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aenramsden · 2 months

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The following is not my idea; it was the original brainchild of a friend of mine named Omicron, with help from various others including EarthScorpion, TenfoldShields, @havocfett and ShintheNinja:

So, you know what I want to do one day? Run (or play in) a D&D campaign in which the Big Bad Super Dragon that is fuckoff ancient and unfathomably powerful and whose actions have shaped history and bent the course of nations and had repercussions on the whole culture and society in the region where it's set; the Bonus Special Boss for some endgame optional quest after you defeat the direct BBEG and win the campaign...

... is a white dragon.

To explain this for people not deep into 5e monster lore; D&D dragons are sapient beings, and known for their instincts and tendencies, and whenever you meet an big evil dragon that's really old it's usually this ancient creature of terrible intellect Smaug-ing it up all over the place.

Except white dragons are fucking stupid. Like, they're still capable of speech and thought! They're just… feral, hungry morons. And you almost never see them portrayed as ancient wyrms for that reason; they lack majesty. Critical Role did it, yes, but even then, Vorugal is explicitly the most bestial member of the Chroma Conclave, and the others are the more intelligent planners and long-term threats. An ancient white as a nation-defining endboss, though; not a thug for a smarter master but as the strongest and biggest threat around is just not the sort of thing you tend to see.

Adventurers: "Oh wise Therunax the Munificent, gold dragon of Law and Good, what can you tell us adventurers of the evil dragons which rule this land?" Therunax the Munificent, 500-year old Gold Dragon: "Good adventurers, know this: this land is torn apart by the evil of Tiamat's spawn. The eastern marches are the dwelling of Furinar the Plague-Bringer, black dragoness whose hoard is a thousand sicknesses contained in the body of her tributes. The southern volcanic mountains are the roosting of Angrar the Wrathful, the fiery red dragon, who brings magmatic fury on all who do not worship him. And the northern peaks are home to Face-Biter Mike, the oldest and most powerful of all, of whom I dread to speak." Adventurers: "F-Face-Biter Mike???" Therunax: "Oh yes, verily indeed; two thousand years has Mike lived, and his eyes have seen the rise and fall of five empires, and a hundred and score champions have sought to slay him; and each and every one he bit their fucking face off."

Like... I want to see a campaign where Face-Biter Mike is genuinely the most powerful dragon in the region, if not the entire world. Where sometimes he descends on a city to grab himself some meatsicles and causes a localised ice age by the beat of his vast wings and the frigid wastes of his mighty breath and by the chill his mere presence brings to everything for miles around him, and everyone just has to deal with that for the next decade. An entire era of civilization comes to an end, an empire falls, tens of thousands starve in the winter, all because Mike wanted a snack. Where his hoard is an unfathomably vast mass of jewels and artefacts and precious stones frozen in an unmelting glacier, except he is a nouveau riche idiot with fuckall appraising skill, so half of his hoard is coloured glass or worthless knicknacks, and he doesn't give a shit.

"Your Draconic Majesty, this crown is… It's pyrite." "Yeah, well, it's brighter than this dusty old thing made out of real gold, it's my new best treasure. Throw the other one away." "…throw the Burnished Tiara of Bahamut, forged in the First Age of Man, your majesty???" "See? I can't even remember its fucking name." "But my lord-" "DO YOU WANT TO BE A MEATSICLE" "…I will fetch a trash bag, your majesty."

But at the same time, he's not stupid, he's just simple, and in some ways that makes him more dangerous than the usual kinds of scheming Big Bad you see in these things, while simultaneously justifying why Orcus remains on his throne (because he's lazy). Face-Biter Mike doesn't make convoluted plans or run labyrinthine schemes; he just has a talent for violence and a pragmatic, straightforward approach to turning any kind of problem he struggles with into a problem that can be resolved with violence. Face-Biter Mike has one talent and it's horrifying physical power, so his approach to any complicated problem is "how do I turn this into a situation where I can fly down and bite this dude's face off?" with absolutely no regard for the collateral damage or consequences of doing so, because those are also things he can turn into face-bitable problems.

"My lord, the dread necromancer Nikodemion is using his undead dragons to attempt a conquest of the eastern kingdom; his agents are everywhere, his plans are centuries in the making, what can we do against such a mastermind?" "I'm gonna fly over the capital and eat the eastern king." "M-my lord???" "The kingdom will collapse without leadership, Nikodemion will win his war, he'll take the capital and crown himself king." "And that helps us… how?" "Once he does I'll fly over to the capital and eat him." "…" "This is why you advisors all suck. You're all about convoluted plans when the only thing I need to win is know where my enemy is so I can fly down there and eat him. Stop overthinking things."

And, like, yeah, it's a simplistic plan, but when you're several hundred tons of nigh invincible magical death, you don't need brilliant strategy; the smartest way to win a war is, in this case, the simplest. He's not even all that clever at figuring out the consequences of face-biting, he's just memorised the common consequences of doing so.

(If you want to go all in on Mike being the major mover and shaker in the region; Nikodemion only even has a pet zombie dragon because Mike killed the last dragon to show up and contest his turf but wasn't going to eat a whole dragon by himself. Nikodemion got to stick around and amass that much power because Mike ate the Hero of the Realm while he was adventuring because he figured the Hero would come and try to slay him at some point. Nikodemion got started because Mike ate half the leadership of the Academy of High Magic who typically keep evil wizards and necromancers in check. And then eventually this product of Mike's casual, careless actions becomes a big enough problem to bother Mike personally, at which point Mike eats him too.)

He doesn't even really fail upwards, either! He is regularly reduced to nothing but the glacier he stores his hoard in, but he's Face-Biter Mike so nobody wants to commit to actually ending him forever lest they get their faces bitten the fuck off. And his hoard's in a huge-ass magical glacier so nobody can get to it without running into the Invading Russia problem; it's hard to wage war when everything is frozen over and you're both starving and freezing to death. Once he's been beaten back to his central lair and has lost all his holdings… I mean, he's still a problem, but he's a far away problem. So he loses his assets and spends a decade in a cave brooding it up while no one dares risk trying to actually kill him, and then a generation or two later he flies down to a kobold colony and gets himself some minions, or a dragon-worshipping mage comes to offer his service against a pittance from his hoard, or a particularly stupid cult starts thinking they can get in good with him and leech off his power, and then he's (hah) snowballing again.

He's also got a very… well, the kind of weird Charisma that Grineer bosses do. Like Sargas Ruk, who's a malformed idiot, but oddly charismatic. As he's a dragon, that makes him a natural sorcerer and thus Charisma is all he needs. He's pretty relaxed when he isn't in a face-biting mood, and he's kind of infectiously optimistic, because his life has taught him that he will succeed as long as he perseveres. So he just believes it.

And sometimes that's really refreshing to work for, as an evil minion of darkness! It's like, you're coming to your Evil Dragon Lord with terrible news; you've worked for evil overlords before, you know how it goes. You fall to your knees weeping and tell him that you've failed to seize the incredibly powerful magical artifact, you think your life is forfeit. And he's just like "Eh, it's okay, these things are all over the place. Better luck next time. You remember the guy who took it, right?" and you go "Y-yes, oh great lord!" and he's like "Sweet tell me his name later and I'll grab it" and then eats a frozen adventurer he kept around as a snack.

His followers tend to quickly realise that if they fail him, bringing some temple's silver or a sack of brightly coloured beads or a couple of dead cows means he's super forgiving because at least he's got something out of the day. "Oh boy, cows? It's been forever since I had those, ever since the Orc Steppe Nomads took over it's all about goats and onions. Today is a good day." He's a master of delegation by dragon standards, in that he just tells you "Just go get it done, I don't care how" rather than micromanaging you and constantly appearing as an image in smoke or taking over your campfire.

The key part of Face-Biter Mike as a threat to players (because he exists in the context of a D&D campaign) works well in that you can rely on several known quantities:

He will not pull sneaky shit that you don't see coming

He will not make convoluted plans that you must work to unravel

He will consistently attempt to come down and wreck you personally if he finds the opportunity and you are a threat to him

You cannot fight him head-on (at least not until the last leg of the campaign, and ideally as an optional boss rather than mandatory)

So as long as you are good at staying under the radar, thwarting his minions (whom he gives broad orders to with almost zero oversight) and not putting yourself in face-biting range, you can deal with him. If you succeed, it won't be the first time Mike has lost his assets and had to go brood in his glacier for a decade or two before rebuilding. It happens; he can deal with it. And that's a win for you within the context of a single campaign, so take the win.

And if you're not going to use him as an enemy, he works pretty well as a quest-giver, too! The costs for failure are obvious and straightforward, and "do whatever, just get me mine" means that players have a lot of freedom in accomplishing their goals. As far as evil overlords go he is actually one of the least dangerous to work for; his pride is relatively subdued by draconic standards, his goals are simple and typically achievable, and he is easily pleased.

(There's also a good chance he is the forefather of any draconic sorcerer in your party, because Face Biter Mike is a deadbeat dad.)

#d&d #face-biter mike #I want this #writing #gaming #advice #funny #criticism #fandom

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ellemj · 6 months

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Needs & Wants - Sex Pollen Trope Pt. 7

Bucky Barnes x Reader

**Read parts 1-6 first for the full effect!**

Summary: Bucky thinks you're avoiding him because you're worried that he caught feelings for you after the night you shared, but he couldn't be more wrong.

Warnings: mentions of previous smut, profanity, use of y/n, MINORS DNI!!!

Word Count: 5k

Author's Note: Where the hell am I going with this? Is it possible for it to get even smuttier before this ends? I think that's where I'm going, down a very smutty rabbit hole. I need to be stopped.

You expected to feel so guilty and distraught after the night that you had with Bucky. You slept with your partner not just once, but five times. All in the same night. Inexplicably, you feel almost completely fine, with your only issues being how sore you are now and figuring out when’s the right moment to give his dog tags back. You’re sure he didn’t expect you to keep them. You’ve barely managed to get along for the past two months that you’ve worked together. There’s no way he’d want you to keep one of his most sacred possessions just because you spent a night together. You’ll give them back sometime today, when the time is right.

You put the tags out of your mind as you finish packing up your small duffel bag. The team sent the quinjet to bring you and Bucky back home after confirming that you were both fine and that the chemical had seemingly cleared your systems. Banner initially wanted to have the two of you enter quarantine when you return to the compound later today, but after a brief conference call with a few biomedical experts in the field, he decided it was overkill. You probably would’ve fought it anyway. After the last 24 hours, all you want is to be back in your suite at the tower, to take a long, hot shower, and then to sleep for twelve hours straight in your own familiar bed. Bucky, however, is on a different page.

His mind hasn’t stopped doing cartwheels since the phone call from Sam that woke you both up an hour ago. You’d played the situation off well, telling Sam that Bucky didn’t answer his phone because he was showering. Sam didn’t question it. Why would he? Everyone on the team is fully aware of yours and Bucky’s working relationship. You’re just barely civil with each other when it’s paramount to the success a mission, or when your lives depend on it, but outside of that? Well, let’s just say that neither of you go out of your way to do any sort of partner bonding.

Bucky finished packing his duffel bag fifteen minutes ago, but he can hear that you’re still working on yours. He wants to walk across the hall and sit on your bed while you pack. He wants to just sit there and have a conversation with you, or if you don’t want to talk, he’d be content just to be around you at this point. He didn’t realize how starved he had been for human connection until last night and now he feels too alone sitting in this room by himself. His thoughts are too loud, the whirring of his vibranium arm is too noticeable, and there’s the looming threat of last night’s events replaying in his mind. If he lets himself think about last night and earlier this morning, he’ll end up with a hard-on. If he ends up with a hard-on, you’ll likely notice and he won’t be able to blame it on the fucking HYDRA chemical from hell this time. For the first time in a while, Bucky doesn’t know what to do with himself.

---

You’re definitely avoiding him. Bucky expected some kind of conversation on the flight back home, but you were quick to seclude yourself into a corner seat to work on typing out your mission report from the last 24 hours. He sat in the row of seats across from you and a little to your right, occasionally glancing over to see you still fully concentrated on your laptop screen, typing away. What were you typing anyway? He was sure that you weren’t going to be putting the full truth in your report, so why were you so concerned with getting it finished before landing in New York?

After the first hour of the flight, he was desperate for you to say just one word to him. Leaning forward in his seat, he rests his elbows on his knees and traces the lines of the palm of his vibranium hand with the index finger of his flesh hand. He could ask you if you slept well those last few hours this morning before Sam called. No, that just sounds like small talk. He could ask you something related to the mission, maybe something about the samples you’re bringing back for testing. That’s what he’ll start with. He sits back once again and focuses his gaze on you, clearing his throat in preparation for starting the conversation, when you suddenly sit up a little straighter and look right at him.

“You should read my report, see if it’s the story we want to go with or if I need to make any changes.” You say pointedly, your eyes meeting his. He looks surprised that you’re speaking to him. After a moment of silence, the two of you awkwardly staring at each other, you reach across the space between the two of you to pass him your laptop. He meets you halfway, reaching out to grab it, and then settles back into his seat. You watch him carefully as he narrows his eyes at the screen, reading everything that you’ve spent the last hour working on. You tried to keep it simple. You wrote the full truth of what happened in the lab, explaining what you did that triggered the release of the chemical into the air and how the two of you destroyed the entire facility before leaving via motorcycle afterward. The lies only start when you get to the point where your conference call with Banner and Stark ended. That’s where you write that you and Bucky locked yourselves in separate bedrooms and remained separated for the rest of the night. It's not a very long report, so why it’s taken Bucky more than three minutes to read it is beyond you.

“What do you think?” You ask, raising an eyebrow at him. He stares at the screen for a few more seconds before tearing his eyes away from it and looking over at you.

“It’s fine.” It’s the first time you’ve heard his standard grumpy tone in more than twelve hours. You should feel relieved that he’s acting like his usual self, but for some reason you feel bothered. You didn’t expect him to suddenly act like the two of you are close, but god, would it kill him to act like you weren’t the last person he wanted to be around?

As Bucky passes the laptop to you, he doesn’t miss the way you avoid making eye contact with him.

“So, that’s our story then.” You say matter-of-factly, saving the report and closing your laptop. You’ll finalize it and submit it after the debrief that you’re sure to have with Fury and a whole host of other SHIELD agents and admins later today.

“Guess so.” Bucky mumbles. You want to throw the laptop at his perfect face.

---

“What did you do?” Sam throws the question at Bucky with an overly accusatory tone as he enters Bucky’s suite without so much as a single knock in warning. Bucky had been unpacking his suitcase, but now he drops his folded tactical pants on the bed, turning to face Sam.

“I didn’t do anything.” He answers, though his face isn’t as convincing as his lie. Truthfully, he can’t think of anything that he did or said this morning to have pissed you off. But, in the back of his mind, he knows he did plenty of crossing the lines last night. Maybe you just thought things over in the light of day and realized that you made a huge mistake with him last night and early this morning. Whatever it is that you did between the time you both woke up and the time you boarded the quinjet for the flight home, it put you in a very untalkative mood. You were silent for most of the flight home, and then when you arrived back at the compound, you basically beelined for your room.

“Bullshit. The two of you couldn’t get along for just twenty-four hours? Actually, not even twenty-four hours, because the two of you were locked away from each other all last night. So, what did you do to piss her off?” Sam’s interrogation is the last thing Bucky wants to be dealing with right now. He wants to finish unpacking, shower your fucking intoxicating scent off of every inch of his skin that it seems to be clinging onto, and then get the mission debrief over with.

“We got along fine.”

“Fine doesn’t sound like you two.”

