying to teach Sebek how to play an instrument, partially to spend time with him and partially just because he is curious as to how tone deaf Sebek can be.

Silver is deeply concerned about Yuu and Yutu's safety. He organizes with Sebek and Lilia to change up their patrols to include defending the new members of the royal family . He is a bit confused as to why Yutu wants to just hang out with him when all he really does is train, but he also is glad that the little prince is willing to train with him and take Silver's concerns about his safety seriously. I could see Silver apologizing for not being able to defend his parent, genuinely distressed about his situation and Yutu being a bit awkward about it. He never thought to blame Silver ever, why would he? Yutu is not unused to Silver's kindness, but it still overwhelms him. It's a pure sort of love that challenges what Yutu thinks about the world, and he doesn't know what to do with that.

Now. Mr. Pee Paw. Lilia is probably the most excited out of the entire group, look at this kid. You see him? Living physical proof that humans and fae can get along! If a Draconia did it then you can too, Grandpa Leven would be so proud! The future is concerning sure, but now that he knows about it he can plan for it. Lilia might be old, but he is still has some fight left in him, and he is very happy to use it on securing Malleus's family's future.

Yes, he does try to cook for Yutu. He wants to make him a birthday cake because he insists that they should throw him a party even if it isn't his birthday so he can have one with his Pee Paw and Dad. Yes everyone forces Yutu to distract him so they can make sure they've got something edible. He's so sad about it, how could they, jail for the little prince, jail for 1000 years.

Malleus is overly confident about his ability to change the future. Failure isn't an option as far as he is concerned, he will find the person who dared to corrupt his perfect future and he will have his due. His son will never have to live in a world without him, and he will never have to live in a world that rejected Yuu. Someone clearly needs to be reminded of just who Malleus Draconia is, and that memory will not be pretty.

Bonus

So the little crown princess. She learns that her idiot younger brother is planning to go back in time without her and she is very angry about this. How dare he, she knows he can't do anything without her so she makes sure to tag along anyway.

I toyed with the future kid reveal coming from her just marching up to Yutu and giving him orders, but I also like the idea of the Draconia family finding her lost in the woods crying because of how distressed she is that she can't find her little brother. Either way she doesn't understand the need for secrecy and wants to spend every single second she can with her parents. She causes a lot of rain when she finally gets to meet Yuu in person, she had so many dreams about meeting them and now they're real and she can hug them- she's just got too many emotions in her little body send help.

The Draconia family has pretty easy to follow naming theme, but I wasn't too certain about what names to give Yutu and his sister. I like the idea of Princess Draconia being named Mallia after Lilia but I am less certain about Yutu. In my notes Miss Princes was just called Princess Tamago because she hatched out of an egg. That's not her name but I could see that being something Yutu calls her.

#<3 asks #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #malleus x reader #malleyuu #malleus draconia x reader

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twelvemonkeyswere · 9 hours

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Brienne and Femininity (and Masculinity)

I’ve been musing how one of the most important topics in Brienne's storyline is femininity, and even though her story isn't finished, we can fairly see what some of her major themes are around this—particularly, how performing or failing at performing femininity affects her both internally and externally.

Often I see people pointing out that, in spite of all of Brienne’s traditionally masculine ways—her clothes, her skill set, her body shape, to name a few—she does not fully reject femininity. That she likes little cute animals and fairy tales and wears dresses, and is shy and blushes frequently. This is an important point because, very often, fantasy settings made the assumption that a woman can only be taken seriously if she goes beyond “her womanhood” and acts and thinks “like a man,” as opposed to other girls who are too busy mending or wanting romance. Brienne challenges those tendencies that GRRM saw in his contemporaries. Things have changed a lot since (hello The Locked Tomb, for example), but you can still see where he is working from, and how many of the aspects of Brienne's story still resonate with more modern audiences because, well, sexism hasn't stopped existing. It's also important because the larger asoiaf and got fandoms often refuse to see this side of her, reducing her to a walking sword or a cardboard cut out of a pushover.

Now, my main issue here is that I feel several interpretations of Brienne have now gone on the other direction, and focus so much on Brienne PERFORMING traditional femininity—wearing luxurious dresses, using make up, accepting lavishing gifts, or wondering if she can be desired, for example—that we've gone sometimes on the opposite direction. I feel like many times we’re afraid or do not know how to approach characterizing her as someone who rejects aspects of femininity without making her into another “not like other girls” stereotype.

