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the-hidden-pages · 3 years

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Let Me Worship You: Part 1 - Zemo x Fem!Reader

The fact that this man is the one who dragged me out of my refusing-to-write-fanfiction grave and let me post old work while working on new stuff is...Impressive. Damn you Daniel Bruhl.

Synopsis: With all the horrible things you had heard of Baron Helmut Zemo, you hadn't anticipated just how badly he wished to win you over. To a further extent, you certainly hadn't anticipated how tempting it would be to give in.

No bad NSFW this chapter - this is the lead up to the main course.

You were not an Avenger.

Unsurprising, really, given what you perceived to be your lack of talent and marketable super-heroine prowess, and so when Bucky called you up asking for a favour, you were pleasantly surprised.

You had only met Bucky on the rare occasion he let you help him, often expressing that he viewed you as a worrywart, a particularly bad day of his leading to him accusing you of trying to be his mother. He later apologized, hearing your explanation that you wanted to help in any way you could, and since you didn't have a superhero serum or fancy suit or arm, you relied on what you could - your mind and your giving nature.

He must have remembered this conversation, because he brought you with him and Sam to what appeared to be an underground parking garage.

"What're you talking about, you wanna break Zemo out of jail? Where the hell are we Buck? Have you lost your mind?!" Sam was raving as you followed behind the two men, silent as you stew over what Bucky had told you.

Babysitting duty.

You were effectively on glorified babysitting duty of an incredibly dangerous criminal.

"James..." you hesitated when he discussed this with you, how could you not? "I don't know how useful I'll be here."

"Very," he countered, his voice dull while his eyes were pleading. "Sam’s an Avenger, I have the serum. But you, you're just a person. Zemo will be less likely to hurt and immediately betray you because of that fact alone."

"He's killed people who've been in his way before. Normal people."

"He won't kill you. I'll make sure of that."

A heavy sigh escapes you as Sam and Bucky continue to bicker about the logistics of breaking Zemo out.

"I don't like how casual you're being about this, it's unnatural - and - where are we man?"

"I wouldn't mind an answer to that too," you supply, but any answer is interrupted by the sound of a door unlocking.

The three of you turn to approaching footsteps, and find no one other than Helmut Zemo striding towards you, dressed in a prison guard's uniform.

Sam responds immediately, arguing to throw him back in jail, while Bucky tries to calm him down. But you can't help but stare at the man before you as he removes the cap on his head, arms raised in an attempt to calm the men down.

"If I may" his voice rasped, but he was stopped short by Sam and Bucky in unison.

"NO!"

Zemo nodded, looking away almost sheepishly. "Apologies," came the quiet response.

If it were any other situation, you would have laughed - those two had the dynamics of a married couple and they couldn't stand each other. And for them to completely shut down the killer in front of them was...incredibly funny.

But you had a job to do.

As the boys continued to bicker, you took slow steps forward towards the man now looking you up and down, trying to place your part in all of this.

"Don't mind them," you spoke quietly, not wanting to distract Sam and Bucky, but still intending to speak with the criminal. "They're having some troubles in paradise. You must be Zemo."

His eyes take you in, a small smirk beginning to form. "So I must. May I have the pleasure of your name, Liebling?"

You offer your name hesitantly, and he repeats it back to you, as though he were sampling what it might taste like.

"Beautiful name, thank you." He turns to face the two men still arguing, not noticing your introductions. "I really think I'm invaluable..."

"Shut up..." Sam warned, before turning back to Bucky, looking between him and you.

You nod reassuringly to him - this is necessary, if the super soldiers are to be dealt with.

A sharp sigh leaves Sam. "Okay. If we do this, you don't make a move without our permission. And she is watching you every step of the way."

Bucky interjects. "And if anything happens to her, you're going to wish we left you in that cell."

Zemo nods, looking to you once again. "Fair."

You tilt your head slightly, unable to read his eyes as they examine you. You brush it off, chalking it up to him appreciating not being thrown back into a cell immediately. "Okay Zemo. Where do we start?"

*************************************

Zemo wasn't sure of what to make of you, he realized as you were on the jet to Riga.

You weren't an Avenger, you weren't a soldier, super or otherwise. You seemed to just be a person, one constantly offering her help where she could, even when it was to her own detriment.

He also took note of how rarely your help was appreciated or reciprocated.

You would offer help any moment you could, carrying supplies, offering to fetch food, simply offering and ear to listen. You were quick to attempt to smooth over Sam and Bucky's disputes, and you would play along with the role Zemo would assign you without much question - anything to help, you would say.

You were kind, he noticed as well. Smart, and shrewd, and clearly with trust issues, but you were kind and polite. You spoke with him as much as you might Sam or Bucky, you offered him your trust under the promise he would aide you find the super soldier serum. With your kindness, he thought it might be easy to manipulate you, to slip away from the group, maybe even to ask you to join him.

But there was an issue with his theory, he quickly noticed - any attempt to woo you, attract you, win you...didn't seem to work.

He hadn't been at the task long, mind you, but he had hoped you would be impressed with the jacket, the Baron title, the jet, the offer of wine. Instead, you simply seemed uncomfortable. Come Madripoor, you were happy to play the part of eye candy to escape much attention, yet when he offered you to keep the stunning dress, shoes, and jewelry ensemble you simply waved it off, claiming that you'd reimburse him if he insisted on you keeping it. You were happy to dance near him, unable to hide your laughter at his moves, yet he offered you a drink and you promptly declined, claiming it unnecessary.

Zemo's brow furrows as he observes you, awake and quietly reading as Sam and Bucky both sleep on the flight.

"What's your motive, Liebling?" he questions, and you glance up from your page.

"Don't tell me the criminal doesn't trust me," you respond wryly, turning your gaze back.

"No, I don't mean like that," he shifts, leaning forward to continue to observe the woman that was his guard. "I wonder what keeps you going. Some are motivated by riches, and dreams. Others from spite and anger. What do you want from life, my dear? What causes you to wake up in the morning?"

You pause, looking up to search his eyes to see where this question was coming from. You weren't sure what game he was playing, and you weren't sure how to answer him either. You eventually look back down to your book, a small smile playing on your lips.

"Nothing wakes me up in the morning, given I rarely get to sleep most nights."

His brows furrowed as she goes back to her pages, eager for the conversation to end. Her difficulty doesn't seem to be that he's a criminal - she's spoken plenty freely to him, she agrees to his plans...

The difficulty, he begins to realize with a smile. Maybe he's beginning to see what the difficulty is after all.

*************************************

You weren't sure what to make of Zemo, you think as you lie awake at night in the Riga safe house.

This criminal coming out of nowhere, apparently being rich as hell, so far doing nothing to cause you to believe he would betray you (yes, Sam and Bucky were shocked by his killing of Nagel, but really? You weren't shocked) ...but what shocked you the most was how badly he seemed to want to win you over.

You could justify it, sure. You're supposed to be his guard, he's likely trying to get you to let your guard down so he can escape. Yet when he's so charismatic, the way he holds himself, that voice...

Your eyes snap open sharply.

You were attracted to Zemo.

The man you're meant to be watching.

No, you told yourself. You're just lonely, and he's the first man offering you attention in a long time. It doesn't matter that his eyes examining you makes you blush, that you want to run your fingers through his hair, that a quiet voice your head wished that he would kiss you when he pulled you aside with one arm, other hand aiming at a pipe in Madripoor to blow up some poor saps...

It's the heat of the situation, you told yourself. Your options are Sam, Bucky, and Zemo...

Trust you to pick the worst option.

But how could you not, your mind whispers. When he danced like a goofball in a club your heart warmed. When he sat, filled with confidence and righteousness in the jet, legs splayed enough that you could perch on your knees in front of him, worship him, pleasure him. When he left the bathroom this morning in that damned robe, the deep V drawing your eyes down his chest before you could help himself.

You groaned. Of all the thoughts to keep you awake, why did it have to be your assignment on your mind?

It was too hot, your mind was swimming, you knew sleep wouldn't come soon.

And so, you stood, wrapping your arms around your book and padding downstairs in a loose t-shirt and shorts. Zemo had said that you were welcome to whatever resided within the safe house, and you were ready to take up his offer and steal a cup of tea.

You weren't expecting to find anyone else still awake. And yet, you weren't fully surprised to find Zemo sitting in the kitchen, bottle of whiskey at his side, a glass in his hand. He looks up at the sound of your footsteps, a soft smile on his face.

"Good evening, Liebling."

"Zemo. Can't sleep?"

"Unfortunately, not." He leans backwards slightly, examining you. "Another sleepless night for you as well."

"So it would seem."

You take a seat across the counter from him, not wanting to sit too closely to the man you were just fantasizing about. You were good at keeping a straight face, but you wondered if you got too close if he'd somehow be able to smell it on you.

He pushed his bottle forward, cocking an eyebrow at you.

"Drink?"

Your finger caresses the binding of your book as you hesitate to find the words.

"Actually, I had come down to make myself a cup of tea, if you don't mind."

Zemo's eyes lit up slightly, and he stood, motioning for you to stay where you were. "Allow me."

"You don't have to-" you begin to protest, but he's quick to cut you off.

"Please, Liebling, let me spoil you."

The heat that washes over you is clearly visible, if his chuckle is any indicator.

Silence falls and you quietly open your book as Zemo busies himself over the tea. In mere minutes a steeping mug is delicately placed in front of you. You smile graciously and nod, though you falter slightly as he doesn't return to the other end of the counter - rather, sitting on a stool right beside you, inquisitive eyes not leaving your face.

"Can I help you with something, Baron?" you question, taking the tea and blowing on it to cool it down somewhat. His eyes follow your movements, before travelling to meet yours again.

You could drown in those eyes -

"Day after day you offer your help, sarcastically or not," he begins, leaning forward slightly as he rests his chin on his hand, examining you. "Who offers help to the helper?"

You take a sip of your tea, tilting you head. "I don't know what you mean."

"Your refusal of my gifts, your reluctance to let me even make you a cup of tea - at first I wondered if it was in distrust of me, Liebling -"

"Well, you have killed people."

He quirks an eyebrow, and you motion for him to finish.

"I realize now it's because you're uncomfortable being cared for. You spend so much time looking after everyone else, you give no one the opportunity to worship you as you deserve."

You choked a bit on your tea at that.

"I don't know that I deserve to be worshiped, I just...exist. And do what I can to help others."

Zemo leaned forward further, slowly, so as to not push you away in result. "We haven't been acquainted for long, my dear, but from all I've seen from you with Sam, with James, and with an undeserving man such as myself...the strength in your soul and the empathy in your heart...It alone rises you so far above the men and women placed on pedestals because of their supernatural abilities."

You lean forward to match, but your eyes have steeled over. "Your sweet words won't make me let you go, Zemo. I won't betray Sam and Bucky."

He didn't miss a beat. "I should be so lucky to be held captive by you for eternity, Liebling. I don't ask you to betray your friends on my behalf."

"Then what do you want from me, exactly?"

You should be very afraid. The man who singlehandedly tore apart the Avengers is staring at you as if you were a last meal, his knees touching yours, his hand finding its way to lightly perch on your arm.

You should be afraid.

Yet despite your better judgement, you aren't.

"I want you to tell me every one of your desires, so I might fulfill them. I want to see you stand tall in the finest clothes money can buy, to whisk you away to Paris, Vienna, Rome, every beautiful local this world has to offer, local that pale in comparison to the beauty in front of me. I want you to let me bring you tea, wine, food, chocolates, and anything else that might please you. I want you to relax against me, to feel the tension you've had all mission to wash away in the most luxurious bath of your life, while I wash your beautiful hair, while I taste every inch of you."

His voice had dropped to nearly a whisper, and you couldn't stop yourself from leaning forward more to hang off his every word. "I'm not a stupid man. I know it's only a matter of time before I'm back in a prison cell of some kind. And even if I weren't, you may not believe the sincerity of my words. But tonight, little bird, I want you to let me worship you."

Your eyes fluttered as his hand reached forward to cup your cheek, thumb caressing over your bottom lip. You had the strength to look him dead in the eye with one final warning.

"If this is a trick of any kind, Zemo, I won't hesitate to let Bucky rip you to shreds."

The laughter that leaves him fans over your face, drawing your eyes to his lips.

"I'd expect nothing less, Liebling."

His eyes still search your face. A gentleman, you realize. He's waiting for permission.

You lean forward to close the gap, slowly letting your mouth brush over his, tasting him for the first time, as your hand raises to card through the locks of hair in his face. Your body thrums with anticipation of what's to come, with the anxiety that this may be a dangerous move, with pure, undiluted arousal from his words.

Yet you break away gently, both hands cupping his face now as he looks at you, curious as to why you stopped, pleased that his initial seduction worked.

Your hands slowly travel down to his own, and you stand, backing towards the way you came when you first gave up on sleep for the night.

"Come on then. You want to show me what being spoiled is like?"

A grin curls its way onto his face as he spins you in his arms, twirling you so that your back is against his front, his arms around you, his breath hot in your ear.

"Little bird, I'll give you everything you crave and more."

#zemo x reader #zemo fanfic #helmut zemo x reader #baron zemo #helmut zemo #helmut zemo x reader #x reader #baron zemo x reader

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mysticdragon3md3 · 3 years

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I find it endlessly amusing how after 10 years, my OTPs have circled back onto the same type. lol

I realize the Blue Lions have Dedue, and Ashe used to be a commoner. But Ashe got adopted into a higher class. Meanwhile, the Golden Deer has 3 commoners who stay commoners.

And Yukimura probably had commoners serving under him, but Sengoku Basara (2009) takes a lot of time to emphasize that Masamune's commoner associates are named, get screentime, voice his effect on them, and spent time closely serving under him. Meanwhile, Yukimura's only named subordinates seem to also be lords or ninja, more than basic commoners.

When referring to "self-doubt & a phase of failing as a commander", I'm specifally referring to Sengoku Basara (2009) season 2 for Yukimura. That's pretty much most of what he does that season. And he made a critical decision error as a commander that got one of his major subordinates killed and probably also unnecessarily killed some of his other soldiers. Though I am vaguely aware that in one of the videogames, Yukimura similary spent most of the story in self-doubt, after thinking Takeda was dying, and I think he ran his army around doing actions without enough thought.

And of course, with Dimitri, I'm referring to his post-time-skip phase wherein he went full "boar" and refused to properly lead his army. Though after regaining more mental stability and becoming a proper general, he still gets haunted by self-doubts for the rest of his life.

When I spell "Strength" with a capital "S", I'm usually shortening my term "True Strength" and referring to both a mental and emotional fortitude, resilience, and frequently an iron resolve in Compassion. That's just my personal philosophy in defining "True Strength". Personally, I see 2 definitions of "strength" that both converge at Compassion, to define "True Strength". 1) In an amoral sense, strength is resilience in maintaining one's own "soul pattern"/emotions/resolve, without being swayed or influenced by outside forces to change. 2) In terms of defining strength as the ability to do what is most difficult, in my opinion, Compassion is the most difficult. Not only do acts of Compassion often cost a range of efforts from some to exorbitant, but it can also require the enacter to put themselves into a vulnerable position. So it is often something only the strong can afford, or survive, or disregard fears of being vulnerable or taken advantage of. Therefore, in my personal opinion, converging the 2 definitions into an unwavering resolve in Compassion, is my personal definition of "True Strength".

So when I categorize Date Masamune as having Strength, I mean he is unwavering in his resolve towards Compassion. Sengoku Basara 2009 takes a lot of instances to reiterate that Masamune cannot be swayed, his Resolve is unquestioning, no one can stop him, slow him, or change his mind. His catch phase is "pressing onward" (translated as "full speed ahead"). One of his first scenes is charging ahead, disregarding Katakura's warnings for caution. (Notice that in Judge End, this is framed as foolish brashness, but in Sengoku Basara 2009, Katakura smiles and continues following without worry, because he completely trusts Masamune's instincts and decision-making. Because everyone trusts Masamune 2009 to always make decisions based in the best ideals/Compassion.) This is reiterated throughout season 2, when Masamune makes allies and each of them ask him to change directions, but the most they can do is temporarily slow him down, because he doesn't stop moving forward. This Strength directed in outward Compassion towards others is almost unexpected after considering Masamune's historical backstory. One would think that someone betrayed by his mother would become disillusioned and spiteful towards the world. It's a basic supervillain backstory to be betrayed by a trusted figure, especially during fundamental development. But instead, Masamune seems to want only to protect others and bring the whole country under his command, so that the whole country of people can be under his umbrella of protection. The 2009 series only mentions his regret from one of his early battles where lots of his soldiers died, being his major motivation in protecting others, specifically his soldiers. But I've headcanon'ed a lot that can be extrapolated from his historical backstory, that when in conjunction to his actions in Sengoku Basara 2009, portrays a Masamune who has dedicated himself towards Compassion, despite his tragic backstory.