“Okay, we got along as well as we normally do. It was just a rough night, Sam. What do you want me to say? We were in a bad situation.” Bucky sighs, scooping his tactical pants up again and putting them away in a dresser drawer. Sam studies him closely as he moves around the room, putting away various personal items. He’d like to think that he knows Bucky well enough at this point to read his mind, but he doesn’t. Not most of the time, anyway. Maybe he’ll have more luck going directly to you and asking why you’re so off today. He knows he should give you both a break. It was probably a night filled with physical torment and anguish with that chemical compound running through your veins.

“Fine. I’m sorry, man. We really didn’t know what we were sending the two of you into.” Sam apologizes, uncrossing his arms and hoping Bucky will respond a little less defensively.

“It doesn’t matter. We made it out and now we’re back home and…it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it.” Bucky mutters. Sam knows that’s about as good of an acceptance as he’ll get from Bucky, so he takes it. As he leaves Bucky’s suite, he walks the few steps across the hall and knocks on your door. No answer.

---

This is one of those moments where you find yourself wondering how the hell you ended up in a situation like this. The current situation being you and Bucky, seated in Dr. Raynor’s office. There’s a wall behind you covered with an image of tall, skinny trees. You can tell that it’s meant to be relaxing, but it just makes you feel like you’re in a pediatrician’s office that’s decorated with nature scenes to keep kids distracted from the needles and physical exams. You pick at the fraying threads on the knee of your distressed jeans, trying to occupy your mind before it occupies itself with thoughts of the man sitting next to you. Bucky sits a mere foot and a half away from you. Both of you are seated on opposite ends of the small gray couch. Why does it feel like you’re about to start couples therapy?

Bucky feels even more on-edge than you do. Dr. Raynor knows him too well. She can see straight through him most of the time, and now that he’s sitting here next to you, he’s scared to death of what she might see. His heart is racing in his chest, threatening to break through his navy blue Henley tee and dark jacket. The two of you rode here together, Bucky offered to drive as a small act of kindness, a peace offering, if you will. He also didn’t want the two of you to arrive separately and set off any alarms in Dr. Raynor’s head. She reads too far into everything. On the ride over, Bucky asked if you were still going to keep up the story about what happened three nights ago in the safehouse. You said yes, and that was that. You would both be lying to Dr. Raynor today.

“Sorry, I had a little situation I had to handle downstairs.” Dr. Raynor says with a sigh as she enters the room quickly. Neither of you turn to look at her as she closes the door behind herself and makes her way to her chair across from the couch. This is your first time meeting her. You’ve never been sent to therapy like this before. Sure, you’ve had routine psych evals, and once after a bit of a missing-in-action situation you had to go through the mandatory ten sessions with a shrink. But now? You really don’t even know why Fury sent the two of you here for this. You and Bucky have never really been close, why is that lack of closeness a problem now? “I appreciate the kind greetings.” Dr. Raynor quips sarcastically. She seats herself in her chair, settling her notebook and pen on her lap, before studying you both. You feel the tension in the air rising and Bucky shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Do you know why you’re here?”

Unsure of which one of you she’s directing the question to, you both stay silent.

“I didn’t expect your partner to be as quiet as you, James.” Dr. Raynor says, focusing her gaze on him. This relieves you a little. You don’t feel like you’re the one under scrutiny if she’s addressing at him, even though she’s talking about you.

“She’s not quiet.” Bucky huffs, tracing the lines on his vibranium palm. You’re starting to notice he does that when he doesn’t have much to say, or maybe it’s when he has a lot to say but doesn’t want to say it.

“Oh?” Dr. Raynor turns to you now.

“I don’t know why we’re here.” You answer her previous question, making sure that you don’t sound as moody as Bucky.

“The fact that neither of you can get along, and everyone that you work with knows this about your partnership, you don’t think that that might be the reason why you were sent here today?”

“We’ve been partners for two months and we’ve never been sent here before.” You point out. Bucky’s gaze is flitting between you and Dr. Raynor. He almost seems amused by the exchange. It’s a bit exciting for him to see someone else under Dr. Raynor’s microscope, and it’s especially exciting to him that’s it’s you.

“Right. So, what change happened this week that landed you both in my office?”

That’s a loaded question. You turn your head to steal a glance at Bucky but find him already looking over at you. Somehow, the two of you communicate with just a look. A look that says something along the lines of we both know what changed, but we aren’t going to say a damn thing about it here.

“Nothing.” You both say at the same time, breaking eye contact. Dr. Raynor is immediately interested in the exchange that she just witnessed.

“What was that?” She questions.

“What was what?” Bucky plays dumb, scrunching his eyes at her. She waves her pen between the two of you.

“That, that look.”

“It was just a look, doc.” Bucky lies.

“Okay, we can do this one of two ways.” Dr. Raynor straightens up in her chair, once again resting the pen on the notebook. “You both tell me what really happened on the trip to the HYDRA lab three days ago and I help you fix whatever rift it caused in your working relationship, or you continue acting like nothing happened while this thing festers like an open wound.” You kind of like her. She gets to the point, and though you don’t know her at all, she does seem trustworthy. Still, you can’t just tell her that you and Bucky slept together. That’s a fast track to getting your partnership suspended. Wait, since when do you care so much about your partnership? A week ago, you would’ve happily traded Bucky for a new partner, or even gone back to working solo missions if you were given the option to. Why does the idea of working without Bucky bother you now?

“Did Fury give you a copy of our mission reports?” You ask, drawing Bucky’s attention straight back to your face. He wonders where you’re going with this. Dr. Raynor nods slowly, analyzing you both before speaking.

“Yes, and I feel like they’re missing about twelve hours worth of details.” She responds. She’s good.

“You don’t think we locked ourselves in separate bedrooms.” You make your words a statement, rather than posing another question. Dr. Raynor shrugs.

“I think your reports lacked detail, especially compared to any of your previous mission reports. What possibly could have happened that night that would make you both want to be as vague as possible in a mission report?” Her question isn’t for either of you to answer, but you both know that she knows. You swallow hard and clasp your hands together in your lap, fighting the urge to get a running start and jump out of the window that’s on Bucky’s side of the room. “Let me pose a hypothetical. Let’s say that you both were exposed to a chemical agent that’s designed to make super soldiers reproduce. You get exposed, you both go back to the safehouse, and you lock yourselves in separate rooms like you said. Y/n, with your medical background, how long do you think either of you would be able to stay in a locked room before having to at least use the restroom? According to your reports, you locked in around 9 pm and didn’t leave your rooms again until at least 7:30 am.”

“I don’t like hypotheticals.” You retort, crossing your arms over your chest like a child. You feel silly. You know you look ridiculous sitting here with a frown on your face and your arms crossed, you know that you do. But her line of questioning is quickly approaching the truth and you don’t want to give her anymore fuel than she already has. She sees you shutting down and turns her attention to Bucky.

“James?”

“I didn’t have to pee.” He mumbles.

“You had sex.” Dr. Raynor states. There isn’t a hint of questioning in her tone now. Suddenly, the room falls silent. So silent that Bucky can hear the way your heart is pounding in your chest and the way you’ve suddenly began holding your breath.

“That doesn’t sound like something that two people who can’t stand each other would do.” Bucky responds on your behalf. Mentally, you’re thanking him. You didn’t have a single word in your mind to use to formulate a response.

“Right. But if you think about it, it does. And not only does it sound like something those two people would do, but it sounds smart, if you think about it.”

“Smart?” Bucky’s confused now. Is Dr. Raynor trying to say that it was smart of the two of you to fuck?

“Let’s say that two people who don’t get along are stuck in a situation where they have these primal, innate biological feelings to reproduce. They decide to have sex to lessen their suffering at the hands of the chemical that they were exposed to, knowing that because they don’t get along, they aren’t risking much by crossing that line together. They wouldn’t have cared if they were found out and their partnership was terminated, because they didn’t like working together in the first place. And if no one found out and their partnership remained intact, neither of them have feelings for each other so it wouldn’t matter anyway, they could continue working together like they normally would. That makes it sound like the smart thing to do, don’t you think?”

It does sound smart when she words it like that. But you and Bucky both know that it’s not an accurate representation of your situation. No, you don’t really get along and you never have, but you didn’t have sex while simultaneously not giving a shit about what happened to your partnership. All you could think about at first was how it would ruin your partnership. Then you had a night full of sex that was so good you’ve been thinking about it nonstop since, which led to you avoiding Bucky in the compound so you could give yourself a chance to stop thinking about him in such a non-platonic way. That’s what landed you here, on Dr. Raynor’s little therapy couch in her little therapy office. Fuck. It’s your fault that you’re both here.

“I’m not necessarily accusing the two of you of anything. No one knows what happened that night except for you, though I have my suspicions. I’d like you both to feel comfortable enough to tell me what happened, but if you don’t feel like you can do that right now, I’ll respect it. However, I do want to observe the two of you interacting in the field over the next few missions. Fury is sure that this partnership is the best thing he’s ever created. After reading through each of your files, I’m not as convinced.”

Great. Now you and Bucky have a babysitter.

---

After finishing your very brief and unproductive session with Dr. Raynor, Bucky drove you both back to the compound. The silence was a little more bearable this time. Neither of you wanted to talk about what had just happened in the session or about how Dr. Raynor seems to know that you fucked. When you arrived back at the compound, you went your separate ways. Bucky went upstairs, presumably to skulk around in his room until dinnertime, and you hit the gym. You gave yourself a rest day after coming back from the mission-from-hell, but now you need the high that you get from a good workout. You need it because your thoughts are still consumed with Bucky. With the way he fit so perfectly inside of you, with the way he looked at you with so much awe when you were coming undone on his cock in front of the mirror, and for fuck’s sake, the way you felt like he owned you when his dog tags were around your neck. You want it. You want him. Bad. You’ve been taking a lot of cold showers lately. Now, you’re turning to the gym to try to get him out of your system.

After a nice four-mile evening run and a core workout on the mats in the gym, you decide to take a shower in the gym downstairs instead of going up to your room and risking running into Bucky. You don’t want to ruin your current streak of one hour without thinking about him naked. “FRIDAY, play my workout playlist.” You call out as you enter the shower room and grab a clean towel from one of the shelves by the door. You sling the towel over one of the shower doors and step inside, stripping your clothes off and tossing them over the door before turning the water on. FRIDAY begins playing your playlist at full volume, which is how you always like to have it when you’re showering down here after a workout. With the music blasting and hot water streaming down your skin, you’re safe from any thoughts about Bucky. You wash away all of the stress of the day, imagining all of the bad things in your life flowing down into the drain at your feet.

Suddenly, you hear the door to the shower room swing open and then fall shut again with a resounding click. You continue lathering your skin with soap, listening intently for an announcement of some sort from whoever is intruding on your personal time.

“FRIDAY, turn the volume down to 10%.” Bucky’s voice rings out and you take a deep breath, feeling your bad mood crawl out of the shower drain and back up into your body. How dare he? His next move only further pisses you off, as your towel quickly disappears from the glass door of the shower.

“Barnes—”

“I want to talk.” He interrupts you, and you can see the silhouette of him pacing slowly back and forth through the distorted glass door.

“You have until I finish this shower.” You say through clenched teeth. “Then, I’m getting out and strangling you with that towel.”

“You’re going to get out without a towel?” You see his figure pause as your words still him.

“My naked body will be the last thing you see. You have sixty seconds.” He chuckles at your words, and you can hear the movement of him slinging the towel over his shoulder as he stands outside of the shower, clearly amused.

“Dr. Raynor knows.” He states.

“Yeah, no shit.” You say sarcastically, truly dumbfounded that he felt the need to say it out loud. Obviously, she knows.

“She’s going to be analyzing us on every mission until she confirms it.” He continues. Does he think you were totally zoned out during the session in her office earlier? You know she’s going to be babysitting the both of you in the field for the forseeable future.

“Is there a point to this conversation?” You ask, rinsing all of the soap bubbles off of your skin and watching them slip across the shower floor. Bucky audibly sighs. What is with your fucking attitude tonight? You avoided him all day yesterday. He knows you had some errands to run at SHIELD’s headquarters, so you were there most of the morning, but even when you came back to the compound around lunch it was obvious that you were doing everything you could just to stay out of his sight. He’s fucking sick of it.

“Yeah, I want to know when you’re going to stop acting like fucking made me fall in love with you.” Bucky says flatly. On the inside, he’s angry. That’s why you’ve been avoiding him, right? Because you’re scared that he caught feelings for you somewhere in the midst of all of the mind-blowing sex. That’s the only reason he can imagine that you have for avoiding him the way you have been, and for the way that you’re talking to him now. He, however, couldn’t be more wrong. You were scared that you were catching feelings. It’s why you didn’t want to say his name or kiss him when you fucked. You knew that if you did either of those things, it would feel too real. It’d be too hard to pretend it meant nothing to you.

When are you going to stop acting like fucking made him fall in love with you? Jesus, he thinks he has you all figured out, doesn’t he? You catch yourself laughing. You reach over and turn off the water. You’re just about to tell Bucky that he can fuck off with his demands to know anything from you, when you hear the shower room door open once again, followed by a set of footsteps.

“Hey, Y/n, dinner is going to be ready in—” Sam stops short when his eyes fall on Bucky, who stands outside of your shower door, holding your towel in his vibranium hand. “What’s…are you holding her hostage in the shower? Give me that damn towel, man.” You hear a soft commotion that you can only assume is the two men scuffling over your stolen towel. The towel finds its way back over the glass door, courtesy of Sam, and you quickly snatch it up, patting yourself dry before wrapping it around your body. “Dinner is ready in fifteen minutes, if you two want to eat.” Sam announces. Bucky gives him a steely look for returning the towel to you, but Sam ignores it, turning on his heel and walking out. You’re surprised that he didn’t have anything to say about the unusual situation he stumbled into here. Maybe he’s saving it for later.

Bucky’s just about to ask his question again, the one about when you’ll stop acting like he’s in love with you, when you push the shower door open and step out in front of him. Covered only by that damn towel. He wants to pretend like he’s unbothered, but the way a tent is forming in his jeans throws that plan out the window. You have an effect on him and you’re fully aware of it.

“Fucking didn’t make you fall in love with me?” You ask innocently, standing just six inches in front of him and looking up into his eyes. His eyes leave yours for a moment, his gaze raking down your body and leaving heat in its wake. He takes in your messy bun, the way the towel is so tightly hugged around your curves, and the way water is dripping down your legs. Fuck, he wants to lick every single drop off of your skin. He wants to start at your ankles and kiss, lick, and suck his way up to your inner thighs. When he meets your stare once again, you’re smirking at him. “Answer the question, Barnes.” You use a specific tone of voice this time, one that you usually reserve for seductive purposes in the field. It makes him swallow hard and you note the way his jaw flexes. Hmm, you’ve seen his jaw flex like that before. You take one step forward, closing the minimal space between the two of you, letting your towel-covered chest lightly brush against him as you begin trailing your fingertips down the right sleeve of his Henley tee. He’s temporarily frozen in place, his eyes watching the movements of your hand closely, before he quickly steps back and tsks at you. He shakes his head as annoyed look takes over his features.

“Don’t fuck with me, Y/n. Dr. Raynor isn’t here to supervise the tension.” His words send heat rushing through your body, a heat that settles in your cheeks and between your legs. You hate how the threatening tone of his voice combined with his choice of words makes you long to be underneath him again, but you’re sure he’s just playing a sick game with you. You wish the horny part of you would remember that, that this is just a fucked up game. It isn’t real. But you know what? If he wants to play this fucked up game, you’ll make sure you win it. He can act like he doesn’t want you, but his reactions to everything you do sends a different message.

You’ll just have to play this game until he admits that he wants you as much as you want him. Maybe you'll give him his dog tags back as a consolation prize when you win.

Next Part

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#bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes x reader #the winter soldier #winter soldier #bucky barnes x you #marvel #mcu #bucky barnes smut

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frostironfudge · 1 year

Text

I Need You To Listen - Steve Rogers

Summary: For @the-slumberparty 's Week 3 Something New Challenge, I went with the medium mode - sex pollen but with exes to lovers. This took alot of work I ended up rewriting it entirely, I hope you enjoy!