My two cents on the matter is that if we focus too much in what Brienne can't but "wants" to perform, we forget that she is, in fact, gladly rejecting some common impositions of femininity in her society.

Beginning with swordplay at a young age, for example, she was very glad to ditch a more traditional education in order to learn how to fight the way we know men are taught in asoiaf/got. She is also explicitly more comfortable in men's clothes. We all like the scene where Jaime makes an effort to give her a dress and she appreciates it, but we don't even find out what happened to the dress, because, presumably, the dress itself is not THAT important, at least not as much as the fact Jaime gave her gifts as a form of appreciation. Dresses have been used in Brienne's past to mock her (the event with the bear being the most recent one), and the important part is that Jaime is the only one who has given her one without that ulterior motive. The point of the scene is that where everyone undermines and underestimates her, he is acting the opposite way. We’re seeing how the relationship between them has evolved and that he is doing his best to mend what has happened and what he has done. She is given a dress and a sword as symbols that someone else in the story is beginning to appreciate her for all she is.

Beyond that, we even get details on the old shield Brienne got at Harrenhal, but not a word about the dress. Brienne explicitly doesn't really like being in dresses, she prefers mail and breeches, and feels more at ease in them than anything else. This is not her hating dresses because she is above them. I can’t remember well but as far as we know it’s just her preference: I don’t recall her saying she hates dresses, just that she prefers trousers. She must have been wearing dresses her whole life! It’s not likely she is unused to them. But we do know the act of being given a dress is important in Brienne’s story. The problem is not that they can’t make dresses for her, the problem is that everyone who forces her to wear a dress wants to signal how lacking she is as a woman, trying to fit her in a box too small for her real shape and then mocking her because she doesn’t meet their standard. The problem is they want to make her uncomfortable and they want to humiliate her, because she dares to exist in a way that doesn’t conform to patriarchal ideals. And the problem is that she likes to wear trousers and mail. She likes to wear masculine clothes, and they want her to be very aware of how much they disapprove.

And we also hear a great deal about marrying and having children out of duty. There's a certain loss she feels there because she believes that, at that point, all those missed opportunities will never present themselves again. All her life, she grew up with a dichotomy that dictated that the chance of having a family or children was through duty or none at all, because she is her father’s heir and—they kept telling her—nobody would want an ugly, masculine, temperamental girl as a wife. They could only want her for the money she brought. The point of the story is that, once again, failing the standards of femininity has forced her into a mentality where she thinks she can’t be loved because nobody would like who and what she is. But even then, even with that thorn in her mind, she still feels relieved she didn't have to perform these particular duties. The only thing she’s sad about is that she thinks she's missed any chance at having a family at all and will never know what that might be like. She doesn’t actively want babies or even to be married. She is still young, and at least to me, she seems to view these things in hypothetical rather than explicit goals or wants. She thinks that, at 20, there is no opportunity for her to experience these things because of how her society works. It’s the lack of choice that she mourns, down the line. But she rejects that particularly role that femininity imposes on her now. She didn’t want it, and she is happy it didn’t go through. She literally fought an old man to prove how much she didn’t want those impositions.

All this is interesting to me because Brienne also sort of thinks of herself as her father's son as well as her father's daughter. It almost slips her mouth once or twice. She is aware, I think, that many times the differences between a son and a daughter boil down not really to gender but to the sort of duty they perform. And she wants to do the sorts of things sons do, too. Men regularly learned to fight and wore the clothes she liked best and used hard-earned skills in a way she wanted to use them. There are layers to this (we’ll get to that in a bit) but she is, I think, very aware of her masculinity, and, if left to her own devices, she seems comfortable in it. The problem is she is NOT left to her own devices.

Most of Brienne's self doubt comes from outside forces. As a woman, they underestimate her. As a woman, they think she is stupid. As a gender non-conforming woman, every jape uttered goes directly to her womanhood. As a woman, if she looks the way she does and dresses the way she does and fights the way she does, when she expresses any vulnerable emotion, any shred of “femininity,” she is mocked for it. She likes dancing and beautiful things and pretty boys but a woman as masculine as she is is not the sort of person who gets to express those preferences without judgment from those around her.