Similarly, Claude's backstory is tragic, yet he emerges with True Strength. I've heard criticisms within the fandom that Claude growing up experiencing so much bullying and discrimination against his being biracial, could not believably yield a person dedicated towards Compassion. But I think that's just brainwashing from too many supervillain tropes telling us that traumatized and mentally ill people invariably become villains. I've heard it's more realistic that people who have experienced trauma, tragedy, or some kind of pain, actually are more likely to increase their ability to empathize/sympathize with others, consequently becoming more compassionate. (Mentioned in https://youtu.be/bHe2seINnE0 at 2:03/9:09; https://youtu.be/zaZYDK1RcEU) Claude experienced descrimination and bullying; he explicitly explains in FE3H canon that he wants to create a world where no one else has to experience that same pain. I really don't see why this can be an unbelievable characterization to some people, when most of the world admires Batman for literally that same reason. And I think that characters, like Claude, who react to trauma and hardship with altruism, demonstrate a True Strength in their characters. They haven't been broken by their trauma. They not only survive, but survive as people who still want to care for others. (Also why I love Natsume Takashi.)

I was tempted to include Dimitri in the category of "Emerged from tragic backstory with Strength and vowing to make world where no one will experience same pain". But he didn't emerge with the same level of flawless Strength that Masamune and Claude did. Dimitri certainly did resolve to protect others from ever experiencing the pain that he felt, after the Tragedy of Duscur. But he was also not as mentally stable. He was so repressed and internally conflicted (concerning his feelings of vengence, or sadness that didn't know how to be expressed as anything but anger, lest he break), that he didn't integrate his "boar" impulses/emotions until much later in his post-time-skip. I didn't feel that Dimitri was a fully reconcilled version of himself, until after he had accepted his "boar" emotions, stopped repressing his unresolved anger, and learned to express them more appropriately or at more appropriate times. After he became more mentally/emotionally stable, I have no doubt that he still can have episodes of rage, anti-social moods, or crippling survivor's guilt, but I think he no longer allows those feelings/episodes to push away the people he cares about or disregard his true personal desires to be kind/protective towards others. He knows how to deal with those feelings now. But he spent a long time not yet at that stable level, until much later. Until then, he was frankly wavering, conflicting with his personal resolve, denying his own ideals, and allowing his survivor's guilt manifesting as ghosts to sway him away from his true desires/motivations/values of Compassion. Dimitri was Weak for a time. So I can't say that he was in the same category of Strength as Masamune and Claude.

Dimitri's backstory of his father's death and idolizing Rodrigue, after he took him in, is information he canonically tells the player.

But I realize that Sengoku Basara 2009 never actually mentions a backstory like this for Yukimura. I'm actually referencing the takarazuka version of Sengoku Basara. In that play, they include a childhood backstory scene, where Yukimura's father was a subordinate of Takeda and died while protecting him. Young Yukimura blamed Takeda for his father's death and went to punch him out. Because Takeda understood that Yukimura needed catharsis and was trying to reconcile with his grief, Takeda allowed himself to be punched. But he also punched back. I think maybe to encourage Yukimura to keep going? I can't remember. But eventually, Yukimura punched out all his anger and only had energy left to finally cry, and Takeda said something that comforted him. From then on, he called Takeda "Oyakata-sama" and became completely devoted to him. This explained the origin of the running gag from the 2009 anime, wherein Takeda and Yukimura engage in fist fights as a form a bonding. (It's a shame that the video of these scenes was taken off YouTube. ;_; ) I don't know if "Sengoku Basara Sanada Yukimura-den" mentions how Yukimura's father dies, since he finally appeared in that game. So I'm referencing the takarazuka version.

There isn't really mention of Masamune's mother in the 2009 Sengoku Basara anime. The closest, was Masamune's maternal uncle appearing in the movie "The Last Party" that ended that anime series. But historically, after the real life Date Masamune survived smallpox at a young age, and lost sight in his right eye, there was a lot of dissent among the other high ranking people within his clan, concerning his continued position as the Date clan's head. A lot of this dissent was lead by his mother, who insisted that Masamune's younger brother should become the new clan leader instead. Some accounts say that to shut up accusations that Masamune was weak and that his faulty eye was just an advertised weakness that enemies would take advantage of on the battlefield, Masamune either pulled out his own right eye or ordered Katakura to do it. Apparently, that shut up everyone except his mother, who still continued to try undermining his position. I don't know if there was one instance of several, but she also tried to kill him through poisoning, to replace him with his brother. Because of this, Masamune's only choice was to kill his own little brother, which forced his mother to run back to her original clan. (I can only assume that Masamune didn't just kill his mother, because it's possible she indoctrinated his brother to ursurp him. So Masamune might have ended up eventually needing to kill his brother anyway.) Lots of us in the Sengoku Basara fandom like to headcanon that all of this happened for the Basara version of Masamune too.

It's my understanding that Cornelia implicated Dimitri's stepmother in the murder of his father and friends at the Tragedy of Duscur, but that things were still left canonically vague. Personally, the fact that Patricia was always kind to Dimitri, combined with the fact that Cornelia is proven duplicitous, I find it difficult to believe that Patricia intentionally betrayed Dimitri. The way Cornelia described it, she offered Patricia a chance to be reunited with her daughter Edelgard, Patricia confirmed that desire, then the Tragedy of Duscur happened. Given that Cornelia was already doing terrible things behind Patricia's back, like experimenting on Hapi, and Patricia being angry at Cornelia when she discovered Hapi, I doubt that Cornelia would have been fully truthful with Patricia. I imagine Cornelia tricked Patricia into opening a path or lowering some defenses to "allow a clandestine meeting with Edelgard", but then Cornelia would probably use it to sneak in enemies to kill Dimitri's father and friends. That's my headcanon theory on the Tragedy of Duscur anyway. So Dimitri was only *possibly* betrayed by his mother figure.

And that's my comparison between DateSana and DimiClaude/DMCL/ClauDimi. It continuously amazes me how similar these ships are and how my shipping has come full circle. lol

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prudencepaccard · 3 years

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whenever I post about the same old angers I think of this conversation from two years ago with @injygo which was of the most insightful and revelatory dialogues I’ve ever had about my personal psychology

me: my psychiatrist asked me if I loved myself and I was like "I uh...I think I have a lot to offer...and I don't think I'm worthless...and I don't hate myself like I used to" and she was like "dude that's not good enough"

me: I definitely don't love myself

[note: I think I’m starting to now though]

injygo: <:ghosthug:585698760890515503>

me: like I think I'm talented and interesting but I feel deep down like I must be extremely annoying and unlikable and my voice must be grating and I don't know why anyone actually tolerates me

me: I understand why someone might keep me in their collection of eccentrics but not why anyone would want to spend any significant amount of time with me

[note: in early 2020 I was told by someone whose opinion I valued and whom I had wanted to meet for a long time that « the way I take up space is beautiful » which is one of the most validating things anyone could say to me because I have a complex about taking up space wrong/too much/etc.]

me: this in spite of the fact that I am actually extremely loved

me: I'm not *popular* but I'm not at a lack for devoted friends and family

me: but I'm like "okay surely people will come to their senses though"

injygo: does it help to think about how there's lots of different people in the world with different standards, and so there's not really a single scale of likability?

me: a little maybe

me: anyway my self-compassion is garbage and I knew that

me: I know I'm really harsh on myself and keep letting myself down

me: but I hadn't thought about it in those specific terms till she asked

me: like oh no I don't think I love myself, no

me: my loved ones don't love themselves either

me: I don't hate myself as much as I used to but I'm just extremely rigorous and harsh and impatient

me: I really have very very little compassion for myself at all

me: I don't even feel sorry for myself, usually

[linking thought redacted for interlocutor’s privacy]

me: whereas I tend to double down

me: like "yes so fuck everything, let's stay in bed and not eat"

injygo: you do feel sorry for yourself, but you can't usually "get to" it, if you get my meaning

me: what do you mean by get to it?

injygo: like you tell people stories about shitty things that have happened to you, hoping that something they say will reveal how you can forgive yourself for having been harmed and comfort yourself

injygo: like, you're going "hmm, that feels bad, i bet anyone would feel bad for me and try to comfort me, let's test that out" trying to get a response like "that sucks and shouldn't have happened", not because you deep down want other people to comfort you, but because you deep down want to comfort yourself and don't know how except with other people's words and reactions

me: it's possible

injygo: you stay in situations you hate long after you should, because you don't feel like your preferences matter or that you deserve good things, but you *want* to leave, and can't get to the point of saying "yeah, i shouldn't have to suffer this any longer"

injygo: like you're not a masochist, you're not suicidal, there's not a drive to punish yourself for the sake of punishment, it's just that you don't feel like you have the right to avoid bad things and seek good things, or to be comforted, or to have things be easy for you

me: yeah this is probably true

injygo: so you can easily get trapped in depressive spirals where you don't feel like you deserve to eat, or you don't feel like it matters if you're sad

injygo: but when you feel like you *do* deserve things, you're motivated to pursue them and you get mad at people who get in your way

injygo: which is honestly pretty enviable

me: thanks

me: I'm not 100% sure

>forgive yourself for having been harmed

is apt

me: but the rest is pretty accurate

injygo: yeah, i'm not quite sure what's up with your like, quasi-trauma-processing thing

me: "you shouldn't have to suffer like this" is really, really hard to grok when it's an OCD spiral

me: it feels baked in, like if X then Y

me: >yeah, i'm not quite sure what's up with your like, quasi-trauma-processing thing

elaborate?

me: god I just fucking

injygo: but there's definitely a thing where, uh, it's like if you painted a picture and you thought it was really good, but you can't say to yourself "yep this picture is good" until you've shown it to your friends and they've been like "hey, that's good!"

me: I know something really messed with me but I don't have any idea what's going on

me: I don't model myself as traumatized per se

injygo: like, you don't trust your own judgment about whether something hurt you, whether it was your fault, whether it's okay to feel bad about it

me: I also feel like my suffering doesn't matter because everyone else is worse off and/or deserved it less

me: so these anecdotes keep cropping up to you, because you feel like they're unresolved, but what you actually want, rather than being told that it sucked and shouldn't have happened, is for you to be able to say to yourself that it sucked and shouldn't have happened

me: probably yeah

injygo: you don't trust your ability to tell if the painting is good

me: this is definitely true

me: I'm very insecure like that

me: I undersell and undervalue myself

me: from only charging $40/hr [for one hour/week French tutoring that involved me coming to him from pretty far away and lesson planning and making exercises and where the guy I was tutoring balked at paying me that much and tried to bargain me down to $30 even though he had a ton of money and mentioned taking tennis lessons and how much you wanna bet the tennis instructor was making a whole lot more than $40 an hour]

me: to like

me: going "ugh it's true but why'd you have to say it" if someone calls me ugly

injygo: like this is not the bpd thing where you're constantly seeking validation -- borderlines feel good when they're validated, and it like, satisfies them completely (for a short time) when people are like "i like you and you matter"

injygo: they get "hungry" again, and they have to learn to provide it for themselves, but it's this feeling of desperation like "i will Literally Die if someone doesn't pay attention to me Right Now"

injygo: but with you it's more like, being faced with a door you don't know how to open, a feeling of bafflement and a vague sense that something can be done that isn't being done

injygo: like, you know how a dog acts when they're injured, and they come up to you holding their paw up, asking you to fix it

injygo: but a cat will be like "there is a thing that's wrong! help, human" but you don't know what thing it is, and they keep meowing at you and asking you to fix it, but you can't really figure out what to fix

me: and I'm the cat right

injygo: yeah

injygo: like "i'm pretty sure it shouldn't hurt to jump, but i don't see any way to fix it, so i guess i'll just deal"

me: mood

injygo: you're like "problem?" and people are like "yep, problem" and you're like "oh" and then "problem?" because you need *you* to tell yourself the things

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demisexualemmaswan · 4 years

Text

the story can resume (1/???)

Summary: "The story can resume. ... I will return. Find you, love you, marry you and live without shame.”

An unfortunate misunderstanding caused by secrets and naivety forces a young couple to be torn from each other far too soon. It's up to Henry Nolan to put the clues together and right the wrong he has caused his sister and the man she loves most.

Inspired by the book/film Atonement for the Captain Swan Movie Marathon.

A/N: Hello! It's my turn to post for the Captain Swan Movie Marathon. This is inspired by the book/film Atonement and also just me wanting to see Jen in that green dress. If you've seen the movie, you know the one.

I put this in the tags on Ao3, but Henry will be a narrator for most of the events in this story, but this is at its core a Captain Swan story. There will be exactly one chapter with smut and I'll let you know where that is when it gets posted.

If you know how Atonement ends and you're wondering if this is going to end differently for our lovers the answer is...well I'm not going to give you the answer in the first chapter now am I? You'll have to keep reading to find out.

Special thanks to @kmomof4, @hollyethecurious, @teamhook and all of the CSMM discord group for keeping me motivated, and to @jarienn972 for being a wonderful beta!!

@captainswanmoviemarathon let’s do this!

[Read on Ao3]

It was the loud argument down the hall that woke Henry up. Over the past year, it’d been so quiet that he’d often slept in much to the chagrin of his parents. But today, loud and angry voices seemed to carry themselves down the hall.

Peeking his head out into the hallway, he could see his father standing in front of his sister’s room.

“Emma, really,” Leopold Nolan, his father, huffed as he looked down at something in his hands.

In spite of himself, Henry couldn’t help but grin. If his father was yelling at his sister, it meant Henry’s older sister, Emma, was home to be yelled at.

“A third? I spent all that money for you to go away and you earn yourself a third? You could’ve become a secretary and made it all so much easier on us.”

So he must be looking at Emma’s marks.

“I’m sorry, was Oxford supposed to be easy?” his sister, Emma, snapped. As Henry crept closer to his sister’s room, she was brushing her hair as she looked in the mirror.

Henry only had two older siblings: his older sister and their eldest brother, David. Emma had been away at school for the past year and Henry had missed her fiercely. In the letters she wrote him, she’d made it more than clear that she hated school and would much prefer being at home with him.

“You try sitting in a classroom with a bunch of men--including the professor--who don’t think you deserve to be there and then you see if you can get higher than a third, Father.”

He had to put his hand over his mouth to stop himself from laughing. Henry liked it better when Emma was home too. She was his closest friend, his confidant, and he had no secrets with her, despite being ten years her junior. When he was younger, she would make up games and scavenger hunts for him to do during the day. She had been the one to teach him to read and write, and he wrote stories about their adventures.

It was the thing that had turned him on to writing, and he wanted to make her proud by writing a book one day.

“And I’m sure you spent all your time studying, Emma,” her father said wryly. “You do nothing but laze about when you’re here, so I’m sure you brought that same attitude with you to Oxford.”

“I have the degree, don’t I?” Emma responded cheekily, dabbing some blush on her cheeks. “You don’t need me to be smart. You just need me to be pretty. You’ve told me that plenty of times.”

“Well we thought sending you to university would land you a husband, but clearly you failed in that regard as well!”

Emma turned to face him, her face twisted in anger, but then it relaxed upon seeing Henry. She opened her arms to him and he rushed forward into them eagerly.

“You’re back!” Henry cried happily, tightening his arms around her.

“Yes, Killian and I got back last night,” Emma hummed, holding him close to her.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” Henry demanded, pulling back a little.

“I tried, you wouldn’t stir,” Emma laughed, tapping his nose. Henry rolled his eyes and tried to wriggle away now. He was thirteen, and he was far too grown up for such things, even if he’d missed his sister terribly when she was away at university.