Word Count: 7.4k || Dividers: @firefly-graphics

Pairing: Nomad!Steve Rogers x Fem!Reader

Warnings: 18+ minors dni, smut, angst, smut, fluff, sex pollen, p in v, fingering, dirty talk, love bites, steve rogers dirty talking (this man), swearing, nipple play, past is in italics, sort of a post civil war rewrite so we're going completely off canon

Main Masterlist || AO3

Fate works in the most hilarious of ways, a stubbed toe over here and a broken heart still being nursed over there.

Tony Stark stands in front of your cell, staring at you through the glass. You don’t hold back your tears from him. Disappointment colours his features.

Broken pieces of trust lay scattered on the floor. The damage by him was done. Leaving you to bear the brunt. Leaving you to walk on the jagged edges of the broken family.

A family that shared jokes, laughed, drank and protected each other.

Won together.

Lost together.

In the past few days died together.

“How are you holding up?” His arc reactor gleams as he takes a seat on the stool. Unzipping the jacket he wears his arm in a sling. You close your eyes, more tears fall at the memory of the fight. An involuntary shiver as the chiling bite of the cold manifests itself from your memory.

The cell isn’t uncomfortable. There is a cot in the corner, the bathroom has a door. The sterile scent of the cleaning agent stopped giving you a headache hours ago.

“Why are you asking me?” You look at him, he should be mad, he should yell, call you a traitor.

“Contrary to what you all think and did to me, I trust you.” He shrugs, left eye twitching, he rolls his shoulder.

“How is the arm?” Your gaze falls to it.

“Seen better days. You know, heart troubles.” He looks at Wanda’s cell, “Kid, Vis is asking about you.”

She looks up at him, “Is Rhodes alright?”

Tony presses his lips into a thin line, shaking his head.

Wanda looks down at her hands.

“He tore us apart. That Baron Zemo. I know you have a lot to learn, alot to grieve. The accords may be dissolved. I’m working on it. At SI we’re preparing the bail documents.” He informs you all.

Sam scoffs, “What about Cap and Barnes?”

“James is in recovery as per my last conversation with T’Challa. Where Cap and Nat are I do not know nor does he.” Tony gazes back at you.

“I trusted him.” Is all you can say to him. You stare at your palms, you couldn’t get the blood off.

“I know, I did too.”

“Tony.” Your lips quiver another sob at the heartbreak Steve left you with to deal. All alone.

Bucky fights Tony, you don’t want to see your best friend hurt. The man who took you under his wing when you joined in, your steps halted by the blonde haired man who harbours your heart.

“Sign the accords.” Steve orders, you gape at him.

“Steve, do you fucking realise? We’re here because I didn’t sign them because I am siding with you?” You almost yell. The tempreture drops as the snow cascades into the facility from the now broken windows.

Bucky lands on the floor, a pained groan, his arm blasted off. He kneels, eyes widened at the implication. At the man he hurt irreparablely being the one to take away one of the curses HYDRA bestowed upon him.

“Shit!” Your eyes move to Tony, slowly he rises from the floor. The suit broken in several places.

“Y/N, you need to listen. You cannot go rogue with me.”

“Steve,” You push his arm away you had to intervene.

“It was good while it lasted.” He says and everything turns to static.

“Wh-what?”

“Look, I, we had a good run but I know your stance on the accords you’re just with me for the sole reason we’re together.” Steve says to you.

“Are you serious right now?” Anger courses through you, your grip on your pistol tightens.

“It's not even the accords. I, I didn’t think we would make it beyond this month. Look, I have to think about Bucky. Its all of this, it doesn’t, priorities.” He lunges over to defend Bucky leaving you defenceless. Your ears ringing, you watch as they fight, you can’t hear any of the clangs the groans.

You stand there dumbfounded.

As Steve throws Tony down the beam reflects off of his shield and hits you on the shoulder you’re thrown against the wall. Bucky meets your eyes, at least he seems apologetic.

Tony tries to get up to help you, “Rogers, she’s hurt—,” The shield slams against the arc reactor.

“I don’t care.” He says so easily.

You pant as the pain increases, both the burn and sting of his words as well as the physical injuries manifesting across you.

Steve helps Bucky up, you try to push yourself to your knees, crawling to Tony while keeping your arm close to your body.

Bucky looks back at you, his eyes convey his remorse. Tony breathes hard, you blink back tears at the glance Steve doesn’t spare towards you.

Eight months down the drain.

The morning kisses, cuddles, the random sketches of you he left as gifts all lose their importance. Remembrance only causes pain.

“Mr. Stark, you need to leave.”

Tony sighs, “I’ll visit, or I’ll have you guys out before that. Work some arrangement.”

“I’m so sorry, Tony.” You look at his arm and back at his face.

He gives you one of those sad smiles of his, the one where he pretends it's just another day, another common thing.

“Aren’t you foolish to trust us again?” Sam questions him as Tony passes by his cell.

“I just have to do my job. It’s the people who have to trust us.” Tony turns to face Sam.

“So the people trust the missile maker millionaire Stark?” Sam knows the jab is stinging, Tony hated

that about the company’s past.

The rift was ever present, your friend looks towards you.

“Y/N, let him know not to insult me, I’m a billionaire.” He grabs his glasses and moves away.

You resist the urge to laugh, everyone would resort to their coping mechanisms. You’d have to bide your time here. Usually getting black out drunk was how you solved your own problems.

True to his word Tony has you all released on various conditions. You, Scott and Wanda are released together.

When you reach the tower it isn’t surprising that there was a break in, you’d scoff that Steve didn’t come to break you out but he made his decision in Siberia.

The faint scent of his cologne lingers in your room. Hints of Patchouli and Bergamot. You stare at the box on your bed.

Opening it reveals a burner phone.

“I got a burner too, one number loaded upon it.” Tony stands at the door holding a glass of scotch for himself and your favourite Vodka in a bottle.

“Surprised he bothered.” You open the phone and it chimes an unread text upon it.

“I didn’t get that.” He observes, you take the bottle from him.

Opening the text.

SGR: I want to talk to you. Please let me explain.

You laugh bitterly, unscrewing the cap and taking a long sip. At least you can blame these tears on the alcohol.

“Are you going to? Call him I mean.” Tony settles on your desk chair.

“Nope.” You set your bottle down after three more sips, grabbing the edges of the opened flip phone you press. The phone snaps from its hinges and you place it back down in the box, “Did you track it?”

“Fake return address.” He twirls the ice in his drink.

The two of you bask in the silence. Drinking in tandem and out of sync.

“Were you going to sign the Accords?” You ask after a while staring at the setting sun.

“Nope,” He reaches for your bottle, pouring himself a peg, “I was having them redrafted. Steve only had to agree for them to shut up. My draft would have gotten approved.”

“So confident.” You raise your brows.

“Comes with the job title.” He rolls his eyes.

“Do you think anyone will trust anyone?” You tap the bottle neck.

Steve’s laughter reverberates against your chest. He reaches up to cup your face.

“Why is it so amusing?” You ask, not meeting his eyes.

“Because it is, Poppet. I wouldn’t break your heart.” He assures yet again.

You gnaw at your bottom lip trust was difficult to come by for you.

“You want to know why?” He whispers, making you meet his gaze. His nose brushing against your own.

“Because I have your heart and it's what is keeping me alive.”

You lean closer, pressing your lips to his, Steve kisses you back. Hands pulling you closer. You feel his smile between the kisses and you begin to retract knowing what he was upto but it’s too late.

Steve tickles your sides and laughter blubbers from your chest. He grins, cheeks flushed as you press against him. The thin sheet hides nothing from the way you feel.

“I love you.” He says, you stroke his cheek with your thumb.

“I loved him with everything in me.” You blubber out, tears falling down.

Tony sits next to you, your head rests on his good shoulder, “I know you did. It's a hard road ahead, kid. Not an undoable one.”

“I hate him.” You declare, “I hate him, he just, how could he be so selfish?”

“Sometimes we all are, he is in the wrong. He didn’t exactly reciprocate the trust.” Tony sighs, you look up at him.

“I’m sorry about your parents.” You watch him give you those sad smiles, he flexes and extends the fingers of his left hand.

“He could have told me, I trusted him enough that he could.” He whispers then shakes his head.

“Steve Rogers is an asshole.” You declare raising your bottle to his assholery. Then you giggle.

“You just thought of the word assholery didn’t you?” Tony giggles as well.

Both of you burst out laughing.

“Hey Tone?” You ask mid laughter.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for being here, also can I get a box?”

“Sure.” He stands, FRIDAY has the box led by one of his tinkered bots to the room.

“I need to check on Rhodey.” He says, “I’m a call away okay?”

You nod, he leaves. The box stays on your bed and then you stare at the sketches hung around your room. With a delicateness that Steve didn’t spare towards you, you pack up the papers. Sealing the box with plastic wrap and head down to the safety deposit lockers.

Your steps are misjudged and you drop your box of trinkets several times. The stupid ceramic mug from that couples pottery class probably shattered.

You giggle thinking how it resembles your heart.

Locking the box leaves you in silence. Your room is void of all things Steve except the one shirt he gave you on your first mission together where the two of you fell into the muddled waters that left the two of you in need to change out of clothes.

The shirt smells like him, you curl up with it on your pillow.

“This is the last time you gave your heart away.” You tell yourself.

“This is the last time you cry over him.” You promise yourself.

Eight months pass and you all sit in the conference room. The accords are abolished. They reinstate Natasha, Sharon, James, Sam and him. Tony holds his flip phone. Resorting to texting rather than speaking to him.

A reply comes when you all are back at the tower. They’d be there tomorrow. Rooms are prepared with favourite foods stocked up. You had requested your room be shifted away to another level.

Heart ache didn’t manifest beyond those few nights.

Your walls that Steve Rogers broke down were built back stronger. Impenetrable. His shirt was placed in his room by you a month into getting over him.

You don’t pass by the floor, you’re a level above. Thankfully the elevators divide the levels they service and you won’t ever be on the same floor as him.

The night is restless despite your indifference to all of them. They were the family you chose and yet you were abandoned by them.

Dreams are but a loop of memories you have buried.

After your morning laps you head to Tony’s lab.

“They will be dropping in at SHIELD first. Fury wants to discuss some things and then they come back here.” He stifles a yawn.

“You need caffeine my friend.” You hold up the coffees, “Luckily I come bearing gifts.”

“I love you.” He whispers gingerly while taking the cup.

“Are you talking to the coffee or me?” You ask, taking a sip of your own.

“I can love both.” He defends, whispering to the coffee he loves it more.

You throw one of his discarded paper balls on him. It doesn’t phase him.

“Are you sure you want to come along?” He asks for the umpteenth time on the drive to SHIELD.

“Tony, I will leave you behind if you ask me again.” You glare at him.

“I think you will be fine.” Vision assures a gentle smile on his face and he laces his fingers with Wanda. She smiles at him, her own mind filled with thoughts.

“See we’ll be okay.” You declare.

Minutes later you’re seated on one side of the conference room. Tony on the first seat, you on the second. Vision opts to stand behind Wanda as she sits.

Fury sits at the head of the table. The door opens and Natasha, Sam and Steve step into the room. A thick silence settles over. You look at each of them and then back at Fury.

Natasha’s hair is shorter and blond, Sam seems to have gotten leaner. Steve was sporting a beard and longer hair.

You wondered if the post break up look was something you should have gone for, maybe dyed your hair blue.

“Well, as you know you all have been reinstated. The Avengers operate without any Accords binding them but they must be mindful of their poweress and the possible damage they may cause. A country has full discretion to forbid the Avengers from subduing threats that may lead them there and you must honour that no matter the cost.” Fury gazes at you all.

“What if they need help?” Steve questions, you scoff.

Cold blues flash to you. You roll your eyes.

“The dissolution of the Accords was done keeping this one rule in mind. I suggest you make peace with it. You will not be able to save everyone from damage and hurt, it is better than causing it.” Tony adds.

Steve’s jaw tightens. He nods.

“Now since this is done and dusted. Official missions may resume.” Fury places down a manila folder.

“Official?” Sam questions, raising a brow.

“Agent Y/L/N here was liasoning with us for recon purposes. Kept under wraps. We have identified HYRA bases. Once the plans are sanctioned you all will be back on duty.” Nick sighs, “I suggest you all train together to get a sense of your skill sets and moves again.”

No one nods.

Nick shakes his head leaving the room.

“Your old rooms have been cleaned at the tower. Access is via FRIDAY, food is stocked. Layout’s almost the same. Few changes here and there. Oh and there are new succulents in the living room.” Tony fiddles with the folder.

“We can conduct a meeting about these missions tonight or tomorrow. You all settle in, there is a car outside and your vehicles are in pristine condition at the garage.” He informs them further.

“No welcome back party?” Nat muses, you laugh.

“I drank all the liquor so unfortunately no parties.” You deadpan.

Nat and Sam stare at you.

“It has been a difficult few months. I understand everyone will take time to return to a semblance of previous normalcy.” Vision’s words are both reassuring but also farfetched.

Wanda grasps his hand and gives it a squeeze.

Steve’s brows furrow in worry. He observes you trying to find any hints but you give him none. You learned to school yourself. An agent well versed in hiding her intent, emotions and aim. Your skillset is what brought you to the team and it is what you have. It's what you could trust.

Sam nods, “Well best we head back.”

“Yes we could use some sleep.” Natasha says, you flash her a smile.

“Yep, well I have a few things to discuss with Fury.” You push away from the table first. Tony follows your lead.

“Should you not include us in the conversation?” Steve says in his authoritative baritone.

“Unfortunately, Captain, it isn’t an Avengers matter but a personal one. Which you aren’t entitled to know.” You spit back.

His mouth opens again to speak.

Tony beats him to it, “Where’s our Manchurian candidate?”

“Bucky’s in the UK for a bit, after Wakanda we were there for a while. He stayed back for personal reasons.” Steve explains and you slip out.

Steve stares at your room door, knocking on it yet again. Two weeks since his return and you had avoided him in every capacity.

He had worked up the courage to knock on your door today. But there was no response as it was over the past fifteen minutes. He requests FRIDAY to check in and all the AI says is that you’re fine.

You had gotten back from a mission yesterday morning. You had to have been resting.

“Why won’t she open her door then?” He mutters, pressing his forehead to your door, “Poppet, I just want to speak to you. Please.”

“Captain.” Vision greets floating out of Wanda’s room.

“Vision.” He acknowledges.

“Why are you knocking on an empty room’s door?” Vision tilts his head.

Steve blinks at him, “This is Y/N’s room.” he states as if obvious.

“It isn’t, she switched rooms about three months ago.” Vision says

Before Steve can ask anything further, Wanda opens her door, “Vis.” She gestures with her hand for him to return.

“Wanda.” He walks to her this time.

“FRIDAY, where is Y/N’s new room?” Steve questions walking to the elevators.

“She’s on the twenty-fifth floor.” The AI responds, he switches to the other elevator.

“Captain, you will have to go to the ground floor to switch elevators.” FRIDAY informs him.

Steve sighs moving back in front of the original elevator. It stops at every single floor; he almost misses the elevator as you’re getting on, luckily a Stark Industries employee holds the door for him.

You bite the inside of your cheek. Looking away.

“I want to talk.” He says over the all too silent but crowded elevator.

Everyone looks at him except you. They follow his gaze to you.

“I don’t.” You answer while staring at the numbers.

“Poppet.” He says and you shoot him a glare before looking away again.

People trickle in and out.

Steve’s gaze is trained upon you. He nods politely at those greeting him but his gaze nerver strays from you.