The point is Brienne’s world wants her miserable either way: being unable to be a woman the way they demand of her, because she is too much “like a man” for it, or being unable to be a man, because she is too much a woman for that. The point is she can’t win regardless of what she does. Because that’s how sexism works.

But Brienne’s story is, I think, one about choices. The thing is that the world makes it harder for her, but she shouldn't have to be one thing or the other. She shouldn’t have to be defined by one or the other. If she wants to fight in the mud and smell roses and wear chain-mail and talk to charming men, she should be able to choose all of those things. I think it’s easy to focus too much in what aspects of femininity Brienne likes or dislikes instead of looking at what the story is proposing, which is to look at what Brienne,as a person, likes or dislikes. What she wants. Her parallel story to Jaime is about how the world will always try to put folks in boxes, especially those who, for some reason or another, do not easily fit in those boxes. The question is not “what feminine/masculine parts of Brienne is she happy performing” but rather “what does Brienne want, and why does she feel like she cannot get it and doesn't dare ask.”

This is also what drives her to servitude. There’s a phrase out there that says that if you don’t think you can be liked, you try to become useful, so at least there’s a reason to keep you around. It’s heartbreaking to see how Brienne’s vision of herself has been so skewed by the emotional abuse, parental neglect, and bullying she’s experienced since a young age. She doesn’t think anyone will grow close to her, so at least she can be close to people by serving them. She wants to put her skills to use, she wants to find a place where she fits, where she can be more herself, but she isn’t sure what that looks like or how to find it. She’s still searching, and learning many things on the way.

And Brienne is still very young. We can see her confidence growing and her worldview challenged and she is beginning to see the realities of herself and of the world around her through various trials by fire. Misogyny makes her feel incomplete, but we know the things she trusts about herself while simultaneously seeing the way she constantly doubts others. How she can't never express all of herself without constant judgment or mockery.

I feel like yes, the fact Brienne doesn't reject all traditional femininity is really important to her themes, but by extension, it's as important that shedoes reject some of those traditional expressions of femininity. What she is truly rejecting is imposition, not femininity. What she truly needs to embrace is freedom, not masculinity. She's making her own vows, breaking her own promises, going through her own mistakes. She is learning the hard way. Agency in a world of limited choices is one of Brienne's main themes too. There are moral issues that go deep within her story as well as examinations of the effects of war and the struggle to find authenticity and connection in a community that refuses to acknowledge yours, a community drenched in pretense and lost in performance.

And I think it’s easy to get too caught up in her wanting to be a girlfriend or a mother or wearing a dress that we bypass the whole conversation around why that matters at all. I feel like Brienne's success isn't going to come from her fully embracing all her feminine traits or fully accepting all her masculine traits but from being able, down the line, to be exactly who she is.

#i was looking at my drafts and here are some scrambled ideas I had that I wanted to release so I've tried to make them more organized #brienne of tarth #asoiaf

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transmasc-rose · 2 days

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I like Rose, and I think they should have done more with the Bad Wolf event. So here's a small list of related AUs that have been rattling around in my head.

Feel free to use them for whatever, I'd love to see if you write something tho!

Becoming Bad Wolf, absorbing the Time Vortex and using its powers effects Rose beyond that one moment. Merely absorbing it long enough to expel the power was enough to cause Nine to regenerate, and Rose used its power for an extended period. Time travelling on its own is enough to change the body, the cells, the aging process. Being around enough Time Lords effects the aging process. So when you absorb the vortex into yourself, become it for an extended moment, make someone else immortal in a way no one else is, who's to say it doesn't effect you too? And when you leave with Tentoo, the human Doctor, the mortal Doctor, and you think--we're going to live together, we're going to die together. And the original Doctor thinks--this is for the best. I won't get more attached, I will lose her on my terms, they'll live what I can't have. But the Doctor ages. And Rose doesn't, whether she can regenerate, or lives in a single timeless body. Not like Jack, she can die, but her Doctor dies first. The Doctor lives the life of the Companion, and Rose lives the tragedy of the Doctor. There's no evidence of Time Lords in Pete's World. Rose and Tentoo have a child in the comics. Does her child die before her too, or does she inherit her "gift"? Does she find her way back home? Is she angry? Is she scared? Is she alone?

