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reidslibrarybook · 2 years

Text

Love in More Ways than One

Pairing - Spencer Reid x BAU!Fem!Reader

Warnings - language

Summary - Spencer’s never shied away from using ‘i love you’ and neither have you. It’s been the only tried and true way you could ever express your feelings for him, little does he know that you loved him in more ways than one.

Category - hurt/comfort, fluff at the end

Word Count - 4.9k

A/N - hehe it’s been a while since I’ve posted but have this shorty. I’ll be gone for this whole week but i’ll probably be putting something out by next weekend, wish me luck on finals besties 😭

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“I don’t know how you can drink that, and during winter no less,” he shook his head, disapproval lacing his voice as he took a sip of the steaming hot coffee in his hand.

“There’s nothing wrong with having a good iced coffee, it’s a drink for every season,” you reasoned. He picked up his pace to reach the large glass doors before you, pushing it open and letting you pass him before he followed behind.

Such a simple act made your heart beat for a reason you wouldn’t be able to understand, but then again, when did your heart not race when he was around.

Had it not been for the mistake in paperwork, you wouldn’t be experiencing these indescribable feelings— your transfer papers being written and sent to Hotch instead of the unit chief at ViCAP. You were thankful for your former superior’s lack of diligence, otherwise you wouldn’t have met the man who graduated to being the owner of your glass heart.

Watching Spencer date other people while also keeping your feelings behind wraps was a struggle at times, but it was worth it if he was happy— you were just glad to call him yours in a different way. He was your best friend and has been days after your transfer, offering you a welcoming gift of chocolate and an annotated version of the BAU procedures.

The unconventional combination instead of the usual gift basket or insincere card left you confused, but you soon figured out it was his way of trying to befriend you. He explained that the chocolate was a brain enhancer for when you tackled the large binder of rules and guidelines that you’d be tested on later in the week. His almost illegible notes in the tiny margins helped you a lot more than you thought, getting you a 94% on your test and a nod of approval from your new stone-faced unit chief.

The day after, he was met with an invitation to the local cafe from you as a ‘thank you’ gift and a ploy for you to get to know the handsome man that kept you from hating your first week of work. From there, your walls were quick to fall and so were you— already wading in the waters you had only planned to dip your toes in.

Time passed and Spencer ended up taking up two roles in your life, your closest companion and the subject of your fantasies. You couldn’t remember the number of times you’ve almost let the secrets you held closest to your heart spill from your lips and kept yourself from revealing it all.

You were no damsel in distress.

But life with Spencer Reid was a different story.

“But studies show that hot coffee increases longevity and I want you for as long as I can have you,” he giggled, your face held neutral as every cell in your body seemed to burst with excitement. You knew realistically that what he said was nothing but innocent, pure and good in nature with platonic undertones.

“You’re just saying that because no one else is willing to sit through an untranslated Russian movie,” you giggled, placing your things down onto your desk and trying to reason with you more than him.

“She’s not wrong,” Emily chided, “I may be the only other person here who speaks Russian but I don’t think I could ever handle watching some random men in astronaut suits for three hours.”

“Actually,” he corrected, your smile widening at his incomparable habit of using the word ‘actually’ in an unintentionally obnoxious way, “The movie is only really two hours and thirty-seven minutes so you’d be watching twenty-three minutes less than what you really believed.” He smiled, oblivious to the underlying snarky tone of his comment that everyone around him was well accustomed to. It was an innocent quirk he had, one of the many that had you falling at his feet.

“You better start drinking some hot coffee, I don’t want you dying any time soon either. No way in hell I’m doing any of his nerd stuff with him if you’re gone,” Derek joked, earning a round of chuckles from all the people around you.

He walked past you, scanning the words on the top of the pile of folders on his desk. “Even if you didn’t watch Solaris with me, I’d still want you to live for as long as you can because I love you,” he said with nothing but a warm smile on his face— eyes still glued to the papers in his hands.

A plaguing tightness in your chest and heat stinging your cheeks returned like it usually did when he said the infamous three words that did nothing but inspire a bittersweet feeling in you. You looked up, meeting Emily and Derek’s curious eyes as they stared at the two of you as if they were watching some melodramatic soap opera.

You were startled when Spencer looked up, waiting for you to say it back.

“I love you too,” you sang sweetly, a smile of content forming on his face as he finally sat down in his chair.

You pretended as if you couldn’t feel Emily and Derek’s looming gaze, ignoring the thought of the pending whispers that would take place as soon as you and Spencer left for the day. It was normal for people to talk.

To whisper.

To gossip.

Many of your colleagues had running theories that you and Spencer were secretly dating behind the scenes and as much as you wished all the rumors were true, they weren’t. Knowing the truth about your pitiful, unrequited feelings made you feel even worse— having the almost pathetic ‘inside scoop’ on the hypotheses that the people around you came up with didn’t help the pain that rang through you every time you were reminded that he wasn’t yours in that way.

You sighed, briefly stealing a glance at the man across from you— brows furrowed as he tried to figure out how to fill out his paperwork. Even in his confusion, he was still the most handsome man you ever saw.

He stole your heart without even knowing, taking the poor thing straight from your chest and putting it in his back pocket.

—

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful aside from Emily’s nosy questions and Derek’s endless teasing— things you were very much used to. Spencer seemed unbothered as usual, laughing at their suggestive comments while continuing to beat at the dead horse that was your feelings.

The frustrating thing was the fact that you never knew if he was serious about the things he says, words dripping with a sickly-sweet tone and eyes filled to the brim with golden brown honey. His low husky voice put you in a trance you were perpetually stuck in, unable to escape from his sticky, saccharine grasp.

It was only fair for you to assume that he loved you too, but just in a different way— a way you’ve long past.

“Hey.” You turned around as Spencer jogged up to you, his hand brushing the small of your back which sent an immediate wave of heat across your cheeks.

“Hey,” you smiled, looking down to shield yourself from his tempestuous charm.

“Thanks for waiting for me,” he reached towards the elevator button and pressed it, the warmth from his hand melting the nerve endings in your spinal cord— rendering you paralyzed and unable to move.

You nodded, quickly stepping into the cramped space as soon as the door opened and allowed you to do so. He followed you in, holding his hand out to take the files that were wrapped tightly in your arms— unaware that the act amplified the odd feeling of pain that stemmed from your heart.

“So we have the whole week off, what are you planning on doing?”

“Nothing much,” you sighed, happily giving him some of the files to hold for you as you fished for your keys, “I don’t think I’ll be going out any time soon.”

“Why not?”

You laughed, “I don’t have anywhere to go with anyone, Spence.”

“You have me,” he offered.

And there it was again.

That look.

Those words.

His wide smile pierced a hole through your fibrous heart. It was sweet moments like the one you were experiencing that made you fall in love with him, his handsome personality and breathtaking attractiveness was always something you had no trouble fawning over.

“I- I know,” you chuckled, sweeping the hair out of your face with your cold hand in hopes of cooling down the wildfire on your cheeks, “Don’t you ever get tired of hanging out with me and only me? It must get boring at times.”

“Why would you ever think that? There’s not a single moment in time that’s dull when I’m with you,” he pulled the sleeve of his cardigan to cover his hand, placing it in the elevator door frame to keep the sliding metal pieces from closing in on you while you walked out.

“Spencer, really… you never feel like we’ve run out of things to talk about or something?”

“Of course not, I’ve memorized every book I’ve read. I don’t think I’ll ever exhaust all the information in my brain,” he laughed, placing his arm tightly around your shoulders to keep you close to him and away from the nippy winds that traveled through the parking garage. You were so close to him, trying your best to keep from dropping everything and wrapping your arms around him right there. It took every bone in your body to resist him, ignoring every urge that you had even if all you wanted to do was give in.

“Let me drive,” he said once you reached your car, “You seem exhausted and I don’t want to make you drive if you’re all sleepy.”

“I’m not that tired,” you giggled, “Plus, you’re a horrible driver and I don’t want to get into an accident.”

“Well you drowsy driving isn’t going to decrease our odds of getting into an accident, give me the keys,” he handed you back the files as you reluctantly dropped the keys into his open hand.

His hand navigated to the wheel right as the two of you hopped in, starting the engine and driving out of the parking garage.

The ride was as it usually was, filled with laughter and smiles that came from Spencer’s endless jokes and playful teasing. The only thing that was different was the feelings of reluctance that you typically ignored, except the feeling was much stronger— widespread.

It came as soon as it left, but the feeling grappled onto you and lingered around your heart. It was almost as if he could sense your shift in energy, turning on your favorite song and offering himself up on the butcher’s block. You smiled right when he began to sing, his horribly tone deaf voice filling the car and the warm feeling returning to your chest.

“How about I come over tomorrow and we can have our yearly marathon of Dr. Who early this year?” He asked, driving down the street with both hands gripping the steering wheel as every vein on his hands were bared. Taking your eyes off from staring at his very attractive hands and forearm was a struggle, clearing your throat to keep yourself in the right headspace and away from the desirous thoughts that were plentiful.

“Yea, that s- sounds good,” you stuttered, still distracted.

You were so caught up in singing along with him and drooling over his good looks that you didn’t realize that the car had already come to a quiet stop… outside your building. You looked around, thinking that you were hallucinating the park that reflected the sunlight into your apartment and the tall building— your window visible from your spot in the car.

“Why’d you drive here and not to your place?” You sat up in your chair, furrowing your brow as you looked at him with confusion.

“You’re tired, I don’t want you driving back sleepy,” he smiled, taking the keys out and stepping out.

The look on his face was heavenly, his eyes gleaming with sincerity and care. You couldn’t help but melt with just one wayward look in his direction. He walked around to your side of the car and opened the door for you, offering his hand to help you out.

You sighed, “You didn’t have to do that, how are you going to get back now?”

“I’ll walk back,” he shrugged.

“You’re seriously going to walk to your apartment that’s three miles away from here… while it’s snowing?”

“Yeah,” he said unbothered, leading you towards the front of the building with an overhang that kept you from getting snowed on.

“I don’t think your genius brain is working, there’s no way you’re going to make it back without your nose or fingers falling off,” you joked.

He giggled, taking his hands and pulling the beanie on your head down further— slightly covering your eyes as a wide grin came about on both your faces.

“I’ll be fine.”

You sighed, done with his selflessness and stubborn behavior. “Just take my car, you’re coming over tomorrow night anyways.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to just take your car-”

“It’s alright, Spencer. I know you won’t just take it and drive away without looking back, right?” You joked.

“Of course not.”

“Good,” you whispered, wanting to prolong your ending conversation. You did nothing but stare deep into his eyes, the warm twinkle in his eyes and supple look of his lips drew you in. With a nod and a smile, you turned around to walk into the building before he pulled you back— landing right in between his arms as your face fit right into the crook of his neck.

“You know I love you right? I’d never get tired of you… ever,” he reassured, squeezing you tight enough to make the feelings spill from your already overflowing heart.

“I-” you laughed, “I love you too.”

He pulled away to look at you, tilting his head to the side quizzically, “What’s so funny?”

“I just- I don’t know? We’re best friends and we tell each other that we love each other. Isn’t that weird?”

“I don’t think so,” he shook his head in accordance with his words, “I think it’s perfectly normal.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t say it anymore…” you trailed off to find the words, “I- It’s just overused and I d- don’t know? I guess so people don’t get the wrong idea?”

He laughed, “Since when do you care about what other people think about us?”

“I don’t,” you shrugged, trying to shake off his lost look, “People just think we’re dating and it’s a bit of a hassle to be asked about it all the time.”

“I don’t think that it’s a bad thing that people think we’re dating either. I don’t mind keeping you all to myself,” he teased, a playful grin wide on his face.

And again, the words that always led you to a world of romantic fallacies— words that mislead you and your wandering heart.

“Spencer…”

“Fine,” he held his hands up and surrendered, “If you really want me to, I’ll stop.”

“Thank you b- but it doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I- I still do, I always will,” your words taking on a double meaning that only you knew.

“I know,” he chuckled, walking you to the door of your building and opening it for you, “I’ll always love you too.”

You stood there in silence, accepting that maybe it had to be that way for your own sake. His eyes reflected the light of the moon, a sweet smile on his face that showed nothing but care for you.

Taking one final look at the man your heart beat for, you walked into your building as he stood right where you left him…

The door still open and a piece of yourself still left in his hands.

——————————————

The week flew by in a breeze, the rare time you had off was well spent between a mix of alone time and spending your nights with Spencer. He was always there when you needed him, bringing food and entertainment when you rang. Despite what your insecurities planted in your mind, conversation was never dry and laughs were never missed.

Every moment you spent with him was never dull.

You couldn’t lie even if you tried to block your feelings out. There would be times when conversation would reach a natural lull that he used to fill with a quick ‘i love you’, but the void filled with silence was never remedied with the three words since you told him to stop saying it. You missed him telling you but you had to remind yourself that it had to be done, a preemptive protection for your heart that would inevitably be broken when he found himself someone to give his to.

Your phone buzzed from a message, picking it up and looking to see a text from Spencer the morning you had to return to work.

‘I’m sending a taxi to you, I’ll meet you in the office.’

Why was he sending you a cab instead of picking you up? He had your car, maybe he was just caught up doing something and he didn’t want to get you in trouble with Hotch by picking you up late. It was wishful thinking but it was the best thing you could conjure up without getting all the strings in your heart tied up in a stubborn knot.

The whole ride to the government building was spent coming up with possible reasons why Spencer couldn’t drive you. It wasn’t a big deal, but always followed through on what he said he’d do— specifically stating that he was picking you up the night before after watching one of his favorite Sci-fi movies.

You made it to your desk, the sound of whispers filling your ears. What was peculiar about this instance was that the hushed talks weren’t about you, they were directed toward the people who had just walked into the bullpen.

An unfamiliar sound of a woman’s laughter echoed throughout the room, prompting you to turn around and look at the stunning woman walking in with none other than the man you were just looking for. Spencer.

You were wondering where he was, but it seemed like you didn’t have to look anymore.

Spencer looked up and smiled, waving his hand to you. You smiled back, immobilized in place while the beating of your heart accelerated with each step the pair took towards you.

Was this it?

Was this the moment you lost the chance you never had to begin with?

“Hey,” you said, ignoring the urge to sprint away from Spencer and the woman whose arm was linked with his— two coffees in his hand.

“Hi,” she said, delighted, “I’m Regina.”

“Nice to meet you,” you took the hand she offered to shake, “I um, I’m sorry do I know you?”

Spencer shook his head, gulping nervously— an infuriating blush burning his face. “N- no, she wanted me to show her around the place.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll leave you to it,” you said defeatedly.

“Wait, Y/N-”

“Penelope called me,” the lie slipping past your lips effortlessly in a last ditch attempt to get you away from them, “She needs me to help her with something. I have to go, you two have fun.”

Before you knew it, you were speeding down the hall towards the sacred batcave with your things stuffed haphazardly into your bag.

It probably wasn’t the best idea to hide away in the BAU’s most infamous meddler and gossip girl, but it was your best option— at least, better than sitting across from someone who ditched you in the morning for someone else. There were millions of possibilities you could entertain as to who she was and how he managed to find her.