You look into your phone pulling up a forgotten game loaded into the device. Anything. Any stupid thing to avoid him.

Finally it's just the two of you.

The automated air freshener hisses filling the space with the scent of lavender.

“Poppet I just want to explain—,” Steve steps closer, his hand outstretched.

“No. I don’t fucking want to hear a word.” You seethe, you move forward pressing the button to your floor if it makes you reach quicker.

“Poppet.” He grabs your hand, turning you towards him.

“Y/N. Use my damn name.” You spit out, finally meeting his eyes.

There is a tick in his jaw, he nods, “Y/N. Just five minutes. I know I don’t deserve it—,”

“You don’t deserve to even ask for a minute of my time. You never saw us work beyond that month correct? Well guess what? We don’t.” You push at his chest, he doesn’t budge.

“I lied. I said those things so you wouldn’t follow. I could not have you living rogue with me.” Steve admits, you stare at him.

“You lied?” You repeat.

“I didn’t want to break things off but that was the only way I could ensure you wouldn’t follow behind me. It was dangerous. Poppet—Y/N,” he corrects, “I told you your heart kept me alive, I love you—,”

Steve’s head snaps to the side, cheek turning red at the impact of your slap. You breathe hard, eyes tearing up.

“That was not for you to fucking decide, you do not get to come back here and make your sorry excuses for being a horrible human being. Betraying my trust. Leaving me and your friend injured. You picked Bucky over us. You picked Bucky over me and I understand I would pick him too if I were you. But I would not fucking lie or leave my girlfriend and best friend behind injured horribly. You’re welcome back to the compound Steve. Even back to your glorious Captain America title. However,”

The doors open to your floor, you step out.

“I don’t know how you say you’re alive because I took my fucking heart back from your undeserving self. I don’t care if you lied, I don’t care if it was all fun and games. I don't care about you. I don’t want to care about you. You are a teammate because I am forced to consider you one. I don’t need to listen to you to provide you closure or a second chance. You fucking liar!”

“Poppet,” Steve reaches for you again, you take off running to your door.

“FRIDAY, deny access. Override only with Tony.” You order, the locks on your doors bolt and Steve keeps knocking and pleading.

He sinks to his knees outside your door apologising over and over.

Natasha is pinned to the floor by Wanda as the latter grins triumphantly. Natasha praises her and they break apart. You take Wanda’s place and Sam takes Natasha’s place.

Mixed training was now mandatory.

You had almost burned Nick Fury with your glare. Steve hadn’t shown up to any, in fact he hardly was in the same room as you.

Sam goes full offence, you block the blows. Defending yourself you had worked hard over the time away from official duties.

Minutes pass by, neither of you yields. Panting you stare at Sam waiting for an opening to take him down.

“Come on, that's all you got, little spy?” Sam teases, you laugh.

“You wish birdy.” You stick your tongue out childishly. Wanda and Nat laugh.

“Come on Wilson.” Nat prompts, “We’re bored here.”

“Alright,” Sam moves, pulling a fake. You catch it a moment too late, as he’s about to tackle you to the ground you turn. Tugging on his arm as Sam’s eyes widen.

The momentum thrown off both of you land on your sides, recovering swiftly he’s pinned to the ground by you.

You grin at him.

“How's that birdy?” You laugh at his irritation. Sam rolls his eyes.

“Y/N.”

Everyone’s heads snap to the door, Steve and Tony stand there.

You help Sam up. Sam keeps an arm around your shoulder. Steve’s eyes linger and his fists clench.

Sam takes his arm away.

You roll your eyes, they land on Tony as he bites his cheek, oh this can’t be good you deem.

“Wheels up in an hour for Rogers and you.” He delivers the news.

“Sam, Nat, Vis and Wanda are needed to take on a bigger base with Tony.” Steve looks at you, “Fury’s orders before you try to whine your way out if it.”

You glare at him, “Alright.”

An hour later you’re on the jet with Steve. He doesn’t talk. The last conversation between the two of you was enough.

“We won’t be splitting up.” Steve informs you. You nod, studying the layout.

You frown in recognition.

“I was here on recon. This is supposed to be a dead base.” You look up at him.

“Fury said they detected activity.” He looks back ahead.

“Hopefully it's just random people looking for shelter.” You look back at the plans.

Steve hums, observing you again. Wishing it would be like before where the two of you would be holding hands.

Cobwebs litter the walls, plaster cracked. The scent of something decaying permeates through the space.

Walking into the HYDRA base is carefully crafted, Steve leads with his shield. You keep a double check on the back trail. Something was not sitting right with you.

The hallway diverges, you stand next to Steve, “Left side first then we can go right.” You whisper.

He nods, “Stay close, I don’t know why something feels wrong.”

You don’t verbalise your own feelings, following in his footsteps.

The hallway leads to an abandoned lab, the computers torn down and broken apart. Steve relaxes his defensive stance looking around the area.

You move carefully through the edge of the room, “Something should be of value here.”

“I don’t think there is anything.” Steve declares, “Let's clear the other pathway.”

You give another once over and then follow him back down the path.

Your boot catches on the uneven flooring, “Shit!” You whisper yell as you fall forward.

Steve turns, breaking your fall. You land against his chest and his arm encircles your waist. For a moment that echoes a broken promise of eternity he holds you close to him.

Steve sneaks a moment he lost over a stupid decision. He takes what crumbs he’s given by fate.

Your palm is against his chest, your head tucked against the crook of his neck.

Why can't you move away?

Why do you want more of him?

Why do you miss him?

He hurt you.

He lied.

He hurt you.

You break the eternity Steve was living as you pull away, silence stretches between the two of you as you head down the other hallway.

It's empty yet again, you shake your head at the waste of time. Steve steps closer to the vials on the shelf. The liquid in them gleams a certain way.

You hear a pneumatic hiss from your left. You turn quietly making your way to the wall.

Steve studies the shelf again. There was no dust on it. No pattern on it. These were fresh vials. Then his eyes widened, “Y/N don’t!”

You turn to face him when the hiss is louder and the slits of the vent open. A dust like substance pours over floating around you.

A coughing fit grips you, you place your hand against the wall to steady yourself the gun falls as you clutch your chest wheezing.

Steve pads over to you, trying to rub your back to ease the coughing fit. He asks FRIDAY to scan the micro dust to see if it is anything dangerous.

The coughing fit subsides over a few minutes, your breathing shallow. You look up at Steve blinking away the tears. He cups your cheek.

“Are you okay? Do you feel anything?” He questions, gaze running over every aspect of you. Glove clad large palms moving over your form. You nod, but then your stomach cramps.

“What is it?” Steve takes not of your discomfort.

“I, it's my stomach—,” Your words are cut off by a whimper as the cramp gains severity. You lean more against the wall as the cramp travels across.

Steve rummages through his mind to know what this substance could be, he had been to HYDRA bases before. He spoke to Bucky all about them, their experiments which he knew.

He watches as your skin flushes, you squirm in his grasp. He steps closer to support you.

“Poppet?” Steve makes you look up at him, your eyes have a dazed look almost glazed over. You feel his warmth through your tactical suit. His thigh between your legs and the ache the needy ache is all you know and you need to get rid of it.

“Please,” You plead to him gazing at his slightly blurred blue eyes, your hips moving out of their own accord against his thigh you moan as your core makes contact with him.

Steve pushes your hips away, “Poppet what—,”

“Steve, it hurts so badly. Please,” You cry out wiggling against his hold. His fingers dig into your hips to keep you in place.

Your palms cover his, you look up at him.

You lean up, he shifts back. You use the distraction to guide his palm to grind down on it. Your choked moan has his cock harden further. He can’t help but watch as you use him.

Logic hits him then when he feels just how wet you’ve gotten, before he can pull away there is a prick in the side of his neck. You begin to blur from his view.

“Poppet, something is wrong.”

You look up at him, why did his words sound garbled?

Why was he falling to his knees?

You look behind him, people standing and watching.

The need clouding your mind clears in the slightest, “Steve,” you kneel next to him.

“It’s okay,” he assures you, reaching for the shield.

The cramp hits you again harder; you cry out in pain, doubling over and sinking against the wall to curl up.

“FRIDAY, dis-distress signal.” Steve orders as his vision begins to blacken, he reaches for you with the last of his strength covering your curled up form with his body.

Steve keeps his eyes closed.

Enhanced hearing picking up the dripping pipes from the left. To his right he hears your pained whimpers.

How long was he out?

Chains bind his arms above him, the uneven concrete digs into his knees and shins. He would search for the shield in the aftermath.

He counts four people by their rhythmic footfall. They were in the same facility. It couldn’t have been easy to move them.

Lolling his head to right he watches you through hooded eyes, chained like him kept on your knees but you’re struggling. Squirming on the ground trying to find respite and crying out of frustration.

“Sex pollen.” Bucky spoke, with a shake of his head in disgust.

“Sex pollen?” Steve repeated as if to confirm.

Bucky gives him a look, Steve’s eyebrows shot up higher.

“What does that do? Did they use it on you?” Steve questioned his best friend.

Bucky shook his head, “It basically sets the libido up to the maximum, forces the person in contact to orgasm but basically they need to have sex, self pleasure seldom works. The intensity is higher to combat the inevitable effect.”

A dark expression crossed Bucky’s features, he sighed sadly. Looking out at the view from his home in Wakanda. The house, though borrowed, was Bucky’s own.

Steve had placed a few sketches of Brooklyn around. The place he used to consider home now changed. Steve stares at the more recent sketch of his home city.

Two men out of time in a place decades ahead of the world outside.

“How long?” Steve clutches his charcoal tighter as he forms the curve of soft lips on the paper. A stray tendril of hair.

Bucky looks down at the half done sketch of your face. His heart aches for Steve and you.

“Two hours, it gets progressively maddening. At first one can try to speak or answer what is asked. After that it is variable how long it takes for the need to become the sole focus. If nothing is done in two hours then its too far gone and well...”

He had limited time, he could not gamble any further. Steve opens his eyes, tugging at the restraints to catch the attention of the captors.

You hear the rattling, you look up at Steve another pang through your core.

“Steve—,”

“Ah, Captain. Welcome to the land of the waking, you were out for just under an hour. Now who is this sweet little needy thing with you?” The man asks, stepping closer to you.

Steve growls, “Stay away from her.” he warns.

The man raises his hands in defence, “She’s a little needy Captain,” he walks back toward Steve away from you, “Why so possessive?”

Steve bites his tongue, “She’s mine.” he grits out.

“I see and why is she yours?”

He can’t tell them, they would exploit you but his will is crumbling swiftly and his mind is compelling him to speak, “I love her.”

“Hm, it seems she needs you, Captain.” The man grins, walking back to you. His palm touches your scalp as he pulls your hair back. You want to recoil but the touch is soothing some of the ache. You look at Steve, pleading.

“I could fill in.” He says suggestively.

You try to shuffle away but the grip on your hair tightens.

“Don’t you fucking dare touch her!” Steve bellows as his thumb approaches your lips, “What the fuck do you want?” He pulls against the restraints, almost snarling.

“I want to know where my Soldat is, tell me.” The man demands, leaving you. The words register as does the scent of cigarettes you recoil. You feel your mind working again, clearing the need to be fucked.

“Steve don’t,” you warn him, he couldn’t sell out Bucky whatever this was, it wasn't worth ruining his life again, “I’ll deal with this…” you bite back the pained whimper.

Steve stares at you, eyes wide and with an emotion you can’t place.

“Oh but you know what is wrong with her don’t you Captain?” The man demands and you look to Steve, “Tell her the truth that burns your veins, Captain.”

Steve wants to lie, wants to cushion you, “Truth serum?” He looks at the man who nods.

“Brilliant isn’t it? You’re compelled to tell me whether or not she chooses to be saved. You’re on a time limit.” The man taps his watch.

“It’s a sex pollen.” Steve informs you, you stare at him.

“That, that's why I need?” Your insides churn and your clit pulses as you watch Steve lick his dry lips before he continues to speak. The small insignificant action has your body wanting to be devoured.

“Yes, and if you don’t get release, it’s fatal.”

Silence stretches on the footfall of the three others has stopped, they watch the show play out. The consequences and the outcomes weighed.

“Fight it, don’t tell them. It's not worth it.” You whisper.

“Poppet you cannot say that. I am not risking your life!” Steve yells, pulling at the restraints again.

“You can’t have him at risk again!”

“I won’t let you die!”

“You already left me for the dead once! You chose him once. Just fucking do it again!” You seethe, your skin clammy and you just want this suit gone. The material irritates you.

Steve gapes at you, “I, I didn’t—,”

“Save it.”

“As much as I enjoy a lover’s quarrel. Where is Soldat?” The man interrupts.

“Gone.” Steve answers, “Poppet, please,”

“Don’t fucking tell them!” You demand, “Consider it my last wish! Fight the damn truth serum.”

“You are not dying.” Steve grits out.

“Where is he, where is Bucky Barnes?” The man lands a punch to Steve’s face. His hair falls forward, slowly Steve looks up at the man. Rage colouring all his features.

“I will let you help her. Just tell me where Bucky is, Captain.” The man promises. Steve considers, you begin to yell no at him.

“He’s in the United Kingdom.”

“Are you insane?!” You slump to the ground, “Do you have any fucking idea what have you done?”

The man walks over and slaps you, “Shut the fuck up! You want a cock so fucking bad you fucking bitch in heat, I’ll give you one!”

Steve snarls, wrapping the chain around his own palm and tugging hard until it breaks away from the wall. The man turns, gun cocked and ready, it's grabbed out of his hand by Steve. He looks at the man dead in his eyes before delivering the fatal shot.

You look up at Steve, as the man drops to the floor between the two of you.

Steve watches the other three scramble about, he quickly fires the shots, he keeps one person alive.

He grabs the other chain, yanking it with all his strength. It gives way.

“Where is the shield?” He walks over to the man on the ground, pleading in pain.

A shaking hand rises, pointing to the vault.

“Access code?” Steve picks him up and takes him to the keypad.

The man enters it crying when Steve presses on the open wound, “Don’t fucking pull any stunts.”

You watch as the doors part and the shield stays there as a momento.

You blink when everything goes out of focus. You blink again. Heat spreads over your body goosebumps raise across.

Your thighs clench and you squirm trying to get some friction to release the ache. Tugging at the restraints is maddening. They don’t relent when you try to manoeuvre but no position provides any respite and you sob out as the frustration grows.

“Poppet.” A warm voice calls out, you whimper. The hold on your right arm loosens and your hand reaches for the tactical suit. You had to get it off. You needed to get it off.

You blink and watch as Steve’s hand stops yours, you push at him.

“Please,” you whimper as another cramp takes over.

“You smell so sweet baby.” He groans, the sound urges you on, you guide his hand to where you need him.

His warm palm cups you the fabric of your suit soaked Steve hears your sigh of relief.

“Going to take care of you Poppet, but you need to hold on for me okay?” Steve assures, breaking out your left arm as well.

“Steve please,” you beg again, your mind screaming at your body, your hips move making you grind onto his palm. Your smaller palm wrapped around his wrist not letting him pull away.

“Fuck,” He groans, pushing you against the corner and undoing your suit’s zipper, you don’t face him palms braced against the wall. Steve’s warm calloused palm is as though cold respite to your heated skin.

He doesn’t waste time, fingers running over your folds, palm pressing against your clit. Your head tilts back resting against his shoulder, mouth parted moans leaving you.

Steve presses his fingers into you, two thick digits and your walls clench around him he almost wishes he’d fuck you right there.

“Fuck this pussy remembers who she belongs to doesn’t she?” Fingers curve finding the spot he very well could have placed. Stars line your vision as he hits the spot over and over, fingers curving.

“Right there Steve!” You cry out your ass rocking against him, pressing onto his cock. He keeps his thrusts hard and fast, palm rubbing your clit in the most delicious of ways. His grunts fill your senses.