Or maybe she's still immortal, but she doesn't leave--either she makes it out of Doomsday in her home dimension, or she refuses to make a choice in Journey's End and insists the original Doctor keep her and Tentoo. What matters is, she's there when Ten regenerates into Eleven. She's there when the TARDIS malfunctions, and decides to crash. And through some happenstance, whether separation while the TARDIS was crashing, splitting up for one reason or another, Prisoner Zero plot devices, or simply breaking the age old rule of "don't wander off", they get separated. And the Doctor leaves for "five minutes". Rose returns to the TARDIS, or thinks she's found the TARDIS, and its not there. At best she sees it leave, or it leaves some signature behind she can track with a device from Pete's World. She knows it was there. So she waits, as Amy waits, because if a universe apart wasn't enough to break her spirit then time travel isn't either. Learns the year, gets a job, maybe goes and does her A levels like she said she wanted to do that one time. Years pass. Does she keep in touch with Amelia, the only lead she has to the Doctor? Rose says she doesn't really like children in Fear Her, but she's tolerated them before. Another strange figure in Amy's life. A connection to her "Raggedy Doctor". And almost as strange, too. Because as the years pass, the five between Doomsday and The Eleventh Hour, and the 12-14 years Amy waits, she doesn't age a day over 19/20. Did she ever get an explanation from the Doctor about Jack, in this vague extra time she's been with him? About how he left him without warning or explanation? Does Jack tell her? Does she worry he left her too? As the days pass, does she worry that he could sense what she was becoming, and abandoned her like he abandoned him? Or did she never know, not even have that context, left hoping that the doctor would one day come back until she has to accept that this time, this might be it. Left to deal with this curse on her own. She was worried Ten would leave her when he got that face. Maybe Eleven did. ...and of course, Eleven returns, none the wiser, and Rose's face only "confirms" he'd barely been gone at all! Nothing to worry about! Right?

#rose tyler #eleventh doctor #tenth doctor #11th doctor #10th doctor #doctor who #tentoo #metacrisis doctor #time petals #tenrose #elevenrose #Yippee!#I will probably reblog this later with more #with varying levels of canon compliance and angst #maybe one day I'll actually write about Rose in Torchwood

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bonzos-number-1-fan · 2 days

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TMAGP 13 Thoughts: Phone Bug

A big episodes for small reasons. Not much world-shaking happened but just enough was said about just the right things. A lot to get into in this one around the incident. We're starting to have the curtain pulled back. Just a crack right now, but that's just more reason to be cracked.

Spoilers for episode 13, and all of TMA, below the cut.

Not a huge amount to touch on in the date portion of the episode other than a couple of sentences. Yeah, Sam is a gifted burn out that's sad about not getting experimented on. Same old same old. But Celia has a baby. Jack being Celia's kid I wasn't expecting mostly because of how that figures into her timeline. She's very heavily implied to be TMA's Celia but based on what she said if she is then she's been in TMP's universe for at least 4 years. A "couple of wild years" and Jack's "just over a year old". Plus 9 months and it's a lot longer than it might've appeared. None of that stuff tripped Freddy's possible lie detector either that I heard.

If you work under the assumption that the voices are who most people think, and they started roughly when they arrived, then that's a fairly major time discrepancy. The voices are about a year old but Celia has been around for 4.

However, it doesn't strictly rule that out either. Firstly, we know that moving between universes isn't actually one-to-one time-wise. Anya Villette went backwards 2 weeks when she crossed over. So them arriving at different times could support the idea that she's TMA's Celia further. Her general explanation of events could also be explained by this too. If she's not there willingly, or is there willingly but it didn't quite go to plan, a couple of wild years while you get your footing in a world you don't belong to isn't far fetched. If she was there looking for the voices then her showing up so relatively late could be explained by her baby too. So it's certainly not a dead and buried theory yet.

While Jack isn't Jack Barnabas he and the voices are about the same age. If people want to go rabid over that.

Gwen and Lena's little chat has a similar amount to really dig into. It's nice to see Gwen dealing with it all, and it's annoying we still don't know who died, but Lena does have a lot to say in a few words.