You shouldn’t be mad or upset, you knew that, but that didn’t make the whole situation any easier for you to digest.

It was what you wanted, a slow pull away, an easy distancing from your painful love for him. But why was it so hard? So hard to relieve the tension caused by the strings that connected the little fragment of your heart to the rest of it that laid in his hands?

You could hear him asking Penelope if you were in there, trying to gain entry into her sacred batcave. You ended up telling her that you needed some alone time for your overbearing migraine, asking if you could take shelter from the bright lights of the bullpen in her little area.

She agreed, holding up her word by not allowing anyone to enter in from the outside— even Spencer. You were thankful for her maternal instincts as she tried to figure out what was really wrong without provoking you too much.

You were being irrational and you knew it, but it was so hard for you to accept him finding someone so quickly when you felt like a piece of you was ripped out from inside of you. You were experiencing your own little break up, one that was unknown to the prying eyes of everyone around you.

You didn’t know what was the best for you, was it keeping in touch with Spencer or leaving completely? Either way, you’d feel as though everything in your romanticized world was broken— the image of your very own paradise tarnished with a nightmare you knew was coming.

A very real nightmare that had turned into a sour pill of reality, one you had to swallow.

——————————————

You sat there on the freezing cold bench, staring out at the frozen lake in front of you. The calming appearance and disappearance of your breath helped you distract yourself from what you were really avoiding, Spencer.

Even in the winter under a solid piece of ice, all the life underwater managed to survive. It was a miracle, something you wished you could do. Had you been able to keep yourself from slipping down an icy path and willingly giving your heart to him, you wouldn’t be wallowing while the scene laid out before you looked like it was taken straight out of a postcard picture of a winter wonderland.

The cold was kept out by the large jacket you had on, the gloves keeping your fingers from numbing unlike the little hole that felt the absence of your heart.

“Hey!”

You turned around, met with Spencer and his messy hair trapped in a beanie that you forced him to take.

You wished that he wasn’t there, that he wasn’t real so you wouldn’t have to put yourself through anything more that day.

“Y/N!”

Frozen in that moment like the droplets of water on the tree branches above you, you took a second or two to figure out what he was doing in the park across from your apartment building. You looked away from him, your conflicting feelings about his presence storming your clarity of thought.

You stood up, stuffing your hands into your pocket and walking away from him. You couldn’t, it was too much too soon. The whole reason why you were sitting there was to clear your painful thoughts, to get away from him.

You stopped walking right as a sweeping feeling of cold ice hit your neck, turning around and looking at Spencer with a look of utter shock. He stood there with a mischievous smile on his face, his hand raised in a throwing position with remnants of the snow he threw at you stuck to his black glove.

“Spencer…”

He reached down and grabbed another handful, cupping his hands around it to form it into a ball. “So now you’re talking to me?”

“Don’t you dare,” you yelled, beginning to back away slowly— a slight grin returning to your face.

“What? Are you afraid of a little snow?” He shouted happily, picking up speed and running towards you with a handful of a torturous snow. Your eyes widened, running away from him and hiding behind a tree that took a fatal hit with the ginormous snow ball he formed.

You laughed along with the echoes of his giggled, grabbing a chunk of snow and aiming right at him— hitting square in the chest. He fell back from the impact, the snow visibly entering the small gap between his shirt and puffy coat.

For a moment, you forgot all about the events of the day. The only thing on your mind was your shared happiness, the self-imposed fight turning into one that involved snowballs. You retreated back behind the tree when he got back up, his hands raised in the air.

“Truce,” he yelled, slowly walking towards you.

You approached him, the taste of winter euphoria washing away as reality became increasingly clearer. He met you halfway, towering over you with his lips pressed into an awkward, thin line.

The quiet was torture if not hell, the silence stabbing your heart with an arrow laced with guilt. It was your fault for making things awkward, for letting your feelings interfere with your friendship. Had you kept control of the situation, neither of you would be standing quietly with the sound of your shaky breaths barely audible.

You opened your mouth to speak, closing it shortly after from your loss of words.

“I love you,” he whispered, your eyes meeting his.

“We- we promised not to say that anymore,” you laughed humorlessly.

“I know,” he reached his hand backward to scratch his neck, “B- but I’m saying it in a different way. I love you in a different way… in a way where we’re not just friends.”

Did your wish come true, you really hope it didn’t. All you wanted was for what he said to be real, but then your mind came back to the woman who was trapped in his arms earlier that day.

“But what about Regina?”

He shook his head slightly. “What about her?”

“Aren’t you two-”

“No!” he looked around as his voice echoed through the park unintentionally, “I- I mean no. She insisted on following me when I went to go get us coffee, that’s why I ordered the cab for you. She um, she wouldn’t let me leave her so I was hoping that you could have helped me with that.”

You laughed, “You brought her to the BAU because you couldn’t tell her no?”

“I didn’t want to be rude,” he pouted slightly, biting the inside of his cheek. “She and I- we aren’t um, we aren’t dating or anything. I mean, I think she’s nice, I’m not too sure since I only really talked to her for a half an hour but nothing happened and I promise that I-”

You smiled at his rambling and pulled him down by the lapels of his coat, the two of you crashing together effortlessly in what had been a long time coming. Both of your eyes fluttered close, putting all your feelings through the meeting of your soft lips as the noisy cars of the city passed you by.

You moved together in a synchronized manner, feeling as though you no longer needed the protection your winter gear provided— kept warm enough by the shared feelings brought together by your interconnected hearts.

His wet glove moved to your hair, pulling you closer into him until your bodies were flush up against the other. You giggled into his lips and winced slightly at the odd feeling of his cold hand tangled in the strands of your hair.

Your hands migrated towards the nape of his neck, trying to offset the unfamiliar feeling of being so close by playing with his hair— something you had done many times before. He responded to your kiss with an enthusiasm you didn’t expect, the fluttering feeling filling your stomach with the eagerness of his kiss.

The kiss was addictive. You never wanted to stop or pull away, all you wanted was to be with him stuck in that moment forever. He moved against your lips, the two of you fitting together perfectly having never felt each other in the way you were before.

As much as you wanted to stay in that one moment for the rest of eternity, the air in your lungs was all used up— the two of you pulling away and left gasping for air.

He pressed his forehead against yours, his hot breath ghosting across your swollen lips like the beating of a butterfly’s wings.

“I love you too,” you mumbled, still left in a drunken haze from the lack of oxygen reaching your brain, “I love you in a different way.”

He giggled, “I love you in a different way too.”

There in the snow reflecting the orange glow of the setting sun, you realized— Spencer may have stolen your heart, but you didn't need it back…

Because you had his to share.

—————————————-

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mrsmaybank · 3 years

Text

Crushing - Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

“Reid, stop giving JJ’s intern bedroom eyes. It fuckin’ weirds me out.”

A/N: I love baby genius, season one Reid so much. I wanted to give him a soulmate. Soulmate is you: shy and also a baby genius. Okay, thanks for reading. This was honestly just for me.

CW: Implied Smut, Mild Cursing, shitty writing

“Who...Who is that?” Dr. Spencer Reid, debatably the wordiest boy Derek Morgan had ever met, was suddenly at a loss for words. Maybe it was your perfectly sculpted face, your shoes, the copy of The Kreutzer Sonata held to your chest, your chest, or maybe a mix of it all. Whatever it was, at sight of you walking through the office doors, he was stripped of his ability to speak.

“That’s JJ’s new intern.” Morgan said plainly, before noticing the completely enamored look on his friend’s face. “What, pretty boy?” Reid couldn’t even be bothered to reply. He was too busy studying every detail of your frame.

“You think she’s cute or something kid?” Morgan playfully jabbed his shoulder, Spencer’s face instantly flushing an embarrassing shade of red.

“What?!” He shrieked, “I-no! That’s not..No!” That’s a lie.

“I just..I didn’t know JJ was getting an intern.” That though, was true.

“She’s supposed to be pretty impressive. Let’s go meet her.” he started in the direction of the coffee stand, where you and JJ had begun chatting. Before Spencer could protest out of his shyness, he was being dragged along.

“Morgan,” JJ smiled, “Spence,” she nodded in his direction, “This is Y/N Y/L/N. My godsent savior.” JJ beamed in your direction.

You smiled more sheepishly then you would’ve liked, muttering a “Hopefully.” that got a laugh from Morgan and a “Oh, please.” from JJ, but nothing from the man in the glasses. You did your best not to read into it.

“Derek Morgan.” the muscular agent extended his hand to shake yours, an offer you timidly but happily accepted.

The taller, lankier, younger, incredibly cute man next to him stuffed one of his hands in his pocket and shifted uncomfortably with a small wave, “I’m uh, Doctor Spencer Reid, oh! Uh, you don’t have to, uh call me Doctor. No..” He shook his head, “Just Spencer is fine.” He looked at you with wide eyes that sent butterflies berserk in your stomach and swiped his tongue in between his lips that only made them go crazier. JJ had told you all about the team. About the magnificently brilliant Dr. Spencer Reid, his 3 PhDs and eidetic memory, and all the other quirks you’d have to know in order to work with him, but had failed to mention how utterly hot he was. You felt a crush hijacking your system already. Dear god.

“It’s nice to meet you both.” Your hands gripped your book tighter as you shifted onto your tiptoes, “I’ve heard really exceptional things.”

The conversation was set to continue, but Morgan and JJ were summoned by Hotch to the closed doors of his office. Leaving the resident genius and you starting at each other with tight lip smiles.

Spencer started first, “The Kreutzer Sonata is great.” He excitedly continued, “It uh, it actually used to be a pretty bold book to carry around. After the work had been forbidden in Russia by censors, there was actually a mimeographed version that was widely circulated. Then in 1890, the United States Post Office Department prohibited the mailing of newspapers containing serialized installments of it too. Theodore Roosevelt even called Tolstoy a-”

His enthusiasm was beyond endearing. You finished for him with a soft smile, "Sexual moral pervert.”

Spencer’s lips upturned in a smile. It was rare somebody in the office could finish his sentences. And he couldn’t help but replay the crass words being said in your soft voice. He felt a crush hijacking his system already. Dear god.

“Most people don’t recognize it in the original Russian.” Spencer heard you say.

“Most people probably wouldn’t recognize it in English.” he retorted.

You laughed, “Yeah, you’re right.”

Spencer wasn’t even kidding. “I’m not joking.” He shook his head. “It’s unfortunate how many people aren’t even vaguely familiar with Tolstoy.”

“It is.” you agreed. “You went to Caltech, correct?”

He smiled, “Yes.”

“I almost did too. Decided last minute on Columbia.”

“You went to Columbia?” he asked.

“I just graduated.”

“How old are you?” he asked before quickly correcting himself, “I’m sorry! That was forward! I am not...I’m not trying to undermine your studies with your age, I promise. I’m just curious.”

“No! It’s okay!” You got out fast. “I’m 19. I graduated high school a little bit early.”

“Me too.” He smiled. “12, actually.”

Your eyes went wide, “12?”

“Yes, um, in a Las Vegas public high school.” He winced, but the self-deprecation somehow came out charming, “I uh,” His eyes narrowed, “didn’t go to a lot of parties.”

That made you wholeheartedly laugh. “Me neither! I graduated at 15, which you know is the age everybody else starts. It created a really weird dynamic because the older kids in my grade didn’t like me, but the underclassmen my age really didn’t like me.”

Instead of the laugh you were expecting, Spencer just gave you a pensive stare.

“Um..I can’t see why. I think you’re very likeable.” The compliment would’ve been strange exchanged by anybody other than Spencer to you.

“Wait till you get to know me.” You said it through a smile but so softly you were afraid he might not be able to hear it, but he did.

And that was confirmed when he flashed you the most incredible, toothy grin you’d ever seen. “I uh, I doubt there will be any change in opinion.”

“Well, um, I’m sure- I think! You’re very likeable as well Dr. Reid.” you said.

“That’s what you say now.” He retorted in the same coy tone you had earlier.

You shook your head, “You’ll find I can be insufferably stubborn.”

-----------------------------------

After two weeks, there was little Spencer could do to hide his massive crush affinity for you from the team.

In the bullpen:

You guys had locked eyes and were mouthing out exchanged of No’s and Yes’s from across the room. There was an ongoing half-serious dispute about whether or not Xanthippe slept with Plato.

Morgan glided in his wheeled chair to whisper into Spencer’s ear.

“Reid, stop giving JJ’s intern bedroom eyes. It fuckin’ weirds me out.” He said, shoving files into the cabinet below Reid’s desk.

“I’m..I’m not.. I--what? Bedr--No!” Reid whisper-shouted back.

On the jet:

“Reid?” Gideon called Spencer, “Chess?” He motioned towards the board.

“Yes, sure. Just give me a second. I’m almost done. I’m reading Infinite Jest. I don’t usually enjoy literature if it isn’t classic, even less so if it’s American. But..” Spencer smiled, “Y/N likes the author.” He continued his fast-paced reading of the third-to-last chapter of the book.

Morgan and Gideon exchanged glances.

Even in front of you:

You opened a sugar packet and began stirring.

“De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium is still some of the best work on heliocentric theory out there, I think. Copernicus knew what he was talking about!” You spun on your heels to see Reid’s face contorted in disagreement. You giggled, “Don’t give me that face! I’m right!”

He took a sip of his coffee as to keep himself quiet. “Listen, cosmological theory is for…”

But the pair of you were interrupted, it was Elle, standing behind you and in front of Spencer.

“New skirt?” Elle asked as you turned, back now facing Reid. She was pouring herself a cup of coffee too.

“Yes!” You excitedly nodded. “You like it?”

Elle looked up and down, but not at you. The judgmental eyes were for the man behind you. She pursed her lips, “Not just me.”

The only face redder than yours was Reid’s.

-----------------------------------

Nights spent in a bar after a case that had dragged on far too long was nothing new, but the energy tonight was especially light. Gideon had refused, but everybody else was just relaxed, even Hotch, and the team just got happier at each other's happiness. It was great, really. As Hotch and Morgan sipped on whiskey, JJ and Penelope had already downed four sugary, colorful cocktails and were in a whispered fit of giggles. Elle and Spencer settled on a tamer option of an IPA Spencer couldn’t name.

“SPENCER!” Penelope excitedly shouted, “Y/N is literally you! You’re both adorable! You’re both geniuses! You’re both young!” She drew on her rant, “And if you have a crush on her you should just tell her!” JJ’s eyes widened in embarrassment as she tried to cover Penelope’s mouth.

Morgan and Elle erupted in soft laughter while Hotch cracked an uncharacteristically amused smile.

“Spence, I swear, I didn’t say that! I just...I may have mentioned how happy you get every time she’s around! And how you guys can talk for literally hours!” JJ defended, her words slurring in silly drunkenness.

Spencer rolled his eyes. This wasn’t the first time they teased him about you, and it probably wouldn’t be the last time either.

“I don’t have a crush on her! We just….we like the same things! It gives us a lot to talk about.”

“Yeah?” Morgan said through a laugh, “And what is it that boy and girl wonder talk about so much?”