Pleasure thrums from his touch to your body, your back arching as his fingers drive deeper and deeper into you. Your walls are gripping them back in not wanting him to stop.

“I know sweet Poppet. I know what makes her weep for me. I’m going to taste you. But first you’re going to make a mess on my hand alright?” He instructs filthy words offset by the sweet kisses placed against your forehead and cheek.

His other hand cups your breast playing with your nipple. Your hands fall from the wall, gripping onto his nails leaving indents on his skin. Steve watches your chest constrict, your voice choke off, eyes rolling back as your orgasm crashes into you.

His fingers keep moving, riding your orgasm out, your walls quivering around him the sensitivity of your clit as it pulses. Some of the haze clears but the need just returns tenfold.

“Steve, please, I can’t, can’t wait—,”

His lips are on yours, cutting you off, your suit pushed down further without breaking away from the kiss.

The shield clatters to the floor, his suit haphazardly discarded. Steve’s hands explore your body, remembering the planes he explored before. The love he whispered across your skin. Marking you with his touch, his lips, his seed.

“Wanna see you,” You want to turn, he grabs your hands pinning them to the wall.

“No one gets to see you this way but me.” He growls, you feel his hard cock move between your thighs. His larger body covers yours, shielding you, watching over you.

When your thighs clench around him, Steve hisses, “Going to fill you up, sweet girl.” he coos.

Inch by inch Steve’s length stretches you, your back arches. The relief the stretch of his cock brings is unlike anything else you’ve felt before.

“You can take it, made for my cock aren't you?” He stills inside you, throbbing as your walls clench around him. He moans biting down on your shoulder the feel of you decadent, unable to be given justice by his mind.

“Heaven. Pussy feels so good, baby. Missed you so much.” He grunts, you push back against him needing him to move, “hands around my neck.” He orders, leaving your hands.

You wrap them around him, holding onto his now longer hair, soft between your fingers. Your mind remains you of the soft moments when he laid in your lap and your fingers combed through these locks.

Steve pulls you out of your thoughts with the snap of his hips. His palms gripping your waist anchoring you to him. Skin slapping against skin, his cock feels so good you could sob, the need turns into embers, your thirst being quenched.

Each delicious, deep stroke moves you towards sweet bliss. You hear your name in an echo of his name. Steve watches the wall you mould against him, as countless times before. Your heart may have put up walls but your body left no space.

The way he sees the telltale signs of your orgasm he brings his right hand towards your apex, timing his rough circles on your clit to his thrusts. The sensations blooming become too much, your body alit with flames of pleasure, Steve moans as your walls begin to milk him just as your orgasm shatters through you.

He keeps his thrusts going, pumping into you. The arousal that spills onto your thighs, the mix of you and him.

“One more.” He demands, fingers coated with the mix of the two of you, his marked fingers brought back to your clit, you cry out in ecstasy.

The blissful haze clears, everything returning to you. The mission, the power, you can’t, you can’t, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve–,

“Right here my sweet poppet, you will give me one more. You know I'm greedy.” He reasons, only increasing his pace, you thrash in his hold. Lips find the sweet spot of your neck.

It’s your undoing, you cum around him yet again. Crying out his name, tugging on his hair. Aftershocks moving through you. He holds you up, pressing kisses to your forehead, temple, cheek, jaw and shoulders.

Grounding you, palms moving over you after he brings his coated fingers to taste them. Your head lols against his shoulder, you reach for his jaw, placing a soft kiss. Steve smiles at the familiar gesture.

Helping you get dressed he follows as well. You’re lifted into his arms and carried to the quinjet.

As it had turned out Bucky wasn’t in UK it was a precautionary measure they came up with to secure Bucky from any life threatening attempts. The guilt you had harboured lessened.

Steve had stayed away from you, once Tony and Bruce cleared you of any remnant pollen he took his leave. Avoiding you as he had after the elevator confrontation. It left a bitter taste in your mouth.

As much as you felt as if you were an emotional fool for considering the thought of wanting to approach him, you missed him. Terribly.

You knew your walls were useless against the one man who you had given your jagged heart to, the blue eyes you had drowned yourself in multiple times. Whether it was when he found your gaze across the room or when you were pressed against him.

Your feet carried you after three days to his door. Your hand shook when you knocked. Thoughts swirling through your mind insecurities gaining fleet.

The door opens, Steve’s eyes widen then his brows furrowed with worry, then fall to the still fading love bite that he placed on your collarbone. You shift your weight to either side. Hands fiddling with the hem of your top.

You look down at your feet, Steve’s palm cups your cheek.

Your eyes meet their old home of blue.

“I want to listen.” You manage to say, his pink lips stretch into a familiar smile.

He steps to the side inviting you further into his room.

-x-x-x-x-

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dokidokitsuna · 3 months

Text

Tragic Sky

(very long salty rant ahead (+new Alterna backstory, though! ^^;))

So I've always thought Alterna’s backstory, despite being presented as a grand mystery that’s definitely worth fighting through 90% of the missions to uncover in its entirety…was kinda stupid. :/ I’m all for humanity destroying itself for ridiculous reasons, but trying to launch a rocket in an enclosed space?? Are you serious…? o_O How could the Alternans devote such immense amounts of time and energy to something like that without once thinking, “hey, uh…burning metric tons of high-energy fuel inside of our flammable safety dome might be a little unsafe, idk”.

And it shouldn’t even have been necessary! DX I mean, if they were able to build a dome like that in the first place, wouldn’t they have some sort of scaffolding or elevator system they could use to reach the top and just literally climb out if they wanted to leave that badly?? Had Alterna existed for so long that the technology used to create it was lost to time (seeing as it’s implied that Alterna was destroyed by its SECOND generation, I doubt it)...?? Or, did the writers suddenly realize that coming up with pseudo-scientific lore that explains why inkfishes resemble humanity is wholly unnecessary and adds nothing to the themes of Splatoon…but it was too late to rework the concept, so they just finished off the story with whatever-the-heck and called it a day. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I guess we’ll never know...

Anyway, my version of Alterna’s backstory starts with a similar premise: humans invented crystal thingies that can manifest people’s desires and whatnot…but this alone caused conflict that eventually doomed Alterna. People began to make their own interpretations of other people’s desires, judging and condemning them for how they manifested. They began treating the crystals’ reflections as compulsory measures of morality and worth, rather than simple expressions of the human heart that exist outside of a good/bad binary. Alterna’s leaders envisioned themselves creating a society of ‘pure truth’, free from the destructive power of deceit and subterfuge…all the while ignoring the destructive power of paranoia and exclusion that they immersed themselves in.

Exclusion escalated to oppression, which eventually spawned rebellion: plans were made to create a rocket that would allow a select group of ‘undesirables’ to escape Alterna for the surface world, destroying the integrity of their safe haven in the process. Despite not knowing what was waiting for them out there, they were willing to take the risk in the name of freedom. Eventually, this secret plan was revealed to the public, resulting in Alterna’s first and last civil war. As the Alternans began to fight and kill each other, the crystals were overwhelmed with the unprecedented ferocity of their clashing desires-- “a violent and terrible chain reaction ensued”, and the energy within them exploded outward. The sky dome, still filled with the beautiful blue of the peoples’ wishes for peace and happiness, came crumbling down, raining fire and shrapnel upon Alterna. The still-poisoned air of the outside world flowed freely into the cavern, ensuring the eventual death of anyone who might have survived.

…Then the crystals fell in the ocean, the sea creatures were imbued with human hopes and dreams, yadda yadda, all that’s basically the same as the canon too. And although I still think it’s unneeded (the mere concept of a bygone humanity in Splatoon carries plenty of weight without all this “lore”, imo), at least now the story isn’t stupid!

It speaks to the way humans actually treat each other, and blames their downfall on their long-established bad habits of cruelty and callousness, rather than morally-neutral traits like ambition and pursuit of the unknown (I would never have expected “curiosity killed the cat” as the lesson of the day from Splatoon, of all franchises. o_O This IS the same game that celebrates individual expression and forging your own path, right…?)

Anyway…I’m gonna be using elements of this rewritten backstory and the theme of “manifesting desires” to flesh out the final boss encounter and Agent 3’s subtle character arc. So please look forward to that~

#splatoon #re_rise #splatoon 3 #new agent 3 #alterna

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dairy-farmer · 2 months

Note

Imagining Jason feeling so guilty about everything he's done to Tim, so now he treats Tim like he's a princess. Spoiling his Timmy any chance he can get, feeding him, getting him gifts he just glanced at in vague interest. Maybe at some point when the others see what's happening they get a little jealous cause they keep seeing Timmy's small smiles and red face, they've gotten so used to his rbf that they forgot what he looks like excited. So one after another each person starts to try to do what Jason has been doing with varied success. Anyways, I just really like the idea of Tim being pampered and fawned over, and being treated like the princess he is~ <3

-🐁

jason being all ashamed because when things finally sort of simmer down and become civil it turns out that tim...jason actually enjoys being around tim. like...the two of them have so much in common. jason makes some obscure reference or joke and tim actually gets it, he gets it and lets out a quiet snort of amusement from behind his phone or laptop screen. the two of them share the same sense of humor, the same interest in cheap gory movies, the same food tastes that have the rest of the family grumbling and whining about ordering in from the same place every time because tim and jason both voted for the same place again making them the majority vote. unlike the rest of the family tim is also...easy to get along with. very easy. there's an ease, a humor at being with tim like they're constantly on the same wavelength. so it makes jason feel more than a little...ashamed at how their relationship started. because it means that things are...tense when its just the two of them. like when they're home alone because the rest of the family is out or when they're both up in the middle of the night and sneaking ice cream. tim has this cute little smile that showed off the small gap in his teeth and made his cheeks all pink when tim makes a particularly clever quip and it just makes jason...makes the desire to see it more grow. so jason tries, dare he say it, charming tim. buying him his favorite candies, inviting him to hang out, buying him gifts like that new game he'd talked about his civilian friends playing. he wants to treat tim...well. partly to make up for the rough start and partly because he wants to and so when they start getting closer and jason starts making some progress of course the others notice and just have to ruin it for him by trying to take up tim's very limited time.

#answered asks #asks #anonymous #jaytim

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djljpanda · 4 months

Note

Same anon from https://www.tumblr.com/djljpanda/729765849772228608/hi-just-discovered-your-tumblr-and-thought-id-say

May I be snow anon plz? Also...can't help but imagine one funny senario with all cookies, you can involve beasts or not if you want:

Imagine if y/n was naive and innocent and can get easily distracted....like two cookies could be duking it out for their attention only to discover y/n got distracted and was now watching a butterfly on a flower...like if the cookies took their eyes off y/n for too long or something, y/n wanders off lmao! Also can imagine y/n being confused why cookies are fighting eachother, not realizing it's for their attention.

Bonus if you want...if you want a playful naive fighter y/n senario too: imagine if y/n sees two cookies fighting, thinks they are sparring or play fighting...and just runs up and joins in!

Y/n, seeing two cookies duking it out for y/n's attention but y/n doesn't understand that: oooh that looks fun!

Cookie 1: their eyes should be on me!

Cookie 2: no, they should be on-huh?

The two cookies, turning to see y/n running straight at them with fire in their eyes: WAIT Y/N NOOOO!

*both end up punched in the face by y/n who thought they were sparring or having some sort of fun fight and wanting to join in!*

Y/n: did I win? 😃

Fallen Hero’s/Beast x Reader

I remember you snow anon.

This all happens before their fall from grace.

Now Reader cookie has been traveling with the hero’s for quite awhile now as she was encouraged by the five to join them. But along the way all of them had developed feelings for the cookie.

Innocent Reader, always sees these cookies as friends and would be confused on why they scrabbled allot with each other, just to hold your hand? Now you hate to say that the butterfly flying around was the reason you got lost. But not for long as you saw Eternal sugar cookie come flying down, “oh I was so worried about you how could you get lost like that”. Eternal sugar cookie was always the first to find you and he sit did upset the others.

But at times while you were out doing something’s the rest might start fighting. Let’s say you were leaving to go collect some wood for the town you and the hero’s were helping with. Burning spice cookie, shadow milk cookie, and silent salt cookie had joined you while eternal sugar cookie and mystic flour cookie stayed behind in case if any other cookies may need their help.

But as time went by the two cookies had started to argue as both thought that they will treat you better which led to them about to physically start fight till they heard you and the others returned. When you questioned the two cookies they just pushed off the question while they helped you with the wood you collected.

Fighter reader, here you went with eternal sugar cookie, burning spice cookie, and mystic flour cookie to help some cookies with food. As you four left silent salt cookie and shadow milk cookie decided to spat together but as it continued they truly did started to fight as the topic of you came up. But both were token off guard as they were both knocked to the ground as all confusion went away they look up to see you smiling with the other cookies looking along. “You should have told you two were going to spar I would have stayed back”, you smiled helping the two up as you all got ready to go and help other cookies civilizations.

Other cookies that can fit your scenario-

Affogato cookie and Caramel Arrow cookie

Raspberry mousse cookie and Raspberry cookie

Lilac cookie and Scorpion cookie

Lotus dragon cookie and Longan dragon cookie

Red velvet cookie and Dark choco cookie

Linzer cookie and Crème brlee cookie

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saintsenara · 4 months

Note

Thoughts on remadora?

thank you very much for the asks, anons!

while they are by no means my otp, i really enjoy remadora as pairing - and i think they’re fully up there among the canon couples in terms of being an amazing vehicle through which to explore all sorts of questions about life and love - which i am aware is a sufficiently controversial statement that it involves an immediate engagement with some discourse…

because remadora girlies [gender neutral] get an enormous amount of shit within the fandom, particularly from fans who consider wolfstar to be a more plausible pairing for lupin than tonks. i have seen remadora shippers called homophobes for simply enjoying the couple, justified with the bizarre idea that it disrespects remus' relationship with sirius [so... the non-canon one?] to put them together. i have seen tonks turned into a pathetic shrew who is trying to keep remus from the real love of his life by trapping him with an unwanted baby. i have seen remadora shippers get a lot of the usual stuff that people who prefer the canon-endgame couples do [that to ship a canon pair is boring, that it is indicative of a lack of talent, that it indicates an uncritical support for jkr] magnified to eleven because tonks has the temerity to be a barrier to remus’ relationship with the fandom’s favourite hot and brooding man.

obviously, this is bullshit - primarily because its unreasonable and cruel to invest so much time and energy being mean to people because of their harry potter shipping preferences [fandom should never be that deep].

but it’s also a disappointment to me personally because it means that it can be very hard to find the sort of remadora i like without looking like i’m coming to contribute to the pile-on. because where many remadora fans and i don’t see eye-to-eye is that i have absolutely no interest in thinking about them as a relationship which is actually functional. and, all too often, i find myself sifting through fics which do prefer to interpret them like this - as romantic and passionate and stable - largely, i think it’s fair to say, as a defensive move against the tide of “urgh, imagine shipping that” nonsense - even though all the evidence of canon is that they are… very much not.

i am aware of the pottermore article which smoothes the edges of lupin’s canonical reaction to tonks’ feelings for him in half-blood prince - but, while i read this as something of a retcon to make the relationship more palatable, i also don’t think that assuming that both tonks and lupin’s attraction to each other was sincere precludes them being as dysfunctional as they canonically are. i don’t go in for the common anti-remadora argument that tonks “forces” him into a relationship with her - it’s clear in half-blood prince that it’s not only her who has discussed her feelings with molly and arthur weasley, lupin is definitely flirting with her when they pick harry up in order of the phoenix, lupin is an adult man [no matter other power imbalances between him and tonks - such as the fact that she is an agent of the state which oppresses him] who possesses the capacity to refuse her advances, and - since teddy’s conception is not immaculate - he has no issue with enjoying a sexual relationship with her even if he then wants to run away from the product of that.

instead, what i like with remadora is that they reveal something which goes against the grain of the rest of the series: that love is not always enough. throughout the seven-book canon, we see time and time again the idea that love - and, crucially, love-as-noble-suffering and love-as-sacrifice - is enough to overcome any problem. entire civil service collaborating with a terrorist regime? don’t trouble yourself, love has won. your mother dying in childbirth leaving you to be neglected in a state institution? your own fault you’re not interested in love.

i understand the genre reasons for this, but i also love the way in which lupin especially exists on the margins of these genre conventions [just as he exists on the margins of wizarding society!]. i’m always struck in deathly hallows that he’s the only person who’s actually realistic about the demands of war - particularly when he tells harry that it is breathtakingly naive for him to think he can get through the fighting without having to shoot to kill - and that part of him having to be shuffled out of the way when harry tells him to return to the pregnant tonks is because, were the story focused on realism, the idea that a wanted man who is considered an unhuman by the state fleeing in order to guarantee the safety of his wife and unborn child becomes eminently reasonable and harry's defense of the nuclear family embarrassingly unradical.

and so i like the idea of lupin seeing tonks - and tonks seeing lupin - initially as just a bit of fun, as the two of them being just two chill single people who think the other is hot and interesting and want to bang because of it.