The world is full of opposing forces, some benevolent, most not. In order for the wheels to keep on turning, all these forces need to be monitored and balanced. That is where we come in.

This probably the most information we've had on the OIAR to this point from the show itself. I think most of this was safely assumed before this point. They've been doing a lot of monitoring, categorisation, and the only responses we have seen have been tamping major spikes down. A world of opposing forces is also a given. We are being led to believe that these are analogous to the 14+1 but there being benevolent ones if that's true is a big mix up. If you take the above timeline idea a step further and say the 14+1 arrived much earlier (or it doesn't matter because of how they're temporally weird) the benevolent ones could be native to TMP. They could be all TMP had.

Her assertion that the OIAR is a balance on these forces is interesting. Beyond the obvious stuff it also leans into an idea I've been throwing about regarding Starkwall. In the perception of Starwall might not really be the whole picture. The San Pedro Square massacre could've been an easy scapegoat to pin on them for the OIAR to split with them. A split caused by a disagreement in ethics. Starkwall thus far hasn't been shown to have an incredible disregard for human life based on Ep 7. The OIAR definitely has been. It could just be a PR move because the massacre was too big to contain but that feels like the least interesting way to handle this. A faction that's all in on monster hit men splitting with a faction who is against it has more room for interesting drama and worldbuilding IMO.

Balance was also a very large aspect of TMA in the end. The OIAR working towards that balance isn't as noble a goal as it might sound. Or it at least has the potential to be an incredibly misguided goal.

Okay, with all that mostly out of the way onto the incident itself. I enjoy this one a fair bit. Very different to what's come before it but with another recurring theme. We're starting to see a couple of patterns emerge now although it's too early to start naming things. I don't think there is a lot to really get into but this one was written by Alex, had a new VA, and was a recurring idea. Which does all point to this being quite important as these things go. All the episodes will likely tie up quite nicely in the end but this one seems quite relevant currently. In any case this was a fun one and I'm kinda curious how some of the elements within it will tie together. Mainly the gambling and insects.

Also, super weird they went with Zorrotrade for this. Because that's a real thing. Or was a real thing? It might be dead now, but still.

Post-incident chat has nothing I really want to comment on. More Alice and Sam is always good, even if Alice is trying really hard to not seem very upset.

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet

DPHW Theory: 4622 doesn't seem particularly noteworthy. It's interesting from a thematic angle how this differs from Rolling With It. Both obviously very linked to gambling but this one lacks the compulsion elements. Which is a good indicator that H is linked to that sort of thing. Not that I need to convince myself of that further.

CAT# Theory: 3. Insert screams et cetera, et cetera. More seriously there still isn't a convincing pattern to this. Although I might be swinging back to my original tria prima and/or triple deity interpretation.

R# Theory: B is where I was thinking it'd end up while listening. So that's nice. Not much to add to this. Much like with DPHW the more information that lines up with the theory the less there is to talk about it because I've already done the hard bit.

Header talk: Gambling (Application) -/- Murder. Other than Application being a pretty weird Subsection I'm not sure there is much to dig into here. Although it does likely confirm he's dead. Which does make it a little strange that his statement wasn't read by one of the Freddy lot.

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #tmagp theory #tmagp speculation #klaus = kl4-u5

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otherworldlygate · 2 days

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Once again it's Regal appreciation hour by which I mean day by which I mean year by which I mean lifetime.

I was very much prepared to not write any fanfiction this year, but I cannot divorce myself from how awesome my favorite Symphonia blorbos are and so I am writing yet another stupid fanfic. I feel feral about these characters in general but Raine gets quite a lot of attention (because she's wonderful, obviously) so I don't want to focus on her too much. Regal, on the other hand, has been underappreciated in the ToS fandom since the game's release day, so I must advocate for him.

I've been RPing as him for the last year or so, and together my RP partner and I have written about 320,000 words of a story. I'm having a blast, and a big part of that is because Regal is, despite the flaws in the storytelling of ToS as a whole surrounding him (and how all of the Tethe'alla characters kind of fall flat), a rather well-conceived and implemented character. Yeah, his clothes are dumb (I'm happy to retcon that outfit with zero regrets) and the game blows through his story at such a breakneck pace he doesn't get the space or the arc he deserves (he should have taken his shackles off as part of his 'sacrifice' to fight the angels), but he is a genuinely fascinating character who feels, just like many of the others do, as if he belongs very specifically in the world he was created for.