“Well, uh.. a lot of things. But I find she gets the most excited when we are discussing the theories of postmodernism, in that apparent realities are actually just social constructs and veritable realities are subject to change, and uh... we like to talk about linguistics….political philosophy….history... mathematic theory...and uh, oh! Doctor Who.”

Spencer was blushing and spoke about you like a teenage girl did their boyband crush, and the team noticed. They didn’t even need to say it out loud. Spencer gathered from the way they looked back at him.

“I heard she lent you a book too, Reid.” Hotch said before taking a sip from his glass.

“Yes! She did!” He smiled, “It was her copy of Pale Fire. She has an impressive collection of 19th century Russian literature. All in its original dialect! Some of it’s even annotated, which usually would annoy me but since it’s her thoughts and notes I sort of find it endearing.”

“Dr. Reid is endeared!” Greenaway shrieked.

“Yeah,” he nodded, pushing his glasses up a little higher on his nose, “I find her incredibly endearing.”

“Y’all that sounded like a dorky love confession.” Morgan said as the team erupted in laughter and Reid’s head fell in a smile. There was no point in denying it anymore: He really, really liked you.

--------------------------------------

Within two months, you and Spencer had finally put your shyness aside, and spent a very lovely evening at watching an orchestra at the Smithsonian Music, and sharing noodles at your favorite Thai restaurant. And then you guys spent some time on your couch. And then in your bed. And then in the shower. And then in the kitchen. You were both very sexually frustrated.

For the following two months, as soon as you both stepped out of the office, it was very, very hard to keep your hands off each other. Could either of you help it though? Teenage geniuses don’t experience parties, or football games, or clumsy sex. The time was perfect to make up for it.

And you guys did. The sex part at least. “Football involves a lot of dirt. And germs. And sweat.”

“Oh my god!” you shrieked. His hands were in a place they found themselves more and more often: Your pants.

“Does it feel good?” he asked, continuing his pattern of small circles on that particular bundle of nerves.

“It feels great.” You nodded.

“I uh, I’ve been researching the female anatomy.”

You closed your eyes and nodded your head, but trying to focus on your boyfriends newfound intellect. “It’s fascinating, isn’t it?”

He watched your undoing with boyish adoration and curiosity before swallowing, “Very.”

“Oh fuck!” Your legs began to shake, “Spencee...I’m gonn--”

--------------------------------------------

You and Spencer just understood each other.

#drspencerreid #dr spencer reid #dr reid #criminalminds #reid criminal minds #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x reader #Spencerreid #spencer reid reader insert #spencer x y/n #reid x reader #spencer reid #professor reid x reader #professor reid #season1 reid

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

Text

I feel another fanon debunk session coming over me, and this one’s a BIG one.

Let’s talk about the DickKory breakup, and why it happened.

Yup, we’re going there.

Before we get going though, I want to make one thing abundantly clear: this is NOT an invitation to bash on Kory. There will be no bashing of Kory on this post if I have anything to say about it, and its my post, so I do. So nyah nyah. But seriously like, don’t get my reasons for making this post wrong. I LOVE Kory. I SHIP Dick/Kory. And I don’t actually blame Kory for any of this, no matter how the page I’m about to show makes it appear, for reasons that I will get into later in this post, but like. I really truly don’t. I don’t think the Dick/Kory breakup ultimately was either of their fault. I think it was the painful end result of them both hitting rock bottom due to endless external fuckery with their lives and their minds during the tail end of their relationship, making it all but impossible for them to be there for each other the way they truly needed and WANTED to be....ultimately forcing them to break off and BOTH try and reorder their lives on their own. But IMO, this NEVER actually marked a dissolution of their feelings for each other, no matter what either (particularly Dick) eventually claimed in order to rationalize things to themselves.

I do however think some of the other Titans bear some culpability for not seeing things as they truly were here. I can understand given what they all went through during this time period like, how maybe it became easier to just blame Dick especially as he has a tendency to be so willing to accept blame? And so I think a lot of conclusions were jumped to that at other times they WOULD have spent more time thinking through. But here and now they didn’t simply because they were so relieved to HAVE an easy, simple explanation for things going wrong and someone to blame, someone who ACCEPTED blame. And thus more easily allowing them to speed through to the portion of events where they worked on ‘forgiving him’ for what he’d done so they could all move past it.

Okay, so let me stop talking in code for those of you who have only the faintest idea of what I’m talking about.

Traditional fanon states - and most wiki summaries I’ve seen actually CORROBORATE this, which drives me COMPLETELY up the wall because I would like to have WORDS with whomever wrote each of these wiki summaries - that ultimately, Dick and Kory broke up because they rushed into things with the wedding and both realized they weren’t actually ready to get married.

Let me be clear: this is totally and completely 100% true.

Fanon and wikis go ON however, to conclude that the ‘fault’ lies with Dick, because he was the one who jumped the gun in proposing, and that he only DID so, because he thought getting married would ‘help him finally grow up’ and ‘hit one of the milestones he thought he was missing while everyone else his age that he’d known in high school and stuff were graduating college and getting married and having kids right about now.’ And also that he eventually concluded that he didn’t actually love Kory the way he thought he did and needed to let her go for her sake.

Now let me also be clear: this is also MOSTLY true in the sense that he did eventually THINK these thoughts, some ten or fifteen issues after their crashed wedding, when he was off on his own and thinking through everything that was going on in his life and trying to make sense of the decisions he’d been making lately, most of which he was unhappy with.

The one part that ISN’T true is that last bit, which a lot of people extrapolate from and use as their basis for saying Dick ‘fell out of love with Kory’ and ‘realized that he no longer loved her the way he once had,’ with this leading into why they never got back together after Kory returned to Earth in the Titans revival series in the late 90s.

HOWEVER.

There’s a tiiiiiiiiiny little correction I must make to that last part, which might seem insignificant, but becomes ABUNDANTLY important when added to some other much needed - and much ignored overlooked - context:

Dick never ACTUALLY said or thought that he didn’t love Kory anymore, full stop. What he actually said, in its entirety, was that he realized “he never really loved Kory the way she deserved to be loved.”

Why is this distinction so important? Hang on just a sec, we’re almost there.

Now I would like to share with you, for those who have never seen this page or those who perhaps have forgotten it or its significance, the EXACT page where Dick proposes to Kory, from The New Titans #99, one issue before their wedding special in issue #100. (What’s that? You’re surprised that they got married the very issue after the proposal? You thought that they were engaged for a lengthier period of time? Ohhhh don’t worry, fair readers. We’ll get there. Ohhhh we’ll get there).

But first, those of you who have never actually read this page before, I would like you to take a look at it, and see if you can Where’s Waldo what it is about this page that makes my blood reach a boiling point in excess of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit every time someone utters the words “Dick rushed into marriage because he thought it would make him grow up or hit some important life milestone.”

Take a gander, what do you see:

See it? Get what I’m talking about?

Any talk of Dick and Kory breaking up because they weren’t ready to get married, and Dick having been the one to rush them into it before they were ready, COMPLETELY fails at accurately representing the events of that time if it fails to mention the fact that:

DICK ONLY PROPOSED WHEN HE DID BECAUSE HE WAS DESPERATE TO CONVINCE KORY, HIMSELF AND EVERYONE ELSE THAT HE LOVED HER AND ONLY HER AND SLEEPING WITH MIRAGE HAD MEANT NOTHING!

(Since, y’know, he didn’t actually sleep with her so much as he was raped by her).

I mean, your mileage may vary, but me, I happen to think that bit there is pretty CRITICAL FUCKING INTEL when it comes to this whole matter.

Claiming Dick is to blame because he rushed into marriage because he was looking to grow up or hit some milestone utterly FAILS as an analytical conclusion in EVERY POSSIBLE WAY....

When there is both ZERO indication from him BEFORE the proposal, that those are reasons or thoughts he has that has him leaning towards proposing.....

As well as ZERO reflection AFTER the failed wedding, that being desperate to convince everyone who thought he’d cheated on Kory that he really did love her, was at all a key motivating factor in him proposing when and how he did.

Like it or not, Mirage and the storyline surrounding that is utterly CRUCIAL to the DickKory breakup, because EVERY mention of that describes the cause of that breakup being rushing into marriage, and if you take away that storyline - and every character’s reaction to it - there is absolutely NO reason to even THINK Dick would still have proposed when he did.

And thus, leaving the Mirage story ENTIRELY out of all talk of the end of Dick and Kory’s relationship, is just....blatantly not indicative of what the story actually was.

Now, in addition, I know we tend to talk about this story as though DC sucks for never calling the rape what it was, and say that if DC’s not willing to treat these things as what they really are, they shouldn’t be using them as story points. First order of business: Yes DC sucks a lot and their handling of all this sucked.

BUT.

It is also not entirely accurate to say that they never TREATED this story as what it was.

Because while everyone else may have been fixated on it as Dick cheating on Kory....initially, at pretty much every point UNTIL the wedding....Dick at least was STEADFAST in not considering HIMSELF having cheated. I mean, look at his language in just the page above. He talks about being “repulsed” by what Mirage did. The writers might have never actually called what happened to Dick ‘rape,’ but initially they were VERY consistent in nevertheless writing him as someone who at least to some degree felt victimized by what happened, rather than culpable. He was trying to convince everyone ELSE to see it that way - until eventually he kinda gave up, and started to see it THEIR way.

You can literally see him already starting to make the pivot towards rationalizing that POV to himself in the above page....he talks about ‘thinking with his hormones’ and that leading him to make a mistake, even though his hormones had nothing to do with whether what happened was wrong or not.....it was always entirely about: would he have consented to sex with Mirage IF he knew she wasn’t really Kory. Thinking with his hormones in no way addresses the fact that its completely unreasonable to expect anyone to be so on guard 24/7, even in the privacy of their own bedroom with their own girlfriend, that they have their eyes peeled for an impostor even there.

In fact, imagine what the others would have all said if Dick hadn’t slept with Mirage that night, or else had confided in them later that it felt not right, that something was wrong, at some point BEFORE Mirage entered and told Dick in front of everyone that it had actually been her. How likely do you think it would have been that instead of taking Dick at face value, many of them would have instead viewed this as just another time Dick was exercising “Bat-paranoia” rather than allowing himself to be intimate with a loved one the way normal, non-Batfolk do, y’know? Do you think they would have automatically agreed with him that there was something up and he had reason to feel that ‘something wasn’t right about Kory’ when Dick probably still would have had no idea what for sure he felt was off, let alone that it wasn’t ACTUALLY her? Or would they have gotten on his case about how this is just him self-sabotaging again and letting his issues come between him and someone he cared about?

Tbh, one of the things that was greatest about Dick and Kory’s relationship IMO was that she was one of the best at getting him out of his own head. With Kory, when they weren’t both being jerked around by brainwashing plots and the like, Dick was better at just....letting go and just being himself around her. He didn’t feel like he had to constantly be on his guard or waiting for the other shoe to drop. Ironically, IMO, Dick DOES have a tendency to self-sabotage at times and let paranoia or other issues keep him from totally dropping his defenses and letting himself be vulnerable with other people.....meaning he probably would have been MORE likely to cue into something being off, if it had been anyone BUT Kory he’d been dating when Mirage replaced them.

So bottom line is, you can’t actually fully blame the writing for the others’ reactions to this story. Because whether they ever actually acknowledged it or not, for a good ten to fifteen issues up to the wedding, the writers pretty consistently depicted Dick as someone who was and felt victimized, even if he didn’t consciously realize it yet himself, let alone why. There were repeated moments between Kory initially breaking up with him after it happened through this proposal above, where it basically reads like Dick yelling “Ask me how violated I feel! Go on, ask me!” Except he never really got the chance because he was too busy replying to everyone around him that he hadn’t cheated on Kory, he thought he was WITH Kory, and that was the ONLY reason he had sex that night.

Slight tangent - this btw, is why I can never even get worked up enough about Nightwing Annual #2 to be like, defensive about it. That was the flashback issue written YEARS after all these events, where retroactively Andreyko inserted at some point between this proposal and the wedding - without changing anything else or the events he wrote ever being brought up or acknowledged again - a story where Dick went to visit Babs to personally deliver her wedding invitation....but only AFTER they slept together. And then when he gave her the invitation and she got furious about what had just happened, he just blithely said oh Kory won’t mind, and Babs was like yeah well I MIND!

Which was a totally valid reaction for Babs to have to those events as depicted, its just....I can’t remotely take them seriously, not when I’ve actually READ the events that by Andreyko’s own admission are meant to bookend that story. So you’re telling me, that right after Dick proposes to his longtime girlfriend SPECIFICALLY because he’s desperate to convince her he loves only her and would never willingly sleep with anyone else......he would go and sleep with someone else between then and the wedding? And then just without a hint of remorse say oh what’s the problem, Kory would be fine with it - when literally everything else about the wedding even HAPPENING was based on the fact that he knew for a fact that Kory would NOT in fact, be fine with that? Umm, make it make sense, except you can’t, because that story and the point where it makes sense are in two entirely different galactic quadrants. Green Lanterns couldn’t make it from Point A to Point B. So lol, sorry not sorry, I’m gonna stay not taking that story or claims that Dick is ACTUALLY a cheater, like, remotely seriously. I mean, your mileage may vary, but I especially don’t think anyone who can make excuses for Bruce’s many transgressions being OOC like, has any business trying to pass this particular story off as in character, but WHATEVS. Like, you CAN do it if you really want to, but I mean, I’m just gonna think that’s silly. I’ll be like OMG you’re so silly. Why are you so silly, can we just stop with all the silliness. And then like, I’ll go do something else or whatever.

(Oh and for the record, the wedding was the issue after Dick proposed, but it wasn’t meant to be like, the day after or anything. BUT we do know it was still pretty damn soon after, like at most a week or two....because the concurrent storyline was Roy being upset because the government was trying to shut down the Titans and said they would unless Roy took leadership from Dick and ousted him, which Roy understandably was NOT keen to do, even and especially with everything going on as the Titans were a family first and foremost and he was stuck between trying to preserve them and keep them going and betraying everything they stood for by basically instigating a vote of no confidence in Dick’s leadership.....but point being, Roy kept stalling the government agent asking for his answer......when said agent was very impatient, and asked repeatedly both in issue #99 AND issue #100. So you’re never going to convince me Roy managed to stall said agent for months or whatever, or any longer than a couple weeks at most, to allow for Dick and everyone else to put together a shotgun wedding for him and Kory. Which just further adds to the make it make sense aspect of the above mentioned Annual, but I absofuckinglutely digress).

Anyway.

NOW, let’s bring it back around to when I said like, don’t do the thing, don’t actually blame Kory for any of this, don’t you do it? /paraphrase

Yeah. So we’re there at that point now, and I reiterate once more for the court, like, hey, what if you just don’t? Y’know? Even if you’re looking at her dialogue in the above page I posted and are like, I’m feeling the urge, the urge to.....idk something that rhymes with urge but is bad I guess? Whatever. Just like. Don’t do it. Say nasty things about Kory because of this story three times in front of your computer and I will totally like, be conjured by that and crawl out of your screen all creepy girl from The Ring style. It will NOT be pretty. I am NOT meant to fit through there. I can NOT make it look good. You have been warned.