[which is something fandoms in general really struggle with as a concept. we like epic love stories - and you won't find me objecting to that! - but we're less good at thinking about casual sexual attraction or transient friendships, and how these can be transformative and meaningful without having to end up going any sort of distance.]

and i then like the idea of the relationship being forced into a profundity it doesn’t really have the juice to sustain by the sheer avalanche of grief which besets the two of them - sirius, dumbledore, mad-eye, ted - and by the pressure of the war and the fact that the order is scrambling and the hangover of remus' self-destruction in half-blood prince which makes each cling to the other as a life-raft. i like remadora as something codependent and messy and strange and sad, and i don’t think this prevents it being sincere and fun and based in mutual attraction, but instead that these positive qualities can exist in conjunction with the fact that, without the war, it would have been a summer of fucking and that was probably it.

on tonks herself, i don’t think i can say it better than @evesaintyves in this meta on her character. i’ve been really uncomfortable with quite a lot of stuff i’ve seen recently which has taken against the idea that tonks can be meaningfully read as queer on the basis of what we find in the text, above all because it so often comes with the implication that one cannot imagine her in her canon endgame pairing and presume that she’s something other than straight or cisgender. eve sets out an excellent case for tonks as bolshy and liberated and in tune with herself and fun and confused and in flux and still figuring stuff out about who she is and where she’s going - and this translates, may i say, to an astonishingly beautiful way of writing her, lupin, and the dysfunction inherent between them which i highly recommend you read.

#asks answered #asenora's opinions on ships #remadora #remus lupin #nymphadora tonks

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pansear-doodles · 11 months

Text

The Gourmand's New Apprentices

originally meaning to post this on father's day but ah well

Extras and transcript below cut!

Remember Jelly and Bean? My first ever slugpups?

They're now part of the Anthro AU :)

Jelly and Bean (The Gelatinist and The Beanbag) are two of Gourm's top students in their occasional teaching sessions of the pups in the Outer Expanse, learning basic survival skills and the world around them.

They are eager to learn and create new things to contribute to this new age of slugcat civilization and always drone around their teacher for advice and new studies. Gourmand certainly doesn't mind them, and is happy to know that their teachings entice these impressionate pups.

They appoint them as their little assistants and expedition rookies, staying closely by their side. The pups do not have parents and are being fostered by the orphanage, but they look up to Gourmand as a parental figure of sorts.

Jelly is extremely bouncy and secretes sweet-smelling slime on their skin when prompted.

Bean has large amounts of fur that makes them as soft as a pillow.

Like the third sibling, they're a mix of oc and canon. Gourmand's end screen has pups of similar color and I would like to indicate that this is them.

Transcript:

Gourmand: See you next cycle kids! Remember to stay close to each other on your way home!

Gourmand: Jelly. Bean? Class is over. You can leave now. … Unless you have questions?

Jelly: We can't help but feel that there's an inaccuracy in our mini model of an iterator superstructure.

Bean: I think it's because we made it have four legs instead of six.

Gourmand: Oh but it looks impressive nonetheless! You even nailed down their communication arrays!

Gourmand: Moreover, iterator superstructures can have various degrees of appearance based on the surrounding environment and secondary function, though most of their blueprints' essential elements are commonly shared, as they are a necessity for the iterator's maintenance and their common usage of iterating-

Gourmand: … Oh I forgot. I should put my words down in a simpler manner for you kids to understand since you're learning. Sorry!

Jelly: No! We do understand you!

Bean: Perfectly! Thank you teacher.

Gourmand: Hmm! Where did you learn to understand such advanced wordings?

Jelly: We like to go to the library!

Bean: Yup! All the stuff you talk about is interesting! Didn't know there's a bigger world outside of here.

Jelly: I wanna look at Five Pebbles' can up close in real life!

Bean: I wanna visit the fabled underground lake of the albino leviathan!

Jelly: But… The other grown ups wouldn't let us go out alone because we need a mumdaddy to protect us.

Bean: That's what we're told. I think.

Gourmand: I can accompany you if you want, as your mentor guardian! I can even teach you the more advanced things on our studies. Your inputs throughout the class are excellent and you seem to have bright potential. I'd like to expand your minds a bit. Free up a bit of those limitations. And maybe you can be my apprentices? There's so many projects I want to do but some little helpers who I can teach the ropes to would be great!

Jelly: Do you really mean it?

Bean: Yes! Yes!

Both pups: Thank you teacher!

Gourmand: We can start right now! Instead of going to your shelter, let's go to mine. I have a lab in there and cookies I saved up in the fridge.

Bean: Yummy!

#rain world #rainworld #slugcat #fanart #rainworld downpour #rain world downpour #dp spoilers #downpour spoilers #gourmand #my anthro au #comic #oc #my art

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seeingivy · 1 year

Text

soulmates

levi ackerman x f!reader

a game of taboo makes you wonder if levi is your soulmate

content: post war levi, domestic fluff, mentions of nightmares, falco + gabi, kinda manga spoilers?, blood

Every weekend, you and Levi open up the likes of your tea shop and your home to your two favorite kids - Falco and Gabi. Not that Levi would ever tell them that. It was a tradition the four of you adopted after Reiner went out of town on a trip that you continued after he returned. The four of you enjoy each others company more than most.

Falco and Gabi always help you and Levi with the shop on Friday, granted creating more of a mess than actually helping. While you and Levi had adopted a pace to making drinks at the shop, like a well oiled machine, Falco and Gabi were anything but.

Gabi was all about speed. She wanted to make all the orders as fast as she could, not caring who or what, she had to trample over to get there. You swear the girl has nearly knocked you off your feet a few times, which earns her a scolding from Levi.

Falco was all about precision. He wanted to make all the orders as perfect as possible, not caring how long it could take. You swore he could spend an entire day steeping if he could. You’re sure the habit is no thanks to Levi, who always sends the poor kid back whenever he asks him to make his tea.

After finishing up at the shop, you and Levi close up, letting Falco and Gabi play the board games or read the books you have set out in your apartment for them. Games, from you. Books, from Levi. It goes to say that the spines of the book are in perfect state from never being opened.

On this lovely Friday, Gabi and Falco had picked out Taboo for the four of you to play. You and Falco chose to team up like you did every week, the two of you a dream team of sorts. Meanwhile, Levi and Gabi begrudgingly worked together, butting heads every time the game started. They were both used to taking charge and making the plays, which led to arguments on how they should strategize and win. Meanwhile, you and Falco worked out a system - taking turns calling the shots which fared very well for the two of you.

The game is chaotic, with Levi and Gabi aggressively trying to guess the words at the top of the card. You and Falco can’t help but laugh at their turns, the two of them arguing about the semantics of the words and scolding each other for losing out the points each time. Meanwhile, you and Falco have a civilized conversation, high fiving every time you could figure out the word together.

On your turn, you lift the card to your forehead, Falco smiling in excitement.

“This one’s easy. You and Levi.”

“Me and Levi? Is it business owners?”

“No. Think about what you guys are.”

“Adults? A couple? Short?”

Levi grabs the back of your head, turning your face towards his.

“I’ll pretend like I didn’t hear that last one, brat.”

You see Gabi and Falco laughing from your peripheral and you roll your eyes at him in response.

“Military? Leaders?”

The buzzer rings and you remove the card from your forehead to check the word. You hear Gabi and Levi taunting you in the background, but you’re too busy staring down at the card. Gabi leans over, flipping the card from your fingers to read the word.

“The word is soulmates, Mr. Levi.”

“Soulmates?”

You turn your head at Levi saying the word.

“Soulmates, Mr. Levi, are people who are made for each other. The person who balances you out, the one you’re destined to be with. You can swear you’ve met them before, your souls together in the previous life and the next too. Like you and Miss Y/N. ”

Levi turns to Falco, his gray eyes glaring at him. He turns to you, his gaze noticeably softening. You’re sure your cheeks are beet red by now and you try to divert the subject.

“I’m going to start dinner. Whose turn is it to help me?”

“Mine.”

Your eyes widen as you turn to Levi, cursing yourself for asking in the first place.

“You guys only played a few rounds. Stay here, I can handle it this week, Lee’.”

You stand up before he can respond, basically running to the kitchen.

“But Mr. Levi, wasn’t it my turn?” asks Falco, turning his head to the side to look at Levi.

“Yes. Shut up and play the game brat.”

After dinner, you and Levi pull out the air mattress the four of you sleep on. While you used to set up the guest rooms - you and Gabi in one and Falco and Levi in your bedroom - the four of you had been sleeping together in the living room as of late.

It all started a few weeks ago, on a particularly bad night for you. Falco and Gabi ran into your room to find you screaming in your sleep, Levi hunched over you trying to pull you awake. When you came to, you held onto Levi, the tears streaming from your eyes.

“Miss Y/N. What happened?”

You turn to your side to find Falco and Gabi crying at your side, their faces pink. You motioned for the two of them to join you and Levi on the bed, the four of you sitting criss cross to face one another.

“Nightmares, Falco. I’m okay.” you whisper.

“I get those too. Bad ones.”

The three of you look over, Gabi’s head in her hands. You move her hands, guiding her face to meet your gaze.

“Mine are always about Hange. I see them in the air, skin on fire. I try to stop them in the dream, but they’re gone by the time I get to them. They never get up, no matter how hard I try, how fast I move.….they still die in my arms every time I close my eyes.”

You feel Levi shift behind you, his hand making its way into your hair. He brushes through the tangles, attempting to fix your bedhead. You warm at the thought, Levi’s touch comforting you all together.

“I’m killing Sasha, watching her blood spill onto the floor. Or watching Eren become the Attack Titan, his skeleton spinning into the air while the walls come down.”

She pauses, the words dying in her throat.

“Falco turns into a titan, his warm eyes replaced with that lifeless, horrifying look in his eyes. He’s gone. And it’s all my fault.”

Falco reaches for her hand, the three of you squeezing your hands together.

“You didn’t tell me, Gabi.” whispers Falco, turning to face her.

“It’s embarrassing. That stuff is over but I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“It’s not over, not for us anyway. Sometimes I swear I can still see that girl, Ymir’s memories. I wake up in a cold sweat, dreaming of being her as she’s crushed in Galliard’s teeth. Or I see Colt. Him embracing me while I kill him.”

You hold your arms open, the two of them moving into your arms. You feel the two of them crying onto your shirt, as you press a kiss to the top of their heads. You turn to face Levi, his expression steely. You knew the look all too well, after being at Levi’s side for years. He felt guilty. You’re not sure what for.

“I have them too.”

Gabi and Falco turn to face Levi, shocked at his words. While you opened up to the two of them often, Gabi and Falco rarely had heart to hearts with Levi. They never hated him for it, understanding that he had every reason to be guarded, more than most. The only person he really talked to was you.

He reaches over, his hands brushing across the scars on your forehead and then your neck. You’re taken back to the moment, being nearly crushed in Zeke’s grasp as you guys stood on the Attack Titan. Levi had gotten to you in time, severing you out of Zeke’s hold, but he wasn’t fast enough to catch you before you fell down.

“My nightmare is that I killed you. Every time I close my eyes, all I see is you falling, after I cut you down. I reach you and you’re dead. No sparkling eyes looking at me, no stupid remarks when I talk to you. You’re still. Quiet. Lifeless. And it’s all my fault. I wake up every night, pressing my fingers against your neck just to make sure you’re still here.”

You reach forward, pulling him into your embrace. You place your hand on the side of his hair, the other arm still slung around Gabi and Falco. The four of you sit like that for a while, no one reaching to breaking the silence.

“Mr. Levi. Can we sleep here?” he whispers, looking up at Levi.

You and Levi move, opening up the covers for the two of them to climb in between you. Within a few minutes, the two of them are fast asleep, the tear stains now dry against their cheeks. You and Levi face each other, interlocking fingers over the two of them.

“Whatcha thinking about, Miss Y/N?”

You turn to find Falco, pulling out his pajamas near the mattress. You shake your head, throwing away the memory all together as you finish putting the bed together.

“Nothing, Falco. Levi’s in the bathroom. Go brush your teeth.”

He jumps off, retreating to your bathroom. You move towards the guest bathroom, finding Gabi brushing her teeth by the sink. You join her, the two of you making faces at each other as you finish up.

“Braids, Gabs?”

She nods, sitting up on the counter as you start brushing your fingers through her hair. You section off parts of her hair, getting to work on braiding her brown hair.

“Do you not think Levi is your soulmate?”

“What?”

“It’s just that earlier, the card. You seemed uncomfortable when Falco said you guys were.”

You sigh, twisting her hair in your fingers.

“It’s not that, Gabi. Don’t soulmates have to be reciprocal?”

“You don’t think you’re his soulmate?”

“I don’t know. He’s lost so many people but I’m unsure of how he felt about them and how he feels about me. Sometimes I wonder if they were still here, I wouldn’t be the one next to him. Maybe he would want it to be one of them instead.”

“I don’t think so, Miss Y/N. He loves you. The thing he’s most scared to lose is you.”

“That’s because I’m the only thing left, Gabi.”

Levi and Falco burst in, Falco nearly falling face first into the floor. You and Gabi turn to your side, glaring at the two of them for interrupting your conversation. You see Falco’s eyes shine at the sight of you braiding Gabi’s hair.

“Gabi! You look so pretty.”

You watch Gabi flush at his words, running out of the room to avoid making eye contact with him. He follows, screaming an apology at her.

“Brats. They’re hopeless.”

“She’s hopeless. I bet she does this everyday, because there’s no way Falco walks around without saying something like that to her.”

He nods in agreement as you clear the sink from the brushes and elastics you were using in her hair. You look into the mirror to find Levi staring at you.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

“No.”

“Then why are you staring?”

He reaches forward, crushing you in his arms. You feel his heart pounding in his chest as he holds you even harder in his arms. He lets go, running his eyes over you.

“You okay, Levi?” you whisper, staring into his gray eyes.

“Yeah, it’s just-”

He’s cut off by Falco and Gabi, who barge into the room again.

“Oh, sorry. We were just going to ask when you wanted to sleep.”

Levi turns to you, giving you a smile before turning to glare at the two of them. He pushes Gabi out of the room and you sling your arm around Falco as you follow them.

“Did no one teach you brats how to knock?”

“No. My parents died in the rumbling before they could teach me that.”

“Your parents dropped you off here. You’re real funny brat.”

You wake up, a cold sweat running down the side of your back. Sasha in a pool of her own blood. You look over, Gabi and Falco are still fast asleep under the blanket. Levi is absent from the mattress and you peer around for any signs of where he went.