“Where’s Killian?” Henry asked eagerly.

“With Liam, I’m sure,” Emma promised, smiling up at him. “You should congratulate him. He’s gotten a first.”

“I should hope so with all the money I’ve put into that boy,” Leopold grumbled.

“You should be more pleased. Now you can show him off as your biggest triumph and your biggest example of philanthropy,” Emma said icily to her father. Her green eyes flashed with something Henry didn’t quite understand, and he thought that maybe Emma was angry with Killian for how well he’d done.

Their eldest brother, David, had gotten a first at Oxford and was a great success in the business world. Since then, their father had expected all of his children to be the same. Even though she never said it out loud or even would write it down, Henry knew that their father’s scornful words hurt Emma. He hugged her a little tighter, which earned a scoffing noise from their father. She was smart about other things that their father could never understand, and Henry hoped that she knew that.

“You’re nearly a man, Henry. There’s no need for that.”

“He hasn’t seen me since my last holiday, you can give him a break,” Emma answered, her green eyes still blazing.

Henry pulled back, biting his lip as he looked in between his father and his sister.

Emma sighed, folding her hands in her lap. Keeping her tone light, she added, “Go on. Go find Killian. I’m sure you have a lot to tell him about school, and he practically lived in the library so he probably has a lot to tell you too!”

“And tell Liam he’s to pick David and his friends up from the train at quarter past 11!” his father barked. “He can take the car and if there’s so much as a scratch on it, he won’t get paid for two weeks!” “Can I go with him?” Henry asked excitedly.

“Henry, there won’t be room, don’t be a nuisance,” their father scolded. “David’s bringing his fiancée and some friends.” Turning away, he muttered, “Maybe one of them will be actually invested in marrying Emma.”

It was only when Leopold was out of sight and sound that Emma’s rigid posture loosened and she buried her face in her hands for a moment. “I’m all right,” she mumbled when Henry hugged her again. “Just tired.” Still, she leaned her head against Henry’s for a moment. “It’s so good to see you, Henry. I missed you when I was at school, little brother.”

“I missed you too,” Henry mumbled, childishly cuddling into her for a moment. “And that’s younger brother to you.”

She smiled for a moment at the familiarity of the exchange, before she grimaced again. Their father’s presence still hung heavy in the room even though he was long gone. “Was he all right?” Emma asked, her eyes flickering to the doorway where their father had just been standing. “While I was away?”

“He mostly left me alone, occasionally would come in and do his whole thing if I got a bad mark,” Henry said with a shrug. Emma looked up at him worriedly and he tried to soothe her, “It was fine really. The tutors are working on it, and I am improving. I can handle him yelling at me. Although when he threatened to burn my manuscript...that was the worst.”

“He did what?” Emma demanded, standing up abruptly and rushing to the door as if to follow their father.

“He didn’t actually burn it!” Henry assured her quickly, running to her side. He neglected to tell his sister that their father had held the manuscript over the open flame and that the back cover was singed. “He said that fairy stories were going to rot my brain, and that he wouldn’t stand having a sissy for a son.” Emma’s jaw clenched and the fire in her eyes returned as she glowered down the hallway where their father had last been.

Henry felt himself getting more and more upset as he watched her. He was supposed to be a man, yet he couldn’t even stand up to his father, and Emma seemed more than willing to fight his battles for him. He didn’t want that either! He looked down, trying to hide the tears prickling in his eyes.

“Henry,” Emma said gently, kneeling before her brother. She put her hand on his shoulder gently. “Father doesn’t understand that you have a wonderful gift in both your imagination and writing. We need more people like you in the world who create rather than destroy.” He sniffled and she gently rubbed his shoulder. “What made him give it back?”

“It’s a wedding present,” Henry sniffled. “For David and Mary Margaret. I wanted to have it finished before the wedding.”

Emma smiled tenderly. “And I’m sure they’ll love it,” she murmured encouragingly. “Maybe you could read an excerpt at dinner? Once Father sees it’s for David and David loves it, I’m sure he’ll leave well enough alone.” Henry’s body shuddered, even as Emma gently wiped his tears away with her thumb.

“And what if he hates it and he takes it away and burns it?” Henry mumbled softly, taking in a few deep breaths to try and calm himself down. “I always get so nervous in front of Father and I feel like my tongue is stuffed in my mouth and--”

He stopped as Emma placed something in his hand. “A mint?” he asked curiously, rolling the plastic wrap against his fingers. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Keep it in your pocket,” Emma told him, gently tapping his nose. “When you get nervous, start playing with the mint. Focus on the mint and nothing else, and then there won’t be any room for you to be nervous. It’s a trick that one of my tutors gave me at uni, and now I’m passing it on to you.”

Henry beamed at her and she kissed his forehead. “Now, go off and see Killian,” Emma encouraged. “He really has missed you.”

Henry wrapped his arms around his sister one more time. Emma cradled him close for a moment, kissing the top of his head. With a soft smile, she let him go and gently shooed him out of her room.

The hustle and bustle of the house was a familiar melody to Henry, though everything seemed intensified, not only by the arrival of David and his friends, but--as Henry heard as he maneuvered through the halls--the quite unexpected arrival of his cousins, Ava, Nicholas and Jack were adding more chaos to the day, given Emma and Killian’s arrival the night before, and David’s arrival within the hour.

“--well yes of course they’re getting a divorce. Shameful really.”

“I heard he was caught in flagrante with another man. She should’ve been a better wife and then they wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Hush, don’t let Master Henry hear you!” “Oh please... He wouldn’t know what that means even if he had heard me.”

The conversation all but floated around his ears, even if he didn’t quite understand what exactly the servants were talking about as he tidied up the guest room. Not that it mattered much when his main purpose was finding Liam.

Liam was head groundskeeper of the Nolan estate, and Killian’s older brother. And if Henry could find Liam, he’d easily find Killian. Their father had taken in Liam and Killian when the two were just boys.

Well, actually, it was really Emma who’d convinced her father to take in the two Jones Brothers. Killian had tried to steal Emma’s coat when she was walking home from school, but she had promptly knocked Killian flat on his back. And maybe broke his nose while she was at it. They’d only been eight at the time.

She’d escorted him to the hospital and when it came up that Killian’s only guardian was Liam, who was thirteen at the time, Emma wouldn’t hear of the two brothers going back home. She all but insisted that they stay with the Nolans. Leopold had been absolutely furious with Emma at first, but both boys had proven themselves to be smart and hardworking, and Leopold relented.

David and Liam were quite close given that they were the same age, though David and Liam were not nearly as close as Emma and Killian were. Liam had always strictly adhered to the social status between them. The Jones were never fully adopted by Leopold, there were certainly expectations of blood purity for the Nolans that needed to be upheld, or at least that’s what Henry’s father always said when he asked.

Still, the boys got to live at the Nolan house, and Leopold had covered both Killian and Liam’s university tuitions. Liam was simply biding his time as head groundskeeper until Leopold had room to take him on at the firm.

Emma and Killian, on the other hand, had been inseparable ever since that fateful day. Things like chores and expectations had often kept them apart physically during their days, but the two were in sync and often not found to be too far from each other. If Killian was working in the garden, it was not unexpected to find Emma reading there. If Emma was riding her horse, Killian was working on the paddock fence.

It must be nice to have a best friend like that, Henry thought with a sigh. He’d often yearned for a secret Jones sibling his own age would pop up out of nowhere when he was younger. Liam and Killian treated him like their younger brother, which Henry supposed was enough, but he often felt lonely seeing David and Liam and Emma and Killian hang out together. There was simply no one his age at the home, and all young people hit a certain point in their lives where they do not want a child toddling around after them.

Ava and Nicholas were his age, but they were bossy and decidedly not very much fun at all. They often bossed him around or bullied him when they came over and whenever he complained to his mother, she told him that they were just having a hard time. His father’s advice was to man up.

And so Killian had taught him a good left punch and a right hand uppercut which mostly left the matter lie, at least where Nicholas was concerned. As much as he wanted to, he could not uppercut his cousin Ava.

The memory of boxing lessons with Killian had Henry in a good mood, though he was starting to wonder if Killian hadn’t even woken up yet. He’d turned the corner heading toward the servant’s kitchen, when he heard Liam’s voice.

“Killian, you promise nothing happened?”

“Bloody hell, Liam. Of course nothing happened. I’m just tired. It was a long ride home.”

“You just don’t seem excited to be home, that’s all.” There was a pause, followed by a soft clink of a mug. “You’d tell me if something happened, wouldn’t you, little brother?”

“Of course. And that’s younger brother to you, Liam.” Henry was sure that Killian was more than used to Liam’s fussing and motherhenning since Liam had never shirked in his duty as Killian’s guardian, even when they moved into the Nolan residence.

“Smothering” was what Emma called it.

Though there was an affectionate note to Killian’s voice that would’ve been in place of his usual exasperation. Killian hated being called the little brother in his youth, something Henry had copied out of admiration for Killian.

Emma had once called it adorable and Henry did not speak to her for a whole day because he was not adorable, thank you very much. Though not talking to Emma for that day had been very painful for him because Emma was his favorite person in the house.

Most of the time.

Henry crept closer to the kitchen door to try and get a better listen to the brothers’ conversation, but Killian caught his eye and smirked into his cup of tea. “Lad, you know what pirates do to eavesdroppers, don’t you?”

Henry rolled his eyes playfully and stepped into the kitchen. “I’m not a child anymore, Killian,” he replied. “You can’t threaten to throw me into the brig anymore. That doesn’t work.” Still, he was grinning from ear to ear. “Welcome home, Killian. I missed you.”

“Aye, so it seems you’ve grown indeed, lad. I swear you’ve grown a foot since Christmas,” Killian chuckled, pushing some of his breakfast toward Henry. “Go on, you can finish that. Knowing you, you stayed up writing and missed breakfast.”

“Has the family taken breakfast yet?” Henry asked, almost immediately digging into the food. “I only woke up because Father was yelling at Emma about her marks.”

“We haven’t been home a full day yet and he’s already laying into her about her marks?” Killian asked, getting up halfway out of his chair. Liam cleared his throat pointedly and Killian slowly sat back down into the chair.

“Well go on, you can’t announce the event and not give us any of the juicy details,” Liam goaded Henry, glancing at Killian briefly. “You know the best way to get ourselves extra sweets is to come into the kitchen with a little bit of gossip. We’ll split the bounty three ways,” he murmured conspiratorially.

“Well it wasn’t anything new in terms of what he tells us when we don’t perform the way he wants us to. That we’re lazy or that we’re failures. I don’t know why you all would find that interesting, you’ve heard him say it to each of us at least once a day,” Henry replied nonchalantly, reaching for a napkin to clean up after himself. “Oh, except for that he only paid for her to get her degree so that she could go find a husband.”

Killian’s hand tightened around the handle of his cup of tea and his jaw clenched, his eyes flashing for the briefest of moments. His eyes darted to the doro and they lingered there before he gave his head a quiet shake. Henry happily kept on eating, glad to be moving past it as Killian seemed to be thinking something over.

The storm behind Killian’s eyes seemed to break as he turned to the young boy. “So tell me, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. What’s your latest work about?” he teased Henry, who only rolled his eyes goodnaturedly at the jibe.

“You know, Killian, it would be a much better nickname if I actually wrote any mysteries,” Henry replied.

“And if he hadn’t died within the last few years,” Liam replied, clearing the plates away.

“What? Too soon?” Killian joked. Seriously, he turned to Henry and added, “You know, Doyle hated the Sherlock Holmes works but they were his most popular ones. He wrote plenty of historical works as well.”

“Well, my work is not a mystery or historical,” Henry protested. “So your nickname still doesn’t work.”

“I swear, you must be taking arguing lessons from Emma,” Killian chuckled fondly into his tea. Henry thought that was a very odd thing for him to say, only to be distracted when Liam produced three berry crumbles for the three of them to share.

#blaire's writing #captain swan movie marathon #csmm #csmm20 #captain swan au #cs ff #cs au ff

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cascae · 3 years

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I wonder what would have happened if casca and guts swapped places?

oh oh oh . . . firstly the thought of casca, though strong as she is, trying to lead this giant looming bastard of a man thru endless nights and attacks from demons is killing me, but i do think she’d find a way to manage it in her own way (i’m taking them swapping spots mostly as swapping fates in the eclipse, so hopefully i’m understanding right –– and i could also look at this from more of a casca coming in as the outside in the hawks vs guts... let’s split this up hehe i like this question!)

1. simply swapping fates during the eclipse –– i.e. guts wakes up with his mind essentially locked off from him & casca wakes alone.

in this scenario, i think there’s two potential ways this might have played out –– for casca, she’s very much the type to focus on the external world. she often avoids introspection and instead relies on the steadiness of others (namely griffith’s leadership and the tangible/simultaneously intangible nature of being with him, which she didn’t have to analyze because at the very least she was useful to him and therefore there was always a reason to be beside him that she could cling to – even if she wasn’t with him “as a woman” as she puts it, she was irreplaceable to his goals).

upon the betrayal by griffith + in this case guts’ loss of memory/selfhood, i think she’d hold a similar rage as guts does canonically. however, historically, her experience with rage and hurt has her responding by rallying behind someone. even in the year prior to the eclipse when she herself is leading the hawks in griffith’s absence, she’s still actively working to rescue him and subsequently be close to him. this isn’t to speak to her ability to split off –– when it comes down to it, and this is also something we do see with her as acting leader of the hawks, casca can and will survive above all. she can rally behind herself in moments, but a lot of times we see her relying on others when it comes to emotions / even her own understanding of self.

so, all that said, i think more than guts might’ve, casca would be tempted to stay with guts in the cave. i think she would have a hard time leaving him because her rage and hurt would be placed differently than his is. so my first answer is that she would stay with him, and eventually they’d probably leave the cave and much of the conviction arc would play out in terms of what is “fated”.

alternatively, let’s say first and foremost she’s just angry, rageful, and wants to get back at griffith for what he did (essentially all in the same way as guts). if she were to leave, i think similarly to guts she would leave him behind. which i say only because i think if she were to go on the same sort of crusade against demonkind that guts does canonically, she would have a similar line of thought in terms of bringing someone defenseless / who makes her ache w regret every time she looks at him would make for a harder journey.

2. still following the above, but focusing in on what casca as “the black swordsman” would look like.

so assuming she follows the latter theory from above, casca on her own would be so interesting ... i’m going along, still, with the idea that the ‘demonified’ child of guts & casca’s was born. in her more full aware state, she’d have a similar reaction as guts did in canon, and wouldn’t trust it completely to begin with, but following the sort of innate connection they have in that arc, if it were to carry over, i think she wouldn’t necessarily try to kill it or anything. which leads me to the view of the black swordsman.

in her travels, looking so small and less threatening than guts might, i think her reputation would be different. perhaps even she wouldn’t garner the title he does –– alternatively, like we see in the conviction arc in casca’s own storyline, she might better suit “the black witch” title she temporarily holds. if the child is following her like it does in canon as opposed to focusing its attention moreso on guts, then i think similar events as in conviction would occur where we see evil spirits literally dispelled by her / avoiding her, because of the child’s protection. so all in all it would be a different experience –– she would still be fighting and killing every demon she came into contact with to fight her way to griffith himself, but i think the perspective of her and some of her fighting styles would be different. she relies on agility & strategy more than guts does, mostly.

regarding her journey itself, though her motives would be similar to guts’ they certainly wouldn’t be exact. the brunt of her anger towards griffith would be the fact he used her (guts has the right to be angry on this count as well, but i think a lot of his anger centers around both the personal betrayal and what griffith does to casca in front of him –– so in casca’s case, assuming the eclipse functions similarly to canon, she’d be furious that she was considered a “pawn” in terms of griffith’s plan but also in terms of griffith’s torturing of guts, that he assaults her to spite guts particularly, i don’t think that would go unnoticed entirely by her) and the fact that she was never anything more to him than a tool, with even less merit than guts (re: i’ve never heard him say “i want you” until he said it to you, etc.)