Okay so like, the reason I say none of this is on Kory even though I don’t make the same distinctions for the other Titans is threefold. No, lbr, its probably more on account of I can’t count and I’m always wrong about this shit. But let’s start with three.

1) The first thing we need to address is the fact that Dick WAS acting erratically and out of character through all of this time, even before what happened with Mirage. This was still in the near aftermath of Titans Hunt, and he was still reeling from that, and holding himself totally accountable. People who’ve followed me for awhile have probably seen me fixate on Titans Hunt before, but I honestly don’t think anyone who hasn’t read the full extent of comics from that storyline all the way through like....The New Titans #115 or so, like.....truly grasps the extent of just HOW much that single storyline affected Dick. He was at rock bottom because of it in a way that is probably only truly comparable with the Blockbuster storyline, but for even LONGER. Like the span of comics I referenced just now covers probably like....almost fifty issues.

That’s fifty issues where Dick consistently brings up his failure to stop that and how much Joey and Charlie and Arella and everyone else’s deaths during that like, just weighs on him, and fucks with his confidence and just.....his overall sense of purpose and self. He WAS lost and aimless for a lot of that time. And he DID absolutely even recognize HIMSELF that it was affecting him. Like ten issues or so after the crashed wedding, when he’s on his own journey of self-discovery while looking for Kory in the Amazon (uh yeah, that’s a thing. I’ll get to that)....like, he acknowledges to himself that ever since the Titans Hunt he’s been getting crazier and more demanding (his words) and he doesn’t even recognize himself anymore...and he attributes all of that to not having come to terms with their deaths and his inability to prevent them.

Now, notably, he DOESN’T ever at this time acknowledge that his behavior took an INCREASINGLY downward spiral ever since Mirage and specifically due to everyone blaming him for what he deep down felt wasn’t actually his fault but was losing conviction in. And quite frankly, even though he SAYS at this point he’s ready to move on from their losses, I don’t think that actually happened, but I’ll get back to both those things. First, the important point here, in terms of Kory, is that from her perspective, Dick had been increasingly unpredictable and not himself ever since the losses during Titans Hunt. Actually, given that she was the one who went with him to the Manor after Jason’s death and the only one who saw him come in and out and who thus knows the full extent of what transpired there - with this all happening not long before Titans Hunt - you could additionally say her awareness of that also has her almost prepared to expect the totally unexpected from Dick at this point.

Does that mean its right? No. But it does mean that its there.

2) Next. Kory was not actually offered the chance by the storyline to internalize what happened between Mirage and Dick from a stable, grounded headspace. Mirage KIDNAPPED Kory and replaced her before she slept with Dick. In the grand scheme of things, what happened to Kory specifically here is probably far from the worst thing that’s ever happened to her, but it couldn’t have been pleasant and I’m the first to yell NO TRAUMA OLYMPICS so in that spirit, fuck whether it was as bad as it COULD have been, and again, just acknowledge that it happened, and its reasonable and expected that it would have a negative effect on Kory. She was targeted and victimized by Mirage too. Not in the same way as Dick, but add that to the fact that unlike the other Titans, she was the one IN the relationship with Dick and thus the only one besides him that had a stake in what Mirage’s actions served as a catalyst for in that regard, like....she was not an impartial bystander to all this, and that needs to be considered. She was PART of it. It was her life that was hijacked by all this too.

3) Third.....it is extremely extremely EXTREMELY important here to acknowledge that Kory is herself a rape survivor. She has extensive trauma from her childhood in the Citadel, and that is bound to color her perceptions of what happened here, at least initially. I am 174% soooooo not here for vilifying another rape survivor in defense of a different rape survivor. Like, I’m just saying.....do not throw Kory under the bus for not acknowledging Dick’s trauma and trauma responses as a rape survivor in this story if you’re not also YOURSELF acknowledging Kory’s OWN trauma as a rape survivor.

This is key not because it says any opinions she had at this time don’t count, but rather that they simply don’t come from the same place as the VICTIM-BLAMING that is the central issue with others holding Dick accountable for his own rape. In Kory’s case, we have to consider the issue of projection. The ways in which her own experiences and how they’ve informed her DEFAULT perception of something that deeply affected her, might skew her initial reaction to experiences which share a LABEL, but not specific ELEMENTS.

What I mean here is both Kory and Dick, as of this point in time, are rape survivors. But they survived very very VERY different kinds of rape. Both were abundantly clear that they DID NOT WANT what happened to them, that they were not willing parties to what actually transpired....but what springs to Kory’s mind when someone says “I didn’t want the sex that happened” is understandably going to look VERY different from what Dick was describing when he said “I didn’t want the sex that happened.” So its not really all that unreasonable for Kory to hold those two things up in her head and say these are not the same, and from there jump to the unfortunate conclusion that Dick HAD wanted it on some level, else it would have looked more like her own experiences...especially because others around them were already voicing and affirming this opinion in various ways.

Again, is this fair, or deserved? No. But I talk all the time with other characters and with Dick himself about how its just not reasonable to expect characters - especially ones with highly CHARGED emotions related to their own parallel experiences - to act from an unbiased state or POV and thus leap to the most ideal conclusion without at least first stumbling through some other ones. So with Kory, her own context with rape simply CAN NOT be divorced from the fact that recognizing the central issue of this later moment in time was that it was a rape. Her own experiences and the likely projection of them onto the moment at hand add a degree of context to conclusions she arrived at that other characters simply do not have....and thus, again, its not okay to paint her with the same brush as all those characters. And unless you’re already somehow making a distinction as to why her reaction is different from others despite superficially appearing the same......then like. You need to be. LOL.

4) The other factor that’s important to consider here is that just like Kory was never offered the chance to RECEIVE information of what happened from a relatively grounded place and headspace....the stories never gave her any real time to think things through, process over time, and arrive at different conclusions from her earlier ones. Again, I talk all the time about how Dick’s experiences with the Titans pre-his time in Bludhaven were colored by multiple instances of brainwashing and his head being fucked with and being personally targeted and jerked around in a ton of ways? The same is true of Kory, and it needs to be given equal weight.

Their wedding was crashed by ‘the dark soul self’ of Raven - who they thought was dead - as she infected Kory with what she called a demon seed that was going to grow a new demon inside of her. Due to her possession, Kory spent weeks in a mental institutition, trying to overcome the entity inside her (with Dick sitting by her side and holding her hand through all of it, just FYI). When she finally did purge the entity from her, Kory took off and ended up in a village in the Amazon, with the ordeal having given her amnesia. Dick went after her, but he’d only just tracked her down when she took off again to foil an alien invasion using radio waves that she was uniquely suited to recognize due to being familiar with their tactics, but which pitted her against most of the rest of the world in like, the Ultimate Gaslighting Showdown as everyone kept telling her she was crazy (she was wearing a tinfoil hat to protect herself from the transmissions, the writers were deliberately not doing her any favors).

Only after that was foiled did she regain her memories, and while off the page she agreed to meet with Dick to talk about their failed wedding and everything that happened afterward, as he’d returned from the Amazon by now, where he’d ultimately come to his own self-realizations about everything (or what we were told to accept were his realizations)....in the end she took off for Tamaran without meeting him, leaving him waiting where they’d agreed to rendezvous. Again, I say this not to vilify Kory, because I absolutely think she made the best choice for herself at the time, and should have, and I don’t think Dick has ever blamed her for that and tbh they both separately came to the same decisions about needing to be apart to recollect themselves and figure out who they were and where to go from here, like, without having to actually talk it out to arrive at the same point. I DO raise this point simply to put out there that in contrast to many other things I’ve seen said about the break up......they....never technically broke up?

Like I mean, don’t get me wrong. They DID. They both considered themselves broken up and eventually moved on with other people, Dick with Babs, and Kory with a general who she married back on New Tamaran before it was destroyed by the Sun Eater (again, Kory went through some SHIT after their break up. Dick wasn’t the only one.) But I just mean like.....it was LITERALLY the most mutual break-up that is possible for a break-up to be, because neither one of them ever actually communicated their intent to the other in order for them to both CLEARLY be on the same page. There was no “Dick called off the wedding” - that never actually happened, it was just....never revisited. There was no “Dick told her he no longer had feelings for her” - that was something that happened later, and yes, I’ll get to that too. OMG shut up me. But also shh I’m talking.

But yeah like.....their break-up, despite being almost universally claimed as Dick’s choice and responsibility, with zero mention of Mirage’s role in it in any official accounting of it I’VE ever seen, and with Kory painted as being the victim of Dick’s wandering ways and not knowing what he wanted in the distant aftermath of their break-up, as it was said that due to being Tamaranean, she loved for life and thus would always be in love with Dick even though he after her return claimed he no longer loved her (like, I don’t blame Kory but I also don’t like takes that act like Dick DID all this to Kory somehow. Like that’s literally the entire point here, neither of them needs to be to blame or each other’s victim according to how the story ACTUALLY went).....

But yeah, despite all that.....it really was the most mutually arrived at decision ever, because neither one of them actually EVER EVEN SAID ‘WE NEED TO BREAK UP’ to the other. They both just....ended up there on their own.

(And also because DC wanted them there in order to secure the rest of their push to put Nightwing solely back in the Batbooks for the next several years. With, don’t forget, this all coinciding with the government forcing him out of the Titans and putting Roy in charge and with this all culminating in Dick having his initial adventure in Bludhaven at Bruce’s ask, and then deciding to make that his new base of operations and kinda reinvent himself there, at the start of his solo title. Again, shout out to the myth of “Dick Grayson always runs from things because commitment issues” - not only did he NOT flee to Bludhaven because he just changed his mind about the wedding and said whoops sorry Kory, it wasn’t even his CHOICE to leave the Titans, even if eventually he agreed it was for the best right now. His ex went back to her home planet and he was asked to leave his team. Why the fuck WOULDN’T he go somewhere else?)

NEXT. (jfc he mumbled to himself under his breath. what the fuck did I start here).

Circling back around AGAIN, this time back to Dick’s STATED reasons for deciding things were over.

Two...umm, fuck it, ‘a number that is more than one’ things that need to be kept in mind HERE:

1) The most crucial bit of context when examining Dick’s journey of self-exploration in the Amazon while searching for Kory and what he comes to say and think about everything that’s happened and his own behavior....

Is that he is an EXTREMELY unreliable narrator at this point in time. Y’know how we talk about Dick having that tendency to take on more accountability than is actually earned and is way quicker to view himself as in need of apologizing than he is to view others needing to do that for him?

Yeah I mean, that’s a thing, I definitely have like a billion citations ready to go on a moment’s notice, but point is, being aware of that tendency means absolutely nothing if you don’t actively APPLY that awareness to Dick’s periods of self-reflection and like....compare and contrast what he THINKS about things he’s said or done with like....what he’s ACTUALLY said or done.

For instance, on the way to his so-called epiphanies about all this, he makes the claim that the entire time Kory was dealing with the demon entity inside of her, he was being so selfish because all he was doing was wishing she would wake up or be free of it so that she could help him with his problems instead. (And just for the record, I can provide actual panels for everything I reference in this post, I’m just limiting myself to a couple because I’m just trying to NOT beat War and Peace’s pagecount as it is. Will I succeed? No. Did I try? Yes.)

Now, Dick spending his time at his possessed fianceé’s side doing nothing but wishing she would snap out of it and focus on his problems instead.....is that selfish of him?

Well, yeah.

But is it TRUE?

I mean, you tell me:

This is right smack dab in the middle of that whole storyline, set only a few issues after the crashed wedding, and before Kory successfully evicts the demon entity and loses her memories. This is literally what Dick was ACTUALLY like the entire time. At the TIME, every single thing he said and did was focused on her.....the CLOSEST he came even in his internal monologue, to making it all about him, was him thinking about how this has shown him just how much he needs her.

Do people helping a loved one through something traumatic occasionally have selfish thoughts where their awareness of their own troubles momentarily supersedes their focus on their loved one? Yeah. Does this actually make them selfish if their ACTUAL focus and actions and words are aimed entirely at their loved ones the whole time, with no single actual detour to “hey, while you’re up, can we talk about me for a sec”?

Mmmmm....I feel like no, but I am open to you drawing other conclusions as long as you are aware that they are wrong and mine is right, kay. I mean okay, fine. You can disagree with me here but I’m still gonna disagree about your disagreement there and its just gonna be this whole big thing and its like, ugh, whatever, y’know?

But hey, you do you.

ANYWAY, point is, unless you draw the wrong conclusion here in which case PTTTHB!, like, I think its safe to say Dick thinking in the midst of his self-awareness deep dive that he was being nothing but selfish during that whole story and thus didn’t deserve Kory, like....whether or not the writers are actually AWARE of it or not, I mean......that’s still a pretty good context clue that his internal monologues at this point in time are maybe a little bit skewed towards being more about accepting blame than reflecting reality, right? Yes, no, maybe so?

Well then again, if you agree with me, then add to that awareness the added bit of trivia that every single other one of Dick’s ‘ultimate realizations’ (he just wanted to get married because he thought it would bring stability to his life, it would help him grow up, hit one of those aforementioned milestones, etc)....like every single one of them.....was an opinion that was FIRST offered by one of the other Titans.

Every. Single. One.

(Wanted to get married for the stability was something Donna said she thought was his reasoning, to the other original Titans. The bit about thinking it would help him grow up was unfortunately ALSO Donna, but said to Kory before the wedding when Kory asked if she thought this was a mistake and if she thought Dick had proposed for the right reasons. The milestones thing was said by either Roy, Garth or Wally, I honestly forget which, but it was when the three of them went out to discuss the pending government takeover of the team and how to break this to Dick with everything else going on).

And with not a SINGLE one of these opinions present in ANY of Dick’s internal monologues BEFORE the proposal, hinting that they were anywhere near being on his radar at THAT point.

So....which makes more narrative sense? That Dick ultimately just realized that everything he THOUGHT was motivating him when he proposed was NOT true and that it was only his friends that clued into his actual reasons, which he must have overheard at some point and internalized in order to have replicated said opinions in his thoughts so exactly? Again with ZERO mention alongside any of this, that peoples’ views of what happened with Mirage was at ALL a factor in his thinking?

Or.....does it maybe better track, that over the course of Dick repeatedly expressing that he didn’t know it wasn’t Kory, that he never wanted to cheat on her, that he loved her and only her and would never knowingly do that....with NO ONE budging and everyone from Kory to all of his best friends acting like his adulterous guilt was an over and done with conclusion and they’d already long since moved on to the point of how willing or not they were to forgive him, based on everything else he’d been going through.....and with Dick thinking that how remorseful he appeared to be and how willing to ACCEPT accountability was likely to play a part in how much people were willing to look past all his recent fuck-ups here.......

Does it maaaaaaaybe actually make a little bit more sense that Dick’s total 180 into taking full responsibility and coming up with all these rationalizations for his actions that essentially just mimic theories everyone else had for his behavior has more to do with his deeply internalized acceptance that nobody was listening to his side of the story or what he was actually trying to say (without even real SELF awareness at the time that what he was feeling wasn’t just ‘I’m innocent of what you’re accusing me of’ but ‘I was violated and used’)?