You spot his black hair through the window of the balcony, him sitting on the floor out there. You pull your jacket (it’s Levi’s but who’s paying attention?) and join him out there, moving to sit next to him. He tenses at the contact, before opening up his arm for you to rest against him. You lean your back against his chest, his chin resting on top of your head.

The two of you sit in silence, staring out at the neighborhood over you. You lean into his embrace, thanking whatever gods there were for letting you be the one next to Levi in this moment.

“It was always going to be you.”

“Hm?”

“The person next to me. It was always going to be you.”

You sit up, turning your back to face him. You’re unsure what he’s talking about, confused by his admittance all together.

“I heard you talking to Gabi earlier. If they were still here, you would still be the one I want by my side.”

You feel your cheeks burning, embarrassed Levi had heard you confessing your insecurities to a twelve year old girl.

“I’m sorry, Levi. I didn’t mean it like that. I know how you feel about me.”

Hie expression pinches and you can feel him tense behind your back. You curse yourself for placing doubt in his mind after everything he did for you.

“I…loved them. They were both special to me, my best friends.”

You nod, cradling the side of his face in your hand.

“I know, Levi. You don’t need to explain.” you whisper.

“But they’re not special the way you are. It sounds bad but I don’t love them like I love you. I’d be done for if you were the one gone instead of them.”

You smile, glowing at his words. You knew Levi loved you, but he was hardly one to ever say it. Make no mistake, he showed it to you everyday - leaving tea out for you, making the dinner you like, buying flowers that remind him of you. But he was never the best at saying it, which did leave you to wonder at times.

“Me too, Levi. As weird as it is to say, sometimes I feel lucky that you and I get to do this. Run a tea shop. Have the kids come around. Walk in the markets. I mean this time last year we were cradling each other's nearly dead bodies.”

He pauses, swallowing hard before answering.

“The next life will be nicer to us. I mean the odds are fucking impossible - anything is better than this.”

“The next life?”

“Soulmates. Your souls are together in the previous life and the next.”

You feel your chest warm at his words, at him calling you his soulmate. You lean forward, pressing a kiss to his soft lips.

Levi walks Gabi and Falco home the next morning, leaving you snoring in the mattress behind. Gabi and Falco press kisses to your head, telling Levi they’ll bring dessert when they come next week.

Levi returns, groceries in hand. He makes breakfast, starting a cup of tea as you pad into the kitchen. Still half asleep, you swing your arms against his torso, leaning your face against his back.

“Kids gone?”

“Mhm. Dropped them off earlier. I got the apples you wanted yesterday while I was out.”

You turn to the counter, rummaging through the bag Levi brought. You take out the flowers he brought from the market - a bouquet of red tulips. You smile, setting them aside to put in a vase later.

As you look for the apples, you find a small green box. You take it out and click it open, a simple silver band in the box.

“Levi.”

“Hm?”

“Did you buy me a ring?”

You see his expression pale, as he reaches over trying to take the box from you. You’re able to avoid his grasp for a few seconds, but he gets it back in the end.

“You’re so damn nosy, brat.”

“Why are you trying to hide it? Buy it for your secret girlfriend instead of me?” you tease.

“You get stupider as time goes on. It’s obviously yours. I was waiting to give it to you.”

You smile, holding your hands out so he can give you the box back. As he reaches out to place the box in your hands, you pause spotting an identical silver band on his ring finger.

“You have the same one!”

“Yes. That’s the point, idiot.”

You look up at him, staring into his eyes. You suddenly feel nervous. Last night, Levi called you his soulmate. And today he bought you rings. Matching ones.

“What does it mean? I mean, am I really all that?” you whisper.

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

You deflate, dejected by his words. While the implication of matching rings made you nervous, nauseous even, his fast rejection made you feel even worse.

“Oh. Okay, yeah.”

“I didn’t-”

You can see the frustration rising to his face, his eyes squinting at you.

“I didn’t mean it like that. You mean everything. I just mean we don’t have to do anything. If you don’t want to. They’re just rings. We can do all that whenever we want to.”

You look up at him, smiling at his nervous expression.

“I mean everything?” you ask, smirking at him.

He prods his fingers into your forehead, pushing you back into the chair. He places the breakfast he just made in front of you along with a cup of green tea.

“You’re hopeless, brat.”

Falco and Gabi return the next week, accompanied with a box of mochi Reiner had bought for the two of you. As you and Levi take to make dinner, Falco and Gabi lean over the counter, whispering at the sight of you.

“They’re wearing matching rings.”

“What? Where, Falco?”

“On their ring fingers. Look.”

“They’re getting married, Falco! Does this mean I get to be a flower girl?”

You and Levi smile at each other, trying your best not to laugh at the two of them whispering (yelling) over the counter. Levi turns towards them, placing their food in front of them.

“We’re not getting married, brat. Not yet, anyways.”

“YOU COULD HEAR THAT?”

You turn to join the three of them, balancing your plate and Levi’s in your hand.

“You’re not the best whisperer, Gabs. Sorry.”

“Who bought them, Miss Y/N?”

“Levi did, Falco. Last week after he dropped you off.”

“Told you he was whipped for you. He looks like a kicked dog every time you walk away from him.”

“Keep talking, brat. I can easily convince her to pick another flower girl.”

You and Levi turn to Gabi, a wide smile spreading across her face.

“Wait, so you’d actually consider me?”

“Well yeah. Who else would do it?”

She runs across the table, pulling the both of you together in a hug. Falco jumps up as well, running to join the three of you. The two of them shout in their excitement, shaking the two of you in their hold. Gabi grabs Falco’s hand, dragging him onto the balcony to look at which flowers would be best for the ceremony.

“Since when does that murderous brat like flowers? It’s sickening.”

“She’s just excited, Levi. Getting to be a part of it all and everything.”

“We aren’t even getting married yet.” he deadpans.

“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

You turn to him, interlocking your fingers with his as the two of you eat your food. You hear the two of them chattering outside and thank the gods, for keeping the other half of your soul next to you.

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scarsmood · 9 months

Text

Otherkinity and misogyny

Read time 10-15 min

I have taken some time to sit and think about this topic for quite some time. Let's look at some sterotypes i'm sure you've seen this meme:

Meme can be found here

Credit @pupvi

I think it posses a good question about why this is so prevalent. Why are there so many either edgy or very cutesy otherkin blogs with seemingly no inbetween? How come there seems to be a prevalence for popular blogs to be darker in canine circles? Is this true for other spheres?

This is a result I see most in canine circles and less in others like paleotherians or dragons. Which i think is fascinating. I think it's because dogs and all canines have very strong roles in several different cultures which in turn makes them have a sociological pressure to fill these roles. I think this is a result of being a human bodied animal where we interact with human based concepts all the time and in turn intertwine them with our own beliefs even if they aren't 'technically' how an animal may act.

Interestingly in a paper i was reading, it suggested that the post modernity life style humans live currently is pretty divorced from animals. Humans dont see animals as in the same group as them. With otherkinity being an exception. This wasn't always the case either. In far earlier civilizations animals could be tried for crimes and considered in law. I think the current view humans have of animals is a result of this divorce from them. We have romanticized them and see them as a mythical or archetypical figure rather than one of us.

For example dogs in western culture we have a few concepts: The dog is a protector, the dog is friend and loyal companion, the dog is a mother or caregiver. This results in a pressure for those ideals to be intertwined with who we are. It's difficult to be a dog and grow up with these ideas all around you and not latch onto them. I don't think it's a surprise. Ironically i think this makes a sort of weird mimicry for otherkin experiences we want to be animals as closely as possible but a lot of people in the community are not in a place where they can access wilderness freely. Let alone understand it free from human allegories or symbology.

I don't think were failing as animals either for playing into these human made roles. They are unique to the human bodied experience and I think that should be cherished. I think otherkin may be some of the few human bodied individuals still looking for true connection with nature. I think interestingly we can be advocates and be a gateway for other humans to understand nature more.

We circle back to misogyny which is a result of human made roles. Misogyny plays a role into how we identify based on what humans consider to be masculine and feminine. This is dependent on culture. Some cultures share similar ideals about animals while others may differ. Which means animals can be assigned masculine or feminine based on innate traits about them. This in turn effects how we perceive each other due to our background and culture.

Misogyny is silent at times and the oppression of femininty is present still. As an undertone to otherkinity masculine kintypes may be taken more seriously. Wolves, dragons, predators, ect while feminine animals may be suppressed or seen less often. Cats, bunnies, prey animals. This isn't always true in every case just as a general trend.

I dont think this is on purpose. Rather an unconscious leaning towards masucline things to be more "real" and "realness" used to be very important within otherkin and (mainly) therian communities. Which is ironically also a trait of toxic masculinity. I think some aspects of how we perceive and want to be perceived makes impacts on our blogs.

Tumblr specifically relies a lot on aesthetic typically blogs that have a strong aesthetic may be seen as more appealing compared to something that's more barebones. With masculine leaning blogs about darker tones, gore, trauma, they tend to do very well in receiving attention. Both from a strong aesthetic and that subliminal leaning. I think there is an audience for softcore and plushcore blogs but mixing it with otherkinity seems to be uncommon unlike darker blogs.

I think it comes down to we see those gritty blogs as what aligns with masculinity and what is more credible and real. With a previous and slowly dying down culture of what is considered "real" otherkinity and what isn't this leaves a leaning on gritty darker blogs seeming to have a better reach. I think this lean is a ghost of what was almost a decade ago in the otherkin community.

This leads into my experience. I've had my blog for about 3 years now and started it by writing dark, gritty poems. Sometimes almost everyday. I know of other blogs that started roughly the same time as me but didn't result in the same amount of reach. I partly wonder if the daily activity and the combinations of cryptid/ dark aesthetic being more popular back then contributed to the attention I got in the beginning. All i did was write poems (for the most part) and still received a decent amount of attention / followers.

What I was expecting less was seeing my identity shift from my original 'design' or appearance into the red woods threatening wolf. The first thing I noticed in that transition was that I couldn't heavily identify with wolves anymore. After learning about my species more and actually fully accepting that it was matriarchal over patriarchal it left me feeling more lost compared to the typical otherkin experience. (Wolf dominated in most spaces i was in) My experience didn't feel as validating and I was left looking for something more from the community.

I was not aware at the time this would be a more major shift in how I would be treated to. Threatening wolves have ranks and learning I am cogmol which is the smallest, meekest and most disposable. I was sitting in a place that was equated with feminity suddenly. I wasn't sure how to process it so I just didn't. I accepted that was my role and moved on.

Over the year or two since I shifted my identity I do feel as though i'm not quite on the same level as others at times. I read about some experiences about other interactions in the community and feel at times I get different reactions just cause I either can't relate to the power exchange socially or because people see me differently after they learn about me.

This gets more emphasized when deer alters front who will (were planning at least) for them to front more frequently. Which means more deer content and deer identity. However that also means giving up being a threatening wolf as the main identity. The shift may take awhile but already they comment a bit that it's going to take some effort to find a community.

There isn't a very big deer community in otherkin tumblr circles. It was a bit of a struggle finding the paleokin community but it does exist at least. Deer feel like they fell off the face of the earth. It might be more beneficial to look at furry communities for deer fursonas first and then find people through that instead.

When my deer alters front they note a sense of being seen as weak or easily killable, prey, ect. Lots of predator prey interactions that do not favor the prey. While there are some blogs like poppy whose a bison. They don't feel like they quite fit in the same category as most of our alters are deer esc with typical attributes related to beauty and femininity. Thin, skinny, and 'dainty' seeming.

While most are male some are female and do not even want to exist around the community in fear of having to deal with some less tasteful people. It's no surprise deer are associated with meekness and gentle attributes which leads to some rough experiences. In the beginning of my therian journey I identified as both a wolf and a female deer. I was quickly tossed around verbally for being a deer so bad that within a day or two at best i completely dropped that aspect of myself.

I wonder if this is still an issue today. I'd love to hear other peoples experiences on it since i'm just starting to explore the deerkin community and only on and off make posts about it. I'm hoping eventually i'll learn more but for now i'm far and away from other deerkin I think.

The best way I think to curb this behavior is to participate in other communities and create more diverse cultures. Lots of otherkin are punk, anarchists, goth, pagan and the list goes on. Making more diverse aesthetics may give people the space to feel more comfortable showing more vulnerable aspects of themselves.

Sometimes newbies are driven off from intimidation from the community I think keeping on track and being more chill with what's acceptable and how to express yourself helps a lot.

Overall, I think this is something that's kinda there. It has just enough impact to kind of make other more feminine identities skirt away. It's annoying but I think if people (me included) do a some tonal shifting if they feel inclinded to do so will help make the community feel more diverse and safe.

#otherkin #therian #essay #werewolfkin #dogkin #deerkin #alterhuman #demonkin #dragonkin #catkin

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yugioh-rare-pair-poll · 5 months

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Round 6: The Final Round

Propaganda under the cut

Pairing 1: Pompshipping (Miho Nosaka/Seto Kaiba)

Propaganda: HEAR ME OUT. Miho has blue-ish white long hair. Kisara has blue-ish white long hair. Yugioh DM is NOTORIOUS for having long-dead characters have mysterious modern day dopplegangers (that’s the whole plot!!!) so why not like this? Miho is a gold digger who’s on the lookout for her perfect prince. Kaiba fills that role perfectly: young, rich, successful, handsome— what’s not to love? She latches onto him and they are both confronted with the fact that they’re both terrible people actually, and somewhere in there, real feelings sprout and they have to struggle to navigate it

Pairing 2: Beautyshipping (Mai Valentine|Mai Kukaju/Aileen Rao)

Propaganda: love a good f/f rarepair and also two powerful ladies. aileen is a model who is so good at games that kaiba decides to make her a game master, and mai is introduced as being a powerful duelist who wins a lot. they could make each other worse. | i really like them both and like to see my faves together. and i like the idea of two women who are both very independent being in a relationship together because it could be done either as a sort of rivalry romance where they're both trying to one up each other OR it could be a very soft thing where after a long day having to do everything for themselves, they have someone safe to come home to who really gets them. really depends on where in each of their stories you have them meet, i think.

Now, let’s keep things civil. This is a silly poll where we can share why we love our overlooked ships. There’s no need to be nasty to prove your point. Bashers will be banished to the Shadow Realm.