I know a lot of people like to write him as this sad sack of shit just absolutely lost in the grief sauce (see the part about how he didn't get the arc he deserved), but I think that's a mistake. See, the biggest bump in the road for Regal was his lack of understanding of what was happening and why. When you think about it, he was faced with having to kill Alicia seemingly out of nowhere. Like one day he's just minding his business and the next Alicia is gone and very quickly after that she's a monster trying to kill him AND HE HAS NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON. He has no answers. All he knows is that he killed her, and his autistic* brain latches onto that detail because it's all he has.

You have to think, too, about the fact that the game gives him nobody. His parents are dead. George, the only person even remotely close to Regal--someone he's known his *whole life*--betrayed him. (George didn't mean for things to go Like That and he's sorry he did it, but HE STILL DID IT.) Regal doesn't have friends and the extra material makes it clear that he was literally raised, specifically by his father, to be a workaholic. Do you think anyone came to see him in prison? He fought in a coliseum for his life for YEARS. He was on friendly terms with some of the other inmates but the guy had eight years to just sit there and get stuck in the loop of knowing he killed the one person he'd let himself get even remotely close to.

Which is something else people always downplay for some reason. The shit with Alicia isn't just "guy is sad because he killed his girlfriend." It's very much, "guy was born and bred to take on the family legacy" except in this case the family legacy is a company, an island, a noble bloodline, and also the absolutely insane idea that work and profit is all that matters. Everyone else is out to get you. Keep the workers dissatisfied but keep them hooked just enough that they'll never leave. Take no time for fun or friends or merriment. Everything in your life is a business transaction. Don't ever forget it. It's us vs. them. You're alone and you have to make this your entire life or it'll all fall to pieces and it will be your fault.

The drama cd in particular really honed in on that way of being raised and it makes his entire character make complete sense. At a relatively young age his father died and he ended up on top (though it's stated he had to work as a CEO before he was elected via a board to the position of President). Having no other guidelines other than what he was taught--and what George himself adhered to--Regal followed that path...until he ended up miserable, because, despite the way he was raised, he's a goddamn empath**.

After literal YEARS of occasionally running into Alicia and talking to her, he starts forming a connection to her--which is important because he's never allowed himself to do this before. And at one point he realizes he doesn't even know her name...which comes as a surprise to him...and brings with it shame. After this, he starts living for himself. He listens to his employees--something his father never did. He starts enacting rules to protect his employees, particularly from things that would hurt them in the field, because part of what was making him so miserable was wrestling with the empathy of their terrible working conditions on top of just hearing his father's manta repeating itself in his head all the time.

I cannot stress enough how important this is. Alicia, despite being a love interest and someone he was interested in seriously dating and perhaps someday marrying (the details of their relationship are never known but it's almost more tragic if they were just starting to be serious), WAS STILL HIS EMPLOYEE.

He was supposed to protect his employees. He was doing so much to ensure his employees would be safe. And then he killed Alicia.

Alicia, the one person he allowed himself to get close to.

Now, consider the fact that he was raised as a tool and not a beloved son; he was not allowed to have friends and not allowed to make merry. He was under his father's thumb until his father's untimely death--a death, by the way, that only surprised him with its suddenness; he did not grieve that man!! Regal, as a 25-year-old man, had ZERO coping mechanisms. All he had was the truth he was raised under and the fact that he went against that truth AND WAS NOW BEING PUNISHED FOR IT. How can someone like this think of anything except that they are the reason George was put in a position where he had to get rid of Alicia? That the only reason Alicia was experimented on and turned into a monster was because of her connection to Regal?

IT MAKES ME FEEL SO FERAL!!!

The events of the game open his eyes to the ACTUAL truth, to what actually happened AND WHY IT HAPPENED TO ALICIA. In the end he learns he had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. If he had not befriended and started falling for Alicia, she still would have died--it's just, if she hadn't had a more direct connection to Regal, who knows where she might have met her end. Alone, forgotten? At least someone knew her as she was; at least someone can tell Presea the kind of person her sister was.