SO, long words all to say i think following her as the black swordsman post-eclipse would be so wildly interesting because she would hold also that sort of eternal frustration of “i ought to be _____ as a woman”, so there’s the added idea that if she were to leave guts behind, her guilt would be a lot around shouldn’t she have been the one to nurse him back to normalcy? shouldn’t she be playing maternal & kind & loving? but then she’s spurred on by her anger, the rage she feels towards griffith and his lack of care towards her. she had based her entire life on him needing her, and at least holding platonic affection for her. when that crumbles ... she’s pissed! she’s hurt, certainly, but she’s absolutely enraged.

3. swapping moreso their origin stories, or at least their initial entrance into the band of the hawk.

i won’t go into the eclipse as much here, but just the dynamics and how they’d shift were the trio shuffled emotionally. say guts is griffith’s right hand prior to casca showing up out of the blue and besting some of griffith’s best men –– griffith ultimately engaging her in battle and generating his little obsession that he has for guts for casca instead. i think... well, number one, the dynamic between guts and casca would be interesting. i think the idea of a man being threatened by the sudden appearance of a woman who is skillfully better than him is fundamentally different and more aggressively charged than vice versa. guts’ frustration with casca would likely show itself differently than hers with his, but i would imagine it would still end similarly with a slow burn romance should she be the one to save him on multiple occasions on the field.

(minor cw for manipulation of a sexual nature in this paragraph) regarding her position with griffith, i can’t think of too much else to say because it would be essentially the same as what his relationship with guts is. i was going to say possibly more manipulative but i think that’s mostly because i think griffith has a tendency in canon to utilize sexual situations as power plays (i.e. with charlotte, and then nearly with casca first in the cart right before the eclipse). and i don’t think that path was necessarily closed with guts, but with casca & the assumption that the struggles she holds with her identity as a “woman” and what determines “usefulness” in that position carry over, it could be more prevalent. plus guts actively rejects griffith even jokingly in terms of flirtatious advances, whereas i think there’s a possibility casca would be swayed by that and ultimately be manipulated into perceiving her and griffith’s relationship to go far past friends or comrades, making his eventual betrayal cruel. in this case, i think casca would most assuredly take on the same route of black swordsman as guts does and leave guts behind initially to get revenge on griffith.

further than that, i think if this particular swap happened, griffith might have, instead of doing what he did during the eclipse to casca in order to spite guts, killed him in front of casca to garner the same reaction. or would have found another route to break the pair of them, which could mean that casca would be journeying on her own as opposed to with guts by her side after the fact. though i’m not sure frankly, it could go either way!

anywho, those are my thoughts, apologies for how long this got... i think it’s such an interesting question because the implications in terms of gender especially would be entirely shaken up. it would be interesting also to see the way in which she carried herself afterwards and if she would have a similar resolute persona, so to speak. thank you so much for asking this it was fun to try and work through :-]

#。✟ ▫ ⦙ ░ 𝖗𝖊. footnotes &. meta.#Anonymous #long post #long post cw

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officialjakotsu · 4 years

Text

Fun with Fallacies!!

IMPORTANT NOTE BEFORE WE START. THIS IS MY OFFICIAL REBUTTAL. THIS POST IS FOR FUN BUT THE REBUTTAL IS THE ONE I WANT THE DISCUSSION TO BE ABOUT. LETS GO MY DUDES.

So, many of you who are hip with the officialinuyasha discourse probably know about this post. Now I wanted to pick it apart at the time but the coward blocked me. I have also posted my official rebuttal, but lets have a little fun too, and count the amount of logical fallacies.

Firstly, for those of you who don’t know what a fallacy is, it’s a type of argument that is either illegitimate or lacks relevance to what is actually being argued. For example, if I argue that chocolate ice cream is bad, and you say I’m wrong and people shouldn’t trust me because I once burned down a bank and made off with $20,000 USD (theoretically, of course uwu I would never do that). That’s a fallacy because it doesn’t argue my point, it just makes me look bad. Fallacies weaken your overall argument because even if your point is correct, it is not one that should be made in this context. So leave your fallacies out. Anyway, I’m here today to list off the fallacies in Mr. Takahashi’s post and explain why his argument is, frankly, bullshit in this regard and why it did not make me feel roasted in any way. Not even a little scalded. Ice cream is spicier than his takes.

Fallacy 1: continuum fallacy. “‘American’ consists of every race. So saying that doesn’t mean much. I’m physically Caucasian.” The anon had very clearly implied he was a white American which everyone else seemed to understand. He was nitpicking and attacked the imprecision of the wording, which was irrelevant as everyone else understood the meaning.

Fallacy 2: Red herring. “I heard there is a chance... and Blackfoot.” Your race does not matter in this argument if it is not Japanese.

Fallacy 3/4: red herring. “Why does my race matter when I cosplay....you can cosplay any character” this argument has nothing to do with my original point. I was not talking about cosplaying and my beliefs of who can cosplay what are irrelevant (but I believe you can cosplay whatever as long as you don’t wear something of cultural significance (I.e cultural tattoos) or change your features to look like a different race). This was also a subtle attempt to poison the well to imply I don’t think “black, short, big, or trans” people should cosplay characters outside what they physically resemble. (Also dude I’m short and trans)

Fallacy 5/6/7/8/9: false authority, appeal to authority, false attribution, faulty generalization, and red herring. “My wife is Persian.... that are eastern have no problems with us.” Japanese people living in Japan are not who you should speak to on this matter as they do not face cultural appropriation and people who are friends with you also do not prove that most Japanese people are supportive of you (I am including diaspora). Your wife being Persian and a Shinto priestess has no bearing on my point either.

Fallacy 10: false equivalence. Kyle Killian is not the name of a character. I googled it.

Fallacy 11: poisoning the well. It wasn’t a doxxing attempt but you sure want it to be (however I am sorry for posting what could’ve been where you live. At the time I was thinking it didn’t matter as much because it’s a bigger city. I do take full responsibility and have made sure to not post more like this.)

Fallacy 12/13/14/15/16/17: poisoning the well, appeal to motive, false equivalence, appeal to spite, judgmental language, and tone policing. “You do seem hateful... fictional characters”. None of these are good arguments and none of them even actually apply to me. It also assumes I am likely cisgender and that I “spread hate etc”. These are clear attacks on my person and motives and my anger rather than an argument.

Fallacy 18/19/20/21/22/23: poisoning the well, false authority, appeal to authority, false attribution, faulty generalization, circumstantial ad hominem, courtiers reply. “I doubt you are a part.... “American only means white”. Again, assumptions are made about me. There is also, again, the same exact things I mentioned from these fallacies before. Also my circumstances do not prevent me from calling you out.

Fallacy 24/25/26/27: again. False authority, appeal to authority, false attribution, faulty generalization. This is for the video section. I don’t need to explain this again. Listen to diaspora.

Fallacy 28: false equivalence. “My friend Malay.... say she’s “whitefacing” not too?” This isn’t the same situation, as foreign folk use English names to make life easier for English speakers. Also English =/= white. Asian diaspora also often have asian names. Krystal Jung, who was born in California and is Korean, has the Korean name Jung Sooyeon. This just isn’t the same situation and this does not belong in the conversation.

Fallacy 29/30/31/32: false equivalence, appeal to authority, false authority, false attribution. “Just like when SJWs.... LOVE SPEEDY GONZALES.” A more accurate example would be Mexicans speaking about something like the bastardization of Día De Los Muertos among those who don’t celebrate it. Something with more cultural significance. Also Mexicans have no standing in who can use Japanese names.

Fallacy 33/34/35: appeal to authority, false authority, and false attribution. Your family is one family and does not speak for all of Mexico. Also this argument still doesn’t belong here.

Fallacy 36: appeal to emotion, red herring, special pleading, and I would also argue an etymological fallacy though not in the usual sense. “Before you judge.... Yasha means “to live”.” Cute story but it has no relevance as we all know you named yourself Inuyasha specifically because of the show, as seen by your last name, and your wife’s name having been changed to Kagome. It also has no relevance because, again, you changed your name to a Japanese name on purpose and we all know this.

Also, a couple bonuses! Kettle logic (using multiple, inconsistent arguments to defend a position), faulty generalization (accident; an exception to a generalization is ignored. I realized how many this fit but I don’t want to go back and recount everything AGAIN), appeal to pity (this whole thing), ipse dixit (you consistently imply you’re an expert because of everyone you know or whatever), and straw man fallacy (you broadened my argument to something it wasn’t and then argued that instead).

That leaves us at a grand total of..... 41 fallacies!!!!

Congrats Mr. Takahashi, that’s gotta be a record!

#officialinuyasha

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cannoli-reader · 4 years

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Disability and rehabilitation pt. 2

So my last post about Jaime Lannister on this issue got a bit long, so I split them up. This is going to be the Wheel of Time one. And should not be long, because the Wheel of Time character I was thinking of is not nearly as significant to the series as Jaime is to his.

It’s Siuan. I know lots of people don’t see a redemption arc there, because a lot of them don’t think she needs one. All over the fandom, I see people raving about Siuan and how she’s so strong and lost so much and she keeps going. Okay. That’s true. But not all virtues are exclusive to good people. Courage does not make you a good person, for instance. Arguably, Sammael is pretty courageous. And neither does perseverance or tenacity. You have to apply those traits to something more than self-preservation or personal gain.

What I think happens with Siuan is that we get too small a sample of her actions in the beginning of the series, and find out more about her later, except the imposition of her disability rehabilitates her in the readers’ eyes, which in turn affects the hindsight view of the early books.

At the outset of the story, Siuan has been Amyrlin for about a decade, and despite the hagiography from her friends, she was not a very good one. Siuan is not a good leader, though she can be a very good advisor and would probably make a pretty competent bureaucrat. She is unquestionably intelligent with a good analytical mind, but that does not make her a leader. Off-setting these strengths is that she lacks vision. She works much better under a leader who has ideas she can work to bring to fruition. Unfortunately, she has an inordinate amount of pride as well. And when she rises far and fast, she ends up lacking any counter-balancing wisdom. She gets named Amyrlin at a very young age as a compromise candidate, but rather than walk softly, she takes it and runs, by all accounts being forceful in her manner, and controlling as well. In reaction to the discover of the Horn of Valere, she goes to Fal Dara herself, wreaking havoc on the surrounding environment to expedite her journey, only to bring the Black Ajah, including Liandrin and Alviarin, into the fortress which expedites the theft of the Horn.

The odd thing about Siuan’s carelessness in this regard is that she has known since shortly after getting the shawl about the Black Ajah, and worse, she herself surmised that they are aware of the Dragon’s rebirth and are actively taking measures to get rid of him. In spite of this, she is unable to give up her need to be in control, even when her position and her alienation of the Ajahs means she can’t control her personnel. Once the Black Ajah comes relatively into the open and she has to deal with it, she lets her paranoia take the wheel and, not being able to trust any Aes Sedai, nor to accept that there is nothing she can do, she hands over the investigation to three of the newest initiates of the Tower. She remains obsessed with the Black Ajah and ends up with a tunnel vision focus, to the exclusion of properly managing Tower politics.

Her absurd solution to the Black Ajah problem, of sending Accepted after them, helps bring her down. While in the case of sending Elayne into danger, she has provided herself with plausible deniability, at least her own satisfaction, she cannot control everyone’s interest in the Daughter-heir, including her brothers and Elaida. Siuan herself articulated the prestige Elaida has gained from bringing Elayne to the Tower, and the Red sister’s interest in Andor has cost her the Amyrlin Seat Siuan is certain Elaida wanted desperately. The flimsy excuses Siuan finds sufficient to foist off a mere queen who has historically been devoted to the Tower don’t hold up for her sons who are present all the time and are more loyal to their sister than the Aes Sedai, much less her own rival who is far more knowledgeable about Aes Sedai affairs.

It is her discontent with the situation that inspires Elaida to begin the legwork to depose Siuan. It is his hostility to Siuan for being kept at arm’s length that motivates Gawyn to help foil her allies’ counter-coup.

And this is also characteristic of Siuan, that she focuses on the top-down approach to problems. When she has a plan to unify Murandy under a strong king, and she anticipates her candidate’s habit of raiding into Andor could endanger the plan, she decides to keep Andor from fighting him. Her approach is to go to Morgase and force her to keep her troops away from the area of his depredations, to minimize the risk to him. Siuan grew up in a tyrannical nation that oppresses its people and then she moved to the hierarchy-obsessed White Tower, so to her way of thinking, all you have to do is give orders to your lessers, and that’s the end of it. She makes absolutely no accommodation to Morgase, does nothing to get her to buy in to Siuan’s program, offers her nothing that we know of in exchange for compelling her to commit an egregious dereliction of her duty to her subjects.

For all that she lays the blame for Morgase’s anger toward the Tower on Elayne leaving unexpectedly, maybe she would have accepted Elayne’s absence from Tar Valon, if she was not also dealing with the biggest headache of her reign, brought on by Siuan’s high-handed interference in her rule. The riots and demonstrations against Morgase and her relationship to Elaida and Tar Valon are blamed on the Whitecloaks stirring them up, but since when are they that competent? Eamon Valda was the one left in command in Caemlyn after Geofram Bornhald was recalled to Amador. Straight-arrow Galad runs rings around Valda in the PR game and we’re really supposed to believe he’s responsible for swaying public opinion in the capital against a beloved and long-reigning queen? But even if Bornhald got the ball rolling in the brief time he could have been in Caemlyn, there had to be some discontent for the Children to work off of, and Morgase abandoning her borders after a meeting with the Amyrlin Seat is the best reason we have to go off of. And of course, the Tower’s standard MO means she would not have bothered to walk back her command and let Morgase resume defending her borders after Siuan’s candidate is killed by an ordinary farmer who objected to being robbed, no matter how central the thief was to Aes Sedai plans.

It’s a major weakness of Siuan, that she thinks all she has to do is give orders. She really makes no allowance for differences of opinion, expecting those on her side to stay on her side and to accept her commands. She does not expect compelling Morgase to have domestic blowback. She does not expect her handling of Elayne to anger her family or to turn Elaida, who has a clearly demonstrated long-term interest in Elayne and Andor, against her. She does not expect her high-handed manner to incite sisters against her, or her secretive behavior to give credence to the arguments for deposing her, even though she knew being deposed was a possibility.

And part of that secrecy was kind of unnecessary. Siuan was the one who determined that the Black Ajah knew the Dragon was Reborn. Once she was Amyrlin, there was no further reason for secrecy, since the only people who didn’t know about it were the good guys. What’s more, it was, like the Murandy operation, not just wrong, but futile. The secrecy depended on no one being able to trace her to Rand, which in turn counted on people not remembering how close she had once been to the one sister who’d been with Rand at every turn. Even after Verin pointed out how obvious the whole setup was to anyone who had been paying attention, she still tried to maintain secrecy. And you can’t fault the Hall’s annoyance at being kept in the dark about the imminent apocalypse or the hubris of an Amyrlin a fifth the age of many of them presuming to manage Tarmon Gaidon and the Dragon Reborn all by herself.

And the problem here is that all this stuff is backstory. Some of it we don’t learn until after she is deposed, and some of it we only learn the full ramifications of once we have a better grounding in the political realities of the setting. When Siuan is brought down in The Shadow Rising, our perspective is from her and Min. In Siuan’s mind, of course, she’s the put-upon hero, and her frustrations are reasonable feelings, certainly not an exhibition of entitled expectation that things will go her way. When Elaida reveals that the Hall has voted her out of office, Siuan’s retort is basically “How dare you use politics against me!” Her indignation that Elaida chose a favorable ground for fighting, that she chose to acquire allies rather than taking on Siuan alone in a personal confrontation where Siuan has all the advantage is either so astoundingly naïve as to disqualify her from ever holding office or a breathtaking piece of hypocrisy given the extent to which Siuan stretches her authority and the rules which put her above other sisters. Not to mention the tactics she will later coach Egwene to employ against people who are her ideological allies. But without the hindsight we get from seeing a greater pattern of Siuan’s behavior as well as a deeper look at the politics of the series, she seems like a frank and well-intentioned leader who has been brought down by treachery. In Min’s chapters, we only have Siuan’s presentation of herself and her position, as Min, like the reader, lacks much personal experience of the Amyrlin to see beyond it. And Siuan frames her actions as helping Rand. Which, yeah, she thinks she is doing, but just because she thinks it does not make it true. I’m pretty sure Min’s actions in Tar Valon would have been radically different if she could have been a fly on the wall in Fal Dara when Siuan told Rand that his purpose for existing is to be her tool.