#ygo dm #ygo #yugioh dm #yugioh #yugioh dm rare pair poll #Round 6 #Final Round #pompshipping #beautyshipping #Miho Nosaka/Seto Kaiba #Mai Kujaku/Aileen Rao #Mai Valentine/Aileen Rao

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swords-and-starlight · 1 year

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Stoick headcannons

stoick hated dragons so much because they killed valka. before that, he was a respected dragon hunter but he wasn’t obsessed with it like he was in the first movie

stoick and toothless absolutely have a fake love-hate relationship. toothless will pretend to hate him and growl at him all the time and stoick will complain about toothless being in his house, but toothless and stoick give each other big hugs whenever they see each other after a long time apart and stoick always makes extra food for toothless while toothless brings back extra fish just for stoick

they treat each other like toothless is a stray that just never left: constantly ragging and being snarky with each other but they really do love each other

stoick is sort of a father figure for all the riders

he is their role model and chief, but he tends to treat the riders a bit like they’re his kids

while they all have their own parents and families, the riders tend to have big meals at hiccups house together with stoick every so often

this tradition continues even when stoick passes but it’s never the same

when they meet valka, the riders are pretty frosty to her for a long time

while they understand wanting to save dragons, they were first hand witnesses to hiccup’s loneliness and fights with his father and they hate that she abandoned her kid and husband

they eventually sort it out and become civil but they never get as close to her as they were with stoick

stoick was very socially competent and was very skilled at figuring out when people were trying to manipulate him, which was why he had so many enemies but remained one of the most powerful chiefs in the archipelago

while stoick scolded hiccup a lot for the trouble he got into, he was very protective of hiccup to other people. he’s well known outside of berk for getting into fights with people who disrespected hiccup in front of him. this was strange to the other vikings because while it is normal behavior to defend your sons honor, they would never have done so for a runt that was supposed to die soon after birth

if stoick had survived after drago was defeated, i think stoick would have had a long talk with valka about how she abandoned them. as much as he loves her, he’s still upset that she wasn’t there to help raise hiccup and that is was her choice to be absent

i think while stoick has a hard time talking about her, he gives pieces of valka to hiccup whenever he can (the dragon plushie, the breastplate helmet, etc.)

in turn, after stoick dies hiccup spends a long time working through his grief by telling valka stories of him being his dad instead of being chief

hiccup also likes to sit at stoicks statue and just talk for hours. when he doesn’t feel like talking, he sits in silence while doing some work or eating. it’s almost like having him there still.

stoick gives the best hugs ever

stoick really loved hiccup. while he hated all the trouble he got into, he admired his intellect, leadership ability, and willingness to follow his own heart. after the red death’s death, he is immensely proud and brags about hiccup to everyone.

he really struggled with being a single father while mourning his wife and trying to lead a village. this was the time period when gobber and stoick became the closest, because stoick relied on gobber so much as a friend and support system.

hiccup sees gobber as a crazy uncle/close friend, not as a father figure. however, he will go to gobber whenever he and his dad are having a fight.

stoick also really loved astrid. he often gave her big hugs and was adamant that she only refer to him as stoick or dad when they were at home instead of chief, because she was his future daughter-in-law.

while he loved all the riders for becoming hiccups friends, he was ecstatic when he heard about hiccup and astrid getting together. he was very excited for grandkids.

stoick was very busy as chief and while he always made time for hiccup, he wasn’t aware of the bullying and negligence that hiccup endured from the rest of the village. this was why he never thought it was a big deal to scold him in front of people.

I’ll probably add more httyd headcannons later but feel free to ask for anything in specific :D

#httyd fandom #httyd headcanon #httyd #hiccup httyd #stoick haddock #stoick the vast #httyd valka #stoick x valka #hiccup haddock #astrid hofferson #snotlout jorgenson #ruffnut thorston #tuffnut thorston #fishlegs ingerman #gobber the belch #httyd hc #stoick headcannons #will probably add more later

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pianokantzart · 3 months

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Reading your most recent post on Movie!Bowser… it does make me quite curious as to how they’ll handle Bowser and Mario’s fighting dynamic in the hypothetical second Mario movie. In terms of physical strength, I mean. Game!Mario is quite capable of taking down Bowser in his original form(as in, can physically take Bowser down without power-ups) but Mario more or less needed the aid of the star power-up to do so. The movie versions of M&L are definitely closer to normal humans in terms of fighting prowess, so it makes me wonder if they’ll try having Mario, and Luigi by proxy, fight in hand-to-hand combat with no power-ups with Bowser at some point?

Maybe that could be a plot point in the second movie? Bowser worms his way out and starts whichever villainous plot his evil little heart desires, and Mario and Luigi start off a journey of sorts to find another star power-up, believing it crucial in obtaining victory? But, unable to find it, they’re more or less thrown into the fray with their wits and only limited power-ups in tow? And thus sustain a significant amount more of injuries without their invincibility from the star? (And perhaps the fabled green mushroom makes its debut that way…) The movies could have an interesting juxtaposition with the first movie bros being inexperienced + power-upped vs. second movie bros being more experienced + ….not-so-power-upped lol. They sort’ve have to earn their hero titles more(though moreso in the eyes of themselves only. Mostly everyone around them is already like ‘Duh. Your heroes with or without them.’ But, alas, character arcs! Potentially!) Sorry, I’m kinda word vomiting, but day by day I grow ever more curious how the second movie could play out….

One thing I like about The Super Mario Bros. Movie is that it's pretty much just an origin story. There is so much room to expand between where the movie left off and the full Mario lore as we know it today, and I for one am interested in the process of Mario and Luigi going from "Haha! We're heroes!" to "Oh f*ck, we're heroes," to "Okay... we're heroes... we can do this."

Like, how would they react to the idea of facing off against Bowser again without a power star to help them? How will their dynamic shake out when they're bouncing from one life-or-death situation to another? How will they balance their protectiveness toward each other with their moral obligations? Where will the new stakes take them? What new powerup/ally/enemy will they encounter? But back to what you're saying. If Mario and Luigi don't use powerups– even small ones– in the fight against Bowser, I predict a combination of the following tactics will be employed:

Reliance on dexterity. Bowser has them beat in terms of speed, strength, and resilience, but being a giant turtle monster he isn't nearly as agile as Mario and Luigi.

Using Bowser's emotions against him. It's his most glaring weakness, so while prodding at his ego is risky it could also make his movements more predictable.

Using their surroundings to their advantage instead of relying strictly on their own physical ability, which is a pretty common thing to do in Mario games (and video games in general.)

Leaning heavily on teamwork, not just with each other but with Peach, Toad, and probably Yoshi given the post-credits teaser.

And maybe a certain green and white mushroom will need to come into play at some point? We'll see. My biggest fear is that the writers will nerf Bowser a little so that he's easier to take on without the aid of the super star, but I really hope that doesn't happen. Speedy, strong, ruthless, unwavering, tactical, durable Bowser with a fire breath powerful enough to destroy civilizations is my favorite Bowser.

#askbox #anon #Mario Movie #super mario bros #super mario brothers #bowser #Mario Headcanons

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s-b-party · 24 days

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Ena, HooH, and Xipe: Overseers of Balance

****Honkai star rail/Penacony including 2.1 spoilers ahead****

With 2.2 livestream today [I didn’t watch the livestream on the day it came out so this was written without knowing what was coming out soon but also….THE NEW BOSS????], I wanted to take a closer look at 3 Aeons in particular for this thread bc of the similarities between their concepts & also to look at possible roles/connections in the story of Penacony in particular

Since I normally analyze pairs of Aeons & this time we have 3, I’ll briefly introduce the 3 then I’ll talk about them in detail while trying to connect them to each other & the story

First is Ena, the Aeon of Order; they were absorbed by Xipe during the Swarm Disaster; they had a faction that followed them called the Beyond the Sky Choir which eventually stopped when they were absorbed

The second is HooH, the Aeon of Equilibrium; currently they are alive, their faction is the Arbitrators

The third is Xipe, the Aeon of Harmony; they are currently alive & their faction is the Family in Penacony

From Ena’s entry, we see they have a human-looking face or mask with an inner body that seems to encompass space & stars, giving off mostly blue & purple colors while their face, limbs, accessories, and veil have a white & gold palette; their arms have strings coming out from them which presents them like a puppet; another feature to note is the eye that appears besides them which has a gold outline and a blue and purple iris

Their symbol is represented by the icon of an eye, referring to the open eye that is present behind them in their art, with abstract shapes behind it; at first glance the symbol might not mean much when we look at it & it might look simple bc it’s just an eye but I feel that there may be more to it

The 3 circles & 3 sharp points are arranged in a way that doesn’t look randomized where if we were to divide it in half vertically, it would be balanced

Why does this matter? Mainly bc Ena is the Aeon of Order but what exactly does that concept mean? Order can be defined in a few different ways depending on context but in this case, Ena’s concept is related to the idea that things are arranged or done in a particular way, method, sequence, etc. of which we see an example in the dev log as explained by Herta

She states that she doesn’t like Ena’s personality as a “control freak” but rather their concept or at least how the universe followed the Order

In the case of planets & civilizations, under the Order they would first prosper for a time before coming to an end; this would be the cycle that was followed consistently as it is natural for civilizations to rise and fall

Going back to the abstract shapes, I want to bring up the Rule of Three, which applies to many situations but the general rule involves three things that make something effective, satisfying, ideal, etc. As we saw, the icon had three circles & three pointed ends but they were arranged specifically to make the whole symbol not very chaotic, thus it can be satisfying to look at

Interestingly we see 3 being involved in their faction, the Beyond the Sky Choir: the dev log which mentioned a “three-dimensional framework” & the curio called the Triangular Drum-roll Device

HooH the Equilibrium has a face w/ a body consisting mostly of geometric shapes, giving them a sort of blocky appearance; their body swirls & twists in a round circle which converges towards the center where we see two orbs(?) that are blue & orange while their two hands are clasped together in the center

When we look at their overall design, we can tell that they exhibit some form of balance; their name is exactly symmetrical since it can be split into Ho & oH; when it comes to their physical design, they have what we could consider, for simplicity’s sake, both “positive” & “negative”

Let’s pretend that positive is represented by the white tiles & negative is represented by black tiles, you can reverse the situation & it’ll still apply: the positive & negative tiles balance each other bc there is enough of both positive & negative that they would cancel each other out, creating a sense of balance

The symbol of HooH is well represented by a balance scale, often used for measuring & comparing the weights of objects to see if one is lighter, heavier, or equal in weight to another

Equilibrium as a concept refers to the idea that two opposing things cancel/balance each other out, creating something called “sum zero”; the implication of equilibrium is that things in life are divided by two as opposed to any other number

Herta talks about HooH in a dev log regarding how long they’ve been around compared to other aeons while also pointing out how they focus on duality

Now we have Xipe the Harmony who has a human-like body w/ 3 faces on a single head, long hair, purple skin, a dress that encompasses space, a ring of rainbow colors behind their head, and puzzle pieces floating around their form

Their symbol is quite abstract when we look at it as a whole

It is similar to Ena’s symbol where we had those abstract shapes in the background which came out to be 3 circles & 3 sharp points; here is a similar situation where the shapes are repeated 3 times in a circular fashion (it reminds me of the mitsudomoe, it’s the symbol that has 3 tomoe going around the central point of focus)

As of this point I’m not sure if the shapes themselves actually refer to/mean something specific to Xipe but I think something to point out is that the “commas” act differently based on whether they’re in the forefront or the background

The ones in the front don’t seem to interfere with any of the outer shapes on the same layer as them; however when we look at the background, the commas seem to cross into the other shapes next to them

Now what exactly is Harmony? The concept itself is when everything comes together in a single thing to create something unique or something that is typically good; for example we use harmony in music to refer to when notes or instruments are played together to create a coherent/cohesive song but we can also use harmony to refer to other things like life; in other words, harmony is a synonym for unity

Next we’re going to look at connections to each other & to the story; these 3 Aeons have varying degrees of involvement in the story as well as with each other; HooH seems to have very little connection to the other two so there isn’t rlly much I can say about them for the time being aside from their supposed involvement in the Swarm Disaster & the end of Tayzzyronth which we find in the simulated universe

However Ena & Xipe are much more connected both to each other & to the story when compared to HooH

Ena & Xipe are quite similar which makes sense considering that their concepts were fairly similar which ended up with the former getting absorbed (to clarify on their concepts, Order is the specific way to arrange or place things while Harmony focuses on fusing or combining things to bring about peace or good)

In terms of design, I would argue that they share similar color palettes, mainly cool colors (purple, blue) w/ a side of warmer colors on other features (Ena’s accessories & veil, Xipe’s halo)

Another similarity that I can see is their connection to music

Both Aeons received praise through songs through their respective factions, Beyond the Sky Choir & the Family; now that I think about it, perhaps the “commas” in Xipe’s symbol are actually supposed to be music notes in the world of HSR? I wouldn’t be surprised if they write music notes differently from what we would expect

Now in terms of their connections to the story I’ve heard theories of Ena being possibly connected to Gaiathra Triclops, the Mother Goddess that is mentioned in the most recent Trailblaze quest (****the next part about Gaiathra Triclops is mostly just me entertaining some ideas & pointing things out that I want to note, take w/ a grain of salt); I don’t think they are the same bc there are a few discrepancies that can be pointed out but maybe Gaiathra Triclops is an aspect of Ena that physically manifested

It is explained that Avgins do not follow the Aeon belief system but we also don’t know the exact origins of the Mother Goddess so what if she came from an Aeon? Aeons are the origin of concepts so it doesn’t seem far fetched to suggest that “minor”/sub-gods(?) could possibly come from them

We know that even if an Aeon dies, sometimes they leave behind remnants of themselves that still exist in the current time (e.g. Tayzzyronth & Swarm Disaster) so I don’t think it’s impossible for a similar situation here

We hear that Gaiathra Triclops is depicted as a left palm w/ 3 eyes & Ena does have 3 eyes in total if we count the one in the background; interestingly she is described specifically to be often depicted as a LEFT palm so are there any other manifestations of Ena possibly depicted as a right palm or just another body part in general?

Speaking of eyes, many have pointed out that the eye in the background has a striking resemblance to Aventurine’s eyes

The irises & pupils don’t look the exact same but it feels more of a design choice bc Aventurine’s eye shapes help to establish a sense of mystery/suspicion when it comes to his character; other than that the purple/neon pink outer ring & inner blue ring do match

If the Mother Goddess inherited the same eye from Ena, it could possibly explain how the Aventurine got the same eye despite Ena having been gone before the Sigonian incidents; I know the timeline of events are a bit cloudy so it’s not all clear but it just seems way more than a coincidence to me that Aventurine has the same eye colors as the one that appears besides Ena but I’ll leave my musings there

Now Xipe is the one who has a much more prominent presence in Penacony’s story compared to the other two Aeons

Even before entering the world we are made aware of Xipe’s ties to Penacony & its history; Penacony used to be a desert planet that acted as a prison which was owned by the IPC; the IPC eventually lost control of it due to Nanook & the residents of Penacony became members of the Family under Xipe

In terms of the Trailblaze Mission itself, we never see Xipe in person but we do see two notable instances of (extensions of) Xipe’s powers in the story: first is when we enter the Dreamscape & Robin helps us get accustomed to the new environment through tuning; second time is when Sunday invokes their power on Aventurine during the interrogation

In both cases we get the rainbow aura reminiscent of Xipe’s halo around our screens, for the MC we seem to have less of a problem whereas Aventurine suffers the entire time he’s under the influence; this reminds me of our clockwork ability which is essentially direct emotional manipulation (Clockie is most definitely sus, no question about it)

To me this change in how the extensions of Xipe’s power can go from harmless to dangerous is representative of Penacony’s storyline; it looks like a normal peaceful resort at first glance but then we learn about the darker aspect of the Dreamscape aka the memes that have appeared & untold dangers

To end this off, I do want to reiterate how Ena, HooH, and Xipe are interesting representations of different aspects of balance if you could tell based off my title for this thread; my main reason why I bring this up is bc Nanook is presented or framed as the main antagonist of this game bc of their nature as the Aeon of Destruction and the intention/goal is to stop them supposedly…

Therefore I am curious of whether we will see Xipe, HooH, and just the other Aeons in general play a bigger role in this plot of somehow stopping Nanook or if they’ll leave them be bc that is simply their nature; they are all beings who follow their own concepts & ideals so they do what they feel is right based off of their own values

If we are to consider what is balance in this universe, destruction would be the opposite of preservation which is represented by Qlipoth but we also can consider Yaoshi to be their opposite since they help grow life wherever they go

We also were somewhat expecting the Annihilation Gang to make an appearance during the story but we learned that they disbanded after Ifrit was killed by Acheron; does this mean that we won’t really see them again? We also know that Nanook doesn’t really like how the Annihilation Gang operates bc they see their sadistic desire to destroy as “impure” so it seems almost like we’re left hanging when it comes to them

I know that we are still in the Penacony arc so this might not be addressed at the moment but I’m still interested in seeing how the overall plot involving Nanook will play out 👀

#honkai star rail #honkai star rail lore #hsr #hsr aeons #honkai star rail spoilers #hsr ena #hsr hooh #hsr xipe #penacony

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