That it was more about him finding ways to justify to himself getting on the same page everyone else ALREADY seemed to be on in regards to him and his recent behavior, as that seemed to be the only way to move forward, that he was tired of fighting everybody and feeling like he was in the wrong for it so honestly, maybe they were right?

Because from there.....

Its only a veeeeeery short hop, skip and a jump from “well I guess I DID do what they say and I SHOULD have known it wasn’t Kory”.....to.....”since the only thing I kept clinging to for how I couldn’t know was my insistence that I truly loved Kory, and it turns out that I still SHOULD have known anyway......doesn’t that mean that I didn’t really love Kory the way I thought I did? Or as much as I thought I did?”

“Did I never really love Kory as much as she deserved?”

Cuz uh, remember earlier when I talked about it being significant that Dick never ACTUALLY claimed during this time that he didn’t love Kory anymore or fell out of love with her or anything like that, but rather that his precise claim was “I didn’t love her AS MUCH AS SHE DESERVED”?

Aka.....”enough that I would have known it wasn’t actually Kory that I was with?”

Yeah. Uh, that. That’s the significance there. Yeah. So....

2) Now as to something else to keep in mind in regards to Dick’s eventual ‘self-realizations’ - this calls back to when I said earlier that Dick WAS acting erratically during this time, stemming all the way back to the Titans Hunt aftermath. He was overly aggressive, he was ready to fight anyone at a moment’s notice, he was tunnel-visioned.....in short, he was actually quite a lot how the fanon interpretations of his temper I rage about usually depict him. But the key thing here, and the reason why I wouldn’t have a problem with people drawing references from THIS time when talking about him behaving this way.....

Is that much like when Dick was behaving erratically during the Brother Blood storyline, it was with NARRATIVE INTENT.

There, Dick’s behavior led to the reveal that he was lashing out because he was fighting the Church of Blood’s mental conditioning. Here, Dick’s behavior is directly tied to his downward spiral resulting from the trauma of Titans Hunt and his guilt from that.

In both cases, I’d have zero issue with people referencing specific instances of this behavior....

As long as they ALSO reference and acknowledge the specific narrative context that was directly CONNECTED to that behavior. Its not about whether or not it excuses any specific thing he does, its about the fact that while these behaviors did happen, they shouldn’t be depicted as indicative of his OVERALL characterization, because they were specifically and deliberately written into his actions WITH INTENT by the writers, who were trying to use his DELIBERATELY out of the ordinary behavior to arrive at some narrative point or conclusion.

And here, for Dick, that was the eventual realization that he’d never fully dealt with his feelings about the losses during the Titans Hunt.

I don’t like how he acts in a lot of the issues around this time. Its ugly. But its MEANT to be ugly. I don’t like Dick’s fight with Roy when he tells him about taking over leadership because of the government’s interference. I don’t like it AT ALL.

But what I DO like is how the very next page after the fight, after Donna follows Dick out of the room, Dick turns around and acknowledges how out of control he’d just been and said he felt it proved that everyone was right, things HAD gotten to him more than he’d realized or admitted to himself, and it probably was a sign he needed to take a step back, and besides, Kory needed him more than the team did right now anyway.

THAT’S one of the core things I like about Dick Grayson, that almost without exception, his worst actions or behaviors are almost immediately followed by his realization of this and a tangible action or change in his actions to address it. That’s not something every character can claim - in fact, its unfortunately pretty damn rare.

But here’s the problem with that, in this specific scenario:

Dick WAS spiraling, he DID act out in ways he was right to be called out on and to feel guilt about, and there WAS basis for him acknowledging that there was stuff he needed to address in his life and his head, and to take responsibility for.

Thing is though, nobody else at any point ever stood up to point to where in his willingness to hold himself accountable for his mistakes and try and do better in regards to his friends and teammates and overall relationships....

He additionally took on guilt that WASN’T deserved. Because the other Titans were the ones who in their overall rush to judgment about his behavior and the reasons why.....still erroneously lumped in with the rest, their conclusion as to how the situation with Mirage should be viewed.

And frankly, though this doesn’t make them look good, there’s plenty of places you can go with that which don’t make them heartless monsters either. They were wrong, not to listen to him about Mirage, and I maintain that this tangibly WORSENED his already existing downward spiral from Titans Hunt, because that was already stuff he really could have benefited from support for the others from....and then this other thing happened that he additionally really needed support about, rather than blame.

Problem is, the overall impression given off by the other Titans was that they thought they already WERE doing their best to be supportive, by being so willing to look PAST ‘what Dick had done with Mirage’ and FORGIVE Dick for that, make allowances for why it and other decisions they didn’t agree with, like his rush to marriage, might make sense based on what they were attributing as the reason for his out of character behavior....the fallout from Titans Hunt...but ONLY that.

Like to be clear, I’m aware that there is a flip side of things in fanon, where some stans overcorrect on Dick’s behalf and act like the Titans all universally slut-shamed Dick and were terrible to him. No. That’s not what happened either. There was ONE slut-shaming Titan and ONLY one....and that was Pantha, who to be frank, like.....she was literally written to be the button pusher in regards to everyone. She likely would have said the same thing no matter who was in that situation, because she honestly didn’t care, she was just interested in making the cheap jokes at their expense.

The other Titans though did not adopt a slut-shaming stance against Dick...just a victim-blaming one. Which makes some things better, but some things worse IMO.

Its easier to understand how they could have all fallen into this trap despite all being seasoned heroes who should have known better than to view these specific events the way they did....if you consider that their fatal flaw here was ironically that they were SO quick to try and find a reason that Dick might have done this that they felt they could forgive....that they never actually thought things through long enough to recognize how quick on the draw they’d been in their reactions. And then they failed to listen to Dick’s side of things because they’d kinda convinced themselves that they were ALREADY doing him a favor and hearing him out by having decided to look past what he’d done and make allowances for it....and so they kinda filtered everything he was saying through a lens of like...waiting for him to catch up to what they’d already decided had happened and onto the part where he did the Dick Grayson thing and apologized and accepted responsibility for it....at which point they, as his friends, would be honestly able to say “already forgiven, dude.”

You could additionally factor in the idea that their very respect for his capabilities and high opinion of his overall ‘on the ball-ness’ made what had happened easy to view as something that’d just slipped past his radar, a rare oversight that again, he could be forgiven for, rather than what it was....again, something that he should never have been expected to ‘catch’ in the first place, any more than they would have been.

Either way, the real problem was always just that they failed to support him in the ways he actually needed, because they were already busy forgiving him for things he didn’t actually need forgiveness for because they were never his to accept blame for in the first place. But then BECAUSE Dick was already primed to accept the blame for what he WAS right to accept responsibility for, he overextended and took on everything that was held against him, rather than first differentiating between where a mea culpa both was and WAS NOT due.

No matter how you slice it, the Titans WERE wrong on this front, and Dick absolutely DOES have canon grounds to nurse some bitterness and resentment about, towards them. Again, with a lot of ways that can be approached. Personally, when I think about fics tackling this subject, my big want is always gonna be like.....confrontation fics? Like that’s what I’ve always really wanted to see here....like there’s a lot of obviously valid catharsis to be had in fics that have someone walk Dick through what a more objective view of what happened back then and let him finally unburden himself of all that unearned guilt there...BUT all the focus there is typically on that realization of the truth for DICK, that like....there’s almost never any follow-up where that realization is further pursued and extended to the relevant Titans? And tbh, I’ve always viewed that as the far greater ‘crime’ this story executed in regards to Dick’s character....not an overall obliviousness to his own victimization, period, but the fact that he was basically pushed into ACCEPTING a culpable view of events when actually, he’d always KNOWN on some level that it wasn’t really his fault and he had every reason to feel repulsed and angry and violated.

Like, I do obviously view Dick as someone with a large degree of self-awareness, in no small part due to how often he DOES do these introspective deep dives and reflect on events and actions and behaviors, and even though I understand the viewpoint that things look different when applied to yourself than to others, I do think its perfectly likely that Dick would at some point come to his own realization about what had actually happened with Mirage and why he’d initially felt the way he did about it. Maybe not before the events with Tarantula, but in the aftermath? I think he absolutely would connect certain things then, even if just because of how FAMILIAR everything felt to that earlier time post-Titans Hunt. The Blockbuster arc was like, the most rock bottom Dick had ever been SINCE that point, and various similarities could have definitely been pinging all over for him....the losses he suffered reminding him of his guilt for the fallen Titans, the end of Dick and Babs’ relationship, while based on more reasons than just Tarantula kissing Dick, like, still including that as a reason and so thus bearing an uncomfortable similarity to the last time he was held accountable for his rapist and now eventual rapist’s actions, etc.

And I do think that Dick having some realizations of his own post-Blockbuster could explain a LOT about his later interactions with the Titans, who I honestly don’t think he was ever quite as close to again?

Which makes a ton of sense if you view the 1999 series, and how difficult it was for them to get Dick to join up, and how he was plenty ready to leave at any point...like, that makes a TON of sense if you consider that Dick might have at this point been quietly nursing hurt of his own that everyone was so eager and willing to let bygones be bygones and ‘forgive’ his mistakes of the past, that nobody still had ever realized what he’d had to realize all on his own....that THEY all had a perception of events and like, their friendships, that included forgiving Dick for a betrayal that Dick NEVER ACTUALLY ENACTED. Where its like, thanks, but I didn’t actually need that, what I needed was someone to listen to me. But at the same time its totally understandable why he wouldn’t ever want to bring that up himself....because he’d already TRIED expressing himself on this matter years before, and been shot down, and its totally reasonable that he worried history would just repeat there rather than bring him the closure he WANTED on that front. But again....the distance he keeps a lot of the Titans at after his return to the team pairs pretty damn well with him being both quietly resentful of forgiveness he never needed and wondering when it was everyone else’s turn to accept the accountability for wrongs done that everyone was always so quick to demand from him....as well as why the last thing in the world he’d want to do is bring this all up again himself.

Similarly, this is why I think he always expressed to Kory, ever since her return to Earth, that he wasn’t in love with her anymore.....I don’t think its necessarily true that his feelings ever fully went away, and I also don’t think he’d bear the same resentments towards her that he did the others, even though Kory too ‘forgave’ him for something he never needed absolution for. Because I think at the same time, he’s more aware than most of Kory’s own history, and he has too much empathy for what all that likely stirred up for her at the time as well as his awareness that she really did love him and always had and that she’d mourned their relationship just as much as he had.

So I truly don’t think Dick blames her, in ways that can’t be said of the others, and I don’t think it was truly that he didn’t love her anymore, or that there was no longer anything there....I think he always just said that in order to protect himself, because he was still hurting from everything that had happened back then and how everyone had always painted it as his fault ever since, and his own traumas had only compounded those very specific feelings with later events like Tarantula and her impact on his life, and its just like......I think if it ever came out via someone else re-raising the issue, Dick would be like okay, yes, absolutely let’s finally talk about this....but I totally understand why Dick would never want to re-raise it himself because....he definitely did TRY to express his violation way back when. Why should he be the one to have to essentially.....retry his own case with his friends in order to finally get the verdict he should have had all along, y’know?

Its one thing to get that its probably never going to happen without initiating it himself, but its another thing for that to get you past the hump of just not wanting to relive some of your worst moments when your best friends not believing in you or being so willing to believe something about you in some ways did just as much damage to you as the actual initial violation.

But again, all that said, I would absolutely like, rob the Louvre (Okay I’d also rob the Louvre just for money but like. You get it) for stories where one of the Titans has an ‘oh shit’ realization about everything with Mirage years later. And they tentatively try and bring it up with Dick in the hopes of ‘fixing things’ by correcting the damage they’d done when making him feel it was his to accept blame on.....and for Dick to just be like. “Yeah, uh, I was there. I figured all that out a long time ago, I just didn’t see the point in trying to convince everybody twice.” And them like....being like oh crap we have to figure out a way to make things right, like all this time we’ve thought things were kinda broken between us because of what Dick did but actually it was the other way around and about Dick’s feelings about what WE did.

Okay now like....don’t laugh but I’m literally still not done, because I had this whole other thing about how now we needed to finally talk about the Zitka in the room, which is that IMO its always been kinda backwards to view Tarantula as the focal point of Dick’s traumas here and what happened with Mirage as some kind of footnote kinda....personally I think it should be the other way around. That its Mirage that weighs on Dick the most because what she did was premeditated where with Catalina it was a crime of opportunity. With Miriam though, it was always going to happen no matter what, because it only happened because she MADE it happen. She like....stalked Dick pretty much from the time of her arrival in this timeline (or at least how that initially was viewed - the timeline thing, not the stalking thing. Forget it. Weird story is weird. Doesn’t matter). But like....Mirage went after Dick with intent. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she was willing to do whatever to make it happen, up to and including kidnapping Dick’s actual girlfriend and taking her place.

With Tarantula, like, she was more than quick to seize on the first opportunity to make it happen, but like...that’s still a different thing IMO from like...KNOWING that someone literally plotted out and premeditated one of the most disruptive traumas of your life without any care for what it would DO to your life, and you later carrying all the blame for that in everyone else’s eyes without anyone ever acknowledging what it did to YOU....even though MULTIPLE people know and its even affected your overall reputation. With Tarantula....I think that trauma absolutely compounded everything else that happened with Blockbuster but it was hardly limited to just that, but again with Mirage....that one specific act pretty much derailed the entire course of Dick’s life at the time. Because again....while you could absolutely claim that there are other issues Dick and Kory might have broken up because of later, even without Mirage’s actions, like....you have to MAKE the case for those reasons. You can’t just attribute their breakup to rushing into marriage, when again....Mirage was the literal catalyst for Dick proposing when he did.

Which again, to bring it all back to the start.....that’s why it will forever make me channel Gar Logan and turn into a green-hued screeching howler monkey every time people are like I absolutely agree that its not okay to blame Dick for his own rape at Mirage’s hands....but then turn around and be like okay, but Dick and Kory did break up because Dick rushed them into marriage before they were ready.

Cuz.

Like.

THEY’RE THE EXACT SAME THING!

The one is just the other but described from a different vantage point.

faslkfhaklfhaklfhkalfha

I get if people didn’t know that before now, but please please please can we like....push back against the misinformation on this particular topic because omggggg is it unpleasant to repeatedly hear people contradict themselves in the same paragraphs half the time because they literally don’t know that they’re talking about the same events in both cases.

Believe it or not, I actually had a lot more about Mirage and about other ways things could have gone differently for Dick and Kory if he’d had even just a little more support from someone else at the time, whether from Bruce or even just one of the Titans, like all it would have taken was just ONE person to try and view things from Dick’s perspective and be like okay everyone hold up, some bad fucking conclusions have been arrived at here.

BUT I am tired and this is long and literally just...whatever. I’ll do that some other time. LOL. And I bounce.