And then Siuan gets stilled, hence the disability, and redemption in the eyes of those readers who were rubbed the wrong way by her attitude. The journey to Salidar has her one of three women traveling alone and vulnerable to violence and danger, not to mention ending up facing a trial for stuff for which she and her friends were not responsible, and then she gets to Salidar and runs smack into the prejudice of Aes Sedai against those who are not. Her old friends treat her as a lesser being, her qualities that have nothing to do with her channeling, and which are thus unaffected by her disability, are suddenly dismissed and she is treated like some ignorant hick. All of this makes her the sympathetic underdog, and from the reader’s simplistic binary view of “Elaida, bad: anti-Elaida, good,” Siuan looks good and the reluctance of the Aes Sedai to go to war against the Tower is inexcusable, so her deceptions and manipulations are seen to be for a good cause.

But what casual readers miss is that Siuan is still making the same mistakes. She still thinks, despite her awful track record to date that it’s right and good that she control the Tower’s agenda, as she plans to put a puppet on the Amyrlin Seat to be controlled by a council she herself can manipulate. What I have never seen anyone question is, if she thought Egwene was ignorant enough to be manipulated and controlled by the council and second-hand by her, why on earth did Siuan give her a blanket writ of authority and send her off to hunt Black sisters with only a blocked wilder to manage her? Also, Egwene’s state of mind, courtesy of her Seanchan captivity, evident in her actions outside of Tar Valon and her intractability in the short time she was in the Tower, made that a particularly bad choice.

Furthermore, the meta argument in favor of Salidar over Elaida is that Elaida will try to control Rand, and while the sisters in Salidar have a similar mindset, the protagonists of that arc (Nynaeve, Elayne, Egwene, and incredibly, Siuan) believe otherwise and will prevent it. And yet, to get her foot in the door, and access to power in Salidar, Siuan trades knowledge Rand’s whereabouts to the ruling council. Their response was to send the incredibly arrogant Kiruna and Bera to find Rand, with their only apparent selection criterion being the number of warders the pair could bring on a trip to the Aiel Waste. Later on, she manipulates the choice of which of Rand’s friends to send with the embassy, sending Min whom she believes to be more under her thumb and willing to spy on Rand for her, instead of Elayne, which compounds Elayne’s political problems when she goes to take the throne.

Again, Siuan’s intentions get buried by the fact that she throws in with Egwene and honestly does her best to help, but it was not really her choice, or only her choice insofar as she decided to accept it as her own idea instead of fighting a futile battle. What actually happened was that she let a wilder with little regard for the Tower or Siuan personally see through her decoy tactic, because she still has not learned that when she pretends to not be collaborating with a long-time BFF, someone is going to realize the truth. As a result, Nynaeve has both insight into Siuan’s activities in Salidar, and the willingness to use that knowledge against her, as well as having incurred a debt beyond repayment by restoring her channeling ability. Siuan cannot say ‘no’ to Nynaeve, and Elayne is politically shrewd enough that she’ll spot attempts to wiggle around her which Nynaeve won’t. So Siuan’s chances of manipulating or controlling Egwene are pretty much nil with Nynaeve and Elayne at her back. Her only hope for influence is to throw herself entirely into Egwene’s cause and reap the rewards. Not unlike Asmodean with Rand or the Forsaken in general with the Dark One.

And what about her work with Egwene? While it’s true she provided indispensable political tutelage and strategy, it’s basically the inverse of her own tenure as Amyrlin, where her supposedly good agenda was derailed by her political failure. In this case, the excellent performance she coaches Egwene to in the political sphere belies the fact that they have no good agenda. For one thing, they completely ignore the outside world that both of them presume the Tower has the right to order and control. When a course of action is proposed in the Hall regarding the Black Tower, a topic of not insignificant interest to Aes Sedai (especially Aes Sedai following a woman who publicly told a group of people concerned about the presence of male channelers in their lands “We got this, mind your own business”), Egwene sits mute through the session of the Hall, because neither her own views nor Siuan’s teaching account for a policy for the Black Tower.

The sole agenda for which Siuan and Egwene are engaging in all these political machinations among the rebels is a military campaign against the White Tower, which is utterly wrong, and probably an unjust war on its own. Egwene will even later repudiate the whole campaign and denounce the very act of marching against the White Tower and besieging Tar Valon…after she has had some time away from Siuan, and Siuan’s own actions have soured Egwene on her counsel. So either Siuan primed and aimed Egwene to plan and execute a military rebellion against the Amyrlin Seat, or else Egwene had the idea on her own and Siuan blithely went along with it and actively abetted the plan instead of counseling against it or trying to moderate it.

What it very much looks like is that Siuan leaned into revenge more than fixing a problem. Starting a war within the White Tower cannot be a good way to reuniting it, as people note several times over the course of the conflict when the issue of pushing the fight to an extreme comes up, but it is a better way to make sure that Elaida goes down. After all, if they are making war on Elaida personally, the end result of the war has to be Elaida’s downfall, and a declared war against her makes it much less likely Elaida will retain power under a negotiated settlement. And that, more than anything is Siuan’s agenda. Just as Elaida is really out for her own glorification when she thinks about saving the Tower, Siuan’s first priority is taking out Elaida.

If saving the Tower was the priority that could still be done within the system. At the point when Siuan arrives in Salidar and a negotiated settlement is still on the table for the dissenters gathered there, Elaida has not been in a position to do much damage. What she has begun doing is driving apart the coalition that brought her to the Amyrlin Seat. If the rebels got some concessions in return for their coming back, there would be no external threat to the Tower to rally support to Elaida when her actions become more extreme under Alviarin’s direction. There would be an opposition party in the Hall to vote against her more outrageous actions. Once out of the Hall, Elaida can’t keep holding sittings with only her own faction present, and she has been wearing away that faction with her own Siuan-like behavior.

As it is, in the same book where Siuan reaches Salidar, Elaida has promulgated a blanket amnesty to any sisters who return, so the future issue of the punishments she decrees, such as abolishing the Blue Ajah, is not a factor. Those only become so when Siuan lies about Elaida and the Red Ajah, and begins spreading the story that they created false dragons. And knowing it’s a lie, knowing the Tower’s tradition of covering for fellow sisters and presenting a united front to the world, of not airing their dirty laundry to outsiders, can you blame Elaida? The funny thing is, Siuan herself was outraged when Rand repeated the same story to her. How did she expect Elaida to react? Just as she did. Siuan provoked Elaida into the same indignant reaction she herself felt, for exactly the aim of getting her to lash out, and force the rebels to stay the course out of fear. And as with much of Siuan’s actions in Salidar, you have to say “Smart move. But how does it help?” Is provoking the Amyrlin Seat to acts of tyranny conducive to unifying humanity on the verge of Tarmon Gaidon? Is maintaining the division between sisters to the benefit of the Tower? Clearly not. The only one to benefit is someone who cares much less about those issues than she does about toppling from power the woman who bested her at Tower politics and whose teaching style she resents from when she was a novice and Accepted.

Other lovely advice Siuan gives Egwene is to murder Nicola and Areina for not being protagonists. Because pretty much everything Nicola pulls to try to get ahead is very similar to Egwene. And you can’t even say she’s wrong. She’s almost 25 years old. She had a job and a fiancé. This is a grown woman by any standard you care to name, and if she is willing to take the risks of being forced, she has the right to make that call for herself. Especially with Tarmon Gaidon just around the corner. A considerably better option than sending away girls with enough strength to reach the shawl, just because they are too boy-crazy to make good Aes Sedai, as Siuan did with Else Grinwell. I’m pretty sure Vandene’s assessment the book before she did so was that the Tower would need every novice capable of lighting a candle, as long as they weren’t too interested in good-looking men, right?

But because of mere political inconvenience, Siuan wants to murder Nicola, removing one of the strongest living initiates in the Tower, not to mention one who’s pretty clever, and capable of outmaneuvering sisters, on top of the sheer evil of the notion. And ethically, by assuming all authority over a novice’s actions and choices, by infantilizing her as the Tower does, treating them as literal children, the Tower has a responsibility to protect them as if they were children in truth. Murdering Nicola is as profound a betrayal of the White Tower’s duties as the crime she slanders Elaida for committing.

And speaking of slander, in a world where oaths are taken seriously, where they are sufficient grounds to alter the sentence of a convicted criminal, Siuan swore an oath never to tell a lie. And promptly broke it the moment she was physically capable of doing so. She did not put conditions on the Oaths when she swore them, there was no expiration date, no proviso that she would only live up to them so long as she held a certain status. She not only broke her oath; she did so to abuse others’ trust because they thought that it still held.

As an example of her teaching Egwene how to be Amyrlin, not just what to do, there is the discussion after Moghedian escapes. Egwene, in a moment of panic, commits an egregious violation of tradecraft to meet Siuan and Leane for no real practical gain, and demands they conduct an investigation that will further endanger their covers. Ostensibly, the subject of the investigation is Egwene’s runaway servant, which just might cause people to start wondering at the attention the issue is getting. And there is nothing to be gained by it either. As Siuan points out, none of them know what the Forsaken look like and there is nothing that could be done with anything they do learn about whoever released Moghedian. Egwene slaps down Siuan, demanding to know if the mere reassurance she would get from having slightly more knowledge than she currently does is too much to ask. But it kind of is, considering how many stand to suffer if Egwene goes down. If Egwene can reprimand Nynaeve & Elayne for endangering her (and by extension, her whole faction’s) political position by a bargain with the Sea Folk that is nonetheless a positive good for the world, how much more does she deserve a reprimand for something equally dangerous to that position with nothing to be gained by the risk? Okay, but she’s still learning. Whose job is it to set her straight on that? Siuan’s. And what does Siuan tell her? That she was right to flip out on Siuan, that no one may be impertinent to the Amyrlin Seat!

Before Siuan started filling Egwene’s head with nonsense like that, Egwene understood the need for people to treat rulers and leaders like normal human beings. That is was important for her friends to treat her like their friend, instead of their office. That rulers needed to be told the truth, even if they did not like it. We see in the same book where Siuan tells Egwene not to let anyone be rude to her, Cadsuane being deliberately rude to tell Rand things he needs to hear, because he’s not going to listen to people being deferential and obsequious. Leane tried respect on coming into the tent with “Mother, this is unwise,“ and Egwne’s response is IDGaF. She needs to hear when she’s doing something stupid, but Siuan doubles down on the Amyrlin being above normal human interaction, not least because she’s defending her own track record of arrogance and entitlement.

Recall that when Anaiya brought up her behavior as Amyrlin when she first arrived in Salidar, stating that she abused her authority and forced people to do what she wanted, Siuan’s reaction is to scoff that the Amyrlin can’t treat every sister like a buddy. Except that’s not what Anaiya was saying at all. Siuan was acting like respect and basic courtesy are special favors to close friends. Her reaction is more like a child using a semantic digression rather than reflect on what they did wrong. Why does she think people listened to Elaida as they did not to all the other opponents of Amyrlins who wanted to depose one? Either all but two other Amyrlins who managed to not get deposed DID treat people like girlhood pals, or else Siuan’s behavior was considerably worse than merely failing to be besties.

Just about the only positive thing we know Siuan did as Amyrlin was create the title ‘Mistress of the Kitchens’. I suppose you could count raising the Wondergirls to Accepted, but that’s more of a Doylist good idea. From the point of view of the White Tower and forming girls into proper Aes Sedai it was a tragic blunder, and Siuan had no intention of undermining the process or protecting the girls from being conditioned into obedient sisters. She just thought that her commands took precedence over 3,000 years’ institutional experience in indoctrination.

Siuan Sanche is a rude, petulant bully, who would destroy the White Tower or the authority of the Amyrlin Seat if she cannot hold them herself. She does a poor job teaching Egwene, who reaches her greatest heights after getting away from her teaching, and blames the Siuan-led rescue in defiance of her standing orders for her inability to reunite the Tower without a fight. Upon her triumph, Egwene publicly denounces and repudiates the course of action to which Siuan counseled her. When she held power herself, Siuan presided over a world going to the dogs, and engendered resentment against the Tower and its interference in others’ affairs. Her control-freak mentality and utter lack of subtlety or diplomacy gave the Shadow opportunities to steal the Horn of Valere and break the White Tower, and they were far and away the biggest fans of her efforts to exacerbate and prolong the division.

But to all-too-many WoT fans, Siuan is an amazing person for going on and keeping up the fight in spite of all she lost. Yes. Those are great qualities. And Eamon Valda is a blademaster, with all the discipline, dedication and perseverance that achievement entails. What matters most about skills and personal qualities is the use to which you put them. You don’t get a pass for putting skills to bad use, for striving for unworthy goals, just because you’ve suddenly lost an ability you once took for granted. Siuan learns nothing from her loss, other than perhaps some lessons about practical politics that might have helped her avoid the loss in the first place. She continues barreling down her path in the assumption that she knows best and she has the right to do whatever she can get away with because she knows best. All her disability really does is rehabilitate her in the eyes of the fandom, and cover over her many, many mistakes and the reasons why the Pattern removed her from power as its own champion was rising to fix the mess that was in part her doing.

#wheel of time #siuan sanche #aes sedai

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glitterquadricorn · 5 years

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Million Reasons - Lucifer Morningstar

Pairing: Lucifer Morningstar x Angel!Reader Word Count: 1,359 Warning(s): Angst, screaming & shouting, arguments, Amenadiel, Chloe and Lucifer all get ripped a new asshole, mentions fertility struggles, curse words, etc

Requested By: @anushay1998

Request: Heyy I just read your Luci fic and I LOVE IT!! ❤ Can I have a mini series or a long one shot where the reader is Lucifer's girlfriend yet after he meets Chloe things go downside for her. He neglects her and spend less time with her all in all which of course start to bother but she still does not confront him about it as she is afraid he may go after the detective then to stay with her. As they partners solve cases AFYER cases, the readers relationship with Lucifer gets more jeopardized.. Until..

..2) the revelation is made that Chloe is special and is put in Lucifer's way by God himself, the reader loses it and lashes out at everyone including Luci. That's when he realizes everything and tries making up to her by date nights, his way of apology and a good time😂 Angst and smut all the way, sorry if it's too descripted lol

You're giving me a million reasons to let you go / You're giving me a million reasons to quit the show / You're givin' me a million reasons / Give me a million reasons / Givin' me a million reasons / About a million reasons...

She was mad. She down right pissed. Lucifer, her boyfriend for well over a century, canceled their date for the eighth time in several weeks. She understood that he was a rather busy man, and getting ahold of him was rather difficult. But then he met a woman by the name of Chloe Decker. Not too long after that, Lucifer got a job as a civilian consultant with the LAPD. After that, y/n started to see Lucifer less and less. She was bothered by it, but said nothing to no one.

Walking off the elevator, she saw Lucifer sitting at the bar with none other than Chloe. She rolled her eyes and walked past them, not paying them any attention.

“Why are you all dressed up? Had a night out with Maze?” Lucifer asked. She ignored him and went to their shared bedroom. Once there, she kicked off her heels and peeled off her dress. Wiping the make-up off, she sees Lucifer standing in the doorway.

“Can I help you?”

“What’s wrong?” Lucifer pushed off the door and stood behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders.

“Nothing’s wrong,”

“I feel like you’re lying,” Lucifer said, raising an eyebrow.

“Why would I lie? I don’t have a reason to,” She grabbed her toothbrush and brushed her teeth. She spit out mouthwash and turned to him. “I’m going to bed. Love you, goodnight,”

She crawled into bed not hearing those three words back from Lucifer.

If I had a highway, I would run for the hills / If you could find a dry way, I'd forever be still / But you're giving me a million reasons / Give me a million reasons / Givin' me a million reasons / About a million reasons...

“I just don’t get it, Maze. Everything was fine until she showed up. Most of our date nights get canceled because of her. It’s Chloe this, Chloe that, oh! Chloe and I did this today! I’m just sick of it!” She slammed her fist on the table, cracking it.