The ToS fandom has always loved joking about how Regal's just into punishment as a kink or whatever (and I'll never forgive the shitty non-canon-in-my-heart sequel for leaning so hard into that angle, fuck you fuck you fuck you) but let's be serious about it for a hot second. Yes, I think learning this information puts him on a better path, but you can't erase 8 years of self-loathing and fear instantly. Did you guys really think this man would just forget about the darkest years of his life and start frolicking in fields of flowers?

The trauma he's endured goes so much deeper than "I killed the person I loved," and boiling it down to that really does the character a disservice. The "born for a specific purpose, not allowed to exist outside of that purpose" bit is also given to Colette and Zelos, but while their role is being a sacrifice whose only use is dying or procreating to continue the line to have more sacrifices (absolutely also traumatizing btw), Regal's situation feels a lot more like indoctrinated religion and, very specifically (and no I am not kidding), religious trauma. Again, he endured that very controlled lifestyle complete with a mantra from birth into his early 20s, and the MOMENT he broke away from it too far, his life came crashing down around him in a very painful and traumatizing way.

Now, you might think the religious trauma parallel is unfounded, if not also the indoctrinated religion aspect of it, it could just as easily be a parallel for an abusive and controlling relationship, right down to the betrayal from someone who is supposed to have your best interests at heart the moment you step outside of that control to the feelings of shame and self-loathing and "you did this to yourself."

So whenever I see people joking about what a sad sack of shit he is or whatever, I'm just astounded, especially if it's coming from someone who loves literally any other character in the game. Like, you'll definitely have your blorbos, and I totally understand if Regal just ain't it for you, but I find it really disconcerting that someone might find (for example) Yuan's trauma deeply meaningful but see Regal's as stupid or silly.

I'm pretty sure I started this post to talk about how easy it is for me to RP as Regal because he's just such a great character to sink into and write about, particularly because I like to imagine that, starting in the post-game, he deeply regrets some of the choices he's made in his life, and, rather than lean into the things that have already transpired, he seeks to do what he can to better the world around him with the resources and power that he has.

It's like the ultimate fuck-you to the way his father raised him. He's not wasting the skills he's developed, but he's also not using them to hurt people or for personal or Lezareno profit.

I think most of us love writing about characters who have to work through their trauma, but there's an extra layer here that I particularly enjoy with Regal. With Raine I'm all about her inability to trust easily and her struggle to feel truly comfortable around other people, but with Regal I think it's maybe specifically related to the fact that he has had a lot handed to him that he didn't necessarily want, and his self-sacrificing nature lends itself to him feeling obligated to take it. I fully believe Regal would be happier and better off stepping away from Lezareno and from his family's toxic ass legacy*** (or at least not working it full-time as the acting President) but I can't ignore the fact that...these things are all he has and all he knows. So writing about him attempting to get back into the swing of things, maybe struggling to find time for himself, falling into workaholic patterns by mistake, learning to set boundaries between his private life and his job...all while not being fully satisfied and finding more fulfillment in charity work and other pursuits, just makes him feel like a very well-rounded character. Like...it's believable that he would continue to work a job he didn't particularly love specifically because not only does he not know anything else, but he knows with this position of power he can make a lot of things happen that would be impossible if he just twiddled his thumbs on the sidelines--like financial assistance going to Palmacosta, or his duties as a nobleman to try to get better laws passed in Tethe'alla, etc.

This was a pretty clumsily-written post and for that I am truly sorry. I've just been absolutely insane lately thinking about Regal and I had to get some of why I think he's such a wonderful character out into the world.

*this is just my headcanon but a lot about Regal screams autism to me.

**this is canon as far as I'm concerned. I wrote him this way far before I ever heard the drama cd, and the drama cd just solidified it for me tenfold.

***there's a scene in the hotel with Lloyd I think where Regal says his family's legacy on Altamira started when Tethe'alla flipped over to being a flourishing world last, which means they were in a position of power great enough to build an empire on Altamira already at that time (800+ years ago). I don't want to get into how awful this probably was or how evil the family was because I think you can all imagine that for yourselves. Also, nobody ever mentions the fact that Regal is the last of his family line, but it's a very convenient built-in control tactic to guilt someone into doing as they're told or risk bringing shame to a family that's been going strong and unbroken for over 1,000 years.

#regal bryant #tales of symphonia meta #tales of symphonia

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