#first person to try and tell me the wordcount of this is getting blocked I swear to fucking god

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thepriceofbeingaroseisloneliness · 3 years

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Toshiya’s Creativity Vol 7: Looking back at Life This time, as Toshiya’s birthday is getting closer, we asked him to look back on his life. From his childhood to boyhood in Nagano and moving to Tokyo after his awakening to music. And the present. Memories, present and future…. Blessed with good weather, we did this interview in a localisation where you could feel the arrival of spring. “For me, music is the most stimulating thing. It was a way to escape from reality” “I think it’s a miracle I met these 4 people.” “When you are standing on stage in front of the audience, you should be a special person that nobody can’t replace”

Notes before reading: This is from ‘Toshiya’s creativity’, the serialization done by Ster Edge Magazine and later compiled into a book with the same name. This is Vol 07 (Ster Edge 006) , which was published in March 2018. Originally, I planned to post this for Toshiya’s birthday but....life. Feel free to correct me if you spot any mistake or any confusing parts. Links or credits to this post when the content is reposted or captured in other SNS is appreciated :)

------ 2017 marked the 20th anniversary of the formation of DIR EN GREY. Toshiya also had the opportunity to look back on the history of the band at various locations. This time, we asked him to look back on his ‘life’ just before his birthday on March 31st. How did he feel at that time? What did he realize at that moment and what does he think now? It was an interview that gave us a glimpse of his enigmatic way of thinking and a part his feelings. Toshiya is from Nagano prefecture. He says the environment in which he grew up was "a normal countryside one” in “a normal family”. In our previous talk with Hide TANAKA, a flower designer who is a childhood friend of Toshiya, which was published in "Toshiya's Creativity Vol6", he talked about his childhood, but we will explore this further, in a bit more personal way. When he was asked about his oldest memory, he folded his arms, thought for a moment, and then opened his mouth. “This memory comes quickly to my mind. There was something like an agricultural cooperative bazaar/rummage sale being held near my grandparent's house, and I think they took me to it. I was very impressed by a child of the same age as me at that time who was lost and crying alone. So, I remember holding my grandpa and grandma's hands tightly and saying, ‘Don’t lose me!’ (laughs).” His grandparents' home and his home were close, so he often went out with his grandparents from an early age. “I was close to my grandfather and my grandmother. I remember I was the type of child loved by the elderly. I’m still quite in contact with my family and relatives, we have a good relationship. But it wasn't something special, it was normal for me at the time. My hometown is a normal countryside town, where nothing is like this city, it feels like there are only mountains and rice fields. I also liked drawing at home and playing outside. I was playing like a normal country child would do.” Young Toshiya seems to have grown up in the nature of Nagano. It seems his parents also respected the things he wanted to do. “I was in a sports boys' team, a baseball team, and I practised kendo. I feel like I certainly did what I wanted. I liked physical activities. I wasn’t strong or weak at sports, after all I was normal (laughs). My parents taught me soroban (Japanese abacus), and in junior high school I attended a cram school. I think I got a textbook to study English through radio lessons. I just pretended to play the abacus, and I wasn't good at it at all (laughs). " Toshiya was a boy who was devoted to sports. He talked to Hide about playing the guitar when he was young, but was he interested in music and instruments at that time? “No, no at all. My mother's brother used to play the guitar and I was just using that guitar as a toy instead. More than playing, I was killing time. It felt like that. At that time, I had no dreams for the future. When I was told to write about my dream for the future, I just wrote ‘be a salary man, like my father’. I think that was the safest choice (laughs). The children of my class said ‘I want to be a police officer’ or ‘I want to be a pilot’, but I wasn't interested in what I wanted to do in the future at all.” He said ‘normal’ many times while talking about himself in the past but while listening to his talk, he didn't feel like that for some reason, he had a mysterious aura since he was a boy. He said the thing that young Toshiya was more interested in was ‘wild ideas/fantasies’. “I think it was like that in the past. Didn’t you have any ‘wild idea’ /fantasy on your way to school or coming back from it? I liked that kind of thing. As I liked Gundam, I thought ‘I want to ride one’. Sometimes I went home with my friends, but more often I went home alone. It was about a 30-minute walk from my house to school, so it was days of spending all that time doing that (laughs).” Perhaps he was a boy who had his own world and the strength to be alone. “No, no, I didn't think deeply about that. I never felt scared to be alone…. the reason I went home alone was it was easier for me to go home alone (laughs). I'm older than my siblings, so I grow up as an only child for a while. That’s why it was normal for me to be alone. Most of the boys and girls I played with were older kids who lived near my house” Toshiya, an elementary school boy who often played with older boys and girls who lived in the neighbourhood, gradually got more chances to listen to popular songs at his senpais' homes. Boøwy was the catalyst for him to have an instrument. “Boøwy was a cool band that older seniors listened to. When I got into middle school, there were about one or two people in the class who liked Western music. When I became friends with those guys, I was told ‘You are still listening to Japanese music?’ (laughs). From that moment, I started to dig deeper into Western music.” Then, that Toshiya in middle school becomes more and more absorbed in music. It was around this time that he started to have in his mind that he wanted to play an instrument. “Besides Boøwy and X…..From overseas… I listened to Van Halen. Then, bands like Europe, Guns N'Roses,Bon jovi….. as it was the golden age of LA metal (glam metal), I liked that kind of stuff. I listened to the X’s single ‘Kurenai’ at home. That song starts with a ballad-like part, and then it gets fierce at once, but when I was playing it at first, I could hardly hear any sound. I still remember that suddenly it made a loud noise when I turned up the volume, I was surprised and desperately turned down the volume (laughs). " As Toshiya told us this funny incident, for sure there are many people who had a similar experience. What elements of these bands inspired Toshiya in middle school? "The music was exciting, but the fashion and performance were shocking ... Every band was very unrealistic. It seems that I was taken to a different world at that time. The feelings were very strong. Since TV was the only way to collect information, I think the influence from TV on me was huge.” He has been absorbed in band activities since high school. The first thing he got in his hands was a guitar, not a bass. He doesn't have get the chance to play the guitar on stage right now, but he uses the guitar to make songs. "After all, I started playing the guitar because I admired some guitarists, but I thought 'It's difficult to play with 6 strings. It's a little easier with 4 strings.' After all, I thought it would be easier if there aren’t many chords to hold down. Also, I thought the bass was in a position that didn’t stand out much compared to other instruments, so I thought it would be interesting because that means there were many interesting possibilities about playing” Toshiya, who liked drawing since childhood, went to an art school while being in a band, after graduating from high school. Although he is good at drawing, he eventually chose the musical path. “I didn't want to get a job after graduating from high school, but I didn’t want to study something either. However, I liked drawing, so I asked my parents to attend an art school. At school, the places where the people who graduated there got a job are displayed at the corridor, isn’t it? I was looking at that and I thought ‘Ah? I don't think many people can get a job in the world of drawing’. I don’t think there are many jobs available when it comes to drawing. I thought ‘I like drawing but as this is more a hobby than a job, there is no point in spending money to study it. I’m going to spend my time doing what I like’. After all, I left the art school in about a year. After all, you only live once, and I may regret not doing what I want to do…..That's why I decided to go on the path of music for real. Music is the most stimulating thing for me. Making music was fun and I think it was a bit an escape from reality. I could be a different person than the one I was in my daily life….I wonder if these ‘extraordinary things’ became an stimulus for me.” Immediately after that, Toshiya goes to Tokyo to be fully into band activities as a band man. An era in which the Internet is hardly widespread it was important to move to make his own path. He took action and met various people. “When I went to Tokyo, I met and talked with several people. I was told often that ‘those who move out their hometowns had already won’. I thought there was no chance if I stayed in the countryside and I started doing band activities quietly. There may be various risks and scary feelings, but if you really want a chance, you have to go to the place where there is information. Of course, I think that taking no action is also one of the options. There may be a way to improve your skills locally, or you can go out to the city to seize opportunities, and I think it's up to you to decide which one to choose. I met the members (of DIR EN GREY) in Tokyo, so I think I wouldn't have been in this band if I hadn't come to Tokyo. " "I think it was a miracle that I could meet the other 4 members” Toshiya, who met Kyo,Kaoru, Die, and Shinya, moved to Kansai and started band activities there . In 1997, DIR EN GREY was formed. They made their national debut in 1998, and made his major debut in 1999 with the release of the singles "Akuro no Oka", "ZAN-" and "Yurameki". He thought ‘Because I only have one life, I may regret not doing what I want to do’, and took action. About three years later, Toshiya's life changed. "I think most people in the music world are like that…..At that time, I didn't know what I was doing, but I was confident. I think it's a little scary when I think about my confident at that time. I had such a simple idea that in a way or another, we were going to make it. That's why I didn't think anything strange, the biggest thing was that I didn't have any strange fear. As I grew up, I started to think about things I hadn't thought of before. I was getting more and more involved with people, but I didn’t have that kind of thing when I was young. I think that was the biggest driving force. When I look back on it now, I feel envious of that feeling that nothing was going to stop me.” It was a brilliant and sensational success. It was probably the tremendous power of these five people that attracted that success, which the appropriate world to describe it would be “comet”. A comet that seen from a distance was very beautiful but, how did DIR EN GREY feel about it, being the comet themselves? “We didn’t fully understand the situation we were in. There was a strong feeling we were getting into a world we didn’t know. We were an active part of that, but it felt like we were outsiders. At that time, music had a stimulating sense of unreality but also the fear that it became real started to spring up. At that time, it felt like that many times. DIR EN GREY was called the “last boom” of the scene we were in and I think we were lucky. There was also a part of us that tried to not be absorbed by that boom” DIR EN GREY’s activities have been very creative since then. From this formation until their debut, the band didn’t lose their spirits and kept their aggressive stance. Continuing to present things with a strong emphasis in musicality and fashion making a distinction in the middle of that ‘boom’, they built a unshakeable fortress called DIR EN GREY. “At that time, various media such as TV and magazines talked to us, but we tried not to go in that direction. I was influenced by TV in terms of knowing music, but when it comes to my own work, I didn’t think about becoming the kind of musician that appears on TV. Of course, I thought it would be the best if we got TV exposure but…..at some point, there were things that cold me off. ‘This boom won’t last forever’, it’s easy to get on that boom, but once the boom is over, it’s gone. At that time, I might not have thought so much about it, but I instinctively felt that it was dangerous to get into that boom” It’s not just Toshiya, all DIR EN GREY members agreed. “Sometimes thanks to the boom and the media, they (the listeners) get to know about you. I think it’s the best way to get people know about you but, I also think it’s really dangerous. I think there were some people who succumbed to that kind of excitement. We were cautious because we were the only ones who could protect ourselves, no one else would protect us.” Because DIR EN GREY decided that it was dangerous to get drawn by that boom, they were able to pursue the music and expressions they wanted to do in a deeper way. A different strength from that boom. “That’s right…. We didn’t really understand what happened, we couldn’t say ‘ we did this so this happened after’, there were moments we relied on ourselves, but there were also moments that we relied on others. I guess that balance was good. However, we tried to not get into that wave of popularity as much as possible” DIR EN GREY continued to run ahead of the boom without appearing in the mainstream media, toured Asia in 2002, achieving the first overseas expansion. Due to changes in music aspects, the attention they got from overseas increased and in 2005, they performed in Berlin, marking their first solo concert in Europe. From there, they started to held live performances around the world. Their music spread to the world in proportion to the rise of the Internet. Their journey was so innovative in the music scene that many artists used them as their role model. Should it be called ‘a miracle’ caused by a natural sense of balance? “I think this (the overseas expansion) was something rare for us. ‘Something like this is what we want’, ‘It would be good if you could show this or that’……we were told these kind of things so maybe it (a miracle) happened. First of all, I think it’s a miracle I met these 4 people.” Toshiya said this a little shy smile. There aren't many bands that have been so active for 20 years without changing members or stopping their activities. It's a miracle. “Because it’s an aspect that you can’t control…the things you do and the people you meet. I think it’s a miracle in that sense as well.” After 20 years, there were changes as an individual person, and there were changes in the way they interact with music. He says it's not just about music, ‘No matter what you do, if you make a mistake, you're done’, he adds. “Everyone calls me an 'artist', but I don't feel like one. The easiest thing to say would be ‘free person’ (laughs). As I don’t have the experience of a normal working life, waking up at the same time on weekdays mornings, getting on the same train every day, rather than an artist, I would say I’m a free person. However, if there is a misunderstanding, I come to think of myself as ‘someone special’ who can’t live a normal life. It’s dangerous and scary. But humans are creatures that make mistakes (laughs).” Is it his way of saying that there was a “misunderstanding” in the past? “Well, there is. I made mistakes. That's why I'm scared. At the time of the debut, the number of adults I didn’t know increased around me. No matter what you do, many people was moving. That became something common. But that many people come, means that many people also leave…. Shortly after my debut, a friend from Nagano told me two things. One was ‘it’s good you can do what you like’, and the other was ‘Did you start a band to be admired/ to be pampered?’ Those words were quite a big deal for me. I thought I couldn't stay that way, so I had to change my way of thinking a little more. The words this person told me made me feel sad but then I said ‘Isn’t it good? Why you don’t try to do your best too?’ (laughs).” Toshiya laughs and says ‘I want to be a person with an ordinary consciousness’. His way of talking and manners are soft, giving an impression that he is a person who has nothing to do with the word ‘rude’. “In my teens, my senpais were unconventional and I admired a lot their messy behaviour but unfortunately, times are very different now. When we were children, we thought about what to buy and how to use the money we received for New Year's but nowadays children seem to save money. It might be good to do something unconventional and have a dream in such a conservative era, but I'm not that age anymore. Now, if I do something like that, I’d be in a difficult position (laughs). That’s why being a person with an ordinary consciousness would be the ideal”. “When you stand on stage in front of the audience, you should be a special person that nobody can’t replace” When you ask him about music activity, the talk extends to other topics that are not limited to music. The concept of the brand 'DIRT 100% Natural Dirty' produced by him is 'unisex real clothes that can be worn in a wide range of occasions from casual to formal’, the design not only affects the clothes but also the spaces that surround your daily life. Toshiya proposes and produce unique and original clothes for daily life. The fact that the words ‘life’ and ‘everyday’ are included means that for Toshiya, as music, his brand production and life are something that flows together, not something that can be separate from each other. “There isn’t really a distinction. But both, music and brand production, I can’t call them ‘work’. Of course I can’t remove the business part of it but I don’t think it’s work. This interview is also part of my job, that’s why I’m definitely switched on my ‘business mode’. If you like something in a pure way, you shouldn’t make a business of it. Of course, I make music and produce clothes because I like it, but the truth is that you can’t just do something because you like it. That’s why I think I have to do it. For example, of course I would say ‘I want to do this’ to the company but saying NO to everything that the company suggests, like ‘I want you to do this, I think it’s just selfish. If I’m allowed to do what I want to do, then I have to do also what the company wants me to do, otherwise, it won’t work. If you just want to do whatever you want, it would be like ‘why don't you do it by yourself? I think I'm doing it with several people because I can't do it alone.” It might be because of this that the band DIR EN GREY continue to be active with the same members. It’s only because they have their own opinions but also they have the capacity to listen and absorb other people’s opinions. “I have a firm ideal within myself. However, there are times you will realize things listening to other people’s opinions and absorbing them. When you have a talk with several people that are experts in something, new opinions that I didn’t know before are born. I often think that it’s like the scales fall from my eyes, and it leads to new discoveries. There might be a reason why we don’t aim to “do things by ourselves’. It's not that music and brands can't be done alone…. I feel that if I go alone, I might make a mistake. Going back to I said before, if you think of yourself as 'special', I think it's not going to go in the right direction….But it's an exception when you stand on stage in front of the audience. , you should be a special person that nobody can’t replace” No matter how good a person is, they may stop at some point. Toshiya was no exception. However, he says with confident ‘I still have many things that I want to do’. “I've often thought ‘this is my limit’. I have thought many times ‘I don't have any ideas, I don't like it, it's hard’..... But then, I’ve always come up with ideas and images such as "I want to do something like that" or "Let's do something like this". I've been doing something like that all the time….I think my desire for expression will never run out. I don't think things can be made from scratch. Everything is imitation of something, an arrangement of something….I think that’s the trigger for the ramification of creation. In your daily life, you can see various things and various things will happen, so I hope to reflect in my work what is happening at that moment.” Will Toshiya reach a turning point in his life soon? In the last talk, he wondered if he would become an adult when he is 50 or 60 years old. He also said he wanted to be 50 or 60 years old soon. He set his mind on the idea of ‘You only have one life, if you don’t do the things that you want, you’ll regret it’. Until now, he has devoted his life to the band so is he satisfied with that or is there any regrets? “It’s half satisfaction, half regrets (laughs). I think I have more regrets, though. When I was in elementary school I thought that at my age I would be living in my hometown, I’d be married and would have kids…’I wish I had done that at that time’….’I didn’t do that’….things like that, if I start mentioning them, there would be no end. But you can’t do anything about the things you didn’t do, I think the perception will change if you look at it with regrets or as a reflection. Sayingt that ‘I could become an adult once I’m 50 or 60 years old” means I entrusted to my future self, things I can’t do now. It’s a way of escapism, though(laughs). I feel like the things I can’t do now will be easier in the future and the range of the things I’ll be able to do will be wider. I will pursue forever the person I aspired to become when I was a child. I think it’s a human thing to do that.” Toshiya’s voice “I requested this photoshoot to take place somewhere near the sea. Since my birthday was closer, I did an interview looking back on my life. If anything, it felt like the interview was important. As we went to Odaiba, the travel time was longer. The talk about the Olimpics in the car was exciting.