“Want me to get rid of her?”

“As tempting as that is, no,”

“So have you said anything to Lucifer about it?”

“No, I haven’t. I fear that if I say something to him about it, it’ll just drive him to leave me for Chloe,” Maze watched the usually happy and bubbly angel frown. Her cold, dead, black heart hurt for the woman in front of her. “Why is he doing this? Am I doing something wrong?”

“You’re doing nothing wrong, y/n. Lucifer is a moron,”

Mumbling under her breath, “Understatement of the century,”

“I can talk to him about this,”

“Don’t worry about it,”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,”

When she got home, she saw a note with a bouquet of roses on the counter. Smiling, she reached for the note.

Dear y/n,

I know I've been a real jerk by canceling our dates as of late, so to make up for it, I want you to get dressed in the dress and shoes that’s in the box at the end of the bed. Be ready by 7 p.m.

The smile on her face spread from ear to ear. She rushed to the bedroom and the box Lucifer was talking about. Reaching for the box, she took off the lid and saw a beautiful black, long sleeved, velvet dress. Her hands ran down the soft fabric. She was, without a doubt, excited, but she wondered if Lucifer was going to cancel on her again. If he canceled on her again, she’d pack some bags and leave. It may seem a little dramatic to some, but she didn’t care. She didn’t feel important anymore.

Pushing the thought out of her head, she started to get ready. When she was all dressed and ready to go, it was twenty minutes to seven. Walking over to the couch, she sat down and waited for Lucifer. She couldn’t sit down for long because she got up and walked around the room. Her eyes kept going to the clock on the wall. She let out a shaky breath when seven came and went. She tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he’s running late due to traffic, but she knew better. Lucifer Morningstar cancelled on her once again.

Heading to their bedroom, she grabbed a duffle bag from the closet. She shoved clothes into the duffle bag, not caring if they got wrinkled or not. All she knew was that she didn’t want to be there when Lucifer got home.

And if you say something that you might even mean / It's hard to even fathom / which parts I should believe / 'Cause you're giving me a million reasons / Give me a million reasons / Givin' me a million reasons / About a million reasons...

She sat on the couch, scowling at the blonde, blue-eyed woman across from her while the others argued. When Mazikeen found her at a hotel an hour away, she told her Amenadiel blessed Chloe’s parents and that god himself put Chloe in Lucifer’s path. Needless to say she was pissed.

“Shut up!” She screamed, making everyone stop. Turning towards Amenadial, she waved her finger at him. “You just had to bless her mother didn’t you? You just had to help a couple who had a hard time conceiving. The only reason why god sent you to bless her parents is out of spite of me. I was once one of his favorite angel, but I decided to follow Lucifer down to hell because I loved him. You’re just a piece of an elaborate puzzle.”

Chloe stood up, about to defend her mother. “Hey-”

“Shut up and sit down,” She seethed. “You know, I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt at first. I thought, Oh! She’s this super nice woman with an adorable daughter. And I was only nice to you because you obviously meant something to Lucifer. But then you just started to show up everywhere!”

“He’s my-”

“Partner. I know. You don’t need to remind me,” Her anger was felt by everyone in the room. And if this was a cartoon, steam would be coming out of her ears. “Do you have any idea what you’ve caused? What you’ve done just by being here?”

“I think it’s best if you calm down, love,” Lucifer placed his hands on her arms, trying to calm her down.

She brushed him off, shoving him away from her. "Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down! I’m pissed at you,”

“Me? What have I done?”

“Are you kidding me? That night I came home and you asked if I had a girls night with Maze, yeah that’s a date you canceled. And you wanna know who you were with? Chloe. That date where you had a dress and shoes in a box waiting for me? Yeah, that’s a date you stood me up on. I’m not going to continue to waste my time doing my hair, make-up and getting all dressed up just for you to either cancel or stand me up. It’s not worth it anymore,”

The look of realization came across Lucifer’s face. “Baby, love, why didn’t you say anything?”

“The only reason why I didn’t say anything because I was worried that you’d leave me for Chloe,”

“I could never do such a thing,” Lucifer grinned, grabbing her face in his hands. “You followed me down to hell and became my queen all because you loved me.”

“I’d do it all over again if given the choice,”

“I swear to make it up to you,”

“You said that the last time,”

“I mean this time,”

“You better,”

I've got a hundred million reasons to walk away / But baby, I just need one good one, good one / Tell me that you'll be the good one, good one / Baby, I just need one good one to stay...

=============================================================

ITS FINALLY DONE! And to the person that requested this, I’m sooooo sorry for not posting this sooner. It felt as if all the motivation and drive to write this was sucked right out of me. I feel horrible. I hope you can forgive me. And I know you mentioned smut in the request, but I don't think it needs it.

Enjoy!

Tagging(permanent):

@buckys-sweetheart @letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked @maliasbubble @sergeantjbuckybarnes @patzammit @yagirlmexic @awkwardfangirl2014 @beckieandhertardis @tinycyberhacker @streetghostfighter07 @distant-illusions @sugaglory @independentgirl @darkunderworldqueen @alisoncdariel

#lucifer #Lucifer Morningstar #lucifer x reader #lucifer morningstar x reader #x reader #lucifer imagine #imagine #imagines #I don't know what else to tag

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philosophicalparadox · 4 years

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Orders of Magnitude

Or in other words, the post I said I was going to do about Elements and Personalities, for all you element-loving people out there.

WARNING: this post is LOOOOOOOONG, and came about from a mish-mash of Tarot, Astrology, Wiccan mythology, Rosicrucianism (a mish-mashed sect of Judaism, but with heavy Zoroastrian influence) Zoroastrianism, Mesapotamian demonology, and personal experiences with Paganism and various Spiritualist people. I have done FOUR DAYS worth of reasearch on this, and originally spelled all of it out in this post; however, TUmblr has a dumb word count limit so I had to cut out a good 7, admittedly boring, paragraphs on my reasearch completely out of it -- which was actually probably a good thing.

Now, as you can imagine, I hit a few bumps in the road once I got to Azazel, Beelzebub, and Samael; Beelzebub especially. Hence, he will be at the very bottom, in spite of being nowhere near the top; yes, that means I’m starting from the lower tiers of the heirarchy and working my way up.

1. Earth:

Earth elementals are strong, body, mind and soul. Once they’ve made up their mind, there is no changing it. Earth elementals are notorious for being stubborn and hard headed, but they are less known for their ability to be kind, nurturing and extremely loyal. They find a cause and stick to it, which can create a situation ripe for them to be conflicted with themselves, causing their confidence to rise and fall, though it seldom falls far. They are also quite notorious for having a hearty patience with things they are familiar with, and a shorter fuse with things that they don’t intuitively understand. They tend to be tradition-oriented, and are cautious to outright resistant to anything ‘new’.

2. Rot/Death

The Death arcana is a surprisingly positive one. Death means an end to things, both good and bad, and so death is not always such a bad thing. Decay and Rot, as well, are an end, and therefore the start of a new beginning. In light of this, death/rot can be said to be a remarkably carefree personality, who takes things at face value and seldom deeper. Death is a creature of conflicting self interests, with the ability to be both kind and cruel, and while they are steady, and therefore reliable, they tend to live life on their own terms, at their own pace, and tend not to dwell on things for too long. What’s in the past is in the past, and life is fleeting. They tend to be loyal to only a handful of very close friends, but are nonetheless friendly with everyone. That said, a creature of the Death personality is not one worth crossing, as they are notorious for having a cold, calculating kind of anger and are frequently spiteful. Their reputation for having a level head can get them into trouble, though, since they come off as careless or lacking remorse in dire situations.

Rot is the effort before death, however, a bridge between what is alive and what is dead. Rot probably would be best personified using eldritch myths as inspiration, denoting a personality which, unlike death, can hang onto and hold stark grudges, and while steady in their anger, are probably more overt about it, if still passive aggressive. Decay, like death, is constant, and therefore reliable, but also wildly unpredictable; small things can impact decay as an event quite considerably. Rot is also sometimes associated with greed, given that it “consumes” life, which suits Astaroth as a demon quite well.

3. Water

Water elementals are probably the most relatable for the widest majority of humans. Water is the element of emotion, and consequently water types tend to be quite sensitive, for the good and the bad. Do not forget, however, that water has multiple states, making water types extremely adaptable and ‘fluid’ in the way they live life, going with the flow of things wherever they may go. Passive as they are, water types are harder to hurt than you would think, since they tend to roll with the punches as they come. That said, everyone has their limit, and when a water elemental reaches it, they become frigid and aloof, or else they boil with rage, and there is no in between. Water types also, being emotionally sensitive as they are, tend to be either extremely empathetic, or else completely remorseless, depending on the depth of their heart; after all, not all water is deep. Some water, however, is defiantly deep, and very, very dark. Water types are not just adaptable, but highly variable as well, displaying traits that are on an ever shifting spectrum; this makes water types highly unpredictable when meeting for the first time. But just as a river likes to keep to the course it has always taken, so water types are highly traditionally minded and usually steady, though they are known to change their minds with surprisingly little pressure, and have a unique ability to bond very deeply to people, places, and things. Water types are also undoubtedly the most self-aware, often acutely aware of themselves and their effect on other people; this can lead them to be quite self punishing. Passively tolerant of almost anything, it can be easy for a water type to find themselves getting run over or taken advantage of.

4. Fire

Fire is the element of passion -- and by passion, I mean the archaic meaning of the word, that is “powerful, raw emotions”. Fire is also a very relatable type, but unlike water, they are often very confident and undeterred by criticism or any kind of blow to their ego, since they have the ability, and spunk, to bite back instantaneously. Their ability to be quick and witty belies their fragility though; while fire types are very ambitious, they also do not tend to react well to failure to achieve their ambitions, and due to their outgoing nature, can be prone to loneliness. Fire is also sometimes considered the element of pride, as well as wrath - Fire types have a notoriously violent temper; even if it is short lived, it can be brutally intense, taking the lieu of either an explosion or a slow, hotter, burn. They have the ability to be very warm, to the point of being absurdly selfless, but in the same stroke can be exceedingly selfish as well, and have a very unpredictable nature overall. Wild and confident, they can be, and are often portrayed to be, quite cocky, which against a stronger opponent can become their downfall.

5. Spirit/Air

Ah, the contradictions here.

Air is the element of freedom, and I suppose spiritualism is too. Freedom is paramount to the air element, as stagnation is literally toxic to them. They must move, breathe, be active and most of all have few or no strings holding them back. That isn’t to say that air elementals can’t be loyal, but they often hold loyalty separate from responsibility. In fact, if there is any elemental personality that can hold a bird in one hand and a stone in the other, it is air. They often are capable of holding multiple ideas or correlated things separate in their mind, and it can, in the extreme, cause them to have a very biased interpretation of things. Nonetheless, if you’re looking for a socialite, air is your element -- they love to do, never holding still, and are usually very good at making acquaintances and generally getting along with everyone. However, air is also deeply private, and is reluctant to share personal things with others; having many friends for support, and few friends for close things is just the way they like it. Air is also the element of pride, and air elements can be portrayed as...well, kind of air-headed. Impulsive, is the word I would use; they don’t like to stop and think, preferring action over words. Nonetheless, even the wind must calm down eventually, and air elements can be quite introspective and wise when they want to be. Their temperament is one of a fast-paced, impatient, and action-oriented individual, whose anger is typically very brief but very strong.

Spirit is something that has a very vague-at-best interpretation. Most often I hear Spiritualism described as a strong will or want for something.

Taking that into account, and with what we have seen of Azazel’s clones, as well as his kin, I would say that Spirit as an element is a manifestation of Willpower; the thing which gives life purpose, the drive that keeps all living things, well, living.

6. Time/Space, and the Devil

Now, the closest thing to Samael I could find was the Devil card/arcana. Devil arcana is one personifying -- well, actually, NOT the Devil. In fact, the Devil card is arguably one of the best cards you could recieve, provided it’s not inverted. People who are of a Devil type are upbeat, outgoing, and love, love, love to be the centers of attention. They are incredibly self motivated and independent, but also have innumerable connections through their often rich social lives.

That said, the Devil is a two-faced card; in one hand, the Devil represents outgoing passion and a strong, independent will; in the other, however, Devil’s enjoy their time to themselves, and are typically unconcerned with matters not directly affecting them.

The Devil inverse is one of the worse cards you could ever get, shy of the ten of swords; it’s a signal of impending calamity in personal life, one you got yourself into, but which you will struggle to escape.

Devil’s are adaptable, highly ambitious, and and incredibly devoted to whatever they do, but often are willing to set aside the needs of others to benefit their own. They are “big picture” thinkers and because of that can miss out on smaller details. They also can develop an over-inflated ego, or worse a superiority complex, when they are given too much due. (they’re not known for being humble).

Now, Time/Space element -- that’s a tricky story. Some mythologies do have Time lords (and even Time angels) but the details on their personalities are lacking. From what I garner, if Time/Space could be personified, it would be simultaneously fluid and ever-changing, as well as very vast and very consistent. Consistently chaotic, one might say. Time angels, in particular, seem very contradictory; in one way, they benefit mankind, in another, they torment them.

7. Light, and the Judgement arcana

Aka, the “order of the angels”. The Judgement card is one well known for being the only Tarot card to feature an Archangel, which is usually Gabriel, (the angel of the Moon, ironically) or Michael (the angel of the Sun, also ironic) holding a trumpet, or in some cases a spear.

This is meant to symbolize, obviously, a calling to a higher power; which is perhaps why people who align with the Judgment arcana are very, very ambitious.

Ambitious, and often polarized - there is always two categories that any situation, person, or circumstance can fall into with these people; Good, and Bad. Righteous, and Blasphemous. Divine and Devil incarnate. There is always a black and a white, and Judgment’s often have a hard time switching between the two once their mind is made up.

That isn’t to say that they are all bad people; Judgements are very well known for being major figures in history and mythology alike, doing either very great or very terrible deeds. Due to their polarized views, their actions similarly take on either a good or bad light. What matters is that to them, their ideology will always be the right one. One fairly consistent trait among these types is their refusal to admit defeat or wrongdoing, which can be both a great and a terrible thing.

Because of this, Judgments are very apt at coming up with justifications for their and other’s behavior -- but also a lack thereof, where those who are in the “wrong” are concerned. You will never be able to convince a Judgment that they are the wrong ones here, and any attempt at explanation will be taken offence to as an ‘excuse’. They earn their name - often concerning themselves with not how others think of them, but how others think of their ideas. Once considered to be on the “black” side of the spectrum, however, you are as good as dead to them, since they value loyalty -- not to themselves, but usually to their cause-- to be tantamount to how they judge you as a person.

Light is an element that I actually didn’t have to scavenge for. Light has a definite association, all over the world -- from wrathful sun gods to gentle, nurturing mothers; there isn’t a more universal deity in human history than one which features light at the center of their being.

Because it is so universal, you would think that it had very concrete associations -- and you’d be partially correct. But such global coverage means tons of tons of TONS of variations; you wouldn’t necessarily compare Horus to Amaterasu, after all.

That said, one thing all light deities symbolize regardless of where is hope. Hope for a brighter future, a better ending, a full belly, or a tender touch. Hope for good fortune, grace or humanity in general.

Kindness is often associated with Light as well, as is gentleness. Lucifer himself, in the New Testament, is described as an entity which “emits a gentle, warm light that is cold when touched” (paraphrasing). Light is alluring, because light is hope and compassion --

But be not deceived. Light is also a symbol of cunning, of deception and toxic self-righteousness (Sin of Pride, in the case of biblical Lucifer). Horus is a good example -- yes, he is a ‘good’ god, but he is also full of himself and well known for tricking other gods with his quick wit. (I know scholars often attribute Lucifer to a long-dead King, but I do honestly wonder if his mythology wasn’t borrowed from Egyptian gods as well, specifically Horus and Ra).

*8. Beelzebub and Insects/The Lord of the Flies:

Beelzebub is the only one that really doesn’t fit here. Doesn’t help that we know absolutely nothing about him other than his rank and his title.

Insect, in the generalized, common-use sense, could be anything with legs and an exoskeleton. Why, though, do insects get special attention?