#dir en grey #toshiya #translation #toshiyatranslations

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theseventhoffrostfall · 2 years

Text

I may have mentioned it before, but in 40k the numbers around the Schola Progenium don't add up, and that's saying something considering how much 40k struggles with stuff like scale and logistics.

Lore says, recruits are drawn not just from imperial orphans, but specifically the orphans of exceptional, heroic imperial veterans. There's a high mortality rate throughout the school, and they're the sole source for Commissariat cadets, Adeptus Arbites officers and Sororitas initiates and very nearly the sole source for Tempestus troops and Assassins, along with a very significant source of recruits for Guard officers, high-level Administratum officials, and the Inquisition

If you read that and thought "hey, wait a minute, what?", then you are correct.

The schools' pool of students is miniscule, and yet there are multiple officers in every Guard regiment, plus a Commissar for every regiment (sometimes with final-stage cadets and juniors under him) plus one on every Navy ship and every few planets' PDF have to share one, and it's hard to overstate how many guard regiments there are (because there are so many that no one actually knows). There's at least one Arbiter for every one of the Imperium's million-plus worlds, usually multiple, plus on some worlds like Terra itself they're outright the police (with the attendant mortality rates considering how violent Terra is).

Then there's the Sororitas, who are not only selective of recruits (on top of wanting exceptional fanatics with a variety of skills but wanting large numbers of combat-capables, their recruiting pool is cut in half by being an all-female organization) but truly massive, with each temple fielding a small army.

Then there's the Tempestus, who have at least hundreds, if not thousands of dedicated regiments, along with being attached by squads to various (some of the, again, massively numerous) Guard regiments. We have some rough idea of their scale, as the First War of Armageddon featured basically every Inquisitorial Stormtrooper in the sector called to the planet for a force somewhere north of a hundred thousand. There are dozens of sectors in the Imperium, and the I-boys are the Tempestus' top five percent. There's a lot of them.

Assassins are admittedly very are, Inquistors are very rare and a solid chunk aren't Schola graduates, Administratum posts are mostly hereditary and Schola graduates are rare in proportion to the institution. Fair enough there.

Even so, the only logical conclusion here is some combination of the Schola's recruiting pool being much, much bigger than the stated "orphans of heroes" gig, and the bulk of recruits for these various institutions coming from elsewhere. There's older lore (from the Fantasy Flight RPG's) that said adult veteran Guardsmen could be sent through for stormtrooper training, but that was also stated to require Inquisition sign-off. You'd just about patch that particular hole (being that the Tempestus is the biggest recruit-hog from the Schola by far) if you stated that Guard regiments were allowed to send some of their best veteran troops in (maybe a few slots per year per regiment) for the Tempestus Q-course.

#warhammer 40k #warhammer 40000 #apologies i didnt realize how long this was going to be when i started typing

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ladyartemesia · 3 years

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Yooo your love story straight out seems like an e2l slow burn tumblr fic. Do you have any plans using at as a plot?? I would def read it 👀

I don’t know if I would truly call it enemies-to-lovers because—although I got irritated with him and his behavior and did snap at him from time to time—we were not really enemies. In fact we were barely friends for most of the years we knew each other—

Well.

Ok. So that’s not totally true...

We fought online constantly. From the time we graduated college (where his crush first developed and I routinely forgot his name) the two of us were always fighting on social media—usually about politics—and occasionally about other things but both of us were too smart to ever truly get the better of each other so there was a grudging respect, (his mom said he used to yell at his computer screen about me). We had it OUT several times online even though we rarely—if ever—spoke in person.

My poor sweet boy DID get himself in trouble over me in more ways than one though—even if we’re weren’t close yet...

His college girlfriend set him up to fail asked him who he would date if the two of them weren’t together and he answered immediately—vehemently—

“Viola. I would definitely date Viola if I could.”

🤦🏻‍♀️ (oh...honey...no)

(That would become a huge THING in their relationship. Every time they got into a fight his ex would shout “why don’t you just go date VIOLA then?!”—When he married me he said he felt like a real winner in that particular collection of conflicts. Playing the long game I guess 🤣😂)

Back then I was all about the music/dramatic arts scene and I was dating a string of empty headed pretty boys who bored me nigh unto death because I was young and completely stupid.

In contrast my someday-boo was painfully quiet and shy (though not really with me because he was too busy trying to prove me wrong), but everyone who met him or spoke to him really liked him and respected him.

After college we were were still in the same extended social circle (and—as previously mentioned—fighting online), but I went to grad school and my not-yet-husband decided to chill for awhile and take a job as a landscaper while he figured his life out and... here’s where it gets complicated because...

—that’s where the girls came in. You see... he’s always been a really nice guy... maybe a little too nice 🤦🏻‍♀️

The term fuqboi tends to conjure up impressions of a cocky frat bro who slyly shags his way through a mountain of willing women with disconnected efficiency and a subtext of emotional constipation.

But that would not be the case here.

You see my husband is a listener. He’s an INFP. He, unlike many of his brethren, understands emotions and can really make a woman feel seen. Combine that with his good looks, brilliant mind, and broody nerditude and you have a recipe for women who were ‘just friends’ randomly dropping to their knees (and a lot more) for him.

Never one to stand in the way of a lady’s dreams, pre-me-hubby figured that if they were that determined to (*insert miscellaneous sexy stuff here*) with him then—well—he’d let them.

I mean why not, right? No harm done.

Wrong. 🤬

And here is where our paths truly began to merge (in the real world) for the first time.

As the FOURTH girl (just in my friend group) he graciously allowed (🤦🏻‍♀️) to have her wicked way with him sobbed in my arms, I became determined to put this ridiculous man-child IN his PLACE—this time in the tactile world as well as the virtual one.

...Poor Liz

She realized that he had absolutely no desire whatsoever to be in a relationship with anything other than his WoW account and she was insistent that he had broken her heart.

So I cornered him and we had it out. (Call me meddlesome, but to be fair he was four friends deep at this point.)

The problem was that... the more I talked to him...the more he was not really what I expected... I found myself...oddly...intrigued?

Later it would come out that I was the first girl—ever—that he actually pursued. And I was not even aware of it for like the first three months.

He was pretty slick after all when it came down to it.

That man convinced me to ‘help him’ with women—to make sure he didn’t get himself into another situation where some girl with heart eyes was tearing off his clothes and expecting commitment.

HE ASKED ME TO BE HIS ‘EXCUSE.’

🤦🏻‍♀️(...I know. I’m an idiot.)

“We can hang out. You’ll teach me how to spot if a girl is about to catch feelings and take off my pants. And I will have an excuse when they call as to why we can’t hang out” (—and ...they really were always calling. It was wild.)

....I mean he WAS shy! It SEEMED plausible!

So yeah my dim self agreed to it. (🤦🏻‍♀️)

I considered it a valiant attempt to save the rest of my social circle from the most clueless ‘accidental’ fuqboi on planet earth and maybe even an opportunity to teach him how to be a real human being and what not.

And before you think ‘fake dating’—we weren’t. We were just hanging out as friends. You see when I went to yell at him (and chased him down after he laughed at me and tried to escape) we ended up talking in his car for like four hours. And then that happened like three more times randomly so... I... actually... wanted... to be his friend... 🤷🏻‍♀️

I was still 110% not interested romantically.

Your girl (me) was after some bland banker dude (🤦🏻‍♀️) and so I blissfully fell into friendship with my actual soulmate without a single second thought. And I never worried about either of us catching feelings because I had a crush on someone else and he had heavily implied that I was not his type. (He told me later that I just assumed this and he simply never corrected me 🙄)

I don’t remember falling for him. I never decided to. I never thought about it...

But one day after the whole crew was hanging out at a restaurant (and the waiter kept giving me free drinks which may have pissed my once-and-future man off) the two of us went out to his car to have our customary three hour post-chill chat...

I was teasing him about something—some girl he was still attempting to untangle himself from—and I said—as had become my habit (seriously I said this so many times as a joke)—“It’s too bad I’m not your type—you could just tell her you have a girlfriend.”

(Now. I know what you’re thinking. But I was still firmly on team platonic ok! I was just a flirt. And maybe part of me was starting to feel weird things about him—but those feelings weren’t like anything I recognized so I thought I just needed to cut back on sugar or something.)

(Have I mentioned I’m an idiot?)

ANYWAYS he looked me right in the eye. So serious. And instead of saying “that’s too bad”—LIKE he ALWAYS did—he said—

“You...are my type, Viola... You’re exactly my type.”

To which I responded—“....What? No I’m not. You said I wasn’t.”

“Never said that. You assumed.”

“You LET me!”

—followed by a good ten minutes of me having an existential crisis/yelling at him for allowing me to believe he didn’t find me attractive and lulling me into a false sense of security. He was infuriatingly unapologetic.

At the end of it all he asked me to give him—give us—a chance.

And I agreed to go out on a few dates with him (mostly to prove to myself that there was nothing there).

(🤦🏻‍♀️)

The only thing I ended up proving was that I was wrong about what I wanted and even more wrong about what I needed.

You see...

Those weird feelings turned out to be love.

(🤦🏻‍♀️)

And it was a really special experience to sit in a room full of girls who had cried in my arms over him—girls I had lectured repeatedly on the dangers of his heartless ways— and admit that I was his girlfriend.

🤦🏻‍♀️

Love was—and continues to be—nothing like I expected and frankly I couldn’t be happier.

... to answer your questions

1. I have considered writing a fic based on our story called Broken Road. The title is taken from an old Rascal Flatts song that—as insanely cheesy as it is—really reminds me of us. Don’t know if I will actually write this. Thought about it a lot though.

2. Tags I would use for this story?

#enemies-to-lovers / #idiots-to-lovers / #college au / #outgoing!fem reader(me) x shy nerd!accidental fuqboi / #reader is also a huge nerd actually / #she’s just a loud one / #frenemies-to-lovers / #the love is requited / #they’re just idiots / #pining (his) / denial (mine) / #reader has terrible taste in men / #except for that last one / #she really redeemed herself there at the end

#wow #it was really cool to write all this out actually #my love story #well part of it anyways #it’s still ongoing #via💋viola

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cheri-translates · 3 years

Text

[CN] Shaw’s Creative Date

🍒 Warning: This post contains detailed spoilers for a date, 创意之约, which has not been released in EN! 🍒

This date features S2 Shaw, but contains no spoilers for S2!

[ This date was released on 13 May 2021 ]

Removing the VR headset, I rub my slightly sore eyes. Seeing the familiar modern furniture leaves me in a momentary trance.

MC: I finally cleared it - this game about the ancient times is pretty immersive.

Aside from completing missions, the game also has a rich plot written in a classical literary style. As a “workshop apprentice”, I successfully created a string of wood carved persimmons.

Rotating my aching wrists, it’s as though the sensation of carving products is still lingering on my hands.

MC: It’s a shame that I could only do that in the game...

Just when I’m about to continue grumbling, my phone suddenly rings.

Tapping the answer button, a familiar voice drifts lazily to my ear.

Shaw: Not a sound from you even during the weekend. What are you up to?

MC: I just played an immersive game, and it’s pretty fun.

At the other end of the line, Shaw makes an “oh” sound, then continues asking.

Shaw: Are you planning to stay at home today?

MC: Mm. I finally finished a big program, so I’m pretty comfortable playing games at home.

Hearing my response, Shaw’s tone lifts slightly at the end.

Shaw: It’s just a game. You can play it anytime, can’t you? The weather outside is great. Staying at home is such a waste. Why not take a stroll outside?

My gaze sweeps over the VR headset. While I’m hesitating whether or not to agree, a thought suddenly flashes across my mind, and I have an idea.

MC: Shaw, why don't you accompany me somewhere?

Shaw pauses for a moment, his subtle breathing drifting over the phone along with the electric currents.

Shaw: Where do you want to go?

MC: I’ll keep it a secret first. You’ll know when you get there. It’s definitely a place you wouldn’t expect.

Shaw chuckles softly, and he seems to stretch.

Shaw: All right. Since you invited me with such magnificent hospitality, I’ll reluctantly keep you company.

Soon after, the both of us stand at the entrance of a wood carving studio. Shaw tilts his head, looking me up and down.

Shaw: You sure we’re not at the wrong place?

I nod my head.

MC: How is it? I already said you definitely wouldn’t expect it.

Shaw arches his brows, a somewhat surprised expression in his eyes.

Shaw: When did you get a new hobby?

Not giving Shaw a direct response, I lift my hand, raising my phone to his face. The picture on the screen features the string of wood carved persimmons I made in the game.