Well there’s the fact that around 2/3 of the animal kingdom is made up of insects, if you count by number of species, possibly even higher. Arthropods, if you include them here, were the first things to walk on land, and they still exist here in the form of pill bugs and millipedes.

But I think Beelzebub is a manifestation of a very interesting concept as regards creepy-crawly things -- because humans have a deep, instinctive distrust of anything with legs and an exoskeleton from a young age. Yet insects have long, long been companions of mankind, in the form of now extinct homo-sapiens specific fleas and still-extant homo-sapiens specific lice. They also have a very good reputation for being pests.

That being said, is it so surprising that these feelings could manifest into the shape of a demon? As to what sort of personality he might have, I couldn’t really say. Mythologically Beelzebub is very belligerent and brutish, or else very cunning and cruel.

Well, that wraps it up for today. :) if you’ve any questions or comments, feel free to reply!

#BlueExorcist #Info Dump #Baal

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jurien-ashur · 5 years

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Discourse

So I didn’t want to have to do this but it seems like it’s unavoidable. For the past couple of months I have been trying to move on from a toxic relationship and move on to more enjoyable roleplay but it seems that she cannot let go. Who am I talking about? I’m talking about Corinne Fletcher (aka Nemy on discord) who is @Fletchlingfletcher on tumblr. Now this post is mainly to clear the air because she as well as Naenia (@paleshadeofrose) have been spreading rumors and speaking about my personal real life in order to depict me as a horrible and abusive person.

For the most part, I just ignored it and just peacefully warned people that this was going on and to disregard it because these people and the friends that they have made in order to repeat these rumors have gotten out of control. So here it is… This is my side.

Corinne’s mun and I had a bad falling out because I just wasn’t having fun with her. After 5 years of Rping the same thing I wanted to try other things which she wasn’t comfortable with. I tried to invite other people into the roleplay and she became very passive aggressive. Now this is in no way trying to paint me out to be the Dalai lama to where I didn’t do any wrong. It was a constant back and forth of accusing each other of losing interest or cheating-- overall just very toxic because that is the environment that we created with each other after being with each other for so long. I have a very busy life now which made it difficult to be attentive to her. I had school, I worked 10 hours shifts at night, I have family business that has to come first and so I hardly had time to really talk to her as I once did. The stress of her neediness and my shortness with her led to a big fallout where a lot of things were said out of anger. A lot of things that I said that I’m not too proud of but all the same it was said out of anger. I spoke with her again, one time in December to try to patch things up with her and when she didn’t want to do so, I haven’t talked to her since. You can find the LAST conversation I had with her here…

HERE

Five months later, she is still spreading rumors about me and telling people things that we talked about in private to make me seem like a horrible person in order to sway people into not RPing with me. She won’t show them how I tried to mend things. Instead she shows them THIS in order to emphasize what a bad person I am when it’s a conversation of when we were breaking up. Now, I don’t care if someone is mad because a Roleplay doesn’t work out. Ships end. Friendships end. But time heals sore feelings and regardless of how you may feel about someone you should NEVER bring their personal life into the game that has PERSONAL information about them and their family… In this conversation, specifically, it even spoke about my daughter. I don’t care how pissed you are about a ship not working out, you never bring those aspects into a game to make someone out to be a bad person. This is what she sent to a person I was actively roleplaying with.. Here.

Anyone who would condone this or pretend like this isn’t a serious invasion of privacy is wrong. She has messaged several of the people I interacted with in order to push this narrative and it’s been over 5 months since we broke things off. How do I know this? This conversation from a friend and her was posted 3 days ago suggesting that my friend should block me because of a disagreement we had. You can find that HERE. This evident that she is NOT over our breakup. It doesn’t matter how mad I was about the way she and I broke up, I never suggested to anyone that they should stop speaking to her. Anyone who associated themselves with her a lot, I civilly removed myself from the their tumblr in order to avoid seeing her posts. I cannot tell people to not post her stuff; I only have control over what I can do to ensure my mental health is good. Following someone’s tumblr is not the measure of the friendship that I have with them. But Corinne is actively trying to alienate me from the Tumblr community and from the RP community by showing screenshots of when we were breaking up and I want people to know that that is NOT the narrative of our entire relationship. It wasn’t just me who was bad to her.. WE WERE BAD TO EACH OTHER. There had been days where I would just lie in bed and stare at the ceiling because I was filled with anxiety and she wasn’t helping. She told me that she would not try to sabotage my Rp and keep our drama between her and I which is not truthful. HERE

I can only speculate on her motivation to this but I would assume that she has become bitter and spiteful because I actually am doing better and I’m doing well and my mental health is much better now that we are separated. Yes, in December I tried to mend things but after the offer was rejected, I accepted it and I moved on. And I was happy. And I AM happy. And I want to remain happy.

Now let’s talk about Naenia because she seems especially interested in my personal life. Last night (5/11/19) Naenia harassed my friend trying to confirm some things that is none of her business. However, since Corinne and Naenia have been talking, Naenia wants to concern herself of who I am outside of the game, i.e age, gender, marital status, immediate family etc.. and she wants to confirm if some information about my personal life is true. Her is her trying to guilt my friend into sharing information about who I am when he states several times that he doesn’t want to be involved. HERE.

Now who am I? Who is Jurien? Well for all the people who want to know and all the people who are still reading this. As a mun, I own the tumblr Jurien-Ashur, Misato-Otsuka and Yuki-yukichan. Yes, surprise. Yuki-chan and Jurien have the same mun.

I created Yuki because I had high anxiety, low self-esteem, writer's block, depression and I was generally just angry all the time while playing Jurien. He just wasn’t a fun character to play anymore. I created Yuki more so to converse with people. Not necessarily to Rp though it did turn out that way. I needed to deflate because I was always stressed out. In the process, I ended up meeting a lot of great people who supported me and made me believe that I was more than just one type of OC-- that my creativity was more than just this one thing. From past experiences, I knew that if I invited Nemy/Corinne into Yuki’s world that the same result would happen all over again and people would be turned away because of her passive aggressiveness, so I kept the blog separate. Corinne found the blog, called me out on it and I was reluctant to actually confess. Now that is the problem. Why should I be afraid to let my rp partner know my alts? No one should be afraid to tell the truth when it comes to something they enjoy.

As far as Naenia is concerned, she is bitter because I didn’t want to be in a romantic relationship with her on Jurien. She talked to her friends behind my back to paint this picture that I was abusive to her and leading her on. However.. I have proof that it wasn’t the case. Multiple times I had set up times to rp with her and SHE didn’t show up. In a conversation, I expressed that I was disappointed that we didn’t get to meet up and immediately got defensive and when I decided to end the conversation.. She continued to ‘poke’ and try to get my attention. You can find that conversation HERE. I also made it clear that I didn’t want to be in an rp relationship and that I didn’t want her to wait around for me to be ready for a relationship. You can find that conversation Here. And here is a conversation that was going on at the same time of when she is talking to me reasonably and we are trying to work things out and I asked her for patience because I had a busy life outside of the game. At the same time she is talking to Ashe bad mouthing me. You can find that conversation HERE. Naenia didn’t want to do anything with me because it would be 6am when I got off from work however, she is frustrated with me when I won’t wake up early to Roleplay with her-- because I work 10 hour shifts and it’s heavy lifting. You can find that double standard HERE. She also conveyed that she didn’t like RPing before she had to go to work which I completely understood which you can find that HERE.

After that conversation, Naenia blocked me which I was okay with. I didn’t block her. It didn’t really matter to me but after saying all those things about me and when Ashe and I broke our rp off because Ashe tried to commit suicide.. Naenia pops up in my DM on tumblr again. You can find that conversation HERE. This conversation comes only a few hours after Ashe was discharged from the hospital but because the whole situation was upsetting, I refused to speak with her from that day on. At the same time.. She is telling people that Jurien was Gaslighting her and that he is very abusive (Which could be found here) but Naenia had never stopped actively trying to be with Jurien even after I expressed both IC and OOC that I didn’t want to be in a relationship. She even tried to get Ashe to be the bad person for even showing me the screenshots of her talking poorly about me to her friends while she was sweet as pie when talking to me on most occasions. And got everyone to be mad at her for showing that she was bad mouthing me instead of getting mad at Naenia for saying those malicious things in the first place.

Now again, I’m not telling people to stop talking to these two girls who have been extremely toxic in my life for the past few months. Some people just don’t vibe well together. I don’t want anything to do with either of them after this. They have invaded my privacy and shared that information with everyone who would listen all because they are upset about an rp ship that ended or a friendship that ended. My private life should not be a spectacle. Someone shouldn’t be asking my current RP partners if they know a certain bit of information about my personal life in order to try to convince them not to talk to me because I didn’t want to ship with them. We should not downplay all this and we should call it what is it. It’s bullying. All I wanted was to write and to have fun with the friends I found in game and Tumblr after a bad experience.

I didn’t want to show the information that I had. Hell, I didn’t want to show any of this information but I found that my silence and my ignoring the situation has done little good. People are believing the narrative that I’m this ‘horny guy’ when I have only been with two people in an intimate fashion Rply.

So there you have it. I’m just a player who is trying to move on from a toxic relationship-- a toxic friendship-- a toxic encounter with a tumblr woman and they are obsessing over me. They are broadcasting my personal information and they are trying to alienate me from others because they can’t accept that I’m happy. I’m not broken and I can survive without them.

You can make your own decision about the situation but I did the best I could. I’m doing the best I can.

#discourse #Leave my personal life out of this #Leave my family out of this #Leave me out of your conversations #Stop harassing my friends #Stop trying to bully me #Jurien Ashur #I have my flaws but I'm over both of you #Move on #Let go #Leave me alone

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artistic-mathematics · 5 years

Text

Is this another She-Ra theories/speculations post?

It is indeed.

Season 3 spoilers!!! Again!!!

Part 1 is here!

Catra’s redemption arc (and Beast Island?)

Yeah, I think she’s getting one. She seems irredeemable at the moment, but I’m here to try to change your mind.

There’s been a bit of talk on the sidelines about how Catra will probably end up at Beast Island and the whole sequence of the people seeing her as a queen, yada yada. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go read about the original Catra. Yes, from the original theories.)

Generally speaking, Catra’s hit a new low. It’s noted that her main motivation is spite, and will do whatever it takes to defeat Adora, even if it meant watching the world burn in the process. She’s kidnapped Bow and Glimmer, tried to kill Adora several times, destroyed many parts of Etheria in her quest to gain power and have Hordak trust her.

Irredeemable, though? I think not.

Remember that Catra had an abusive upbringing. She was always overshadowed by Adora as they both grew up, only because Shadow Weaver saw that power within her and glorified it, while Catra was only kept around because Adora was “fond” of her. She was always overshadowed, always being thrown around like she’s useless, always being blamed and taking the fall for any of Adora’s mishaps. In order to lessen the blows, she always acted somewhat tame around the others.

The moment Adora left, her one motivation to stay tame disappeared. She didn’t want to go with Adora not because she necessarily liked the Horde, but because she wanted to prove to Shadow Weaver and Hordak that she was capable. At first, it was getting Adora back to the Horde. When that failed, it became the ability to defeat Adora and the Princess Alliance.

Catra simply believes that Adora betrayed her by leaving to join the Princess Alliance. She didn’t go with Adora just because she wanted to prove that she was just as capable, even more so, than Adora in the Horde.

That’s why her interaction with Shadow Weaver in the prison was so crucial. Catra leaned into her touch like it was addicting, almost. Shadow Weaver praised her, even mentioning how Catra could be better if she took the right precautions. Shadow Weaver felt like the parental figure she never had, for a moment. Then Shadow Weaver escaped and Catra was devastated. She thought she had met her expectations for once, her being especially crucial. As abusive as she was, Shadow Weaver was the only parental figure Catra had known. She was happy for a second, comforted by that one parental figure for probably what was the first and only time, only for her to realize that it was Shadow Weaver manipulating Catra one last time, punching her in the gut, and leaving her... once again, for Adora.

And Catra is ticked off by it.

Now she no longer cares. She’s been backstabbed by Shadow Weaver who screwed her over for Adora. She’s felt so insignificant. She’s willing to do whatever it takes to get the approval of the person who’s truly in power here, Hordak.

Remember in the Crimson Waste when Catra mentions she’s lost everything? Haha, no she didn’t, at the time. The moment she left the Crimson Waste to return to the Fright Zone and prove to Hordak that she was useful, she lost everything she’s had, for real this time.

She backstabbed Entrapta after she admitted Adora was right, even after she saved Catra’s life. If Hordak ever finds out, she’s utterly screwed.

She then turned on Scorpia, who tried to intervene when Catra stabs Entrapta with a stun baton. Scorpia looks extremely hurt, although later mentions she believes that Catra was just scared and didn’t mean to. But Scorpia doesn’t even entirely believe that anymore, considering her face expression as she tried to convince Adora of it. Scorpia is no longer convinced herself.

Notice how both Scorpia and Entrapta cut off mid-sentence when talking about Catra in the warped reality and pause for a second? Yeah.

The worst part is that Catra pushed Adora to the limit here too. Catra’s pissed Adora off completely, and Adora is no longer going to go easy on Catra. Adora’s always been gentle with Catra despite the fact she could easily take her out (cue berserk She-Ra scene) but she never has. It’s no longer the case now, and Catra knows. She knows she’s made a huge mistake.

Catra has now completely lost everything.

Now here’s what I’m thinking... there’s two main ways (I could think of that’s fairly reasonable) the plot could go with this.

Catra gets away with backstabbing Entrapta, but soon finds out that Hordak isn’t even the true leader. Hordak gets his redemption arc, in which he sides with the princesses against Horde Prime. Angered, Catra sides with Horde Prime.

Going down this course, however, Catra’s going to realize that she is nothing to Horde Prime as well.

Horde Prime clearly wants to be a monarch. He doesn’t care about others. He’s not going to want Catra to be a second in command at all. Even if he does end up doing that, he’ll just use her and dispose of her.

The only thing I can see here is that Catra will eventually be forced to join the Princess Alliance.

Hordak finds out about what Catra did and gets sent to Beast Island just as the Princess Alliance go to the island as well.

Scorpia is very likely going to rat Catra out. That scorpion cannot keep a secret for her life and it’s... pretty obvious.

Catra gets sent to Beast Island and there’s the whole sequence of Catra and her mask and being the queen of the Magicats... this is entirely speculation upon the original She-Ra series. You can read the original Catra’s story here.

Even if the whole Magicats sequence doesn’t happen, I’m sure that she’ll end up just rallying a bunch of people against Hordak or something. How much do we all want to bet that there are a bunch of Horde rejects there and they end up influencing her into taking revenge? I mean, her main motivation is spite, once again.

Either way, I think she’ll get a redemption arc. It may take a while, and I think it’ll be after Hordak gets a redemption (ahaha, who we thought to be the main villain getting a redemption? who thought?) if he gets one, which I really think he will.

To be completely fair, with his interactions with Entrapta, I really think he will. It’s clear that he’s bitter about being cast out and definitely has emotions that he represses. Where have we seen that before, hmm...

Madame Razz

Alright, we’re coming back to her.

I originally thought that she may be a First One, but by the way she acts and talks, I don’t think so anymore. I think she’s just been on Etheria for a very long time and has come to expect the weird things that occur on the planet. She also seems to be some sort of magical being. She seemed entirely unfazed by the portal instability, possibly because of Mara, but I’m starting to wonder if she has some sort of time traveling experience, or is some all-seeing being maybe? (I mentioned time-travel because she does mention that it was “just yesterday” for herself when she watched Mara do the same thing, trying to fix the portal...) In fact, she walked straight into everything that was disappearing while everyone else fled from it.

And she does say “Oh, it’s been such a long time since we last saw each other, hasn’t it? That, or, it hasn’t happened yet. I always get those two things mixed up.” How the hell do you mix up the future and the past? She has to have some sort of time-travel capability. (or future vision like Garnet, like where she mentions she can see into other timelines and stuff...)

She was kind of everywhere in S3E5, which caused Adora to run around the Fright Zone while freaking out. She even led Adora straight to Hordak’s sanctum when the door disappeared...

I mean, she seems to know Adora’s power very well from Mara. And since Mara and Adora look nothing alike, I wonder if she senses the same magic Shadow Weaver sensed from Adora.

It would make sense, at least, because they both are She-Ras... and Razz can’t exactly tell them apart.

Also the whole Mara and She-Ra thing on the piece of paper would make more sense, but that could just be Adora struggling to remember and her subconsciousness screwing with her.

She’s still a huge mystery to me. At least I could mention this, at least.

PS! She-Razz when?!!

Light Hope and the First Ones

Oh boy, do I want to talk about this.

I think they’ll end up being the end-game villains.

Note Mara’s words here... “I never wanted to be a hero. I won’t be remembered as one.”

It’s odd. She never straight-up mentions that she wasn’t a hero. She said that she never wanted to be one... and those who remember her name won’t see her as one. It’s very unique wording. And it shows a lot.

Light Hope seems directly programmed in getting rid of Adora’s attachments. She’s constantly telling Adora to move on, never really explaining Adora’s background and purpose, never giving Adora a choice in anything.

Mara grew attached. But to what?

The First Ones were explorers. They weren’t native to Etheria.

They created all these structures and seemed to have left in a hurry, or at least, that’s what Adora said when they were in that Ghost Town. My speculation is that they left when Mara was stranding Etheria.

I feel like the First Ones were colonizers. They didn’t care much for the people around. Mara realized this, grew attached to the native people of Etheria, and tried to save the people of Etheria from future colonizers. I’m assuming the settlers panicked and fled.

It would also explain why there are no more First Ones. They all ran when Mara turned against them.

It also explains what She-Ra was for before Horde Prime. She-Ra was for keeping peace, for restoring balance. So what type of disorder was there back then?

If the First Ones were explorers, then the first thing that comes to mind is peace with the natives of Etheria. It would also make sense that Mara grew attached to them, much to the First Ones’ dismay, causing them to shun her. Causing Light Hope to declare that Mara was, well, a failure. But she really wasn’t.

Even Razz says “Destroy the world? No! Mara saved the world!” And I think Razz is right.

A general speculation...

The storyline of She-Ra is a massive struggle for power. Those who end out on top are the people who were willing to widen their perspective. The same is true, mostly, in the real world.

We’ve already seen a few examples of this...

Let’s hope some of the current antagonists of the story do the same.

#she-ra theories #she-ra #adora #catra #hordak #entrapta #madam razz #razz #scorpia #the first ones #first ones #light hope #mara

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palmtreeinwondahlandd · 5 years

Text

To the Boy who was Never Mine

It feels odd typing this. Usually, when I write goodbye posts, it’s after a long, tumultuous relationship that ended me typing out the words I couldn’t bear to utter. But not this time. This time is different. This is a sad goodbye. Not one done out of spite, or anger, but rather, one done when there’s nothing else to do. You’re sick. Very sick. There’s a chance you might not make it. Just imagining that makes ny insides swollen. I don’t want to think about that now. I just want to reminisce. When I first laid eyes upon you, that fateful August day, I was mesmerized. You were and still are and probably always will be the most beautiful man my eyes have ever been fortunate enough to see. But if I’m being honest, it wasn’t just your looks that captivated me. It was you. How you managed to look incredibly bored, yet subtly interested at the same time. The way your eyes scanned the room, not really looking, but observing. The way you walked in with the confident stride of a man who’d seen it all, but you still had the demeanor of a young boy. The way your eyes caught mine, and held them for a few seconds. Since then, I’ve been infatuated with you. It’s pathetic and masochistic, but it’s true. I was hooked on you from day one. And you probably don’t know and never will know. After that, you become this sort of motivation for me. I’d never been one to try to stand out in a crowd or take risks, but that all changed. I started dressing to stand out in the hopes that you’d notice me. I socialized more in the hopes that someone might mention me to to you, whether in passing or not. I did things I never inagined I could like going rock-climbing because I’d heard you were interested in it. I changed and I become a person I only thought I could be in my own head. You did that for me. You also broke my heart a few times. You never knew and again, you never will, but you’re the first person I’ve ever really wanted. In the past, I’ve shown interest in people solely based on the fact that they were interested in me. You never gave me that. Sure, there were a few glances here and there, but you never really showed interest in me. And that’s fine. I’m not bitter or mad. I understand. Sometimes, we see people in ways they do not see us. And you were and are that for me. I am so glad that I have had this silly schoolgirl crush on you for the past year and a half. It’s made me the person I am now. No words can describe how thankful I am for your presence in my life. But, I have to say goodbye now. I hope you get better. I hope you do not suffer while getting better. I hope that after you get better, you make even more memories with the people that you love. I hope you meet someone who brightens up your day just as seeing you brightened up mine. I hope you have a family of your own, and that they love you as much as you love them. I hope that you live a long, happy, and healthy life. I hope that when you look back on everything you’ve done, you’re fond of the person you are and have no regrets. I hope that on the rare, and most likely impossible occasion that I ever cross your mind, you think of that girl in the back row, who could only focus on you in that crowded room. Thank you. I wish I could’ve known you better. Maybe I’ll meet you again in another life and things will be different. Maybe not. Either way, I hope you’re out there somewhere, smiling that smile that puts a thousand suns to shame. I like you. I’m glad I can admit that somewhere. Goodbye, Superman. I hope you make it to the moon.

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insideabunker · 5 years

Text

The Games: Chapter 2

"I don't care how good she is, Mike, there's just no reason to take her. There are more than enough good tall guys out there, and it would be a strict disadvantage to put someone so small behind the net."

In a cradle of loose netting behind the crossbar, a tiny transistor radio crackled to life, filling the frozen air with the staticky voices of commentators. The sound echoed through the empty rink, followed by the sharp metal ding of a puck as it ricocheted off the goal post.

"We gonna listen to that thing the whole fucking time?"

"It motivates me."

"To what, have an aneurysm?"

The crack of a slap shot rang out like a bullet from a gun, followed immediately by the hard thud of vulcanized rubber hitting leather at 80 miles an hour.

"Are you throwing softballs?"

Lincoln eyed the goalie skeptically. "Why am I even shooting from the line? You should be working on close up stuff. The teams you're going to be playing will be focusing on dekes, tips, and wrists more than they will slap shots. You need to work on reading the body."

"Pussy."

Another crack filled the area, another hollow thud as the puck was stopped mid-flight.

"That's more like it."

Lincoln scowled. As irritating as she could be, there was no denying his friend's talent. The problem was that Lexa would be the first one to the point that out, and it made the goaltender hard to bear, and on rare occasions, pretty tough to like.

The radio crackled to life again, the static fragmenting the voices as they droned on.

"Oh, come on! Remember Enroth? He was five foot eleven, and the fans up in Buffalo didn't seem to mind him."

"Enroth? Enroth!? Mike, if you're going to use someone as an example at least pick someone who still plays in the NHL. The last time I checked Enroth was sent packing to a KHL team in Belarus or some such place. Meanwhile, Halak and Khudobin, the only goalies in the league I can think of that are under six feet tall, haven't started more than half the games in a season."

"Keith, I played with Gerry Cheevers, who is arguably one of the greatest goaltenders in history. He had to have been no taller than five foot eleven, and a hundred and eighty pounds soaking wet. Now, Woods is only one inch and five pounds smaller than that. You cannot tell me that she can't compete at a professional level."

"Ok Mike, thousands of years ago, when you played, it wasn't uncommon to see a guy five foot ten or five foot eleven between the pipes. And for the record, I'm not arguing that she can't play. She's good. I've seen her play. I know she's good. She might even be better than good. My point is there's just no reason to take her in an era of giant goaltenders. Right now, the average goalie in the NHL is six foot two, two hundred and ten pounds. And that's just the average. Ben Bishop is six foot seven, two hundred and sixteen pounds. Why on earth would you bother taking this girl when there are guys like that out there? Does she have the chops for the NHL? Sure. Fine. But, why sign a small, average quality NHL prospect, when you've got guys playing at the same level who can also fill up the net like they're the Rock of Gibraltar?"

"Well, either way, her selection to the Canadian national team should make this Olympics an interesting one."

"One thing is for sure. If this girl wants a shot at being selected to a professional team, there had better be a shiny, gold medal hanging around her neck at the end of the games. I doubt any NHL team is going to sustain interest if she can't bring home gold when she's just playing against other women."

“Can we please turn that crap off,” Lincoln pleaded with her, his arms dangling at his sides as he kicked a puck into position for another shot."

“I don’t want to.” Lexa adjusting her footing as she waited for him to snap the puck.

“Dante's gonna be pissed when he hears you've been binge-listening to this crap again.”

“He won't,” she crouched low in the net, superstitious that the mere mention of the surly, wizened goalie coach might summon him to appear before her.

“It's gonna get into your head.”

“It won't,” she crouching lower still, dismissing the momentary sting of guilt at her dishonesty.

“Whatever you say.”

Lincoln wound back, his body twisting forward violently as he slapped the puck in her direction, full force.

Most people would have believed Lexa when she told them that the detractors and skeptics didn’t get to her, but not Lincoln. He had known her too intimately for far too long. Lincoln knew when Lexa was lying to herself. When they were children, it had been easier to recognize, easier to see the hurt hidden behind the brave face. Now though, the cracks around the edges were almost imperceptible, and when the naysaying was at its worst, Lexa only doubled down on her cocksure bravado. It was an act that had become so calculated, so much a part of her, that he doubted she could tell the difference between the facade and the emotional truth behind it.

On the rare occasions that Lexa's emotions did break the surface, they always came out convoluted, manifesting themselves as anger and aggression rather than hurt and disappointment. There were times when Lincoln wanted to do more, say more to help her, but his oldest friend lived in abject fear of losing her competitive edge. Frustratingly, Lexa believed that it was her fury, rather than her natural talent alone, that continued to propel her forward. Lincoln knew that his words would fall on deaf ears.

“So you want me to bring it in close?”

“Nope.”

Lincoln sighed, kicking at a puck.

“Lex, the teams at the Olympics...”

“I'm not training to play the teams at the Olympics, Lincoln."

"Lexa..."

They're women, Lincoln! I've been playing in the damn OHL for three years now. Men's professional hockey is my reality. The Olympic games are a distraction at best, and when they're over, I need to be playing at a level that's going to get me drafted out of here. Training for the women's game isn't going to help me with that."

"And training like you're about to play Zdeno Chara is going to lose you the gold!"

Lincoln sent a puck flying towards the stands in frustration. It barely missed the glass, making a terrible rattling sound as it shook the board.

"Lexa, just listen to me for once! You're minimizing how good these players are."

The hulking former defenseman skated over to his friend, pulling off his helmet and discarding it gently on ice as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

"You're not wrong. The women's game is different, but different doesn't mean worse, it doesn't mean unskilled. These women play a different style of hockey, and all of them are extremely good at it. Some of them are unbelievably good at it. More importantly, because you've spent your entire career playing in all-male leagues, their style of hockey isn't one you've played before. If you underestimate how hard it's going to be for you to adjust to that, you do so at your own peril."

Lexa sighed, pulling her goalie mask off. “I swear Lincoln; coaching women has gotten you soft.”

She winked, smirking at her already exacerbated friend. After a two year stint in the NHL, a catastrophic injury had realigned Lincoln's stars, setting him on a new path as the assistant coach of a collegiate women's team in Wisconsin. His transition from rising playboy all-star to a champion of Title IX and female athletes was a sensitive matter, though he remained a good sport when it came to teasing. She expected him to roll his eyes, groan, or perhaps playfully punch her in the arm. Instead, he made Lexa jump as he threw his stick onto the ice, furious.

“Lexa! Can you just drop your fucking attitude for once?”

He skated away from her, his hands resting behind his head as he took a moment to cool off.

"You know… I get it. I grew up with you. I was there when you and those other girls petitioned to play in the boy’s league. I saw how you were the only one left standing after years of harassment and abuse. I've been with you every step of the way, so I understand how you ended up with the mindset you have, but you've got to get over this toxic masculinity shit! Somewhere, deep down inside of you, you still believe that you've gotten this far in spite of being a woman. That belief is wrong, Lexa. That thinking is your Achille's heel."

He turned back to her, rubbing his temples to soothe the headache form an afternoon of clenching his jaw.

"Those girls don't think that way. I know you believe that if they were as good as you, they'd be playing in the men's leagues too, but you're wrong. They didn't grow up where we did; they didn't have to walk that path. They grew up playing in women's leagues, where nobody ever told them they weren't good enough. They're not playing to prove anything to anyone."

He eyed her knowingly, an unspoken truth passing between them."

"If you shove it in their face that you think you're better than them because you play with men, they're going to use that attitude to humiliate you."

Lexa's face was red, her eyes fixed and furious. She threw her goalie stick in Lincoln's general direction and tossed her glove and blocker down in disgust.

“I didn't even want to compete with these women! Playing for the stupid Olympic team was your idea; you and Dante! I don't understand why the hell I'm supposed to learn some whole new style of play for something that's going to last all of three weeks!"

"Because it's a damn honor!"

Lincoln and Lexa both froze as the gravelly voice of Dante Wallace rumbled at them from across the ice.

"And would either of you care to tell me what you're doing here on a day that I specifically told you to take off?"

For a second, Lexa just watched her coach approaching, frozen in shock as though she were an eight-year-old who'd just been caught goofing off in practice. She was accustomed to her coach's frequent irritability, but this was a different mood altogether. The old salt was raging, his anger fueled by the audacity of his protege's defiance. Dante was the kind of man who refused to take insubordination lightly, and as he stomped towards them, fisherman's cap pulled low on his brow, unlit cigarette gripped between his gritted teeth, unshaven jaw clenched, Lexa knew she was about to catch hell.

"What the hell do you think you're doing!"

"Dante, I..."

Dante held up his hand, pointing directly at Lincoln as he continued to stare Lexa down.

"Don't you even start!"

He thrust his index finger in Lexa's direction.

"You want to practice? Fine, let's practice. Suicides, go!"

Lexa remained frozen for a moment, trying in vain to process an excuse.

"Now!" He pointed at Lincoln. "You too, blockhead!"

The pair finally sprung into action, dashing off towards the closest line and hustling back towards the goal.

Dante watched his unfortunate trainees sprint towards center ice, already panting. He muttered, pulling up the zipper on the ancient Red Wings Starter jacket he was never without. He stood there, letting a full five minutes pass until the suffering athletes had begun to turn red and pour sweat before he launched into his lecture.

"You're a damn fool, Woods! Only a fool would underestimate their opponent to service their individual, selfish pride."

He chewed on the end of the unlit cigarette, shifting it from one side of his mouth to the other.

"You've been granted the privilege of representing your country because you're the best it has to offer, a paragon of true Olympic prowess, and like a jackass, you choose to squander that opportunity. Why? Because you don't like the stipulations?!"

He spat his cigarette out on the ice, finally blowing the whistle around his neck to give the go-ahead for Lexa and Lincoln to stop. The two dropped to the ice, gasping for breath.

"Woods, you're one of the best goalies I've ever coached, you might even be the best. Right now, however, you could fit the number of people that believe that into a pee-wee locker room. This season is the last one you'll be eligible to play Major Junior, and if you're betting on those NHL scouts suddenly coming to their senses, you've got another thing coming."

Dante walked over to where the players were slumped over on the ice, still trying to catch their breaths. He crouched directly in front of Lexa's face, staring her dead in the eye.

"Kid, you've spent the last three years playing for the worst team in Northern Ontario. Nobody gives a rat's ass how good you are if they don't see you play. You're invisible up here, and as long as you're invisible, the NHL can ignore you all they like. Play net at the Olympics and you get to show the whole world what you can do. Nobody will be able to ignore you after that. That's why I insisted you play for the women's national team."

Dante stood, brushing the wrinkles out of his pants, and popping another cigarette into his mouth.

"Now get off my ice and go clean yourselves up.” He paused looking over the pathetic, exhausted skaters with disdain. "You two look like a damn soup sandwich."

With that, he trudged off, the scent of bay rum and stale Camel Straights lingering in his wake.

Next Chapter ->

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#the100 fanfiction #the100au #the100 #clexa #clexa fanfic #clexa au #clexahockeyfic #clexahockeyau #lexa #lexa woods #clarke griffin #thegames

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