MC: Look at this string of persimmons. I carved it bit by bit in the game. Looks good, doesn’t it? I plan to carve a replica based on this later.

Shaw leans closer to give it a sweeping glance, his expression a little subtle.

Shaw: ...the object in the picture isn’t too bad. But do you like it that much that you must carve a string of persimmons?

MC: Don’t underestimate this small string of persimmons. Slow work yields fine products. The smaller something is, the more patience and carving skills are tested. Also, this is the first wood carving I made in the game. Furthermore, “everything will go according to one’s wishes” is a wonderful message and well-wish. Making it myself will feel very meaningful.

[Note] For the translation of “everything will go according to one’s wishes”, What MC says is “柿柿如意”, which is a pun based on the popular well-wish “事事如意” (“everything will go according to one’s wishes”)

“Persimmon” is 柿 (“shi”). “Everything” is 事事 (“shi shi”)

Shaw: But based on the level of complexity, you can’t make it without having a foundation in carving.

Predicting that Shaw would say this, I make a fist, lifting my head up confidently.

MC: Don’t underestimate me. I think I’m naturally talented in handwork. If I can make it in the game, I might be able to in reality.

Hearing my “lofty aspirations”, the corners of Shaw’s lips hook upwards, and he elongates the tail of his sentence coolly.

Shaw: Fine, I’ll wait and see.

Probably because it’s the lunch break, only the boss is in the shop.

After telling the boss my purpose in coming, he very quickly prepares the wooden block and burin, then comprehensively explains some matters I should take note of.

[Trivia] A burin (刻刀 - “ke dao”) is a handheld steel tool used for carving metal or wood

MC: Draw a design first, then trace a copy onto the wooden block, then...

Hearing me mumble to myself, Shaw can’t help but arch his brows.

Shaw: It’s no use simply memorising the steps. You’ve got to get started to get the feel of it.

...that make sense.

Very soon, I successfully draw a design based on the picture. However, I keep sensing that something’s missing when I look at the picture of the string of persimmons in my hand.

Darting a glance at Shaw, who occasionally looks at the drawing paper in my hand, I turn my body to the side, displaying the drawing paper in front of him.

MC: Shaw, didn’t you brag about being the “best in hand-drawn sketches” in your department? Want to take a look and make adjustments for me?

[Note] For those who are unaware, Shaw is the only graduate student in the archaeological department of Loveland University, so... of course he’s the best in everything LOL

Shaw’s brows arch slightly. Grabbing a pen on the table casually, he starts making amendments quickly.

Shaw: Done.

Unexpectedly, with just a few strokes, the fullness and lushness of the persimmons are outlined, and the entire picture instantly becomes much more vibrant.

Once all the preparatory work is done, the next step is to saw the sides of the wood carving. Placing the wooden block on the machine, I test out suitable positions.

All of a sudden, Shaw presses on my hand.

Shaw: Didn’t the boss mention that it’d be safer to place it a little beyond the peripheral line?

While saying this, he pulls on my wrist, causing the wooden block to shift to the side slightly. After verifying that it’s in the right place, he releases my hand.

Wood carving in real life is much more difficult than I imagined. The more I tell myself to be calm, the more my hands refuse to obey.

I take a deep breath -

Shaw: Tch, aren’t you going a little too fast?

Right after he finishes speaking, my hand suddenly trembles, and I saw a small hole into the wooden block.

Shaw pauses for a few seconds, then bursts into laughter mercilessly.

He leans over, pointing at the small hole, his eyes gloating over my misfortune.

Shaw: Heh. Did someone take a bite out of the persimmon? It’s actually pretty creative.

Faced with Shaw’s mockery, I pout without saying anything. Then, I mimic his usual tone and glare at him.

MC: Why are you laughing so loudly? My hearing is good, okay.

Shaw casually props himself on the table with his elbows. He turns his head to the side and watches me, eyes filled with interest and a smile.

Perhaps because we’re too close in proximity, I seem to feel his warmth encasing my surroundings.

Smelling the scent of peppermint at the tip of my nose, I subconsciously turn away, muttering softly.

MC: Stop crowding over here... it’s a little warm.

The corners of Shaw’s eyes lift upwards slightly, and he sweeps a gaze over my face. He chuckles, sitting down on the chair behind in a wilful manner.

Not long after, I painstakingly saw the overall outer shape of the wooden block. After that, I start using a chisel to carefully craft the outline and thickness.

Probably because I’m unfamiliar with the techniques, the thickness of both sides of the wood carving are very different despite me putting in a lot of effort into correcting it.

I steal a glance at Shaw who is behind. After some hesitation, I clear my throat.

MC: Erm, could you help me with a little something?

Shaw loosens his shoulders.

Shaw: You want my help?

MC: Since you look like you don't have much to do, why not adjust the thickness of the outline with me?

Shaw doesn’t respond immediately. He folds his arms and leans against the wall, both legs placed casually.

Beneath the sunlight of the scorching afternoon sun, the corners of his lips tilt upwards, revealing a mischievous smile.

Shaw: Someone made a solemn vow earlier that she could do it by herself. So, in order for you to experience this fully, I refuse.

I don’t even spare Shaw half a glance after this, heart sinking as I lower my head in silence, focusing on the wood carving alone.

Perhaps grasping some tricks, my actions are gradually much more proficient than before, despite slow improvement.

The doors to the shop are suddenly pushed open. A parent walks in with a little boy.

The boss greets the new customers. Shaw suddenly lifts his arm and waves, walking over to the boss.

Shaw: Boss, give me a burin too.

Thinking that Shaw was suddenly “pricked by his conscience” and is planning to help, I lift my head to look at him in anticipation.

Unexpectedly, after getting the burin, Shaw picks up the leftover linden wood that I had sawed off earlier.

He stands near the window, lifting his hand leisurely. Against the light, that head of bluish purple hair is even more eye-catching.

Shaw: It’s boring to wait. I’ll try it with you, and give you some competitive motivation.

He reveals a confident smile, his tone not at all humble.

Shaw: I’ll also show you what it means to be “naturally talented”.

Shaw deliberately sits down at a table that’s further away from me.

Seeing that my gaze continues to linger on him, Shaw lifts his eyes, asking teasingly.

Shaw: Why are you staring at me?

MC: ...you already know the answer. Also, you’re pretending to be mysterious. What exactly do you plan to carve?

Shaw: You want to know? All the more reason not to tell you.

With this, he lowers his head, the tip of the pen making rustling sounds. He’s likely drawing a design on the rough paper.

Pursing my lips with a “hmph”, I decide to throw myself into crafting the wood carving.

Just as I strive to painstakingly carve the appearance of the wood carving, the little boy who accompanied his parent here seems to be restless.

He runs around the shop, and finally scuttles to Shaw’s side.

Little Boy: Big Bro, your hair’s really cool!

Shaw releases a “hmph”, paying no attention to the boy. But the little boy is fearless, and continues curiously.

Little Boy: Big Bro, what are you carving?

Unintentionally hearing this, I hurriedly perk up my ears, turning my body towards Shaw secretly.

Shaw glances at the boy from the side, placing the prototype wood carving on the table and leaning it from side to side.

Shaw: Make a guess.

The boy stares at it for a while, then exclaims excitedly.

Little Boy: I see it now - it’s a fish! Big Bro, did I guess correctly?

Shaw doesn’t deny it, revealing an expression which says “you’re pretty knowledgeable”.

Shaw: [aww he sounds so affectionate] Little Imp, your eyesight isn’t bad.

Little Boy: But why do you want to carve a fish?

The boy doesn’t seem to understand, and is also slightly disdainful.

Little Boy: Fishes are so unimpressive. If it were me, I’d carve a big tiger. It’s the king of all creatures, and it’s so impressive!

While the boy speaks, he chuckles in satisfaction.

Shaw laughs, then purses his lips.

Shaw: A wooden carved fish is much more interesting than your big tiger.

The boy has an expression on his face which reads “nonsense”. Shaw casts a sidelong glance at him, scoffing softly.

Shaw: Forget it. You wouldn't understand even if I told you.

Little Boy: Who says I wouldn’t understand? I’ve already learnt many things!

The boy grumbles in dissatisfaction, his arms akimbo, pestering Shaw unflinchingly.

I try my best to control the smile at the corners of my lips, and suddenly have an idea. Clearing my throat, I pretend to be a bystander, inserting myself into the conversation.

MC: What this little boy said is correct. Young man, you can’t look down on others just because you’re older by a few years.

Little Boy: Hmph! That’s right!

My “encouragement” enables the boy to be even less willing to back down, and he purses his small mouth.

Shaw: Oh?

Hearing my response, Shaw lifts his eyes, a mischievous smile curling the corners of his lips upwards.

Shaw: What is it? You also want to know?

MC: Since you started it, it’s only right for you to talk about it more.

Shaw: Since the both of you are pretty eager to learn, I’ll broaden your knowledge.

Next to the window, the rays of light are bright. Shaw arches his brows wilfully.

Shaw: To put it simply, this is related to the history of “fish culture”. Since ancient times, fish have represented auspicious signs and well-wishes.

Little Boy: I know about this! Is this how people wish each other “may you have abundance year after year”? I heard my teacher mentioning it before. It’s because “鱼” and “余” are homophonic!

[Note] The well-wish the boy is referring to is “年年有鱼”, which is a pun based on the proper saying “年年有余”

“Fish” is 鱼 (“yu”), while 余 (also “yu”) means abundance

Shaw: In that case, your teacher only told you half of it.

Shaw fiddles with the burin in his hand, spinning it casually.

Shaw: Fishes are an embodiment of luck. Patterns of fish can often be seen on antiques.

MC: What’s the origin of wooden carved fishes then?

Shaw pauses for a second before responding.

Shaw: Over seven thousand years ago, the most ancient wooden carved fishes were in the Hemudu culture. Based on conjectures, they were likely used for praying and well-wishes.

[Trivia] The Hemudu culture was a Neolithic culture spanning from 5500 BC to 3300 BC, located south of the Hangzhou Bay in Jiangnan in Zhejiang, China

Shaw speaks indifferently, but the boy listens at the side, his eyes wide.

Little Boy: Big Bro, you really know a lot! You’re even more incredible than my teacher!

The corners of Shaw’s lips hook upwards with pride.

Shaw: I guess so. Little Imp, remember to read more books and learn properly.

The boy runs away contentedly. My gaze lands on the wooden carving in Shaw’s hand that I can’t see quite clearly yet.

I didn’t expect the wooden carved fish to have the same symbolism as the string of persimmons. I tilt my head, feeling slightly emotional.

Time flows by as the seconds and minutes pass. Before realising it, the sky dims, and the studio lights are bright.

Swinging my hands which have almost lost all physical strength, I release a long sigh.

At the other side of the table, Shaw lifts his chin towards me.

Shaw: Progress isn’t going smoothly?

Looking at the half-finished product with uneven contours next to my hand, I shake my head a little despondently.

MC: Looks like I won’t be able to finish it today, and would have to come back next time. Also, the actual wood carving is light-years away from what I expected...

Hearing my soft grumbling at the end, Shaw arches his brows.

Shaw: Just by looking at it, the string of persimmons isn’t easy to make. But you dug this pit yourself, so I’ll wait and watch you fill it up.

Ignoring the teasing tone in his voice, I purse my lips.

MC: I definitely won’t give up. What about you? Are you done with the carving?

Shaw has an expression which reads “of course”, and he nods unhesitatingly.

Shaw: It was done a long time ago.

I’m stunned for a moment, both surprised and curious.

One hand supports Shaw’s cheek lightly. With a stretch of his long arm, the wooden carved fish is brought before my eyes.

This is a bright coloured wood carving of a fish. It has a roundish head and a chubby belly, and looks extremely adorable.

I lift up the wooden fish sculpture with both hands, as though instantly struck by its adorable shape.

Shaw: Excellent workmanship with profound symbolism. Your goal has been overtaken by me.

Behind the table, Shaw arches his brows in satisfaction, casually twisting the burin, his pose utterly flamboyant.

Even though his carving is indeed not bad, the moment I lift my eyes and see Shaw’s insuppressible pride, I can’t help but remain silent.

With the sudden impulse to sing a different tune, I deliberately purse my lips, speaking calmly.

MC: It’s just like this I guess. In terms of exquisiteness, I’d give a passing mark at most.

The smile on Shaw’s lips retracts slightly. While looking at me from the side, he releases a “hmph” from his nose.

Shaw: You have the nerve to criticise me? Why don’t you look at your own standard. Also, this is my exclusive design. It’s much more creative than you making a duplicate from the game.

Hearing the unwillingness to back down hidden in his tone, I can’t help but smile secretly.

Shaw glances at me indifferently. He seems to catch the secret smile on my lips, and an indiscernible light flashes across his eyes.

Shaw: Hey, shouldn’t you return it to me after touching it for half a day? You don’t like it anyway.

MC: Who says-

Almost making a slip of the tongue, I hurriedly change my words.

MC: Actually, on closer inspection, it seems that your carving is pretty okay.

Shaw: Just “okay”?

MC: ...I’ll add one mark for its symbolism and origin then.

Pleased with this, Shaw rolls his shoulders, chuckling softly.

Shaw: You still have some taste.

He crosses his leg over the other, his eyebrows suddenly furrowing. He seems to blurt out what’s in his mind.

Shaw: But the head of this fish seems a little too round... Hm, it’s a little irksome. Looks like I need to make some corrections.

MC: No it isn’t? It looks just right like this!

Afraid that Shaw would snatch it back, I hurriedly fold my hands over the wooden carving, and notice a hint of slyness in his eyes.

He leans closer abruptly, instantly closing the distance between us.

Shaw: Looking at your posture... What is it? Can’t bear to return it?

Specks of bright light reminiscent of daytime dance on Shaw’s bluish purple hair, outlining his expression and making it look even more triumphant.

I blink my eyes.

MC: Since you’re already done, I think I should observe it for a while longer, and have some “luck” rubbed off on me. I might even be able to quickly and successfully finish my wood carving too.

Shaw turns his head, the corners of his lips turning upwards relaxedly. A pondering smile surfaces in his bright eyes.

Shaw: You’ve got taste. If you really like it, it’s not that I can’t give it to you.

My heart stirs, eyes widening as I look at him. But I have the feeling that there should be a second half to his sentence.

Shaw leans back relaxedly, stretching casually.

Shaw: But I need to make up for the costs.

...just as I guessed.

Cradling the wooden carving in my hand, I lift my chin towards Shaw.

MC: Go on, what’s the “fee”?

Shaw lowers his head, pretending to deliberate for a few seconds. Then, he lifts his eyes, meeting mine.

Shaw: When you’re done with your wooden carving...

Shaw: It belongs to me.

[Note] There are actually two ways one can interpret this line because it’s kept purposefully vague. It’s simply “归我”, which means “belong to me”. This means we can’t be sure if he’s asking for the wooden carving or MC herself :>

Shaw: How is it? Isn’t it very fair?

Light falls on the tips of Shaw’s hair, reflecting a bright and sly smile in his eyes.

Before I can react, he has already stood up.

Shaw: All right, that’s how it’d be.

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